THE INQUEST
IM iss Marple walked slowly along the village street on her way towards the market place where the inquest was totake place in the old-fashioned Georgian building which had been known for a hundred years as the Curfew Arms. Sheglanced at her watch. There was still a good twenty minutes before she need be there. She looked into the shops. Shepaused before the shop that sold wool and babies’ jackets, and peered inside for a few moments. A girl in the shop wasserving. Small woolly coats were being tried on two children. Further along the counter there was an elderly woman.
Miss Marple went into the shop, went along the counter to a seat opposite the elderly woman, and produced asample of pink wool. She had run out, she explained, of this particular brand of wool and had a little jacket she neededto finish. The match was soon made, some more samples of wool that Miss Marple had admired were brought out forher to look at, and soon she was in conversation. Starting with the sadness of the accident which had just taken place.
Mrs. Merrypit, if her name was identical with that which was written up outside the shop, was full of the importanceof the accident, and the general difficulties of getting local governments to do anything about the dangers of footpathsand public rights of way.
“After the rain, you see, you get all the soil washed off and then the boulders3 get loose and then down they comes. Iremember one year they had three falls—three accidents there was. One boy nearly killed, he was, and then later thatyear, oh six months later, I think, there was a man got his arm broken, and the third time it was poor old Mrs. Walker.
Blind she was and pretty well deaf too. She never heard nothing or she could have got out of the way, they say.
Somebody saw it and they called out to her, but they was too far away to reach her or to run to get her. And so she waskilled.”
“Oh how sad,” said Miss Marple, “how tragic4. The sort of thing that’s not easily forgotten, is it.”
“No indeed. I expect the Coroner’ll mention it today.”
“I expect he will,” said Miss Marple. “In a terrible way it seems quite a natural thing to happen, doesn’t it, thoughof course there are accidents sometimes by pushing things about, you know. Just pushing, making stones rock. Thatsort of thing.”
“Ah well, there’s boys as be up to anything. But I don’t think I’ve ever seen them up that way, fooling about.”
Miss Marple went on to the subject of pullovers. Bright coloured pullovers.
“It’s not for myself,” she said, “it’s for one of my great-nephews. You know he wants a polo-necked pullover andvery bright colours he’d like.”
“Yes, they do like bright colours nowadays, don’t they?” agreed Mrs. Merrypit. “Not in jeans. Black jeans theylike. Black or dark blue. But they like a bit of brightness up above.”
Miss Marple described a pullover of check design in bright colours. There appeared to be quite a good stock ofpullovers and jerseys5, but anything in red and black did not seem to be on display, nor even was anything like itmentioned as having been lately in stock. After looking at a few samples Miss Marple prepared to take her departure,chatting first about the former murders she had heard about which had happened in this part of the world.
“They got the fellow in the end,” said Mrs. Merrypit. “Nice looking boy, hardly have thought it of him. He’d beenwell brought up, you know. Been to university and all that. Father was very rich, they say. Touched in the head, Isuppose. Not that they sent him to Broadway, or whatever the place is. No, they didn’t do that, but I think myself hemust have been a mental case—there was five or six other girls, so they said. The police had one after another of theyoung men round hereabouts to help them. Geoffrey Grant they had up. They were pretty sure it was him to beginwith. He was always a bit queer, ever since he was a boy. Interfered6 with little girls going to school, you know. Heused to offer them sweets and get them to come down the lanes with him and see the primroses7, or something like that.
Yes, they had very strong suspicions about him. But it wasn’t him. And then there was another one. Bert Williams, buthe’d been far away on two occasions, at least—what they call an alibi8, so it couldn’t be him. And then at last it cameto this—what’sis-name, I can’t remember him now. Luke I think his name was—no Mike something. Very nicelooking, as I say, but he had a bad record. Yes, stealing, forging cheques, all sorts of things like that. And two what-you-call ’em paternity cases, no, I don’t mean that, but you know what I mean. When a girl’s going to have a baby.
You know and they make an order and make the fellow pay. He’d got two girls in the family way before this.”
“Was this girl in the family way?”
“Oh yes, she was. At first we thought when the body was found it might have been Nora Broad. That was Mrs.
Broad’s niece, down at the mill shop. Great one for going with the boys, she was. She’d gone away missing fromhome in the same way. Nobody knew where she was. So when this body turned up six months later they thought atfirst it was her.”
“But it wasn’t?”
“No—someone quite different.”
“Did her body ever turn up?”
“No. I suppose it might some day, but they think on the whole it was pushed into the river. Ah well, you neverknow, do you? You never know what you may dig up off a ploughed field or something like that. I was taken once tosee all that treasure. Luton Loo was it—some name like that? Somewhere in the East Counties. Under a ploughed fieldit was. Beautiful. Gold ships and Viking ships and gold plate, enormous great platters. Well, you never know. Any dayyou may turn up a dead body or you may turn up a gold platter. And it may be hundreds of years old like that goldplate was, or it may be a three-or four-years-old body, like Mary Lucas who’d been missing for four years, they say.
Somewhere near Reigate she was found. Ah well, all these things! It’s a sad life. Yes, it’s a very sad life. You neverknow what’s coming.”
“There was another girl who’d lived here, wasn’t there?” said Miss Marple, “who was killed.”
“You mean the body they thought was Nora Broad’s but it wasn’t? Yes. I’ve forgotten her name now. Hope, it was,I think. Hope or Charity. One of those sort of names, if you know what I mean. Used to be used a lot in Victoriantimes but you don’t hear them so much nowadays. Lived at the Manor9 House, she did. She’d been there for some timeafter her parents were killed.”
“Her parents died in an accident, didn’t they?”
“That’s right. In a plane going to Spain or Italy, one of those places.”
“And you say she came to live here? Were they relations of hers?”
“I don’t know if they were relations, but Mrs. Glynne as she is now, was I think a great friend of her mother’s orsomething that way. Mrs. Glynne, of course, was married and gone abroad but Miss Clotilde—that’s the eldest10 one,the dark one—she was very fond of the girl. She took her abroad, to Italy and France and all sorts of places, and shehad her trained a bit of typewriting and shorthand and that sort of thing, and art classes too. She’s very arty, MissClotilde is. Oh, she was mighty11 fond of the girl. Brokenhearted she was when she disappeared. Quite different to MissAnthea—”
“Miss Anthea is the youngest one, isn’t she?”
“Yes. Not quite all there, some people say. Scatty like, you know, in her mind. Sometimes you see her walkingalong, talking to herself, you know, and tossing her head in a very queer way. Children get frightened of hersometimes. They say she’s a bit queer about things. I don’t know. You hear everything in a village, don’t you? Thegreat-uncle who lived here before, he was a bit peculiar12 too. Used to practise revolver shooting in the garden. For noreason at all so far as anyone could see. Proud of his marksmanship, he said he was, whatever marksmanship is.”
“But Miss Clotilde is not peculiar?”
“Oh no, she’s clever, she is. Knows Latin and Greek, I believe. Would have liked to go to university but she had tolook after her mother who was an invalid13 for a long time. But she was very fond of Miss—now, what was her name?
—Faith perhaps. She was very fond of her and treated her like a daughter. And then along comes this young what’s-his-name, Michael I think it was—and then one day the girl just goes off without saying a word to anyone. I don’tknow if Miss Clotilde knew as she was in the family way.”
“But you knew,” said Miss Marple.
“Ah well, I’ve got a lot of experience. I usually know when a girl’s that way. It’s plain enough to the eye. It’s notonly the shape, as you might say, you can tell by the look in their eyes and the way they walk and sit, and the sort ofgiddy fits they get and sick turns now and again. Oh yes, I thought to myself, here’s another one of them. MissClotilde had to go and identify the body. Nearly broke her up, it did. She was like a different woman for weeksafterwards. Fairly loved that girl, she did.”
“And the other one—Miss Anthea?”
“Funnily enough, you know, I thought she had a kind of pleased look as though she was—yes, just pleased. Notnice, eh? Farmer Plummer’s daughter used to look like that. Always used to go and see pigs killed. Enjoyed it. Funnythings goes on in families.”
Miss Marple said good-bye, saw she had another ten minutes to go and passed on to the post office. The post officeand general store of Jocelyn St. Mary was just off the Market Square.
Miss Marple went into the post office, bought some stamps, looked at some of the postcards and then turned herattention to various paperback14 books. A middle-aged15 woman with rather a vinegary face presided behind the postalcounter. She assisted Miss Marple to free a book from the wire support in which the books were.
“Stick a bit sometimes, they do. People don’t put them back straight, you see.”
There was by now no one else in the shop. Miss Marple looked with distaste at the jacket of the book, a naked girlwith blood-stained markings on her face and a sinister-looking killer16 bending over her with a blood-stained knife in hishand.
“Really,” she said, “I don’t like these horrors nowadays.”
“Gone a bit too far with some of their jackets, haven’t they,” said Mrs. Vinegar. “Not everyone as likes them. Toofond of violence in every way, I’d say nowadays.”
Miss Marple detached a second book. “Whatever Happened to Baby Jane,” she read. “Oh dear, it’s a sad world onelives in.”
“Oh yes, I know. Saw in yesterday’s paper, I did, some woman left her baby outside a supermarket and thensomeone else comes along and wheels it away. And all for no reason as far as one can see. The police found her allright. They all seem to say the same things, whether they steal from a supermarket or take away a baby. Don’t knowwhat came over them, they say.”
“Perhaps they really don’t,” suggested Miss Marple.
Mrs. Vinegar looked even more like vinegar.
“Take me a lot to believe that, it would.”
Miss Marple looked round—the post office was still empty. She advanced to the window.
“If you are not too busy, I wonder if you could answer a question of mine,” said Miss Marple. “I have donesomething extremely stupid. Of late years I make so many mistakes. This was a parcel addressed to a charity. I sendthem clothes—pullovers and children’s woollies, and I did it up and addressed it and it was sent off—and only thismorning it came to me suddenly that I’d made a mistake and written the wrong address. I don’t suppose any list is keptof the address of parcels—but I thought someone might have just happened to remember it. The address I meant to putwas The Dockyard and Thames Side Welfare Association.”
Mrs. Vinegar was looking quite kindly17 now, touched by Miss Marple’s patent incapacity and general state ofsenility and dither.
“Did you bring it yourself?”
“No, I didn’t—I’m staying at The Old Manor House—and one of them, Mrs. Glynne, I think—said she or her sisterwould post it. Very kind of her—”
“Let me see now. It would have been on Tuesday, would it? It wasn’t Mrs. Glynne who brought it in, it was theyoungest one, Miss Anthea.”
“Yes, yes, I think that was the day—”
“I remember it quite well. In a good sized dress box—and moderately heavy, I think. But not what you said,Dockyard Association—I can’t recall anything like that. It was the Reverend Matthews—The East Ham Women andChildren’s Woollen Clothing Appeal.”
“Oh yes.” Miss Marple clasped her hands in an ecstasy18 of relief. “How clever of you—I see now how I came to doit. At Christmas I did send things to the East Ham Society in answer to a special appeal for knitted things, so I musthave copied down the wrong address. Can you just repeat it?” She entered it carefully in a small notebook.
“I’m afraid the parcel’s gone off, though—”
“Oh yes, but I can write, explaining the mistake and ask them to forward the parcel to the Dockyard Associationinstead. Thank you so much.”
Miss Marple trotted19 out.
Mrs. Vinegar produced stamps for her next customer, remarking in an aside to a colleague—“Scatty as they makethem, poor old creature. Expect she’s always doing that sort of thing.”
Miss Marple went out of the post office and ran into Emlyn Price and Joanna Crawford.
Joanna, she noticed, was very pale and looked upset.
“I’ve got to give evidence,” she said. “I don’t know—what will they ask me? I’m so afraid. I—I don’t like it. I toldthe police sergeant20, I told him what I thought we saw.”
“Don’t you worry, Joanna,” said Emlyn Price. “This is just a coroner’s inquest, you know. He’s a nice man, adoctor, I believe. He’ll just ask you a few questions and you’ll say what you saw.”
“You saw it too,” said Joanna.
“Yes, I did,” said Emlyn. “At least I saw there was someone up there. Near the boulders and things. Now come on,Joanna.”
“They came and searched our rooms in the hotel,” said Joanna. “They asked our permission but they had a searchwarrant. They looked in our rooms and among the things in our luggage.”
“I think they wanted to find that check pullover you described. Anyway, there’s nothing for you to worry about. Ifyou’d had a black and scarlet21 pullover yourself you wouldn’t have talked about it, would you. It was black and scarlet,wasn’t it?”
“I don’t know,” said Emlyn Price. “I don’t really know the colours of things very well. I think it was a sort ofbright colour. That’s all I know.”
“They didn’t find one,” said Joanna. “After all, none of us have very many things with us. You don’t when you goon a coach travel. There wasn’t anything like that among anybody’s things. I’ve never seen anyone—of our lot, Imean, wearing anything like that. Not so far. Have you?”
“No, I haven’t, but I suppose—I don’t know that I should know if I had seen it,” said Emlyn Price. “I don’t alwaysknow red from green.”
“No, you’re a bit colour-blind, aren’t you,” said Joanna. “I noticed that the other day.”
“What do you mean, you noticed it.”
“My red scarf. I asked if you’d seen it. You said you’d seen a green one somewhere and you brought me the redone. I’d left it in the dining room. But you didn’t really know it was red.”
“Well, don’t go about saying I’m colour-blind. I don’t like it. Puts people off in some way.”
“Men are more often colour-blind than women,” said Joanna. “It’s one of those sex-link things,” she added, with anair of erudition. “You know, it passes through the female and comes out in the male.”
“You make it sound as though it was measles,” said Emlyn Price. “Well, here we are.”
“You don’t seem to mind,” said Joanna, as they walked up the steps.
“Well, I don’t really. I’ve never been to an inquest. Things are rather interesting when you do them for the firsttime.”
II
Dr. Stokes was a middle-aged man with greying hair and spectacles. Police evidence was given first, then the medicalevidence with technical details of the concussion22 injuries which had caused death. Mrs. Sandbourne gave particularsof the coach tour, the expedition as arranged for that particular afternoon, and particulars of how the fatality23 hadoccurred. Miss Temple, she said, although not young, was a very brisk walker. The party were going along a well-known footpath1 which led around the curve of a hill which slowly mounted to the old Moorland Church originallybuilt in Elizabethan times, though repaired and added to later. On an adjoining crest24 was what was called theBonaventure Memorial. It was a fairly steep ascent25 and people usually climbed it at different paces from each other.
The younger ones very often ran or walked ahead and reached their destination much earlier than the others. Theelderly ones took it slowly. She herself usually kept at the rear of the party so that she could, if necessary, suggest topeople who were tired that they could, if they liked, go back. Miss Temple, she said, had been talking to a Mr. andMrs. Butler. Miss Temple, though she was over sixty, had been slightly impatient at their slow pace and hadoutdistanced them, had turned a corner and gone on ahead rather rapidly, which she had done often before. She wasinclined to get impatient if waiting for people to catch up for too long, and preferred to make her own pace. They hadheard a cry ahead, and she and the others had run on, turned a curve of the pathway and had found Miss Temple lyingon the ground. A large boulder2 detached from the hillside above where there were several others of the same kind,must, they had thought, have rolled down the hillside and struck Miss Temple as she was going along the path below.
A most unfortunate and tragic accident.
“You had no idea there was anything but an accident?”
“No, indeed. I can hardly see how it could have been anything but an accident.”
“You saw no one above you on the hillside?”
“No. This is the main path round the hill but of course people do wander about over the top. I did not see anyonethat particular afternoon.”
Then Joanna Crawford was called. After particulars of her name and age Dr. Stokes asked,“You were not walking with the remainder of the party?”
“No, we had left the path. We’d gone round the hill a little higher up the slope.”
“You were walking with a companion?”
“Yes. With Mr. Emlyn Price.”
“There was no one else actually walking with you?”
“No. We were talking and we were looking at one or two of the flowers. They seemed of rather an uncommonkind. Emlyn’s interested in botany.”
“Were you out of sight of the rest of the party?”
“Not all the time. They were walking along the main path—some way below us, that is.”
“Did you see Miss Temple?”
“I think so. She was walking ahead of the others, and I think I saw her turn a corner of the path ahead of them afterwhich we didn’t see her because the contour of the hill hid her.”
“Did you see someone walking above you on the hillside?”
“Yes. Up amongst a good many boulders. There’s a sort of great patch of boulders on the side of the hill.”
“Yes,” said Dr. Stokes, “I know exactly the place you mean. Large granite26 boulders. People call them the Wethers,or the Grey Wethers sometimes.”
“I suppose they might look like sheep from a distance but we weren’t so very far away from them.”
“And you saw someone up there?”
“Yes. Someone was more or less in the middle of the boulders, leaning over them.”
“Pushing them, do you think?”
“Yes. I thought so, and wondered why. He seemed to be pushing at one on the outside of the group near the edge.
They were so big and so heavy I would have thought it was impossible to push them. But the one he or she waspushing seemed to be balanced like a rocking stone.”
“You said first he, now you say he or she, Miss Crawford. Which do you think it was?”
“Well, I thought—I suppose—I suppose I thought it was a man, but I wasn’t actually thinking at the time. It was—he or she was—wearing trousers and a pullover, a sort of man’s pullover with a polo-neck.”
“What colour was the pullover?”
“Rather a bright red and black in checks. And there was longish hair at the back of a kind of beret, rather like awoman’s hair, but then it might just as well have been a man’s.”
“It certainly might,” said Dr. Stokes, rather drily. “Identifying a male or female figure by their hair is certainly noteasy these days.” He went on, “What happened next?”
“Well, the stone began to roll over. It sort of toppled over the edge and then it began to gain speed. I said to Emlyn,“Oh it’s going to go right over down the hill.” Then we heard a sort of crash as it fell. And I think I heard a cry frombelow but I might have imagined it.”
“And then?”
“Oh, we ran on up a bit and round the corner of the hill to see what happened to the stone.”
“And what did you see?”
“We saw the boulder below on the path with a body underneath27 it—and people coming running round the corner.”
“Was it Miss Temple who uttered the cry?”
“I think it must have been. It might have been one of the others who was catching28 up and turned the corner. Oh! itwas—it was horrible.”
“Yes, I’m sure it was. What had happened to the figure you’d seen above? The man or woman in the red and blackpullover? Was that figure still there among the stones?”
“I don’t know. I never looked up there. I was—I was busy looking at the accident, and running down the hill to seeif one could do anything. I did just look up, I think, but there wasn’t anyone in sight. Only the stones. There were a lotof contours and you could lose anyone quite easily from view.”
“Could it have been one of your party?”
“Oh, no. I’m sure it wasn’t one of us. I would have known because, I mean, one would have known by theirclothes. I’m sure nobody was wearing a scarlet and black pullover.”
“Thank you, Miss Crawford.”
Emlyn Price was called next. His story was practically a replica29 of Joanna’s.
There was a little more evidence which did not amount to much.
The Coroner brought in that there was not sufficient evidence to show how Elizabeth Temple had come to herdeath, and adjourned30 the inquest for a fortnight.
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footpath
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| n.小路，人行道 | |
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boulder
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| n.巨砾；卵石，圆石 | |
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boulders
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| n.卵石( boulder的名词复数 )；巨砾；（受水或天气侵蚀而成的）巨石；漂砾 | |
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tragic
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| adj.悲剧的，悲剧性的，悲惨的 | |
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jerseys
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| n.运动衫( jersey的名词复数 ) | |
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interfered
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| v.干预( interfere的过去式和过去分词 )；调停；妨碍；干涉 | |
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primroses
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| n.报春花( primrose的名词复数 )；淡黄色；追求享乐（招至恶果） | |
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alibi
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manor
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eldest
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| adj.最年长的，最年老的 | |
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mighty
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peculiar
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invalid
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| n.病人，伤残人；adj.有病的，伤残的；无效的 | |
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paperback
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middle-aged
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killer
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kindly
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ecstasy
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trotted
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| 小跑，急走( trot的过去分词 )； 匆匆忙忙地走 | |
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sergeant
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scarlet
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concussion
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fatality
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crest
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ascent
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granite
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| adj.花岗岩，花岗石 | |
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underneath
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catching
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| adj.易传染的，有魅力的，迷人的，接住 | |
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replica
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adjourned
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| （使）休会， （使）休庭( adjourn的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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