THE CLOCK STRIKES THREE
IM iss Cooke and Miss Barrow arrived very promptly1 at 8:45. One wore beige lace and the other one a shade of olivegreen. During dinner Anthea had asked Miss Marple about these two ladies.
“It seems very funny of them,” she said, “to want to stay behind.”
“Oh, I don’t think so,” said Miss Marple. “I think it is really quite natural. They have a rather exact plan, Iimagine.”
“What do you mean by a plan?” asked Mrs. Glynne.
“Well, I should think they are always prepared for various eventualities and have a plan for dealing2 with them.”
“Do you mean,” said Anthea, with some interest, “do you mean that they had a plan for dealing with murder?”
“I wish,” said Mrs. Glynne, “that you wouldn’t talk of poor Miss Temple’s death as murder.”
“But of course it’s murder,” said Anthea. “All I wonder is who wanted to murder her? I should think probablysome pupil of hers at the school who always hated her and had it in for her.”
“Do you think hate can last as long as that?” asked Miss Marple.
“Oh, I should think so. I should think you could hate anyone for years.”
“No,” said Miss Marple, “I think hate would die out. You could try and keep it up artificially, but I think you wouldfail. It’s not as strong a force as love,” she added.
“Don’t you think that Miss Cooke or Miss Barrow or both of them might have done the murder?”
“Why should they?” said Mrs. Glynne. “Really, Anthea! They seemed very nice women to me.”
“I think there’s something rather mysterious about them,” said Anthea. “Don’t you, Clotilde?”
“I think perhaps you’re right,” said Clotilde. “They seemed to me to be slightly artificial, if you know what Imean.”
“I think there’s something very sinister3 about them,” said Anthea.
“You’ve got such an imagination always,” said Mrs. Glynne. “Anyway, they were walking along the bottom path,weren’t they? You saw them there, didn’t you?” she said to Miss Marple.
“I can’t say that I noticed them particularly,” said Miss Marple. “In fact, I had no opportunity of doing so.”
“You mean—?”
“She wasn’t there,” said Clotilde. “She was here in our garden.”
“Oh, of course. I forgot.”
“A very nice, peaceful day it was,” said Miss Marple. “I enjoyed it very much. Tomorrow morning I would like togo out and look again at that mass of white flowers coming into bloom at the end of the garden near that raised upmound. It was just beginning to come out the other day. It must be a mass of bloom now. I shall always remember thatas part of my visit here, you know.”
“I hate it,” said Anthea. “I want it taken away. I want to build up a greenhouse again there. Surely if we saveenough money we can do that, Clotilde?”
“We’ll leave that alone,” said Clotilde. “I don’t want that touched. What use is a greenhouse to us now? It wouldbe years before grapes would bear fruit again.”
“Come,” said Mrs. Glynne, “we can’t go on arguing over that. Let us go into the drawing room. Our guests will becoming shortly for coffee.”
It was then that the guests had arrived. Clotilde brought in the tray of coffee. She poured out the cups anddistributed them. She placed one before each guest and then brought one to Miss Marple. Miss Cooke leaned forward.
“Oh, do forgive me, Miss Marple, but really, do you know, I shouldn’t drink that if I were you. Coffee, I mean, atthis time of night. You won’t sleep properly.”
“Oh, do you think so?” said Miss Marple. “I am quite used to coffee in the evening.”
“Yes, but this is very strong, good coffee. I should advise you not to drink it.”
Miss Marple looked at Miss Cooke. Miss Cooke’s face was very earnest, her fair, unnatural-looking hair floppedover one eye. The other eye blinked slightly.
“I see what you mean,” said Miss Marple. “Perhaps you are right. You know something, I gather, about diet.”
“Oh yes, I make quite a study of it. I had some training in nursing, you know, and one thing and another.”
“Indeed.” Miss Marple pushed the cup away slightly. “I suppose there is no photograph of this girl?” she asked.
“Verity5 Hunt, or whatever her name was? The Archdeacon was talking about her. He seemed to have been very fondof her.”
“I think he was. He was fond of all young people,” said Clotilde.
She got up, went across the room and lifted the lid of a desk. From that she brought a photograph and brought itover for Miss Marple to see.
“That was Verity,” she said.
“A beautiful face,” said Miss Marple. “Yes, a very beautiful and unusual face. Poor child.”
“It’s dreadful nowadays,” said Anthea, “these things seem to be happening the whole time. Girls going out withevery kind of young man. Nobody taking any trouble to look after them.”
“They have to look after themselves nowadays,” said Clotilde, “and they’ve no idea of how to do it, heaven helpthem!”
She stretched out a hand to take back the photograph from Miss Marple. As she did so her sleeve caught the coffeecup and knocked it to the floor.
“Oh dear!” said Miss Marple. “Was that my fault? Did I jog your arm?”
“No,” said Clotilde, “it was my sleeve. It’s rather a floating sleeve. Perhaps you would like some hot milk, if youare afraid to take coffee?”
“That would be very kind,” said Miss Marple. “A glass of hot milk when I go to bed would be very soothingindeed, and always gives one a good night.”
After a little more desultory6 conversation, Miss Cooke and Miss Barrow took their departure. A rather fussydeparture in which first one and then the other came back to collect some article they’d left behind. A scarf, a handbagand a pocket handkerchief.
“Fuss, fuss, fuss,” said Anthea, when they had departed.
“Somehow,” said Mrs. Glynne, “I agree with Clotilde that those two don’t seem real, if you know what I mean,”
she said to Miss Marple.
“Yes,” said Miss Marple, “I do rather agree with you. They don’t seem very real. I have wondered about them agood deal. Wondered, I mean, why they came on this tour and if they were really enjoying it. And what was theirreason for coming.”
“And have you discovered the answers to all those things?” asked Clotilde.
“I think so,” said Miss Marple. She sighed. “I’ve discovered the answers to a lot of things,” she said.
“Up to now I hope you’ve enjoyed yourself,” said Clotilde.
“I am glad to have left the tour now,” said Miss Marple. “I don’t think I should have enjoyed much more of it.”
“No. I can quite understand that.”
Clotilde fetched a glass of hot milk from the kitchen and accompanied Miss Marple up to her room.
“Is there anything else I can get you?” she asked. “Anything at all?”
“No, thank you,” said Miss Marple. “I have everything I want. I have my little night bag here, you see, so I neednot do anymore unpacking7. Thank you,” she said, “it is very kind of you and your sisters to put me up again tonight.”
“Well, we couldn’t do much less, having had Mr. Rafiel’s letter. He was a very thoughtful man.”
“Yes,” said Miss Marple, “the kind of man who—well, thinks of everything. A good brain, I should think.”
“I believe he was a very noted8 financier.”
“Financially and otherwise, he thought of a lot of things,” said Miss Marple. “Oh well, I shall be glad to get to bed.
Good night, Miss Bradbury-Scott.”
“Shall I send you breakfast up in the morning, you’d like to have it in bed?”
“No, no, I wouldn’t put you out for the world. No, no, I would rather come down. A cup of tea, perhaps, would bevery nice, but I want to go out in the garden. I particularly want to see that mound4 all covered with white flowers, sobeautiful and so triumphant—”
“Good night,” said Clotilde, “sleep well.”
II
In the hall of The Old Manor9 House the grandfather clock at the bottom of the stairs struck two o’clock. The clocks inthe house did not all strike in unison10 and some of them, indeed, did not strike at all. To keep a house full of antiqueclocks in working order was not easy. At three o’clock the clock on the first floor landing struck a soft-chimed threeo’clock. A faint chink of light showed through the hinge of the door.
Miss Marple sat up in bed and put her fingers on the switch of the electric lamp by her bed. The door opened verysoftly. There was no light outside now but the soft footstep came through the door into the room. Miss Marpleswitched the light on.
“Oh,” she said, “it’s you, Miss Bradbury-Scott. Is there anything special?”
“I just came to see if you wanted anything,” said Miss Bradbury-Scott.
Miss Marple looked at her. Clotilde had on a long purple robe. What a handsome woman she was, thought MissMarple. Her hair framing her forehead, a tragic11 figure, a figure of drama. Again Miss Marple thought of Greek plays.
Clytemnestra again.
“You’re sure there is nothing I can bring you?”
“No, thank you,” said Miss Marple. “I’m afraid,” she said apologetically, “that I have not drunk my milk.”
“Oh dear, why not?”
“I did not think it would be very good for me,” said Miss Marple.
Clotilde stood there, at the foot of the bed, looking at her.
“Not wholesome12, you know,” said Miss Marple.
“Just what do you mean by that?” Clotilde’s voice was harsh now.
“I think you know what I mean,” said Miss Marple. “I think you’ve known all the evening. Perhaps before that.”
“I have no idea what you are talking about.”
“No?” There was a faint satirical note to the questioning monosyllable.
“I am afraid the milk is cold now. I will take it away and get you some hot.”
Clotilde stretched out a hand and took the glass of milk from the bedside.
“Don’t trouble yourself,” said Miss Marple. “Even if you brought it me, I should not drink it.”
“I really cannot understand the point of what you’re saying. Really,” said Clotilde, looking at her. “What a veryextraordinary person you are. What sort of a woman are you? Why are you talking like this? Who are you?”
Miss Marple pulled down the mass of pink wool that encircled her head, a pink wool scarf of the same kind thatshe had once worn in the West Indies.
“One of my names,” she said, “is Nemesis13.”
“Nemesis? And what does that mean?”
“I think you know,” said Miss Marple. “You are a very well educated woman. Nemesis is long delayed sometimes,but it comes in the end.”
“What are you talking about?”
“About a very beautiful girl whom you killed,” said Miss Marple.
“Whom I killed? What do you mean?”
“I mean the girl Verity.”
“And why should I kill her?”
“Because you loved her,” said Miss Marple.
“Of course I loved her. I was devoted14 to her. And she loved me.”
“Somebody said to me not very long ago that love was a very frightening word. It is a frightening word. You lovedVerity too much. She meant everything in the world to you. She was devoted to you until something else came intoher life. A different kind of love came into her life. She fell in love with a boy, a young man. Not a very suitable one,not a very good specimen15, not anyone with a good record, but she loved him and he loved her and she wanted toescape. To escape from the burden of the bondage16 of love she was living in with you. She wanted a normal woman’slife. To live with the man of her choice, to have children by him. She wanted marriage and the happiness ofnormality.”
Clotilde moved. She came to a chair and sat down in it, staring at Miss Marple.
“So,” she said, “you seem to understand very well.”
“Yes, I do understand.”
“What you say is quite true. I shan’t deny it. It doesn’t matter if I do or do not deny it.”
“No,” said Miss Marple, “you are quite right there. It will not matter.”
“Do you know at all—can you imagine—how I have suffered?”
“Yes,” said Miss Marple, “I can imagine it. I’ve always been able to imagine things.”
“Did you imagine the agony, the agony of thinking, of knowing you are going to lose the thing you love best in theworld. And I was losing it to a miserable17, depraved delinquent18. A man unworthy of my beautiful, splendid girl. I hadto stop it. I had to—I had to.”
“Yes,” said Miss Marple. “Sooner than let the girl go, you killed her. Because you loved her, you killed her.”
“Do you think I could ever do a thing like that? Do you think I could strangle the girl I loved? Do you think I couldbash her face in, crush her head to a pulp19? Nothing but a vicious, depraved man would do a thing like that.”
“No,” said Miss Marple, “you wouldn’t do that. You loved her and you would not be able to do that.”
“Well then, you see, you are talking nonsense.”
“You didn’t do that to her. The girl that happened to was not the girl you loved. Verity’s here still, isn’t she? She’shere in the garden. I don’t think you strangled her. I think you gave her a drink of coffee or of milk, you gave her apainless overdose of sleeping stuff. And then when she was dead, you took her out into the garden, you pulled asidethe fallen bricks of the greenhouse, and you made a vault20 for her there, under the floor with the bricks, and covered itover. And then the polygonum was planted there and has flowered ever since, growing bigger and stronger every year.
Verity has remained here with you. You never let her go.”
“You fool! You crazy old fool! Do you think you are ever going to get away to tell this story?”
“I think so,” said Miss Marple. “I’m not quite sure of it. You are a strong woman, a great deal stronger than I am.”
“I’m glad you appreciate that.”
“And you wouldn’t have any scruples,” said Miss Marple. “You know one doesn’t stop at one murder. I havenoticed that in the course of my life and in what I have observed of crime. You killed two girls, didn’t you? You killedthe girl you loved and you killed a different girl.”
“I killed a silly little tramp, an adolescent tart21. Nora Broad. How did you know about her?”
“I wondered,” said Miss Marple. “I didn’t think from what I saw of you that you could have borne to strangle anddisfigure the girl you loved. But another girl disappeared also about that time, a girl whose body has never been found.
But I thought the body had been found, only they hadn’t known that the body was Nora Broad’s. It was dressed inVerity’s clothes, it was identified as Verity by the person who would be the first applied22 to, the person who knew herbetter than anyone else. You had to go and say if the body found was the body of Verity. You recognized it. You saidthat that dead body was Verity’s.”
“And why should I do that?”
“Because you wanted the boy who had taken Verity away from you, the boy whom Verity had loved and who hadloved Verity, you wanted him tried for murder. And so you hid that second body in a place where it would not be tooeasily discovered. When that was discovered, it would be thought to be the wrong girl. You would make sure that itwas identified in the way you wanted. You dressed it in Verity’s clothes, put her handbag there; a letter or two, abangle, a little cross on a chain—you disfigured her face.
“A week ago you committed a third murder, the murder of Elizabeth Temple. You killed her because she wascoming to this part of the world, and you were afraid of what she might have known, from what Verity might havewritten to her or told her, and you thought that if Elizabeth Temple got together with Archdeacon Brabazon, theymight with what they both knew come at some appraisal23 of the truth. Elizabeth Temple must not be allowed to meetthe Archdeacon. You are a very powerful woman. You could have rolled that boulder24 down the hillside. It must havetaken some doing, but you are a very strong woman.”
“Strong enough to deal with you,” said Clotilde.
“I don’t think,” said Miss Marple, “that you will be allowed to do that.”
“What do you mean, you miserable, shrivelled up old woman?”
“Yes,” said Miss Marple, “I’m an elderly pussy25 and I have very little strength in my arms or my legs. Very littlestrength anywhere. But I am in my own way an emissary of justice.”
Clotilde laughed, “And who’ll stop me from putting an end to you?”
“I think,” said Miss Marple, “my guardian26 angel.”
“Trusting to your guardian angel, are you?” said Clotilde, and laughed again.
She advanced towards the bed.
“Possibly two guardian angels,” said Miss Marple. “Mr. Rafiel always did things on a lavish27 scale.”
Her hand slipped under the pillow and out again. In it was a whistle which she put to her lips. It was something of asensation in whistles. It had the shrill28 fury which would attract a policeman from the end of a street. Two thingshappened almost simultaneously29. The door of the room opened. Clotilde turned. Miss Barrow was standing30 in thedoorway. At the same moment the large wardrobe hanging cupboard opened and Miss Cooke stepped out of it. Therewas a grim air of professionalism about them both which was very noticeable, in contrast to their pleasant socialbehaviour a little earlier in the evening.
“Two guardian angels,” said Miss Marple happily. “Mr. Rafiel has done me very proud! as one used to say.”
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promptly
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| adv.及时地，敏捷地 | |
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dealing
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| n.经商方法，待人态度 | |
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sinister
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| adj.不吉利的，凶恶的，左边的 | |
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mound
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| n.土墩，堤，小山；v.筑堤，用土堆防卫 | |
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verity
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desultory
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unpacking
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| n.取出货物，拆包[箱]v.从（包裹等）中取出（所装的东西），打开行李取出( unpack的现在分词 )；拆包；解除…的负担；吐露（心事等） | |
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noted
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manor
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unison
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tragic
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| adj.悲剧的，悲剧性的，悲惨的 | |
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wholesome
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| adj.适合；卫生的；有益健康的；显示身心健康的 | |
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nemesis
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| n.给以报应者，复仇者，难以对付的敌手 | |
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devoted
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| adj.忠诚的，忠实的，热心的，献身于...的 | |
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specimen
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bondage
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miserable
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| adj.悲惨的，痛苦的；可怜的，糟糕的 | |
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delinquent
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| adj.犯法的，有过失的；n.违法者 | |
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pulp
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| n.果肉，纸浆；v.化成纸浆，除去...果肉，制成纸浆 | |
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vault
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| n.拱形圆顶，地窖，地下室 | |
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tart
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applied
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appraisal
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| n.对…作出的评价；评价，鉴定，评估 | |
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boulder
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| n.巨砾；卵石，圆石 | |
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pussy
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guardian
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lavish
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| adj.无节制的；浪费的；vt.慷慨地给予，挥霍 | |
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shrill
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| adj.尖声的；刺耳的；v尖叫 | |
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simultaneously
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| adv.同时发生地，同时进行地 | |
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standing
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