EDITH PAGETT
M rs. Mountford’s back parlour was a comfortable room. It had a round table covered with a cloth, and some old-fashioned armchairs and a stern-looking but unexpectedly well-sprung sofa against the wall. There were china dogsand other ornaments1 on the mantelpiece, and a framed coloured representation of the Princess Elizabeth and MargaretRose. On another wall was the King in Naval2 uniform, and a photograph of Mr. Mountford in a group of other bakersand confectioners. There was a picture made with shells and a watercolour of a very green sea at Capri. There were agreat many other things, none of them with any pretensions3 to beauty or the higher life; but the net result was a happy,cheerful room where people sat round and enjoyed themselves whenever there was time to do so.
Mrs. Mountford, née Pagett, was short and round and darkhaired with a few grey streaks4 in the dark. Her sister,Edith Pagett, was tall and dark and thin. There was hardly any grey in her hair though she was at a guess round aboutfifty.
“Fancy now,” Edith Pagett was saying. “Little Miss Gwennie. You must excuse me, m’am, speaking like that, butit does take one back. You used to come into my kitchen, as pretty as could be. ‘Winnies,’ you used to say. ‘Winnies.’
And what you meant was raisins5—though why you called them winnies is more than I can say. But raisins was whatyou meant and raisins it was I used to give you, sultanas, that is, on account of the stones.”
Gwenda stared hard at the upright figure and the red cheeks and black eyes, trying to remember—to remember—but nothing came. Memory was an inconvenient6 thing.
“I wish I could remember—” she began.
“It’s not likely that you would. Just a tiny little mite7, that’s all you were. Nowadays nobody seems to want to go ina house where there’s children. I can’t see it, myself. Children give life to a house, that’s what I feel. Though nurserymeals are always liable to cause a bit of trouble. But if you know what I mean, m’am, that’s the nurse’s fault, not thechild’s. Nurses are nearly always difficult—trays and waiting upon and one thing and another. Do you rememberLayonee at all, Miss Gwennie? Excuse me, Mrs. Reed, I should say.”
“Léonie? Was she my nurse?”
“Swiss girl, she was. Didn’t speak English very well, and very sensitive in her feelings. Used to cry a lot if Lilysaid something to upset her. Lily was house-parlourmaid. Lily Abbott. A young girl and pert in her ways and a bitflighty. Many a game Lily used to have with you, Miss Gwennie. Play peep-bo through the stairs.”
Gwenda gave a quick uncontrollable shiver.
The stairs …
Then she said suddenly, “I remember Lily. She put a bow on the cat.”
“There now, fancy you remembering that! On your birthday it was, and Lily she was all for it, Thomas must have abow on. Took one off the chocolate box, and Thomas was mad about it. Ran off into the garden and rubbed throughthe bushes until he got it off. Cats don’t like tricks being played on them.”
“A black and white cat.”
“That’s right. Poor old Tommy. Caught mice something beautiful. A real proper mouser.” Edith Pagett paused andcoughed primly8. “Excuse me running on like this, m’am. But talking brings the old days back. You wanted to ask mesomething?”
“I like hearing you talk about the old days,” said Gwenda. “That’s just what I want to hear about. You see, I wasbrought up by relations in New Zealand and of course they could never tell me anything about—about my father, andmy stepmother. She—she was nice, wasn’t she?”
“Very fond of you, she was. Oh yes, she used to take you down to the beach and play with you in the garden. Shewas quite young herself, you understand. Nothing but a girl, really. I often used to think she enjoyed the games asmuch as you did. You see she’d been an only child, in a manner of speaking. Dr. Kennedy, her brother, was years andyears older and always shut up with his books. When she wasn’t away at school, she had to play by herself….”
Miss Marple, sitting back against the wall, asked gently, “You’ve lived in Dillmouth all your life, haven’t you?”
“Oh yes, madam. Father had the farm up behind the hill—Rylands it was always called. He’d no sons, and Mothercouldn’t carry on after he died, so she sold it and bought the little fancy shop at the end of the High Street. Yes, I’velived here all my life.”
“And I suppose you know all about everyone in Dillmouth?”
“Well, of course it used to be a small place, then. Though there used always to be a lot of summer visitors as longas I can remember. But nice quiet people who came here every year, not these trippers and charabancs we havenowadays. Good families they were, who’d come back to the same rooms year after year.”
“I suppose,” said Giles, “that you knew Helen Kennedy before she was Mrs. Halliday?”
“Well, I knew of her, so to speak, and I may have seen her about. But I didn’t know her proper until I went intoservice there.”
“And you liked her,” said Miss Marple.
Edith Pagett turned towards her.
“Yes, madam, I did,” she said. There was a trace of defiance9 in her manner. “No matter what anybody says. Shewas as nice as could be to me always. I’d never have believed she’d do what she did do. Took my breath away, it did.
Although, mind you, there had been talk—”
She stopped rather abruptly10 and gave a quick apologetic glance at Gwenda.
Gwenda spoke11 impulsively12.
“I want to know,” she said. “Please don’t think I shall mind anything you say. She wasn’t my own mother—”
“That’s true enough, m’am.”
“And you see, we are very anxious to—to find her. She went away from here—and she seems to have been quitelost sight of. We don’t know where she is living now, or even if she is alive. And there are reasons—”
She hesitated and Giles said quickly, “Legal reasons. We don’t know whether to presume death or—or what.”
“Oh, I quite understand, sir. My cousin’s husband was missing—after Ypres it was—and there was a lot of troubleabout presuming death and that. Real vexing13 it was for her. Naturally, sir, if there is anything I can tell you that willhelp in any way—it isn’t as if you were strangers. Miss Gwenda and her ‘winnies.’ So funny you used to say it.”
“That’s very kind of you,” said Giles. “So, if you don’t mind, I’ll just fire away. Mrs. Halliday left home quitesuddenly, I understand?”
“Yes, sir, it was a great shock to all of us—and especially to the Major, poor man. He collapsed14 completely.”
“I’m going to ask you right out—have you any idea who the man was she went away with?”
Edith Pagett shook her head.
“That’s what Dr. Kennedy asked me—and I couldn’t tell him. Lily couldn’t either. And of course that Layonee,being a foreigner, didn’t know a thing about it.”
“You didn’t know,” said Giles. “But could you make a guess? Now that it’s all so long ago, it wouldn’t matter—even if the guess is all wrong. You must, surely, have had some suspicion.”
“Well, we had our suspicions … but mind you, it wasn’t more than suspicions. And as far as I’m concerned, Inever saw anything at all. But Lily who, as I told you, was a sharp kind of girl, Lily had her ideas—had had them for along time. ‘Mark my words,’ she used to say. ‘That chap’s sweet on her. Only got to see him looking at her as shepours out the tea. And does his wife look daggers15!’”
“I see. And who was the—er—chap?”
“Now I’m afraid, sir, I just don’t remember his name. Not after all these years. A Captain—Esdale—no, thatwasn’t it—Emery—no. I have a kind of feeling it began with an E. Or it might have been H. Rather an unusual kind ofname. But I’ve never even thought of it for sixteen years. He and his wife were staying at the Royal Clarence.”
“Summer visitors?”
“Yes, but I think that he—or maybe both of them—had known Mrs. Halliday before. They came to the house quiteoften. Anyway, according to Lily he was sweet on Mrs. Halliday.”
“And his wife didn’t like it.”
“No, sir … But mind you, I never believed for a moment that there was anything wrong about it. And I still don’tknow what to think.”
Gwenda asked, “Were they still here—at the Royal Clarence—when—when Helen—my stepmother went away?”
“As far as I recollect16 they went away just about the same time, a day earlier or a day later—anyway, it was closeenough to make people talk. But I never heard anything definite. It was all kept very quiet if it was so. Quite a ninedays’ wonder Mrs. Halliday going off like that, so sudden. But people did say she’d always been flighty—not that Iever saw anything of the kind myself. I wouldn’t have been willing to go to Norfolk with them if I’d thought that.”
For a moment three people stared at her intently. Then Giles said, “Norfolk? Were they going to Norfolk?”
“Yes, sir. They’d bought a house there. Mrs. Halliday told me about three weeks before—before all this happened.
She asked me if I’d come with them when they moved, and I said I would. After all, I’d never been away fromDillmouth, and I thought perhaps I’d like a change—seeing as I liked the family.”
“I never heard they had bought a house in Norfolk,” said Giles.
“Well, it’s funny you should say that, sir, because Mrs. Halliday seemed to want it kept very quiet. She asked menot to speak about it to anyone at all—so of course I didn’t. But she’d been wanting to go away from Dillmouth forsome time. She’d been pressing Major Halliday to go, but he liked it at Dillmouth. I even believe he wrote to Mrs.
Findeyson whom St. Catherine’s belonged to, asking if she’d consider selling it. But Mrs. Halliday was dead againstit. She seemed to have turned right against Dillmouth. It’s almost as though she was afraid to stop there.”
The words came out quite naturally, yet at the sound of them the three people listening again stiffened17 to attention.
Giles said, “You don’t think she wanted to go to Norfolk to be near this — the man whose name you can’tremember?”
Edith Pagett looked distressed18.
“Oh indeed, sir, I wouldn’t like to think that. And I don’t think it, not for a moment. Besides I don’t think that—Iremember now—they came from up North somewhere, that lady and gentleman did. Northumberland, I think it was.
Anyway, they liked coming south for a holiday because it was so mild down here.”
Gwenda said: “She was afraid of something, wasn’t she? Or of someone? My stepmother, I mean.”
“I do remember—now that you say that—”
“Yes?”
“Lily came into the kitchen one day. She’d been dusting the stairs, and she said, ‘Ructions!’ she said. She had avery common way of talking sometimes, Lily had, so you must excuse me.
“So I asked her what she meant and she said that the missus had come in from the garden with the master into thedrawing room and the door to the hall being open, Lily heard what they said.
“‘I’m afraid of you,’ that’s what Mrs. Halliday had said.
“‘And she sounded scared too,’ Lily said. ‘I’ve been afraid of you for a long time. You’re mad. You’re not normal.
Go away and leave me alone. You must leave me alone. I’m frightened. I think, underneath19, I’ve always beenfrightened of you... .’
“Something of that kind—of course I can’t say now to the exact words. But Lily, she took it very seriously, andthat’s why, after it all happened, she—”
Edith Pagett stopped dead. A curious frightened look came over her face.
“I didn’t mean, I’m sure—” she began. “Excuse me, madam, my tongue runs away with me.”
Giles said gently: “Please tell us, Edith. It’s really important, you see, that we should know. It’s all a long time agonow, but we’ve got to know.”
“I couldn’t say, I’m sure,” said Edith helplessly.
Miss Marple asked: “What was it Lily didn’t believe—or did believe?”
Edith Pagett said apologetically: “Lily was always one to get ideas in her head. I never took no notice of them. Shewas always one for going to the pictures and she got a lot of silly melodramatic ideas that way. She was out at thepictures the night it happened—and what’s more she took Layonee with her—and very wrong that was, and I told herso. ‘Oh, that’s all right,’ she said. ‘It’s not leaving the child alone in the house. You’re down in the kitchen and themaster and the missus will be in later and anyway that child never wakes once she’s off to sleep.’ But it was wrong,and I told her so, though of course I never knew about Layonee going till afterwards. If I had, I’d have run up to seeshe—you, I mean, Miss Gwenda—were quite all right. You can’t hear a thing from the kitchen when the baize door’sshut.”
Edith Pagett paused and then went on: “I was doing some ironing. The evening passed ever so quick and the firstthing I knew Dr. Kennedy came out in the kitchen and asked me where Lily was and I said it was her night off butshe’d be in any minute now and sure enough she came in that very minute and he took her upstairs to the mistress’sroom. Wanted to know if she’d taken any clothes away with her, and what. So Lily looked about and told him andthen she come down to me. All agog20 she was. ‘She’s hooked it,’ she said. ‘Gone off with someone. The master’s all in.
Had a stroke or something. Apparently21 it’s been a terrible shock to him. More fool he. He ought to have seen itcoming.’ ‘You shouldn’t speak like that,’ I said. ‘How do you know she’s gone off with anybody? Maybe she had atelegram from a sick relation.’ ‘Sick relation my foot,’ Lily says (always a common way of speaking, as I said). ‘Sheleft a note.’ ‘Who’s she gone off with?’ I said. ‘Who do you think?’ Lily said. ‘Not likely to be Mr. Sobersides Fane,for all his sheep’s eyes and the way he follows her round like a dog.’ So I said, ‘You think it’s Captain—whatever hisname was.’ And she said, ‘He’s my bet. Unless it’s our mystery man in the flashy car.’ (That’s just a silly joke wehad.) And I said, ‘I don’t believe it. Not Mrs. Halliday. She wouldn’t do a thing like that.’ And Lily says, ‘Well, itseems she’s done it.’
“All this was at first, you understand. But later on, up in our bedroom, Lily woke me up. ‘Look here,’ she says. ‘It’sall wrong.’ ‘What’s wrong?’ I said. And she said, ‘Those clothes.’ ‘Whatever are you talking about?’ I said. ‘Listen,Edie,’ she said. ‘I went through her clothes because the doctor asked me to. And there’s a suitcase gone and enough tofill it—but they’re the wrong things.’ ‘What do you mean?’ I said. And Lily said, ‘She took an evening dress, her greyand silver—but she didn’t take her evening belt and brassière, nor the slip that goes with it, and she took her goldbrocade evening shoes, not the silver strap22 ones. And she took her green tweed—which she never wears until late onin the autumn, but she didn’t take that fancy pullover and she took her lace blouses that she only wears with a townsuit. Oh and her undies, too, they were a job lot. You mark my words, Edie,’ Lily said. ‘She’s not gone away at all.
The master’s done her in.’
“Well, that made me wide awake. I sat right up and asked her what on earth she was talking about.
“‘Just like it was in the News of the World last week,’ Lily says. ‘The master found she’d been carrying on and hekilled her and put her down in the cellar and buried her under the floor. You’d never hear anything because it’s underthe front hall. That’s what he’s done, and then he packed a suitcase to make it look as though she’d gone away. Butthat’s where she is—under the cellar floor. She never left this house alive.’ I gave her a piece of my mind then, sayingsuch awful things. But I’ll admit I slipped down to the cellar the next morning. But there, it was all just as usual andnothing disturbed and no digging been done—and I went and told Lily she’d just been making a fool of herself, butshe stuck to it as the master had done her in. ‘Remember,’ she says, ‘she was scared to death of him. I heard her tellinghim so.’ ‘And that’s just where you’re wrong, my girl,’ I said, ‘because it wasn’t the master at all. Just after you’d toldme, that day, I looked out of the window and there was the master coming down the hill with his golf clubs, so itcouldn’t have been him who was with the mistress in the drawing room. It was someone else.’”
The words echoed lingeringly in the comfortable commonplace sitting room.
Giles said softly under his breath, “It was someone else….”
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1
ornaments
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| n.装饰( ornament的名词复数 )；点缀；装饰品；首饰v.装饰，点缀，美化( ornament的第三人称单数 ) | |
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naval
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| adj.海军的，军舰的，船的 | |
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pretensions
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| 自称( pretension的名词复数 )； 自命不凡； 要求； 权力 | |
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streaks
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| n.（与周围有所不同的）条纹( streak的名词复数 )；（通常指不好的）特征（倾向）；（不断经历成功或失败的）一段时期v.快速移动( streak的第三人称单数 )；使布满条纹 | |
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raisins
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| n.葡萄干( raisin的名词复数 ) | |
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inconvenient
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| adj.不方便的，令人感到麻烦的 | |
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mite
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| n.极小的东西；小铜币 | |
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8
primly
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| adv.循规蹈矩地，整洁地 | |
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defiance
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| n.挑战，挑衅，蔑视，违抗 | |
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abruptly
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| adv.突然地，出其不意地 | |
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11
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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12
impulsively
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| adv.冲动地 | |
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vexing
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| adj.使人烦恼的，使人恼火的v.使烦恼( vex的现在分词 )；使苦恼；使生气；详细讨论 | |
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14
collapsed
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| adj.倒塌的 | |
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15
daggers
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| 匕首，短剑( dagger的名词复数 ) | |
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16
recollect
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| v.回忆，想起，记起，忆起，记得 | |
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stiffened
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| 加强的 | |
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distressed
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| 痛苦的 | |
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underneath
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| adj.在...下面，在...底下；adv.在下面 | |
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20
agog
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| adj.兴奋的，有强烈兴趣的； adv.渴望地 | |
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21
apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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22
strap
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| n.皮带，带子；v.用带扣住，束牢；用绷带包扎 | |
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