MISS MARPLE TELLS A STORY
I don’t think I’ve ever told you, my dears—you, Raymond, and you, Joan, about the rather curious little business thathappened some years ago now. I don’t want to seem vain in any way—of course I know that in comparison with youyoung people I’m not clever at all—Raymond writes those very modern books all about rather unpleasant young menand women—and Joan paints those very remarkable1 pictures of square people with curious bulges2 on them—veryclever of you, my dear, but as Raymond always says (only quite kindly3, because he is the kindest of nephews) I amhopelessly Victorian. I admire Mr. Alma- Tadema and Mr. Frederic Leighton and I suppose to you they seemhopelessly vieux jeu. Now let me see, what was I saying? Oh, yes—that I didn’t want to appear vain—but I couldn’thelp being just a teeny weeny bit pleased with myself, because, just by applying a little common sense, I believe Ireally did solve a problem that had baffled cleverer heads than mine. Though really I should have thought the wholething was obvious from the beginning.?.?.?.
Well, I’ll tell you my little story, and if you think I’m inclined to be conceited4 about it, you must remember that Idid at least help a fellow creature who was in very grave distress5.
The first I knew of this business was one evening about nine o’clock when Gwen—(you remember Gwen? Mylittle maid with red hair) well—Gwen came in and told me that Mr. Petherick and a gentleman had called to see me.
Gwen had shown them into the drawing room—quite rightly. I was sitting in the dining room because in early spring Ithink it is so wasteful6 to have two fires going.
I directed Gwen to bring in the cherry brandy and some glasses and I hurried into the drawing room. I don’t knowwhether you remember Mr. Petherick? He died two years ago, but he had been a friend of mine for many years as wellas attending to all my legal business. A very shrewd man and a really clever solicitor7. His son does my business for menow—a very nice lad and very up to date—but somehow I don’t feel quite the confidence I had with Mr. Petherick.
I explained to Mr. Petherick about the fires and he said at once that he and his friend would come into the diningroom—and then he introduced his friend—a Mr. Rhodes. He was a youngish man—not much over forty—and I saw atonce there was something very wrong. His manner was most peculiar8. One might have called it rude if one hadn’trealized that the poor fellow was suffering from strain.
When we were settled in the dining room and Gwen had brought the cherry brandy, Mr. Petherick explained thereason for his visit.
“Miss Marple,” he said, “you must forgive an old friend for taking a liberty. What I have come here for is aconsultation.”
I couldn’t understand at all what he meant, and he went on:
“In a case of illness one likes two points of view—that of the specialist and that of the family physician. It is thefashion to regard the former as of more value, but I am not sure that I agree. The specialist has experience only in hisown subject—the family doctor has, perhaps, less knowledge—but a wider experience.”
I knew just what he meant, because a young niece of mine not long before had hurried her child off to a very well-known specialist in skin diseases without consulting her own doctor whom she considered an old dodderer, and thespecialist had ordered some very expensive treatment, and later found that all the child was suffering from was a ratherunusual form of measles9.
I just mention this—though I have a horror of digressing—to show that I appreciate Mr. Petherick’s point—but Istill hadn’t any idea what he was driving at.
“If Mr. Rhodes is ill—” I said, and stopped—because the poor man gave a most dreadful laugh.
He said: “I expect to die of a broken neck in a few months’ time.”
And then it all came out. There had been a case of murder lately in Barnchester—a town about twenty miles away.
I’m afraid I hadn’t paid much attention to it at the time, because we had been having a lot of excitement in the villageabout our district nurse, and outside occurrences like an earthquake in India and a murder in Barnchester, although ofcourse far more important really—had given way to our own little local excitements. I’m afraid villages are like that.
Still, I did remember having read about a woman having been stabbed in a hotel, though I hadn’t remembered hername. But now it seemed that this woman had been Mr. Rhodes’s wife—and as if that wasn’t bad enough—he wasactually under suspicion of having murdered her himself.
All this Mr. Petherick explained to me very clearly, saying that, although the Coronor’s jury had brought in averdict of murder by a person or persons unknown, Mr. Rhodes had reason to believe that he would probably bearrested within a day or two, and that he had come to Mr. Petherick and placed himself in his hands. Mr. Petherickwent on to say that they had that afternoon consulted Sir Malcolm Olde, K.C., and that in the event of the case comingto trial Sir Malcolm had been briefed to defend Mr. Rhodes.
Sir Malcolm was a young man, Mr. Petherick said, very up to date in his methods, and he had indicated a certainline of defence. But with that line of defence Mr. Petherick was not entirely10 satisfied.
“You see, my dear lady,” he said, “it is tainted11 with what I call the specialist’s point of view. Give Sir Malcolm acase and he sees only one point—the most likely line of defence. But even the best line of defence may ignorecompletely what is, to my mind, the vital point. It takes no account of what actually happened.”
Then he went on to say some very kind and flattering things about my acumen12 and judgement and my knowledgeof human nature, and asked permission to tell me the story of the case in the hopes that I might be able to suggestsome explanation.
I could see that Mr. Rhodes was highly sceptical of my being of any use and he was annoyed at being broughthere. But Mr. Petherick took no notice and proceeded to give me the facts of what occurred on the night of March 8th.
Mr. and Mrs. Rhodes had been staying at the Crown Hotel in Barnchester. Mrs. Rhodes who (so I gathered fromMr. Petherick’s careful language) was perhaps just a shade of a hypochondriac, had retired13 to bed immediately afterdinner. She and her husband occupied adjoining rooms with a connecting door. Mr. Rhodes, who is writing a book onprehistoric flints, settled down to work in the adjoining room. At eleven o’clock he tidied up his papers and preparedto go to bed. Before doing so, he just glanced into his wife’s room to make sure that there was nothing she wanted. Hediscovered the electric light on and his wife lying in bed stabbed through the heart. She had been dead at least an hour—probably longer. The following were the points made. There was another door in Mrs. Rhodes’s room leading intothe corridor. This door was locked and bolted on the inside. The only window in the room was closed and latched14.
According to Mr. Rhodes nobody had passed through the room in which he was sitting except a chambermaidbringing hot-water bottles. The weapon found in the wound was a stiletto dagger15 which had been lying on Mrs.
Rhodes’s dressing16 table. She was in the habit of using it as a paper knife. There were no fingerprints17 on it.
The situation boiled down to this—no one but Mr. Rhodes and the chambermaid had entered the victim’s room.
I enquired19 about the chambermaid.
“That was our first line of enquiry,” said Mr. Petherick. “Mary Hill is a local woman. She had been chambermaidat the Crown for ten years. There seems absolutely no reason why she should commit a sudden assault on a guest. Sheis, in any case, extraordinarily20 stupid, almost half-witted. Her story has never varied21. She brought Mrs. Rhodes herhot-water bottle and says the lady was drowsy—just dropping off to sleep. Frankly22, I cannot believe, and I am sure nojury would believe, that she committed the crime.”
Mr. Petherick went on to mention a few additional details. At the head of the staircase in the Crown Hotel is a kindof miniature lounge where people sometimes sit and have coffee. A passage goes off to the right and the last door in itis the door into the room occupied by Mr. Rhodes. The passage then turns sharply to the right again and the first doorround the corner is the door into Mrs. Rhodes’s room. As it happened, both these doors could be seen by witnesses.
The first door—that into Mr. Rhodes’s room, which I will call A, could be seen by four people, two commercialtravellers and an elderly married couple who were having coffee. According to them nobody went in or out of door Aexcept Mr. Rhodes and the chambermaid. As to the other door in the passage B, there was an electrician at work thereand he also swears that nobody entered or left door B except the chambermaid.
It was certainly a very curious and interesting case. On the face of it, it looked as though Mr. Rhodes must havemurdered his wife. But I could see that Mr. Petherick was quite convinced of his client’s innocence23 and Mr. Petherickwas a very shrewd man.
At the inquest Mr. Rhodes had told a hesitating and rambling24 story about some woman who had writtenthreatening letters to his wife. His story, I gathered, had been unconvincing in the extreme. Appealed to by Mr.
Petherick, he explained himself.
“Frankly,” he said, “I never believed it. I thought Amy had made most of it up.”
Mrs. Rhodes, I gathered, was one of those romantic liars25 who go through life embroidering26 everything thathappens to them. The amount of adventures that, according to her own account, happened to her in a year was simplyincredible. If she slipped on a bit of banana peel it was a case of near escape from death. If a lampshade caught fire shewas rescued from a burning building at the hazard of her life. Her husband got into the habit of discounting herstatements. Her tale as to some woman whose child she had injured in a motor accident and who had vowedvengeance on her—well—Mr. Rhodes had simply not taken any notice of it. The incident had happened before hemarried his wife and although she had read him letters couched in crazy language, he had suspected her of composingthem herself. She had actually done such a thing once or twice before. She was a woman of hysterical27 tendencies whocraved ceaselessly for excitement.
Now, all that seemed to me very natural—indeed, we have a young woman in the village who does much the samething. The danger with such people is that when anything at all extraordinary really does happen to them, nobodybelieves they are speaking the truth. It seemed to me that that was what had happened in this case. The police, Igathered, merely believed that Mr. Rhodes was making up this unconvincing tale in order to avert28 suspicion fromhimself.
I asked if there had been any women staying by themselves in the hotel. It seemed there were two—a Mrs.
Granby, an Anglo-Indian widow, and a Miss Carruthers, rather a horsey spinster who dropped her g’s. Mr. Petherickadded that the most minute enquiries had failed to elicit29 anyone who had seen either of them near the scene of thecrime and there was nothing to connect either of them with it in any way. I asked him to describe their personalappearance. He said that Mrs. Granby had reddish hair rather untidily done, was sallow-faced and about fifty years ofage. Her clothes were rather picturesque30, being made mostly of native silk, etc. Miss Carruthers was about forty, worepince-nez, had close-cropped hair like a man and wore mannish coats and skirts.
“Dear me,” I said, “that makes it very difficult.”
Mr. Petherick looked enquiringly at me, but I didn’t want to say anymore just then, so I asked what Sir MalcolmOlde had said.
Sir Malcolm was confident of being able to call conflicting medical testimony31 and to suggest some way of gettingover the fingerprint18 difficulty. I asked Mr. Rhodes what he thought and he said all doctors were fools but he himselfcouldn’t really believe that his wife had killed herself. “She wasn’t that kind of woman,” he said simply—and Ibelieved him. Hysterical people don’t usually commit suicide.
I thought a minute and then I asked if the door from Mrs. Rhodes’s room led straight into the corridor. Mr. Rhodessaid no—there was a little hallway with a bathroom and lavatory32. It was the door from the bedroom to the hallway thatwas locked and bolted on the inside.
“In that case,” I said, “the whole thing seems remarkably33 simple.”
And really, you know, it did .?.?. the simplest thing in the world. And yet no one seemed to have seen it that way.
Both Mr. Petherick and Mr. Rhodes were staring at me so that I felt quite embarrassed.
“Perhaps,” said Mr. Rhodes, “Miss Marple hasn’t quite appreciated the difficulties.”
“Yes,” I said, “I think I have. There are four possibilities. Either Mrs. Rhodes was killed by her husband, or by thechambermaid, or she committed suicide, or she was killed by an outsider whom nobody saw enter or leave.”
“And that’s impossible,” Mr. Rhodes broke in. “Nobody could come in or go out through my room without myseeing them, and even if anyone did manage to come in through my wife’s room without the electrician seeing them,how the devil could they get out again leaving the door locked and bolted on the inside?”
Mr. Petherick looked at me and said: “Well, Miss Marple?” in an encouraging manner.
“I should like,” I said, “to ask a question. Mr. Rhodes, what did the chambermaid look like?”
He said he wasn’t sure—she was tallish, he thought—he didn’t remember if she was fair or dark. I turned to Mr.
Petherick and asked the same question.
He said she was of medium height, had fairish hair and blue eyes and rather a high colour.
Mr. Rhodes said: “You are a better observer than I am, Petherick.”
I ventured to disagree. I then asked Mr. Rhodes if he could describe the maid in my house. Neither he nor Mr.
Petherick could do so.
“Don’t you see what that means?” I said. “You both came here full of your own affairs and the person who let youin was only a parlourmaid. The same applies to Mr. Rhodes at the hotel. He saw her uniform and her apron34. He wasengrossed by his work. But Mr. Petherick has interviewed the same woman in a different capacity. He has looked ather as a person.
“That’s what the woman who did the murder counted upon.”
As they still didn’t see, I had to explain.
“I think,” I said, “that this is how it went. The chambermaid came in by door A, passed through Mr. Rhodes’sroom into Mrs. Rhodes’s room with the hot-water bottle and went out through the hallway into passage B. X—as Iwill call our murderess—came in by door B into the little hallway, concealed36 herself in—well, in a certain apartment,ahem—and waited until the chambermaid had passed out. Then she entered Mrs. Rhodes’s room, took the stiletto fromthe dressing table (she had doubtless explored the room earlier in the day), went up to the bed, stabbed the dozingwoman, wiped the handle of the stiletto, locked and bolted the door by which she had entered, and then passed outthrough the room where Mr. Rhodes was working.”
Mr. Rhodes cried out: “But I should have seen her. The electrician would have seen her go in.”
“No,” I said. “That’s where you’re wrong. You wouldn’t see her—not if she were dressed as a chambermaid.” Ilet it sink in, then I went on, “You were engrossed35 in your work—out of the tail of your eye you saw a chambermaidcome in, go into your wife’s room, come back and go out. It was the same dress—but not the same woman. That’swhat the people having coffee saw—a chambermaid go in and a chambermaid come out. The electrician did the same.
I dare say if a chambermaid were very pretty a gentleman might notice her face—human nature being what it is—butif she were just an ordinary middle-aged37 woman—well—it would be the chambermaid’s dress you would see—not thewoman herself.”
Mr. Rhodes cried: “Who was she?”
“Well,” I said, “that is going to be a little difficult. It must be either Mrs. Granby or Miss Carruthers. Mrs. Granbysounds as though she might wear a wig38 normally—so she could wear her own hair as a chambermaid. On the otherhand, Miss Carruthers with her close-cropped mannish head might easily put on a wig to play her part. I dare say youwill find out easily enough which of them it is. Personally, I incline myself to think it will be Miss Carruthers.”
And really, my dears, that is the end of the story. Carruthers was a false name, but she was the woman all right.
There was insanity39 in her family. Mrs. Rhodes, who was a most reckless and dangerous driver, had run over her littlegirl, and it had driven the poor woman off her head. She concealed her madness very cunningly except for writingdistinctly insane latters to her intended victim. She had been following her about for some time, and she laid her plansvery cleverly. The false hair and maid’s dress she posted in a parcel first thing the next morning. When taxed with thetruth she broke down and confessed at once. The poor thing is in Broadmoor now. Completely unbalanced of course,but a very cleverly planned crime.
Mr. Petherick came to me afterwards and brought me a very nice letter from Mr. Rhodes—really, it made meblush. Then my old friend said to me: “Just one thing—why did you think it was more likely to be Carruthers thanGranby? You’d never seen either of them.”
“Well,” I said. “It was the g’s. You said she dropped her g’s. Now, that’s done by a lot of hunting people in books,but I don’t know many people who do it in reality—and certainly no one under sixty. You said this woman was forty.
Those dropped g’s sounded to me like a woman who was playing a part and overdoing40 it.”
I shan’t tell you what Mr. Petherick said to that—but he was very complimentary—and I really couldn’t helpfeeling just a teeny weeny bit pleased with myself.
And it’s extraordinary how things turn out for the best in this world. Mr. Rhodes has married again—such a nice,sensible girl—and they’ve got a dear little baby and—what do you think?—they asked me to be godmother. Wasn’t itnice of them?
Now I do hope you don’t think I’ve been running on too long.?.?.?.
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remarkable
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| adj.显著的，异常的，非凡的，值得注意的 | |
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bulges
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| 膨胀( bulge的名词复数 )； 鼓起； （身体的）肥胖部位； 暂时的激增 | |
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kindly
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conceited
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| adj.自负的，骄傲自满的 | |
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distress
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wasteful
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solicitor
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peculiar
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measles
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| n.麻疹，风疹，包虫病，痧子 | |
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entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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tainted
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| adj.腐坏的；污染的；沾污的；感染的v.使变质( taint的过去式和过去分词 )；使污染；败坏；被污染，腐坏，败坏 | |
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acumen
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retired
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| adj.隐退的，退休的，退役的 | |
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latched
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| v.理解( latch的过去式和过去分词 )；纠缠；用碰锁锁上（门等）；附着（在某物上） | |
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dagger
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dressing
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| n.(食物)调料；包扎伤口的用品，敷料 | |
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fingerprints
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| n.指纹( fingerprint的名词复数 )v.指纹( fingerprint的第三人称单数 ) | |
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fingerprint
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enquired
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extraordinarily
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varied
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frankly
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innocence
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rambling
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liars
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embroidering
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hysterical
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| adj.情绪异常激动的，歇斯底里般的 | |
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avert
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elicit
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picturesque
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testimony
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lavatory
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| n.盥洗室，厕所 | |
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remarkably
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apron
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engrossed
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concealed
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middle-aged
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wig
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insanity
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overdoing
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