Copyright

Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

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First published in Great Britain by Collins, The Crime Club 1964

A Caribbean Mystery™ is a trade mark of Agatha Christie Limited

and Agatha Christie® Marple® and the Agatha Christie Signature are

registered trade marks of Agatha Christie Limited in the UK and elsewhere.

Copyright © 1964 Agatha Christie Limited. All rights reserved.

www.agathachristie.com

Cover by designedbydavid.co.uk © HarperCollins/Agatha Christie Ltd 2016

Agatha Christie asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

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Source ISBN: 9780008196608

Ebook Edition © December 2016 ISBN: 9780007422203

Version 2017-04-11

Dedication

To my old friend

John Cruikshank Rose

with happy memories of my

visit to the West Indies

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Chapter 1: Major Palgrave Tells a Story

Chapter 2: Miss Marple Makes Comparisons

Chapter 3: A Death in the Hotel

Chapter 4: Miss Marple Seeks Medical Attention

Chapter 5: Miss Marple Makes a Decision

Chapter 6: In the Small Hours

Chapter 7: Morning on the Beach

Chapter 8: A Talk with Esther Walters

Chapter 9: Miss Prescott and Others

Chapter 10: A Decision in Jamestown

Chapter 11: Evening at the Golden Palm

Chapter 12: Old Sins Cast Long Shadows

Chapter 13: Exit Victoria Johnson

Chapter 14: Inquiry

Chapter 15: Inquiry Continued

Chapter 16: Miss Marple Seeks Assistance

Chapter 17: Mr Rafiel Takes Charge

Chapter 18: Without Benefit of Clergy

Chapter 19: Uses of a Shoe

Chapter 20: Night Alarm

Chapter 21: Jackson on Cosmetics

Chapter 22: A Man in Her Life?

Chapter 23: The Last Day

Chapter 24: Nemesis

Chapter 25: Miss Marple Uses Her Imagination

Epilogue

Also by Agatha Christie

About the Publisher

CHAPTER 1
Major Palgrave Tells a Story

‘Take all this business about Kenya,’ said Major Palgrave. ‘Lots of chaps gabbing away who know nothing about the place! Now I spent fourteen years of my life there. Some of the best years of my life, too—’

Old Miss Marple inclined her head.

It was a gentle gesture of courtesy. Whilst Major Palgrave proceeded with the somewhat uninteresting recollections of a lifetime, Miss Marple peacefully pursued her own thoughts. It was a routine with which she was well acquainted. The locale varied. In the past, it had been predominantly India. Majors, Colonels, Lieutenant-Generals—and a familiar series of words: Simla. Bearers. Tigers. Chota Hazri—Tiffin. Khitmagars, and so on. With Major Palgrave the terms were slightly different. Safari. Kikuyu. Elephants. Swahili. But the pattern was essentially the same. An elderly man who needed a listener so that he could, in memory, relive days in which he had been happy. Days when his back had been straight, his eyesight keen, his hearing acute. Some of these talkers had been handsome soldierly old boys, some again had been regrettably unattractive; and Major Palgrave, purple of face, with a glass eye, and the general appearance of a stuffed frog, belonged in the latter category.

Miss Marple had bestowed on all of them the same gentle charity. She had sat attentively, inclining her head from time to time in gentle agreement, thinking her own thoughts and enjoying what there was to enjoy: in this case the deep blue of a Caribbean Sea.

So kind of dear Raymond—she was thinking gratefully, so really and truly kind … Why he should take so much trouble about his old aunt, she really did not know. Conscience, perhaps; family feeling? Or possibly he was truly fond of her …

She thought, on the whole, that he was fond of her—he always had been—in a slightly exasperated and contemptuous way! Always trying to bring her up to date. Sending her books to read. Modern novels. So difficult—all about such unpleasant people, doing such very odd things and not, apparently, even enjoying them. ‘Sex’ as a word had not been mentioned in Miss Marple’s young days; but there had been plenty of it—not talked about so much—but enjoyed far more than nowadays, or so it seemed to her. Though usually labelled Sin, she couldn’t help feeling that that was preferable to what it seemed to be nowadays—a kind of Duty.

Her glance strayed for a moment to the book on her lap lying open at page twenty-three which was as far as she had got (and indeed as far as she felt like getting!).

‘“Do you mean that you’ve had no sexual experience at ALL?” demanded the young man incredulously. “At nineteen? But you must. It’s vital.”

‘The girl hung her head unhappily, her straight greasy hair fell forward over her face.

‘“I know,” she muttered, “I know.”

‘He looked at her, stained old jersey, the bare feet, the dirty toe nails, the smell of rancid fat … He wondered why he found her so maddeningly attractive.’

Miss Marple wondered too! And really! To have sex experience urged on you exactly as though it was an iron tonic! Poor young things …

‘My dear Aunt Jane, why must you bury your head in the sand like a very delightful ostrich? All bound up in this idyllic rural life of yours. REAL LIFE—that’s what matters.’

Thus Raymond—and his Aunt Jane had looked properly abashed—and said ‘Yes,’ she was afraid she was rather old-fashioned.

Though really rural life was far from idyllic. People like Raymond were so ignorant. In the course of her duties in a country parish, Jane Marple had acquired quite a comprehensive knowledge of the facts of rural life. She had no urge to talk about them, far less to write about them—but she knew them. Plenty of sex, natural and unnatural. Rape, incest, perversion of all kinds. (Some kinds, indeed, that even the clever young men from Oxford who wrote books didn’t seem to have heard about.)

Miss Marple came back to the Caribbean and took up the thread of what Major Palgrave was saying …

‘A very unusual experience,’ she said encouragingly. ‘Most interesting.’

‘I could tell you a lot more. Some of the things, of course, not fit for a lady’s ears—’

With the ease of long practice, Miss Marple dropped her eyelids in a fluttery fashion, and Major Palgrave continued his bowdlerized version of tribal customs whilst Miss Marple resumed her thoughts of her affectionate nephew.

Raymond West was a very successful novelist and made a large income, and he conscientiously and kindly did all he could to alleviate the life of his elderly aunt. The preceding winter she had had a bad go of pneumonia, and medical opinion had advised sunshine. In lordly fashion Raymond had suggested a trip to the West Indies. Miss Marple had demurred—at the expense, the distance, the difficulties of travel, and at abandoning her house in St Mary Mead. Raymond had dealt with everything. A friend who was writing a book wanted a quiet place in the country. ‘He’ll look after the house all right. He’s very house proud. He’s a queer. I mean—’

He had paused, slightly embarrassed—but surely even dear old Aunt Jane must have heard of queers.

He went on to deal with the next points. Travel was nothing nowadays. She would go by air—another friend, Diana Horrocks, was going out to Trinidad and would see Aunt Jane was all right as far as there, and at St Honoré she would stay at the Golden Palm Hotel which was run by the Sandersons. Nicest couple in the world. They’d see she was all right. He’d write to them straight away.

As it happened the Sandersons had returned to England. But their successors, the Kendals, had been very nice and friendly and had assured Raymond that he need have no qualms about his aunt. There was a very good doctor on the island in case of emergency and they themselves would keep an eye on her and see to her comfort.

They had been as good as their word, too. Molly Kendal was an ingenuous blonde of twenty odd, always apparently in good spirits. She had greeted the old lady warmly and did everything to make her comfortable. Tim Kendal, her husband, lean, dark and in his thirties, had also been kindness itself.

So there she was, thought Miss Marple, far from the rigours of the English climate, with a nice bungalow of her own, with friendly smiling West Indian girls to wait on her, Tim Kendal to meet her in the dining-room and crack a joke as he advised her about the day’s menu, and an easy path from her bungalow to the sea front and the bathing beach where she could sit in a comfortable basket chair and watch the bathing. There were even a few elderly guests for company. Old Mr Rafiel, Dr Graham, Canon Prescott and his sister, and her present cavalier Major Palgrave.

What more could an elderly lady want?

It is deeply to be regretted, and Miss Marple felt guilty even admitting it to herself, but she was not as satisfied as she ought to be.

Lovely and warm, yes—and so good for her rheumatism—and beautiful scenery, though perhaps—a trifle monotonous? So many palm trees. Everything the same every day—never anything happening. Not like St Mary Mead where something was always happening. Her nephew had once compared life in St Mary Mead to scum on a pond, and she had indignantly pointed out that smeared on a slide under the microscope there would be plenty of life to be observed. Yes, indeed, in St Mary Mead, there was always something going on. Incident after incident flashed through Miss Marple’s mind, the mistake in old Mrs Linnett’s cough mixture—that very odd behaviour of young Polegate—the time when Georgy Wood’s mother had come down to see him—(but was she his mother—?) the real cause of the quarrel between Joe Arden and his wife. So many interesting human problems—giving rise to endless pleasurable hours of speculation. If only there were something here that she could—well—get her teeth into.

With a start she realized that Major Palgrave had abandoned Kenya for the North West Frontier and was relating his experiences as a subaltern. Unfortunately he was asking her with great earnestness: ‘Now don’t you agree?’

Long practice had made Miss Marple quite an adept at dealing with that one.

‘I don’t really feel that I’ve got sufficient experience to judge. I’m afraid I’ve led rather a sheltered life.’

‘And so you should, dear lady, so you should,’ cried Major Palgrave gallantly.

‘You’ve had such a very varied life,’ went on Miss Marple, determined to make amends for her former pleasurable inattention.

‘Not bad,’ said Major Palgrave, complacently. ‘Not bad at all.’ He looked round him appreciatively. ‘Lovely place, this.’

‘Yes, indeed,’ said Miss Marple and was then unable to stop herself going on: ‘Does anything ever happen here, I wonder?’

Major Palgrave stared.

‘Oh rather. Plenty of scandals—eh what? Why, I could tell you—’

But it wasn’t really scandals Miss Marple wanted. Nothing to get your teeth into in scandals nowadays. Just men and women changing partners, and calling attention to it, instead of trying decently to hush it up and be properly ashamed of themselves.

‘There was even a murder here a couple of years ago. Man called Harry Western. Made a big splash in the papers. Dare say you remember it.’

Miss Marple nodded without enthusiasm. It had not been her kind of murder. It had made a big splash mainly because everyone concerned had been very rich. It had seemed likely enough that Harry Western had shot the Count de Ferrari, his wife’s lover, and equally likely that his well-arranged alibi had been bought and paid for. Everyone seemed to have been drunk, and there was a fine scattering of dope addicts. Not really interesting people, thought Miss Marple—although no doubt very spectacular and attractive to look at. But definitely not her cup of tea.

‘And if you ask me, that wasn’t the only murder about that time.’ He nodded and winked. ‘I had my suspicions—oh!—well—’

Miss Marple dropped her ball of wool, and the Major stooped and picked it up for her.

‘Talking of murder,’ he went on. ‘I once came across a very curious case—not exactly personally.’

Miss Marple smiled encouragingly.

‘Lot of chaps talking at the club one day, you know, and a chap began telling a story. Medical man he was. One of his cases. Young fellow came and knocked him up in the middle of the night. His wife had hanged herself. They hadn’t got a telephone, so after the chap had cut her down and done what he could, he’d got out his car and hared off looking for a doctor. Well, she wasn’t dead but pretty far gone. Anyway, she pulled through. Young fellow seemed devoted to her. Cried like a child. He’d noticed that she’d been odd for some time, fits of depression and all that. Well, that was that. Everything seemed all right. But actually, about a month later, the wife took an overdose of sleeping stuff and passed out. Sad case.’

Major Palgrave paused, and nodded his head several times. Since there was obviously more to come Miss Marple waited.

‘And that’s that, you might say. Nothing there. Neurotic woman, nothing out of the usual. But about a year later, this medical chap was swapping yarns with a fellow medico, and the other chap told him about a woman who’d tried to drown herself, husband got her out, got a doctor, they pulled her round—and then a few weeks later she gassed herself.

‘Well, a bit of a coincidence—eh? Same sort of story. My chap said—“I had a case rather like that. Name of Jones (or whatever the name was)—What was your man’s name?” “Can’t remember. Robinson I think. Certainly not Jones.”

‘Well, the chaps looked at each other and said it was pretty odd. And then my chap pulled out a snapshot. He showed it to the second chap. “That’s the fellow,” he said—“I’d gone along the next day to check up on the particulars, and I noticed a magnificent species of hibiscus just by the front door, a variety I’d never seen before in this country. My camera was in the car and I took a photo. Just as I snapped the shutter the husband came out of the front door so I got him as well. Don’t think he realized it. I asked him about the hibiscus but he couldn’t tell me its name.” Second medico looked at the snap. He said: “It’s a bit out of focus—But I could swear—at any rate I’m almost sure—it’s the same man.”

‘Don’t know if they followed it up. But if so they didn’t get anywhere. Expect Mr Jones or Robinson covered his tracks too well. But queer story, isn’t it? Wouldn’t think things like that could happen.’

‘Oh, yes, I would,’ said Miss Marple placidly. ‘Practically every day.’

‘Oh, come, come. That’s a bit fantastic.’

‘If a man gets a formula that works—he won’t stop. He’ll go on.’

‘Brides in the bath—eh?’

‘That kind of thing, yes.’

‘Doctor let me have that snap just as a curiosity—’

Major Palgrave began fumbling through an overstuffed wallet murmuring to himself: ‘Lots of things in here—don’t know why I keep all these things …’

Miss Marple thought she did know. They were part of the Major’s stock-in-trade. They illustrated his repertoire of stories. The story he had just told, or so she suspected, had not been originally like that—it had been worked up a good deal in repeated telling.

The Major was still shuffling and muttering—‘Forgotten all about that business. Good-looking woman she was, you’d never suspect—now where—Ah—that takes my mind back—what tusks! I must show you—’

He stopped—sorted out a small photographic print and peered down at it.

‘Like to see the picture of a murderer?’

He was about to pass it to her when his movement was suddenly arrested. Looking more like a stuffed frog than ever, Major Palgrave appeared to be staring fixedly over her right shoulder—from whence came the sound of approaching footsteps and voices.

‘Well, I’m damned—I mean—’ He stuffed everything back into his wallet and crammed it into his pocket.

His face went an even deeper shade of purplish red—He exclaimed in a loud, artificial voice:

‘As I was saying—I’d like to have shown you those elephant tusks—Biggest elephant I’ve ever shot—Ah, hallo!’ His voice took on a somewhat spurious hearty note.

‘Look who’s here! The great quartette—Flora and Fauna—What luck have you had today—Eh?’

The approaching footsteps resolved themselves into four of the hotel guests whom Miss Marple already knew by sight. They consisted of two married couples and though Miss Marple was not as yet acquainted with their surnames, she knew that the big man with the upstanding bush of thick grey hair was addressed as ‘Greg’, that the golden blonde woman, his wife, was known as Lucky—and that the other married couple, the dark lean man and the handsome but rather weather-beaten woman, were Edward and Evelyn. They were botanists, she understood, and also interested in birds.

‘No luck at all,’ said Greg—‘At least no luck in getting what we were after.’

‘Don’t know if you know Miss Marple? Colonel and Mrs Hillingdon and Greg and Lucky Dyson.’

They greeted her pleasantly and Lucky said loudly that she’d die if she didn’t have a drink at once or sooner.

Greg hailed Tim Kendal who was sitting a little way away with his wife poring over account books.

‘Hi, Tim. Get us some drinks.’ He addressed the others. ‘Planters Punch?’

They agreed.

‘Same for you, Miss Marple?’

Miss Marple said Thank you, but she would prefer fresh lime.

‘Fresh lime it is,’ said Tim Kendal, ‘and five Planters Punches.’

‘Join us, Tim?’

‘Wish I could. But I’ve got to fix up these accounts. Can’t leave Molly to cope with everything. Steel band tonight, by the way.’

‘Good,’ cried Lucky. ‘Damn it,’ she winced, ‘I’m all over thorns. Ouch! Edward deliberately rammed me into a thorn bush!’

‘Lovely pink flowers,’ said Hillingdon.

‘And lovely long thorns. Sadistic brute, aren’t you, Edward?’

‘Not like me,’ said Greg, grinning. ‘Full of the milk of human kindness.’

Evelyn Hillingdon sat down by Miss Marple and started talking to her in an easy pleasant way.

Miss Marple put her knitting down on her lap. Slowly and with some difficulty, owing to rheumatism in the neck, she turned her head over her right shoulder to look behind her. At some little distance there was the large bungalow occupied by the rich Mr Rafiel. But it showed no sign of life.

She replied suitably to Evelyn’s remarks (really, how kind people were to her!) but her eyes scanned thoughtfully the faces of the two men.

Edward Hillingdon looked a nice man. Quiet but with a lot of charm … And Greg—big, boisterous, happy-looking. He and Lucky were Canadian or American, she thought.

She looked at Major Palgrave, still acting a bonhomie a little larger than life.

Interesting …

CHAPTER 2
Miss Marple Makes Comparisons

It was very gay that evening at the Golden Palm Hotel.

Seated at her little corner table, Miss Marple looked round her in an interested fashion. The dining-room was a large room open on three sides to the soft warm scented air of the West Indies. There were small table lamps, all softly coloured. Most of the women were in evening dress: light cotton prints out of which bronzed shoulders and arms emerged. Miss Marple herself had been urged by her nephew’s wife, Joan, in the sweetest way possible, to accept ‘a small cheque’.

‘Because, Aunt Jane, it will be rather hot out there, and I don’t expect you have any very thin clothes.’

Jane Marple had thanked her and had accepted the cheque. She came of the age when it was natural for the old to support and finance the young, but also for the middle-aged to look after the old. She could not, however, force herself to buy anything very thin! At her age she seldom felt more than pleasantly warm even in the hottest weather, and the temperature of St Honoré was not really what is referred to as ‘tropical heat’. This evening she was attired in the best traditions of the provincial gentlewoman of England—grey lace.

Not that she was the only elderly person present. There were representatives of all ages in the room. There were elderly tycoons with young third or fourth wives. There were middle-aged couples from the North of England. There was a gay family from Caracas complete with children. The various countries of South America were well represented, all chattering loudly in Spanish or Portuguese. There was a solid English background of two clergymen, one doctor and one retired judge. There was even a family of Chinese. The dining-room service was mainly done by women, tall black girls of proud carriage, dressed in crisp white; but there was an experienced Italian head waiter in charge, and a French wine waiter, and there was the attentive eye of Tim Kendal watching over everything, pausing here and there to have a social word with people at their tables. His wife seconded him ably. She was a good-looking girl. Her hair was a natural golden blonde and she had a wide generous mouth that laughed easily. It was very seldom that Molly Kendal was out of temper. Her staff worked for her enthusiastically, and she adapted her manner carefully to suit her different guests. With the elderly men she laughed and flirted; she congratulated the younger women on their clothes.

‘Oh, what a smashing dress you’ve got on tonight, Mrs Dyson. I’m so jealous I could tear it off your back.’ But she looked very well in her own dress, or so Miss Marple thought: a white sheath, with a pale green embroidered silk shawl thrown over her shoulders. Lucky was fingering the shawl. ‘Lovely colour! I’d like one like it.’ ‘You can get them at the shop here,’ Molly told her and passed on. She did not pause by Miss Marple’s table. Elderly ladies she usually left to her husband. ‘The old dears like a man much better,’ she used to say.

Tim Kendal came and bent over Miss Marple.

‘Nothing special you want, is there?’ he asked. ‘Because you’ve only got to tell me—and I could get it specially cooked for you. Hotel food, and semi-tropical at that, isn’t quite what you’re used to at home, I expect?’

Miss Marple smiled and said that that was one of the pleasures of coming abroad.

‘That’s all right, then. But if there is anything—’

‘Such as?’

‘Well—’ Tim Kendal looked a little doubtful—‘Bread and butter pudding?’ he hazarded.

Miss Marple smiled and said that she thought she could do without bread and butter pudding very nicely for the present.

She picked up her spoon and began to eat her passion fruit sundae with cheerful appreciation.

Then the steel band began to play. The steel bands were one of the main attractions of the islands. Truth to tell, Miss Marple could have done very well without them. She considered that they made a hideous noise, unnecessarily loud. The pleasure that everyone else took in them was undeniable, however, and Miss Marple, in the true spirit of her youth, decided that as they had to be, she must manage somehow to learn to like them. She could hardly request Tim Kendal to conjure up from somewhere the muted strains of the ‘Blue Danube’. (So graceful—waltzing.) Most peculiar, the way people danced nowadays. Flinging themselves about, seeming quite contorted. Oh well, young people must enjoy—Her thoughts were arrested. Because, now she came to think of it, very few of these people were young. Dancing, lights, the music of a band (even a steel band), all that surely was for youth. But where was youth? Studying, she supposed, at universities, or doing a job—with a fortnight’s holiday a year. A place like this was too far away and too expensive. This gay and carefree life was all for the thirties and the forties—and the old men who were trying to live up (or down) to their young wives. It seemed, somehow, a pity.

Miss Marple sighed for youth. There was Mrs Kendal, of course. She wasn’t more than twenty-two or three, probably, and she seemed to be enjoying herself—but even so, it was a job she was doing.

At a table nearby Canon Prescott and his sister were sitting. They motioned to Miss Marple to join them for coffee and she did so. Miss Prescott was a thin severe-looking woman, the Canon was a round, rubicund man, breathing geniality.

Coffee was brought, and chairs were pushed a little way away from the tables. Miss Prescott opened a work bag and took out some frankly hideous table mats that she was hemming. She told Miss Marple all about the day’s events. They had visited a new Girls’ School in the morning. After an afternoon’s rest, they had walked through a cane plantation to have tea at a pension where some friends of theirs were staying.

Since the Prescotts had been at the Golden Palm longer than Miss Marple, they were able to enlighten her as to some of her fellow guests.

That very old man, Mr Rafiel. He came every year. Fantastically rich! Owned an enormous chain of supermarkets in the North of England. The young woman with him was his secretary, Esther Walters—a widow. (Quite all right, of course. Nothing improper. After all, he was nearly eighty!)

Miss Marple accepted the propriety of the relationship with an understanding nod and the Canon remarked:

‘A very nice young woman; her mother, I understand, is a widow and lives in Chichester.’

‘Mr Rafiel has a valet with him, too. Or rather a kind of Nurse Attendant—he’s a qualified masseur, I believe. Jackson, his name is. Poor Mr Rafiel is practically paralysed. So sad—with all that money, too.’

‘A generous and cheerful giver,’ said Canon Prescott approvingly.

People were regrouping themselves round about, some going farther from the steel band, others crowding up to it. Major Palgrave had joined the Hillingdon-Dyson quartette.

‘Now those people—’ said Miss Prescott, lowering her voice quite unnecessarily since the steel band easily drowned it.

‘Yes, I was going to ask you about them.’

‘They were here last year. They spend three months every year in the West Indies, going round the different islands. The tall thin man is Colonel Hillingdon and the dark woman is his wife—they are botanists. The other two, Mr and Mrs Gregory Dyson—they’re American. He writes on butterflies, I believe. And all of them are interested in birds.’

‘So nice for people to have open-air hobbies,’ said Canon Prescott genially.

‘I don’t think they’d like to hear you call it hobbies, Jeremy,’ said his sister. ‘They have articles printed in the National Geographic and in the Royal Horticultural Journal. They take themselves very seriously.’

A loud outburst of laughter came from the table they had been observing. It was loud enough to overcome the steel band. Gregory Dyson was leaning back in his chair and thumping the table, his wife was protesting, and Major Palgrave emptied his glass and seemed to be applauding.

They hardly qualified for the moment as people who took themselves seriously.

‘Major Palgrave should not drink so much,’ said Miss Prescott acidly. ‘He has blood pressure.’

A fresh supply of Planters Punches was brought to the table.

‘It’s so nice to get people sorted out,’ said Miss Marple. ‘When I met them this afternoon I wasn’t sure which was married to which.’

There was a slight pause. Miss Prescott coughed a small dry cough, and said—‘Well, as to that—’

‘Joan,’ said the Canon in an admonitory voice. ‘Perhaps it would be wise to say no more.’

‘Really, Jeremy, I wasn’t going to say anything. Only that last year, for some reason or other—I really don’t know why—we got the idea that Mrs Dyson was Mrs Hillingdon until someone told us she wasn’t.’

‘It’s odd how one gets impressions, isn’t it?’ said Miss Marple innocently. Her eyes met Miss Prescott’s for a moment. A flash of womanly understanding passed between them.

A more sensitive man than Canon Prescott might have felt that he was de trop.

Another signal passed between the women. It said as clearly as if the words had been spoken: ‘Some other time …’

‘Mr Dyson calls his wife “Lucky”. Is that her real name or a nickname?’ asked Miss Marple.

‘It can hardly be her real name, I should think.’

‘I happened to ask him,’ said the Canon. ‘He said he called her Lucky because she was his good-luck piece. If he lost her, he said, he’d lose his luck. Very nicely put, I thought.’

‘He’s very fond of joking,’ said Miss Prescott.

The Canon looked at his sister doubtfully.

The steel band outdid itself with a wild burst of cacophony and a troupe of dancers came racing on to the floor.

Miss Marple and the others turned their chairs to watch. Miss Marple enjoyed the dancing better than the music; she liked the shuffling feet and the rhythmic sway of the bodies. It seemed, she thought, very real. It had a kind of power of understatement.

Tonight, for the first time, she began to feel slightly at home in her new environment … Up to now, she had missed what she usually found so easy, points of resemblance in the people she met, to various people known to her personally. She had, possibly, been dazzled by the gay clothes and the exotic colouring; but soon, she felt, she would be able to make some interesting comparisons.

Molly Kendal, for instance, was like that nice girl whose name she couldn’t remember, but who was a conductress on the Market Basing bus. Helped you in, and never rang the bus on until she was sure you’d sat down safely. Tim Kendal was just a little like the head waiter at the Royal George in Medchester. Self-confident, and yet, at the same time, worried. (He had had an ulcer, she remembered.) As for Major Palgrave, he was undistinguishable from General Leroy, Captain Flemming, Admiral Wicklow and Commander Richardson. She went on to someone more interesting. Greg for instance? Greg was difficult because he was American. A dash of Sir George Trollope, perhaps, always so full of jokes at the Civil Defence meetings—or perhaps Mr Murdoch the butcher. Mr Murdoch had had rather a bad reputation, but some people said it was just gossip, and that Mr Murdoch himself liked to encourage the rumours! ‘Lucky’ now? Well, that was easy—Marleen at the Three Crowns. Evelyn Hillingdon? She couldn’t fit Evelyn in precisely. In appearance she fitted many roles—tall thin weather-beaten Englishwomen were plentiful. Lady Caroline Wolfe, Peter Wolfe’s first wife, who had committed suicide? Or there was Leslie James—that quiet woman who seldom showed what she felt and who had sold up her house and left without ever telling anyone she was going. Colonel Hillingdon? No immediate clue there. She’d have to get to know him a little first. One of those quiet men with good manners. You never knew what they were thinking about. Sometimes they surprised you. Major Harper, she remembered, had quietly cut his throat one day. Nobody had ever known why. Miss Marple thought that she did know—but she’d never been quite sure …

Her eyes strayed to Mr Rafiel’s table. The principal thing known about Mr Rafiel was that he was incredibly rich, he came every year to the West Indies, he was semi-paralysed and looked like a wrinkled old bird of prey. His clothes hung loosely on his shrunken form. He might have been seventy or eighty, or even ninety. His eyes were shrewd and he was frequently rude, but people seldom took offence, partly because he was so rich, and partly because of his overwhelming personality which hypnotized you into feeling that somehow, Mr Rafiel had the right to be rude if he wanted to.

With him sat his secretary, Mrs Walters. She had corn-coloured hair, and a pleasant face. Mr Rafiel was frequently very rude to her, but she never seemed to notice it—She was not so much subservient, as oblivious. She behaved like a well-trained hospital nurse. Possibly, thought Miss Marple, she had been a hospital nurse.

A young man, tall and good-looking, in a white jacket, came to stand by Mr Rafiel’s chair. The old man looked up at him, nodded, then motioned him to a chair. The young man sat down as bidden. ‘Mr Jackson, I presume,’ said Miss Marple to herself—‘His valet-attendant.’

She studied Mr Jackson with some attention.

In the bar, Molly Kendal stretched her back, and slipped off her high-heeled shoes. Tim came in from the terrace to join her. They had the bar to themselves for the moment.

‘Tired, darling?’ he asked.

‘Just a bit. I seem to be feeling my feet tonight.’

‘Not too much for you, is it? All this? I know it’s hard work.’ He looked at her anxiously.

She laughed. ‘Oh, Tim, don’t be ridiculous. I love it here. It’s gorgeous. The kind of dream I’ve always had, come true.’

‘Yes, it would be all right—if one was just a guest. But running the show—that’s work.’

‘Well, you can’t have anything for nothing, can you?’ said Molly Kendal reasonably.

Tim Kendal frowned.

‘You think it’s going all right? A success? We’re making a go of it?’

‘Of course we are.’

‘You don’t think people are saying, “It’s not the same as when the Sandersons were here”?’

‘Of course someone will be saying that—they always do! But only some old stick-in-the-mud. I’m sure that we’re far better at the job than they were. We’re more glamorous. You charm the old pussies and manage to look as though you’d like to make love to the desperate forties and fifties, and I ogle the old gentlemen and make them feel sexy dogs—or play the sweet little daughter the sentimental ones would love to have had. Oh, we’ve got it all taped splendidly.’

Tim’s frown vanished.

‘As long as you think so. I get scared. We’ve risked everything on making a job of this. I chucked my job—’

‘And quite right to do so,’ Molly put in quickly. ‘It was soul-destroying.’

He laughed and kissed the tip of her nose.

‘I tell you we’ve got it taped,’ she repeated. ‘Why do you always worry?’

‘Made that way, I suppose. I’m always thinking—suppose something should go wrong?’

‘What sort of thing—’

‘Oh, I don’t know. Somebody might get drowned.’

‘Not they. It’s one of the safest of all the beaches. And we’ve got that hulking Swede always on guard.’

‘I’m a fool,’ said Tim Kendal. He hesitated—and then said, ‘You—haven’t had any more of those dreams, have you?’

‘That was shellfish,’ said Molly, and laughed.

CHAPTER 3
A Death in the Hotel

Miss Marple had her breakfast brought to her in bed as usual. Tea, a boiled egg, and a slice of paw-paw.

The fruit on the island, thought Miss Marple, was rather disappointing. It seemed always to be paw-paw. If she could have a nice apple now—but apples seemed to be unknown.

Now that she had been here a week, Miss Marple had cured herself of the impulse to ask what the weather was like. The weather was always the same—fine. No interesting variations.

‘The many splendoured weather of an English day,’ she murmured to herself and wondered if it was a quotation, or whether she had made it up.

There were, of course, hurricanes, or so she understood. But hurricanes were not weather in Miss Marple’s sense of the word. They were more in the nature of an Act of God. There was rain, short violent rainfall that lasted five minutes and stopped abruptly. Everything and everyone was wringing wet, but in another five minutes they were dry again.

The black West Indian girl smiled and said Good Morning as she placed the tray on Miss Marple’s knees. Such lovely white teeth and so happy and smiling. Nice natures, all these girls, and a pity they were so averse to getting married. It worried Canon Prescott a good deal. Plenty of christenings, he said, trying to console himself, but no weddings.

Miss Marple ate her breakfast and decided how she would spend her day. It didn’t really take much deciding. She would get up at her leisure, moving slowly because it was rather hot and her fingers weren’t as nimble as they used to be. Then she would rest for ten minutes or so, and she would take her knitting and walk slowly along towards the hotel and decide where she would settle herself. On the terrace overlooking the sea? Or should she go on to the bathing beach to watch the bathers and the children? Usually it was the latter. In the afternoon, after her rest, she might take a drive. It really didn’t matter very much.

Today would be a day like any other day, she said to herself.

Only, of course, it wasn’t.

Miss Marple carried out her programme as planned and was slowly making her way along the path towards the hotel when she met Molly Kendal. For once that sunny young woman was not smiling. Her air of distress was so unlike her that Miss Marple said immediately:

‘My dear, is anything wrong?’

Molly nodded. She hesitated and then said: ‘Well, you’ll have to know—everyone will have to know. It’s Major Palgrave. He’s dead.’

‘Dead?’

‘Yes. He died in the night.’

‘Oh, dear, I am sorry.’

‘Yes, it’s horrid having a death here. It makes everyone depressed. Of course—he was quite old.’

‘He seemed quite well and cheerful yesterday,’ said Miss Marple, slightly resenting this calm assumption that everyone of advanced years was liable to die at any minute.

‘He seemed quite healthy,’ she added.

‘He had high blood pressure,’ said Molly.

‘But surely there are things one takes nowadays—some kind of pill. Science is so wonderful.’

‘Oh yes, but perhaps he forgot to take his pills, or took too many of them. Like insulin, you know.’

Miss Marple did not think that diabetes and high blood pressure were at all the same kind of thing. She asked:

‘What does the doctor say?’

‘Oh, Dr Graham, who’s practically retired now, and lives in the hotel, took a look at him, and the local people came officially, of course, to give a death certificate, but it all seems quite straightforward. This kind of thing is quite liable to happen when you have high blood pressure, especially if you overdo the alcohol, and Major Palgrave was really very naughty that way. Last night, for instance.’

‘Yes, I noticed,’ said Miss Marple.

‘He probably forgot to take his pills. It is bad luck for the old boy—but people can’t live for ever, can they? But it’s terribly worrying—for me and Tim, I mean. People might suggest it was something in the food.’

‘But surely the symptoms of food poisoning and of blood pressure are quite different?’

‘Yes. But people do say things so easily. And if people decided the food was bad—and left—or told their friends—’

‘I really don’t think you need worry,’ said Miss Marple kindly. ‘As you say, an elderly man like Major Palgrave—he must have been over seventy—is quite liable to die. To most people it will seem quite an ordinary occurrence—sad, but not out of the way at all.’

‘If only,’ said Molly unhappily, ‘it hadn’t been so sudden.’

Yes, it had been very sudden, Miss Marple thought as she walked slowly on. There he had been last night, laughing and talking in the best of spirits with the Hillingdons and the Dysons.

The Hillingdons and the Dysons … Miss Marple walked more slowly still … Finally she stopped abruptly. Instead of going to the bathing beach she settled herself in a shady corner of the terrace. She took out her knitting and the needles clicked rapidly as though they were trying to match the speed of her thoughts. She didn’t like it—no, she didn’t like it. It came so pat.

She went over the occurrences of yesterday in her mind.

Major Palgrave and his stories …

That was all as usual and one didn’t need to listen very closely … Perhaps, though, it would have been better if she had.

Kenya—he had talked about Kenya and then India—the North West Frontier—and then—for some reason they had got on to murder—And even then she hadn’t really been listening …

Some famous case that had taken place out here—that had been in the newspapers—

It was after that—when he picked up her ball of wool—that he had begun telling her about a snapshot—A snapshot of a murderer—that is what he had said.

Miss Marple closed her eyes and tried to remember just exactly how that story had gone.

It had been rather a confused story—told to the Major in his club—or in somebody else’s club—told him by a doctor—who had heard it from another doctor—and one doctor had taken a snapshot of someone coming through a front door—someone who was a murderer—

Yes, that was it—the various details were coming back to her now—

And he had offered to show her that snapshot—He had got out his wallet and begun hunting through its contents—talking all the time …

And then still talking, he had looked up—had looked—not at her—but at something behind her—behind her right shoulder to be accurate. And he had stopped talking, his face had gone purple—and he had started stuffing back everything into his wallet with slightly shaky hands and had begun talking in a loud unnatural voice about elephant tusks!

A moment or two later the Hillingdons and the Dysons had joined them …

It was then that she had turned her head over her right shoulder to look … But there had been nothing and nobody to see. To her left, some distance away, in the direction of the hotel, there had been Tim Kendal and his wife; and beyond them a family group of Venezuelans. But Major Palgrave had not been looking in that direction …

Miss Marple meditated until lunch time.

After lunch she did not go for a drive.

Instead she sent a message to say that she was not feeling very well and to ask if Dr Graham would be kind enough to come and see her.

CHAPTER 4
Miss Marple Seeks Medical Attention

Dr Graham was a kindly elderly man of about sixty-five. He had practised in the West Indies for many years, but was now semi-retired, and left most of his work to his West Indian partners. He greeted Miss Marple pleasantly and asked her what the trouble was. Fortunately at Miss Marple’s age, there was always some ailment that could be discussed with slight exaggerations on the patient’s part. Miss Marple hesitated between ‘her shoulder’ and ‘her knee’, but finally decided upon the knee. Miss Marple’s knee, as she would have put it to herself, was always with her.

Dr Graham was exceedingly kindly but he refrained from putting into words the fact that at her time of life such troubles were only to be expected. He prescribed for her one of the brands of useful little pills that form the basis of a doctor’s prescriptions. Since he knew by experience that many elderly people could be lonely when they first came to St Honoré, he remained for a while gently chatting.

‘A very nice man,’ thought Miss Marple to herself, ‘and I really feel rather ashamed of having to tell him lies. But I don’t quite see what else I can do.’

Miss Marple had been brought up to have a proper regard for truth and was indeed by nature a very truthful person. But on certain occasions, when she considered it her duty so to do, she could tell lies with a really astonishing verisimilitude.

She cleared her throat, uttered an apologetic little cough, and said, in an old ladyish and slightly twittering manner:

‘There is something, Dr Graham, I would like to ask you. I don’t really like mentioning it—but I don’t quite see what else I am to do—although of course it’s quite unimportant really. But you see, it’s important to me. And I hope you will understand and not think what I am asking is tiresome or—or unpardonable in any way.’

To this opening Dr Graham replied kindly: ‘Something is worrying you? Do let me help.’

‘It’s connected with Major Palgrave. So sad about his dying. It was quite a shock when I heard it this morning.’

‘Yes,’ said Dr Graham, ‘it was very sudden, I’m afraid. He seemed in such good spirits yesterday.’ He spoke kindly, but conventionally. To him, clearly, Major Palgrave’s death was nothing out of the way. Miss Marple wondered whether she was really making something out of nothing. Was this suspicious habit of mind growing on her? Perhaps she could no longer trust her own judgment. Not that it was judgment really, only suspicion. Anyway she was in for it now! She must go ahead.

‘We were sitting talking together yesterday afternoon,’ she said. ‘He was telling me about his very varied and interesting life. So many strange parts of the globe.’

‘Yes indeed,’ said Dr Graham, who had been bored many times by the Major’s reminiscences.

‘And then he spoke of his family, boyhood rather, and I told him a little about my own nephews and nieces and he listened very sympathetically. And I showed him a snapshot I had with me of one of my nephews. Such a dear boy—at least not exactly a boy now, but always a boy to me if you understand.’

‘Quite so,’ said Dr Graham, wondering how long it would be before the old lady was going to come to the point.

‘I had handed it to him and he was examining it when quite suddenly those people—those very nice people—who collect wild flowers and butterflies, Colonel and Mrs Hillingdon I think the name is—’

‘Oh yes? The Hillingdons and the Dysons.’

‘Yes, that’s right. They came suddenly along laughing and talking. They sat down and ordered drinks and we all talked together. Very pleasant it was. But without thinking, Major Palgrave must have put back my snapshot into his wallet and returned it to his pocket. I wasn’t paying very much attention at the time but I remembered afterward and I said to myself—“I mustn’t forget to ask the Major to give me back my picture of Denzil.” I did think of it last night while the dancing and the band was going on, but I didn’t like to interrupt him just then, because they were having such a merry party together and I thought “I will remember to ask him for it in the morning.” Only this morning—’ Miss Marple paused—out of breath.

‘Yes, yes,’ said Dr Graham, ‘I quite understand. And you—well, naturally you want the snapshot back. Is that it?’

Miss Marple nodded her head in eager agreement.

‘Yes. That’s it. You see, it is the only one I have got and I haven’t got the negative. And I would hate to lose that snapshot, because poor Denzil died some five or six years ago and he was my favourite nephew. This is the only picture I have to remind me of him. I wondered—I hoped—it is rather tiresome of me to ask—whether you could possibly manage to get hold of it for me? I don’t really know who else to ask, you see. I don’t know who’ll attend to all his belongings and things like that. It is all so difficult. They would think it such a nuisance of me. You see, they don’t understand. Nobody could quite understand what this snapshot means to me.’

‘Of course, of course,’ said Dr Graham. ‘I quite understand. A most natural feeling on your part. Actually, I am meeting the local authorities shortly—the funeral is tomorrow—and someone will be coming from the Administrator’s office to look over his papers and effects before communicating with the next of kin—all that sort of thing—If you could describe this snapshot.’

‘It was just the front of a house,’ said Miss Marple. ‘And someone—Denzil, I mean—was just coming out of the front door. As I say it was taken by one of my other nephews who is very keen on flower shows—and he was photographing a hibiscus, I think, or one of those beautiful—something like antipasto—lilies. Denzil just happened to come out of the front door at that time. It wasn’t a very good photograph of him—just a trifle blurred—But I liked it and have always kept it.’

‘Well,’ said Dr Graham, ‘that seems clear enough. I think we’ll have no difficulty in getting back your picture for you, Miss Marple.’

He rose from his chair. Miss Marple smiled up at him.

‘You are very kind, Dr Graham, very kind indeed. You do understand, don’t you?’

‘Of course I do, of course I do,’ said Dr Graham, shaking her warmly by the hand. ‘Now don’t you worry. Exercise that knee every day gently but not too much, and I’ll send you round these tablets. Take one three times a day.’

CHAPTER 5
Miss Marple Makes a Decision

The funeral service was said over the body of the late Major Palgrave on the following day. Miss Marple attended in company with Miss Prescott. The Canon read the service—after that life went on as usual.

Major Palgrave’s death was already only an incident, a slightly unpleasant incident, but one that was soon forgotten. Life here was sunshine, sea, and social pleasures. A grim visitor had interrupted these activities, casting a momentary shadow, but the shadow was now gone. After all, nobody had known the deceased very well. He had been rather a garrulous elderly man of the club-bore type, always telling you personal reminiscences that you had no particular desire to hear. He had had little to anchor himself to any particular part of the world. His wife had died many years ago. He had had a lonely life and a lonely death. But it had been the kind of loneliness that spends itself in living amongst people, and in passing the time that way not unpleasantly. Major Palgrave might have been a lonely man, he had also been quite a cheerful one. He had enjoyed himself in his own particular way. And now he was dead, buried, and nobody cared very much, and in another week’s time nobody would even remember him or spare him a passing thought.

The only person who could possibly be said to miss him was Miss Marple. Not indeed out of any personal affection, but he represented a kind of life that she knew. As one grew older, so she reflected to herself, one got more and more into the habit of listening; listening possibly without any great interest, but there had been between her and the Major the gentle give and take of two old people. It had had a cheerful, human quality. She did not actually mourn Major Palgrave but she missed him.

On the afternoon of the funeral, as she was sitting knitting in her favourite spot, Dr Graham came and joined her. She put her needles down and greeted him. He said at once, rather apologetically:

‘I am afraid I have rather disappointing news, Miss Marple.’

‘Indeed? About my—’

‘Yes. We haven’t found that precious snapshot of yours. I’m afraid that will be a disappointment to you.’

‘Yes. Yes it is. But of course it does not really matter. It was a sentimentality. I do realize that now. It wasn’t in Major Palgrave’s wallet?’

‘No. Nor anywhere else among his things. There were a few letters and newspaper clippings and odds and ends, and a few old photographs, but no sign of a snapshot such as you mentioned.’

‘Oh dear,’ said Miss Marple. ‘Well, it can’t be helped … Thank you very much, Dr Graham, for the trouble you’ve taken.’

‘Oh it was no trouble, indeed. But I know quite well from my own experience how much family trifles mean to one, especially as one is getting older.’

The old lady was really taking it very well, he thought. Major Palgrave, he presumed, had probably come across the snapshot when taking something out of his wallet, and not even realizing how it had come there, had torn it up as something of no importance. But of course it was of great importance to this old lady. Still, she seemed quite cheerful and philosophical about it.

Internally, however, Miss Marple was far from being either cheerful or philosophical. She wanted a little time in which to think things out, but she was also determined to use her present opportunities to the fullest effect.

She engaged Dr Graham in conversation with an eagerness which she did not attempt to conceal. That kindly man, putting down her flow of talk to the natural loneliness of an old lady, exerted himself to divert her mind from the loss of the snapshot, by conversing easily and pleasantly about life in St Honoré, and the various interesting places perhaps Miss Marple might like to visit. He hardly knew himself how the conversation drifted back to Major Palgrave’s decease.

‘It seems so sad,’ said Miss Marple. ‘To think of anyone dying like this away from home. Though I gather, from what he himself told me, that he had no immediate family. It seems he lived by himself in London.’

‘He travelled a fair amount, I believe,’ said Dr Graham. ‘At any rate in the winters. He didn’t care for our English winters. Can’t say I blame him.’

‘No, indeed,’ said Miss Marple. ‘And perhaps he had some special reason like a weakness of the lungs or something which made it necessary for him to winter abroad?’

‘Oh no, I don’t think so.’

‘He had high blood pressure, I believe. So sad nowadays. One hears so much of it.’

‘He spoke about it to you, did he?’

‘Oh no. No, he never mentioned it. It was somebody else who told me.’

‘Ah, really.’

‘I suppose,’ went on Miss Marple, ‘that death was to be expected under those circumstances.’

‘Not necessarily,’ said Dr Graham. ‘There are methods of controlling blood pressure nowadays.’

‘His death seemed very sudden—but I suppose you weren’t surprised.’

‘Well I wasn’t particularly surprised in a man of that age. But I certainly didn’t expect it. Frankly, he always seemed to me in very good form, but I hadn’t ever attended him professionally. I’d never taken his blood pressure or anything like that.’

‘Does one know—I mean, does a doctor know—when a man has high blood pressure just by looking at him?’ Miss Marple inquired with a kind of dewy innocence.

‘Not just by looking,’ said the doctor, smiling. ‘One has to do a bit of testing.’

‘Oh I see. That dreadful thing when you put a rubber band round somebody’s arm and blow it up—I dislike it so much. But my doctor said that my blood pressure was really very good for my age.’

‘Well, that’s good hearing,’ said Dr Graham.

‘Of course, the Major was rather fond of Planters Punch,’ said Miss Marple thoughtfully.

‘Yes. Not the best thing with blood pressure—alcohol.’

‘One takes tablets, doesn’t one, or so I have heard?’

‘Yes. There are several on the market. There was a bottle of one of them in his room—Serenite.’

‘How wonderful science is nowadays,’ said Miss Marple. ‘Doctors can do so much, can’t they?’

‘We all have one great competitor,’ said Dr Graham. ‘Nature, you know. And some of the good old-fashioned home remedies come back from time to time.’

‘Like putting cobwebs on a cut?’ said Miss Marple. ‘We always used to do that when I was a child.’

‘Very sensible,’ said Dr Graham.

‘And a linseed poultice on the chest and rubbing in camphorated oil for a bad cough.’

‘I see you know it all!’ said Dr Graham laughing. He got up. ‘How’s the knee? Not been too troublesome?’

‘No, it seems much, much better.’

‘Well, we won’t say whether that’s Nature or my pills,’ said Dr Graham. ‘Sorry I couldn’t have been of more help to you.’

‘But you have been most kind—I am really ashamed of taking up your time—Did you say that there were no photographs in the Major’s wallet?’

‘Oh yes—a very old one of the Major himself as quite a young man on a polo pony—and one of a dead tiger—He was standing with his foot on it. Snaps of that sort—memories of his younger days—But I looked very carefully, I assure you, and the one you describe of your nephew was definitely not there—’

‘Oh I’m sure you looked carefully—I didn’t mean that—I was just interested—We all tend to keep such very odd things—’

‘Treasures from the past,’ said the doctor smiling.

He said goodbye and departed.

Miss Marple remained looking thoughtfully at the palm trees and the sea. She did not pick up her knitting again for some minutes. She had a fact now. She had to think about that fact and what it meant. The snapshot that the Major had brought out of his wallet and replaced so hurriedly was not there after he died. It was not the sort of thing the Major would throw away. He had replaced it in his wallet and it ought to have been in his wallet after his death. Money might have been stolen, but no one would want to steal a snapshot. Unless, that is, they had a special reason for so doing …

Miss Marple’s face was grave. She had to take a decision. Was she, or was she not, going to allow Major Palgrave to remain quietly in his grave? Might it not be better to do just that? She quoted under her breath. ‘Duncan is dead. After Life’s fitful fever he sleeps well!’ Nothing could hurt Major Palgrave now. He had gone where danger could not touch him. Was it just a coincidence that he should have died on that particular night? Or was it just possibly not a coincidence? Doctors accepted the deaths of elderly men so easily. Especially since in his room there had been a bottle of the tablets that people with high blood pressure had to take every day of their lives. But if someone had taken the snapshot from the Major’s wallet, that same person could have put that bottle of tablets in the Major’s room. She herself never remembered seeing the Major take tablets; he had never spoken about his blood pressure to her. The only thing he had ever said about his health was the admission—‘Not as young as I was.’ He had been occasionally a little short of breath, a trifle asthmatic, nothing else. But someone had mentioned that Major Palgrave had high blood pressure—Molly? Miss Prescott? She couldn’t remember.

Miss Marple sighed, then admonished herself in words, though she did not speak those words aloud.

‘Now, Jane, what are you suggesting or thinking? Are you, perhaps, just making the whole thing up? Have you really got anything to build on?’

She went over, step by step, as nearly as she could, the conversation between herself and the Major on the subject of murder and murderers.

‘Oh dear,’ said Miss Marple. ‘Even if—really, I don’t see how I can do anything about it—’

But she knew that she meant to try.

CHAPTER 6
In the Small Hours

Miss Marple woke early. Like many old people she slept lightly and had periods of wakefulness which she used for the planning of some action or actions to be carried out on the next or following days. Usually, of course, these were of a wholly private or domestic nature, of little interest to anybody but herself. But this morning Miss Marple lay thinking soberly and constructively of murder, and what, if her suspicions were correct, she could do about it. It wasn’t going to be easy. She had one weapon and one weapon only, and that was conversation.

Old ladies were given to a good deal of rambling conversation. People were bored by this, but certainly did not suspect them of ulterior motives. It would not be a case of asking direct questions. (Indeed, she would have found it difficult to know what questions to ask!) It would be a question of finding out a little more about certain people. She reviewed these certain people in her mind.

She could find out, possibly, a little more about Major Palgrave, but would that really help her? She doubted if it would. If Major Palgrave had been killed it was not because of secrets in his life or to inherit his money or for revenge upon him. In fact, although he was the victim, it was one of those rare cases where a greater knowledge of the victim does not help you or lead you in any way to his murderer. The point, it seemed to her, and the sole point, was that Major Palgrave talked too much!

She had learnt one rather interesting fact from Dr Graham. He had had in his wallet various photographs: one of himself in company with a polo pony, one of a dead tiger, also one or two other shots of the same nature. Now why did Major Palgrave carry these about with him? Obviously, thought Miss Marple, with long experience of old admirals, brigadier-generals and mere majors behind her, because he had certain stories which he enjoyed telling to people. Starting off with ‘Curious thing happened once when I was out tiger shooting in India …’ Or a reminiscence of himself and a polo pony. Therefore this story about a suspected murderer would in due course be illustrated by the production of the snapshot from his wallet.

He had been following that pattern in his conversation with her. The subject of murder having come up, and to focus interest on his story, he had done what he no doubt usually did, produced his snapshot and said something in the nature of ‘Wouldn’t think this chap was a murderer, would you?’

The point was that it had been a habit of his. This murderer story was one of his regular repertoire. If any reference to murder came up, then away went the Major, full steam ahead.

In that case, reflected Miss Marple, he might already have told his story to someone else here. Or to more than one person—If that were so, then she herself might learn from that person what the further details of the story had been, possibly what the person in the snapshot had looked like.

She nodded her head in satisfaction—That would be a beginning.

And, of course, there were the people she called in her mind the ‘Four Suspects’. Though really, since Major Palgrave had been talking about a man—there were only two. Colonel Hillingdon or Mr Dyson, very unlikely-looking murderers, but then murderers so often were unlikely. Could there have been anyone else? She had seen no one when she turned her head to look. There was the bungalow of course. Mr Rafiel’s bungalow. Could somebody have come out of the bungalow and gone in again before she had had time to turn her head? If so, it could only have been the valet-attendant. What was his name? Oh yes, Jackson. Could it have been Jackson who had come out of the door? That would have been the same pose as the photograph. A man coming out of a door. Recognition might have struck suddenly. Up till then, Major Palgrave would not have looked at Arthur Jackson, valet-attendant, with any interest. His roving and curious eye was essentially a snobbish eye—Arthur Jackson was not a pukka sahib—Major Palgrave would not have glanced at him twice.

Until, perhaps, he had had the snapshot in his hand, and had looked over Miss Marple’s right shoulder and had seen a man coming out of a door …?

Miss Marple turned over on her pillow—Programme for tomorrow—or rather for today—Further investigation of the Hillingdons, the Dysons and Arthur Jackson, valet-attendant.

Dr Graham also woke early. Usually he turned over and went to sleep again. But today he was uneasy and sleep failed to come. This anxiety that made it so difficult to go to sleep again was a thing he had not suffered from for a long time. What was causing this anxiety? Really, he couldn’t make it out. He lay there thinking it over. Something to do with—something to do with—yes, Major Palgrave. Major Palgrave’s death? He didn’t see, though, what there could be to make him uneasy there. Was it something that that twittery old lady had said? Bad luck for her about her snapshot. She’d taken it very well. But now what was it she had said, what chance word of hers had it been, that had given him this funny feeling of uneasiness? After all, there was nothing odd about the Major’s death. Nothing at all. At least he supposed there was nothing at all.

It was quite clear that in the Major’s state of health—a faint check came in his thought process. Did he really know much about Major Palgrave’s state of health? Everybody said that he’d suffered from high blood pressure. But he himself had never had any conversation with the Major about it. But then he’d never had much conversation with Major Palgrave anyway. Palgrave was an old bore and he avoided old bores. Why on earth should he have this idea that perhaps everything mightn’t be all right? Was it that old woman? But after all she hadn’t said anything. Anyway, it was none of his business. The local authorities were quite satisfied. There had been that bottle of Serenite tablets, and the old boy had apparently talked to people about his blood pressure quite freely.

Dr Graham turned over in bed and soon went to sleep again.

Outside the hotel grounds, in one of a row of shanty cabins beside a creek, the girl Victoria Johnson rolled over and sat up in bed. The St Honoré girl was a magnificent creature with a torso of black marble such as a sculptor would have enjoyed. She ran her fingers through her dark, tightly curling hair. With her foot she nudged her sleeping companion in the ribs.

‘Wake up, man.’

The man grunted and turned.

‘What you want? It’s not morning.’

‘Wake up, man. I want to talk to you.’

The man sat up, stretched, showed a wide mouth and beautiful teeth.

‘What’s worrying you, woman?’

‘That Major man who died. Something I don’t like. Something wrong about it.’

‘Ah, what d’you want to worry about that? He was old. He died.’

‘Listen, man. It’s them pills. Them pills the doctor asked me about.’

‘Well, what about them? He took too many maybe.’

‘No. It’s not that. Listen.’ She leant towards him, talking vehemently. He yawned and lay down again.

‘There’s nothing in that. What’re you talking about?’

‘All the same, I’ll speak to Mrs Kendal about it in the morning. I think there’s something wrong there somewhere.’

‘Shouldn’t bother,’ said the man who, without benefit of ceremony, she considered as her present husband. ‘Don’t let’s look for trouble,’ he said and rolled over on his side yawning.

CHAPTER 7
Morning on the Beach

It was mid-morning on the beach below the hotel.

Evelyn Hillingdon came out of the water and dropped on the warm golden sand. She took off her bathing cap and shook her dark head vigorously. The beach was not a very big one. People tended to congregate there in the mornings and about 11.30 there was always something of a social reunion. To Evelyn’s left in one of the exotic-looking modern basket chairs lay Señora de Caspearo, a handsome woman from Venezuela. Next to her was old Mr Rafiel who was by now the doyen of the Golden Palm Hotel and held the sway that only an elderly invalid of great wealth could attain. Esther Walters was in attendance on him. She usually had her shorthand notebook and pencil with her in case Mr Rafiel should suddenly think of urgent business cables which must be got off at once. Mr Rafiel in beach attire was incredibly desiccated, his bones draped with festoons of dry skin. Though looking like a man on the point of death, he had looked exactly the same for at least the last eight years—or so it was said in the islands. Sharp blue eyes peered out of his wrinkled cheeks, and his principal pleasure in life was denying robustly anything that anyone else said.

Miss Marple was also present. As usual she sat and knitted and listened to what went on, and very occasionally joined in the conversation. When she did so, everyone was surprised because they had usually forgotten that she was there! Evelyn Hillingdon looked at her indulgently, and thought that she was a nice old pussy.

Señora de Caspearo rubbed some more oil on her long beautiful legs and hummed to herself. She was not a woman who spoke much. She looked discontentedly at the flask of sun oil.

‘This is not so good as Frangipanio,’ she said, sadly. ‘One cannot get it here. A pity.’ Her eyelids drooped again.

‘Are you going in for your dip now, Mr Rafiel?’ asked Esther Walters.

‘I’ll go in when I’m ready,’ said Mr Rafiel, snappishly.

‘It’s half past eleven,’ said Mrs Walters.

‘What of it?’ said Mr Rafiel. ‘Think I’m the kind of man to be tied by the clock? Do this at the hour, do this at twenty minutes past, do that at twenty to—bah!’

Mrs Walters had been in attendance on Mr Rafiel long enough to have adopted her own formula for dealing with him. She knew that he liked a good space of time in which to recover from the exertion of bathing and she had therefore reminded him of the time, allowing a good ten minutes for him to rebut her suggestion and then be able to adopt it without seeming to do so.

‘I don’t like these espadrilles,’ said Mr Rafiel, raising a foot and looking at it. ‘I told that fool Jackson so. The man never pays attention to a word I say.’

‘I’ll fetch you some others, shall I, Mr Rafiel?’

‘No, you won’t, you’ll sit here and keep quiet. I hate people rushing about like clucking hens.’

Evelyn shifted slightly in the warm sand, stretching out her arms.

Miss Marple, intent on her knitting—or so it seemed—stretched out a foot, then hastily she apologized.

‘I’m so sorry, so very sorry, Mrs Hillingdon. I’m afraid I kicked you.’

‘Oh, it’s quite all right,’ said Evelyn. ‘This beach gets rather crowded.’

‘Oh, please don’t move. Please. I’ll move my chair a little back so that I won’t do it again.’

As Miss Marple resettled herself, she went on talking in a childish and garrulous manner.

‘It still seems so wonderful to be here! I’ve never been to the West Indies before, you know. I thought it was the kind of place I never should come to and here I am. All by the kindness of my dear nephew. I suppose you know this part of the world very well, don’t you, Mrs Hillingdon?’

‘I have been in this island once or twice before and of course in most of the others.’

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