A Caribbean Mystery - Miss Marple 09 Read online

  "Mr. Dyson has got blood pressure. His wife mentioned it," said Miss Marple.

  "So it was put in Palgrave's room to suggest that he suffered from blood pressure and to make his death seem natural."

  "Exactly," said Miss Marple. "And the story was put about, very cleverly, that he had frequently mentioned to people that he had high blood pressure. But you know, it's very easy to put about a story. Very easy. I've seen a lot of it in my time."

  "I bet you have," said Mr. Rafter.

  "It only needs a murmur here and there," said Miss Marple. "You don't say it of your own knowledge you just say that Mrs. B. told you that Colonel C. told her. It's always at second hand or third hand or fourth hand and it's very difficult to find out who was the original whisperer. Oh yes, it can be done. And the people you say it to go on and repeat it to others as if they know it of their own knowledge."

  "Yes," said Miss Marple, "I think somebody's been quite clever."

  "This girl saw something, or knew something and tried blackmail, I suppose," said Mr. Rafter.

  "She mayn't have thought of it as blackmail," said Miss Marple. "In these large hotels, there are often things the maids know that some people would rather not have repeated. And so they hand out a larger tip or a little present of money. The girl possibly didn't realise at first the importance of what she knew."

  "Still, she got a knife in her back all right," said Mr. Rafter brutally.

  "Yes. Evidently someone couldn't afford to let her talk."

  "Well? Let's hear what you think about it all."

  Miss Marple looked at him thoughtfully.

  "Why should you think I know any more than you do, Mr. Rafter?"

  "Probably you don't," said Mr. Rafter, "but I'm interested to hear your ideas about what you do know."

  "But why?"

  "There's not very much to do out here," said Mr. Rafter, "except make money."

  Miss Marple looked slightly surprised.

  "Make money? Out here?"

  "You can send out half a dozen cables in code every day if you like," said Mr. Rafter. "That's how I amuse myself."

  "Takeover bids?" Miss Marple asked doubtfully, in the tone of one who speaks a foreign language.

  "That kind of thing," agreed Mr. Rafter. "Pitting your wits against other people's wits. The trouble is it doesn't occupy enough time, so I've got interested in this business. It's aroused my curiosity. Palgrave spent a good deal of his time talking to you. Nobody else would be bothered with him, I expect. What did he say?"

  "He told me a good many stories," said Miss Marple.

  "I know he did. Damn boring, most of them. And you hadn't only got to hear them once. If you got anywhere within range you heard them three or four times over."

  "I know," said Miss Marple. "I'm afraid that does happen when gentlemen get older."

  Mr. Rafter looked at her very sharply.

  "I don't tell stories," he said. "Go on. It started with one of Palgrave's stories, did it?"

  "He said he knew a murderer," said Miss Marple. "There's nothing really special about that," she added in her gentle voice, "because I suppose it happens to nearly everybody."

  "I don't follow you," said Mr. Rafter.

  "I don't mean specifically," said Miss Marple. "but surely, Mr. Rafter, if you cast over in your mind your recollections of various events in your life, hasn't there nearly always been an occasion when somebody has made some careless reference such as 'Oh yes I knew the So-and-So quite well—he died very suddenly and they always say his wife did him in, but I daresay that's just gossip'. You've heard people say something like that, haven't you?"

  'Well, I suppose so—yes, something of the kind. But not well, not seriously."

  "Exactly," said Miss Marple, "but Major Palgrave was a very serious man. I think he enjoyed telling this story. He said he had a snapshot of the murderer. He was going to show it to me but—actually—he didn't."

  "Why?"

  "Because he saw something," said Miss Marple. "Saw someone, I suspect. His face got very red and he shoved back the snapshot into his wallet and began talking on another subject."

  "Who did he see?"

  "I've thought about that a good deal," said Miss Marple. "I was sitting outside my bungalow, and he was sitting nearly opposite me and—whatever he saw, he saw over my right shoulder."

  "Someone coming along the path then from behind you on the right, the path from the creek and the car park."

  "Yes."

  "Was anyone coming along the path?"

  "Mr. and Mrs. Dyson and Colonel and Mrs. Hillingdon."

  "Anybody else?"

  "Not that I can find out. Of course, your bungalow would also be in his line of vision . . ."

  "Ah. Then we include—shall we say—Esther Walters and my chap, Jackson. Is that right? Either of them, I suppose, might have come out of the bungalow and gone back inside again without your seeing them."

  "They might have," said Miss Marple, "I didn't turn my head at once."

  "The Dysons, the Hillingdons, Esther, Jackson. One of them's a murderer. Or of course, myself," he added, obviously as an afterthought.

  Miss Marple smiled faintly.

  "And he spoke of the murderer as a man?"

  "Yes."

  "Right. That cuts out Evelyn Hillingdon, Lucky and Esther Walters. So your murderer, allowing that all this farfetched nonsense is true, your murderer is Dyson, Hillingdon or my smooth-tongued Jackson."

  "Or yourself," said Miss Marple.

  Mr. Rafter ignored this last point.

  "Don't say things to irritate me," he said. "I'll tell you the first thing that strikes me, and which you don't seem to have thought of. If it's one of those three, why the devil didn't old Palgrave recognise him before? Dash it all, they've all been sitting round looking at each other for the last two weeks. That doesn't seem to make sense."

  "I think it could," said Miss Marple.

  "Well, tell me how."

  "You see, in Major Palgrave's story he hadn't seen this man himself at any time. It was a story told to him by a doctor. The doctor gave him the snapshot as a curiosity. Major Palgrave may have looked at the snapshot fairly closely at the time but after that he'd just stuck it away in his wallet and kept it as a souvenir. Occasionally, perhaps, he'd take it out and show it to someone he was telling the story to. And another thing, Mr. Rafter, we don't know how long ago this happened. He didn't give me any indication of that when he was telling the story. I mean this may have been a story he's been telling to people for years. Five years. Ten years. Longer still perhaps. Some of his tiger stories go back about twenty years."

  "They would!" said Mr. Rafter.

  "So I don't suppose for a moment that Major Palgrave would recognise the face in the snapshot if he came across the man casually. What I think happened, what I'm almost sure must have happened, is that as he told his story he fumbled for the snapshot, took it out, looked down at it studying the face and then looked up to see the same face, or one with a strong resemblance coming towards him from a distance of about ten or twelve feet away."

  "Yes," said Mr. Rafter consideringly, "Yes, that's possible."

  "He was taken aback," said Miss Marple, "and he shoved it back in his wallet and began to talk loudly about something else."

  "He couldn't have been sure," said Mr. Rafter, shrewdly.

  "No," said Miss Marple, "he couldn't have been sure. But of course afterwards he would have studied the snapshot very carefully and would have looked at the man and tried to make up his mind whether it was just a likeness or whether it could actually be the same person."

  Mr. Rafter reflected a moment or two, then he shook his head. "There's something wrong here. The motive's inadequate. Absolutely inadequate. He was speaking to you loudly, was he?"

  "Yes," said Miss Marple, "quite loudly. He always did."

  "True enough. Yes, he did shout. So whoever was approaching would hear what he said?"

  "I should imagine you could hear
it for quite a good radius round."

  Mr. Rafter shook his head again. He said, "It's fantastic, too fantastic. Anybody would laugh at such a story. Here's an old booby telling a story about another story somebody told him, and showing a snapshot, and all of it centring round a murder which had taken place years ago! Or at any rate, a year or two. How on earth can that worry the man in question. No evidence, just a bit of hearsay, a story at third hand. He could even admit a likeness, he could say: 'Yes, I do look rather like that fellow, don't I! Ha, ha!' Nobody's going to take old Palgrave's identification seriously. Don't tell me so, because I won't believe it. No, the chap, if it was the chap, had nothing to fear—nothing whatever. It's the kind of accusation he can just laugh off. Why on earth should he proceed to murder old Palgrave? It's absolutely unnecessary. You must see that."

  "Oh I do see that," said Miss Marple. "I couldn't agree with you more. That's what makes me uneasy. So very uneasy that I really couldn't sleep last night."

  Mr. Rafter stared at her. "Let's hear what's on your mind," he said quietly.

  "I may be entirely wrong," said Miss Marple hesitantly.

  "Probably you are," said Mr. Rafter with his usual lack of courtesy, "but at any rate let's hear what you've thought up in the small hours."

  "There could be a very powerful motive if—"

  "If what?"

  "If there was going to be—quite soon—another murder."

  Mr. Rafter stared at her. He tried to pull himself up a little in his chair.

  "Let's get this clear," he said.

  "I am so bad at explaining." Miss Marple spoke rapidly and rather incoherently. A pink flush rose to her cheeks. "Supposing there was a murder planned. If you remember, the story Major Palgrave told me concerned a man whose wife died under suspicious circumstances. Then, after a certain lapse of time, there was another murder under exactly the same circumstances. A man of a different name had a wife who died in much the same way and the doctor who was telling it recognised him as the same man, although he'd changed his name. Well, it does look, doesn't it, as though this murderer might be the kind of murderer who made a habit of the thing?"

  "You mean like Smith, Brides in the Bath, that kind of thing. Yes?"

  "As far as I can make out," said Miss Marple, "and from what I have heard and read, a man who does a wicked thing like this and gets away with it the first time, is, alas, encouraged. He thinks it's easy, he thinks he's clever. And so he repeats it. And in the end, as you say, like Smith and the Brides in the Bath, it becomes a habit. Each time in a different place and each time the man changes his name. But the crimes themselves are all very much alike. So it seems to me, although I may be quite wrong—"

  "But you don't think you are wrong, do you?" Mr. Rafter put it shrewdly.

  Miss Marple went on without answering. "—that if that were so and if this—this person had got things all lined up for a murder out here, for getting rid of another wife, say, and if this is crime three or four, well then, the Major's story would matter because the murderer couldn't afford to have any similarity pointed out. If you remember, that was exactly the way Smith got caught. The circumstances of a crime attracted the attention of somebody who compared it with a newspaper clipping of some other case. So you do see, don't you, that if this wicked person has got a crime planned, arranged, and shortly about to take place, he couldn't afford to let Major Palgrave go about telling this story and showing that snapshot."

  She stopped and looked appealingly at Mr. Rafter.

  "So you see he had to do something very quickly, as quickly as possible."

  Mr. Rafter spoke, "In fact, that very same night, eh?"

  "Yes," said Miss Marple.

  "Quick work," said Mr. Rafter, "but it could be done. Put the tablets in old Palgrave's room, spread the blood pressure rumour about and add a little of our fourteen syllable drug to a Planters Punch. Is that it?"

  "Yes. But that's all over. We needn't worry about it. It's the future. It's now. With Major Palgrave out of the way and the snapshot destroyed, this man will go on with his murder as planned."

  Mr. Rafter whistled.

  "You've got it all worked out, haven't you?"

  Miss Marple nodded. She said in a most unaccustomed voice, firm and almost dictatorial, "And we've got to stop it. You've got to stop it, Mr. Rafter."

  "Me?" said Mr. Rafter, astonished, "why me?"

  "Because you're rich and important," said Miss Marple, simply. "People will take notice of what you say or suggest. They wouldn't listen to me for a moment. They would say that I was an old lady imagining things."

  "They might at that," said Mr. Rafter. "More fools if they did. I must say, though, that nobody would think you had any brains in your head to hear your usual line of talk. Actually, you've got a logical mind. Very few women have." He shifted himself uncomfortably in his chair. "Where the hell's Esther or Jackson?" he said. "I need resettling. No, it's no good your doing it. You're not strong enough. I don't know what they mean, leaving me alone like this."

  "I'll go and find them."

  ''No, you won't. You'll stay here—and thrash this out. Which of them is it? The egregious Greg? The quiet Edward Hillingdon or my fellow Jackson? It's got to be one of the three, hasn't it?"

  17

  MR. RAFTER TAKES CHARGE

  "I DON'T know," said Miss Marple.

  ''What do you mean? What have we been talking about for the last twenty minutes?"

  "It has occurred to me that I may have been wrong."

  Mr. Rafter stared at her.

  "Scatty after all!" he said disgustedly. "And you sounded so sure of yourself."

  "Oh, I am sure—about the murder. It's the murderer I'm not sure about. You see I've found out that Major Palgrave had more than one murder story—you told me yourself he'd told you one about a kind of Lucrezia Borgia."

  "So he did, at that. But that was quite a different kind of story."

  "I know. And Mrs. Walters said he had one about someone being gassed in a gas oven—"

  "But the story he told you—"

  Miss Marple allowed herself to interrupt—a thing that did not often happen to Mr. Rafter.

  She spoke with desperate earnestness and only moderate incoherence. "Don't you see—it's so difficult to be sure. The whole point is that—so often—one doesn't listen. Ask Mrs. Walters. She said the same thing. You listen to begin with, and then your attention flags, your mind wanders and suddenly you find you've missed a bit. I just wonder if possibly there may have been a gap—a very small one—between the story he was telling me—about a man—and the moment when he was getting out his wallet and saying: 'Like to see a picture of a murderer'."

  "But you thought it was a picture of the man he had been talking about?"

  "I thought so—yes. It never occurred to me that it mightn't have been. But now, how can I be sure?"

  Mr. Rafter looked at her very thoughtfully.

  "The trouble with you is" he said, "that you're too conscientious. Great mistake. Make up your mind and don't shilly shally. You didn't shilly shally to begin with. If you ask me, in all this chit-chat you've been having with the parson's sister and the rest of them, you've got hold of something that's unsettled you."

  "Perhaps you're right."

  "Well, cut it out for the moment. Let's go ahead with what you had to begin with. Because, nine times out of ten, one's original judgements are right—or so I've found. We've got three suspects. Let's take 'em out and have a good look at them. Any preference?"

  "I really haven't," said Miss Marple, "all three of them seem so very unlikely."

  "We'll take Greg first," said Mr. Rafter. "Can't stand the fellow. Doesn't make him a murderer, though. Still, there are one or two points against him. Those blood pressure tablets belonged to him. Nice and handy to make use of."

  "That would be a little obvious, wouldn't it?" Miss Marple objected.

  "I don't know that it would," said Mr. Rafter. "After all, the main thing was to do so
mething quickly, and he'd got the tablets. Hadn't much time to go looking round for tablets that somebody else might have. Let's say it's Greg. All right. If he wanted to put his dear wife Lucky out of the way—(Good job, too, I'd say. In fact I'm in sympathy with him)—I can't actually see his motive. From all accounts he's rich. Inherited money from his first wife who had pots of it. He qualifies on that as a possible wife murderer all right. But that's over and done with. He got away with it. But Lucky was his first wife's poor relation. No money there, so if he wants to put her out of the way it must be in order to marry somebody else. Any gossip going around about that?"

  Miss Marple shook her head. "Not that I have heard. He—er—has a very gallant manner with all the ladies."

  "Well, that's a nice, old-fashioned way of putting it," said Mr. Rafter. "All right, he's a stoat. He makes passes. Not enough! We want more than that. Let's go on to Edward Hillingdon. Now there's a dark horse, if ever there was one."

  "He is not, I think, a happy man," offered Miss Marple.

  Mr. Rafter looked at her thoughtfully.

  "Do you think a murderer ought to be a happy man?"

  Miss Marple coughed. "Well, they usually have been in my experience."

  "I don't suppose your experience has gone very far," said Mr. Rafter.

  In this assumption, as Miss Marple could have told him, he was wrong. But she forbore to contest his statement. Gentlemen, she knew, did not like to be put right in their facts.

  "I rather fancy Hillingdon myself," said Mr. Rafter. "I've an idea that there is something a bit odd going on between him and his wife. You noticed it at all?"

  "Oh yes," said Miss Marple, "I have noticed it. Their behaviour is perfect in public, of course, but that one would expect."

  "You probably know more about those sort of people than I would," said Mr. Rafter. "Very well, then, everything is in perfectly good taste but it's a probability that, in a gentlemanly way, Edward Hillingdon is contemplating doing away with Evelyn Hillingdon. Do you agree?"

  "If so," said Miss Marple, "there must be another woman."

  "But what woman?"

  Miss Marple shook her head in a dissatisfied manner.