Sleeping Murder - Christie Agatha (книги онлайн полностью .txt) 📗

Giles and Gwenda had just finished breakfast on the morning after their return from Northumberland when Miss Marple was announced. She came rather apologetically.

‘I’m afraid this is a very early call. Not a thing I am in the habit of doing. But there was something I wanted to explain.’

‘We’re delighted to see you,’ said Giles, pulling out a chair for her. ‘Do have a cup of coffee.’

‘Oh no, no, thank you-nothing at all. I have breakfastedmost adequately. Now let me explain. I came in whilst you were away, as you kindly said I might, to do a little weeding-’

‘Angelic of you,’ said Gwenda.

‘And it really did strike me that two days a week is not quite enough for this garden. In any case I think Foster is taking advantage of you. Too much tea and too much talk. I found out that he couldn’t manage another day himself, so I took it upon myself to engage another man just for one day a week-Wednesdays-today, in fact.’

Giles looked at her curiously. He was a little surprised. It might be kindly meant, but Miss Marple’s action savoured, very faintly, of interference. And interference was unlike her.

He said slowly: ‘Foster’s far too old, I know, for really hard work.’

‘I’m afraid, Mr Reed, that Manning is even older. Seventy-five, he tells me. But you see, I thought employing him, just for a few odd days, might be quite an advantageous move, because he used, many years ago, to be employed at Dr Kennedy’s. The name of the young man Helen got engaged to was Afflick, by the way.’

‘Miss Marple,’ said Giles, ‘I maligned you in thought. You are a genius. You know I’ve got those specimens of Helen’s handwriting from Kennedy?’

‘I know. I was here when he brought them.’

‘I’m posting them off today. I got the address of a good handwriting expert last week.’

‘Let’s go into the garden and see Manning,’ said Gwenda.

Manning was a bent, crabbed-looking old man with a rheumy and slightly cunning eye. The pace at which he was raking a path accelerated noticeably as his employers drew near.

‘Morning, sir. Morning, m’am. The lady said as how you could do with a little extra help of a Wednesday. I’ll be pleased. Shameful neglected, this place looks.’

‘I’m afraid the garden’s been allowed to run down for some years.’

‘It has that. Remember it, I do, in Mrs Findeyson’s time. A picture it were, then. Very fond of her garden she was, Mrs Findeyson.’

Giles leaned easily against a roller. Gwenda snipped off some rose heads. Miss Marple, retreating a little up stage, bent to the bindweed. Old Manning leant on his rake. All was set for a leisurely morning discussion of old times and gardening in the good old days.

‘I suppose you know most of the gardens round here, said Giles encouragingly.

‘Ar, I know this place moderate well, I do. And the fancies people went in for. Mrs Yule, up at Niagra, she had a yew hedge used to be clipped like a squirrel. Silly, I thought it. Peacocks is one thing and squirrels is another. Then Colonel Lampard, he was a great man for begonias-lovely beds of begonias he used to have. Bedding out now, that’s going out of fashion. I wouldn’t like to tell you how often I’ve had to fill up beds in the front lawns and turf ’em over in the last six years. Seems people ain’t got no eye for geraniums and a nice bit of lobelia edging no more.’

‘You worked at Dr Kennedy’s, didn’t you?’

‘Ar. Long time ago, that were. Must have been 1920 and on. He’s moved now-given up. Young Dr Brent’s up at Crosby Lodge now. Funny ideas, he has-little white tablets and so on. Vittapins he calls ’em.’

‘I suppose you remember Miss Helen Kennedy, the doctor’s sister.’

‘Ar, I remember Miss Helen right enough. Pretty-maid, she was, with her long yellow hair. The doctor set a lot of store by her. Come back and lived in this very house here, she did, after she was married. Army gentleman from India.’

‘Yes,’ said Gwenda. ‘We know.’

‘Ar. I did ’ear-Saturday night it was-as you and your ’usband was some kind of relations. Pretty as a picter, Miss Helen was, when she first come back from school. Full of fun, too. Wanting to go everywhere-dances and tennis and all that. ’Ad to mark the tennis court, I ’ad-hadn’t been used for nigh twenty years, I’d say. And the shrubs overgrowing it cruel. ’Ad to cut ’em back, I did.And get a lot of whitewash and mark out the lines. Lot of work it made-and in the end hardly played on. Funny thing I always thought that was.’

‘What was a funny thing?’ asked Giles. 

‘Business with the tennis court. Someone come along one night-and cut it to ribbons. Just to ribbons it was. Spite, as you might say. That was what it was-nasty bit of spite.’

‘But who would do a thing like that?’

‘That’s what the doctor wanted to know. Proper put out about it he was-and I don’t blame him. Just paid for it, he had. But none of us could tell who’d done it. We never did know. And he said he wasn’t going to get another-quite right, too, for if it’s spite one time, it would be spite again. But Miss Helen, she was rare and put out. She didn’t have no luck, Miss Helen didn’t. First that net-and then her bad foot.’

‘A bad foot?’ asked Gwenda.

‘Yes-fell over a scraper or somesuch and cut it. Not much more than a graze, it seemed, but it wouldn’t heal. Fair worried about it, the doctor was. He was dressing it and treating it, but it didn’t get well. I remember him saying “I can’t understand it-there must have been something spectic-or some word like that-on that scraper. And anyway,” he says, “what was the scraper doing out in the middle of the drive?” Because that’s where it was when Miss Helen fell over it, walking home on a dark night. The poor maid, there she was, missing going to dances and sitting about with her foot up. Seemed as though there was nothing but bad luck for her.’ 

The moment had come, Giles thought. He asked casually, ‘Do you remember somebody called Afflick?’

‘Ar. You mean Jackie Afflick? As was in Fane and Watchman’s office?’

‘Yes. Wasn’t he a friend of Miss Helen’s?’

‘That were just a bit of nonsense. Doctor put a stop to it and quite right too. He wasn’t any class, Jackie Afflick. And he was the kind that’s too sharp by half. Cut themselves in the end, that kind do. But he weren’t here long. Got himself into hot water. Good riddance. Us don’t want the likes of he in Dillmouth. Go and be smart somewhere else, that’s what he were welcome to do.’

Gwenda said: ‘Was he here when that tennis net was cut up?’

‘Ar. I see what you’re thinking. But he wouldn’t do a senseless thing like that. He were smart, Jackie Afflick were. Whoever did that it was just spite.’

‘Was there anybody who had a down on Miss Helen? Who would be likely to feel spiteful?’

Old Manning chuckled softly.

‘Some of the young ladies might have felt spiteful all right. Not a patch on Miss Helen to look at, most of ’em weren’t. No, I’d say that was done just in foolishness. Some tramp with a grudge.’

‘Was Helen very upset about Jackie Afflick?’ asked Gwenda. 

‘Don’t think as Miss Helen cared much about any of the young fellows. Just liked to enjoy herself, that’s all. Very devoted some of them were-young Mr Walter Fane, for one. Used to follow her round like a dog.’

‘But she didn’t care for him at all?’

‘Not Miss Helen. Just laughed-that’s all she did. Went abroad to foreign parts, he did. But he come back later. Top one in the firm he is now. Never married. I don’t blame him. Women causes a lot of trouble in a man’s life.’

‘Are you married?’ asked Gwenda.

‘Buried two, I have,’ said old Manning. ‘Ar, well, I can’t complain. Smoke me pipe in peace where I likes now.’

In the ensuing silence, he picked up his rake again.

Giles and Gwenda walked back up the path towards the house and Miss Marple desisting from her attack on bindweed joined them.

‘Miss Marple,’ said Gwenda. ‘You don’t look well. Is there anything-’

‘It’s nothing, my dear.’ The old lady paused for a moment before saying with a strange kind of insistence, ‘You know, I don’t like that bit about the tennis net. Cutting it to ribbons. Even then-’

She stopped. Giles looked at her curiously.

‘I don’t quite understand-’ he began.

‘Don’t you? It seems so horribly plain to me. But perhaps it’s better that you shouldn’t understand. And anyway-perhaps I am wrong. Now do tell me how you got on in Northumberland.’

They gave her an account of their activities, and Miss Marple listened attentively.

‘It’s really all very sad,’ said Gwenda. ‘Quite tragic, in fact.’

‘Yes, indeed. Poor thing-poor thing.’

‘That’s what I felt. How that man must suffer-’

‘He? Oh yes. Yes, of course.’

‘But you meant-’

‘Well, yes-I was thinking ofher -of the wife. Probably very deeply in love with him, and he married her because she was suitable, or because he was sorry for her, or for one of those quite kindly and sensible reasons that men often have, and which are actually so terribly unfair.’

‘I know a hundred ways of love,

And each one makes the loved one rue,’

quoted Giles softly.

Miss Marple turned to him.

‘Yes, that is so true. Jealousy, you know, is usually not an affair ofcauses. It is much more-how shall I say?-fundamental than that. Based on the knowledge that one’s love is not returned. And so one goes on waiting, watching, expecting…that the loved one will turn to someone else. Which, again, invariably happens. So this Mrs Erskine has made life a hell for her husband, and he, without being able to help it, has made life a hell for her. But I think she has suffered most. And yet, you know, I dare say he is really quite fond of her.’

‘He can’t be,’ cried Gwenda.

‘Oh, my dear, you are very young. He has never left his wife, and that means something, you know.’

‘Because of the children. Because it was his duty.’

‘The children, perhaps,’ said Miss Marple. ‘But I must confess that gentlemen do not seem to me to have a great regard for duty in so far as their wives are concerned-public service is another matter.’

Giles laughed.

‘What a wonderful cynic you are, Miss Marple.’