A Caribbean Mystery

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 (#ulink_6472d8bc-c210-5d6b-bbe2-f44576bc74d1)

A Death in the Hotel (#ulink_6472d8bc-c210-5d6b-bbe2-f44576bc74d1)

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.’