'But, Ruth dear, that would be a most difficult thing to do.'
'No, it wouldn't. I've thought it all out. If you won't be absolutely mad at me, I've prepared the ground already.'
Mrs Van Rydock paused, eyed Miss Marple rather uneasily, lighted a cigarette, and plunged rather nervously into explanation.
'You'll admit, I'm sure, that things have been difficult in this country since the war, for people with small fixed incomes - for people like you, that is to say, Jane.'
'Oh yes, indeed. But for the kindness, the really great kindness of my nephew Raymond, I don't know really where I should be.'
'Never mind your nephew,' said Mrs Van Rydock. 'Carrie Louise knows nothing about your nephew - or if she does, she knows him as a writer and has no idea that he's your nephew. The point, as I put it to Carrie Louise, is that it's just too bad about dear Jane. Really sometimes hardly enough to eat, and of course, far too proud ever to appeal to old friends. One couldn't, I said, suggest money - but a nice long rest in lovely surroundings, with an old friend and with plenty of nourishing food, and no cares or worries -' Ruth Van Rydock paused and then added defiantly, 'Now go on - be mad at me if you want to be.'
Miss Marple opened her china blue eyes in gentle surprise.
'But why should I be mad at you, Ruth? A very ingenious and plausible approach. I'm sure Carrie Louise responded.'
'She's writing to you. You'll find the letter when you get back. Honestly, Jane, you don't feel that I've taken an unpardonable liberty? You won't mind?'
She hesitated and Miss Marple put her thoughts deftly into words.
'Going to Stonygates as an object of charity - more or less under false pretences? Not in the least - if it is necessary. You think it is necessary - and I am inclined to agree with you.'
Mrs Van Rydock stared at her.
'But why? What have you heard?'
'I haven't heard anything. It's just your conviction. You're not a fanciful woman, Ruth.'
'No, but I haven't anything definite to go upon.'
'I remember,' said Miss Marple thoughtfully, 'one Sunday morning at church - it was the second Sunday in Advent - sitting behind Grace Lamble and feeling more and more worried about her. Quite sure, you know, that something was wrong - badly wrong - and yet being quite unable to say why. A most disturbing feeling and very very definite.'
'And was there something wrong?'
'Oh yes. Her father, the old Admiral, had been very peculiar for some time, and the very next day he went for her with the coal hammer, roaring out that she was Antichrist masquerading as his daughter. He nearly killed her. They took him away to the asylum and she eventually recovered after months in hospital - but it was a very near thing.'
'And you'd actually had a premonition that day in church?'
'I wouldn't call it a premonition. It was founded on fact - these things usually are, though one doesn't always recognize it at the time. She was wearing her Sunday hat the wrong way round. Very significant, really, because Grace Lamble was a most precise woman, not at all vague or absent-minded - and the circumstances under which she would not notice which way her hat was put on to go to church were really extremely limited. Her father, you see, had thrown a marble paperweight at her and it had shattered the looking-glass. She had caught up her hat, put it on, and hurried out of the house. Anxious to keep up appearances and for the servants not to hear anything. She put down these actions, you see, to "dear Papa's Naval temper," she didn't realize that his mind was definitely unhinged. Though she ought to have realized it clearly enough. He was always complaining to her of being spied upon and of enemies - all the usual symptoms, in fact.'
Mrs Van Rydock gazed respectfully at her friend.
'Maybe, Jane,' she said, 'that St Mary Mead of yours isn't quite the idyllic retreat that I've always imagined it.'
'Human nature, dear, is very much the same everywhere. It is more difficult to observe it closely in a city, that is all.'
'And you'll go to Stonygates?'
'I'll go to Stonygates. A little unfair, perhaps, on my nephew Raymond. To let it be thought that he does not assist me, I mean. Still, the dear boy is in Mexico for six months. And by that time it should all be over.'
'What should all be over?'
'Carrie Louise's invitation will hardly be for an indefinite stay. Three weeks, perhaps - a month. That should be ample.'
'For you to find out what is wrong?'
'For me to find out what is wrong.'
'My, Jane,' said Mrs Van Rydock, 'you've got a lot of confidence in yourself, haven't you?'
Miss Marple looked faintly reproachful.
'You have confidence in me, Ruth. Or so you say... I can only assure you that I shall endeavour to justify your confidence.'
Chapter 2
Before catching her train back to St Mary Mead (Wednesday special cheap day return), Miss Marple, in a precise and businesslike fashion, collected certain data.
'Carrie Louise and I have corresponded after a fashion, but it has largely been a matter of Christmas cards or calendars. It's just the facts I should like, Ruth dear - and also some idea as to whom exactly I shall encounter in the household at Stonygates.'
'Well, you know about Carrie Louise's marriage to Gulbrandsen. There were no children and Carrie Louise took that very much to heart. Gulbrandsen was a widower, and had three grown-up sons. Eventually they adopted a child. Pippa, they called her - a lovely little creature. She was just two years old when they got her.'
'Where did she come from? What was her background?'
'Really, now, Jane, I can't remember - if I ever heard, that is. An Adoption Society, maybe? Or some unwanted child that Gulbrandsen had heard about. Why? Do you think it's important?'
'Well, one always likes to know the background, so to speak. But please go on.'
'The next thing that happened was that Carrie Louise found that she was going to have a baby after all. I understand from doctors that that quite often happens.'
Miss Marple nodded.
'I believe so.'
'Anyway, it did happen, and in a funny kind of way, Carrie Louise was almost disconcerted, if you can understand what I mean. Earlier, of course, she'd have been wild with joy. As it was, she'd given such a devoted love to Pippa that she felt quite apologetic to Pippa for putting her nose out of joint, so to speak. And then Mildred, when she arrived, was really a very unattractive child. Took after the Gulbrandsens - who were solid and worthy - but definitely homely. Carrie Louise was always so anxious to make no difference between the adopted child and her own child that I think she rather tended to overindulge Pippa and pass over Mildred. Sometimes I think that Mildred resented it. However I didn't see them often. Pippa grew up a very beautiful girl and Mildred grew up a plain one. Eric Gulbrandsen died when Mildred was fifteen and Pippa eighteen. At twenty Pippa married an Italian, the Marchese di San Severiano - oh, quite a genuine Marchese - not an adventurer, or anything like that. She was by way of being an heiress (naturally, or San Severiano wouldn't have married her you know what Italians are!). Gulbrandsen left an equal sum in trust for both his own and his adopted daughter. Mildred married a Canon Strete - a nice man but given to colds in the head. About ten or fifteen years older than she was. Quite a happy marriage, I believe.
'He died a year ago and Mildred has come back to Stonygates to live with her mother. But that's getting on too fast, I've skipped a marriage or two. I'll go back to them. Pippa married her Italian. Carrie Louise was quite pleased about the marriage. Guido had beautiful manners and was very handsome, and he was a fine sportsman. A year later Pippa had a daughter and died in childbirth. It was a terrible tragedy and Guido San Severiano was very cut up. Carrie Louise went to and fro between Italy and England a good deal, and it was in Rome that she met Johnnie Restarick and married him. The Marchese married again and he was quite willing for his little daughter to be brought up in England by her exceedingly wealthy grandmother. So they all settled down at Stonygates, Johnnie Restarick and Carrie Louise, and Johnnie's two boys, Alexis and Stephen (Johnnie's first wife was a Russian) and the baby Gina. Mildred married her Canon soon afterwards. Then came all this business of Johnnie and the Yugoslavian woman and the divorce. The boys still came to Stonygates for their holidays and were devoted to Carrie Louise, and then in 1938, I think it was, Carrie Louise married Lewis.'
Mrs Van Rydock paused for breath.
'You've not met Lewis?'
Miss Marple shook her head.
'No, I think I last saw Carrie Louise in 1928. She very sweetly took me to Covent Garden - to the Opera.'
'Oh yes. Well, Lewis was a very suitable person for her to marry. He was the head of a very celebrated firm of chartered accountants. I think he met her first over some questions of the finances of the Gulbrandsen Trust and the College. He was well off, just about her own age, and a man of absolutely upright life. But he was a crank. He was absolutely rabid on the subject of the redemption of young criminals.'
Ruth Van Rydock sighed.
'As I said just now, Jane, there are fashions in philanthropy. In Gulbrandsen's time it was education. Before that it was soup kitchens.'
Miss Marple nodded.
'Yes, indeed. Port wine jelly and calf's head broth taken to the sick. My mother used to do it.'
'That's right. Feeding the body gave way to feeding the mind. Everyone went mad on educating the lower classes. Well, that's passed. Soon, I expect, the fashionable thing to do will be not to educate your children, preserve their illiteracy carefully until they're eighteen. Anyway the Gulbrandsen Trust and Education Fund was in some difficulties because the State was taking over its functions. Then Lewis came along with his passionate enthusiasm about constructive training for juvenile delinquents. His attention had been drawn to the subject first in the course of his profession - auditing accounts where ingenious young men had perpetrated frauds. He was more and more convinced that juvenile delinquents were not subnormal - that they had excellent brains and abilities and only needed right direction.'
'There is something in that,' said Miss Marple. 'But it is not entirely true. I remember...'
She broke off and glanced at her watch.
'Oh dear - I mustn't miss the 6.30.'
Ruth Van Rydock said urgently:
'And you will go to Stonygates?'
Gathering up her shopping bag and her umbrella Miss Marple said:
'If Carrie Louise asks me...'
'She will ask you. You'll go? Promise, Jane?'
Jane Marple promised.
Chapter 3
Miss Marple got out of the train at Market Kindle station. A kindly fellow passenger handed out her suitcase after her, and Miss Marple, clutching a string bag, a faded leather handbag and some miscellaneous wraps, uttered appreciative twitters of thanks.
'So kind of you, I'm sure... So difficult nowadays - not many porters. I get so flustered when I travel.'
The twitters were drowned by the booming noise of the station announcer saying loudly but indistinctly that the 3:18 was standing at Platform 1, and was about to proceed to various unidentifiable stations.
Market Kindle was a large empty windswept station with hardly any passengers or railway staff to be seen on it. Its claim to distinction lay in having six platforms and a bay where a very small train of one carriage was puffing importantly.
Miss Marple, rather more shabbily dressed than was her custom (so lucky that she hadn't given away the old speckledy), was peering around her uncertainly when a young man came up to her.
'Miss Marple?' he said. His voice had an unexpectedly dramatic quality about it, as though the utterance of her name were the first words of a part he was playing in amateur theatricals. 'I've come to meet you - from Stonygates.'
Miss Marple looked gratefully at him, a charming helpless-looking old lady with, if he had chanced to notice it, very shrewd blue eyes. The personality of the young man did not quite match his voice. It was less important, one might almost say insignificant. His eyelids had a trick of fluttering nervously.
'Oh thank you,' said Miss Marple. 'There's just this suitcase.'
She noticed that the young man did not pick up her suitcase himself. He flipped a finger at a porter who was trundling some packing cases past on a trolley.
'Bring it out, please,' he said, and added importantly, 'for Stonygates.'
The porter said cheerfully:
'Rightyho. Shan't be long.'
Miss Marple fancied that her new acquaintance was not too pleased about this. It was as if Buckingham Palace had been dismissed as no more important than 3 Laburnum Road.
He said, 'The railways get more impossible every day!'
Guiding Miss Marple towards the exit, he said:
'I'm Edgar Lawson. Mrs Serrocold asked me to meet you. I help Mr Serrocold in his work.'
There was again the faint insinuation that a busy and important man had, very charmingly, put important affairs on one side out of chivalry to his employer's wife.
And again the impression was not wholly convincing, it had a theatrical flavour.
Miss Marple began to wonder about Edgar Lawson.
They came out of the station and Edgar guided the old lady to where a rather elderly Ford V8 was standing. He was just saying 'Will you come in front with me, or would you prefer the back?' when there was a diversion.
A new gleaming two-seater Rolls Bentley came purring into the station yard and drew up in front of the Ford. A very beautiful young woman jumped out of it and came across to them. The fact that she wore dirty corduroy slacks and a simple shirt open at the neck seemed somehow to enhance the fact that she was not only beautiful but expensive.
'There you are, Edgar. I thought I wouldn't make it in time. I see you've got Miss Marple. I came to meet her.'
