Agatha Christie - A Caribbean Mystery

"If what?"

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

Mr. Rafiel 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. Rafiel 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. Rafiel.

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

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

"Yes," said Miss Marple.

"Quick work," said Mr. Rafiel, "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. Rafiel 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. Rafiel."

"Me?" said Mr. Rafiel, 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. Rafiel. "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?"

"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. Rafiel 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. Rafiel.

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. Rafiel 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. Rafiel. "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. Rafiel. "After all, the main thing was to do something 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. Rafiel. "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."