Agatha Christie: Complete Short Stories Of Miss Marple

'Presently the man came out again and, to my great thankfulness, drove the car down to the quay and left it there. He strolled back past me toward the inn. Just at that moment another beastly car came twisting down, and a woman got out of it, dressed in the brightest chintz frock I have ever seen, scarlet poinsettias, I think they were, and she had on one of these big native straw hats - Cuban, aren't they? - in very bright scarlet.

'This woman didn't stop in front of the inn but drove the car farther down the street toward the other one. Then she got out and the man, seeing her, gave an astonished shout. 'Carol,' he cried, 'in the name of all that is wonderful. Fancy meeting you in this out-of-the-way spot. I haven't seen you for years. Hello, there's Margery - my wife, you know. You must come and meet her.'

'They went up the street toward the inn side by side, and I saw the other woman had just come out of the door and was moving down toward them. I had had just a glimpse of the woman called Carol as she passed by me. Just enough to see a very white powdered chin and a flaming scarlet mouth, and I wondered - I just wondered - if Margery would be so very pleased to meet her. I hadn't seen Margery near to, but in the distance she looked dowdy and extra prim and proper.

'Well, of course, it was not any of my business, but you get very queer little glimpses of life sometimes, and you can't help speculating about them.

'From where they were standing I could just catch fragments of their conversation that floated down to me. They were talking about bathing. The husband, whose name seemed to be Denis, wanted to take a boat and row around the coast. There was a famous cave well worth seeing, so he said, about a mile along. Carol wanted to see the cave, too, but she suggested walking along the cliffs and seeing it from the land side. She said she hated boats. In the end, they fixed it that way. Carol was to go along the cliff path and to meet them at the cave, and Denis and Margery would take a boat and row round.

'Hearing them talk about bathing made me want to bathe too. It was a very hot morning and I wasn't doing particularly good work. Also, I fancied that the afternoon sunlight would be far more attractive in effect. So I packed up my things and went off to a little beach that I knew of - it was quite the opposite direction from the cave and was rather a discovery of mine. I had a ripping swim there and I lunched off a tinned tongue and two tomatoes, and I came back in the afternoon full of confidence and enthusiasm to get on with my sketch.

'The whole of Rathole seemed to be asleep. I had been right about the afternoon sunlight - the shadows were far more telling. The Polharwith Arms was the principal note of my sketch. A ray of sunlight came slanting obliquely down and hit the ground in front of it and had rather a curious effect. I gathered that the bathing party had returned safely, because two bathing dresses, a scarlet one and a dark-blue one, were hanging from the balcony, drying in the sun.

'Something had gone a bit wrong with one corner of my sketch and I bent over it for some moments, doing something to put it right. When I looked up again there was a figure leaning against one of the pillars of the Polharwith Arms, who seemed to have appeared there by magic. He was dressed in seafaring clothes and was, I suppose, a fisherman. But he had a long dark beard, and if I had been looking for a model for a wicked Spanish captain, I couldn't have imagined anyone better. I got to work with feverish haste before he should move away, though from his attitude he looked as though he was perfectly prepared to prop up the pillars through all eternity.

'He did move, however, but luckily not until I had got what I wanted. He came over to me and he began to talk. Oh, how that man talked.

'Rathole,' he said, 'was a very interesting place.'

'I knew that already, but although I said so that didn't save me. I had the whole history of the shelling - I mean the destroying - of the village and how the landlord of the Polharwith Arms was the last man to be killed. Run through on his own threshold by a Spanish captain's sword, and of how his blood spurted out on the pavement and no one could wash out the stain for a hundred years.

'It all fitted in very well with the languorous, drowsy feeling of the afternoon. The man's voice was very suave and yet at the same time there was an undercurrent in it of something rather frightening. He was very obsequious in his manner, yet I felt underneath he was cruel. He made me understand the Inquisition and the terrors of all the things the Spaniards did better than I have ever done before.

'All the time he was talking to me I went on painting, and suddenly I realized that in the excitement of listening to his story I had painted in something that was not there. On that white square of pavement where the sun fell before the door of the Polharwith Arms, I had painted in bloodstains. It seemed extraordinary that the mind could play such tricks with the hand, but as I looked over toward the inn again I got a second shock. My hand had only painted in what my eyes saw - drops of blood on the white pavement.

'I stared for a minute or two. Then I shut my eyes, said to myself, 'Don't be so stupid, there's nothing there, really,' then I opened them again, but the bloodstains were still there.

'I suddenly felt I couldn't stand it. I interrupted the fisherman's flood of language.

'Tell me,' I said. 'My eyesight is not very good. Are those bloodstains on that pavement over there?'

He looked at me indulgently and kindly.

'No bloodstains in these days, lady. What I am telling you about is nearly five hundred years ago.'

'Yes,' I said, 'but now - on the pavement…' The words died away in my throat. I knew - I knew that he wouldn't see what I was seeing.

'I got up and with shaking hands began to put my things together. As I did so the young man who had come in the car that morning came out of the inn door. He looked up and down the street perplexedly. On the balcony above his wife came out and collected the bathing things. He walked down toward the car but suddenly swerved and came across the road toward the fisherman.

'Tell me, my man,' he said, 'you don't know whether that lady who came in that second car there has got back yet?'

'Lady in a dress with flowers all over it? No, sir, I haven't seen her. She went along the cliff toward the cave this morning.'

'I know, I know. We all bathed there together, and then she left us to walk home and I have not seen her since. It can't have taken her all this time. The cliffs round here are not dangerous, are they?'

'It depends, sir, on the way you go. The best way is to take a man who knows the place with you.'

'He very clearly meant himself and was beginning to enlarge on the theme, but the young man cut him short unceremoniously and ran back toward the inn, calling up to his wife on the balcony.

'I say, Margery, Carol hasn't come back yet. Odd, isn't it?'

'I didn't hear Margery's reply, but her husband went on. 'Well, we can't wait any longer. We have got to push on to Penrithar. Are you ready? I will turn the car.'

'He did as he had said, and presently the two of them drove off together. Meanwhile, I had deliberately been nerving myself to prove how ridiculous my fancies were. When the car had gone I went over to the inn and examined the pavement closely. Of course there were no bloodstains there. No, all along it had been the result of my distorted imagination. Yet, somehow, it seemed to make the thing more frightening. It was while I was standing there that I heard the fisherman's voice.

'He was looking at me curiously. 'You thought you saw bloodstains here, eh, lady?'

'I nodded.

'That is very curious, that is very curious. We have got a superstition here, lady. If anyone sees those bloodstains -'