加勒比海之谜3
时间：2025-11-25 09:50:19
（单词翻译:单击）
Two
MISS MARPLE MAKES COMPARISONS
I
It was very gay that evening at the Golden Palm Hotel.
Seated at her little corner table, Miss Marple looked round her in an in-
terested fashion. The dining room was a large room open on three sides to
the soft warm scented air of the West Indies. There were small table
lamps, all softly coloured. Most of the women were in evening dress: light
cotton prints out of which bronzed shoulders and arms emerged. Miss
Marple herself had been urged by her nephew’s wife, Joan, in the sweetest
way possible, to accept “a small cheque.”
“Because, Aunt Jane, it will be rather hot out there, and I don’t expect
you have any very thin clothes.”
Jane Marple had thanked her and had accepted the cheque. She came of
the age when it was natural for the old to support and finance the young,
but also for the middle-aged to look after the old. She could not, however,
force herself to buy anything very thin! At her age she seldom felt more
than pleasantly warm even in the hottest weather, and the temperature of
St. Honoré was not really what is referred to as “tropical heat.” This even-
ing she was attired in the best traditions of the provincial gentlewoman of
England—grey lace.
Not that she was the only elderly person present. There were represent-
atives of all ages in the room. There were elderly tycoons with young third
or fourth wives. There were middle-aged couples from the North of Eng-
land. There was a gay family from Caracas complete with children. The
various countries of South America were well represented, all chattering
loudly in Spanish or Portuguese. There was a solid English background of
two clergymen, one doctor and one retired judge. There was even a family
of Chinese. The dining room service was mainly done by women, tall
black girls of proud carriage, dressed in crisp white; but there was an ex-
perienced Italian head waiter in charge, and a French wine waiter, and
there was the attentive eye of Tim Kendal watching over everything, paus-
ing here and there to have a social word with people at their tables. His
wife seconded him ably. She was a good-looking girl. Her hair was a nat-
ural golden blonde and she had a wide generous mouth that laughed eas-
ily. It was very seldom that Molly Kendal was out of temper. Her staff
worked for her enthusiastically, and she adapted her manner carefully to
suit her different guests. With the elderly men she laughed and flirted; she
congratulated the younger women on their clothes.
“Oh, what a smashing dress you’ve got on tonight, Mrs. Dyson. I’m so
jealous I could tear it off your back.” But she looked very well in her own
dress, or so Miss Marple thought: a white sheath, with a pale green em-
broidered silk shawl thrown over her shoulders. Lucky was fingering the
shawl. “Lovely colour! I’d like one like it.” “You can get them at the shop
here,” Molly told her and passed on. She did not pause by Miss Marple’s
table. Elderly ladies she usually left to her husband. “The old dears like a
man much better,” she used to say.
Tim Kendal came and bent over Miss Marple.
“Nothing special you want, is there?” he asked. “Because you’ve only got
to tell me—and I could get it specially cooked for you. Hotel food, and
semi-tropical at that, isn’t quite what you’re used to at home, I expect?”
Miss Marple smiled and said that that was one of the pleasures of com-
ing abroad.
“That’s all right, then. But if there is anything—”
“Such as?”
“Well—” Tim Kendal looked a little doubtful—“Bread and butter pud-
ding?” he hazarded.
Miss Marple smiled and said that she thought she could do without
bread and butter pudding very nicely for the present.
She picked up her spoon and began to eat her passion fruit sundae with
cheerful appreciation.
Then the steel band began to play. The steel bands were one of the main
attractions of the islands. Truth to tell, Miss Marple could have done very
well without them. She considered that they made a hideous noise, unne-
cessarily loud. The pleasure that everyone else took in them was undeni-
able, however, and Miss Marple, in the true spirit of her youth, decided
that as they had to be, she must manage somehow to learn to like them.
She could hardly request Tim Kendal to conjure up from somewhere the
muted strains of the “Blue Danube.” (So graceful—waltzing.) Most pecu-
liar, the way people danced nowadays. Flinging themselves about, seem-
ing quite contorted. Oh well, young people must enjoy—Her thoughts were
arrested. Because, now she came to think of it, very few of these people
were young. Dancing, lights, the music of a band (even a steel band), all
that surely was for youth. But where was youth? Studying, she supposed,
at universities, or doing a job—with a fortnight’s holiday a year. A place
like this was too far away and too expensive. This gay and carefree life
was all for the thirties and the forties—and the old men who were trying
to live up (or down) to their young wives. It seemed, somehow, a pity.
Miss Marple sighed for youth. There was Mrs. Kendal, of course. She
wasn’t more than twenty-two or three, probably, and she seemed to be en-
joying herself—but even so, it was a job she was doing.
At a table nearby Canon Prescott and his sister were sitting. They mo-
tioned to Miss Marple to join them for coffee and she did so. Miss Prescott
was a thin severe-looking woman, the Canon was a round, rubicund man,
breathing geniality.
Coffee was brought, and chairs were pushed a little way away from the
tables. Miss Prescott opened a work bag and took out some frankly
hideous table mats that she was hemming. She told Miss Marple all about
the day’s events. They had visited a new Girls’ School in the morning.
After an afternoon’s rest, they had walked through a cane plantation to
have tea at a pension where some friends of theirs were staying.
Since the Prescotts had been at the Golden Palm longer than Miss
Marple, they were able to enlighten her as to some of her fellow guests.
That very old man, Mr. Rafiel. He came every year. Fantastically rich!
Owned an enormous chain of supermarkets in the North of England. The
young woman with him was his secretary, Esther Walters — a widow.
(Quite all right, of course. Nothing improper. After all, he was nearly
eighty!)
Miss Marple accepted the propriety of the relationship with an under-
standing nod and the Canon remarked:
“A very nice young woman; her mother, I understand, is a widow and
lives in Chichester.”
“Mr. Rafiel has a valet with him, too. Or rather a kind of Nurse Attend-
ant—he’s a qualified masseur, I believe. Jackson, his name is. Poor Mr.
Rafiel is practically paralysed. So sad—with all that money, too.”
“A generous and cheerful giver,” said Canon Prescott approvingly.
People were regrouping themselves round about, some going farther
from the steel band, others crowding up to it. Major Palgrave had joined
the Hillingdon-Dyson quartette.
“Now those people—” said Miss Prescott, lowering her voice quite unne-
cessarily since the steel band easily drowned it.
“Yes, I was going to ask you about them.”
“They were here last year. They spend three months every year in the
West Indies, going round the different islands. The tall thin man is Colonel
Hillingdon and the dark woman is his wife—they are botanists. The other
two, Mr. and Mrs. Gregory Dyson—they’re American. He writes on butter-
flies, I believe. And all of them are interested in birds.”
“So nice for people to have open-air hobbies,” said Canon Prescott geni-
ally.
“I don’t think they’d like to hear you call it hobbies, Jeremy,” said his sis-
ter. “They have articles printed in the National Geographic and in the
Royal Horticultural Journal. They take themselves very seriously.”
A loud outburst of laughter came from the table they had been ob-
serving. It was loud enough to overcome the steel band. Gregory Dyson
was leaning back in his chair and thumping the table, his wife was
protesting, and Major Palgrave emptied his glass and seemed to be ap-
plauding.
They hardly qualified for the moment as people who took themselves
seriously.
“Major Palgrave should not drink so much,” said Miss Prescott acidly.
“He has blood pressure.”
A fresh supply of Planters Punches was brought to the table.
“It’s so nice to get people sorted out,” said Miss Marple. “When I met
them this afternoon I wasn’t sure which was married to which.”
There was a slight pause. Miss Prescott coughed a small dry cough, and
said—“Well, as to that—”
“Joan,” said the Canon in an admonitory voice. “Perhaps it would be
wise to say no more.”
“Really, Jeremy, I wasn’t going to say anything. Only that last year, for
some reason or other—I really don’t know why—we got the idea that Mrs.
Dyson was Mrs. Hillingdon until someone told us she wasn’t.”
“It’s odd how one gets impressions, isn’t it?” said Miss Marple inno-
cently. Her eyes met Miss Prescott’s for a moment. A flash of womanly un-
derstanding passed between them.
A more sensitive man than Canon Prescott might have felt that he was
de trop.
Another signal passed between the women. It said as clearly as if the
words had been spoken: “Some other time….”
“Mr. Dyson calls his wife ‘Lucky.’ Is that her real name or a nickname?”
asked Miss Marple.
“It can hardly be her real name, I should think.”
“I happened to ask him,” said the Canon. “He said he called her Lucky
because she was his good-luck piece. If he lost her, he said, he’d lose his
luck. Very nicely put, I thought.”
“He’s very fond of joking,” said Miss Prescott.
The Canon looked at his sister doubtfully.
The steel band outdid itself with a wild burst of cacophony and a troupe
of dancers came racing on to the floor.
Miss Marple and the others turned their chairs to watch. Miss Marple
enjoyed the dancing better than the music; she liked the shuffling feet and
the rhythmic sway of the bodies. It seemed, she thought, very real. It had a
kind of power of understatement.
Tonight, for the first time, she began to feel slightly at home in her new
environment … Up to now, she had missed what she usually found so easy,
points of resemblance in the people she met, to various people known to
her personally. She had, possibly, been dazzled by the gay clothes and the
exotic colouring; but soon, she felt, she would be able to make some inter-
esting comparisons.
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 un-
distinguishable 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. Col-
onel 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 sev-
enty or eighty, or even ninety. His eyes were shrewd and he was fre-
quently rude, but people seldom took offence, partly because he was so
rich, and partly because of his overwhelming personality which hypnot-
ized 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 pre-
sume,” said Miss Marple to herself—“His valet-attendant.”
She studied Mr. Jackson with some attention.
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