加勒比海之谜39
时间：2026-01-04 07:34:01
（单词翻译:单击）
Twenty-five
MISS MARPLE USES HER IMAGINATION
“So that’s what had been going on?” said Mr. Rafiel.
He and Miss Marple were sitting together in a confidential manner.
“She’d been having an affair with Tim Kendal, had she?”
“Hardly an affair, I imagine,” said Miss Marple, primly. “It was, I think, a
romantic attachment with the prospect of marriage in the future.”
“What—after his wife was dead?”
“I don’t think poor Esther Walters knew that Molly was going to die,”
said Miss Marple. “I just think she believed the story Tim Kendal told her
about Molly having been in love with another man, and the man having
followed her here, and I think she counted on Tim’s getting a divorce. I
think it was all quite proper and respectable. But she was very much in
love with him.”
“Well, that’s easily understood. He was an attractive chap. But what
made him go for her—d’you know that too?”
“You know, don’t you?” said Miss Marple.
“I dare say I’ve got a pretty fair idea, but I don’t know how you should
know about it. As far as that goes, I don’t see how Tim Kendal could know
about it.”
“Well, I really think I could explain all that with a little imagination,
though it would be simpler if you told me.”
“I’m not going to tell you,” said Mr. Rafiel. “You tell me, since you’re be-
ing so clever.”
“Well, it seems to me possible,” said Miss Marple, “that as I have already
hinted to you, your man Jackson was in the habit of taking a good snoop
through your various papers from time to time.”
“Perfectly possible,” said Mr. Rafiel, “but I shouldn’t have said there was
anything there that could do him much good. I took care of that.”
“I imagine,” said Miss Marple, “he read your will.”
“Oh I see. Yes, yes, I did have a copy of my will along.”
“You told me,” said Miss Marple, “you told me—(as Humpty Dumpty said
—very loud and clear) that you had not left anything to Esther Walters in
your will. You had impressed that fact upon her, and also upon Jackson. It
was true in Jackson’s case, I should imagine. You have not left him any-
thing, but you had left Esther Walters money, though you weren’t going to
let her have any inkling of the fact. Isn’t that right?”
“Yes, it’s quite right, but I don’t know how you knew.”
“Well, it’s the way you insisted on the point,” said Miss Marple. “I have a
certain experience of the way people tell lies.”
“I give in,” said Mr. Rafiel. “All right. I left Esther £50,000. It would come
as a nice surprise to her when I died. I suppose that, knowing this, Tim
Kendal decided to exterminate his present wife with a nice dose of some-
thing or other and marry £50,000 and Esther Walters. Possibly to dispose
of her also in good time. But how did he know she was going to have
£50,000?”
“Jackson told him, of course,” said Miss Marple. “They were very
friendly, those two. Tim Kendal was nice to Jackson and, quite, I should
imagine, without ulterior motive. But amongst the bits of gossip that Jack-
son let slip I think Jackson told him that unbeknownst to herself, Esther
Walters was going to inherit a fat lot of money, and he may have said that
he himself hoped to induce Esther Walters to marry him though he hadn’t
had much success so far in taking her fancy. Yes, I think that’s how it
happened.”
“The things you imagine always seem perfectly plausible,” said Mr.
Rafiel.
“But I was stupid,” said Miss Marple, “very stupid. Everything fitted in
really, you see. Tim Kendal was a very clever man as well as being a very
wicked one. He was particularly good at putting about rumours. Half the
things I’ve been told here came from him originally, I imagine. There were
stories going around about Molly wanting to marry an undesirable young
man, but I rather fancy that the undesirable young man was actually Tim
Kendal himself, though that wasn’t the name he was using then. Her
people had heard something, perhaps that his background was fishy. So
he put on a high indignation act, refused to be taken by Molly to be ‘shown
off’ to her people and then he brewed up a little scheme with her which
they both thought great fun. She pretended to sulk and pine for him. Then
a Mr. Tim Kendal turned up, primed with the names of various old friends
of Molly’s people, and they welcomed him with open arms as being the
sort of young man who would put the former delinquent one out of
Molly’s head. I am afraid Molly and he must have laughed over it a good
deal. Anyway, he married her, and with her money he bought out the
people who ran this place and they came out here. I should imagine that
he ran through her money at a pretty fair rate. Then he came across Es-
ther Walters and he saw a nice prospect of more money.”
“Why didn’t he bump me off?” said Mr. Rafiel.
Miss Marple coughed.
“I expect he wanted to be fairly sure of Mrs. Walters first. Besides—I
mean …” She stopped, a little confused.
“Besides, he realized he wouldn’t have to wait long,” said Mr. Rafiel,
“and it would clearly be better for me to die a natural death. Being so rich.
Deaths of millionaires are scrutinized rather carefully, aren’t they, unlike
mere wives?”
“Yes, you’re quite right. Such a lot of lies as he told,” said Miss Marple.
“Look at the lies he got Molly herself to believe—putting that book on
mental disorders in her way. Giving her drugs which would give her
dreams and hallucinations. You know, your Jackson was rather clever
over that. I think he recognized certain of Molly’s symptoms as being the
result of drugs. And he came into the bungalow that day to potter about a
bit in the bathroom. That face cream he examined. He might have got
some idea from the old tales of witches rubbing themselves with oint-
ments that had belladonna in them. Belladonna in face cream could have
produced just that result. Molly would have blackouts. Times she couldn’t
account for, dreams of flying through the air. No wonder she got
frightened about herself. She had all the signs of mental illness, Jackson
was on the right track. Maybe he got the idea from Major Palgrave’s stor-
ies about the use of datura by Indian women on their husbands.”
“Major Palgrave!” said Mr. Rafiel. “Really, that man!”
“He brought about his own murder,” said Miss Marple, “and that poor
girl Victoria’s murder, and he nearly brought about Molly’s murder. But
he recognized a murderer all right.”
“What made you suddenly remember about his glass eye?” asked Mr.
Rafiel curiously.
“Something that Señora de Caspearo said. She talked some nonsense
about his being ugly, and having the Evil Eye; and I said it was only a glass
eye, and he couldn’t help that, poor man, and she said his eyes looked dif-
ferent ways, they were cross-eyes—which, of course, they were. And she
said it brought bad luck. I knew—I knew that I had heard something that
day that was important. Last night, just after Lucky’s death, it came to me
what it was! And then I realized there was no time to waste….”
“How did Tim Kendal come to kill the wrong woman?”
“Sheer chance. I think his plan was this: Having convinced everybody—
and that included Molly herself—that she was mentally unbalanced, and
after giving her a sizeable dose of the drug he was using, he told her that
between them they were going to clear up all these murder puzzles. But
she had got to help him. After everyone was asleep, they would go separ-
ately and meet at an agreed spot by the creek.
“He said he had a very good idea who the murderer was, and they
would trap him. Molly went off obediently—but she was confused and stu-
pefied with the drug she had been given, and it slowed her up. Tim ar-
rived there first and saw what he thought was Molly. Golden hair and pale
green shawl. He came up behind her, put his hand over her mouth, and
forced her down into the water and held her there.”
“Nice fellow! But wouldn’t it have been easier just to give her an over-
dose of narcotic?”
“Much easier, of course. But that might have given rise to suspicion. All
narcotics and sedatives have been very carefully removed from Molly’s
reach, remember. And if she had got hold of a fresh supply, who more
likely to have supplied it than her husband? But if, in a fit of despair, she
went out and drowned herself whilst her innocent husband slept, the
whole thing would be a romantic tragedy, and no one would be likely to
suggest that she had been drowned deliberately. Besides,” added Miss
Marple, “murderers always find it difficult to keep things simple. They
can’t keep themselves from elaborating.”
“You seem convinced you know all there is to be known about murder-
ers! So you believe Tim didn’t know he had killed the wrong woman?”
Miss Marple shook her head.
“He didn’t even look at her face, just hurried off as quickly as he could,
let an hour elapse, then started to organize a search for her, playing the
part of a distracted husband.”
“But what the devil was Lucky doing hanging about the creek in the
middle of the night?”
Miss Marple gave an embarrassed little cough.
“It is possible, I think, that she was—er—waiting to meet someone.”
“Edward Hillingdon?”
“Oh no,” said Miss Marple. “That’s all over, I wondered whether—just
possibly—she might have been waiting for Jackson.”
“Waiting for Jackson?”
“I’ve noticed her—look at him once or twice,” murmured Miss Marple,
averting her eyes.
Mr. Rafiel whistled.
“My Tom Cat Jackson! I wouldn’t put it past him! Tim must have had a
shock later when he found he’d killed the wrong woman.”
“Yes, indeed. He must have felt quite desperate. Here was Molly alive
and wandering about. And the story he’d circulated so carefully about her
mental condition wouldn’t stand up for a moment once she got into the
hands of competent mental specialists. And once she told her damning
story of his having asked her to meet him at the creek, where would Tim
Kendal be? He’d only one hope—to finish off Molly as quickly as possible.
Then there was a very good chance that everyone would believe that
Molly, in a fit of mania, had drowned Lucky, and had then, horrified by
what she had done, taken her own life.”
“And it was then,” said Mr. Rafiel, “that you decided to play Nemesis,
eh?”
He leaned back suddenly and roared with laughter. “It’s a damned good
joke,” he said. “If you knew what you looked like that night with that fluffy
pink wool all round your head, standing there and saying you were
Nemesis! I’ll never forget it!”
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