复仇女神18
时间：2026-01-29 07:12:32
（单词翻译:单击）
Nine
POLYGONUM BALDSCHUANICUM
The meal was conventional. A small joint of mutton, roast potatoes, fol-
lowed by a plum tart with a small jug of cream and rather indifferent
pastry. There were a few pictures round the dining room wall, family pic-
tures, Miss Marple presumed, Victorian portraits without any particular
merit, the sideboard was large and heavy, a handsome piece of plum-col-
oured mahogany. The curtains were of dark crimson damask and at the
big mahogany table ten people could easily have been seated.
Miss Marple chatted about the incidents of the tour in so far as she had
been on it. As this, however, had only been three days, there was not very
much to say.
“Mr. Rafiel, I suppose, was an old friend of yours?” said the eldest Miss
Bradbury-Scott.
“Not really,” said Miss Marple. “I met him first when I was on a cruise to
the West Indies. He was out there for his health, I imagine.”
“Yes, he had been very crippled for some years,” said Anthea.
“Very sad,” said Miss Marple. “Very sad indeed. I really admired his
fortitude. He seemed to manage to do so much work. Every day, you
know, he dictated to his secretary and was continually sending off cables.
He did not seem to give in at all kindly to being an invalid.”
“Oh no, he wouldn’t,” said Anthea.
“We have not seen much of him of late years,” said Mrs. Glynne. “He
was a busy man, of course. He always remembered us at Christmas very
kindly.”
“Do you live in London, Miss Marple?” asked Anthea.
“Oh no,” said Miss Marple. “I live in the country. A very small place
halfway between Loomouth and Market Basing. About twenty-five miles
from London. It used to be a very pretty old-world village but of course
like everything else, it is becoming what they call developed nowadays.”
She added, “Mr. Rafiel, I suppose, lived in London? At least I noticed that
in the St. Honoré hotel register his address was somewhere in Eaton
Square, I think, or was it Belgrave Square?”
“He had a country house in Kent,” said Clotilde. “He used to entertain
there, I think, sometimes. Business friends, mostly you know, or people
from abroad. I don’t think any of us ever visited him there. He nearly al-
ways entertained us in London on the rare occasions when we happened
to meet.”
“It was very kind of him,” said Miss Marple, “to suggest to you that you
should invite me here during the course of this tour. Very thoughtful. One
wouldn’t really have expected a busy man such as he must have been to
have had such kindly thoughts.”
“We have invited before friends of his who have been on these tours. On
the whole they are very considerate the way they arrange these things. It
is impossible, of course, to suit everybody’s taste. The young ones natur-
ally wish to walk, to make long excursions, to ascend hills for a view, and
all that sort of thing. And the older ones who are not up to it, remain in the
hotels, but hotels round here are not really at all luxurious. I am sure you
would have found today’s trip and the one to St. Bonaventure tomorrow
also, very fatiguing. Tomorrow I believe there is a visit to an island, you
know, in a boat and sometimes it can be very rough.”
“Even going round houses can be very tiring,” said Mrs. Glynne.
“Oh, I know,” said Miss Marple. “So much walking and standing about.
One’s feet get very tired. I suppose really I ought not to take these expedi-
tions, but it is such a temptation to see beautiful buildings and fine rooms
and furniture. All these things. And of course some splendid pictures.”
“And the gardens,” said Anthea. “You like gardens, don’t you?”
“Oh yes,” said Miss Marple, “specially the gardens. From the description
in the prospectus I am really looking forward very much to seeing some of
the really finely kept gardens of the historic houses we have still to visit.”
She beamed round the table.
It was all very pleasant, very natural, and yet she wondered why for
some reason she had a feeling of strain. A feeling that there was some-
thing unnatural here. But what did she mean by unnatural? The conversa-
tion was ordinary enough, consisting mainly of platitudes. She herself was
making conventional remarks and so were the three sisters.
The Three Sisters, thought Miss Marple once again considering that
phrase. Why did anything thought of in threes somehow seem to suggest a
sinister atmosphere? The Three Sisters. The Three Witches of Macbeth.
Well, one could hardly compare these three sisters to the three witches.
Although Miss Marple had always thought at the back of her mind that the
theatrical producers made a mistake in the way in which they produced
the three witches. One production which she had seen, indeed, seemed to
her quite absurd. The witches had looked more like pantomime creatures
with flapping wings and ridiculously spectacular steeple hats. They had
danced and slithered about. Miss Marple remembered saying to her
nephew, who was standing her this Shakespearean treat, “You know, Ray-
mond, my dear, if I were ever producing this splendid play I would make
the three witches quite different. I would have them three ordinary, nor-
mal old women. Old Scottish women. They wouldn’t dance or caper. They
would look at each other rather slyly and you would feel a sort of menace
just behind the ordinariness of them.”
Miss Marple helped herself to the last mouthful of plum tart and looked
across the table at Anthea. Ordinary, untidy, very vague- looking, a bit
scatty. Why should she feel that Anthea was sinister?
“I am imagining things,” said Miss Marple to herself. “I mustn’t do that.”
After luncheon she was taken on a tour of the garden. It was Anthea
who was deputed to accompany her. It was, Miss Marple thought, rather a
sad progress. Here, there had once been a well kept, though certainly not
in any way an outstanding or remarkable, garden. It had had the elements
of an ordinary Victorian garden. A shrubbery, a drive of speckled laurels,
no doubt there had once been a well kept lawn and paths, a kitchen
garden of about an acre and a half, too big evidently for the three sisters
who lived here now. Part of it was unplanted and had gone largely to
weeds. Ground elder had taken over most of the flower beds and Miss
Marple’s hands could hardly restrain themselves from pulling up the vag-
rant bindweed asserting its superiority.
Miss Anthea’s long hair flapped in the wind, shedding from time to time
a vague hairpin on the path or the grass. She talked rather jerkily.
“You have a very nice garden, I expect,” she said.
“Oh, it’s a very small one,” said Miss Marple.
They had come along a grass path and were pausing in front of a kind of
hillock that rested against the wall at the end of it.
“Our greenhouse,” said Miss Anthea, mournfully.
“Oh yes, where you had such a delightful grapevine.”
“Three vines,” said Anthea. “A Black Hamburg and one of those small
white grapes, very sweet, you know. And a third one of beautiful mus-
cats.”
“And a heliotrope, you said.”
“Cherry Pie,” said Anthea.
“Ah yes, Cherry Pie. Such a lovely smell. Was there any bomb trouble
round here? Did that—er—knock the greenhouse down?”
“Oh no, we never suffered from anything of that kind. This neighbour-
hood was quite free of bombs. No, I’m afraid it just fell down from decay.
We hadn’t been here so very long and we had no money to repair it, or to
build it up again. And in fact, it wouldn’t have been worth it really be-
cause we couldn’t have kept it up even if we did. I’m afraid we just let it
fall down. There was nothing else we could do. And now you see, it’s all
grown over.”
“Ah that, completely covered by—what is that flowering creeper just
coming into bloom?”
“Oh yes. It’s quite a common one,” said Anthea. “It begins with a P. Now
what is the name of it?” she said doubtfully. “Poly something, something
like that.”
“Oh yes. I think I do know the name. Polygonum Baldschuanicum. Very
quick growing, I think, isn’t it? Very useful really if one wants to hide any
tumbledown building or anything ugly of that kind.”
The mound in front of her was certainly thickly covered with the all-en-
veloping green and white flowering plant. It was, as Miss Marple well
knew, a kind of menace to anything else that wanted to grow. Polygonum
covered everything, and covered it in a remarkably short time.
“The greenhouse must have been quite a big one,” she said.
“Oh yes—we had peaches in it, too—and nectarines.” Anthea looked
miserable.
“It looks really very pretty now,” said Miss Marple in a consoling tone.
“Very pretty little white flowers, aren’t they?”
“We have a very nice magnolia tree down this path to the left,” said
Anthea. “Once I believe there used to be a very fine border here—a herb-
aceous border. But that again one cannot keep up. It is too difficult.
Everything is too difficult. Nothing is like it used to be—it’s all spoilt—
everywhere.”
She led the way quickly down a path at right angles which ran along a
side wall. Her pace had increased. Miss Marple could hardly keep up with
her. It was, thought Miss Marple, as though she were deliberately being
steered away from the Polygonum mound by her hostess. Steered away as
from some ugly or displeasing spot. Was she ashamed perhaps that the
past glories no longer remained? The Polygonum certainly was growing
with extraordinary abandonment. It was not even being clipped or kept to
reasonable proportions. It made a kind of flowery wilderness of that bit of
the garden.
She almost looks as though she was running away from it, thought Miss
Marple, as she followed her hostess. Presently her attention was diverted
to a broken down pigsty which had a few rose tendrils round it.
“My great- uncle used to keep a few pigs,” explained Anthea, “but of
course one would never dream of doing anything of that kind nowadays,
would one? Rather too noisome, I am afraid. We have a few floribunda
roses near the house. I really think floribundas are such a great answer to
difficulties.”
“Oh, I know,” said Miss Marple.
She mentioned the names of a few recent productions in the rose line.
All the names, she thought, were entirely strange to Miss Anthea.
“Do you often come on these tours?”
The question came suddenly.
“You mean the tours of houses and of gardens?”
“Yes. Some people do it every year.”
“Oh I couldn’t hope to do that. They’re rather expensive, you see. A
friend very kindly gave me a present of this to celebrate my next birthday.
So kind.”
“Oh. I wondered. I wondered why you came. I mean—it’s bound to be
rather tiring, isn’t it? Still, if you usually go to the West Indies, and places
like that….”
“Oh, the West Indies was the result of kindness, too. On the part of a
nephew, that time. A dear boy. So very thoughtful for his old aunt.”
“Oh, I see. Yes, I see.”
“I don’t know what one would do without the younger generation,” said
Miss Marple. “They are so kind, are they not?”
“I—I suppose so. I don’t really know. I—we haven’t—any young rela-
tions.”
“Does your sister, Mrs. Glynne, have any children? She did not mention
any. One never likes to ask.”
“No. She and her husband never had any children. It’s as well perhaps.”
“And what do you mean by that?” Miss Marple wondered as they re-
turned to the house.
©2005-2010英文阅读网