复仇女神23
时间：2026-01-29 07:21:55
（单词翻译:单击）
II
Tea, coffee, biscuits and cakes despatched, everyone seemed somewhat
dissociated and ill at ease. When a catastrophe has occurred, it is very dif-
ficult to know what is the proper way to meet it. Everyone had given their
view, had expressed surprise and distress. They were now awaiting news
and at the same time had a slight hankering after some form of sightsee-
ing, some interest to carry them through the morning. Lunch would not be
served until one o’clock and they really felt that to sit around and repeat
their same remarks would be rather a gloomy business.
Miss Cooke and Miss Barrow rose as one woman and explained that it
was necessary for them to do a little shopping. One or two things they
needed, and they also wished to go to the post office and buy stamps.
“I want to send off one or two postcards. And I want to enquire about
postal dues on a letter to China,” said Miss Barrow.
“And I want to match some wools,” said Miss Cooke. “And also it seemed
to me there was rather an interesting building on the other side of the
Market Square.”
“I think it would do us all good to get out,” said Miss Barrow.
Colonel and Mrs. Walker also rose, and suggested to Mr. and Mrs. Butler
that they too might go out and see what there was to see. Mrs. Butler ex-
pressed hopes of an antique shop.
“Only I don’t really mean a real antique shop. More what you would call
a junk shop. Sometimes you can pick up some really interesting things
there.”
They all trooped out. Emlyn Price had already sidled to the door and dis-
appeared in pursuit of Joanna without troubling to use conversation to ex-
plain his departure. Mrs. Riseley-Porter, having made a belated attempt to
call her niece back, said she thought that at least the lounge would be
rather more pleasant to sit in. Miss Lumley agreed—Mr. Caspar escorted
the ladies with the air of a foreign equerry.
Professor Wanstead and Miss Marple remained.
“I think myself,” said Professor Wanstead, addressing Miss Marple, “that
it would be pleasant to sit outside the hotel. There is a small terrace giving
on the street. If I might persuade you?”
Miss Marple thanked him and rose to her feet. She had hardly ex-
changed a word so far with Professor Wanstead. He had several learned
looking books with him, one of which he was usually perusing. Even in the
coach he continued to try and read.
“But perhaps you too want to shop,” he said. “For myself, I would prefer
to wait somewhere peacefully for the return of Mrs. Sandbourne. It is im-
portant, I think, that we should know exactly what we are in for.”
“I quite agree with you, as to that,” said Miss Marple. “I did a certain
amount of walking round the town yesterday and I don’t feel any neces-
sity to do so again today. I’d rather wait here in case there is anything I
can do to help. Not that I suppose there is, but one never knows.”
They moved together through the hotel door and round the corner to
where there was a little square of garden with a raised stone walk close to
the wall of the hotel and on which there were various forms of basket
chairs. There was no one there at the moment so they sat down. Miss
Marple looked thoughtfully at her vis- à- vis. At his corrugated and
wrinkled face, his bushy brows, his luxuriant head of grey hair. He
walked with a slight stoop. He had an interesting face, Miss Marple de-
cided. His voice was dry and caustic, a professional man of some kind, she
thought.
“I am not wrong, am I,” said Professor Wanstead. “You are Miss Jane
Marple?”
“Yes, I am Jane Marple.”
She was slightly surprised, though for no particular reason. They had
not been long enough together for people to be identified by the other
travellers. The last two nights she had not been with the rest of the party.
It was quite natural.
“I thought so,” said Professor Wanstead, “from a description I have had
of you.”
“A description of me?” Miss Marple was again slightly surprised.
“Yes, I had a description of you—” he paused for a moment. His voice
was not exactly lowered, but it lost volume, although she could still hear it
quite easily “—from Mr. Rafiel.”
“Oh,” said Miss Marple, startled. “From Mr. Rafiel.”
“You are surprised?”
“Well, yes, I am rather.”
“I don’t know that you should be.”
“I didn’t expect—” began Miss Marple and then stopped.
Professor Wanstead did not speak. He was merely sitting, looking at her
intently. In a minute or two, thought Miss Marple to herself, he will say to
me, “What symptoms exactly, dear lady? Any discomfort in swallowing?
Any lack of sleep? Digestion in good order?” She was almost sure now that
he was a doctor.
“When did he describe me to you? That must have been—”
“You were going to say some time ago—some weeks ago. Before his
death—that is so. He told me that you would be on this tour.”
“And he knew that you would be on it too—that you were going on it.”
“You can put it that way,” said Professor Wanstead. “He said,” he contin-
ued, “that you would be travelling on this tour, that he had in fact ar-
ranged for you to be travelling on this tour.”
“It was very kind of him,” said Miss Marple. “Very kind indeed. I was
most surprised when I found he’d booked me. Such a treat. Which I could
not have afforded for myself.”
“Yes,” said Professor Wanstead. “Very well put.” He nodded his head as
one who applauds a good performance by a pupil.
“It is sad that it has been interrupted in this fashion,” said Miss Marple.
“Very sad indeed. When I am sure we were all enjoying ourselves so
much.”
“Yes,” said Professor Wanstead. “Yes, very sad. And unexpected, do you
think, or not unexpected?”
“Now what do you mean by that, Professor Wanstead?”
His lips curled in a slight smile as he met her challenging look.
“Mr. Rafiel,” he said, “spoke to me about you at some length, Miss
Marple. He suggested that I should be on this tour with you. I should in
due course almost certainly make your acquaintance, since members in a
tour inevitably do make each other’s acquaintance, though it usually takes
a day or two for them to split up, as it were, into possible groupings led by
similar tastes or interests. And he further suggested to me that I should,
shall we say, keep an eye on you.”
“Keep an eye on me?” said Miss Marple, showing some slight displeas-
ure. “And for what reason?”
“I think reasons of protection. He wanted to be quite sure that nothing
should happen to you.”
“Happen to me? What should happen to me, I should like to know?”
“Possibly what happened to Miss Elizabeth Temple,” said Professor
Wanstead.
Joanna Crawford came round the corner of the hotel. She was carrying a
shopping basket. She passed them, nodding a little, she looked towards
them with slight curiosity and went on down the street. Professor Wan-
stead did not speak until she had gone out of sight.
“A nice girl,” he said, “at least I think so. Content at present to be a beast
of burden to an autocratic aunt, but I have no doubt will reach the age of
rebellion fairly soon.”
“What did you mean by what you said just now?” said Miss Marple, un-
interested for the moment in Joanna’s possible rebellion.
“That is a question which, perhaps, owing to what has happened, we
shall have to discuss.”
“You mean because of the accident?”
“Yes. If it was an accident.”
“Do you think it wasn’t an accident?”
“Well, I think it’s just possible. That’s all.”
“I don’t of course know anything about it,” said Miss Marple, hesitating.
“No. You were absent from the scene. You were—shall I put it this way—
were you just possibly on duty elsewhere?”
Miss Marple was silent for a moment. She looked at Professor Wanstead
once or twice and then she said:
“I don’t think I know exactly what you mean.”
“You are being careful. You are quite right to be careful.”
“I have made it a habit,” said Miss Marple.
“To be careful?”
“I should not put it exactly like that, but I have made a point of being al-
ways ready to disbelieve as well as believe anything that is told to me.”
“Yes, and you are quite right too. You don’t know anything about me.
You know my name from the passenger list of a very agreeable tour visit-
ing castles and historic houses and splendid gardens. Possibly the gardens
are what will interest you most.”
“Possibly.”
“There are other people here too who are interested in gardens.”
“Or profess to be interested in gardens.”
“Ah,” said Professor Wanstead. “You have noticed that.”
He went on. “Well, it was my part, or at any rate to begin with, to ob-
serve you, to watch what you were doing, to be near at hand in case there
was any possibility of—well, we might call it roughly—dirty work of any
kind. But things are slightly altered now. You must make up your mind if I
am your enemy or your ally.”
“Perhaps you are right,” said Miss Marple. “You put it very clearly but
you have not given me any information about yourself yet on which to
judge. You were a friend, I presume, of the late Mr. Rafiel?”
“No,” said Professor Wanstead, “I was not a friend of Mr. Rafiel. I had
met him once or twice. Once on a committee of a hospital, once at some
other public event. I knew about him. He, I gather, also knew about me. If
I say to you, Miss Marple, that I am a man of some eminence in my own
profession, you may think me a man of bounding conceit.”
“I don’t think so,” said Miss Marple. “I should say, if you say that about
yourself, that you are probably speaking the truth. You are, perhaps, a
medical man.”
“Ah. You are perceptive, Miss Marple. Yes, you are quite perceptive. I
have a medical degree, but I have a speciality too. I am a pathologist and
psychologist. I don’t carry credentials about with me. You will probably
have to take my word up to a certain point, though I can show you letters
addressed to me, and possibly official documents that might convince you.
I undertake mainly specialist work in connection with medical jurispru-
dence. To put it in perfectly plain everyday language, I am interested in
the different types of criminal brain. That has been a study of mine for
many years. I have written books on the subject, some of them violently
disputed, some of them which have attracted adherence to my ideas. I do
not do very arduous work nowadays, I spend my time mainly writing up
my subject, stressing certain points that have appealed to me. From time
to time I come across things that strike me as interesting. Things that I
want to study more closely. This I am afraid must seem rather tedious to
you.”
“Not at all,” said Miss Marple. “I am hoping perhaps, from what you are
saying now, that you will be able to explain to me certain things which Mr.
Rafiel did not see fit to explain to me. He asked me to embark upon a cer-
tain project but he gave me no useful information on which to work. He
left me to accept it and proceed, as it were, completely in the dark. It
seemed to me extremely foolish of him to treat the matter in that way.”
“But you accepted it?”
“I accepted it. I will be quite honest with you. I had a financial incent-
ive.”
“Did that weigh with you?”
Miss Marple was silent for a moment and then she said slowly,
“You may not believe it, but my answer to that is, ‘Not really.’”
“I am not surprised. But your interest was aroused. That is what you are
trying to tell me.”
“Yes. My interest was aroused. I had known Mr. Rafiel not well, casually,
but for a certain period of time—some weeks in fact—in the West Indies. I
see you know about it, more or less.”
“I know that that was where Mr. Rafiel met you and where—shall I say
—you two collaborated.”
Miss Marple looked at him rather doubtfully. “Oh,” she said, “he said
that, did he?” She shook her head.
“Yes, he did,” said Professor Wanstead. “He said you had a remarkable
flair for criminal matters.”
Miss Marple raised her eyebrows as she looked at him.
“And I suppose that seems to you most unlikely,” she said. “It surprises
you.”
“I seldom allow myself to be surprised at what happens,” said Professor
Wanstead. “Mr. Rafiel was a very shrewd and astute man, a good judge of
people. He thought that you, too, were a good judge of people.”
“I would not set myself up as a good judge of people,” said Miss Marple.
“I would only say that certain people remind me of certain other people
that I have known, and that therefore I can presuppose a certain likeness
between the way they would act. If you think I know all about what I am
supposed to be doing here, you are wrong.”
“By accident more than design,” said Professor Wanstead, “we seem to
have settled here in a particularly suitable spot for discussion of certain
matters. We do not appear to be overlooked, we cannot easily be over-
heard, we are not near a window or a door and there is no balcony or win-
dow overhead. In fact, we can talk.”
“I should appreciate that,” said Miss Marple. “I am stressing the fact that
I am myself completely in the dark as to what I am doing or supposed to
be doing. I don’t know why Mr. Rafiel wanted it that way.”
“I think I can guess that. He wanted you to approach a certain set of
facts, of happenings, unbiased by what anyone would tell you first.”
“So you are not going to tell me anything either?” Miss Marple sounded
irritated. “Really!” she said, “there are limits.”
“Yes,” said Professor Wanstead. He smiled suddenly. “I agree with you.
We must do away with some of these limits. I am going to tell you certain
facts that will make certain things fairly clear to you. You in turn may be
able to tell me certain facts.”
“I rather doubt it,” said Miss Marple. “One or two rather peculiar indica-
tions perhaps, but indications are not facts.”
“Therefore—” said Professor Wanstead, and paused.
“For goodness’ sake, tell me something,” said Miss Marple.
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