复仇女神29
时间：2026-01-29 07:22:08
（单词翻译:单击）
II
That evening she heard a little more. Mrs. Glynne came to her bedroom
when she was changing her dress to go out and join the others at the hotel.
“I thought I ought to come and explain a little to you,” said Mrs. Glynne,
“about—about the girl Verity Hunt. Of course you couldn’t know that our
sister Clotilde was particularly fond of her and that her really horrible
death was a terrible shock. We never mention her if we can help it, but—I
think it would be easier if I told you the facts completely and you will un-
derstand. Apparently Verity had, without our knowledge, made friends
with an undesirable—a more than undesirable—it turned out to be a dan-
gerous—young man who already had a criminal record. He came here to
visit us when he was passing through once. We knew his father very
well.” She paused. “I think I’d better tell you the whole truth if you don’t
know, and you don’t seem to. He was actually Mr. Rafiel’s son, Michael—”
“Oh dear,” said Miss Marple, “not—not—I can’t remember his name but
I do remember hearing that there was a son—and, that he hadn’t been
very satisfactory.”
“A little more than that,” said Mrs. Glynne. “He’d always given trouble.
He’d been had up in court once or twice for various things. Once assault-
ing a teenager—other things of that type. Of course I consider myself that
the magistrates are too lenient with that kind of thing. They don’t want to
upset a young man’s university career. And so they let them off with a—I
forget what they call it—a suspended sentence, something of that kind. If
these boys were sent to gaol at once it would perhaps warn them off that
type of life. He was a thief, too. He had forged cheques, he pinched things.
He was a thoroughly bad lot. We were friends of his mother’s. It was lucky
for her, I think, that she died young before she had time to be upset by the
way her son was turning out. Mr. Rafiel did all he could, I think. Tried to
find suitable jobs for the boy, paid fines for him and things like that. But I
think it was a great blow to him, though he pretended to be more or less
indifferent and to write it off as one of those things that happen. We had,
as probably people here in the village will tell you, we had a bad outbreak
of murders and violence in this district. Not only here. They were in dif-
ferent parts of the country, twenty miles away, sometimes fifty miles
away. One or two, it’s suspected by the police, were nearly a hundred
miles away. But they seemed to centre more or less on this part of the
world. Anyway, Verity one day went out to visit a friend and—well, she
didn’t come back. We went to the police about it, the police sought for her,
searched the whole countryside but they couldn’t find any trace of her.
We advertised, they advertised, and they suggested that she’d gone off
with a boyfriend. Then word began to get round that she had been seen
with Michael Rafiel. By now the police had their eye on Michael as a pos-
sibility for certain crimes that had occurred, although they couldn’t find
any direct evidence. Verity was said to have been seen, described by her
clothing and other things, with a young man of Michael’s appearance and
in a car that corresponded to a description of his car. But there was no fur-
ther evidence until her body was discovered six months later, thirty miles
from here in a rather wild part of wooded country, in a ditch covered with
stones and piled earth. Clotilde had to go to identify it—it was Verity all
right. She’d been strangled and her head beaten in. Clotilde has never
quite got over the shock. There were certain marks, a mole and an old scar
and of course her clothes and the contents of her handbag. Miss Temple
was very fond of Verity. She must have thought of her just before she
died.”
“I’m sorry,” said Miss Marple. “I’m really very, very sorry. Please tell
your sister that I didn’t know. I had no idea.”
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