复仇女神39
时间：2026-01-29 07:29:16
（单词翻译:单击）
Twenty-two
MISS MARPLE TELLS HER STORY
“When did you find out,” asked Professor Wanstead, “that those two wo-
men were private agents accompanying you for your protection?”
He leaned forward in his chair looking thoughtfully at the white-haired
old lady who sat in an upright position in the chair opposite him. They
were in an official Government building in London, and there were four
other persons present.
An official from the Public Prosecutor’s Office; the Assistant Commis-
sioner of Scotland Yard, Sir James Lloyd, the Governor of Manstone
Prison, Sir Andrew McNeil. The fourth person was the Home Secretary.
“Not until the last evening,” said Miss Marple. “I wasn’t actually sure un-
til then. Miss Cooke had come to St. Mary Mead and I found out fairly
quickly that she was not what she represented herself to be, which was a
woman knowledgeable in gardening who had come there to help a friend
with her garden. So I was left with the choice of deciding what her real ob-
ject had been, once she had acquainted herself with my appearance,
which was obviously the only thing she could have come for. When I re-
cognized her again, on the coach, I had to make up my mind if she was ac-
companying the tour in the rôle of guardianship, or whether those two
women were enemies enlisted by what I might call the other side.
“I was only really sure that last evening when Miss Cooke prevented me,
by very distinct words of warning, from drinking the cup of coffee that
Clotilde Bradbury-Scott had just set down in front of me. She phrased it
very cleverly, but the warning was clearly there. Later, when I was wish-
ing those two good night, one of them took my hand in both of hers giving
me a particularly friendly and affectionate handshake. And in doing so
she passed something into my hand, which, when I examined it later, I
found to be a high-powered whistle. I took it to bed with me, accepted the
glass of milk which was urged upon me by my hostess, and wished her
good night, being careful not to change my simple and friendly attitude.”
“You didn’t drink the milk?”
“Of course not,” said Miss Marple. “What do you take me for?”
“I beg your pardon,” said Professor Wanstead. “It surprises me that you
didn’t lock your door.”
“That would have been quite the wrong thing to do,” said Miss Marple.
“I wanted Clotilde Bradbury-Scott to come in. I wanted to see what she
would say or do. I thought it was almost certain that she would come in
when sufficient time had elapsed, to make sure that I had drunk the milk,
and was in an unconscious sleep from which presumably I would not
have woken up again.”
“Did you help Miss Cooke to conceal herself in the wardrobe?”
“No. It was a complete surprise when she came out of that suddenly. I
suppose,” said Miss Marple thoughtfully, thinking it over, “I suppose she
slipped in there just when I had gone down the passage to the—er—to the
bathroom.”
“You knew the two women were in the house?”
“I thought they would be at hand somewhere after they’d given me the
whistle. I do not think it was a difficult house to which to gain access,
there were no shuttered windows or burglar alarms or anything of that
kind. One of them came back on the pretext of having left a handbag and a
scarf. Between them they probably managed to leave a window un-
fastened, and I should imagine they came back into the house almost as
soon as they left it, while the inhabitants inside were going up to bed.”
“You took a big risk, Miss Marple.”
“I hoped for the best,” said Miss Marple. “One cannot go through life
without attracting certain risks if they are necessary.”
“Your tip about the parcel dispatched to that charity, by the way, was
entirely successful. It contained a brand new brightly coloured man’s
polo-necked jumper in scarlet and black checks. Most noticeable. What
made you think of that?”
“Well,” said Miss Marple, “that was really very simple. The description
that Emlyn and Joanna gave of the figure they had seen made it seem al-
most certain that these very bright coloured and noticeable clothes were
meant to be noticed, and that therefore it would be very important that
they should not be hidden locally or kept among the person’s own belong-
ings. They must be got out of the way as soon as could be. And really there
is only one way successfully of disposing of something. That is through the
general post. Anything in the nature of clothes can be very easily dis-
patched to charities. Think how pleased the people who collect winter gar-
ments for Unemployed Mothers, or whatever the name of the charity,
would be to find a nearly brand new woollen jumper. All I had to do was
to find out the address where it had been sent.”
“And you asked them that at the post office?” The Home Secretary
looked slightly shocked.
“Not directly, of course. I mean, I had to be a little flustered and explain
how I’d put the wrong address on some clothes that I was sending to a
charity and could they by any chance tell me if the parcel one of my kind
hostesses had brought up there, had been sent off. And a very nice woman
there did her best and remembered that it was not the address I was hop-
ing it had been sent to, and she gave me the address that she had noted.
She had no suspicion, I think, that I had any wish for the information
apart from being—well, rather muddleheaded, elderly, and very worried
about where my parcel of worn clothes had gone.”
“Ah,” said Professor Wanstead, “I see you are an actress, Miss Marple, as
well as an avenger.” Then he said, “When did you first begin to discover
what had happened ten years ago?”
“To begin with,” said Miss Marple, “I found things very difficult, almost
impossible. In my mind I was blaming Mr. Rafiel for not having made
things clear to me. But I see now that he’d been very wise not to do so.
Really, you know, he was extraordinary clever. I can see why he was such
a big financier and made so much money so easily. He laid his plans so
well. He gave me just enough information in small packets each time. I
was, as it were, directed. First my guardian angels were alerted to note
what I looked like. Then I was directed on the tour and to the people on
it.”
“Did you suspect, if I may use that word, anyone on the tour at first?”
“Only as possibilities.”
“No feeling of evil?”
“Ah, you have remembered that. No, I did not think there was any defin-
ite atmosphere of evil. I was not told who my contact was there, but she
made herself known to me.”
“Elizabeth Temple?”
“Yes. It was like a searchlight,” said Miss Marple, “illuminating things on
a dark night. So far, you see, I had been in the dark. There were certain
things that must be, must logically be, I mean, because of what Mr. Rafiel
had indicated. There must be somewhere a victim and somewhere a mur-
derer. Yes, a killer was indicated because that was the only liaison that
had existed between Mr. Rafiel and myself. There had been a murder in
the West Indies. Both he and I had been involved in it and all he knew of
me was my connection with that. So it could not be any other type of
crime. And it could not, either, be a casual crime. It must be, and show it-
self definitely to be, the handiwork of someone who had accepted evil.
Evil instead of good. There seemed to be two victims indicated. There
must be someone who had been killed and there must be clearly a victim
of injustice. A victim who had been accused of a crime he or she had not
committed. So now, while I pondered these things, I had no light upon
them until I talked to Miss Temple. She was very intense, very compelling.
There came the first link which I had with Mr. Rafiel. She spoke of a girl
she had known, a girl who had once been engaged to Mr. Rafiel’s son.
Here then was my first ray of light. Presently she also told me that the girl
had not married him. I asked why not and she said ‘because she died.’ I
asked then how she died, what had killed her, and she said very strongly,
very compellingly—I can hear her voice still, it was like the sound of a
deep bell—she said Love. And she said after that ‘the most frightening
word there can be is Love.’ I did not know then exactly what she meant. In
fact the first idea that came to me was that the girl had committed suicide
as a result of an unhappy love affair. It can happen often enough, and a
very sad tragedy it is when it does happen. That was the most I knew then.
That and the fact that the journey she herself was engaged upon was no
mere pleasure tour. She was going, she told me, on a pilgrimage. She was
going to some place or to some person. I did not learn then who the per-
son was, that only came later.”
“Archdeacon Brabazon?”
“Yes. I had no idea then of his existence. But from then on I felt that the
chief characters—the chief actors—in the drama, whichever way you like
to put it, were not on the tour. They were not members of the coach party.
I hesitated just for a short time, hesitated over some particular persons. I
hesitated, considering Joanna Crawford and Emlyn Price.”
“Why fix on them?”
“Because of their youth,” said Miss Marple. “Because youth is so often
associated with suicide, with violence, with intense jealousy and tragic
love. A man kills his girl—it happens. Yes, my mind went to them but it did
not seem to me there was any association there. No shadow of evil, of des-
pair, of misery. I used the idea of them later as a kind of false pointer
when we were drinking sherry at The Old Manor House that last evening.
I pointed out how they could be the most easy suspects in the death of
Elizabeth Temple. When I see them again,” said Miss Marple, punctili-
ously, “I shall apologize to them for having used them as useful characters
to distract attention from my real ideas.”
“And the next thing was the death of Elizabeth Temple?”
“No,” said Miss Marple. “Actually the next thing was my arrival at The
Old Manor House. The kindness of my reception and taking up my stay
there under their hospitable roof. That again had been arranged by Mr.
Rafiel. So I knew that I must go there, but not for what reason I was to go
there. It might be merely a place where more information would come to
me to lead me onwards in my quest. I am sorry,” Miss Marple said, sud-
denly becoming her normal apologetic and slightly fussy self, “I am talking
at much too great a length. I really must not inflict on you all that I
thought and….”
“Please go on,” said Professor Wanstead. “You may not know it but what
you are telling me is particularly interesting to me. It ties up with so much
I have known and seen in the work I do. Go on giving me what you felt.”
“Yes, go on,” said Sir Andrew McNeil.
“It was feeling,” said Miss Marple. “It wasn’t really, you know, logical de-
duction. It was based on a kind of emotional reaction or susceptibility to—
well, I can only call it atmosphere.”
“Yes,” said Wanstead, “there is atmosphere. Atmosphere in houses, at-
mosphere in places, in the garden, in the forest, in a public house, in a cot-
tage.”
“The three sisters. That is what I thought and felt and said to myself
when I went into The Old Manor House. I was so kindly received by
Lavinia Glynne. There’s something about the phrase—the three sisters—
that springs up in your mind as sinister. It combines with the three sisters
in Russian literature, the three witches on Macbeth’s heath. It seemed to
me that there was an atmosphere there of sorrow, of deep felt unhappi-
ness, also an atmosphere of fear and a kind of struggling different atmo-
sphere which I can only describe as an atmosphere of normality.”
“Your last word interests me,” said Wanstead.
“It was due, I think, to Mrs. Glynne. She was the one who came to meet
me when the coach arrived and explained the invitation. She was an en-
tirely normal and pleasant woman, a widow. She was not very happy, but
when I say she was not very happy it was nothing to do with sorrow or
deep unhappiness, it was just that she had the wrong atmosphere for her
own character. She took me back with her and I met the other two sisters.
The next morning I was to hear from an aged housemaid who brought my
early morning tea, a story of past tragedy, of a girl who had been killed by
her boyfriend. Of several other girls in the neighbourhood who’d fallen
victims to violence, or sexual assault. I had to make my second appraisal. I
had dismissed the people in the coach as not being personally concerned
in my search. Somewhere still there was a killer. I had to ask myself if one
of the killers could be here. Here in this house where I had been sent,
Clotilde, Lavinia, Anthea. Three names of three weird sisters, three happy
—unhappy—suffering—frightened—what were they? My attention was
caught first by Clotilde. A tall, handsome woman. A personality. Just as
Elizabeth Temple had been a personality. I felt that here where the field
was limited, I must at least sum up what I could about the three sisters.
Three Fates. Who could be a killer? What kind of a killer? What kind of a
killing? I could feel then rising up rather slowly, rather slowly like a mi-
asma does, an atmosphere. I don’t think there is any other word that ex-
presses it except evil. Not necessarily that any of these three was evil, but
they were certainly living in an atmosphere where evil had happened, had
left its shadow or was still threatening them. Clotilde, the eldest, was the
first one I considered. She was handsome, she was strong, she was, I
thought, a woman of intense emotional feeling. I saw her, I will admit, as a
possible Clytemnestra. I had recently,” Miss Marple dropped into her
everyday tones, “been taken very kindly to a Greek play performed at a
well-known boys’ public school not far from my home. I had been very,
very impressed by the acting of the Agamemnon and particularly the per-
formance of the boy who had played Clytemnestra. A very remarkable
performance. It seemed to me that in Clotilde I could imagine a woman
who could plan and carry out the killing of a husband in his bath.”
For a moment Professor Wanstead had all he could do to repress a
laugh. It was the seriousness of Miss Marple’s tone. She gave him a slight
twinkle from her eyes.
“Yes, it sounds rather silly, does it not, said like that? But I could see her
that way, playing that part, that is to say. Very unfortunately, she had no
husband. She had never had a husband, and therefore did not kill a hus-
band. Then I considered my guide to the house. Lavinia Glynne. She
seemed an extremely nice, wholesome and pleasant woman. But alas, cer-
tain people who have killed have produced much that effect on the world
round them. They have been charming people. Many murderers have
been delightful and pleasant men and people have been astonished. They
are what I call the respectable killers. The ones who would commit
murder from entirely utilitarian motives. Without emotion, but to gain a
required end. I didn’t think it was very likely and I should be highly sur-
prised if it was so, but I could not leave out Mrs. Glynne. She had had a
husband. She was a widow and had been a widow for some years. It could
be. I left it at that. And then I came to the third sister. Anthea. She was a
disquieting personality. Badly coordinated, it seemed to me, scatter-
brained, and in a condition of some emotion which I thought on the whole
was fear. She was frightened of something. Intensely frightened of some-
thing. Well, that could fit in too. If she had committed a crime of some
kind, a crime which she had thought was finished with and past, there
might have been some recrudescence, some raising up of old problems,
something perhaps connected with the Elizabeth Temple enquiries; she
might have felt fear that an old crime would be revived or discovered. She
had a curious way of looking at you, and then looking sharply from side to
side over one shoulder as though she saw something standing behind her.
Something that made her afraid. So she too was a possible answer. A pos-
sibly slightly mentally unhinged killer who could have killed because she
considered herself persecuted. Because she was afraid. These were only
ideas. They were only a rather more pronounced assessment of possibilit-
ies that I had already gone through on the coach. But the atmosphere of
the house was on me more than ever. The next day I walked in the garden
with Anthea. At the end of the principal grass path was a mound. A
mound created by the falling down of a former greenhouse. Owing to a
lack of repairs and of gardeners at the end of the war it had fallen into dis-
use, come to pieces, bricks had been piled up surmounted with earth and
turf, and had been planted with a certain creeper. A creeper well known
when you want to hide or cover some rather ugly pieces of building in
your garden. Polygonum it is called. One of the quickest flowering shrubs
which swallows and kills and dries up and gets rid of everything it grows
over. It grows over everything. It is in a way a rather frightening plant. It
has beautiful white flowers, it can look very lovely. It was not yet in bloom
but it was going to be. I stood there with Anthea, and she seemed to be
desperately unhappy over the loss of the greenhouse. She said it had had
such lovely grapes, it seemed to be the thing she remembered most about
the garden when she had been a child there. And she wanted, she wanted
desperately to have enough money so as to dig up the mound, level the
ground and rebuild the greenhouse and stock it with muscat grapes and
peaches as the old greenhouse had been. It was a terrible nostalgia for the
past she was feeling. It was more than that. Again, very clearly, I felt an at-
mosphere of fear. Something about the mound made her frightened. I
couldn’t then think what it was. You know the next thing that happened. It
was Elizabeth Temple’s death and there was no doubt from the story told
by Emlyn Price and Joanna Crawford that there could be only one conclu-
sion. It was not accident. It was deliberate murder.
“I think it was from then on,” said Miss Marple, “that I knew. I came to
the conclusion there had been three killings. I heard the full story of Mr.
Rafiel’s son, the delinquent boy, the exjailbird and I thought that he was
all those things, but none of them showed him as being a killer or likely to
be a killer. All the evidence was against him. There was no doubt in any-
one’s mind that he had killed the girl whose name I had now learned as
being Verity Hunt. But Archdeacon Brabazon put the final crown on the
business, as it were. He had known those two young people. They had
come to him with their story of wanting to get married and he had taken it
upon himself to decide that they should get married. He thought that it
was not perhaps a wise marriage, but it was a marriage that was justified
by the fact that they both loved each other. The girl loved the boy with
what he called a true love. A love as true as her name. And he thought that
the boy, for all his bad sexual reputation, had truly loved the girl and had
every intention of being faithful to her and trying to reform some of his
evil tendencies. The Archdeacon was not optimistic. He did not, I think, be-
lieve it would be a thoroughly happy marriage, but it was to his mind
what he called a necessary marriage. Necessary because if you love
enough you will pay the price, even if the price is disappointment and a
certain amount of unhappiness. But one thing I was quite sure of. That dis-
figured face, that battered-in head could not have been the action of a boy
who really loved the girl. This was not a story of sexual assault. I was
ready to take the Archdeacon’s word for that. But I knew, too, that I’d got
the right clue, the clue that was given me by Elizabeth Temple. She had
said that the cause of Verity’s death was Love—one of the most frightening
words there is.
“It was quite clear then,” said Miss Marple. “I think I’d known for some
time really. It was just the small things that hadn’t fitted in, but now they
did. They fitted in with what Elizabeth Temple had said. The cause of Ver-
ity’s death. She had said first the one word ‘Love’ and then that ‘Love
could be the most frightening word there was.’ It was all mapped out so
plainly then. The overwhelming love that Clotilde had had for this girl.
The girl’s hero worship of her, dependency on her, and then as she grew a
little older, her normal instincts came into play. She wanted Love. She
wanted to be free to love, to marry, to have children. And along came the
boy that she could love. She knew that he was unreliable, she knew he
was what was technically called a bad lot, but that,” said Miss Marple, in a
more ordinary tone of voice, “is not what puts any girl off a boy. No.
Young women like bad lots. They always have. They fall in love with bad
lots. They are quite sure they can change them. And the nice, kind, steady,
reliable husbands got the answer, in my young days, that one would be ‘a
sister to them,’ which never satisfied them at all. Verity fell in love with
Michael Rafiel, and Michael Rafiel was prepared to turn over a new leaf
and marry this girl and was sure he would never wish to look at another
girl again. I don’t say this would have been a happy-ever-after thing, but it
was, as the Archdeacon said quite surely, it was real love. And so they
planned to get married. And I think Verity wrote to Elizabeth and told her
that she was going to marry Michael Rafiel. It was arranged in secret be-
cause I think Verity did realize that what she was doing was essentially an
escape. She was escaping from a life that she didn’t want to live any
longer, from someone whom she loved very much but not in the way she
loved Michael. And she would not be allowed to do so. Permission would
not be willingly given, every obstacle would be put in their way. So, like
other young people, they were going to elope. There was no need for them
to fly off to Gretna Green, they were of sufficiently mature age to marry.
So she appealed to Archdeacon Brabazon, her old friend who had con-
firmed her—who was a real friend. And the wedding was arranged, the
day, the time, probably even she bought secretly some garment in which
to be married. They were to meet somewhere, no doubt. They were to
come to the rendezvous separately. I think he came there, but she did not
come. He waited perhaps. Waited and then tried to find out, perhaps, why
she didn’t come. I think then a message may have been given him, even a
letter sent him, possibly in her forged handwriting, saying she had
changed her mind. It was all over and she was going away for a time to get
over it. I don’t know. But I don’t think he ever dreamt of the real reason of
why she hadn’t come, of why she had sent no word. He hadn’t thought for
one moment that she had been deliberately, cruelly, almost madly per-
haps, destroyed. Clotilde was not going to lose the person she loved. She
was not going to let her escape, she was not going to let her go to the
young man whom she herself hated and loathed. She would keep Verity,
keep her in her own way. But what I could not believe was—I did not be-
lieve that she’d strangled the girl and had then disfigured her face. I don’t
think she could have borne to do that. I think that she had rearranged the
bricks of the fallen greenhouse and piled up earth and turf over most of it.
The girl had already been given a drink, an overdose of sleeping draught
probably. Grecian, as it were, in tradition. One cup of hemlock—even if it
wasn’t hemlock. And she buried the girl there in the garden, piled the
bricks over her and the earth and the turf—”
“Did neither of the other sisters suspect it?”
“Mrs. Glynne was not there then. Her husband had not died and she was
still abroad. But Anthea was there. I think Anthea did know something of
what went on. I don’t know that she suspected death at first, but she knew
that Clotilde had been occupying herself with the raising up of a mound at
the end of the garden to be covered with flowering shrubs, to be a place of
beauty. I think perhaps the truth came to her little by little. And then
Clotilde, having accepted evil, done evil, surrendered to evil, had no
qualms about what she would do next. I think she enjoyed planning it. She
had a certain amount of influence over a sly, sexy little village girl who
came to her cadging for benefits now and then. I think it was easy for her
to arrange one day to take the girl on a picnic or an expedition a good long
way away. Thirty or forty miles. She’d chosen the place beforehand, I
think. She strangled the girl, disfigured her, hid her under turned earth,
leaves and branches. Why should anyone ever suspect her of doing any
such thing? She put Verity’s handbag there and a little chain Verity used to
wear round her neck and possibly dressed her in clothes belonging to Ver-
ity. She hoped the crime would not be found out for some time but in the
meantime she spread abroad rumours of Nora Broad having been seen
about in Michael’s car, going about with Michael. Possibly she spread a
story that Verity had broken off the engagement to be married because of
his infidelity with this girl. She may have said anything and I think
everything she said she enjoyed, poor lost soul.”
“Why do you say ‘poor lost soul,’ Miss Marple?”
“Because,” said Miss Marple, “I don’t suppose there can be any agony so
great as what Clotilde has suffered all this time—ten years now—living in
eternal sorrow. Living, you see, with the thing she had to live with. She
had kept Verity, kept her there at The Old Manor House, in the garden,
kept her there for ever. She didn’t realize at first what that meant. Her
passionate longing for the girl to be alive again. I don’t think she ever
suffered from remorse. I don’t think she had even that consolation. She
just suffered—went on suffering year after year. And I know now what
Elizabeth Temple meant. Better perhaps than she herself did. Love is a
very terrible thing. It is alive to evil, it can be one of the most evil things
there can be. And she had to live with that day after day, year after year. I
think, you know, that Anthea was frightened of that. I think she knew
more clearly the whole time what Clotilde had done and she thought that
Clotilde knew that she knew. And she was afraid of what Clotilde might
do. Clotilde gave that parcel to Anthea to post, the one with the pullover.
She said things to me about Anthea, that she was mentally disturbed, that
if she suffered from persecution or jealousy Anthea might do anything. I
think — yes — that in the not so distant future — something might have
happened to Anthea—an arranged suicide because of a guilty conscience
—”
“And yet you are sorry for that woman?” asked Sir Andrew. “Malignant
evil is like cancer—a malignant tumour. It brings suffering.”
“Of course,” said Miss Marple.
“I suppose you have been told what happened that night,” said Professor
Wanstead, “after your guardian angels had removed you?”
“You mean Clotilde? She had picked up my glass of milk, I remember.
She was still holding it when Miss Cooke took me out of the room. I sup-
pose she—drank it, did she?”
“Yes. Did you know that might happen?”
“I didn’t think of it, no, not at the moment. I suppose I could have known
it if I’d thought about it.”
“Nobody could have stopped her. She was so quick about it, and nobody
quite realized there was anything wrong in the milk.”
“So she drank it.”
“Does that surprise you?”
“No, it would have seemed to her the natural thing to do, one can’t really
wonder. It had come by this time that she wanted to escape—from all the
things she was having to live with. Just as Verity had wanted to escape
from the life that she was living there. Very odd, isn’t it, that the retribu-
tion one brings on oneself fits so closely with what has caused it.”
“You sound sorrier for her than you were for the girl who died.”
“No,” said Miss Marple, “it’s a different kind of being sorry. I’m sorry for
Verity because of all that she missed, all that she was so near to obtaining.
A life of love and devotion and service to the man she had chosen, and
whom she truly loved. Truly and in all verity. She missed all that and
nothing can give that back to her. I’m sorry for her because of what she
didn’t have. But she escaped what Clotilde had to suffer. Sorrow, misery,
fear and a growing cultivation and imbibing of evil. Clotilde had to live
with all those. Sorrow, frustrated love which she could never get back, she
had to live with the two sisters who suspected, who were afraid of her,
and she had to live with the girl she had kept there.”
“You mean Verity?”
“Yes. Buried in the garden, buried in the tomb that Clotilde had pre-
pared. She was there in The Old Manor House and I think Clotilde knew
she was there. It might be that she even saw her or thought she saw her,
sometimes when she went to pick a spray of polygonum blossom. She
must have felt very close to Verity then. Nothing worse could happen to
her, could it, than that? Nothing worse….”
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