加勒比海之谜26
时间：2026-01-04 07:19:43
（单词翻译:单击）
Seventeen
MR. RAFIEL TAKES CHARGE
“I don’t know,” said Miss Marple.
“What do you mean? What have we been talking about for the last
twenty minutes?”
“It has occurred to me that I may have been wrong.”
Mr. Rafiel stared at her.
“Scatty after all!” he said disgustedly. “And you sounded so sure of your-
self.”
“Oh, I am sure—about the murder. It’s the murderer I’m not sure about.
You see I’ve found out that Major Palgrave had more than one murder
story—you told me yourself he’d told you one about a kind of Lucrezia
Borgia—”
“So he did—at that. But that was quite a different kind of story.”
“I know. And Mrs. Walters said he had one about someone being gassed
in a gas oven—”
“But the story he told you—”
Miss Marple allowed herself to interrupt—a thing that did not often hap-
pen to Mr. Rafiel.
She spoke with desperate earnestness and only moderate incoherence.
“Don’t you see—it’s so difficult to be sure. The whole point is that—so of-
ten—one doesn’t listen. Ask Mrs. Walters—she said the same thing—you
listen to begin with—and then your attention flags—your mind wanders—
and suddenly you find you’ve missed a bit. I just wonder if possibly there
may have been a gap—a very small one—between the story he was telling
me—about a man—and the moment when he was getting out his wallet
and saying—‘Like to see a picture of a murderer.’”
“But you thought it was a picture of the man he had been talking
about?”
“I thought so—yes. It never occurred to me that it mightn’t have been.
But now—how can I be sure?”
Mr. Rafiel looked at her very thoughtfully….
“The trouble with you is,” he said, “that you’re too conscientious. Great
mistake — Make up your mind and don’t shilly shally. You didn’t shilly
shally to begin with. If you ask me, in all this chit-chat you’ve been having
with the parson’s sister and the rest of them, you’ve got hold of something
that’s unsettled you.”
“Perhaps you’re right.”
“Well, cut it out for the moment. Let’s go ahead with what you had to be-
gin with. Because, nine times out of ten, one’s original judgments are right
—or so I’ve found. We’ve got three suspects. Let’s take ’em out and have a
good look at them. Any preference?”
“I really haven’t,” said Miss Marple, “all three of them seem so very un-
likely.”
“We’ll take Greg first,” said Mr. Rafiel. “Can’t stand the fellow. Doesn’t
make him a murderer, though. Still, there are one or two points against
him. Those blood pressure tablets belonged to him. Nice and handy to
make use of.”
“That would be a little obvious, wouldn’t it?” Miss Marple objected.
“I don’t know that it would,” said Mr. Rafiel. “After all, the main thing
was to do something quickly, and he’d got the tablets. Hadn’t much time to
go looking round for tablets that somebody else might have. Let’s say it’s
Greg. All right. If he wanted to put his dear wife Lucky out of the way—
(Good job, too, I’d say. In fact I’m in sympathy with him.) I can’t actually
see his motive. From all accounts he’s rich. Inherited money from his first
wife who had pots of it. He qualifies on that as a possible wife murderer
all right. But that’s over and done with. He got away with it. But Lucky
was his first wife’s poor relation. No money there, so if he wants to put her
out of the way it must be in order to marry somebody else. Any gossip go-
ing around about that?”
Miss Marple shook her head.
“Not that I have heard. He—er—has a very gallant manner with all the
ladies.”
“Well, that’s a nice, old-fashioned way of putting it,” said Mr. Rafiel. “All
right, he’s a stoat. He makes passes. Not enough! We want more than that.
Let’s go on to Edward Hillingdon. Now there’s a dark horse, if ever there
was one.”
“He is not, I think, a happy man,” offered Miss Marple.
Mr. Rafiel looked at her thoughtfully.
“Do you think a murderer ought to be a happy man?”
Miss Marple coughed.
“Well, they usually have been in my experience.”
“I don’t suppose your experience has gone very far,” said Mr. Rafiel.
In this assumption, as Miss Marple could have told him, he was wrong.
But she forbore to contest his statement. Gentlemen, she knew, did not
like to be put right in their facts.
“I rather fancy Hillingdon myself,” said Mr. Rafiel. “I’ve an idea that
there is something a bit odd going on between him and his wife. You no-
ticed it at all?”
“Oh yes,” said Miss Marple, “I have noticed it. Their behaviour is perfect
in public, of course, but that one would expect.”
“You probably know more about those sort of people than I would,” said
Mr. Rafiel. “Very well, then, everything is in perfectly good taste but it’s a
probability that, in a gentlemanly way, Edward Hillingdon is contemplat-
ing doing away with Evelyn Hillingdon. Do you agree?”
“If so,” said Miss Marple, “there must be another woman.”
Miss Marple shook her head in a dissatisfied manner.
“I can’t help feeling—I really can’t—that it’s not all quite as simple as
that.”
“Well, who shall we consider next—Jackson? We leave me out of it.”
Miss Marple smiled for the first time.
“And why do we leave you out of it, Mr. Rafiel?”
“Because if you want to discuss the possibilities of my being a murderer
you’d have to do it with somebody else. Waste of time talking about it to
me. And anyway, I ask you, am I cut out for the part? Helpless, hauled out
of bed like a dummy, dressed, wheeled about in a chair, shuffled along for
a walk. What earthly chance have I of going and murdering anyone?”
“Probably as good a chance as anyone else,” said Miss Marple vigor-
ously.
“And how do you make that out?”
“Well, you would agree yourself, I think, that you have brains?”
“Of course I’ve got brains,” declared Mr. Rafiel. “A good deal more than
anybody else in this community, I’d say.”
“And having brains,” went on Miss Marple, “would enable you to over-
come the physical difficulties of being a murderer.”
“It would take some doing!”
“Yes,” said Miss Marple, “it would take some doing. But then, I think, Mr.
Rafiel, you would enjoy that.”
Mr. Rafiel stared at her for a long time and then he suddenly laughed.
“You’ve got a nerve!” he said. “Not quite the gentle fluffy old lady you
look, are you? So you really think I’m a murderer?”
“No,” said Miss Marple, “I do not.”
“And why?”
“Well, really, I think just because you have got brains. Having brains,
you can get most things you want without having recourse to murder.
Murder is stupid.”
“And anyway who the devil should I want to murder?”
“That would be a very interesting question,” said Miss Marple. “I have
not yet had the pleasure of sufficient conversation with you to evolve a
theory as to that.”
Mr. Rafiel’s smile broadened.
“Conversations with you might be dangerous,” he said.
“Conversations are always dangerous, if you have something to hide,”
said Miss Marple.
“You may be right. Let’s get on to Jackson. What do you think of Jack-
son?”
“It is difficult for me to say. I have not had the opportunity really of any
conversation with him.”
“So you’ve no views on the subject?”
“He reminds me a little,” said Miss Marple reflectively, “of a young man
in the Town Clerk’s office near where I live, Jonas Parry.”
“And?” Mr. Rafiel asked and paused.
“He was not,” said Miss Marple, “very satisfactory.”
“Jackson’s not wholly satisfactory either. He suits me all right. He’s first
class at his job, and he doesn’t mind being sworn at. He knows he’s damn’
well paid and so he puts up with things. I wouldn’t employ him in a posi-
tion of trust, but I don’t have to trust him. Maybe his past is blameless,
maybe it isn’t. His references were all right but I discern—shall I say—a
note of reserve. Fortunately, I’m not a man who has any guilty secrets, so
I’m not a subject for blackmail.”
“No secrets?” said Miss Marple, thoughtfully. “Surely, Mr. Rafiel, you
have business secrets?”
“Not where Jackson can get at them. No. Jackson is a smooth article, one
might say, but I really don’t see him as a murderer. I’d say that wasn’t his
line at all.”
He paused a minute and then said suddenly, “Do you know, if one
stands back and takes a good look at all this fantastic business, Major Pal-
grave and his ridiculous stories and all the rest of it, the emphasis is en-
tirely wrong. I’m the person who ought to be murdered.”
Miss Marple looked at him in some surprise.
“Proper type casting,” explained Mr. Rafiel. “Who’s the victim in murder
stories? Elderly men with lots of money.”
“And lots of people with a good reason for wishing him out of the way,
so as to get that money,” said Miss Marple. “Is that true also?”
“Well—” Mr. Rafiel considered. “I can count up to five or six men in Lon-
don who wouldn’t burst into tears if they read my obituary in The Times.
But they wouldn’t go so far as to do anything to bring about my demise.
After all, why should they? I’m expected to die any day. In fact the bug—
blighters are astonished that I’ve lasted so long. The doctors are surprised
too.”
“You have, of course, a great will to live,” said Miss Marple.
“You think that’s odd, I suppose,” said Mr. Rafiel.
Miss Marple shook her head.
“Oh no,” she said, “I think it’s quite natural. Life is more worth living,
more full of interest when you are likely to lose it. It shouldn’t be, perhaps,
but it is. When you’re young and strong and healthy, and life stretches
ahead of you, living isn’t really important at all. It’s young people who
commit suicide easily, out of despair from love, sometimes from sheer
anxiety and worry. But old people know how valuable life is and how in-
teresting.”
“Hah!” said Mr. Rafiel, snorting. “Listen to a couple of old crocks.”
“Well, what I said is true, isn’t it?” demanded Miss Marple.
“Oh, yes,” said Mr. Rafiel, “it’s true enough. But don’t you think I’m right
when I say that I ought to be cast as the victim?”
“It depends on who has reason to gain by your death,” said Miss Marple.
“Nobody, really,” said Mr. Rafiel. “Apart, as I’ve said, from my competit-
ors in the business world who, as I have also said, can count comfortably
on my being out of it before very long. I’m not such a fool as to leave a lot
of money divided up among my relations. Precious little they’d get of it
after the Government had taken practically the lot. Oh, no, I’ve attended to
all that years ago. Settlements, trusts and all the rest of it.”
“Jackson, for instance, wouldn’t profit by your death?”
“He wouldn’t get a penny,” said Mr. Rafiel cheerfully. “I pay him double
the salary that he’d get from anyone else. That’s because he has to put up
with my bad temper; and he knows quite well that he will be the loser
when I die.”
“And Mrs. Walters?”
“The same goes for Esther. She’s a good girl. First-class secretary, intelli-
gent, good-tempered, understands my ways, doesn’t turn a hair if I fly off
the handle, couldn’t care less if I insult her. Behaves like a nice nursery
governess in charge of an outrageous and obstreperous child. She irritates
me a bit sometimes, but who doesn’t? There’s nothing outstanding about
her. She’s rather a commonplace young woman in many ways, but I
couldn’t have anyone who suited me better. She’s had a lot of trouble in
her life. Married a man who wasn’t much good. I’d say she never had
much judgment when it came to men. Some women haven’t. They fall for
anyone who tells them a hard-luck story. Always convinced that all the
man needs is proper female understanding. That, once married to her,
he’ll pull up his socks and make a go of life! But of course that type of man
never does. Anyway, fortunately her unsatisfactory husband died; drank
too much at a party one night and stepped in front of a bus. Esther had a
daughter to support and she went back to her secretarial job. She’s been
with me five years. I made it quite clear to her from the start that she need
have no expectations from me in the event of my death. I paid her from
the start a very large salary, and that salary I’ve augmented by as much as
a quarter as much again each year. However decent and honest people
are, one should never trust anybody—that’s why I told Esther quite clearly
that she’d nothing to hope for from my death. Every year I live she’ll get a
bigger salary. If she puts most of that aside every year—and that’s what I
think she has done—she’ll be quite a well-to-do woman by the time I kick
the bucket. I’ve made myself responsible for her daughter’s schooling and
I’ve put a sum in trust for the daughter which she’ll get when she comes of
age. So Mrs. Esther Walters is very comfortably placed. My death, let me
tell you, would mean a serious financial loss to her.” He looked very hard
at Miss Marple. “She fully realizes all that. She’s very sensible, Esther is.”
“Do she and Jackson get on?” asked Miss Marple.
Mr. Rafiel shot a quick glance at her.
“Noticed something, have you?” he said. “Yes, I think Jackson’s done a
bit of tom-catting around, with an eye in her direction, especially lately.
He’s a good-looking chap, of course, but he hasn’t cut any ice in that direc-
tion. For one thing, there’s class distinction. She’s just a cut above him. Not
very much. If she was really a cut above him it wouldn’t matter, but the
lower middle class — they’re very particular. Her mother was a school
teacher and her father a bank clerk. No, she won’t make a fool of herself
about Jackson. Dare say he’s after her little nest egg, but he won’t get it.”
“Hush—she’s coming now!” said Miss Marple.
They both looked at Esther Walters as she came along the hotel path to-
wards them.
“She’s quite a good-looking girl, you know,” said Mr. Rafiel, “but not an
atom of glamour. I don’t know why, she’s quite nicely turned out.”
Miss Marple sighed, a sigh that any woman will give however old at
what might be considered wasted opportunities. What was lacking in Es-
ther had been called by so many names during Miss Marple’s span of ex-
istence. “Not really attractive to me.” “No SA.” “Lacks Come-hither in her
eye.” Fair hair, good complexion, hazel eyes, quite a good figure, pleasant
smile, but lacking that something that makes a man’s head turn when he
passes a woman in the street.
“She ought to get married again,” said Miss Marple, lowering her voice.
“Of course she ought. She’d make a man a good wife.”
Esther Walters joined them and Mr. Rafiel said, in a slightly artificial
voice:
“So there you are at last! What’s been keeping you?”
“Everyone seemed to be sending cables this morning,” said Esther.
“What with that, and people trying to check out—”
“Trying to check out, are they? A result of this murder business?”
“I suppose so. Poor Tim Kendal is worried to death.”
“And well he might be. Bad luck for that young couple, I must say.”
“I know. I gather it was rather a big undertaking for them to take on this
place. They’ve been worried about making a success of it. They were doing
very well, too.”
“They were doing a good job,” agreed Mr. Rafiel. “He’s very capable and
a damned hard worker. She’s a very nice girl—attractive too. They’ve both
worked like blacks, though that’s an odd term to use out here, for blacks
don’t work themselves to death at all, so far as I can see. Was looking at a
fellow shinning up a coconut tree to get his breakfast, then he goes to
sleep for the rest of the day. Nice life.”
He added, “We’ve been discussing the murder here.”
Esther Walters looked slightly startled. She turned her head towards
Miss Marple.
“I’ve been wrong about her,” said Mr. Rafiel, with characteristic frank-
ness. “Never been much of a one for the old pussies. All knitting wool and
tittle- tattle. But this one’s got something. Eyes and ears, and she uses
them.”
Esther Walters looked apologetically at Miss Marple, but Miss Marple
did not appear to take offence.
“That’s really meant to be a compliment, you know,” Esther explained.
“I quite realize that,” said Miss Marple. “I realize, too, that Mr. Rafiel is
privileged, or thinks he is.”
“What do you mean—privileged?” asked Mr. Rafiel.
“To be rude if you want to be rude,” said Miss Marple.
“Have I been rude?” said Mr. Rafiel, surprised. “I’m sorry if I’ve offen-
ded you.”
“You haven’t offended me,” said Miss Marple, “I make allowances.”
“Now, don’t be nasty. Esther, get a chair and bring it here. Maybe you
can help.”
Esther walked a few steps to the balcony of the bungalow and brought
over a light basket chair.
“We’ll go on with our consultation,” said Mr. Rafiel. “We started with old
Palgrave, deceased, and his eternal stories.”
“Oh, dear,” sighed Esther. “I’m afraid I used to escape from him
whenever I could.”
“Miss Marple was more patient,” said Mr. Rafiel. “Tell me, Esther, did he
ever tell you a story about a murderer?”
“Oh yes,” said Esther. “Several times.”
“What was it exactly? Let’s have your recollection.”
“Well—” Esther paused to think. “The trouble is,” she said apologetically,
“I didn’t really listen very closely. You see, it was rather like that terrible
story about the lion in Rhodesia which used to go on and on. One did get
rather in the habit of not listening.”
“Well, tell us what you do remember.”
“I think it arose out of some murder case that had been in the papers.
Major Palgrave said that he’d had an experience not every person had
had. He’d actually met a murderer face to face.”
“Met?” Mr. Rafiel exclaimed. “Did he actually use the word ‘met?’”
Esther looked confused.
“I think so.” She was doubtful. “Or he may have said, ‘I can point you out
a murderer.’”
“Well, which was it? There’s a difference.”
“I can’t really be sure … I think he said he’d show me a picture of
someone.”
“That’s better.”
“And then he talked a lot about Lucrezia Borgia.”
“Never mind Lucrezia Borgia. We know all about her.”
“He talked about poisoners and that Lucrezia was very beautiful and
had red hair. He said there were probably far more women poisoners go-
ing about the world than anyone knew.”
“That I fear is quite likely,” said Miss Marple.
“And he talked about poison being a woman’s weapon.”
“Seems to have been wandering from the point a bit,” said Mr. Rafiel.
“Well, of course, he always did wander from the point in his stories. And
then one used to stop listening and just say ‘Yes’ and ‘Really?’ And ‘You
don’t say so.’”
“What about this picture he was going to show you?”
“I don’t remember. It may have been something he’d seen in the paper
—”
“He didn’t actually show you a snapshot?”
“A snapshot? No.” She shook her head. “I’m quite sure of that. He did
say that she was a good-looking woman, and you’d never think she was a
murderer to look at her.”
“She?”
“There you are,” exclaimed Miss Marple. “It makes it all so confusing.”
“He was talking about a woman?” Mr. Rafiel asked.
“Oh, yes.”
“The snapshot was a snapshot of a woman?”
“Yes.”
“It can’t have been!”
“But it was,” Esther persisted. “He said ‘She’s here in this island. I’ll
point her out to you, and then I’ll tell you the whole story.’”
Mr. Rafiel swore. In saying what he thought of the late Major Palgrave
he did not mince his words.
“The probabilities are,” he finished, “that not a word of anything he said
was true!”
“One does begin to wonder,” Miss Marple murmured.
“So there we are,” said Mr. Rafiel. “The old booby started telling you
hunting tales. Pig sticking, tiger shooting, elephant hunting, narrow es-
capes from lions. One or two of them might have been fact. Several of
them were fiction, and others had happened to somebody else! Then he
gets on to the subject of murder and he tells one murder story to cap an-
other murder story. And what’s more he tells them all as if they’d
happened to him. Ten to one most of them were a hash-up of what he’d
read in the paper, or seen on TV.”
He turned accusingly on Esther. “You admit that you weren’t listening
closely. Perhaps you misunderstood what he was saying.”
“I’m certain he was talking about a woman,” said Esther obstinately,
“because of course I wondered who it was.”
“Who do you think it was?” asked Miss Marple.
Esther flushed and looked slightly embarrassed.
“Oh, I didn’t really—I mean, I wouldn’t like to—”
Miss Marple did not insist. The presence of Mr. Rafiel, she thought, was
inimical to her finding out exactly what suppositions Esther Walters had
made. That could only be cosily brought out in a tête-à-tête between two
women. And there was, of course, the possibility that Esther Walters was
lying. Naturally, Miss Marple did not suggest this aloud. She registered it
as a possibility but she was not inclined to believe in it. For one thing she
did not think that Esther Walters was a liar (though one never knew) and
for another, she could see no point in such a lie.
“But you say,” Mr. Rafiel was now turning upon Miss Marple, “you say
that he told you this yarn about a murderer and that he then said he had a
picture of him which he was going to show you.”
“I thought so, yes.”
“You thought so? You were sure enough to begin with!”
Miss Marple retorted with spirit.
“It is never easy to repeat a conversation and be entirely accurate in
what the other party to it has said. One is always inclined to jump at what
you think they meant. Then, afterwards, you put actual words into their
mouths. Major Palgrave told me this story, yes. He told me that the man
who told it to him, this doctor, had shown him a snapshot of the murderer;
but if I am to be quite honest I must admit that what he actually said to me
was ‘Would you like to see a snapshot of a murderer?’ and naturally I as-
sumed that it was the same snapshot he had been talking about. That it
was the snapshot of that particular murderer. But I have to admit that it is
possible—only remotely possible, but still possible—that by an association
of ideas in his mind he leaped from the snapshot he had been shown in
the past, to a snapshot he had taken recently of someone here who he was
convinced was a murderer.”
“Women!” snorted Mr. Rafiel in exasperation. “You’re all the same, the
whole blinking lot of you! Can’t be accurate. You’re never exactly sure of
what a thing was. And now,” he added irritably, “where does that leave
us?” He snorted. “Evelyn Hillingdon, or Greg’s wife, Lucky? The whole
thing is a mess.”
There was a slight apologetic cough. Arthur Jackson was standing at Mr.
Rafiel’s elbow. He had come so noiselessly that nobody had noticed him.
“Time for your massage, sir,” he said.
Mr. Rafiel displayed immediate temper.
“What do you mean by sneaking up on me in that way and making me
jump? I never heard you.”
“Very sorry, sir.”
“I don’t think I’ll have any massage today. It never does me a damn’ bit
of good.”
“Oh, come sir, you mustn’t say that.” Jackson was full of professional
cheerfulness. “You’d soon notice if you left it off.”
He wheeled the chair deftly round.
Miss Marple rose to her feet, smiled at Esther and went down to the
beach.
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