加勒比海之谜28
时间：2026-01-04 07:19:52
（单词翻译:单击）
II
“Jeremy, of course rightly, is very against ill-natured gossip,” said Miss
Prescott, “but one cannot really ignore what people are saying. And there
was, as I say, a great deal of talk at the time.”
“Yes?” Miss Marple’s tone urged her forward.
“This young woman, you see, Miss Greatorex I think her name was then,
I can’t remember now, was a kind of cousin and she looked after Mrs.
Dyson. Gave her all her medicines and things like that.” There was a short,
meaningless pause. “And of course there had, I understand”— Miss
Prescott’s voice was lowered—“been goings-on between Mr. Dyson and
Miss Greatorex. A lot of people had noticed them. I mean things like that
are quickly observed in a place like this. Then there was some curious
story about some stuff that Edward Hillingdon got for her at a chemist.”
“Oh, Edward Hillingdon came into it?”
“Oh yes, he was very much attracted. People noticed it. And Lucky—
Miss Greatorex—played them off against each other. Gregory Dyson and
Edward Hillingdon. One has to face it, she has always been an attractive
woman.”
“Though not as young as she was,” Miss Marple replied.
“Exactly. But she was always very well turned out and made up. Of
course not so flamboyant when she was just the poor relation. She always
seemed very devoted to the invalid. But, well, you see how it was.”
“What was this story about the chemist—how did that get known?”
“Well, it wasn’t in Jamestown, I think it was when they were in Marti-
nique. The French, I believe, are more lax than we are in the matter of
drugs—This chemist talked to someone, and the story got around—Well,
you know how these things happen.”
Miss Marple did. None better.
“He said something about Colonel Hillingdon asking for something and
not seeming to know what it was he was asking for. Consulting a piece of
paper, you know, on which it was written down. Anyway, as I say, there
was talk.”
“But I don’t see quite why Colonel Hillingdon—” Miss Marple frowned in
perplexity.
“I suppose he was just being used as a cat’s- paw. Anyway, Gregory
Dyson married again in an almost indecently short time. Barely a month
later, I understand.”
They looked at each other.
“But there was no real suspicion?” Miss Marple asked.
“Oh no, it was just—well, talk. Of course there may have been absolutely
nothing in it.”
“Major Palgrave thought there was.”
“Did he say so to you?”
“I wasn’t really listening very closely,” confessed Miss Marple. “I just
wondered if—er—well, if he’d said the same thing to you?”
“He did point her out to me one day,” said Miss Prescott.
“Really? He actually pointed her out?”
“Yes. As a matter of fact, I thought at first it was Mrs. Hillingdon he was
pointing out. He wheezed and chuckled a bit and said, ‘Look at that wo-
man over there. In my opinion that’s a woman who’s done murder and
got away with it.’ I was very shocked, of course. I said, ‘Surely you’re jok-
ing, Major Palgrave,’ and he said, ‘Yes, yes, dear lady, let’s call it joking.’
The Dysons and the Hillingdons were sitting at a table quite near to us,
and I was afraid they’d overhear. He chuckled and said ‘Wouldn’t care to
go to a drinks party and have a certain person mix me a cocktail. Too
much like supper with the Borgias.’”
“How very interesting,” said Miss Marple. “Did he mention—a—a photo-
graph?”
“I don’t remember … Was it some newspaper cutting?”
Miss Marple, about to speak, shut her lips. The sun was momentarily ob-
scured by a shadow. Evelyn Hillingdon paused beside them.
“Good morning,” she said.
“I was wondering where you were,” said Miss Prescott, looking up
brightly.
“I’ve been to Jamestown, shopping.”
“Oh, I see.”
Miss Prescott looked round vaguely and Evelyn Hillingdon said:
“Oh, I didn’t take Edward with me. Men hate shopping.”
“Did you find anything of interest?”
“It wasn’t that sort of shopping. I just had to go to the chemist.”
With a smile and a slight nod she went on down the beach.
“Such nice people, the Hillingdons,” said Miss Prescott, “though she’s not
really very easy to know, is she? I mean, she’s always very pleasant and all
that, but one never seems to get to know her any better.”
Miss Marple agreed thoughtfully.
“One never knows what she is thinking,” said Miss Prescott.
“Perhaps that is just as well,” said Miss Marple.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Oh nothing really, only that I’ve always had the feeling that perhaps
her thoughts might be rather disconcerting.”
“Oh,” said Miss Prescott, looking puzzled. “I see what you mean.” She
went on with a slight change of subject. “I believe they have a very charm-
ing place in Hampshire, and a boy—or is it two boys—who have just gone
—or one of them—to Winchester.”
“Do you know Hampshire well?”
“No. Hardly at all. I believe their house is somewhere near Alton.”
“I see.” Miss Marple paused and then said, “And where do the Dysons
live?”
“California,” said Miss Prescott. “When they are at home, that is. They
are great travellers.”
“One really knows so little about the people one meets when one is trav-
elling,” said Miss Marple. “I mean—how shall I put it—one only knows,
doesn’t one, what they choose to tell you about themselves. For instance,
you don’t really know that the Dysons live in California.”
Miss Prescott looked startled.
“I’m sure Mr. Dyson mentioned it.”
“Yes. Yes, exactly. That’s what I mean. And the same thing perhaps with
the Hillingdons. I mean when you say that they live in Hampshire, you’re
really repeating what they told you, aren’t you?”
Miss Prescott looked slightly alarmed. “Do you mean that they don’t live
in Hampshire?” she asked.
“No, no, not for one moment,” said Miss Marple, quickly apologetic. “I
was only using them as an instance as to what one knows or doesn’t know
about people.” She added, “I have told you that I live at St. Mary Mead,
which is a place, no doubt, of which you have never heard. But you don’t,
if I may say so, know it of your own knowledge, do you?”
Miss Prescott forbore from saying that she really couldn’t care less
where Miss Marple lived. It was somewhere in the country and in the
South of England and that is all she knew. “Oh, I do see what you mean,”
she agreed hastily, “and I know that one can’t possibly be too careful when
one is abroad.”
“I didn’t exactly mean that,” said Miss Marple.
There were some odd thoughts going through Miss Marple’s mind. Did
she really know, she was asking herself, that Canon Prescott and Miss
Prescott were really Canon Prescott and Miss Prescott? They said so. There
was no evidence to contradict them. It would really be easy, would it not,
to put on a dog-collar, to wear the appropriate clothes, to make the appro-
priate conversation. If there was a motive….
Miss Marple was fairly knowledgeable about the clergy in her part of
the world, but the Prescotts came from the north. Durham, wasn’t it? She
had no doubt they were the Prescotts, but still, it came back to the same
thing—one believed what people said to one.
Perhaps one ought to be on one’s guard against that. Perhaps … She
shook her head thoughtfully.
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