复仇女神2
时间：2026-01-29 07:00:01
（单词翻译:单击）
One
OVERTURE
In the afternoons it was the custom of Miss Jane Marple to unfold her
second newspaper. Two newspapers were delivered at her house every
morning. The first one Miss Marple read while sipping her early morning
tea, that is, if it was delivered in time. The boy who delivered the papers
was notably erratic in his management of time. Frequently, too, there was
either a new boy or a boy who was acting temporarily as a stand-in for the
first one. And each one would have ideas of his own as to the geographical
route that he should take in delivering. Perhaps it varied monotony for
him. But those customers who were used to reading their paper early so
that they could snap up the more saucy items in the day’s news before de-
parting for their bus, train or other means of progress to the day’s work
were annoyed if the papers were late, though the middle-aged and elderly
ladies who resided peacefully in St. Mary Mead often preferred to read a
newspaper propped up on their breakfast table.
Today, Miss Marple had absorbed the front page and a few other items
in the daily paper that she had nicknamed “the Daily All-Sorts,” this being
a slightly satirical allusion to the fact that her paper, the Daily Newsgiver,
owing to a change of proprietor, to her own and to other of her friends’
great annoyance, now provided articles on men’s tailoring, women’s
dress, female heartthrobs, competitions for children, and complaining let-
ters from women and had managed pretty well to shove any real news off
any part of it but the front page, or to some obscure corner where it was
impossible to find it. Miss Marple, being old- fashioned, preferred her
newspapers to be newspapers and give you news.
In the afternoon, having finished her luncheon, treated herself to
twenty minutes’ nap in a specially purchased, upright armchair which
catered for the demands of her rheumatic back, she had opened The
Times, which lent itself still to a more leisurely perusal. Not that The Times
was what it used to be. The maddening thing about The Times was that
you couldn’t find anything anymore. Instead of going through from the
front page and knowing where everything else was so that you passed eas-
ily to any special articles on subjects in which you were interested, there
were now extraordinary interruptions to this time-honoured programme.
Two pages were suddenly devoted to travel in Capri with illustrations.
Sport appeared with far more prominence than it had ever had in the old
days. Court news and obituaries were a little more faithful to routine. The
births, marriages and deaths which had at one time occupied Miss
Marple’s attention first of all owing to their prominent position had mi-
grated to a different part of The Times, though of late, Miss Marple noted,
they had come almost permanently to rest on the back page.
Miss Marple gave her attention first to the main news on the front page.
She did not linger long on that because it was equivalent to what she had
already read this morning, though possibly couched in a slightly more dig-
nified manner. She cast her eye down the table of contents. Articles, com-
ments, science, sport; then she pursued her usual plan, turned the paper
over and had a quick run down the births, marriages and deaths, after
which she proposed to turn to the page given to correspondence, where
she nearly always found something to enjoy; from that she passed on to
the Court Circular, on which page today’s news from the Sale Rooms could
also be found. A short article on Science was often placed there but she
did not propose to read that. It seldom made sense for her.
Having turned the paper over as usual to the births, marriages and
deaths, Miss Marple thought to herself, as so often before,
“It’s sad really, but nowadays one is only interested in the deaths!”
People had babies, but the people who had babies were not likely to be
even known by name to Miss Marple. If there had been a column dealing
with babies labelled as grandchildren, there might have been some
chance of a pleasurable recognition. She might have thought to herself,
“Really, Mary Prendergast has had a third granddaughter!,” though even
that perhaps might have been a bit remote.
She skimmed down Marriages, also with not a very close survey, be-
cause most of her old friends’ daughters or sons had married some years
ago already. She came to the Deaths column, and gave that her more seri-
ous attention. Gave it enough, in fact, so as to be sure she would not miss a
name. Alloway, Angopastro, Arden, Barton, Bedshaw, Burgoweisser —
(dear me, what a German name, but he seemed to be late of Leeds). Car-
penter, Camperdown, Clegg. Clegg? Now was that one of the Cleggs she
knew? No, it didn’t seem to be. Janet Clegg. Somewhere in Yorkshire. Mc-
Donald, McKenzie, Nicholson. Nicholson? No. Again not a Nicholson she
knew. Ogg, Ormerod—that must be one of the aunts, she thought. Yes,
probably so. Linda Ormerod. No, she hadn’t known her. Quantril? Dear
me, that must be Elizabeth Quantril. Eighty- five. Well, really! She had
thought Elizabeth Quantril had died some years ago. Fancy her having
lived so long! So delicate she’d always been, too. Nobody had expected her
to make old bones. Race, Radley, Rafiel. Rafiel? Something stirred. That
name was familiar. Rafiel. Belford Park, Maidstone. Belford Park, Maid-
stone. No, she couldn’t recall that address. No flowers. Jason Rafiel. Oh
well, an unusual name. She supposed she’d just heard it somewhere. Ross-
Perkins. Now that might be—no, it wasn’t. Ryland? Emily Ryland. No. No,
she’d never known an Emily Ryland. Deeply loved by her husband and chil-
dren. Well, very nice or very sad. Whichever way you liked to look at it.
Miss Marple laid down her paper, glancing idly through the crossword
while she puzzled to remember why the name Rafiel was familiar to her.
“It will come to me,” said Miss Marple, knowing from long experience
the way old people’s memories worked.
“It’ll come to me, I have no doubt.”
She glanced out of the window towards the garden, withdrew her gaze
and tried to put the garden out of her mind. Her garden had been the
source of great pleasure and also a great deal of hard work to Miss Marple
for many, many years. And now, owing to the fussiness of doctors, work-
ing in the garden was forbidden to her. She’d once tried to fight this ban,
but had come to the conclusion that she had, after all, better do as she was
told. She had arranged her chair at such an angle as not to be easy to look
out in the garden unless she definitely and clearly wished to see some-
thing in particular. She sighed, picked up her knitting bag and took out a
small child’s woolly jacket in process of coming to a conclusion. The back
was done and the front. Now she would have to get on with the sleeves.
Sleeves were always boring. Two sleeves, both alike. Yes, very boring.
Pretty coloured pink wool, however. Pink wool. Now wait a minute, where
did that fit in? Yes—yes—it fitted in with that name she’d just read in the
paper. Pink wool. A blue sea. A Caribbean sea. A sandy beach. Sunshine.
Herself knitting and—why, of course, Mr. Rafiel. That trip she had made to
the Caribbean. The island of St. Honoré. A treat from her nephew Ray-
mond. And she remembered Joan, her niece-in-law, Raymond’s wife, say-
ing:
“Don’t get mixed up in any more murders, Aunt Jane. It isn’t good for
you.”
Well, she hadn’t wished to get mixed up in any murders, but it just
happened. That was all. Simply because of an elderly Major with a glass
eye who had insisted on telling her some very long and boring stories.
Poor Major—now what was his name? She’d forgotten that now. Mr. Rafiel
and his secretary, Mrs.—Mrs. Walters, yes, Esther Walters, and his mas-
seur-attendant, Jackson. It all came back. Well, well. Poor Mr. Rafiel. So
Mr. Rafiel was dead. He had known he was going to die before very long.
He had practically told her so. It seemed as though he had lasted longer
than the doctors had thought. He was a strong man, an obstinate man—a
very rich man.
Miss Marple remained in thought, her knitting needles working regu-
larly, but her mind not really on her knitting. Her mind was on the late
Mr. Rafiel, and remembering what she could remember about him. Not an
easy man to forget, really. She could conjure his appearance up mentally
quite well. Yes, a very definite personality, a difficult man, an irritable
man, shockingly rude sometimes. Nobody ever resented his being rude,
though. She remembered that also. They didn’t resent his being rude be-
cause he was so rich. Yes, he had been very rich. He had had his secretary
with him and a valet attendant, a qualified masseur. He had not been able
to get about very well without help.
Rather a doubtful character that nurse-attendant had been, Miss Marple
thought. Mr. Rafiel had been very rude to him sometimes. He had never
seemed to mind. And that, again, of course was because Mr. Rafiel was so
rich.
“Nobody else would pay him half what I do,” Mr. Rafiel had said, “and
he knows it. He’s good at his job, though.”
Miss Marple wondered whether Jackson?—Johnson? had stayed on with
Mr. Rafiel. Stayed on for what must have been—another year? A year and
three or four months. She thought probably not. Mr. Rafiel was one who
liked a change. He got tired of people, tired of their ways, tired of their
faces, tired of their voices.
Miss Marple understood that. She had felt the same sometimes. That
companion of hers, that nice, attentive, maddening woman with her coo-
ing voice.
“Ah,” said Miss Marple, “what a change for the better since—” oh dear,
she’d forgotten her name now—Miss—Miss Bishop?—no, not Miss Bishop.
Oh dear, how difficult it was.
Her mind went back to Mr. Rafiel and to—no, it wasn’t Johnson, it had
been Jackson, Arthur Jackson.
“Oh, dear,” said Miss Marple again, “I always get all the names wrong.
And of course, it was Miss Knight I was thinking of. Not Miss Bishop. Why
do I think of her as Miss Bishop?” The answer came to her. Chess, of
course. A chess piece. A knight. A bishop.
“I shall be calling her Miss Castle next time I think of her, I suppose, or
Miss Rook. Though, really, she’s not the sort of person who would ever
rook anybody. No, indeed. And now what was the name of that nice sec-
retary that Mr. Rafiel had. Oh yes, Esther Walters. That was right. I won-
der what has happened to Esther Walters? She’d inherited money? She
would probably inherit money now.”
Mr. Rafiel, she remembered, had told her something about that, or she
had—oh, dear, what a muddle things were when you tried to remember
with any kind of exactitude. Esther Walters. It had hit her badly, that busi-
ness in the Caribbean, but she would have got over it. She’d been a widow,
hadn’t she? Miss Marple hoped that Esther Walters had married again,
some nice, kindly, reliable man. It seemed faintly unlikely. Esther Walters,
she thought, had had rather a genius for liking the wrong kind of men to
marry.
Miss Marple went back to thinking about Mr. Rafiel. No flowers, it had
said. Not that she herself would have dreamed of sending flowers to Mr.
Rafiel. He could buy up all the nurseries in England if he’d wanted to. And
anyway, they hadn’t been on those terms. They hadn’t been—friends, or
on terms of affection. They had been—what was the word she wanted?—
allies. Yes, they had been allies for a very short time. A very exciting time.
And he had been an ally worth having. She had known so. She’d known it
as she had gone running through a dark, tropical night in the Caribbean
and had come to him. Yes, she remembered, she’d been wearing that pink
wool—what used they to call them when she was young?—a fascinator.
That nice pink wool kind of shawl-scarf that she’d put round her head,
and he had looked at her and laughed, and later when she had said—she
smiled at the remembrance—one word she had used and he had laughed,
but he hadn’t laughed in the end. No, he’d done what she asked him and
therefore—“Ah!” Miss Marple sighed, it had been, she had to admit it, all
very exciting. And she’d never told her nephew or dear Joan about it be-
cause, after all, it was what they’d told her not to do, wasn’t it? Miss
Marple nodded her head. Then she murmured softly,
“Poor Mr. Rafiel, I hope he didn’t—suffer.”
Probably not. Probably he’d been kept by expensive doctors under sed-
atives, easing the end. He had suffered a great deal in those weeks in the
Caribbean. He’d nearly always been in pain. A brave man.
A brave man. She was sorry he was dead because she thought that
though he’d been elderly and an invalid and ill, the world had lost some-
thing through his going. She had no idea what he could have been like in
business. Ruthless, she thought, and rude and overmastering and aggress-
ive. A great attacker. But—but a good friend, she thought. And somewhere
in him a deep kind of kindness that he was very careful never to show on
the surface. A man she admired and respected. Well, she was sorry he was
gone and she hoped he hadn’t minded too much and that his passing had
been easy. And now he would be cremated no doubt and put in some
large, handsome marble vault. She didn’t even know if he’d been married.
He had never mentioned a wife, never mentioned children. A lonely man?
Or had his life been so full that he hadn’t needed to feel lonely? She
wondered.
She sat there quite a long time that afternoon, wondering about Mr.
Rafiel. She had never expected to see him again after she had returned to
England and she never had seen him again. Yet in some queer way she
could at any moment have felt she was in touch with him. If he had ap-
proached her or had suggested that they meet again, feeling perhaps a
bond because of a life that had been saved between them, or of some
other bond. A bond—
“Surely,” said Miss Marple, aghast at an idea that had come into her
mind, “there can’t be a bond of ruthlessness between us?” Was she, Jane
Marple—could she ever be—ruthless? “D’you know,” said Miss Marple to
herself, “it’s extraordinary, I never thought about it before. I believe, you
know, I could be ruthless….”
The door opened and a dark, curly head was popped in. It was Cherry,
the welcome successor to Miss Bishop—Miss Knight.
“Did you say something?” said Cherry.
“I was speaking to myself,” said Miss Marple, “I just wondered if I could
ever be ruthless.”
“What, you?” said Cherry. “Never! You’re kindness itself.”
“All the same,” said Miss Marple, “I believe I could be ruthless if there
was due cause.”
“What would you call due cause?”
“In the cause of justice,” said Miss Marple.
“You did have it in for little Gary Hopkins I must say,” said Cherry.
“When you caught him torturing his cat that day. Never knew you had it
in you to go for anyone like that! Scared him stiff, you did. He’s never for-
gotten it.”
“I hope he hasn’t tortured anymore cats.”
“Well, he’s made sure you weren’t about if he did,” said Cherry. “In fact
I’m not at all sure as there isn’t other boys as got scared. Seeing you with
your wool and the pretty things you knits and all that—anyone would
think you were gentle as a lamb. But there’s times I could say you’d be-
have like a lion if you was goaded into it.”
Miss Marple looked a little doubtful. She could not quite see herself in
the rôle in which Cherry was now casting her. Had she ever—she paused
on the reflection, recalling various moments—there had been intense irrit-
ation with Miss Bishop—Knight. (Really, she must not forget names in this
way.) But her irritation had shown itself in more or less ironical remarks.
Lions, presumably, did not use irony. There was nothing ironical about a
lion. It sprang. It roared. It used its claws, presumably it took large bites at
its prey.
“Really,” said Miss Marple, “I don’t think I have ever behaved quite like
that.”
Walking slowly along her garden that evening with the usual feelings of
vexation rising in her, Miss Marple considered the point again. Possibly
the sight of a plant of snapdragons recalled it to her mind. Really, she had
told old George again and again that she only wanted sulphur-coloured
antirrhinums, not that rather ugly purple shade that gardeners always
seemed so fond of. “Sulphur yellow,” said Miss Marple aloud.
Someone the other side of the railing that abutted on the lane past her
house turned her head and spoke.
“I beg your pardon? You said something?”
“I was talking to myself, I’m afraid,” said Miss Marple, turning to look
over the railing.
This was someone she did not know, and she knew most people in St.
Mary Mead. Knew them by sight even if not personally. It was a thickset
woman in a shabby but tough tweed skirt, and wearing good country
shoes. She wore an emerald pullover and a knitted woollen scarf.
“I’m afraid one does at my age,” added Miss Marple.
“Nice garden you’ve got here,” said the other woman.
“Not particularly nice now,” said Miss Marple. “When I could attend to it
myself—”
“Oh I know. I understand just what you feel. I suppose you’ve got one of
those—I have a lot of names for them, mostly very rude—elderly chaps
who say they know all about gardening. Sometimes they do, sometimes
they don’t know a thing about it. They come and have a lot of cups of tea
and do a little very mild weeding. They’re quite nice, some of them, but all
the same it does make one’s temper rise.” She added, “I’m quite a keen
gardener myself.”
“Do you live here?” asked Miss Marple, with some interest.
“Well, I’m boarding with a Mrs. Hastings. I think I’ve heard her speak of
you. You’re Miss Marple, aren’t you?”
“Oh yes.”
“I’ve come as a sort of companion-gardener. My name is Bartlett, by the
way. Miss Bartlett. There’s not really much to do there,” said Miss Bartlett.
“She goes in for annuals and all that. Nothing you can really get your teeth
into.” She opened her mouth and showed her teeth when making this re-
mark. “Of course I do a few odd jobs as well. Shopping, you know, and
things like that. Anyway, if you want any time put in here, I could put in
an hour or two for you. I’d say I might be better than any chap you’ve got
now.”
“That would be easy,” said Miss Marple. “I like flowers best. Don’t care
so much for vegetables.”
“I do vegetables for Mrs. Hastings. Dull but necessary. Well, I’ll be get-
ting along.” Her eyes swept over Miss Marple from head to foot, as though
memorizing her, then she nodded cheerfully and tramped off.
Mrs. Hastings? Miss Marple couldn’t remember the name of any Mrs.
Hastings. Certainly Mrs. Hastings was not an old friend. She had certainly
never been a gardening chum. Ah, of course, it was probably those newly
built houses at the end of Gibraltar Road. Several families had moved in in
the last year. Miss Marple sighed, looked again with annoyance at the an-
tirrhinums, saw several weeds which she yearned to root up, one or two
exuberant suckers she would like to attack with her secateurs, and finally,
sighing, and manfully resisting temptation, she made a detour round by
the lane and returned to her house. Her mind recurred again to Mr. Rafiel.
They had been, he and she—what was the title of that book they used to
quote so much when she was young? Ships that pass in the night. Rather
apt it was really, when she came to think of it. Ships that pass in the night
… It was in the night that she had gone to him to ask—no, to demand—
help. To insist, to say no time must be lost. And he had agreed, and put
things in train at once! Perhaps she had been rather lionlike on that occa-
sion? No. No, that was quite wrong. It had not been anger she had felt. It
had been insistence on something that was absolutely imperative to be put
in hand at once. And he’d understood.
Poor Mr. Rafiel. The ship that had passed in the night had been an inter-
esting ship. Once you got used to his being rude, he might have been quite
an agreeable man? No! She shook her head. Mr. Rafiel could never have
been an agreeable man. Well, she must put Mr. Rafiel out of her head.
Ships that pass in the night, and speak each other in
passing;
Only a signal shown and a distant voice in the darkness.
She would probably never think of him again. She would look out perhaps
to see if there was an obituary of him in The Times. But she did not think it
was very likely. He was not a very well known character, she thought. Not
famous. He had just been very rich. Of course, many people did have obit-
uaries in the paper just because they were very rich; but she thought that
Mr. Rafiel’s richness would possibly not have been of that kind. He had
not been prominent in any great industry, he had not been a great finan-
cial genius, or a noteworthy banker. He had just all his life made enorm-
ous amounts of money….
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