复仇女神24
时间：2026-01-29 07:21:56
（单词翻译:单击）
Twelve
A CONSULTATION
“I’m not going to make a long story of things. I’ll explain quite simply how
I came into this matter. I act as confidential adviser from time to time for
the Home Office. I am also in touch with certain institutions. There are
certain establishments which, in the event of crime, provide board and
lodging for certain types of criminal who have been found guilty of cer-
tain acts. They remain there at what is termed Her Majesty’s pleasure,
sometimes for a definite length of time and in direct association with their
age. If they are below a certain age they have to be received in some place
of detention specially indicated. You understand that, no doubt.”
“Yes, I understand quite well what you mean.”
“Usually I am consulted fairly soon after whatever the—shall we call it—
crime has happened, to judge such matters as treatment, possibilities in
the case, prognosis favourable or unfavourable, all the various words.
They do not mean much and I will not go into them. But occasionally also I
am consulted by a responsible Head of such an institution for a particular
reason. In this matter I received a communication from a certain Depart-
ment which was passed to me through the Home Office. I went to visit the
Head of this institution. In fact, the Governor responsible for the prisoners
or patients or whatever you like to call them. He was by way of being a
friend of mine. A friend of fairly long standing though not one with whom
I was on terms of great intimacy. I went down to the institution in ques-
tion and the Governor laid his troubles before me. They referred to one
particular inmate. He was not satisfied about this inmate. He had certain
doubts. This was the case of a young man or one who had been a young
man, in fact little more than a boy, when he came there. That was now
several years ago. As time went on, and after the present Governor had
taken up his own residence there (he had not been there at the original ar-
rival of this prisoner), he became worried. Not because he himself was a
professional man, but because he was a man of experience of criminal pa-
tients and prisoners. To put it quite simply, this had been a boy who from
his early youth had been completely unsatisfactory. You can call it by
what term you like. A young delinquent, a young thug, a bad lot, a person
of diminished responsibility. There are many terms. Some of them fit,
some of them don’t fit, some of them are merely puzzling. He was a crim-
inal type. That was certain. He had joined gangs, he had beaten up people,
he was a thief, he had stolen, he had embezzled, he had taken part in
swindles, he had initiated certain frauds. In fact, he was a son who would
be any father’s despair.”
“Oh, I see,” said Miss Marple.
“And what do you see, Miss Marple?”
“Well, what I think I see is that you are talking of Mr. Rafiel’s son.”
“You are quite right. I am talking of Mr. Rafiel’s son. What do you know
about him?”
“Nothing,” said Miss Marple. “I only heard—and that was yesterday—
that Mr. Rafiel had a delinquent, or unsatisfactory, if we like to put it
mildly, son. A son with a criminal record. I know very little about him.
Was he Mr. Rafiel’s only son?”
“Yes, he was Mr. Rafiel’s only son. But Mr. Rafiel also had two daughters.
One of them died when she was fourteen, the elder daughter married
quite happily but had no children.”
“Very sad for him.”
“Possibly,” said Professor Wanstead. “One never knows. His wife died
young and I think it possible that her death saddened him very much,
though he was never willing to show it. How much he cared for his son
and daughters I don’t know. He provided for them. He did his best for
them. He did his best for his son, but what his feelings were one cannot
say. He was not an easy man to read that way. I think his whole life and
interest lay in his profession of making money. It was the making of it, like
all great financiers, that interested him. Not the actual money which he se-
cured by it. That, as you might say, was sent out like a good servant to
earn more money in more interesting and unexpected ways. He enjoyed
finance. He loved finance. He thought of very little else.
“I think he did all that was possible for his son. He got him out of
scrapes at school, he employed good lawyers to get him released from
Court proceedings whenever possible, but the final blow came, perhaps
presaged by some early happenings. The boy was taken to Court on a
charge of assault against a young girl. It was said to be assault and rape
and he suffered a term of imprisonment for it, with some leniency shown
because of his youth. But later, a second and really serious charge was
brought against him.”
“He killed a girl,” said Miss Marple. “Is that right? That’s what I heard.”
“He lured a girl away from her home. It was some time before her body
was found. She had been strangled. And afterwards her face and head had
been disfigured by some heavy stones or rocks, presumably to prevent her
identity being made known.”
“Not a very nice business,” said Miss Marple, in her most old-ladylike
tone.
Professor Wanstead looked at her for a moment or two.
“You describe it that way?”
“It is how it seems to me,” said Miss Marple. “I don’t like that sort of
thing. I never have. If you expect me to feel sympathy, regret, urge an un-
happy childhood, blame bad environment; if you expect me in fact to
weep over him, this young murderer of yours, I do not feel inclined so to
do. I do not like evil beings who do evil things.”
“I am delighted to hear it,” said Professor Wanstead. “What I suffer in
the course of my profession from people weeping and gnashing their
teeth, and blaming everything on some happening in the past, you would
hardly believe. If people knew the bad environments that people have
had, the unkindness, the difficulties of their lives and the fact that never-
theless they can come through unscathed, I don’t think they would so of-
ten take the opposite point of view. The misfits are to be pitied, yes, they
are to be pitied if I may say so for the genes with which they are born and
over which they have no control themselves. I pity epileptics in the same
way. If you know what genes are—”
“I know, more or less,” said Miss Marple. “It’s common knowledge
nowadays, though naturally I have no exact chemical or technical know-
ledge.”
“The Governor, a man of experience, told me exactly why he was so
anxious to have my verdict. He had felt increasingly in his experience of
this particular inmate that, in plain words, the boy was not a killer. He
didn’t think he was the type of a killer, he was like no killer he had ever
seen before, he was of the opinion that the boy was the kind of criminal
type who would never go straight no matter what treatment was given to
him, would never reform himself; and for whom nothing in one sense of
the word could be done, but at the same time he felt increasingly certain
that the verdict upon him had been a wrong one. He did not believe that
the boy had killed a girl, first strangled her and then disfigured her after
rolling her body into a ditch. He just couldn’t bring himself to believe it.
He’d looked over the facts of the case, which seemed to be fully proved.
This boy had known the girl, he had been seen with her on several differ-
ent occasions before the crime. They had presumably slept together and
there were other points. His car had been seen in the neighbourhood. He
himself had been recognized and all the rest of it. A perfectly fair case. But
my friend was unhappy about it, he said. He was a man who had a very
strong feeling for justice. He wanted a different opinion. He wanted, in
fact, not the police side which he knew, he wanted a professional medical
view. That was my field, he said. My line of country entirely. He wanted
me to see this young man and talk with him, visit him, make a profes-
sional appraisal of him and give him my opinion.”
“Very interesting,” said Miss Marple. “Yes, I call that very interesting.
After all, your friend—I mean your Governor—was a man of experience, a
man who loved justice. He was a man whom you’d be willing to listen to.
Presumably then, you did listen to him.”
“Yes,” said Professor Wanstead, “I was deeply interested. I saw the sub-
ject, as I will call him, I approached him from several different attitudes. I
talked to him, I discussed various changes likely to occur in the law. I told
him it might be possible to bring down a lawyer, a Queen’s Counsel, to see
what points there might be in his favour, and other things. I approached
him as a friend but also as an enemy so that I could see how he responded
to different approaches, and I also made a good many physical tests, such
as we use very frequently nowadays. I will not go into those with you be-
cause they are wholly technical.”
“Then what did you think in the end?”
“I thought,” said Professor Wanstead, “I thought my friend was likely to
be right. I did not think that Michael Rafiel was a murderer.”
“What about the earlier case you mentioned?”
“That told against him, of course. Not in the jury’s mind, because of
course they did not hear about that until after the judge’s summing up, but
certainly in the judge’s mind. It told against him, but I made a few enquir-
ies myself afterwards. He had assaulted a girl. He had conceivably raped
her, but he had not attempted to strangle her and in my opinion—I have
seen a great many cases which come before the Assizes—it seemed to me
highly unlikely that there was a very definite case of rape. Girls, you must
remember, are far more ready to be raped nowadays than they used to be.
Their mothers insist, very often, that they should call it rape. The girl in
question had had several boyfriends who had gone further than friend-
ship. I did not think it counted very greatly as evidence against him. The
actual murder case—yes, that was undoubtedly murder—but I continued
to feel by all tests, physical tests, mental tests, psychological tests, none of
them accorded with this particular crime.”
“Then what did you do?”
“I communicated with Mr. Rafiel. I told him that I would like an inter-
view with him on a certain matter concerning his son. I went to him. I told
him what I thought, what the Governor thought, that we had no evidence,
that there were no grounds of appeal, at present, but that we both be-
lieved that a miscarriage of justice had been committed. I said I thought
possibly an enquiry might be held, it might be an expensive business, it
might bring out certain facts that could be laid before the Home Office, it
might be successful, it might not. There might be something there, some
evidence if you looked for it. I said it would be expensive to look for it but
I presumed that would make no difference to anyone in his position. I had
realized by that time that he was a sick man, a very ill man. He told me so
himself. He told me that he had been in expectation of an early death, that
he’d been warned two years ago that death could not be delayed for what
they first thought was about a year, but later they realized that he would
last rather longer because of his unusual physical strength. I asked him
what he felt about his son.”
“And what did he feel about his son?” said Miss Marple.
“Ah, you want to know that. So did I. He was, I think, extremely honest
with me even if—”
“—even if rather ruthless?” said Miss Marple.
“Yes, Miss Marple. You are using the right word. He was a ruthless man,
but he was a just man and an honest man. He said, ‘I’ve known what my
son was like for many years. I have not tried to change him because I
don’t believe that anyone could change him. He is made a certain way. He
is crooked. He’s a bad lot. He’ll always be in trouble. He’s dishonest.
Nobody, nothing could make him go straight. I am well assured of that. I
have in a sense washed my hands of him. Though not legally or out-
wardly; he has always had money if he required it. Help legal or otherwise
if he gets into trouble. I have done always what I could do. Well, let us say
if I had a son who was a spastic who was sick, who was epileptic, I would
do what I could for him. If you have a son who is sick morally, shall we
say, and for whom there is no cure, I have done what I could also. No
more and no less. What can I do for him now?’ I told him that it depended
what he wanted to do. ‘There’s no difficulty about that,’ he said. ‘I am han-
dicapped but I can see quite clearly what I want to do. I want to get him
vindicated. I want to get him released from confinement. I want to get him
free to continue to lead his own life as best he can lead it. If he must lead it
in further dishonesties, then he must lead it that way. I will leave provi-
sion for him, to do for him everything that can be done. I don’t want him
suffering, imprisoned, cut off from his life because of a perfectly natural
and unfortunate mistake. If somebody else, some other man killed that
girl, I want the fact brought to light and recognized. I want justice for Mi-
chael. But I am handicapped. I am a very ill man. My time is measured
now not in years or months but in weeks.’
“Lawyers, I suggested—I know a firm—He cut me short. ‘Your lawyers
will be useless. You can employ them but they will be useless. I must ar-
range what I can arrange in such a limited time.’ He offered me a large fee
to undertake the search for the truth and to undertake everything possible
with no expense spared. ‘I can do next to nothing myself. Death may come
at any moment. I empower you as my chief help, and to assist you at my
request I will try to find a certain person.’ He wrote down a name for me.
Miss Jane Marple. He said ‘I don’t want to give you her address. I want you
to meet her in surroundings of my own choosing,’ and he then told me of
this tour, this charming, harmless, innocent tour of historic houses, castles
and gardens. He would provide me with a reservation on it ahead for a
certain date. ‘Miss Jane Marple,’ he said, ‘will also be on that tour. You will
meet her there, you will encounter her casually, and thus it will be seen
clearly to be a casual meeting.’
“I was to choose my own time and moment to make myself known to
you if I thought that that would be the better way. You have already asked
me if I or my friend, the Governor, had any reason to suspect or know of
any other person who might have been guilty of the murder. My friend
the Governor certainly suggested nothing of the kind, and he had already
taken up the matter with the police officer who had been in charge of the
case. A most reliable detective-superintendent with very good experience
in these matters.”
“No other man was suggested? No other friend of the girl’s? No other
former friend who might have been supplanted?”
“There was nothing of that kind to find. I asked him to tell me a little
about you. He did not however consent to do so. He told me you were eld-
erly. He told me that you were a person who knew about people. He told
me one other thing.” He paused.
“What’s the other thing?” said Miss Marple. “I have some natural curios-
ity, you know. I really can’t think of any other advantage I conceivably
could have. I am slightly deaf. My eyesight is not quite as good as it used to
be. I cannot really think that I have any advantages beyond the fact that I
may, I suppose, seem rather foolish and simple, and am in fact, what used
to be called in rather earlier days an ‘old pussy.’ I am an old pussy. Is that
the sort of thing he said?”
“No,” said Professor Wanstead. “What he said was he thought you had a
very fine sense of evil.”
“Oh,” said Miss Marple. She was taken aback.
Professor Wanstead was watching her.
“Would you say that was true?” he said.
Miss Marple was quiet for quite a long time. At last she said,
“Perhaps it is. Yes, perhaps. I have at several different times in my life
been apprehensive, have recognized that there was evil in the neighbour-
hood, the surroundings, that the environment of someone who was evil
was near me, connected with what was happening.”
She looked at him suddenly and smiled.
“It’s rather, you know,” she said, “like being born with a very keen sense
of smell. You can smell a leak of gas when other people can’t do so. You
can distinguish one perfume from another very easily. I had an aunt
once,” continued Miss Marple thoughtfully, “who said she could smell
when people told a lie. She said there was quite a distinctive odour came
to her. Their noses twitched, she said, and then the smell came. I don’t
know if it was true or not, but—well, on several occasions she was quite
remarkable. She said to my uncle once, ‘Don’t, Jack, engage that young
man you were talking to this morning. He was telling you lies the whole
time he was talking.’ That turned out to be quite true.”
“A sense of evil,” said Professor Wanstead. “Well, if you do sense evil,
tell me. I shall be glad to know. I don’t think I have a particular sense of
evil myself. Ill health, yes, but not—not evil up here.” He tapped his fore-
head.
“I’d better tell you briefly how I came into things now,” said Miss
Marple. “Mr. Rafiel, as you know, died. His lawyers asked me to come and
see them, apprised me of his proposition. I received a letter from him
which explained nothing. After that I heard nothing more for some little
time. Then I got a letter from the company who run these tours saying that
Mr. Rafiel before his death had made a reservation for me knowing that I
should enjoy a trip very much, and wanting to give it me as a surprise
present. I was very astonished but took it as an indication of the first step
that I was to undertake. I was to go on this tour and presumably in the
course of the tour some other indication or hint or clue or direction would
come to me. I think it did. Yesterday, no, the day before, I was received on
my arrival here by three ladies who live at an old manor house here and
who very kindly extended an invitation to me. They had heard from Mr.
Rafiel, they said, who had written some time before his death, saying that
a very old friend of his would be coming on this tour and would they be
kind enough to put her up for two or three days as he thought she was not
fit to attempt the particular ascent of this rather difficult climb up the
headland to where there was a memorial tower which was the principal
event of yesterday’s tour.”
“And you took that also as an indication of what you were to do?”
“Of course,” said Miss Marple. “There can be no other reason for it. He
was not a man to shower benefits for nothing, out of compassion for an
old lady who wasn’t good at walking up hills. No. He wanted me to go
there.”
“And you went there? And what then?”
“Nothing,” said Miss Marple. “Three sisters.”
“Three weird sisters?”
“They ought to have been,” said Miss Marple, “but I don’t think they
were. They didn’t seem to be anyway. I don’t know yet. I suppose they
may have been—they may be, I mean. They seem ordinary enough. They
didn’t belong to this house. It had belonged to an uncle of theirs and
they’d come here to live some years ago. They are in rather poor circum-
stances, they are amiable, not particularly interesting. All slightly different
in type. They do not appear to have been well acquainted with Mr. Rafiel.
Any conversation I have had with them appears to yield nothing.”
“So you learnt nothing during your stay?”
“I learnt the facts of the case you’ve just told me. Not from them. From
an elderly servant, who started her reminiscences dating back to the time
of the uncle. She knew of Mr. Rafiel only as a name. But she was eloquent
on the theme of the murder: it had all started with the visit here of a son
of Mr. Rafiel’s who was a bad lot, of how the girl had fallen in love with
him and that he’d strangled the girl, and how sad and tragic and terrible it
all was. ‘With bells on,’ as you might say,” said Miss Marple, using a
phrase of her youth. “Plenty of exaggeration, but it was a nasty story, and
she seemed to believe that the police view was that this hadn’t been his
only murder—”
“It didn’t seem to you to connect up with the three weird sisters?”
“No, only that they’d been the guardians of the girl—and had loved her
dearly. No more than that.”
“They might know something—something about another man?”
“Yes—that’s what we want, isn’t it? The other man—a man of brutality,
who wouldn’t hesitate to bash in a girl’s head after he’d killed her. The
kind of man who could be driven frantic with jealousy. There are men like
that.”
“No other curious things happened at The Old Manor?”
“Not really. One of the sisters, the youngest I think, kept talking about
the garden. She sounded as though she was a very keen gardener, but she
couldn’t be because she didn’t know the names of half the things. I laid a
trap or two for her, mentioning special rare shrubs and saying did she
know it? and yes, she said, wasn’t it a wonderful plant? I said it was not
very hardy and she agreed. But she didn’t know anything about plants.
That reminds me—”
“Reminds you of what?”
“Well, you’ll think I’m just silly about gardens and plants, but I mean
one does know things about them. I mean, I know a few things about birds
and I know some things about gardens.”
“And I gather that it’s not birds but gardens that are troubling you.”
“Yes. Have you noticed two middle-aged women on this tour? Miss Bar-
row and Miss Cooke.”
“Yes. I’ve noticed them. Pair of middle- aged spinsters travelling to-
gether.”
“That’s right. Well, I’ve found out something odd about Miss Cooke. That
is her name, isn’t it? I mean it’s her name on the tour.”
“Why—has she got another name?”
“I think so. She’s the same person who visited me—I won’t say visited
me exactly, but she was outside my garden fence in St. Mary Mead, the vil-
lage where I live. She expressed pleasure at my garden and talked about
gardening with me. Told me she was living in the village and working in
somebody’s garden, who’d moved into a new house there. I rather think,”
said Miss Marple, “yes, I rather think that the whole thing was lies. There
again, she knew nothing about gardening. She pretended to but it wasn’t
true.”
“Why do you think she came there?”
“I’d no idea at the time. She said her name was Bartlett—and the name
of the woman she said she was living with began with ‘H,’ though I can’t
remember it for the moment. Her hair was not only differently done but it
was a different colour and her clothes were of a different style. I didn’t re-
cognize her at first on this trip. Just wondered why her face was vaguely
familiar. And then suddenly it came to me. Because of the dyed hair. I said
where I had seen her before. She admitted that she’d been there—but pre-
tended that she, too, hadn’t recognized me. All lies.”
“And what’s your opinion about all that?”
“Well, one thing certainly—Miss Cooke (to give her her present name)
came to St. Mary Mead just to have a look at me—so that she’d be quite
sure to be able to recognize me when we met again—”
“And why was that felt to be necessary?”
“I don’t know. There are two possibilities. I’m not sure that I like one of
them very much.”
“I don’t know,” said Professor Wanstead, “that I like it very much
either.”
They were both silent for a minute or two, and then Professor Wanstead
said—
“I don’t like what happened to Elizabeth Temple. You’ve talked to her
during this trip?”
“Yes, I have. When she’s better I’d like to talk to her again—she could
tell me—us—things about the girl who was murdered. She spoke to me of
this girl—who had been at her school, who had been going to marry Mr.
Rafiel’s son—but didn’t marry him. Instead she died. I asked how or why
she died—and she answered with the word ‘Love.’ I took it as meaning a
suicide—but it was murder. Murder through jealousy would fit. Another
man. Some other man we’ve got to find. Miss Temple may be able to tell us
who he was.”
“No other sinister possibilities?”
“I think, really, it is casual information we need. I see no reason to be-
lieve that there is any sinister suggestion in any of the coach passengers—
or any sinister suggestion about the people living in The Old Manor House.
But one of those three sisters may have known or remembered something
that the girl or Michael once said. Clotilde used to take the girl abroad.
Therefore, she may know of something that occurred on some foreign trip
perhaps. Something that the girl said or mentioned or did on some trip.
Some man that the girl met. Something which has nothing to do with The
Old Manor House here. It is difficult because only by talking, by casual in-
formation, can you get any clue. The second sister, Mrs. Glynne, married
fairly early, has spent time, I gather, in India and in Africa. She may have
heard of something through her husband, or through her husband’s rela-
tions, through various things that are unconnected with The Old Manor
House here although she has visited it from time to time. She knew the
murdered girl presumably, but I should think she knew her much less
well than the other two. But that does not mean that she may not know
some significant facts about the girl. The third sister is more scatty, more
localized, does not seem to have known the girl as well. But still, she too
may have information about possible lovers—or boyfriends—seen the girl
with an unknown man. That’s her, by the way, passing the hotel now.”
Miss Marple, however occupied by her tête-à-tête, had not relinquished
the habits of a lifetime. A public thoroughfare was always to her an obser-
vation post. All the passersby, either loitering or hurrying, had been no-
ticed automatically.
“Anthea Bradbury-Scott—the one with the big parcel. She’s going to the
post office, I suppose. It’s just round the corner, isn’t it?”
“Looks a bit daft to me,” said Professor Wanstead, “all that floating hair
—grey hair too—a kind of Ophelia of fifty.”
“I thought of Ophelia too, when I first saw her. Oh dear, I wish I knew
what I ought to do next. Stay here at the Golden Boar for a day or two, or
go on with the coach tour. It’s like looking for a needle in a haystack. If
you stick your fingers in it long enough, you ought to come up with some-
thing—even if one does get pricked in the process.”
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