复仇女神33
时间：2026-01-29 07:28:46
（单词翻译:单击）
II
The service took place on the following morning. All the members of the
tour were there. Miss Marple looked round the church. Several of the loc-
als were there also. Mrs. Glynne was there and her sister Clotilde. The
youngest one, Anthea, did not attend. There were one or two people from
the village also, she thought. Probably not acquainted with Miss Temple
but there out of a rather morbid curiosity in regard to what was now
spoken of by the term “foul play.” There was, too, an elderly clergyman; in
gaiters, well over seventy, Miss Marple thought, a broad-shouldered old
man with a noble mane of white hair. He was slightly crippled and found
it difficult both to kneel and to stand. It was a fine face, Miss Marple
thought, and she wondered who he was. Some old friend of Elizabeth
Temple, she presumed, who might perhaps have come from quite a long
distance to attend the service?
As they came out of the church Miss Marple exchanged a few words
with her fellow travellers. She knew now pretty well who was doing what.
The Butlers were returning to London.
“I told Henry I just couldn’t go on with it,” said Mrs. Butler. “You know—
I feel all the time that any minute just as we might be walking round a
corner, someone, you know, might shoot us or throw a stone at us.
Someone who has got a down on the Famous Houses of England.”
“Now then, Mamie, now then,” said Mr. Butler, “don’t you let your ima-
gination go as far as that!”
“Well, you just don’t know nowadays. What with hijackers about and
kidnapping and all the rest of it, I don’t feel really protected anywhere.”
Old Miss Lumley and Miss Bentham were continuing with the tour, their
anxieties allayed.
“We’ve paid very highly for this tour and it seems a pity to miss any-
thing just because this very sad accident has happened. We rang up a very
good neighbour of ours last night, and they are going to see to the cats, so
we don’t need to worry.”
It was going to remain an accident for Miss Lumley and Miss Bentham.
They had decided it was more comfortable that way.
Mrs. Riseley-Porter was also continuing on the tour. Colonel and Mrs.
Walker were resolved that nothing would make them miss seeing a partic-
ularly rare collection of fuchsias in the garden due to be visited the day
after tomorrow. The architect, Jameson, was also guided by his wish to see
various buildings of special interest for him. Mr. Caspar, however, was de-
parting by rail, he said. Miss Cooke and Miss Barrow seemed undecided.
“Pretty good walks round here,” said Miss Cooke. “I think we’ll stay at
the Golden Boar for a little. That’s what you’re going to do, isn’t it, Miss
Marple?”
“I really think so,” said Miss Marple. “I don’t feel quite equal to going on
travelling and all that. I think a day or two’s rest would be helpful to me
after what’s happened.”
As the little crowd dispersed, Miss Marple took an unostentatious route
of her own. From her handbag she took out a leaf torn from her notebook
on which she had entered two addresses. The first, a Mrs. Blackett, lived in
a neat little house and garden just by the end of the road where it sloped
down towards the valley. A small neat woman opened the door.
“Mrs. Blackett?”
“Yes, yes, ma’am, that’s my name.”
“I wonder if I might just come in and speak to you for a minute or two. I
have just been to the service and I am feeling a little giddy. If I could just
sit down for a minute or two?”
“Dear me, now, dear me. Oh, I’m sorry for that. Come right in, ma’am,
come right in. That’s right. You sit down here. Now I’ll get you a glass of
water—or maybe you’d like a pot of tea?”
“No, thank you,” said Miss Marple, “a glass of water would put me
right.”
Mrs. Blackett returned with a glass of water and a pleasurable prospect
of talking about ailments and giddiness and other things.
“You know, I’ve got a nephew like that. He oughtn’t to be at his age, he’s
not much over fifty but now and then he’ll come over giddy all of a sudden
and unless he sits down at once—why you don’t know, sometimes he’ll
pass out right on the floor. Terrible, it is. Terrible. And doctors, they don’t
seem able to do anything about it. Here’s your glass of water.”
“Ah,” said Miss Marple, sipping, “I feel much better.”
“Been to the service, have you, for the poor lady as got done in, as some
say, or accident as others. I’d say it’s accident every time. But these in-
quests and coroners, they always want to make things look criminal, they
do.”
“Oh yes,” said Miss Marple. “I’ve been so sorry to hear of a lot of things
like that in the past. I was hearing a great deal about a girl called Nora.
Nora Broad, I think.”
“Ah, Nora, yes. Well, she was my cousin’s daughter. Yes. A long while
ago, that was. Went off and never come back. These girls, there’s no hold-
ing them. I said often, I did, to Nancy Broad—that’s my cousin—I said to
her, ‘You’re out working all day’ and I said ‘What’s Nora doing? You know
she’s the kind that likes the boys. Well,’ I said, ‘there’ll be trouble. You see
if there isn’t.’ And sure enough, I was quite right.”
“You mean—?”
“Ah, the usual trouble. Yes, in the family way. Mind you, I don’t think as
my cousin Nancy knew about it yet. But of course, I’m sixty-five and I
know what’s what and I know the way a girl looks and I think I know who
it was, but I’m not sure. I might have been wrong because he went on liv-
ing in the place and he was real cut up when Nora was missing.”
“She went off, did she?”
“Well, she accepted a lift from someone—a stranger. That’s the last time
she was seen. I forget the make of the car now. Some funny name it had.
An Audit or something like that. Anyway, she’d been seen once or twice in
that car. And off she went in it. And it was said it was that same car that
the poor girl what got herself murdered used to go riding in. But I don’t
think as that happened to Nora. If Nora’d been murdered, the body would
have come to light by now. Don’t you think so?”
“It certainly seems likely,” said Miss Marple. “Was she a girl who did
well at school and all that?”
“Ah no, she wasn’t. She was idle and she wasn’t too clever at her books
either. No. She was all for the boys from the time she was twelve-years-old
onwards. I think in the end she must have gone off with someone or other
for good. But she never let anyone know. She never sent as much as a
postcard. Went off, I think, with someone as promised her things. You
know. Another girl I knew—but that was when I was young—went off
with one of them Africans. He told her as his father was a Shake. Funny
sort of word, but a shake I think it was. Anyway it was somewhere in
Africa or in Algiers. Yes, in Algiers it was. Somewhere there. And she was
going to have all sorts of wonderful things. He had six camels, the boy’s
father, she said and a whole troop of horses and she was going to live in a
wonderful house, she was, with carpets hanging up all over the walls,
which seems a funny place to put carpets. And off she went. She come
back again three years later. Yes. Terrible time, she’d had. Terrible. They
lived in a nasty little house made of earth. Yes, it was. And nothing much
to eat except what they call cos-cos which I always thought was lettuce,
but it seems it isn’t. Something more like semolina pudding. Oh terrible it
was. And in the end he said she was no good to him and he’d divorce her.
He said he’d only got to say ‘I divorce you’ three times, and he did and
walked out and somehow or other, some kind of Society out there took
charge of her and paid her fare home to England. And there she was. Ah,
but that was about thirty to forty years ago, that was. Now Nora, that was
only about seven or eight years ago. But I expect she’ll be back one of
these days, having learnt her lesson and finding out that all these fine
promises didn’t come to much.”
“Had she anyone to go to here except her—her mother—your cousin, I
mean? Anyone who—”
“Well, there’s many as was kind to her. There was the people at The Old
Manor House, you know. Mrs. Glynne wasn’t there then, but Miss Clotilde,
she was always one to be good to the girls from school. Yes, many a nice
present she’s given Nora. She gave her a very nice scarf and a pretty dress
once. Very nice, it was. A summer frock, a sort of foulard silk. Ah, she was
very kind, Miss Clotilde was. Tried to make Nora take more interest in her
schooling. Lots of things like that. Advised her against the way she was go-
ing on because, you see—well, I wouldn’t like to say it, not when she’s my
cousin’s child though, mark you, my cousin is only one who married my
boy cousin, that is to say—but I mean it was something terrible the way
she went on with all the boys. Anyone could pick her up. Real sad it is. I’d
say she’ll go on the streets in the end. I don’t believe she has any future
but that. I don’t like to say these things, but there it is. Anyway, perhaps
it’s better than getting herself murdered like Miss Hunt did, what lived at
The Old Manor House. Cruel, that was. They thought she’d gone off with
someone and the police, they was busy. Always asking questions and hav-
ing the young men who’d been with the girl up to help them with their en-
quiries and all that. Geoffrey Grant there was, Billy Thompson, and the
Landfords’ Harry. All unemployed — with plenty of jobs going if they’d
wanted to take them. Things usedn’t to be like that when I was young.
Girls behaved proper. And the boys knew they’d got to work if they
wanted to get anywhere.”
Miss Marple talked a little more, said that she was now quite restored,
thanked Mrs. Blackett, and went out.
Her next visit was to a girl who was planting out lettuces.
“Nora Broad? Oh, she hasn’t been in the village for years. Went off with
someone, she did. She was a great one for boys. I always wondered where
she’d end up. Did you want to see her for any particular reason?”
“I had a letter from a friend abroad,” said Miss Marple, untruthfully. “A
very nice family and they were thinking of engaging a Miss Nora Broad.
She’d been in some trouble, I think. Married someone who was rather a
bad lot and had left her and gone off with another woman, and she
wanted to get a job looking after children. My friend knew nothing about
her, but I gathered she came from this village. So I wondered if there was
anyone here who could—well, tell me something about her. You went to
school with her, I understand?”
“Oh yes, we were in the same class, we were. Mind you, I didn’t approve
of all Nora’s goings-on. She was boy mad, she was. Well, I had a nice boy-
friend myself that I was going steady with at the time, and I told her she’d
do herself no good going off with every Tom, Dick and Harry that offered
her a lift in a car or took her along to a pub where she told lies about her
age, as likely as not. She was a good mature girl as looked a lot older than
she was.”
“Dark or fair?”
“Oh, she had dark hair. Pretty hair it was. Always loose like, you know,
as girls do.”
“Were the police worried about her when she disappeared?”
“Yes. You see, she didn’t leave no word behind. She just went out one
night and didn’t come back. She was seen getting into a car and nobody
saw the car again and nobody saw her. Just at that time there’d been a
good many murders, you know. Not specially round here, but all over the
country. The police, they were rounding up a lot of young men and boys.
Thought as Nora might be a body at the time we did. But not she. She was
all right. I’d say as likely as not she’s making a bit of money still in London
or one of these big towns doing a striptease, something of that kind. That’s
the kind she was.”
“I don’t think,” said Miss Marple, “that if it’s the same person, that she’d
be very suitable for my friend.”
“She’d have to change a bit if she was to be suitable,” said the girl.
©2005-2010英文阅读网