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A Body at the Midsummer Fete | Miss Marple Sleep Stories · Miss Marple Sleep Stories

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Speaker 1: Death at the Midsummer Fate. A Miss Marple Mystery. Section 1.
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Speaker 1: The Garland Makers. St Mary Mead never looked so innocent
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Speaker 1: as it did on the morning of the Midsummer Fate,
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Speaker 1: and it was Miss Marple's habit to be most watchful
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Speaker 1: when everything looked most innocent. She sat on the vicarage
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Speaker 1: lawn before ten o'clock that Saturday, her knitting in her lap,
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Speaker 1: and heard of the disturbance before the church clock had
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Speaker 1: finished striking, for there was a disturbance already, though nobody
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Speaker 1: yet called it by so serious a name. It arrived—
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Speaker 1: as village disturbances so often do, in the person of
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Speaker 1: a parlourmaid bursting with news. Elsie Biggs from Hazeldean came
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Speaker 1: across the lawn with her hat on crooked, and stood
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Speaker 1: over the trestle table where the garlands were being made,
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Speaker 1: and could contain herself no longer. A box come by
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Speaker 1: the first post, she announced to the table at large.
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Speaker 1: Flowers it was, done up nice like a florist's, only
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Speaker 1: there wasn't no florist's name, and there wasn't no card,
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Speaker 1: and the mistress opens it, and goes white as the tablecloth,
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Speaker 1: and says, very quiet, take them away. Only then she says, no,
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Speaker 1: put them in water, and then she says, burn them.
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Speaker 1: Three times she changed her mind, and her breakfast not touched.
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Speaker 1: How very singular, said Griselda Clement, the vicar's wife, who
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Speaker 1: was threading daisies and wishing, not for the first time,
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Speaker 1: that she were better at it. Who sends flowers without
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Speaker 1: a card? What sort of flowers? inquired Miss Hartnell, who
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Speaker 1: liked her information exact. Nasty little things, said Elsie. Rue,
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Speaker 1: Cook says the bitter one is, and rosemary. and a
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Speaker 1: bit of foxglove, and a sprig of lavender, not what
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Speaker 1: you'd call a cheerful bunch. There was a small silence
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Speaker 1: at the garland table. It was Miss Marple who broke it,
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Speaker 1: gently without looking up from her knitting. Rue, she observed,
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Speaker 1: means regret. I remember that from my girlhood, when young
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Speaker 1: ladies still sent one another posies with meanings in them.
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Speaker 1: Rosemary is for remembrance, we all know that. Lavender, I
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Speaker 1: am afraid, stands for distrust. And the foxglove, she paused
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Speaker 1: and clicked her needles. The foxglove, dear Elsie, stands for insincerity,
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Speaker 1: but I dare say it was only someone's idea of
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Speaker 1: a joke. Nasty kind of joke, said Elsie, and went
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Speaker 1: home to Hazeldene to tell Cook the latest from the
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Speaker 1: vicarage lawn. The garland makers returned to their work, but
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Speaker 1: a faint chill had been laid over the morning, as
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Speaker 1: though a cloud had passed before the sun, and thought
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Speaker 1: better of it. The vicarage lawn was at its loveliest.
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Speaker 1: The roses heavy, the limes in flower, the long tables
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Speaker 1: already set with cloths for the afternoon. Colonel Bantry could
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Speaker 1: be heard hammering tent pegs beyond the laurels, and complaining
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Speaker 1: about the boy who had been sent to help him.
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Speaker 1: His wife Dolly moved from table to table with lists,
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Speaker 1: a general disguised as a matron. The vicar himself, Leonard Clement,
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Speaker 1: came out with a stack of hymn sheets to be
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Speaker 1: used as programmes, and stopped to ask whether anyone had
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Speaker 1: seen his sermon, which he had put down somewhere, and which,
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Speaker 1: Griselda remarked, would be a pity to find now that
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Speaker 1: it was too late to use. Old Job Crick, the
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Speaker 1: gardener from Hazeldene, shuffled past with an armful of greenery
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Speaker 1: for the arch over the gate. He was seventy if
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Speaker 1: he was a day, bent like a bill-hook, and he
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Speaker 1: had gardened at Hazeldene since boyhood, through old Mr. Vines-Time,
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Speaker 1: and through the years the house stood empty, and now
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Speaker 1: through Mrs. Mallory's. He paused by the garland table and
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Speaker 1: looked at the heap of cut flowers, and something moved
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Speaker 1: in his old face. Roo, he said, to no one
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Speaker 1: in particular. Funny thing to send a body. Roo and Rosemary.
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Speaker 1: That's a burying bunch, that is. Job, said Griselda kindly.
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Speaker 1: You are the most depressing man in three counties. I,
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Speaker 1: said Job, unmoved and shuffled on. The last to arrive
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Speaker 1: before the clock struck eleven was Mrs. Hobbery, the district nurse,
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Speaker 1: who leaned her bicycle against the hedge and came apologising
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Speaker 1: across the grass, still pinning her cap. Everybody was glad
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Speaker 1: to see her. Everybody always was. Alice Hobbery had nursed
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Speaker 1: half the village into the world and a good many
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Speaker 1: out of it, and there was no one, from Colonel
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Speaker 1: Bantry down to the carrier's boy, who would hear a
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Speaker 1: word against her. She was a quiet, comely woman of five-and-forty,
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Speaker 1: with gentle hands and a way of tipping her head
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Speaker 1: when she listened that made you feel what you said
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Speaker 1: mattered to her. I've only twenty minutes, she said, taking
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Speaker 1: her place at the table. I must be up at
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Speaker 1: Hazelden by half-past. Mrs. Mallory will have her drops before
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Speaker 1: the excitement, and no argument. She smiled as she said it,
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Speaker 1: the smile of a woman used to managing the obstinate,
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Speaker 1: and took up a handful of daisies. They're saying, said
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Speaker 1: Miss Weatherby, who had been waiting for exactly this audience,
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Speaker 1: that Mrs. Mallory had a horrid anonymous posy this morning.
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Speaker 1: and went white as a sheet. Nurse Horbury went on
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Speaker 1: threading daisies. She threaded them, Miss Marple noticed, with every
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Speaker 1: stalk cut to exactly the same length, which was the
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Speaker 1: way she trimmed bandages, and her expression did not change
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Speaker 1: at all. Poor lady, she said, her heart is not strong,
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Speaker 1: you know. I have told her the fate is too
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Speaker 1: much for her, but she will have her way. She
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Speaker 1: has looked forward to it so, she said to me
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Speaker 1: only yesterday. Nurse, I mean this to be a midsummer
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Speaker 1: nobody forgets. A singularly unpleasant trick to play on an invalid,
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Speaker 1: said Griselda. Rue and rosemary, whoever would. When I was
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Speaker 1: a girl, said Miss Marple, in the soft wandering voice
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Speaker 1: that made people feel she had lost the thread of things,
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Speaker 1: there was a young woman at Muchbenham who received just
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Speaker 1: such a posy rue and rosemary I remember, and I
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Speaker 1: think tansy, which means a declaration of war, and it
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Speaker 1: upset her dreadfully, because she knew at once who had
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Speaker 1: sent it. That is the thing about a message in flowers,
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Speaker 1: you see. It is only frightening if you understand it.
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Speaker 1: She smiled round the table with an air of innocent mildness.
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Speaker 1: It was Nurse Hallbury who stood up and said she
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Speaker 1: really must be going. The fate opened at three o'clock
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Speaker 1: under a sky of unbroken blue, and by half past
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Speaker 1: the vicarage lawn and the meadow beyond it were as
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Speaker 1: full as Miss Marple could ever remember them. The Morris
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Speaker 1: men from Much Benham stamped and capered with their bells.
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Speaker 1: The tombola did a roaring trade. Children shrieked over the
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Speaker 1: bowling for a pig. The Women's Institute tea-tent was besieged.
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Speaker 1: At the cordial table Miss Weatherby presided over an enormous
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Speaker 1: glass jug of elderflower cordial made to her mother's receipt,
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Speaker 1: with sprigs of mint and lemon balm floating in it,
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Speaker 1: pale and cool, and smelling of the hedgerows. Mrs. Mallory
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Speaker 1: came down from Hazeldean at a quarter past three, leaning
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Speaker 1: a little on her stick, dressed in mauve with pearls
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Speaker 1: at her throat. Honoria Mallory was sixty-three years old, tall
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Speaker 1: and handsome in the severe old-fashioned way, and she had
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Speaker 1: come back to St. Mary Mead five years before, and
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Speaker 1: bought Hazeldean, the house where, as the village never tired
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Speaker 1: of remembering, she had been born Honoria Vine, she moved
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Speaker 1: through the fate like a queen being gracious, and bought
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Speaker 1: a bottle of bath salts she could not possibly want,
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Speaker 1: and gave ten shillings to the church roof fund with
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Speaker 1: a little speech that made Mrs Price Ridley say it
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Speaker 1: was just like the old days, yet Miss Marple, watching
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Speaker 1: from her chair in the shade, thought there was something
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Speaker 1: odd about Mrs Mallory's gaiety, a stillness underneath it, like
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Speaker 1: the stillness at the centre of a turning wheel, and
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Speaker 1: when Nurse Horbury came to her side, Mrs, Mallory turned
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Speaker 1: and looked at her, and the two women regarded one
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Speaker 1: another for a long moment in a way that Miss
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Speaker 1: Marple could not read at all. You will not forget
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Speaker 1: your drops in all this, Mrs Mallory, said the nurse, smiling. No,
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Speaker 1: my dear, said Honoria Mallory, you never let me forget them,
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Speaker 1: do you? It was twenty minutes later that Gerald Vine
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Speaker 1: walked through the arch of greenery and stood blinking in
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Speaker 1: the sun like a man who has dreamed a place
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Speaker 1: and woken to find it real. The word passed through
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Speaker 1: the fate faster than the Morris bells. Gerald Vine, old mister,
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Speaker 1: Vine's son, home from Kenya after twenty-two years, thinner and
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Speaker 1: greyer and shabbier, but unmistakable. Old Job Crick, who was
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Speaker 1: standing by the gate, took off his hat, and then
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Speaker 1: oddly put it on again. Mrs. Mallory, hearing the murmur,
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Speaker 1: turned quite slowly, and looked at her brother across the
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Speaker 1: crowded lawn, and what passed between them nobody could afterwards describe,
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Speaker 1: but Miss Hartnell, who was nearest, declared that Mrs. Mallory
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Speaker 1: said only, Oh, there you are, as though he had
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Speaker 1: been gone twenty-two minutes. They talked later, everyone agreed, behind
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Speaker 1: the marquee, and it was not a comfortable talk. Miss Hartnell,
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Speaker 1: retrieving a dropped ticket, heard fragments, a woman's voice raised, rose,
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Speaker 1: and then, twenty-two years, and a man's voice rough. Mean
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Speaker 1: to pay, and then Mrs Mallory's laugh, which was not,
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Speaker 1: Miss Hartnell insisted, an unkind laugh, which was the strangest
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Speaker 1: part of all. At four o'clock Miss Weatherby pressed a
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Speaker 1: glass of cordial on Mrs Mallory, who refused it, Not
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Speaker 1: for me, thank you. It is too sweet, and the
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Speaker 1: day too hot. And at half-past she refused again, quite sharply,
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Speaker 1: when Colonel Bantry offered to fetch her something. And then,
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Speaker 1: at a quarter to five, Nurse Horbury came through the
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Speaker 1: crowd carrying a cup. Your drops, Mrs. Mallory, she said.
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Speaker 1: I have brought them in a little cordial. It will
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Speaker 1: do you good in the heat. Honoria Mallory looked at
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Speaker 1: the cup, and then at the nurse. And for the
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Speaker 1: second time that afternoon Miss Marple saw that long, unreadable
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Speaker 1: regard pass between the two women. Then Mrs. Mallory took
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Speaker 1: the cup in both hands and drank it down. It
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Speaker 1: has a bitter taste today, she said. The lemon balm, perhaps,
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Speaker 1: said Nurse Holbury gently. Eight minutes later, standing by the coconut,
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Speaker 1: shy with one hand raised to her pearls, Honoria Mallory fell.
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Speaker 1: She fell without a cry, heavily, as a tree falls,
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Speaker 1: and the cup dropped from her fingers and rolled away
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Speaker 1: across the grass. The Morris men's bells went on ringing,
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Speaker 1: because no one had told them to stop. Miss Marple,
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Speaker 1: sitting quite still with her knitting in her lap, watched
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Speaker 1: the cup until it stopped rolling. Section 2. A murmur
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Speaker 1: on the green. The cup came to rest against the
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Speaker 1: toe of Job Crick's boot, and Job stood looking down
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Speaker 1: at it, as though it were a snake. Then the
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Speaker 1: crowd surged and closed, and Dr. Hadock was thrusting through
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Speaker 1: with his bag, calling for room, and somebody's child began
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Speaker 1: to cry, and the vicar's voice could be heard saying,
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Speaker 1: Stand back, please. Please stand back, in the tone of
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Speaker 1: a man saying a prayer he does not expect to
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Speaker 1: be answered. The Morris bells faltered and stopped, one by one,
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Speaker 1: like birds going quiet before a storm. Nurse Horbury was
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Speaker 1: already kneeling. She had Mrs. Mallory's head on her arm,
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Speaker 1: and her fingers on the pulse, and when Dr. Haydock
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Speaker 1: knelt beside her she looked up and said, quite steadily,
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Speaker 1: it is her heart, doctor. I have been expecting it,
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Speaker 1: but not today. Her voice carried. It was a nurse's voice,
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Speaker 1: trained to be heard across a sick room, and a
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Speaker 1: dozen people heard her and repeated it, and by six
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Speaker 1: o'clock the whole of St Mary Mead knew that Mrs.
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Speaker 1: Mallory had died of her heart, poor lady, in the
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Speaker 1: middle of her own fate, which just showed. They carried
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Speaker 1: her up to Hazeldine on a hurdle fetched from the
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Speaker 1: home farm, decently covered with a union flag that Colonel
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Speaker 1: Bantry produced from the scout tent, and the fate, after
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Speaker 1: a stunned interval, did what fetts do. It wavered, and consulted,
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Speaker 1: and went on at half volume, because the teas were
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Speaker 1: all paid for, and the pig could hardly be unbowled for,
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Speaker 1: but the joy had gone out of it. The bunting
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Speaker 1: looked suddenly foolish, like a party dress on a widow.
10:34
Speaker 1: On the green and under the tea-tent awnings, the village
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Speaker 1: assembled its theories the way it assembled everything, out of
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Speaker 1: small pieces, gossiped from hand to hand. Her heart, said
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Speaker 1: Miss Weatherby positively. Nurse said so before the doctor had
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Speaker 1: so much as touched her, a heart like hers, she
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Speaker 1: should never have been allowed to stand about in the heat.
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Speaker 1: She would not touch my cordial, said Miss Weatherby, a
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Speaker 1: moment later, to a different listener, and with a different inflection.
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Speaker 1: Twice she refused it, and then, they say, she drank
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Speaker 1: a whole cup down at a draught. Now I call
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Speaker 1: that odd. The heat, said Mrs. Price Ridley, is very
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Speaker 1: bad for elderly hearts, though I must say, and I
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Speaker 1: only say what everyone is thinking. that a woman does
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Speaker 1: not receive an anonymous posy of horrid bitter herbs in
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Speaker 1: the morning, and drop dead in the afternoon without its
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Speaker 1: meaning something. I read a book once, Gerald Vine, said
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Speaker 1: Miss Hartnell, in the voice of a woman laying down
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Speaker 1: the ace of trumps. Home after twenty-two years, quarrelling with
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Speaker 1: his sister behind the marquee within the hour, and she
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Speaker 1: dead before tea-time. I heard them, Mrs. Price Ridley. I
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Speaker 1: heard the name Rose. Nobody said, in so many words,
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Speaker 1: Rose who. There was no need. In St. Mary Mead
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Speaker 1: the dead are not forgotten. They are only rested, like
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Speaker 1: Sunday china, and brought out when occasion offers. A few
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Speaker 1: of the older women exchanged glances, and one or two
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Speaker 1: crossed themselves, though the village was solidly Church of England.
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Speaker 1: Miss Marple sat in her chair in the shade and knitted,
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Speaker 1: and listened, and said things like, Dear me, and how
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Speaker 1: very strange, and did she really, now? Her pink, wrinkled
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Speaker 1: face was all mild attention. Nobody noticed how rarely her
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Speaker 1: needles stopped, or how her eyes went, again and again,
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Speaker 1: to the table where the used cups were being gathered.
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Speaker 1: for the fate must be tidied even over a death,
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Speaker 1: and it was Nurse Horbury, back from Hazeldean, pale but composed,
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Speaker 1: saying the doctor had everything in hand, who tidied it.
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Speaker 1: She gathered cups and carried them to the trestle where
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Speaker 1: the washing-up bowls steamed, and washed them herself, capably, one
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Speaker 1: after another, and it was the most natural thing in
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Speaker 1: the world, the district nurse, helping, as she always helped.
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Speaker 1: Only Miss Marple, making her slow way to the cordial
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Speaker 1: table on the pretext of wanting a little water, saw
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Speaker 1: the cup that had rolled against Job Crick's boot, set
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Speaker 1: apart from the rest, she noticed, and then, when she
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Speaker 1: looked again, not apart but among the others, washed and drying,
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Speaker 1: but not before Miss Marple had seen the dregs, elderflower
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Speaker 1: cordial as Miss Weatherby made it, was pale as straw.
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Speaker 1: The dregs in that cup had been darker, amber, almost brown,
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Speaker 1: and there had clung to the side of the cup
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Speaker 1: a few dark flecks, like tea leaves, only they were
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Speaker 1: not tea. Nurse Horbury is so capable, said Miss Marple
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Speaker 1: softly to Griselda, who had come up beside her, I
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Speaker 1: always think capable hands are such a blessing. One never
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Speaker 1: has to ask them to do a thing twice. She
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Speaker 1: is a treasure, said Griselda warmly. She nursed my mother,
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Speaker 1: you know. I don't know what this village would do
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Speaker 1: without her. No, said Miss Marple. That is just what
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Speaker 1: I was thinking. Inspector Slack arrived from much venom as
13:29
Speaker 1: the light began to thicken, driving up in a hurry
13:31
Speaker 1: as though a death at a fate were a personal
13:33
Speaker 1: affront to the police. He was a bustling, suspicious man
13:36
Speaker 1: who looked at everyone as though they had probably done
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Speaker 1: it and would certainly lie about it. He took statements
13:41
Speaker 1: in the vicar's study briskly, and emerged after an hour
13:44
Speaker 1: wearing the expression of a man who has found the
13:46
Speaker 1: case exactly as troublesome as he expected. Heart failure, he
13:50
Speaker 1: was overheard to say to Doctor. Hey, Doc, on the
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Speaker 1: vicarage steps. That's your certificate, and that's my report, and
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Speaker 1: I don't mind saying so. Woman of 63, bad heart,
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Speaker 1: hot day, drops dead, happens every week. All this talk
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Speaker 1: about posies and whatnot, village nonsense. I sign nothing yet,
14:08
Speaker 1: said Doctor. Hey, Doc. who was an old friend of
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Speaker 1: Miss Marple's and had not survived twenty years in St
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Speaker 1: Mary Mead by being hurried. I said I would look
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Speaker 1: at her again in the morning. There was a funny
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Speaker 1: look about her lips, slack, that I didn't care for,
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Speaker 1: and I'd like to know what was in that cup.
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Speaker 1: The cup, said Inspector Slack heavily, which has been washed
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Speaker 1: up with all the others by some helpful soul, along
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Speaker 1: with every blessed cup at the fete. But the village
14:31
Speaker 1: did not hear that exchange. The village was going home
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Speaker 1: through the long midsummer dusk, carrying its unused raffle tickets
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Speaker 1: and its tired children, and telling itself that it was
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Speaker 1: a sad business, and that Mrs Mallory had been a
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Speaker 1: real lady, and that it just showed. Already the story
14:46
Speaker 1: had begun to smooth itself, the way water smooths over
14:49
Speaker 1: a stone. Only two people in St Mary Mead were
14:52
Speaker 1: not smoothing anything. One was old Job Crick, who stood
14:55
Speaker 1: for a long time by the deserted cordial table, after
14:58
Speaker 1: everyone had gone, turning something over and over in his
15:01
Speaker 1: earthy hands, and if anyone had been near enough to see,
15:04
Speaker 1: they would have seen that he was not looking at
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Speaker 1: the table at all, but at the figure of Nurse
15:08
Speaker 1: Horbury cycling away down the lane, and that his old
15:10
Speaker 1: face was working like a man trying to remember something
15:13
Speaker 1: he has known all along. The other was Miss Marple.
15:16
Speaker 1: She went home to her little house on the corner
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Speaker 1: of the High Street, and had her tea, and answered
15:21
Speaker 1: her door to Elsie Biggs's cousin, who wanted to tell
15:23
Speaker 1: her all over again about the posy and the cardboard box,
15:26
Speaker 1: and agreed with everything, and heard her out. But when
15:29
Speaker 1: she was alone again she sat by her window in
15:31
Speaker 1: the summer dusk, and did not turn on the lamp,
15:33
Speaker 1: and her knitting lay forgotten in her lap. Rue, she
15:36
Speaker 1: was thinking, means regret. Rosemary means remembrance. A woman receives
15:41
Speaker 1: such a message in the morning, and changes her mind
15:44
Speaker 1: three times about it, away, water, fire, and goes out
15:48
Speaker 1: to her fate in mauve and pearls like a queen,
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Speaker 1: and tells her nurse she means the day to be
15:52
Speaker 1: a midsummer nobody forgets, and drinks her medicine down, and dies,
15:57
Speaker 1: and says beforehand, to her own brother, home after twenty-two years,
16:01
Speaker 1: something about rose, and something about paying. Miss Marple rose
16:05
Speaker 1: at last to draw the curtains, and as she did
16:07
Speaker 1: so she saw a bicycle lamp pass along the high street,
16:10
Speaker 1: moving not toward the nurse's cottage on the Muchbenham Road,
16:13
Speaker 1: but the other way, toward the church. It turned in
16:16
Speaker 1: at the lightgate, and the little light went out among
16:18
Speaker 1: the graves. There was one grave in St Mary Mead
16:21
Speaker 1: churchyard that was always tended, though nobody in the village
16:24
Speaker 1: would tell you who tended it. It was a plain stone,
16:27
Speaker 1: and the name on it was Rose Ray, and the
16:29
Speaker 1: date beneath it was twenty-two years old that midsummer. Miss
16:33
Speaker 1: Marple stood for a while longer by the window, with
16:35
Speaker 1: her shawl round her shoulders, and thought about Roo. Section 3.
16:39
Speaker 1: The Inspector Asks Questions Nurse Horbury's bicycle lamp passed out
16:44
Speaker 1: of sight among the graves, and Miss Marple drew her
16:46
Speaker 1: curtains and went to bed, but not to sleep. She
16:49
Speaker 1: lay in the dark for a long time, listening to
16:51
Speaker 1: the Midsummer Night, an owl in the vicarage elms, the
16:54
Speaker 1: church clock striking the quarters, and arranging, with the patience
16:58
Speaker 1: of a woman sorting wool, the things she knew from
17:00
Speaker 1: the things she merely felt. By morning the village had
17:03
Speaker 1: rearranged itself into a village with a scandal, and it
17:06
Speaker 1: did so with the efficiency of long practice. The postmistress
17:09
Speaker 1: had it from the baker's boy, who had it from Dr.
17:12
Speaker 1: Haydock's maid that the doctor had refused to sign the certificate,
17:15
Speaker 1: and the fishmonger's van carried the news to Little Worsley,
17:18
Speaker 1: and brought back in exchange the intelligence that Inspector Slack
17:22
Speaker 1: had been seen going up the drive at Hazeldane, with
17:24
Speaker 1: a sergeant and a black notebook, which was never a
17:27
Speaker 1: good sign. The investigation, such as it was, settled upon
17:31
Speaker 1: Hazeldane like weather, Inspector Slack worked through the house in
17:34
Speaker 1: his methodical, affronted way. He interviewed Cook, who had opened
17:38
Speaker 1: the cardboard box and confirmed the posy. Nasty little herbs, sir,
17:42
Speaker 1: done up with black ribbon, if you'll believe it. And
17:45
Speaker 1: the parlour maid, who had taken Mrs. Mallory her tea
17:48
Speaker 1: on the morning of the fete, and found her already
17:50
Speaker 1: dressed and sitting by the window, like a lady expecting callers,
17:53
Speaker 1: though no callers were expected. He examined the little row
17:56
Speaker 1: of bottles on Mrs. Mallory's washstand, her drops, her sleeping mixture,
18:01
Speaker 1: her salts. He asked who had access to them, and
18:04
Speaker 1: was told what he might have known already, that Nurse
18:06
Speaker 1: Horbury had access to everything in the way of medicine
18:08
Speaker 1: in that house, as she did in half the houses
18:11
Speaker 1: of the parish. And where, said Inspector Slack, is the
18:14
Speaker 1: bottle now? There was a small silence. The bottle of drops,
18:18
Speaker 1: Cook said, stood always on the washstand. It was not
18:21
Speaker 1: there now. It was Nurse Horbury who answered, arriving at
18:25
Speaker 1: that moment with her bag, calm as ever, cap a
18:27
Speaker 1: little crooked from the ride. The drops went down to
18:30
Speaker 1: the kitchen on the day of the fate, Inspector, she said.
18:33
Speaker 1: I measured the dose myself in the morning, as I
18:35
Speaker 1: always do, and the bottle was put by in the
18:37
Speaker 1: cool cupboard, out of the light. Mrs Mallory was particular
18:41
Speaker 1: about that. You will find it there. And there it was,
18:44
Speaker 1: a brown glass bottle with a glass stopper, half full
18:47
Speaker 1: of a clear, faintly yellow liquid, labelled in an old
18:50
Speaker 1: apothecary's hand. Digitalin, BP1 minim to the dram. The dose.
18:56
Speaker 1: Twelve drops. Inspector Slack held it up to the light
18:59
Speaker 1: and looked at Nurse Horbury over the top of it,
19:01
Speaker 1: and she looked back at him with her mild, attentive,
19:04
Speaker 1: listening look. You gave her her medicine at the fete, Nurse,
19:07
Speaker 1: I understand. In a cup of cordial. I did, Mrs.
19:11
Speaker 1: Mallory would forget her drops when she was excited, and
19:14
Speaker 1: her heart could not afford forgetting. The cordial was only
19:17
Speaker 1: to make it pleasant. I have done the same at
19:19
Speaker 1: a dozen fates. And where did you get the cordial?
19:22
Speaker 1: From the jug on Miss Weatherby's table. There were a
19:24
Speaker 1: dozen people watching. I poured it in front of them all.
19:27
Speaker 1: This was true, and a dozen people said so eagerly
19:30
Speaker 1: to the sergeant with the notebook, and it was at
19:32
Speaker 1: this point that the investigation, which had been drifting, took
19:35
Speaker 1: on direction, because it was Miss Hartnell, never backward with
19:38
Speaker 1: a fact, who told Inspector Slack about Gerald Vine. She
19:42
Speaker 1: told him about Kenya, and the twenty-two years, and the
19:44
Speaker 1: quarrel behind the marquee, and the word rose, and the
19:47
Speaker 1: word pay. She told him with relish. that Gerald Vine
19:50
Speaker 1: had not written to his sister in all those years,
19:53
Speaker 1: nor she to him, that old Mr. Vine had cut
19:55
Speaker 1: him off without a shilling. But with Mrs. Mallory dead
19:58
Speaker 1: unmarried and without a will that anyone knew of, Gerald
20:01
Speaker 1: Vine stood to inherit Hazelden and everything in it, and
20:04
Speaker 1: that if that was not a motive, Miss Hartnell would
20:06
Speaker 1: like to know what was. Inspector Slack went to see
20:09
Speaker 1: Gerald Vine at the Blue Boar, where he had taken
20:11
Speaker 1: a room, and found a lean, sunburnt man of fifty-five
20:14
Speaker 1: with the faded, bewildered air of someone who has come
20:17
Speaker 1: home too late. Vine answered the questions in a low voice,
20:20
Speaker 1: looking mostly at his hands. Yes, he had come back
20:23
Speaker 1: without warning. Yes, he had quarrelled with his sister, or rather,
20:27
Speaker 1: she had quarrelled with him. He had never been good
20:29
Speaker 1: at quarrelling. No, he would not say what it was about. Yes,
20:33
Speaker 1: He knew he inherited if she died without a will.
20:36
Speaker 1: He said this last in a tone of such flat
20:38
Speaker 1: distaste that Inspector Slack, who believed everyone wanted money, disliked
20:42
Speaker 1: him for it. It is a strange thing, sir, said Slack,
20:45
Speaker 1: leaning back, to come home after twenty-two years on the
20:48
Speaker 1: very day your sister dies. It is a strange thing,
20:51
Speaker 1: said Gerald Vine, that I came home to tell her something,
20:54
Speaker 1: and that someone else arrived before me. He would say
20:57
Speaker 1: no more than that, and Slack went away dissatisfied, with
21:00
Speaker 1: the dissatisfied man's conviction that dissatisfaction means guilt. Miss Marple, meanwhile,
21:05
Speaker 1: pursued her investigations in her own way, which looked to
21:08
Speaker 1: the untrained eye like a morning's shopping and an afternoon's calls.
21:12
Speaker 1: She bought wool at the post office, and learnt from
21:14
Speaker 1: the postmistress that no parcel or box addressed to Hazeldine
21:17
Speaker 1: had passed through St. Marymead's hands in a fortnight. So
21:21
Speaker 1: that posy Miss Marple never came by our post at all,
21:24
Speaker 1: whatever Elsie Biggs says, and you may tell Inspector Slack so,
21:28
Speaker 1: for he's been round and was quite short with me.
21:30
Speaker 1: It had come then by the rural post from Muchbenham,
21:33
Speaker 1: or by hand. Miss Marple filed this away. She called
21:37
Speaker 1: upon old Mrs. Sims, who had been cook general at
21:39
Speaker 1: Hazeldean in old Mr. Vine's day, and now sat by
21:42
Speaker 1: her fire with her memories laid out around her like mending.
21:45
Speaker 1: And there, over a cup of stewed tea, gently and
21:48
Speaker 1: by degrees, Miss Marple drew out the old story, the
21:52
Speaker 1: story the village had rested like Sunday China. Rose Ray
21:55
Speaker 1: had been the underhousemaid at Hazeldean, thirty years and more ago,
21:59
Speaker 1: when Honoria Vine was the young lady of the house,
22:01
Speaker 1: and Gerald was a boy home from school. A pretty girl,
22:04
Speaker 1: Mrs … Sims said, in the tone of a woman
22:07
Speaker 1: who has thought about it a great deal. Not a
22:09
Speaker 1: village beauty, but something better. Quick and warm and always laughing,
22:14
Speaker 1: with a cloud of dark hair that would come down
22:16
Speaker 1: from its pins. She wasn't a bad girl, Miss Marple.
22:19
Speaker 1: I'll say that to anyone. There was nothing bad in Rose.
22:22
Speaker 1: She was the kind things happen to. What happened to
22:25
Speaker 1: her was the usual thing. She was found one March morning,
22:28
Speaker 1: twenty-two years ago, at the foot of the old quarry
22:31
Speaker 1: on the Muchbenham Road. and the coroner's jury brought it
22:33
Speaker 1: in as death by misadventure, walking home across the fields
22:37
Speaker 1: in the dark, the way she was forbidden to go,
22:39
Speaker 1: and missed the style in the frost. She was nineteen,
22:42
Speaker 1: she had left Hazeldine's service six weeks before, suddenly, in
22:46
Speaker 1: the middle of the night, without her month's money, and
22:48
Speaker 1: gone nobody quite knew where, and come back to the
22:51
Speaker 1: village a fortnight later, to lodge with her aunt on
22:53
Speaker 1: the much-benham road, in a state that Mrs. Sims would
22:57
Speaker 1: only describe as brought very low poor lamb. It was
23:00
Speaker 1: put about, said Mrs. Sims, dropping her voice, that it
23:03
Speaker 1: was the young master, Mr. Gerald. It was the year
23:06
Speaker 1: he went abroad, you see, packed off to Kenya within
23:08
Speaker 1: the month, and never home since, and folk will put
23:11
Speaker 1: two and two together. But I was in that house,
23:14
Speaker 1: Miss Marple, and I'll tell you what I told nobody
23:16
Speaker 1: at the time, for what good would it have done.
23:19
Speaker 1: It wasn't Mr. Gerald that girl used to meet in
23:21
Speaker 1: the garden. I heard them once, from the still room window.
23:25
Speaker 1: It was a woman's voice I heard with her, quarrelling,
23:28
Speaker 1: low and quick and angry. and the next day Rose went.
23:31
Speaker 1: A woman's voice, said Miss Marple. Did you know it?
23:34
Speaker 1: I couldn't swear, said Mrs. Sims, and I wouldn't. But
23:39
Speaker 1: there was only the one woman in that house besides
23:41
Speaker 1: me that Rose Ray had any business quarrelling with, and
23:43
Speaker 1: that was the young mistress, Miss Honoria, as was, Mrs. Mallory,
23:47
Speaker 1: as we must learn to say. Miss Marple walked home
23:50
Speaker 1: very slowly through the lanes, where the honeysuckle was out
23:53
Speaker 1: and the dust lay white on the nettles, and she
23:55
Speaker 1: thought about a girl with a cloud of dark hair
23:57
Speaker 1: lying at the foot of a quarry in the frost.
23:59
Speaker 1: Twenty-two years ago, and about a posy of rue and
24:02
Speaker 1: rosemary delivered on the morning of the day Honoria Vine died. Rue. Regret. Rosemary. Remembrance. Someone,
24:10
Speaker 1: thought Miss Marple, had not forgotten Rose Ray. Someone had
24:14
Speaker 1: sent Honoria Mallory a burying bunch on the last morning
24:16
Speaker 1: of her life, and Honoria had known at once what
24:19
Speaker 1: it meant and from whom it came. That is the
24:21
Speaker 1: thing about a message in flowers. It is only frightening
24:24
Speaker 1: if you understand it. She understood, too, something that Inspector
24:28
Speaker 1: Slack did not. that the question was not who had
24:31
Speaker 1: wanted Honoria Mallory dead. The question was why, after twenty-two years,
24:35
Speaker 1: someone had wanted her dead now, this midsummer, this week,
24:39
Speaker 1: this day. And she thought about a cup of cordial,
24:42
Speaker 1: carried through a crowd by the one person in the
24:44
Speaker 1: village whom nobody would ever suspect of anything, and about
24:47
Speaker 1: dregs that were darker than elderflower, and flecks that were
24:50
Speaker 1: not tea. Digital Inn, Miss Marple knew from her own
24:53
Speaker 1: doctor's warnings over the years, was itself made from foxglove,
24:57
Speaker 1: the foxglove in the posy, insincerity. That was the polite
25:00
Speaker 1: name the flower-books gave it. But the old country people
25:03
Speaker 1: had another name for Foxglove altogether. They called it Dead
25:06
Speaker 1: Men's Bells. Section 4. The Convenient Nephew The suspicion that
25:11
Speaker 1: had settled on Gerald Vine by Monday morning was not
25:14
Speaker 1: at first the doing of the police so much as
25:16
Speaker 1: the doing of the village, which had tried him over
25:18
Speaker 1: Sunday dinner tables and found him wanting. A man who
25:21
Speaker 1: stays away twenty-two years and returns on the day of
25:23
Speaker 1: his sister's death is a man the village does not
25:26
Speaker 1: need evidence against. His absence is the evidence, the way
25:29
Speaker 1: a gap in a hedge proves something has been going
25:31
Speaker 1: through it. Inspector Slack, to do him justice, resisted this
25:35
Speaker 1: for nearly a day. Then two things came to his hand,
25:38
Speaker 1: and resistance ended. The first was a letter. Mrs Mallory's solicitor,
25:42
Speaker 1: a mister, Petherick of much venom, a dry old man
25:46
Speaker 1: who had known Miss Marple for forty years and was
25:48
Speaker 1: not too proud to be seen talking to her on
25:50
Speaker 1: the vicarage lawn, came forward with the information that his
25:53
Speaker 1: client had summoned him to Hazeldean on the Friday, the
25:55
Speaker 1: day before the fete, that she had dictated a new will,
25:59
Speaker 1: and that it had been executed that afternoon before witnesses.
26:02
Speaker 1: The old will, made years before, left everything to Gerald
26:05
Speaker 1: Vine for want of nearer kin. The new will, Mr.
26:08
Speaker 1: Petherick permitted himself a thin, significant pause, revoked it entirely.
26:13
Speaker 1: Hazeldean and the whole estate, some forty thousand pounds, was
26:16
Speaker 1: left to Alice Horbury, district nurse of this parish, in
26:20
Speaker 1: gratitude for devotion beyond the terms of duty. The sensation
26:23
Speaker 1: this caused was of the kind that makes a village
26:25
Speaker 1: fall silent before it begins to talk. To Nurse Horbury,
26:29
Speaker 1: said Mrs Price Ridley, and sat down. But that is absurd,
26:33
Speaker 1: said Colonel Bantry. The woman's a saint. Everyone knows Alice
26:37
Speaker 1: Horbury wouldn't. And then he stopped, because what everyone knew
26:40
Speaker 1: had suddenly become a great deal less certain, and he looked,
26:43
Speaker 1: for a moment, like a man who has put his
26:45
Speaker 1: foot through the drawing-room ceiling. The second thing was a
26:48
Speaker 1: youth called Alf Biggs, Elsie's nephew, who came to inspect
26:52
Speaker 1: a slack with the air of a boy who has
26:53
Speaker 1: been turning something over, and finds it heavy. Alf worked
26:56
Speaker 1: up at the Hazeldean Gardens under old Job, and on
26:59
Speaker 1: the afternoon of the fete he had been sent round
27:01
Speaker 1: the back of the marquee for the empty bottles, and
27:03
Speaker 1: he had seen Mr. Vini, him as come from foreign parts,
27:08
Speaker 1: standing by the hedge at the corner of the vicarage
27:10
Speaker 1: lawn where the cordial table stood, quite near the cups, like,
27:13
Speaker 1: not five minutes before Nurse Horbury came through with the
27:16
Speaker 1: cup for Mrs. Mallory. He hadn't thought anything of it
27:18
Speaker 1: at the time, Alf said shuffling. Only what with everyone talking.
27:22
Speaker 1: That will do, said Inspector Slack, who had heard enough,
27:26
Speaker 1: and wrote it down. It hung together, as Slack explained
27:29
Speaker 1: that evening to Doctor. Haydock over a glass of the
27:32
Speaker 1: vicar's inferior sherry, to which he had helped himself with freedom.
27:36
Speaker 1: Gerald Vine, cut off and bitter, comes home after twenty-two years,
27:40
Speaker 1: comes home, mark you, the very day after his sister
27:43
Speaker 1: makes a new will cutting him out. Coincidence? Perhaps. Or
27:47
Speaker 1: perhaps he knew. Perhaps someone had written to him. He
27:50
Speaker 1: quarrels with his sister behind the marquee. He is seen
27:53
Speaker 1: loitering by the cordial table. The woman dies of something
27:56
Speaker 1: the Doctor doesn't like the look of. and the medicine
27:58
Speaker 1: bottle she was dosed from stood in a cool cupboard
28:01
Speaker 1: anyone in that kitchen could reach. Slack had been on
28:03
Speaker 1: to Kenya. There was a cable due. Gerald Vine had
28:06
Speaker 1: left Mombasa five weeks ago, and no one knew why.
28:10
Speaker 1: And the posy, said Dr. Haydock. Village theatricals, said Slack.
28:15
Speaker 1: Some fool's idea of a scare. I dare say it
28:17
Speaker 1: has nothing to do with anything. I wonder, said Dr. Haydock,
28:22
Speaker 1: whether you are right about that. I wonder very much.
28:25
Speaker 1: Miss Marple heard all of this on Tuesday. piece by piece,
28:28
Speaker 1: in the course of a day that took her from
28:30
Speaker 1: the butcher's to the vicarage to tea with Dolly Bantry,
28:33
Speaker 1: and at every stop she said, how very distressing, and
28:36
Speaker 1: I am sure the police know best, and her needles
28:38
Speaker 1: never stopped, but it was at Dolly Bantry's tea-table, with
28:42
Speaker 1: the scones going round and the shadow of the cedar
28:44
Speaker 1: lying long across the lawn at Gossington, that Miss Marple
28:47
Speaker 1: said the first thing that made anyone look at her twice.
28:50
Speaker 1: I was so sorry, she said, to hear about the will,
28:53
Speaker 1: not because of Mr. Vinnie though one is sorry for
28:55
Speaker 1: him too, in a way, but because of what it
28:58
Speaker 1: tells us. Tells us? said Dolly. Mrs. Mallory changed her
29:02
Speaker 1: will on Friday afternoon, said Miss Marple, and on Saturday
29:06
Speaker 1: morning the posy came, and on Saturday afternoon she died. Now,
29:10
Speaker 1: if a person kills for an inheritance, dear, they do
29:12
Speaker 1: not usually kill the day after the inheritance is taken
29:15
Speaker 1: from them. There would be no point, would there? The
29:18
Speaker 1: horses bolted. Unless, she paused and counted stitches, unless the
29:23
Speaker 1: person who killed her did not know about the new will.
29:25
Speaker 1: and that, you see, narrows it a little. Whoever poisoned her,
29:29
Speaker 1: if she was poisoned, either did not know the will
29:32
Speaker 1: had been changed, or did not care about wills at all.
29:35
Speaker 1: Or knew perfectly well, said Dolly slowly, and killed her
29:38
Speaker 1: because of it. Miss Marple looked at her with mild
29:41
Speaker 1: faded blue eyes. Because of it, she repeated. Yes, Dolly,
29:46
Speaker 1: that is what frightens me. There was a little silence
29:48
Speaker 1: at the tea-table, and a thrush sang in the syringa,
29:51
Speaker 1: and Dolly Bantry, who was not a fanciful woman, found
29:54
Speaker 1: that she had got cold, and said so, and rang
29:57
Speaker 1: for more hot water. The police, meanwhile, did what police
30:00
Speaker 1: do when a theory has taken hold of them. They
30:02
Speaker 1: set about furnishing it. Gerald Vine's room at the Blue
30:05
Speaker 1: Boar was searched, quietly, but in St Mary Mead quietness
30:08
Speaker 1: is relative, and the barmaid told her sister, and her
30:11
Speaker 1: sister told everybody. Nothing was found, unless you count a
30:15
Speaker 1: packet of letters tied with string, which Slack opened with
30:18
Speaker 1: a sense of duty rather than hope, and which proved
30:20
Speaker 1: to be from Rose Ray. They were twenty-two years old,
30:23
Speaker 1: and there were nine of them. written in a round, unformed,
30:26
Speaker 1: cheerful hand that grew less cheerful as the months went on,
30:29
Speaker 1: and they were all addressed to Jerry, care of the
30:32
Speaker 1: post office, Mombasa, and they were all of them returned, unopened,
30:36
Speaker 1: the envelopes stamped and re-stamped until the paper was grey.
30:39
Speaker 1: Gerald Vine had never read them. He had kept them
30:42
Speaker 1: unopened for twenty-two years, the way a man keeps a
30:45
Speaker 1: wound he cannot bear to dress. Slack read them, because
30:48
Speaker 1: he was that kind of policeman, and what he read
30:50
Speaker 1: made him sit for a long time at the little
30:52
Speaker 1: table in the Blue Boar's Best Bedroom, smoking, and looking
30:56
Speaker 1: at nothing. The first letters were full of a village
30:58
Speaker 1: girl's gossip, the fate, the new calves, her aunt's rheumatism,
31:02
Speaker 1: with a shy, fierce tenderness breaking through in every line.
31:06
Speaker 1: I do not mind the waiting, Jerry, if you do not. Then,
31:09
Speaker 1: in the fourth letter, the ground shifted. There is something
31:12
Speaker 1: I must tell you, and I cannot write it, only
31:15
Speaker 1: I must see you. She has said things to me, Jerry,
31:18
Speaker 1: terrible things, and I do not know what is true
31:20
Speaker 1: any more. She says you are to go away and
31:22
Speaker 1: forget me, and that it is all arranged. I said
31:25
Speaker 1: I would never believe it of you. Only come home,
31:28
Speaker 1: or write, and I will believe nothing but what you say.
31:30
Speaker 1: And the eighth letter, the last but one, was only
31:34
Speaker 1: four lines. Jerry, I am to have a child. Do
31:37
Speaker 1: not be angry. I am not angry, only frightened. She
31:41
Speaker 1: has been to see my aunt. I do not know
31:43
Speaker 1: what she told her, but my aunt has turned on me,
31:46
Speaker 1: and I have nowhere to go that is not her
31:48
Speaker 1: doing or her undoing. Come home, R. The ninth letter
31:52
Speaker 1: was never written. Rose Ray was dead within the fortnight.
31:55
Speaker 1: Inspector Slack put the letters down and lit another cigarette
31:58
Speaker 1: off the end of the last one, and the theory
32:01
Speaker 1: in his mind underwent a quiet, total revision, the kind
32:04
Speaker 1: a man does not announce, because if Gerald Vine had
32:07
Speaker 1: never opened these letters, then he had never known about
32:09
Speaker 1: the child, and if he had never known about the child,
32:12
Speaker 1: then the story the village had told itself for twenty-two years,
32:15
Speaker 1: Gerald and Rose, Gerald packed off, Gerald the seducer, was wrong,
32:19
Speaker 1: or only half right, and the woman who had said
32:21
Speaker 1: terrible things and been to see my aunt, was, she,
32:25
Speaker 1: Rose had not named her, she had not needed to.
32:29
Speaker 1: Slack went out to the churchyard that evening, though he
32:31
Speaker 1: could not have said why, and stood looking at the
32:34
Speaker 1: plain stone with the name Rose Ray on it. The
32:36
Speaker 1: grave was tended, it was always tended, there were fresh
32:40
Speaker 1: flowers on it now, even at the end of a
32:42
Speaker 1: hot day, rosemary, he saw, and lavender, and a single
32:45
Speaker 1: late rose, and standing there, Inspector Slack had the uncomfortable
32:49
Speaker 1: feeling that the whole case was standing just behind his shoulder,
32:52
Speaker 1: looking at him, and that it had been looking at
32:54
Speaker 1: him all along, and that it was not wearing Gerald
32:57
Speaker 1: Vine's face at all. He drove back to Muchbenham, and
33:00
Speaker 1: asked for the post-mortem results to be telephoned the moment
33:03
Speaker 1: they came. Miss Marple, that same evening, sat at her
33:06
Speaker 1: little table with a sheet of writing paper, on which
33:09
Speaker 1: she had written a list, she believed in lists, and
33:12
Speaker 1: under the heading, Who Tended the Grave, she had written
33:14
Speaker 1: nothing at all, but had drawn, thoughtfully, a small five-petalled flower,
33:19
Speaker 1: and beside it a sprig that could only be rue.
33:22
Speaker 1: Section 5. The Pressed Flower. Miss Marple's little five-petal drawing
33:26
Speaker 1: was still on the paper when she went to bed
33:28
Speaker 1: on Tuesday, and it was there when she came down
33:30
Speaker 1: on Wednesday morning, and by ten o'clock she had put
33:32
Speaker 1: on her second-best hat and her better gloves, and set
33:35
Speaker 1: out to call on Nurse Horbury. The nurse's cottage stood
33:38
Speaker 1: a little way along the much-benham road, a neat pink-washed
33:41
Speaker 1: place with a hive of bees at the end of
33:43
Speaker 1: the garden and a rope of onions drying under the eaves.
33:46
Speaker 1: Nurse Horbury was in her front parlour, mending a stocking,
33:50
Speaker 1: and rose to greet Miss Marple with the exact degree
33:52
Speaker 1: of quiet welcome she gave everyone. No more warmth for
33:55
Speaker 1: a visitor she was fond of, no less for a stranger.
33:58
Speaker 1: Miss Marple noted this, as she noted everything, and made
34:02
Speaker 1: her little apologies for calling unannounced. It is only, she said,
34:05
Speaker 1: settling herself, that I have been troubled in my mind,
34:08
Speaker 1: my dear, and I thought that you, of all people,
34:11
Speaker 1: would understand. This dreadful business of Mrs. Mallory! One does
34:14
Speaker 1: not like to think ill of anyone, and yet I
34:17
Speaker 1: confess I have not slept well. Nor I. said Nurse Horbury.
34:21
Speaker 1: She said it simply, without emphasis, and went on with
34:24
Speaker 1: her mending. Miss Marple looked at her over the tops
34:26
Speaker 1: of her spectacles. Alice Horbury was a comely woman, she
34:29
Speaker 1: thought again. That was the word, comely. A face that
34:33
Speaker 1: had been pretty in a soft way, and had grown,
34:35
Speaker 1: in middle life, into something calmer and stronger. Grey eyes,
34:39
Speaker 1: a steady mouth, hands that had held a great many
34:42
Speaker 1: dying people by the wrist, and been the last thing
34:44
Speaker 1: they had felt. You were with her at the end,
34:47
Speaker 1: of course, said Miss Marple. That must be a comfort.
34:50
Speaker 1: It is a comfort, said Nurse Horbury, and it is not.
34:53
Speaker 1: I have been over it a hundred times in my head,
34:55
Speaker 1: whether her drops were the right strength, whether the cordial
34:58
Speaker 1: was too cold, whether I ought to have made her
35:00
Speaker 1: sit down sooner. One does that, you know, after any death.
35:05
Speaker 1: It is the price of the profession. Yes, said Miss
35:08
Speaker 1: Marple gently, one does that with any death one cares about.
35:11
Speaker 1: There was a small pause in which the bees could
35:14
Speaker 1: be heard through the open window, and a cart went
35:16
Speaker 1: by in the lanes. Nurse Horbury did not look up.
35:19
Speaker 1: I understand, said Miss Marple, that Mrs. Mallory has been
35:22
Speaker 1: very good to you, in her will. The stocking-mending did
35:26
Speaker 1: not falter. Nurse Horbury set another stitch, and another. I
35:29
Speaker 1: did not know until Mr. Petherick came to see me
35:32
Speaker 1: on Monday morning, she said. I had not thought of
35:34
Speaker 1: such a thing. It has, I will not pretend, Miss Marple.
35:37
Speaker 1: It has troubled me exceedingly. I have already written to Mr.
35:41
Speaker 1: Petherick to say that I do not feel able to
35:43
Speaker 1: accept it. There will be some proper way, he says,
35:46
Speaker 1: to see it goes back to her brother. whom it
35:48
Speaker 1: should have gone to. That is generous of you, said
35:50
Speaker 1: Miss Marple. It is not generous, said Nurse Horbury. It
35:54
Speaker 1: is only that I could not sleep for it. Money
35:56
Speaker 1: that comes to one that way. One always wonders, and
35:59
Speaker 1: the village will wonder too. I have my work, and
36:02
Speaker 1: my cottage, and my bees, and I have never wanted more.
36:06
Speaker 1: Miss Marple sat quietly for a moment, admiring, or seeming
36:09
Speaker 1: to admire, the geraniums on the windowsill. Nurse Horbury, she
36:13
Speaker 1: said at last, do you remember Rose Rae? If Miss
36:16
Speaker 1: Marple had been watching for a start, she would have
36:18
Speaker 1: been disappointed. Nurse Horbury looked up, and her steady grey
36:22
Speaker 1: eyes did not change. Only, Miss Marple thought, they became
36:25
Speaker 1: a little more steady, as a pool becomes still when
36:27
Speaker 1: a hand is held over it. Rose Ray, said Nurse Horbury,
36:31
Speaker 1: was before my time in this village, Miss Marple. I
36:34
Speaker 1: came here twelve years ago, from Trumpington, but of course
36:37
Speaker 1: I have heard the name. One hears everything, in a
36:39
Speaker 1: district like this. She was the girl who fell at
36:42
Speaker 1: the quarry. Yes, said Miss Marple. She was the girl
36:45
Speaker 1: who fell at the quarry. She rose to go. Thank you,
36:48
Speaker 1: my dear. You have set my mind at rest on
36:51
Speaker 1: several things. I shall not trouble you again. At the
36:54
Speaker 1: gate she paused, and turned, and said, as though it
36:57
Speaker 1: had only that moment occurred to her, and the flowers
36:59
Speaker 1: on her grave. Do you know who tends them? For
37:02
Speaker 1: the first time Nurse Horbury's face altered, minutely. It was
37:05
Speaker 1: as though a shutter, standing very slightly open, closed all
37:09
Speaker 1: the way. I could not say, she said. The sexton, perhaps.
37:13
Speaker 1: Of course, said Miss Marple. How silly of me. She
37:16
Speaker 1: walked home along the lane with her thoughts going before
37:19
Speaker 1: her like a flock of sparrows. She did not think
37:21
Speaker 1: Nurse Horbury had lied about the will. She thought Nurse
37:24
Speaker 1: Horbury had told the exact truth about the will, and
37:27
Speaker 1: had told it in a way that made the truth
37:29
Speaker 1: do more work than truth ordinarily does. And she thought
37:31
Speaker 1: about the sexton, who was seventy-eight, and had rheumatism, and
37:35
Speaker 1: had not put a spade in the churchyard for two
37:37
Speaker 1: years except at a burying. That afternoon Miss Marple went
37:40
Speaker 1: down to the churchyard herself, in the drowsy heat of
37:43
Speaker 1: a July afternoon, and knelt as though at a family stone,
37:46
Speaker 1: and looked at the plot where Rose Ray was buried.
37:49
Speaker 1: The flowers on the grave had been renewed within the day,
37:51
Speaker 1: the soil at the base of the vase had been
37:53
Speaker 1: freshly disturbed, and thrust down into the earth beside the vase,
37:57
Speaker 1: half hidden, as though someone had begun to pull it
37:59
Speaker 1: out and been interrupted, was a single wilted stem of rue.
38:03
Speaker 1: Miss Marple took the stem between her fingers and turned it,
38:06
Speaker 1: and beneath the leaves she felt the little roughness of
38:08
Speaker 1: a piece of thread. It was black. It had once,
38:11
Speaker 1: she thought, tied a small posy of herbs. She stayed
38:14
Speaker 1: on her knees for a long time, and it was not,
38:17
Speaker 1: in the strict sense, a prayer. Motif, she thought. The
38:20
Speaker 1: word had been in her mind since the fate. Motif,
38:23
Speaker 1: the word one used in the old flower dictionaries her
38:26
Speaker 1: mother had loved, for a design that repeated Rue, Rosemary, Foxglove, Lavender.
38:32
Speaker 1: But motif meant more than that. It meant the thing
38:34
Speaker 1: that ran through a piece of music from beginning to
38:36
Speaker 1: end and made it one thing. Rue had come three
38:39
Speaker 1: times now, in the posy, in the dregs of the
38:42
Speaker 1: cup she had not been meant to see, In the
38:44
Speaker 1: earth of Roseray's grave, someone in Saint, Mary Mead was
38:47
Speaker 1: writing a piece of music in bitter herbs, and Miss
38:50
Speaker 1: Marple was beginning to think she knew who the audience
38:52
Speaker 1: had been meant to be. When she went home, she
38:54
Speaker 1: took down from her bookshelf a small brown album her
38:57
Speaker 1: mother had given her at fifteen, on the occasion of
38:59
Speaker 1: her confirmation. It was a pressed flower book, filled with
39:03
Speaker 1: her girlhood, bluebells from Danmid, primroses from Elaine in Kent,
39:07
Speaker 1: a sprig of white heather from Scotland the summer she
39:09
Speaker 1: had been twenty. She turned the pages carefully, for the
39:12
Speaker 1: paper was brittle. At the very back, between two blank leaves,
39:15
Speaker 1: was a flower she had forgotten she had. It was
39:18
Speaker 1: a single-pressed foxglove bell, purple-brown with age, and beneath it,
39:22
Speaker 1: in her own girlish hand, she had written, Given me
39:25
Speaker 1: by A.M., who said its old name was Dead Men's Bells,
39:28
Speaker 1: and laughed. Much Benham, June 1899. A.M. Miss Marple sat
39:33
Speaker 1: with the album in her lap and thought about A.M.
39:36
Speaker 1: Alice Meridue, who had been her cousin's governess for a summer,
39:40
Speaker 1: forty and more years ago, a bright, laughing, strong-handed girl
39:43
Speaker 1: who had gone into nursing afterwards. the girl who had
39:46
Speaker 1: shown her how to tie a bandage and how to
39:48
Speaker 1: press a flower and how to tell foxglove leaves from comfrey.
39:51
Speaker 1: You must be careful, Janie. The one will kill you
39:53
Speaker 1: and the other will not. That is the only difference
39:56
Speaker 1: that matters. Alice married you who had married a man
39:58
Speaker 1: called Horbury and been widowed young and gone on nursing.
40:02
Speaker 1: Alice married you who had once in Miss Marple's dining
40:04
Speaker 1: room four years ago said, I nursed a family called
40:07
Speaker 1: Vine once, at Trumpington. The daughter had married a soldier,
40:11
Speaker 1: a Mallory, and been widowed too. Curious, is it not,
40:15
Speaker 1: How the World Doubles Back. Miss Marple closed the album
40:17
Speaker 1: and sat still. Alice Horbury had come to St Mary
40:20
Speaker 1: Mead twelve years ago from Trumpington. She had nursed a
40:23
Speaker 1: Mallory at Trumpington, and she had, at some earlier time,
40:27
Speaker 1: how much earlier, known Rose Ray's story from the inside,
40:30
Speaker 1: from the family, from the woman whose voice misses, Sims
40:33
Speaker 1: had heard in the stillroom quarrel. She had known it
40:36
Speaker 1: not as a village legend, not as gossip smoothed like
40:39
Speaker 1: Sunday China, but as it had really happened. The evolving
40:42
Speaker 1: motif of rue and rosemary was not, Miss Marple realised,
40:45
Speaker 1: the murderer's signature. It was a message, one the murderer
40:49
Speaker 1: had made sure Mrs Mallory received and understood and had
40:52
Speaker 1: time to be afraid of before she died. It was
40:55
Speaker 1: punishment being made legible, which meant, thought Miss Marple, that
40:58
Speaker 1: the person who had killed Honoria Mallory was a person
41:01
Speaker 1: to whom it mattered, above all things, that Honoria Mallory
41:04
Speaker 1: should know why. She rose and went to her writing
41:07
Speaker 1: desk and wrote a short note to Mr Hetherick. and another,
41:11
Speaker 1: shorter still, to Dr. Hadock. Then she sat by the
41:14
Speaker 1: window in the fading light and thought about a stem
41:16
Speaker 1: of rue thrust into the earth of a girl's grave,
41:19
Speaker 1: half hidden as though the hand had been interrupted, and
41:21
Speaker 1: about a bicycle lamp that had turned in at the
41:23
Speaker 1: light gate on the night of the fate and gone
41:25
Speaker 1: out among the stones. Motif, she thought. Not signature. Motif.
41:30
Speaker 1: Section 6. Cracks in the china. Miss Marple's two notes
41:34
Speaker 1: went out with the morning post on Thursday, and by
41:37
Speaker 1: the time she had finished her breakfast egg, the village
41:39
Speaker 1: had come to her. as it always did when there
41:41
Speaker 1: was trouble, on a variety of pretexts. Griselda Clement came first,
41:46
Speaker 1: ostensibly to borrow a pattern, but really because she had
41:49
Speaker 1: heard that Mrs Price Ridley had heard that Colonel Bantry
41:52
Speaker 1: had said that Inspector Slack had said that Gerald Vine
41:54
Speaker 1: was to be arrested by lunchtime. It was untrue, but
41:57
Speaker 1: it was the kind of untruth that had begun to
41:59
Speaker 1: feel true, and Griselda wanted, as she said, to know
42:03
Speaker 1: what to think. I think, my dear, said Miss Marple,
42:06
Speaker 1: that we shall none of us have to think at
42:07
Speaker 1: all in a day or two, because things are moving.
42:10
Speaker 1: though not perhaps in the direction one might suppose. They say,
42:14
Speaker 1: said Griselda, dropping her voice, though there was nobody in
42:16
Speaker 1: the room to overhear, that the letters Inspector Slack found
42:19
Speaker 1: at the Blue Boar were from her, from Rose Ray,
42:22
Speaker 1: and that Gerald Vine had never opened them, not one
42:25
Speaker 1: of them, in twenty-two years. I did hear something of that,
42:28
Speaker 1: said Miss Marple. Do you know what I think? said Griselda.
42:32
Speaker 1: She was flushed, and there was a fine glitter of
42:34
Speaker 1: anger in her that made her, for a moment, look
42:36
Speaker 1: very like her boy Timothy in one of his tempers.
42:39
Speaker 1: I think it is monstrous to have kept those letters
42:41
Speaker 1: unopened all that time, knowing they must contain what they contained,
42:45
Speaker 1: is a kind of cowardice I cannot even bear to imagine.
42:48
Speaker 1: If he had opened them, Miss Marple, if he had
42:50
Speaker 1: opened even one, that girl would not have died. No,
42:54
Speaker 1: said Miss Marple, she would not have died. I have
42:56
Speaker 1: thought about that too. Griselda went home to think about
42:59
Speaker 1: it some more, and Colonel Bantry came in her place,
43:02
Speaker 1: with the ostensible object of returning a book that Miss
43:04
Speaker 1: Marple had never lent him. He stood on the hearth-rug
43:07
Speaker 1: with his hands behind his back and cleared his throat
43:09
Speaker 1: several times in the manner of a man conducting a
43:12
Speaker 1: difficult interview with himself.' Look here, Miss Marple,' he said
43:15
Speaker 1: at last.' I' m no gossip, never was, but there's a
43:18
Speaker 1: thing I ought to say, and I don't know who
43:20
Speaker 1: else to say it to. It's about Honoria Mallory.'' Sit down, Colonel,'
43:25
Speaker 1: said Miss Marple,' and have a glass of my elderberry.'
43:28
Speaker 1: He sat down and had a glass of the elderberry,
43:30
Speaker 1: which was strong, and it worked upon him in the
43:32
Speaker 1: way she had intended. When she came back to this
43:35
Speaker 1: village five years ago, said the Colonel, and bought Hazeldean,
43:38
Speaker 1: she came to see me. Wanted advice about the timber,
43:41
Speaker 1: she said. I gave it her, and when she was
43:43
Speaker 1: leaving she stopped in the hall and said, quite out
43:46
Speaker 1: of nothing, Colonel Bantry, you are the churchwarden, I believe.
43:50
Speaker 1: Is Rose Ray still buried at St. Mary Mead? Just
43:53
Speaker 1: like that, as though she was asking about a linen cupboard.
43:56
Speaker 1: I said yes, she was, and she said, ah, then
43:59
Speaker 1: I have come home to the right place. And she smiled.
44:02
Speaker 1: Miss Marple. I did not care for that smile at all.
44:05
Speaker 1: It was the smile of a woman who has been
44:07
Speaker 1: carrying something for a long time and knows now where
44:10
Speaker 1: she means to put it down. Thank you, Colonel, said
44:12
Speaker 1: Miss Marple. That is exactly what I needed to know.
44:16
Speaker 1: Dolly Bantry rang up at eleven, and Miss Hartnell called
44:19
Speaker 1: after lunch with a fresh instalment of what she had
44:21
Speaker 1: overheard behind the marquee. The words twenty-two years, she was
44:25
Speaker 1: now certain, had been Mrs. Mallory's, not Gerald's, and had
44:29
Speaker 1: been followed by and now you know why. and by
44:32
Speaker 1: three o'clock Miss Marple felt she had received the whole
44:34
Speaker 1: village through her drawing-room, like a receiving line at a
44:37
Speaker 1: bad wedding, and she went out into the garden to
44:39
Speaker 1: be quiet. She was pinching off dead heads from her
44:42
Speaker 1: roses when Mr. Petherick came up the path, precise and
44:45
Speaker 1: dry as ever, with his umbrella under his arm, although
44:48
Speaker 1: the sky was cloudless.' You wrote to me,' he said,
44:51
Speaker 1: without preamble.' I did,' said Miss Marple.' Come and sit
44:55
Speaker 1: under the pear-tree. It is cooler. Under the pear-tree, without ceremony.'
45:00
Speaker 1: She asked him three questions, and he answered them. The
45:03
Speaker 1: first was whether Mrs. Mallory, on the Friday, had said
45:06
Speaker 1: anything about why she was changing her will. Mr. Petherick coughed.
45:10
Speaker 1: He was not, he said, in the habit of repeating
45:12
Speaker 1: what his clients said in their private capacities. Then he added, dryly,
45:16
Speaker 1: that Mrs. Mallory had said, when he pointed out that
45:19
Speaker 1: the disinheritance of a brother was a serious step, Mr. Petherick,
45:23
Speaker 1: I am not disinheriting my brother, I am paying a debt.
45:26
Speaker 1: I have owed it a great many years, and it
45:28
Speaker 1: grows no smaller for the waiting. The second was whether
45:31
Speaker 1: Mrs Mallory had known she was ill. She told me,
45:34
Speaker 1: said Mr Petherick, that her heart was not strong. She
45:37
Speaker 1: told me that she did not expect to make old bones.
45:40
Speaker 1: She was, however, in no immediate expectation of death, or
45:44
Speaker 1: so she said. And the third question, said Miss Marple,
45:47
Speaker 1: is whether she gave any indication, anything at all, that
45:50
Speaker 1: she was afraid. Mr Petherick looked at her for a moment.
45:53
Speaker 1: He was a man who did not use large words carelessly. Yes,
45:57
Speaker 1: he said. When she signed the will, her hand shook.
46:00
Speaker 1: I remarked upon it, pleasantly, and she said, Mr. Petherick,
46:05
Speaker 1: I have been afraid of one person all my life.
46:07
Speaker 1: I intend to stop being afraid this weekend. I confess
46:10
Speaker 1: it puzzled me at the time. It puzzles me a
46:12
Speaker 1: good deal more now. He rose to go, and paused
46:15
Speaker 1: at the gate, and looked back. Miss Marple, he said,
46:19
Speaker 1: I have known you a very long time. If you
46:21
Speaker 1: have any notion what all this means, I hope you
46:23
Speaker 1: will not carry it about alone. I shall not, said
46:26
Speaker 1: Miss Marple, carry it about alone for very much longer.
46:29
Speaker 1: He went. and she sat under the pear tree with
46:32
Speaker 1: the shadow of the leaves moving on her lap, and
46:34
Speaker 1: thought about a woman who had been afraid of one
46:36
Speaker 1: person all her life, and had come home to pay
46:38
Speaker 1: a debt. One person all her life. Not Rose Ray, then.
46:42
Speaker 1: Rose Ray had been nineteen when she died. She had
46:45
Speaker 1: not been in Honoria Vine's life always. Not Gerald, whom
46:48
Speaker 1: she had bullied and dismissed like a small boy. Not
46:51
Speaker 1: the servants. Not the village. Someone else. Someone earlier. Someone
46:55
Speaker 1: who had been there when Honoria was a child. and
46:58
Speaker 1: who had been there still on the day she came
46:59
Speaker 1: back to some time, Mary Mead as an old woman.
47:02
Speaker 1: And now Miss Marple, sitting very still under the pear tree,
47:06
Speaker 1: remembered a thing Mrs. Sims had said, and had not
47:08
Speaker 1: thought important at the time, and neither had she. There
47:11
Speaker 1: was only the one woman in that house besides me
47:13
Speaker 1: that Rose Ray had any business quarrelling with, and that
47:16
Speaker 1: was the young mistress. Only the one woman besides Mrs. Sims.
47:20
Speaker 1: But there had been another woman in the house, not
47:22
Speaker 1: one Mrs. Sims had thought of as a woman, perhaps,
47:25
Speaker 1: because she had been so much a part of it,
47:27
Speaker 1: There had been Honoria Vine's old nurse. The village had
47:30
Speaker 1: always spoken of Nanny Pruitt, and everyone had assumed she
47:33
Speaker 1: had died years ago. But had she? Had she really?
47:36
Speaker 1: Miss Marple rose so quickly that her knitting fell from
47:39
Speaker 1: her lap, and she left it, and went into the house,
47:42
Speaker 1: and took down the parish register from its shelf. She
47:45
Speaker 1: turned the pages of burials for the last thirty years,
47:48
Speaker 1: and she did not find the name Pruitt. Then she
47:50
Speaker 1: turned to the pages of marriages twenty years back, and
47:53
Speaker 1: she read down the columns, and stopped. The 24th of September. 1906.
47:58
Speaker 1: James Alfred Horbury, widower of Trumpington Cams, aged 41, and
48:03
Speaker 1: Emily Jane Pruitt, spinster of this parish, aged 46. Emily
48:08
Speaker 1: Jane Pruitt, Nanny Pruitt, married a widower called Horbury at
48:11
Speaker 1: 46 and gone to live at Trumpington, and had presumably
48:15
Speaker 1: no children of her own but a stepdaughter, a stepdaughter
48:18
Speaker 1: called Alice, who had grown up calling her mother and
48:21
Speaker 1: had gone into nursing and had come, in her time,
48:24
Speaker 1: to St Mary Mead. Nurse Alice Horbury was not the
48:27
Speaker 1: woman who had been in the still room with Rose
48:29
Speaker 1: Ray twenty-two years ago. Nurse Alice Horbury had been a
48:32
Speaker 1: schoolgirl at Trumpington then, but her stepmother had been, and
48:35
Speaker 1: her stepmother had gone on doubtless in some quiet corner
48:38
Speaker 1: of Trumpington, alive or dead, keeping the secret and the
48:41
Speaker 1: shame of it. And Nurse Alice Horbury, when she had
48:44
Speaker 1: come as a young woman to nurse a family called Vine,
48:47
Speaker 1: as she had once mentioned to Miss Marple in casual conversation,
48:50
Speaker 1: had come to a house where an old woman lay dying,
48:53
Speaker 1: and had, perhaps been told at last, by the dying,
48:56
Speaker 1: what had really happened to a village girl at the
48:58
Speaker 1: foot of a quarry twenty years before. Told by whom?
49:01
Speaker 1: Miss Marple asked herself, and who else, in that Trumpington sick-room,
49:05
Speaker 1: had heard? She sat with the parish register open on
49:07
Speaker 1: her knee, and the answer arranged itself slowly, as everything
49:11
Speaker 1: did in her mind, until it stood clear. Honoria Vian,
49:14
Speaker 1: Mrs Mallory as she then was, widowed young, had been
49:17
Speaker 1: nursing her old nurse at Trumpington, Alice Horbury had been
49:21
Speaker 1: the district nurse who came in to help, and in
49:23
Speaker 1: that sick room, in the last delirium of Nanny Pruitt,
49:26
Speaker 1: the whole story of Rose Ray had been told aloud,
49:29
Speaker 1: perhaps by the old nurse to relieve her conscience, perhaps
49:32
Speaker 1: by Honoria herself to a woman she trusted, perhaps in
49:35
Speaker 1: a whispered accusation of one to the other. with the
49:37
Speaker 1: young nurse listening in the corner and understanding, at last,
49:41
Speaker 1: what she was hearing. And afterwards, when the old woman
49:43
Speaker 1: was buried, the young nurse had come, quietly, unremarkably, over
49:47
Speaker 1: the course of a year, to St. Mary Mead, not
49:50
Speaker 1: to punish, not yet, only to watch. Twelve years of watching,
49:55
Speaker 1: twelve years of tending a grave in secret, twelve years
49:58
Speaker 1: of giving Honoria Mallory her medicine with steady hands. She
50:02
Speaker 1: has been very good to you, thought Miss Marple, and
50:04
Speaker 1: a woman who has been very good to another woman
50:06
Speaker 1: for twelve years, without ever exchanging a cross word, is
50:09
Speaker 1: a woman who has been holding her breath. She closed
50:12
Speaker 1: the register very gently, as though it were something breakable,
50:15
Speaker 1: and went to find her hat. Section 7. The Second
50:19
Speaker 1: Blow Miss Marple found her hat where she had left it,
50:22
Speaker 1: and put it on, and was standing in her own
50:24
Speaker 1: doorway with her hand on the latch when the telephone
50:26
Speaker 1: bell rang in the little hall, an event rare enough
50:29
Speaker 1: to be alarming, and alarming enough, that Friday morning, to
50:32
Speaker 1: be portentous. It was Dr. Haydock. His voice had the
50:36
Speaker 1: careful flatness of a man who has decided how much
50:38
Speaker 1: he is going to say before he picks up the receiver.
50:41
Speaker 1: Miss Marple, I have had the post-mortem results from the
50:44
Speaker 1: county analyst. Digital in poisoning, massive, unmistakable, and far beyond
50:49
Speaker 1: any therapeutic dose. It was in the cordial without question.
50:53
Speaker 1: I have telephoned Slack. He is on his way to
50:55
Speaker 1: the Blue Boar now with a warrant for Gerald Vine.
50:58
Speaker 1: There was a pause, and the line crackled with summer static.
51:01
Speaker 1: But that is not why I rang you, said Dr. Haydock.
51:04
Speaker 1: Slack's sergeant got to the blue boar first, to keep
51:07
Speaker 1: an eye on things. Miss Marple, Gerald Vine is gone,
51:10
Speaker 1: his bag is gone, his room is paid up to
51:13
Speaker 1: this morning, and the landlord's boy saw him walking out
51:15
Speaker 1: along the much-benham road at half-past five with his coat
51:18
Speaker 1: over his arm. He has run for it, and Slack
51:21
Speaker 1: is saying, in the way Slack says things, that innocent
51:24
Speaker 1: men do not run. Miss Marple stood in her hall
51:27
Speaker 1: with the receiver in her hand, and through the open
51:29
Speaker 1: door she could see her roses, and the blue sky.
51:32
Speaker 1: and the quiet high street where nothing ever happened except everything. Hey, Doc,
51:36
Speaker 1: she said. She never called him that except when it mattered.
51:39
Speaker 1: Gerald Vine has not run for it. Gerald Vine has
51:42
Speaker 1: gone to Roseray's grave, and if I am not very
51:44
Speaker 1: much mistaken, he will not be alone there for long.
51:47
Speaker 1: She put down the receiver and went out, without her
51:50
Speaker 1: shopping bag and without her umbrella, at a pace that
51:52
Speaker 1: would have astonished the village had the village been watching.
51:55
Speaker 1: But she was not the first to the churchyard, and
51:57
Speaker 1: she knew, even as she turned in at the light gate,
52:00
Speaker 1: that she was not in time to prevent what had
52:02
Speaker 1: been set in motion, only perhaps to witness it, and witnesses,
52:06
Speaker 1: as she had told Inspector Slack a hundred times in
52:08
Speaker 1: her gentle way, are what the truth requires. The churchyard
52:11
Speaker 1: lay baking in the late morning sun, all long shadows
52:15
Speaker 1: and yew smell and the drowsy sound of bees, and there,
52:18
Speaker 1: by the plain stone that bore the name Rose Ray,
52:21
Speaker 1: the second shock of that midsummer was already in progress.
52:24
Speaker 1: Gerald Vine was standing by the grave with his hat
52:27
Speaker 1: in his hand, and in front of him, between him
52:29
Speaker 1: and the stone, stood old Job Crick. Job had a
52:32
Speaker 1: shotgun under his arm. It was an ancient fowling piece,
52:36
Speaker 1: older than Job's tenancy at Hazeldine, kept for rabbits, and
52:39
Speaker 1: he was not pointing it. He was simply holding it,
52:41
Speaker 1: the way an old soldier holds a rifle on parade,
52:44
Speaker 1: and his bent old body had straightened, and his voice,
52:47
Speaker 1: when Miss Marple came within earshot, was not the mumble
52:49
Speaker 1: of the Hazeldine gardener, but the voice of a man
52:52
Speaker 1: who has waited twenty-two years to say a thing and
52:54
Speaker 1: finds it comes out whole.' You never opened them,' Job
52:58
Speaker 1: was saying.' Nine letters she wrote you, and I posted
53:01
Speaker 1: every one of them for her myself, walked into much
53:04
Speaker 1: venom with them so the village postmistress shouldn't see the direction,
53:07
Speaker 1: and you never opened one. She watched that post, Mr. Gerald,
53:11
Speaker 1: every day for a month she watched it, and then
53:13
Speaker 1: she stopped watching it, and a fortnight after that she
53:16
Speaker 1: was dead at the bottom of the quarry, and they
53:18
Speaker 1: called it misadventure, and I have kept my mouth shut
53:21
Speaker 1: twenty-two years because keeping my mouth shut was all I
53:23
Speaker 1: could do for her. But I seen you come home,
53:26
Speaker 1: and I seen her fall at the fate, and I
53:28
Speaker 1: know what I know, and I'm an old man and
53:30
Speaker 1: I don't care any more. Job, said Gerald Vine. His
53:34
Speaker 1: voice was very quiet. I never knew. I swear to
53:37
Speaker 1: you on that grave I never knew she wrote. The
53:39
Speaker 1: letters were returned. I never had them. Someone sent them
53:42
Speaker 1: back unopened. Do you understand? Someone intercepted. Aye, said Job. Someone.
53:48
Speaker 1: The house was full of someones, wasn't it? The young
53:51
Speaker 1: mistress who found her in the garden with you and
53:53
Speaker 1: turned her off without a character. The old nurse who
53:56
Speaker 1: told her aunt God knows what. They were all someones.
53:59
Speaker 1: and you went off to Africa like a good boy
54:01
Speaker 1: because your father told you, and she waited for a
54:03
Speaker 1: letter that was never coming, because it had never been sent.
54:06
Speaker 1: Miss Marple came forward then through the long grass, and
54:09
Speaker 1: neither man heard her until she was quite close, and
54:11
Speaker 1: then Job turned, and the shotgun swung an inch, and
54:14
Speaker 1: she looked at it with mild blue eyes and said,
54:17
Speaker 1: Good morning, Job. It is going to be hot again,
54:19
Speaker 1: I think. Miss Marple! The old man's face worked. You'd
54:23
Speaker 1: best go home, ma'am. This isn't women's business. On the contrary,
54:27
Speaker 1: said Miss Marple. sitting down on the low wall of
54:29
Speaker 1: the next plot with the air of a woman settling
54:31
Speaker 1: herself at a sewing circle. It has been women's business
54:34
Speaker 1: from the beginning. That is rather the point. Job, I
54:38
Speaker 1: want you to tell me something, and I want the truth.
54:41
Speaker 1: Who has been tending this grave? The old man was silent.
54:44
Speaker 1: The bees went on. Somewhere beyond the wall a wood
54:47
Speaker 1: pigeon called. She was my niece, Job said at last,
54:50
Speaker 1: and the words came out of him like something drawn
54:52
Speaker 1: with hooks. Rose, my sister's girl. No one remembered, or
54:57
Speaker 1: no one said. a gardener's niece, an underhousemaid, same thing,
55:01
Speaker 1: both invisible. I planted the yew by that wall the
55:04
Speaker 1: year she was born, did anyone know that? And I've
55:07
Speaker 1: tended this grave for twenty-two years, and every year I
55:10
Speaker 1: told myself, next year it'll matter less, and every year
55:13
Speaker 1: it mattered more. And then, his voice changed, and then
55:17
Speaker 1: I found out I wasn't the only one tending it. No,
55:20
Speaker 1: said Miss Marple softly, you were not the only one.
55:23
Speaker 1: The flowers, said Job, fresh ones, always, and never mine. Rosemary, mostly,
55:29
Speaker 1: and sometimes rue. For years I thought it was some
55:32
Speaker 1: soft-hearted village soul. Then this spring I came early, with
55:35
Speaker 1: the mist, and I saw the bicycle at the gate,
55:38
Speaker 1: and I saw who it was kneeling here, and I
55:40
Speaker 1: said nothing because, because what does an old man say,
55:43
Speaker 1: Miss Marple, when he finds that the person who has
55:45
Speaker 1: been mourning his girl all these years is the person who,
55:47
Speaker 1: he stopped, he could not say it, is the person
55:50
Speaker 1: who knew all along what was done to her, said
55:52
Speaker 1: Miss Marple gently, and had been waiting all those years
55:55
Speaker 1: to do something about it. Yes, Job, I know. I
55:59
Speaker 1: have known for a little while now. What I did
56:01
Speaker 1: not know, what I still need you to tell me,
56:03
Speaker 1: is what happened on the morning of the fate. You
56:05
Speaker 1: were by the gate when the cup rolled to your boot.
56:08
Speaker 1: You looked at it. You have been carrying something ever since.
56:11
Speaker 1: Job Crick looked at her for a long moment, and then, slowly,
56:14
Speaker 1: from the pocket of his ancient coat, he drew out
56:17
Speaker 1: a twist of paper and unfolded it with earthy, trembling fingers.
56:21
Speaker 1: Inside was a sprig of rue, dried, pressed almost flat,
56:25
Speaker 1: but unmistakable. It was lying by the cup, he said.
56:28
Speaker 1: where it rolled, just this, lying on the grass, like
56:31
Speaker 1: it had been dropped, and I picked it up, because
56:34
Speaker 1: rue was roses, not hers to like. It wasn't a liking,
56:38
Speaker 1: rue was what her mother grew by the door, my sister,
56:41
Speaker 1: for the sorrow of it, after, and I knew that
56:43
Speaker 1: whoever dropped this by that cup had sent the burying
56:45
Speaker 1: bunch in the morning, and I knew that the mistress's
56:48
Speaker 1: heart had been bad for years but not that bad,
56:51
Speaker 1: and I picked it up and I kept it, because
56:53
Speaker 1: I didn't know what else an old man does with
56:54
Speaker 1: a thing like that. He held it out on his palm.
56:57
Speaker 1: and it lay there between the three of them, small
56:59
Speaker 1: and grey-green and terrible. The whole story of that midsummer
57:03
Speaker 1: reduced to one sprig of bitter herb. Job, said Miss Marple.
57:07
Speaker 1: Who else was near the cordial table when the cup
57:09
Speaker 1: was carried through? You see everything. You have seen everything
57:12
Speaker 1: in this village for sixty years. The old man's jaw worked.
57:17
Speaker 1: Gerald Vine had sunk down onto the grass beside his sisters,
57:20
Speaker 1: beside Roses, Grave, and was staring at nothing. Everyone was
57:24
Speaker 1: near it, said Job. That's the devil of it. Miss
57:27
Speaker 1: Weatherby pouring, and the Colonel fetching, and the children underfoot.
57:31
Speaker 1: But there was one as come up beside the nurse
57:33
Speaker 1: while she carried the cup through the crowd, and walked
57:35
Speaker 1: a dozen yards with her, and spoke to her smiling,
57:38
Speaker 1: and went on. And I thought nothing of it, because
57:40
Speaker 1: what was there to think? It was only, the church
57:43
Speaker 1: clock struck the half hour, and its sound rolled over
57:46
Speaker 1: the graves, and Job Crick said the name. And Miss Marple,
57:49
Speaker 1: who had been expecting it, who had, in truth, known
57:52
Speaker 1: it since she found the black thread in the grave earth,
57:55
Speaker 1: felt her heart turn over all the same, because knowing
57:57
Speaker 1: a thing in the mind and hearing it spoken aloud
57:59
Speaker 1: by an old man with a shotgun are two very
58:02
Speaker 1: different degrees of knowledge. Ah, said Miss Marple. Yes, of course,
58:07
Speaker 1: it was only... And she said the name too, quietly,
58:10
Speaker 1: as one confirms an entry in a ledger. From beyond
58:13
Speaker 1: the lych gate came the sound of a bicycle being
58:15
Speaker 1: leaned against the wall, and unhurried footsteps on the path,
58:19
Speaker 1: and the three of them turned, as one, to see
58:21
Speaker 1: who had come to the grave. Section 8. Miss Marple's
58:25
Speaker 1: Snare The footsteps on the path belonged to Inspector Slack,
58:28
Speaker 1: who came through the light gate with his sergeant at
58:30
Speaker 1: his heels, and stopped dead at the sight before him.
58:33
Speaker 1: Miss Marple seated on a grave wall like a robin
58:36
Speaker 1: on a spade handle, Gerald Vine sitting on the grass
58:38
Speaker 1: with his hat in his hands, and old Job Crick
58:41
Speaker 1: with a shotgun under his arm, and twenty-two years of
58:43
Speaker 1: grief standing upright in his face.' Here,' said Inspector Slack,
58:47
Speaker 1: with the air of a man whose day has exceeded
58:49
Speaker 1: its allocation of irregularities.' Here! What is all this? Crick,
58:53
Speaker 1: put that gun down! Vine!' I've been looking for you
58:56
Speaker 1: since six o'clock, and I'd like to know what a
58:58
Speaker 1: man means by walking out of his lodgings the morning
59:01
Speaker 1: a warrant. Inspector, said Miss Marple, do come and sit down,
59:05
Speaker 1: or stand if you prefer. I dare say you will
59:07
Speaker 1: prefer it. Job has something to give you. and I
59:10
Speaker 1: have something to ask you, and I think if we
59:12
Speaker 1: are all patient for ten minutes we may save the
59:15
Speaker 1: county a very embarrassing arrest. Inspector Slack had known Miss
59:18
Speaker 1: Marple for fifteen years, and had learned, slowly, reluctantly, the
59:23
Speaker 1: way one learns that the tide will come in regardless
59:25
Speaker 1: of one's opinion of tides, that when she used that
59:28
Speaker 1: particular tone Patience was the cheapest option available. He stood
59:32
Speaker 1: his ground, but he did not bluster, and his sergeant,
59:34
Speaker 1: who was young, produced his notebook, and then, under Slack's eye,
59:38
Speaker 1: thought better of it. Job Crick held out the twist
59:41
Speaker 1: of paper. Slack unfolded it, looked at the dried sprig within,
59:45
Speaker 1: and looked up. Roo, said Miss Marple helpfully. It means regret.
59:50
Speaker 1: Job found it on the grass beside the cup Mrs.
59:53
Speaker 1: Mallory drank from, the cup that rolled away, you remember,
59:56
Speaker 1: before it was so thoughtfully washed. Whoever poisoned that cup
59:59
Speaker 1: dropped this beside it. Not by accident, Inspector. I do
1:00:03
Speaker 1: not believe anything about that day was an accident. It
1:00:05
Speaker 1: was left there as the posy was sent in the morning.
1:00:08
Speaker 1: A signature. A message. Rue, for regret. The same hand
1:00:12
Speaker 1: that sent the burying bunch held the cup. Then it
1:00:15
Speaker 1: wasn't in the cordial jug, said Slack slowly. We've been
1:00:18
Speaker 1: going at it as though someone poisoned the jug, or
1:00:20
Speaker 1: the bottle of drops up at the house. But if
1:00:23
Speaker 1: the rue was dropped beside the cup, Then the poison
1:00:25
Speaker 1: was in that cup and no other, said Miss Marple,
1:00:28
Speaker 1: which means it was put there after the cup was
1:00:30
Speaker 1: poured between the cordial table and the place where Mrs
1:00:33
Speaker 1: Mallory stood, a matter of a dozen yards and a
1:00:36
Speaker 1: dozen seconds, with the whole village watching and nobody seeing,
1:00:39
Speaker 1: because the one person carrying that cup was the one
1:00:42
Speaker 1: person nobody in St Mary Mead would ever look at twice.
1:00:46
Speaker 1: Slack's eyes went to the bicycle leaning against the churchyard
1:00:48
Speaker 1: wall and back to Miss Marple, and something in his
1:00:51
Speaker 1: face rearranged itself. The nurse, he said. You're telling me
1:00:55
Speaker 1: Alice Horbury poisoned her own patient in front of four
1:00:58
Speaker 1: hundred people? I am telling you nothing of the kind,
1:01:01
Speaker 1: said Miss Marple mildly. I am telling you that the
1:01:03
Speaker 1: cup was poisoned in transit, and I am telling you
1:01:06
Speaker 1: that Nurse Horbury carried it, and that Mrs... Mallory drank it,
1:01:09
Speaker 1: and that between those two facts there is a space
1:01:12
Speaker 1: of about a minute in which someone else, someone walking
1:01:14
Speaker 1: beside her, smiling, saying a few pleasant words, that both
1:01:18
Speaker 1: the opportunity and, I am afraid, a very much older
1:01:21
Speaker 1: motive than anyone has yet examined. You mean Mrs...' Mallory,'
1:01:25
Speaker 1: said Gerald Vine suddenly from the grass. His voice was rough.'
1:01:28
Speaker 1: You mean my sister did it herself? The posy, the rue,
1:01:32
Speaker 1: the poison in her own cup? You mean she—'' No, Mr. Vine,'
1:01:36
Speaker 1: said Miss Marple.' I do not mean that. Your sister
1:01:38
Speaker 1: was a hard woman, and a frightened one, and she
1:01:41
Speaker 1: had a great deal on her conscience. But she did
1:01:43
Speaker 1: not kill herself. She drank that cup because she had
1:01:46
Speaker 1: spent twelve years learning not to be afraid of the
1:01:48
Speaker 1: woman who brought it to her. That was the cruelty
1:01:51
Speaker 1: of it, you see. The trust was the weapon.' She
1:01:54
Speaker 1: turned back to Slack, and her voice lost, for a
1:01:56
Speaker 1: moment its wandering gentleness. Inspector, I am going to ask
1:02:00
Speaker 1: you to do something irregular, and I am going to
1:02:03
Speaker 1: ask you to trust me. This afternoon, at four o'clock,
1:02:06
Speaker 1: I want you to be within earshot of the nurse's
1:02:08
Speaker 1: cottage on the Muchbenham Road, concealed if you please. I
1:02:12
Speaker 1: believe policemen can be concealed when they try, with your
1:02:14
Speaker 1: sergeant and with Dr. Haydock if he will come, and
1:02:17
Speaker 1: I want you to wait whatever you hear until you
1:02:19
Speaker 1: hear me drop my knitting. I shall be knitting, and
1:02:22
Speaker 1: I shall drop it, and that will be the moment.
1:02:25
Speaker 1: And what, said Slack, with enormous suspicion, are you proposing
1:02:29
Speaker 1: to do at the nurse's cottage at four o'clock? I
1:02:31
Speaker 1: am proposing, said Miss Marple, to take tea. Nurse Horbury
1:02:35
Speaker 1: has invited me, or rather, she will have invited me
1:02:38
Speaker 1: by luncheon time, because I intend to call on her
1:02:40
Speaker 1: this morning and make myself so gently, mildly, thoroughly informative,
1:02:45
Speaker 1: that she will have no choice but to ask me
1:02:46
Speaker 1: to stay. I am going to tell her a story, Inspector,
1:02:50
Speaker 1: a village story, About a parallel, I am very fond
1:02:53
Speaker 1: of parallels. They are my one talent, and I am
1:02:55
Speaker 1: going to watch her face while I tell it. And
1:02:57
Speaker 1: if you're wrong, said Slack, you'll be taking tea with
1:03:00
Speaker 1: a poisoner. Oh, I am not wrong, said Miss Marple,
1:03:04
Speaker 1: rising from the wall and shaking the grass seeds from
1:03:06
Speaker 1: her skirt. But there is one more thing you should
1:03:08
Speaker 1: know before this afternoon, and you should hear it now,
1:03:11
Speaker 1: because it changes the shape of the case. Job, will
1:03:14
Speaker 1: you tell the inspector who it was that walked beside
1:03:16
Speaker 1: Nurse Horbury and spoke to her smiling while she carried
1:03:19
Speaker 1: the cup? The old gardener looked at the ground. It
1:03:22
Speaker 1: was the mistress's own maid, he said, Elsie Biggs. Only
1:03:26
Speaker 1: walked with her a dozen yards, like I said. Laughing
1:03:29
Speaker 1: and chatting, bold as brass, with her hat still crooked
1:03:31
Speaker 1: from the morning. And I thought nothing of it. Why
1:03:34
Speaker 1: would I? A parlour maid and a nurse, gossiping at
1:03:37
Speaker 1: a fate. Elsie Biggs, repeated Slack, in the voice of
1:03:41
Speaker 1: a man trying to fit a new piece into a
1:03:42
Speaker 1: puzzle he thought was finished. The girl who found the posy.
1:03:45
Speaker 1: The girl who told the whole vicarage lawn about it.
1:03:48
Speaker 1: Miss Marple. What in heaven's name does a twenty-year-old parlour maid?
1:03:52
Speaker 1: Elsie Biggs, said Miss Marple, is Mrs. Sims' granddaughter, and Mrs. Sims,
1:03:58
Speaker 1: as I learnt this week, was cook general at Hazeldean
1:04:00
Speaker 1: twenty-two years ago, and heard a quarrel in the garden
1:04:03
Speaker 1: from the still-room window, and never forgot it. And Elsie Biggs, Inspector,
1:04:07
Speaker 1: is also, though she does not use the name, because
1:04:10
Speaker 1: her mother married a Biggs of Little Worsley, the daughter
1:04:13
Speaker 1: of Martha Ray. The churchyard was very quiet. The wood-pigeon
1:04:17
Speaker 1: had stopped calling. Rose Ray, said Miss Marple, was not
1:04:20
Speaker 1: the only daughter her mother bore. There was a younger girl, Martha,
1:04:24
Speaker 1: sent away to an aunt in Yorkshire when the scandal came,
1:04:27
Speaker 1: and the village forgot her as it forgets everything inconvenient.
1:04:30
Speaker 1: Martha married, and had a daughter, and named her Elsie,
1:04:33
Speaker 1: and told her on her deathbed three years ago about
1:04:36
Speaker 1: the sister she had lost at the bottom of a quarry,
1:04:38
Speaker 1: and the house that had destroyed her, and the woman
1:04:40
Speaker 1: who had done it. And Elsie Biggs came to St
1:04:43
Speaker 1: Mary Mead eighteen months ago, and took service at Hazeldine,
1:04:46
Speaker 1: as a parlour maid, in the house where her aunt
1:04:48
Speaker 1: had been an underhousemaid. Waiting, Inspector. The way this whole
1:04:52
Speaker 1: case has waited. It has been waiting twenty-two years, and
1:04:55
Speaker 1: it came to harvest this midsummer, at a fate, in
1:04:58
Speaker 1: a cup of elderflower cordial. She picked up her knitting
1:05:01
Speaker 1: from the wall. She had brought it, of course. She
1:05:04
Speaker 1: always brought it, and looked round the little company. The policeman,
1:05:08
Speaker 1: the brother, the old gardener with his useless gun. The
1:05:11
Speaker 1: snare this afternoon is not for Nurse Holbury, she said.
1:05:14
Speaker 1: It never was. The nurse is the only innocent person
1:05:17
Speaker 1: in this wretched business, and she has been living twelve
1:05:19
Speaker 1: years beside a secret she half knew and could not speak,
1:05:23
Speaker 1: tending a grave for a girl she never met because
1:05:25
Speaker 1: her stepmother's dying voice told her where the guilt lay. No, Inspector.
1:05:29
Speaker 1: This afternoon I am taking tea with Nurse Horbury because
1:05:32
Speaker 1: Elsie Biggs will be there. She has been there every
1:05:35
Speaker 1: afternoon this week, comforting the nurse, and I want to
1:05:38
Speaker 1: watch Elsie's face just once, when someone says aloud, in
1:05:41
Speaker 1: an ordinary drawing-room voice, the word Roo. She paused at
1:05:45
Speaker 1: the light gate. A soft snare, she said, almost to herself.
1:05:49
Speaker 1: That is all one needs for a conscience that has
1:05:52
Speaker 1: been waiting twenty-two years. It wants, more than anything in
1:05:55
Speaker 1: the world, to be sprung. Section 9. The Quiet Assembling
1:05:59
Speaker 1: The light gate swung shut behind her, and Miss Marple
1:06:02
Speaker 1: walked back along the high street in the white noon heat,
1:06:05
Speaker 1: and the village she moved through was the same village
1:06:07
Speaker 1: it had always been. The baker's van, the ducks on
1:06:10
Speaker 1: the pond, Mrs. Price Ridley airing a grievance at her gate,
1:06:14
Speaker 1: and yet it seemed to her, as it sometimes did,
1:06:16
Speaker 1: that she was seeing it with the varnish off, the
1:06:18
Speaker 1: way one sees a familiar room when a piece of
1:06:20
Speaker 1: furniture has been taken away. She had one more call
1:06:23
Speaker 1: to make before four o'clock, and she made it at
1:06:25
Speaker 1: the vicarage, where she found Griselda in the garden pretending
1:06:28
Speaker 1: to deadhead the sweet peas, and actually, Miss Marple suspected,
1:06:32
Speaker 1: hiding from the parish magazines. My dear Griselda, she said,
1:06:36
Speaker 1: I want to ask you a favour. This afternoon at
1:06:38
Speaker 1: about half-past four, I want you to take your little
1:06:41
Speaker 1: boy for a walk along the much-benham road. past Nurse
1:06:44
Speaker 1: Horbury's cottage, and I want you to walk slowly, and
1:06:47
Speaker 1: to stop and look at the bees in the nurse's garden.
1:06:50
Speaker 1: Timothy likes bees, does he not? And I want you
1:06:52
Speaker 1: not to hurry away, whatever you hear. Griselda, who had
1:06:56
Speaker 1: lived in St Mary Mead long enough to know an
1:06:58
Speaker 1: instrument of providence when one sat down beside her, looked
1:07:01
Speaker 1: at Miss Marple for a long moment. Miss Marple, she said,
1:07:05
Speaker 1: is someone going to be arrested this afternoon? I hope,
1:07:08
Speaker 1: said Miss Marple, that someone is going to be freed
1:07:10
Speaker 1: this afternoon. There is a difference. Will you do it?
1:07:13
Speaker 1: Of course I shall do it, said Griselda. Timothy shall
1:07:16
Speaker 1: see more bees than any child in England. The second
1:07:19
Speaker 1: call was at the Blue Boar, where Miss Marple sent
1:07:22
Speaker 1: up a message, and presently Gerald Vine came down into
1:07:25
Speaker 1: the little private parlour, looking ten years older than he
1:07:27
Speaker 1: had at the churchyard, which was itself a day in
1:07:30
Speaker 1: which he had lived twenty years. Mister! Vine! said Miss Marple.
1:07:35
Speaker 1: You came home to tell your sister something. You said
1:07:37
Speaker 1: so to Inspector Slack, that you came home to tell
1:07:40
Speaker 1: her something, and that someone else arrived before you. Will
1:07:43
Speaker 1: you tell me now what it was? He sat down
1:07:45
Speaker 1: heavily in the horsehair chair, and turned his hat in
1:07:48
Speaker 1: his hands, and for a moment she thought he would
1:07:50
Speaker 1: not speak. Then he said, I got a letter, five
1:07:53
Speaker 1: weeks ago in Kenya. It had followed me round three farms.
1:07:57
Speaker 1: It was from my sister, the first word she'd written
1:07:59
Speaker 1: me in twenty-two years. Do you want to know what
1:08:02
Speaker 1: it said, after twenty-two years of silence? It said, Gerald,
1:08:06
Speaker 1: I have made my will. Come home before midsummer. There
1:08:09
Speaker 1: is something that must be put right. and I find
1:08:12
Speaker 1: I cannot die with it where it is. Harsh. And
1:08:15
Speaker 1: you came. I came. Six weeks on ships and trains,
1:08:19
Speaker 1: turning it over. What must be put right? And I
1:08:22
Speaker 1: got here on the day of the fate, and she
1:08:23
Speaker 1: looked at me across the lawn, and I went to
1:08:25
Speaker 1: her behind the marquee, and I said, I said, Honoria,
1:08:29
Speaker 1: I've come. And she said, He stopped and cleared his throat.
1:08:33
Speaker 1: She said, You came too late, Jerry. You always did
1:08:36
Speaker 1: come too late. But you may as well know it
1:08:38
Speaker 1: all now. And she began to tell me about Rose.
1:08:41
Speaker 1: about that night. She had got as far as, as
1:08:43
Speaker 1: far as the garden, the quarrel in the garden, when
1:08:46
Speaker 1: Miss Hartnell came round the corner of the marquee after
1:08:48
Speaker 1: her dropped ticket, and Honoria stopped and stood up and said, Afterwards,
1:08:53
Speaker 1: come to the house tonight and I'll tell you the rest.
1:08:55
Speaker 1: Only there wasn't any tonight, there wasn't any afterwards. She
1:08:59
Speaker 1: was dead within the hour, and the rest of it
1:09:01
Speaker 1: died with her. Not quite all of it, said Miss Marple.
1:09:04
Speaker 1: Some of it was written down, some of it grew
1:09:07
Speaker 1: in a garden, and some of it, Mr. Vine, has
1:09:10
Speaker 1: been walking about this village in a parlour maid's cap
1:09:12
Speaker 1: for eighteen months. I should like you to be at
1:09:14
Speaker 1: Nurse Horbury's cottage at half-past four this afternoon. Walk in
1:09:18
Speaker 1: without knocking. She will think you have come about the will,
1:09:21
Speaker 1: and it will seem quite natural. Come after me, not before.
1:09:24
Speaker 1: And when I drop my knitting, say what I tell
1:09:26
Speaker 1: you to say. Nothing else. Only that. What am I
1:09:30
Speaker 1: to say? That, said Miss Marple, will depend entirely on
1:09:34
Speaker 1: what happens when I drop it. She walked home and
1:09:36
Speaker 1: ate a slice of cold ham and a tomato, with
1:09:39
Speaker 1: the attention she always gave to solitary meals, and then
1:09:42
Speaker 1: she sat down in her drawing-room with her diary of engagements.
1:09:45
Speaker 1: She kept one. It was nearly empty, which was, she
1:09:48
Speaker 1: often remarked, the advantage of a well-ordered life, and she
1:09:51
Speaker 1: turned back through the pages of the past fortnight and
1:09:54
Speaker 1: read the entries with care, as though the little pencilled
1:09:56
Speaker 1: words were entries in a ledger she meant to balance.
1:09:59
Speaker 1: Fate Committee, Vicarage Lawn, 10am Elsie Biggs with News of
1:10:03
Speaker 1: the Posey, Hat Crooked, Fate, 3 o'clock, Mrs M in Morve,
1:10:08
Speaker 1: Nurse H at her elbow, you never let me forget them, 4.45,
1:10:13
Speaker 1: The Cup, The Fall, The Cup Rolling, Jobs Boot, Nurse H.
1:10:18
Speaker 1: Gathering Cups, Dregs Darker, Flex, Bicycle Lamp, Lichgate, Rue in
1:10:23
Speaker 1: the Grave Earth, Black Thread, Mrs. Sims, The Stillroom Window,
1:10:28
Speaker 1: A Woman's Voice, Register, Hobbery, Prewitt, Trumpington, Job's Niece, The
1:10:33
Speaker 1: Yew Planted the Year She Was Born, Elsie, Martha Ray's Daughter,
1:10:37
Speaker 1: and there, on the last page, she wrote, in her
1:10:40
Speaker 1: small upright Victorian hand, the sentence she had been travelling
1:10:43
Speaker 1: towards since a cup rolled across the vicarage lawn, and
1:10:46
Speaker 1: stopped against an old man's boot. The poisoner is the
1:10:49
Speaker 1: person for whom the message was written, and the message
1:10:51
Speaker 1: was not written to Honoria Mallory. It was written by her.
1:10:54
Speaker 1: She sat looking at it for a long time. That
1:10:57
Speaker 1: was the thing the whole village had got backwards, the
1:10:59
Speaker 1: thing Inspector Slack had got backwards, the thing she herself
1:11:02
Speaker 1: had got backwards for four days. The posy of Rue
1:11:05
Speaker 1: and Rosemary had been found in Mrs Mallory's hands on
1:11:07
Speaker 1: the morning of the fete. Everyone had assumed it was
1:11:10
Speaker 1: sent to her, as a threat. But Honoria Mallory's behaviour
1:11:13
Speaker 1: that morning, the white face... The three changes of mind, away, water, fire,
1:11:19
Speaker 1: was not the behaviour of a woman receiving a threat.
1:11:21
Speaker 1: A threatened woman burns the thing at once, or shows
1:11:24
Speaker 1: it to the police, or gives it to her nurse.
1:11:26
Speaker 1: She does not put it in water. She does not.
1:11:29
Speaker 1: And this was what Miss Marple had seen and not understood,
1:11:32
Speaker 1: sitting on the vicarage lawn while Elsie Biggs told her
1:11:34
Speaker 1: tale with her hat on crooked. She does not keep
1:11:37
Speaker 1: it alive. You put in water the thing you want
1:11:39
Speaker 1: to keep. Honoria Mallory had sent that posy herself. She
1:11:43
Speaker 1: had wrapped it in a florist's box, without card, without name,
1:11:46
Speaker 1: and sent it to her own house by the rural post,
1:11:49
Speaker 1: to be found there on the morning of her death,
1:11:51
Speaker 1: to be talked of at the fete, to be remembered afterwards,
1:11:54
Speaker 1: to be understood, rue for regret, rosemary for remembrance, foxglove
1:11:58
Speaker 1: for the manner of her dying, told in advance, lavender
1:12:01
Speaker 1: for distrust, of whom? Of the woman who had held
1:12:04
Speaker 1: her medicine for twelve years. It was a confession and
1:12:07
Speaker 1: an accusation in one, addressed to the only audience that mattered,
1:12:11
Speaker 1: the village, afterwards. She was arranging her own death like
1:12:14
Speaker 1: a fate, thought Miss Marple. She meant it to be
1:12:17
Speaker 1: a midsummer nobody forgets. She told Nurse Horbury so. She
1:12:21
Speaker 1: told her the exact truth. But Honoria Mallory had not
1:12:24
Speaker 1: poisoned herself. Miss Marple was as sure of that as
1:12:27
Speaker 1: she had ever been sure of anything. The woman who
1:12:29
Speaker 1: drank that cup had spent twelve years refusing to be
1:12:32
Speaker 1: afraid of her nurse, had built a whole life on
1:12:34
Speaker 1: that refusal, had come home to St Mary Mead to
1:12:37
Speaker 1: put it right, had made a will to pay the debt,
1:12:39
Speaker 1: had summoned her brother to hear the story. Such a
1:12:42
Speaker 1: woman does not drink her own death in a cup
1:12:44
Speaker 1: of cordial at 4.45 on a Saturday afternoon. Such a
1:12:47
Speaker 1: woman was executed by someone who had learned what she
1:12:50
Speaker 1: intended and could not permit it to be said aloud.
1:12:53
Speaker 1: Someone who had been in the house that Friday, when
1:12:55
Speaker 1: the will was signed. Someone who had heard, servants always heard. Mrs.
1:12:59
Speaker 1: Sims had heard, 22 years ago, from the stillroom window,
1:13:03
Speaker 1: what Honoria Mallory meant to tell her brother when he
1:13:05
Speaker 1: came to the house that night. Someone for whom that story,
1:13:08
Speaker 1: spoken aloud at last, was not a confession longed for
1:13:11
Speaker 1: but a catastrophe arriving. Someone who stood, if the story
1:13:15
Speaker 1: were told, in the place where murderesses stand. Not the nurse.
1:13:19
Speaker 1: The nurse was innocent, had been innocent for twelve years,
1:13:23
Speaker 1: knowing half and dreading the rest. The person who could
1:13:25
Speaker 1: not permit the story was the person the story was about,
1:13:29
Speaker 1: and Honoria Mallory, who had been afraid of one person
1:13:31
Speaker 1: all her life, who had said so to her solicitor
1:13:34
Speaker 1: with a shaking hand, had not been afraid of her nurse,
1:13:36
Speaker 1: her brother, or any living soul in St Mary Mead.
1:13:40
Speaker 1: She had been afraid of the girl at the foot
1:13:41
Speaker 1: of the quarry. She had been afraid of Rose Ray,
1:13:44
Speaker 1: of her name, her grave, her memory, her family's quiet, patient,
1:13:48
Speaker 1: twenty-two-year tending of all three. And she had come home
1:13:51
Speaker 1: at last to buy the fear off with forty thousand
1:13:53
Speaker 1: pounds and a deathbed confession, and someone in that house
1:13:57
Speaker 1: had decided that the price of her peace was her silence.
1:14:00
Speaker 1: Miss Marple closed the diary, and took her knitting, and
1:14:02
Speaker 1: her second-best hat, and her little beaded bag, and went
1:14:06
Speaker 1: out into the afternoon. The much-venom road lay white and
1:14:09
Speaker 1: dusty under the sun, and the hedgerows were loud with insects,
1:14:12
Speaker 1: and at the end of it the pink-washed cottage stood
1:14:15
Speaker 1: with its bees and its drying onions, looking exactly like
1:14:18
Speaker 1: what it was, the home of a woman everyone trusted.
1:14:21
Speaker 1: Miss Marple walked up the path at four o'clock precisely,
1:14:24
Speaker 1: and as she reached the door she saw, through the
1:14:26
Speaker 1: open parlour window, that the tea-things were set for three,
1:14:29
Speaker 1: she had expected that. Elsie Biggs was always there comforting
1:14:33
Speaker 1: the nurse. Dear Miss Marple, said Nurse Horbury opening the door,
1:14:37
Speaker 1: how kind of you to come. Elsie has just brought
1:14:39
Speaker 1: over some of her shortbread. Do sit in the cool.
1:14:42
Speaker 1: And Elsie Biggs, sitting by the window with the sun
1:14:45
Speaker 1: in her dark hair, smiled at Miss Marple with her
1:14:47
Speaker 1: Aunt Rose's smile, and Miss Marple sat down and took
1:14:51
Speaker 1: out her knitting, and began very gently, very mildly, in
1:14:54
Speaker 1: her soft wandering voice, to tell a story. Such a
1:14:57
Speaker 1: sad business, she said, and it has put me so
1:15:00
Speaker 1: in mind all week of a parallel. I am very
1:15:03
Speaker 1: fond of parallels, my dears. They are my one talent.
1:15:07
Speaker 1: It happened at St Mary Mead too, oh, many years ago,
1:15:10
Speaker 1: before either of you was born, a girl in a
1:15:12
Speaker 1: great house, and a young master, and an old nurse
1:15:15
Speaker 1: who knew more than was good for her. And the
1:15:18
Speaker 1: strange thing about it, the thing I have never forgotten,
1:15:21
Speaker 1: was the flowers. It was all done with flowers. She
1:15:24
Speaker 1: smiled round the little parlour, and her needles clicked, and
1:15:26
Speaker 1: she said the word. Roo. Roo. Section 10. The flowers speak.
1:15:32
Speaker 1: The word lay in the quiet parlour like a stone
1:15:34
Speaker 1: dropped into a well, and Miss Marple went on knitting,
1:15:37
Speaker 1: and waited for the ripple to come back. It came,
1:15:41
Speaker 1: but not from the quarter she had half expected. Nurse
1:15:43
Speaker 1: Horbury sat very still, her teacup halfway to the pot,
1:15:47
Speaker 1: and her mild grey eyes went, not to Miss Marple,
1:15:49
Speaker 1: but to Elsie Biggs. And Elsie Biggs, who had been
1:15:52
Speaker 1: cutting her shortbread with a steady hand, did not look up,
1:15:55
Speaker 1: but the knife stopped, and after a moment she laid
1:15:58
Speaker 1: it down on the plate with a small, precise sound,
1:16:00
Speaker 1: the way one sets down a piece in a game
1:16:02
Speaker 1: one has been winning. Roo, repeated Elsie pleasantly. That's the
1:16:06
Speaker 1: herb of grace, isn't it, Miss Marple? My mother grew
1:16:09
Speaker 1: it by the door. She said it was for the
1:16:10
Speaker 1: sorrow of the house. Yes, said Miss Marple. Your mother
1:16:14
Speaker 1: would know. She was Martha Ray before she married. Rose
1:16:17
Speaker 1: Ray's sister. Your aunt, my dear, was the girl at
1:16:20
Speaker 1: the bottom of the quarry. The parlour was silent. Through
1:16:23
Speaker 1: the open window came the sound of the bees, and
1:16:25
Speaker 1: the church clock far off, striking the quarter. Nurse Horbury
1:16:29
Speaker 1: had set down the teapot, and her hand, Miss Marple noticed,
1:16:32
Speaker 1: was not quite steady, the first unsteady thing she had
1:16:35
Speaker 1: ever seen those hands do.' How long have you known?'
1:16:38
Speaker 1: said Elsie. There was no pretense left in her voice.
1:16:41
Speaker 1: It had gone flat and hard and much older than twenty.
1:16:44
Speaker 1: It was, Miss Marple thought, the voice of Martha Ray's deathbed,
1:16:47
Speaker 1: a family voice, kept like the Sunday china.' Since yesterday,
1:16:51
Speaker 1: said Miss Marple, though I began to wonder on the
1:16:54
Speaker 1: day of the fate, when you came across the vicarage
1:16:56
Speaker 1: lawn with your hat on crooked, and your news all ready,
1:16:59
Speaker 1: you found the posy Elsie, you told us so, but
1:17:02
Speaker 1: the postmistress tells me no such box came through the
1:17:04
Speaker 1: village post, and the rural postman from Muchbenham tells Inspector Slack,
1:17:08
Speaker 1: told him this morning, at my suggestion, that he delivered
1:17:11
Speaker 1: nothing to Hazeldane on the Friday or the Saturday. There
1:17:14
Speaker 1: was no box, my dear, there was only a bunch
1:17:17
Speaker 1: of bitter herbs, cut fresh, tied with black thread, and
1:17:20
Speaker 1: carried into Hazeldame by the one person who could carry
1:17:23
Speaker 1: anything anywhere in that house without being asked a question,
1:17:26
Speaker 1: and then found, very dramatically in the morning, so that
1:17:29
Speaker 1: the whole Vicarage lawn should hear of it by ten o'clock.
1:17:32
Speaker 1: You needed the village to know about the posy. You
1:17:35
Speaker 1: needed us all watching Mrs Mallory's face when the news
1:17:37
Speaker 1: went round. It was your signature, Elsie, your motif. Rue, rosemary, foxglove, lavender, regret, remembrance, insincerity, distrust.
1:17:47
Speaker 1: You wrote it all out in flowers, the way your
1:17:49
Speaker 1: grandmother wrote it out in a garden bed, and you
1:17:51
Speaker 1: made her drink it. Elsie Biggs looked at her then,
1:17:54
Speaker 1: and smiled, Rose Ray's smile, warm and quick and terrible,
1:17:59
Speaker 1: the smile that had made a whole village love a
1:18:00
Speaker 1: dead girl it barely remembered. Prove it, she said. I
1:18:04
Speaker 1: cannot prove it, said Miss Marple simply. Not the cup.
1:18:08
Speaker 1: You are too clever for that, and I do not
1:18:10
Speaker 1: think anyone will ever prove the cup. But I can
1:18:12
Speaker 1: tell you the rest of it, shall I? And you
1:18:14
Speaker 1: may tell me where I am wrong. and without haste,
1:18:17
Speaker 1: in her soft, elderly, wandering voice, Miss Marple told it.
1:18:21
Speaker 1: Twenty-two years ago your Aunt Rose was under housemaid at Hazeldane,
1:18:24
Speaker 1: and she and Gerald Vine loved one another, truly, I believe.
1:18:28
Speaker 1: They were that kind of young. And old Mr. Vine's daughter, Honoria,
1:18:31
Speaker 1: found them in the garden one night, and quarrelled with Rose, Mrs.
1:18:35
Speaker 1: Sims heard it from the still-room window, and never knew,
1:18:38
Speaker 1: poor soul, that what she was hearing was not a
1:18:40
Speaker 1: mistress dismissing a forward maid, but something much colder. Honoria
1:18:44
Speaker 1: Vine did not dismiss your aunt for impropriety, Elsie. She
1:18:47
Speaker 1: dismissed her because she was jealous, not of Gerald. but
1:18:50
Speaker 1: of what Rose had, warmth, laughter, the power of being loved.
1:18:55
Speaker 1: Honoria had none of it, and she was the kind
1:18:57
Speaker 1: of woman who destroys what she cannot have. She turned
1:19:00
Speaker 1: Rose off without a character, in the middle of the night,
1:19:03
Speaker 1: and then, and this is the part the village never knew,
1:19:06
Speaker 1: she went to Rose's aunt, your great-aunt on the much-benham road,
1:19:09
Speaker 1: and told her the girl was with child, and that
1:19:11
Speaker 1: it was Gerald's, and that the family would deny it,
1:19:14
Speaker 1: and that the best thing was for Rose to go
1:19:16
Speaker 1: away somewhere and be forgotten. It was Honoria who arranged
1:19:19
Speaker 1: the forgetting. She had a talent for arranging. But Rose
1:19:22
Speaker 1: did not go away quietly. She wrote to Gerald nine letters,
1:19:26
Speaker 1: and Honoria, who had allies in that house still, saw
1:19:29
Speaker 1: to it the letters never reached him. And when Rose
1:19:31
Speaker 1: found herself alone, and shamed, and waiting for a word
1:19:34
Speaker 1: that was never coming, One frosted March night she walked
1:19:37
Speaker 1: home across the fields by the old quarry, the short way,
1:19:41
Speaker 1: the forbidden way. And I do not know, Elsie, nobody
1:19:44
Speaker 1: will ever know, whether she missed the style in the dark,
1:19:46
Speaker 1: as the coroner said, or whether she simply stopped caring
1:19:49
Speaker 1: where she put her feet. But I know whose doing
1:19:51
Speaker 1: it was that she was on that road, in that dark, alone.
1:19:55
Speaker 1: And so do you. Your mother told you. She told
1:19:58
Speaker 1: you on her deathbed, the way these things are always told,
1:20:01
Speaker 1: too late, to the wrong person, as a burden instead
1:20:04
Speaker 1: of a warning. Elsie had not moved. Her face was
1:20:07
Speaker 1: like a mask of her aunt's face, the same bones,
1:20:10
Speaker 1: the same warmth, all hardened into patience. And you came here,
1:20:14
Speaker 1: said Miss Marple, eighteen months ago, and took service in
1:20:17
Speaker 1: the very house, and waited. You were very patient. Patience
1:20:21
Speaker 1: is a family virtue of yours, I think. Your uncle
1:20:23
Speaker 1: Job has tended that grave for twenty-two years without speaking
1:20:26
Speaker 1: a word, and your mother carried the story for twenty
1:20:29
Speaker 1: years without telling it. You watched Mrs. Mallory, You learned
1:20:32
Speaker 1: her habits, and when you found her drops, the digital inn,
1:20:35
Speaker 1: kept in the cool cupboard, in a house where the
1:20:37
Speaker 1: parlour maid comes and goes as freely as the cat,
1:20:40
Speaker 1: you understood, I think, that you would never need a
1:20:42
Speaker 1: better instrument. Because digital inn is foxglove, Elsie. It is
1:20:46
Speaker 1: the flower itself. You could kill her with her own medicine,
1:20:49
Speaker 1: and sign the death with her own motif, and everyone
1:20:52
Speaker 1: would say her heart. Poor lady. It was always her heart.
1:20:55
Speaker 1: She paused. The needles clicked. And then, on the Friday
1:20:59
Speaker 1: before the fete, everything changed. Mrs Mallory made a new will.
1:21:03
Speaker 1: She left everything, Hazeldean, forty thousand pounds to Nurse Horbury,
1:21:07
Speaker 1: and you were in that house, and servants hear everything,
1:21:10
Speaker 1: and you understood what it meant, that she was making
1:21:12
Speaker 1: her peace, that she meant to tell her brother the
1:21:15
Speaker 1: whole story that night, and die easy, and be remembered kindly,
1:21:18
Speaker 1: the benefactress, the penitent, the real lady who paid her debts,
1:21:22
Speaker 1: and that was the one thing you could not permit,
1:21:25
Speaker 1: not the money, I don't believe the money meant anything
1:21:27
Speaker 1: to you, the story, she was going to confess, and
1:21:30
Speaker 1: be forgiven, and take the meaning of your aunt's death
1:21:32
Speaker 1: away from you, and make it into a chapter of
1:21:35
Speaker 1: her redemption. Twenty-two years of your family's grief, all bought
1:21:38
Speaker 1: up and signed away in a solicitor's office on a
1:21:40
Speaker 1: Friday afternoon, so it could not wait for her heart.
1:21:44
Speaker 1: It had to be Saturday, at the Fate, in public,
1:21:46
Speaker 1: before the night came, before she could speak. You're guessing,
1:21:50
Speaker 1: said Elsie. I am deducing, said Miss Marple gently, which
1:21:53
Speaker 1: is only guessing with better manners, and I have one
1:21:56
Speaker 1: thing more, Elsie, that is not a guess. Job found
1:21:59
Speaker 1: the sprig of rue by the cup, You dropped it there.
1:22:02
Speaker 1: You had to have it there. The motif required it.
1:22:05
Speaker 1: The message was not complete without it. And Job has
1:22:08
Speaker 1: kept it, wrapped in paper, in his coat pocket, since
1:22:11
Speaker 1: a quarter to five on the day of the fate.
1:22:13
Speaker 1: There is black thread on that sprig, my dear. The
1:22:15
Speaker 1: same black thread that is in the mending basket at Hazeldean,
1:22:18
Speaker 1: where you turned the hem of the housemaid's afternoon dress
1:22:21
Speaker 1: last Tuesday week. Cook will remember it. Thread is thread,
1:22:24
Speaker 1: and I dare say a dozen reels of black would match.
1:22:27
Speaker 1: But juries are made of village people, Elsie. and village
1:22:30
Speaker 1: people understand about thread, and about who carries it. It
1:22:33
Speaker 1: was at that moment, exactly then, with the girl's eyes
1:22:36
Speaker 1: fixed on her and the hatred in them coming up
1:22:38
Speaker 1: like water in a well, that Miss Marple dropped her knitting.
1:22:41
Speaker 1: It fell with a soft sound, and rolled, and the
1:22:44
Speaker 1: ball of wool ran a little way across the parlour floor,
1:22:47
Speaker 1: and at that signal, prearranged, irrevocable, two things happened at once.
1:22:51
Speaker 1: The garden gate clicked, and Gerald Vine came up the
1:22:54
Speaker 1: path without knocking, as he had been told to do,
1:22:56
Speaker 1: and appeared in the parlour doorway. thin and grey and shabby,
1:23:00
Speaker 1: rose-raised letters in his breast-pocket like a breastplate, and from
1:23:03
Speaker 1: the laurels at the side of the cottage, where they
1:23:05
Speaker 1: had stood for forty minutes in the heat, came Inspector
1:23:08
Speaker 1: Slack and his sergeant, their boots loud on the path,
1:23:11
Speaker 1: and past them on the road, walking very slowly with
1:23:14
Speaker 1: her little boy, came Griselda Clement, who stopped, as she
1:23:17
Speaker 1: had been asked to stop, to look at the bees.
1:23:20
Speaker 1: Elsie Biggs looked round the parlour at all of them,
1:23:22
Speaker 1: the old lady gathering up her wool, the policeman in
1:23:25
Speaker 1: the doorway, the dead girl's sweetheart with his hand against
1:23:28
Speaker 1: his heart, and what happened then was the thing Miss
1:23:30
Speaker 1: Marple had feared, and hoped for, and known, in the
1:23:33
Speaker 1: way she knew everything, would come. The girl did not run,
1:23:36
Speaker 1: she did not deny it again. She turned instead to
1:23:39
Speaker 1: Nurse Horbury, who had sat through all of it, as
1:23:42
Speaker 1: white as her own cap, and she said, in a
1:23:44
Speaker 1: voice suddenly young again, suddenly twenty and frightened, and unbearably tired,
1:23:49
Speaker 1: You knew, all these years, tending her grave, wearing your
1:23:52
Speaker 1: cap and your kind face, you knew what that house
1:23:55
Speaker 1: did to her, and you nursed her, You gave her
1:23:57
Speaker 1: her drops. You held her hand. You made her comfortable.
1:24:01
Speaker 1: And she was going to buy you two, wasn't she?
1:24:03
Speaker 1: With her forty thousand pounds. Devotion beyond the terms of duty.
1:24:07
Speaker 1: I was devoted beyond the terms of duty. I devoted
1:24:10
Speaker 1: eighteen months. Nobody left me anything. And then she put
1:24:13
Speaker 1: her head down on the parlour table, among the tea
1:24:15
Speaker 1: things and the shortbread, and wept, not like a murderess,
1:24:19
Speaker 1: but like Martha Ray's daughter, like Rose Ray's niece, like
1:24:22
Speaker 1: a girl who had carried a burying bunch for three
1:24:24
Speaker 1: years and finally set it down. Inspector Slack came in
1:24:28
Speaker 1: and did his duty, kindly enough, in his rough way.
1:24:31
Speaker 1: Nobody looked at anybody else. Outside, the bees went on,
1:24:35
Speaker 1: and Griselda lifted Timothy up to see them, and the
1:24:37
Speaker 1: church clock struck five. Miss Marple picked up her knitting,
1:24:41
Speaker 1: and counted her stitches, and found to her mild satisfaction
1:24:44
Speaker 1: that she had not dropped one. It was Gerald Vine
1:24:47
Speaker 1: who spoke last, standing in the doorway with his hat
1:24:49
Speaker 1: in his hands, looking not at the girl but at
1:24:51
Speaker 1: the empty chair where his sister used, at Fett's in
1:24:54
Speaker 1: the old days, to sit. She came home to put
1:24:56
Speaker 1: it right, he said, to no one in particular. Forty
1:24:59
Speaker 1: thousand pounds, and a confession, and she thought that would
1:25:02
Speaker 1: put it right. And the strange thing is, the terrible
1:25:05
Speaker 1: thing is, it would have done. If she had lived
1:25:07
Speaker 1: one more day, it would have done. That's what none
1:25:10
Speaker 1: of you understand. He turned then, and looked at Elsie,
1:25:13
Speaker 1: and his face was very old. She was going to
1:25:15
Speaker 1: tell me the night she died, and I've wondered ever
1:25:18
Speaker 1: since what the rest of it was. But I don't
1:25:20
Speaker 1: wonder any more. The rest of it was you. Section 11.
1:25:24
Speaker 1: The Flowers Close The church clock went on striking five,
1:25:28
Speaker 1: and the sound faded over the cottages, and the summer
1:25:30
Speaker 1: afternoon took the little parlour back into itself the way
1:25:33
Speaker 1: the sea takes back a footprint. They took Elsie Biggs
1:25:36
Speaker 1: away quietly, through the back of the cottage and round
1:25:38
Speaker 1: by the lane, because Nurse Horbury asked, in a low voice,
1:25:41
Speaker 1: whether it need be done through the village, and Inspector Slack,
1:25:45
Speaker 1: who was not without his own rough kindness, said no,
1:25:48
Speaker 1: it need not. The girl went without resistance, with her
1:25:51
Speaker 1: hat still crooked, holding her aunt's smile behind her face
1:25:54
Speaker 1: like something wrapped in paper. At the gate she stopped
1:25:57
Speaker 1: and looked back at the garden, at the bees and
1:25:59
Speaker 1: the rope of onions under the eaves and the geraniums
1:26:02
Speaker 1: in the window, as a person looks at the last
1:26:04
Speaker 1: ordinary thing. You'll tell my uncle, she said to Miss Marple.
1:26:08
Speaker 1: It was not a question. I shall tell him myself,
1:26:11
Speaker 1: said Miss Marple. It will come easier from an old
1:26:13
Speaker 1: woman than from the police. And Elsie, he knows already.
1:26:17
Speaker 1: He has known since the fate. He picked up what
1:26:19
Speaker 1: you dropped, and he kept it, and he never once
1:26:22
Speaker 1: said your name. Twenty-two years of silence. and eighteen months
1:26:25
Speaker 1: of watching you, and in the end it was his
1:26:27
Speaker 1: silence that held longest. Remember that, my dear, in the
1:26:31
Speaker 1: time that is coming. Your family does not only avenge,
1:26:34
Speaker 1: it also keeps things. The girl looked at her for
1:26:37
Speaker 1: a long moment, and then she was gone, walking between
1:26:40
Speaker 1: the two policemen down the dusty lane, small and straight
1:26:43
Speaker 1: and ordinary, and the village did not see her go.
1:26:46
Speaker 1: In the parlour, Nurse Horbury gathered the tea-things with hands
1:26:49
Speaker 1: that had remembered their steadiness, the way the hands of
1:26:51
Speaker 1: the capable remember everything. She set the cups on the
1:26:54
Speaker 1: tray one by one, and the small sounds they made
1:26:57
Speaker 1: were the only sounds in the room. I shall still
1:26:59
Speaker 1: refuse the will, she said at last, to no one
1:27:02
Speaker 1: in particular. More than ever now. It was never I
1:27:05
Speaker 1: hope you understand, Miss Marple. It was never what she
1:27:07
Speaker 1: thought it was. I did not stay in this village
1:27:10
Speaker 1: for twelve years to be paid for it. No, my dear,
1:27:13
Speaker 1: said Miss Marple. I know why you stayed. Nurse Horbury
1:27:16
Speaker 1: looked up then, and for a moment the two women
1:27:19
Speaker 1: regarded one another across the tea-tray. the young one who
1:27:22
Speaker 1: had carried a secret for twelve years, and the old
1:27:24
Speaker 1: one who carried them as a vocation. My stepmother told
1:27:27
Speaker 1: me on her deathbed, said Nurse Aubrey, what she had
1:27:30
Speaker 1: heard in that house, what she had helped to do,
1:27:33
Speaker 1: the letters, the aunt, all of it, without ever letting
1:27:36
Speaker 1: herself know what it was she was helping to do.
1:27:38
Speaker 1: She asked me to forgive her, and I could not,
1:27:41
Speaker 1: and she died, and I thought, I will go to
1:27:43
Speaker 1: that village, and I will tend that grave, and I
1:27:46
Speaker 1: will watch that woman, and one day there will be
1:27:48
Speaker 1: a reckoning, and I will be there for it. She
1:27:51
Speaker 1: picked up the last cup. And I was there, wasn't I?
1:27:54
Speaker 1: I was there for twelve years. And in the end
1:27:56
Speaker 1: the reckoning came from the other direction entirely, and all
1:27:59
Speaker 1: my watching was worth nothing, worse than nothing. She poisoned
1:28:03
Speaker 1: the cup I carried. She used my hands, Miss Marple.
1:28:06
Speaker 1: The whole village watched me carry that cup, and it
1:28:08
Speaker 1: was my hands she used. I shall think about that
1:28:10
Speaker 1: for the rest of my life. Then think about this too,
1:28:13
Speaker 1: said Miss Marple gently. Mrs. Mallory drank from your hand
1:28:17
Speaker 1: twelve years and never once doubted it. Do you understand
1:28:20
Speaker 1: what that was, from a woman who was afraid of everything?
1:28:23
Speaker 1: It was the only trust she had left. She gave
1:28:25
Speaker 1: it to you. Whatever else was taken from her that day,
1:28:28
Speaker 1: that was not taken. You were the one thing in
1:28:30
Speaker 1: her life that was exactly what it seemed. Nurse Horbury
1:28:33
Speaker 1: stood quite still, holding the tray, and the steadiness of
1:28:36
Speaker 1: her broke at last, quietly, the way ice breaks in
1:28:39
Speaker 1: a thaw. from underneath without a sound, and Miss Marple
1:28:43
Speaker 1: sat with her and did not say anything more, because
1:28:45
Speaker 1: there was nothing more that saying could do. Gerald Vine
1:28:48
Speaker 1: went back to Kenya in September. Hazel Deanne was his,
1:28:52
Speaker 1: the will being contested on grounds that satisfied no one,
1:28:55
Speaker 1: and dissolved, as everyone had known it would, before it
1:28:57
Speaker 1: reached a courtroom. and he sold it within the month
1:29:00
Speaker 1: to a family from Birmingham, with four children and a spaniel,
1:29:03
Speaker 1: which the village agreed was the best thing that could
1:29:05
Speaker 1: have happened to the place. He gave Job Crick a
1:29:07
Speaker 1: pension and a cottage for life, and he gave Martha
1:29:10
Speaker 1: Ray's other daughter, the quiet sister in Yorkshire, an annuity
1:29:13
Speaker 1: that was never spoken of at the post office, which
1:29:16
Speaker 1: in St. Mary Mead was the same as saying it
1:29:18
Speaker 1: was generous, and before he left he came to say
1:29:21
Speaker 1: goodbye to Miss Marple, and stood in her little drawing-room,
1:29:23
Speaker 1: turning his hat in his hands as he always did,
1:29:26
Speaker 1: and said the thing he had come to say. I
1:29:28
Speaker 1: read the letters, on the ship coming home. All nine
1:29:31
Speaker 1: of them, at last, twenty-two years too late. He was
1:29:35
Speaker 1: silent for a moment. She forgave me in every single one.
1:29:38
Speaker 1: That's the thing nobody tells you about the dead, Miss Marple.
1:29:42
Speaker 1: It's not their anger that you can't bear. It's that
1:29:44
Speaker 1: they had already forgiven you, and you weren't there to
1:29:46
Speaker 1: be forgiven. You are there now, said Miss Marple. That
1:29:50
Speaker 1: is what the letters were for. She wrote them to
1:29:52
Speaker 1: a man she believed would come. You came. It was
1:29:55
Speaker 1: too late for everything except the cumming. But the coming, mister, vine,
1:29:59
Speaker 1: was the part that was yours. He went away down
1:30:01
Speaker 1: the garden path, and a fortnight later he was gone
1:30:04
Speaker 1: from England, and the village which had chewed on him
1:30:06
Speaker 1: for a summer, put him away with the Sunday china
1:30:09
Speaker 1: and the rest of its memories, and thought of him,
1:30:11
Speaker 1: when it thought of him at all, with a vague,
1:30:14
Speaker 1: uneasy kindness. Elsie Biggs was tried at the Assizes in November,
1:30:18
Speaker 1: and the case was spoken of in the county papers
1:30:20
Speaker 1: with that hushed relish the press keeps for poisoning in
1:30:22
Speaker 1: picturesque villages. The black thread was produced, and the sprig
1:30:26
Speaker 1: of rue and old job crick gave his evidence in
1:30:28
Speaker 1: a voice so low the judge had twice to ask
1:30:30
Speaker 1: him to speak up, and the jury was out for
1:30:32
Speaker 1: four hours. She was found guilty, with a strong recommendation
1:30:36
Speaker 1: to mercy, on account of her youth and what the
1:30:38
Speaker 1: defence called, not inaptly, an inheritance of grief. She was
1:30:42
Speaker 1: not hanged. She went to prison, and the village, after
1:30:45
Speaker 1: the first delicious fortnight, found it difficult to keep hold
1:30:48
Speaker 1: of her. She had been, after all, only the parlour-maid.
1:30:51
Speaker 1: and by Christmas her name had begun to go the
1:30:53
Speaker 1: way of her aunt's. Rested, like China, brought out less
1:30:57
Speaker 1: and less. Nurse Horbury stayed. That was the thing the
1:31:00
Speaker 1: village had not expected, and discussed at length over the
1:31:02
Speaker 1: winter fires, and finally approved. She stayed in the pink-washed
1:31:06
Speaker 1: cottage with the bees and the drying onions, and she
1:31:09
Speaker 1: went her rounds as she had always gone them, and
1:31:11
Speaker 1: if her patient's medicine tasted no different and her hands
1:31:14
Speaker 1: were as gentle as ever, there were some in the
1:31:16
Speaker 1: village who noticed that she tipped her head, now, when
1:31:19
Speaker 1: she listened, a little less often. and looked at people
1:31:22
Speaker 1: a little more directly, as though a person who had
1:31:24
Speaker 1: spent twelve years watching had at last been watched herself,
1:31:27
Speaker 1: and found it did not kill her. She refused the
1:31:30
Speaker 1: inheritance formally, through Mr. Petherick, and the money went in
1:31:34
Speaker 1: the end to Gerald Vine, who sent back, from Kenya,
1:31:37
Speaker 1: a sum to build a nurse's fund for the county,
1:31:40
Speaker 1: in two names, Rose Ray's and Honoria Mallory's. The village
1:31:43
Speaker 1: thought this strange at first, and then, on reflection, exactly right,
1:31:47
Speaker 1: and then, being St. Mary Mead, ceased to reflect upon it.
1:31:51
Speaker 1: The grave in the churchyard was tended that winter as
1:31:53
Speaker 1: it had always been tended. Job Crick planted snowdrops round
1:31:57
Speaker 1: the stone, and when they came up in February, white
1:32:00
Speaker 1: and bent and stubborn in the frost, someone else had
1:32:02
Speaker 1: been there before him, as someone always had, and there
1:32:05
Speaker 1: were rosemary and rue laid among them, fresh cut, tied
1:32:08
Speaker 1: with thread that was not black. Miss Marple saw them
1:32:11
Speaker 1: on her Sunday walk, and stopped, and looked at them
1:32:13
Speaker 1: a long time. The motif, she thought, had run its course.
1:32:17
Speaker 1: Rue had begun as a weapon. a message written in
1:32:20
Speaker 1: bitter herbs to frighten a dying woman, and then to
1:32:23
Speaker 1: sign her death. But flowers are only ever what the
1:32:25
Speaker 1: hand means by them, and the hand that had laid
1:32:28
Speaker 1: these was not the same hand, and the meaning was
1:32:30
Speaker 1: not the same meaning. Rue for regret, but there was
1:32:33
Speaker 1: such a thing Miss Marple had always believed, as honest regret,
1:32:37
Speaker 1: regret that came at last and stayed and did its work,
1:32:39
Speaker 1: and rosemary for remembrance, which belonged by right to the
1:32:42
Speaker 1: dead and had never really belonged to the living at all.
1:32:45
Speaker 1: The herbs had been a threat, and then a signature,
1:32:48
Speaker 1: and then a confession, and now at last they were
1:32:50
Speaker 1: only what they had been in her girlhood, in the
1:32:53
Speaker 1: old flower dictionaries, in gardens where they grew by cottage
1:32:56
Speaker 1: doors for the sorrow of the house, a message, and
1:32:58
Speaker 1: the message, this time, was to no one. She walked
1:33:01
Speaker 1: home through the lanes in the thin spring sunshine, past
1:33:04
Speaker 1: the pond where the first ducklings swam, past the vicarage
1:33:07
Speaker 1: where Griselda's daffodils were out in unregimented crowds, past the
1:33:11
Speaker 1: shop where Miss Weatherby was already speaking of the summer fate,
1:33:14
Speaker 1: such a pity about last year, but one must carry on,
1:33:17
Speaker 1: and this year Miss Marple, We shall have a proper
1:33:20
Speaker 1: cordial table. And the village lay about her in the
1:33:22
Speaker 1: morning light, exactly as it had always lain, gentle and
1:33:25
Speaker 1: shabby and watchful. Its equilibrium restored the way water restores itself,
1:33:30
Speaker 1: closing over the stone without a ripple. That was the
1:33:32
Speaker 1: thing about villages, Miss Marple reflected, letting herself in at
1:33:36
Speaker 1: her own gate, and pausing, as she always paused, to
1:33:39
Speaker 1: look at her roses. People believed that a village was
1:33:42
Speaker 1: a place where nothing happened, and that was why they
1:33:44
Speaker 1: never understood it. A village was a place where everything happened,
1:33:48
Speaker 1: love and shame and patience and revenge, the whole of
1:33:51
Speaker 1: human nature under one church spire, and where, because nothing
1:33:55
Speaker 1: could be hidden, everything had to be carried, carried for
1:33:58
Speaker 1: twenty-two years, sometimes, carried in silence, in service, in a
1:34:02
Speaker 1: nurse's steady hands, in a gardener's bent back, in letters
1:34:06
Speaker 1: that were never opened and flowers that were never explained,
1:34:09
Speaker 1: until one midsummer day the carrying stopped and what had
1:34:12
Speaker 1: been carried was set down, in public at a fete,
1:34:15
Speaker 1: in a cup of elderflower cordial, and the village looked
1:34:18
Speaker 1: at it, and shuddered, and took it up again, and
1:34:21
Speaker 1: went on. Miss Marple went indoors, and put the kettle on,
1:34:24
Speaker 1: and took her knitting from its bag, and sat down
1:34:27
Speaker 1: by the window where she could see the high street,
1:34:29
Speaker 1: the rue in her own little herb border, planted years ago,
1:34:32
Speaker 1: for no reason she had ever admitted, was coming into leaf.
1:34:36
Speaker 1: She looked at it for a while, over the top
1:34:38
Speaker 1: of her glasses, with her needles clicking softly in the
1:34:40
Speaker 1: quiet room. and what she thought she kept, as she
1:34:43
Speaker 1: kept everything, behind her mild and faded blue eyes. The end.