At Bertram's Hotel - Agatha Christie [7]
“One wonders if she is happy,” said Miss Marple.
Lady Selina, who had clearly never wondered anything of the kind, looked rather startled.
“She’s got packets of money, I suppose,” she said doubtfully. “Alimony and all that. Of course that isn’t everything….”
“No, indeed.”
“And she’s usually got a man—or several men—in tow.”
“Yes?”
“Of course when some women get to that age, that’s all they want…But somehow—”
She paused.
“No,” said Miss Marple. “I don’t think so either.”
There were people who would have smiled in gentle derision at this pronouncement on the part of an old-fashioned old lady who could hardly be expected to be an authority on nymphomania, and indeed it was not a word that Miss Marple would have used—her own phrase would have been “always too fond of men.” But Lady Selina accepted her opinion as a confirmation of her own.
“There have been a lot of men in her life,” she pointed out.
“Oh yes, but I should say, wouldn’t you, that men were an adventure to her, not a need?”
And would any woman, Miss Marple wondered, come to Bertram’s Hotel for an assignation with a man? Bertram’s was very definitely not that sort of place. But possibly that could be, to someone of Bess Sedgwick’s disposition, the very reason for choosing it.
She sighed, looked up at the handsome grandfather clock decorously ticking in the corner, and rose with the careful effort of the rheumatic to her feet. She walked slowly towards the lift. Lady Selina cast a glance around her and pounced upon an elderly gentleman of military appearance who was reading the Spectator.
“How nice to see you again. Er—it is General Arlington, isn’t it?”
But with great courtesy the old genleman declined being General Arlington. Lady Selina apologized, but was not unduly discomposed. She combined short sight with optimism and since the thing she enjoyed most was meeting old friends and acquaintances, she was always making this kind of mistake. Many other people did the same, since the lights were pleasantly dim and heavily shaded. But nobody ever took offence—usually indeed it seemed to give them pleasure.
Miss Marple smiled to herself as she waited for the lift to come down. So like Selina! Always convinced that she knew everybody. She herself could not compete. Her solitary achievement in that line had been the handsome and well-gaitered Bishop of Westchester whom she had addressed affectionately as “dear Robbie” and who had responded with equal affection and with memories of himself as a child in a Hampshire vicarage calling out lustily “Be a crocodile now, Aunty Janie. Be a crocodile and eat me.”
The lift came down, the uniformed middle-aged man threw open the door. Rather to Miss Marple’s surprise the alighting passenger was Bess Sedgwick whom she had seen go up only a minute or two before.
And then, one foot poised, Bess Sedgwick stopped dead, with a suddenness that surprised Miss Marple and made her own forward step falter. Bess Sedgwick was staring over Miss Marple’s shoulder with such concentration that the old lady turned her own head.
The commissionaire had just pushed open the two swing doors of the entrance and was holding them to let two women pass through into the lounge. One of them was a fussy looking middle-aged lady wearing a rather unfortunate flowered violet hat, the other was a tall, simply but smartly dressed, girl of perhaps seventeen or eighteen with long straight flaxen hair.
Bess Sedgwick pulled herself together, wheeled round abruptly and reentered the lift. As Miss Marple followed her in, she turned to her and apologized.
“I’m so sorry. I nearly ran into you.” She had a warm friendly voice. “I just remembered I’d forgotten something—which sounds nonsense but isn’t really.”
“Second floor?” said the operator. Miss Marple smiled and nodded in acknowledgment of the apology, got out and walked slowly along to her