Body in the Library - Agatha Christie [46]
She stopped and shook her head.
“And so I suppose it’s true. I neglected Jeff. I don’t mean really neglected him, but my mind and thoughts weren’t with him. When Ruby, as I saw, amused him, I was rather glad. It left me freer to go and do my own things. I never dreamed—of course I never dreamed—that he would be so—so—infatuated by her!”
Mrs. Bantry asked:
“And when you did find out?”
“I was dumbfounded—absolutely dumbfounded! And, I’m afraid, angry too.”
“I’d have been angry,” said Mrs. Bantry.
“There was Peter, you see. Peter’s whole future depends on Jeff. Jeff practically looked on him as a grandson, or so I thought, but, of course, he wasn’t a grandson. He was no relation at all. And to think that he was going to be—disinherited!” Her firm, well-shaped hands shook a little where they lay in her lap. “For that’s what it felt like—and for a vulgar, gold-digging little simpleton—Oh! I could have killed her!”
She stopped, stricken. Her beautiful hazel eyes met Mrs. Bantry’s in a pleading horror. She said:
“What an awful thing to say!”
Hugo McLean, coming quietly up behind them, asked:
“What’s an awful thing to say?”
“Sit down, Hugo. You know Mrs. Bantry, don’t you?”
McLean had already greeted the older lady. He said now in a low, persevering way:
“What was an awful thing to say?”
Addie Jefferson said:
“That I’d like to have killed Ruby Keene.”
Hugo McLean reflected a minute or two. Then he said:
“No, I wouldn’t say that if I were you. Might be misunderstood.”
His eyes—steady, reflective, grey eyes—looked at her meaningly.
He said:
“You’ve got to watch your step, Addie.”
There was a warning in his voice.
III
When Miss Marple came out of the hotel and joined Mrs. Bantry a few minutes later, Hugo McLean and Adelaide Jefferson were walking down the path to the sea together.
Seating herself, Miss Marple remarked:
“He seems very devoted.”
“He’s been devoted for years! One of those men.”
“I know. Like Major Bury. He hung round an Anglo-Indian widow for quite ten years. A joke among her friends! In the end she gave in—but unfortunately ten days before they were to have been married she ran away with the chauffeur! Such a nice woman, too, and usually so well balanced.”
“People do do very odd things,” agreed Mrs. Bantry. “I wish you’d been here just now, Jane. Addie Jefferson was telling me all about herself—how her husband went through all his money but they never let Mr. Jefferson know. And then, this summer, things felt different to her—”
Miss Marple nodded.
“Yes. She rebelled, I suppose, against being made to live in the past? After all, there’s a time for everything. You can’t sit in the house with the blinds down forever. I suppose Mrs. Jefferson just pulled them up and took off her widow’s weeds, and her father-in-law, of course, didn’t like it. Felt left out in the cold, though I don’t suppose for a minute he realized who put her up to it. Still, he certainly wouldn’t like it. And so, of course, like old Mr. Badger when his wife took up Spiritualism, he was just ripe for what happened. Any fairly nice-looking young girl who listened prettily would have done.”
“Do you think,” said Mrs. Bantry, “that that cousin, Josie, got her down here deliberately—that it was a family plot?”
Miss Marple shook her head.
“No, I don’t think so at all. I don’t think Josie has the kind of mind that could foresee people’s reactions. She’s rather dense in that way. She’s got one of those shrewd, limited, practical minds that never do foresee the future and are usually astonished by it.”
“It seems to have taken everyone by surprise,” said Mrs. Bantry. “Addie—and Mark Gaskell too, apparently.”
Miss Marple smiled.
“I dare say he had his own fish to fry. A bold fellow with a roving eye! Not the man to go on being a sorrowing widower for years, no matter how fond he may have been of his wife. I should think they were both restless under old Mr. Jefferson’s yoke of perpetual remembrance.
“Only,” added Miss Marple cynically, “it’s easier for gentlemen, of course.”
IV
At that very