Caribbean Mystery - Agatha Christie [16]
Mrs. Walters had been in attendance on Mr. Rafiel long enough to have adopted her own formula for dealing with him. She knew that he liked a good space of time in which to recover from the exertion of bathing and she had therefore reminded him of the time, allowing a good ten minutes for him to rebut her suggestion and then be able to adopt it without seeming to do so.
“I don’t like these espadrilles,” said Mr. Rafiel raising a foot and looking at it. “I told that fool Jackson so. The man never pays attention to a word I say.”
“I’ll fetch you some others, shall I, Mr. Rafiel?”
“No, you won’t, you’ll sit here and keep quiet. I hate people rushing about like clucking hens.”
Evelyn shifted slightly in the warm sand, stretching out her arms.
Miss Marple, intent on her knitting—or so it seemed—stretched out a foot, then hastily she apologized.
“I’m so sorry, so very sorry, Mrs. Hillingdon. I’m afraid I kicked you.”
“Oh, it’s quite all right,” said Evelyn. “This beach gets rather crowded.”
“Oh, please don’t move. Please. I’ll move my chair a little back so that I won’t do it again.”
As Miss Marple resettled herself, she went on talking in a childish and garrulous manner.
“It still seems so wonderful to be here! I’ve never been to the West Indies before, you know. I thought it was the kind of place I never should come to and here I am. All by the kindness of my dear nephew. I suppose you know this part of the world very well, don’t you, Mrs. Hillingdon?”
“I have been in this island once or twice before and of course in most of the others.”
“Oh yes. Butterflies isn’t it, and wild flowers? You and your—your friends—or are they relations?”
“Friends. Nothing more.”
“And I suppose you go about together a great deal because of your interests being the same?”
“Yes. We’ve travelled together for some years now.”
“I suppose you must have had some rather exciting adventures sometimes?”
“I don’t think so,” said Evelyn. Her voice was unaccentuated, slightly bored. “Adventures always seem to happen to other people.” She yawned.
“No dangerous encounters with snakes or with wild animals or with natives gone berserk?”
(“What a fool I sound,” thought Miss Marple.)
“Nothing worse than insect bites,” Evelyn assured her.
“Poor Major Palgrave, you know, was bitten by a snake once,” said Miss Marple, making a purely fictitious statement.
“Was he?”
“Did he never tell you about it?”
“Perhaps. I don’t remember.”
“I suppose you knew him quite well, didn’t you?”
“Major Palgrave? No, hardly at all.”
“He always had so many interesting stories to tell.”
“Ghastly old bore,” said Mr. Rafiel. “Silly fool, too. He needn’t have died if he’d looked after himself properly.”
“Oh come now, Mr. Rafiel,” said Mrs. Walters.
“I know what I’m talking about. If you look after your health properly you’re all right anywhere. Look at me. The doctors gave me up years ago. All right, I said, I’ve got my own rules of health and I shall keep to them. And here I am.”
He looked round proudly.
It did indeed seem rather a mistake that he should be there.
“Poor Major Palgrave had high blood pressure,” said Mrs. Walters.
“Nonsense,” said Mr. Rafiel.
“Oh, but he did,” said Evelyn Hillingdon. She spoke with sudden, unexpected authority.
“Who says so?” said Mr. Rafiel. “Did he tell you so?”
“Somebody said so.”
“He looked very red in the face,” Miss Marple contributed.
“Can’t go by that,” said Mr. Rafiel. “And anyway he didn’t have high blood pressure because he told me so.”
“What do you mean, he told you so?” said Mrs. Walters. “I mean, you can’t exactly tell people you haven’t got a thing.”
“Yes you can. I said to him once when he was downing all those Planters Punches, and eating too much, I said, ‘You ought to watch your diet and your drink. You’ve got to think of your blood pressure at your age.’ And he said he’d nothing to look out for in that line, that his blood pressure was very good for his age.”
“But he took