Caribbean Mystery - Agatha Christie [4]
“Good,” cried Lucky. “Damn it,” she winced, “I’m all over thorns. Ouch! Edward deliberately rammed me into a thorn bush!”
“Lovely pink flowers,” said Hillingdon.
“And lovely long thorns. Sadistic brute, aren’t you, Edward?”
“Not like me,” said Greg, grinning. “Full of the milk of human kindness.”
Evelyn Hillingdon sat down by Miss Marple and started talking to her in an easy pleasant way.
Miss Marple put her knitting down on her lap. Slowly and with some difficulty, owing to rheumatism in the neck, she turned her head over her right shoulder to look behind her. At some little distance there was the large bungalow occupied by the rich Mr. Rafiel. But it showed no sign of life.
She replied suitably to Evelyn’s remarks (really, how kind people were to her!) but her eyes scanned thoughtfully the faces of the two men.
Edward Hillingdon looked a nice man. Quiet but with a lot of charm … And Greg—big, boisterous, happy-looking. He and Lucky were Canadian or American, she thought.
She looked at Major Palgrave, still acting a bonhomie a little larger than life.
Interesting….
Two
MISS MARPLE MAKES COMPARISONS
I
It was very gay that evening at the Golden Palm Hotel.
Seated at her little corner table, Miss Marple looked round her in an interested fashion. The dining room was a large room open on three sides to the soft warm scented air of the West Indies. There were small table lamps, all softly coloured. Most of the women were in evening dress: light cotton prints out of which bronzed shoulders and arms emerged. Miss Marple herself had been urged by her nephew’s wife, Joan, in the sweetest way possible, to accept “a small cheque.”
“Because, Aunt Jane, it will be rather hot out there, and I don’t expect you have any very thin clothes.”
Jane Marple had thanked her and had accepted the cheque. She came of the age when it was natural for the old to support and finance the young, but also for the middle-aged to look after the old. She could not, however, force herself to buy anything very thin! At her age she seldom felt more than pleasantly warm even in the hottest weather, and the temperature of St. Honoré was not really what is referred to as “tropical heat.” This evening she was attired in the best traditions of the provincial gentlewoman of England—grey lace.
Not that she was the only elderly person present. There were representatives of all ages in the room. There were elderly tycoons with young third or fourth wives. There were middle-aged couples from the North of England. There was a gay family from Caracas complete with children. The various countries of South America were well represented, all chattering loudly in Spanish or Portuguese. There was a solid English background of two clergymen, one doctor and one retired judge. There was even a family of Chinese. The dining room service was mainly done by women, tall black girls of proud carriage, dressed in crisp white; but there was an experienced Italian head waiter in charge, and a French wine waiter, and there was the attentive eye of Tim Kendal watching over everything, pausing here and there to have a social word with people at their tables. His wife seconded him ably. She was a good-looking girl. Her hair was a natural golden blonde and she had a wide generous mouth that laughed easily. It was very seldom that Molly Kendal was out of temper. Her staff worked for her enthusiastically, and she adapted her manner carefully to suit her different guests. With the elderly men she laughed and flirted; she congratulated the younger women on their clothes.
“Oh, what a smashing dress you’ve got on tonight, Mrs. Dyson. I’m so jealous I could tear it off your back.” But she looked very well in her own dress, or so Miss Marple thought: a white sheath, with a pale green embroidered silk shawl thrown over her shoulders. Lucky was fingering the shawl. “Lovely colour! I’d like one like it.” “You can get them at the shop here,” Molly told her