Caribbean Mystery - Agatha Christie [41]
“He said he knew a murderer,” said Miss Marple. “There’s nothing really special about that,” she added in her gentle voice, “because I suppose it happens to nearly everybody.”
“I don’t follow you,” said Mr. Rafiel.
“I don’t mean specifically,” said Miss Marple, “but surely, Mr. Rafiel, if you cast over in your mind your recollections of various events in your life, hasn’t there nearly always been an occasion when somebody has made some careless reference such as ‘Oh yes I knew the So-and-So’s quite well—he died very suddenly and they always say his wife did him in, but I dare say that’s just gossip.’ You’ve heard people say something like that, haven’t you?”
“Well, I suppose so—yes, something of the kind. But not—well, not seriously.”
“Exactly,” said Miss Marple, “but Major Palgrave was a very serious man. I think he enjoyed telling this story. He said he had a snapshot of the murderer. He was going to show it to me but—actually—he didn’t.”
“Why?”
“Because he saw something,” said Miss Marple. “Saw someone, I suspect. His face got very red and he shoved back the snapshot into his wallet and began talking on another subject.”
“Who did he see?”
“I’ve thought about that a good deal,” said Miss Marple. “I was sitting outside my bungalow, and he was sitting nearly opposite me and—whatever he saw, he saw over my right shoulder.”
“Someone coming along the path then from behind you on the right, the path from the creek and the car park—”
“Yes.”
“Was anyone coming along the path?”
“Mr. and Mrs. Dyson and Colonel and Mrs. Hillingdon.”
“Anybody else?”
“Not that I can find out. Of course, your bungalow would also be in his line of vision….”
“Ah. Then we include—shall we say—Esther Walters and my chap, Jackson. Is that right? Either of them, I suppose, might have come out of the bungalow and gone back inside again without your seeing them.”
“They might have,” said Miss Marple, “I didn’t turn my head at once.”
“The Dysons, the Hillingdons, Esther, Jackson. One of them’s a murderer. Or, of course, myself,” he added; obviously as an afterthought.
Miss Marple smiled faintly.
“And he spoke of the murderer as a man?”
“Yes.”
“Right. That cuts out Evelyn Hillingdon, Lucky and Esther Walters. So your murderer, allowing that all this far-fetched nonsense is true, your murderer is Dyson, Hillingdon or my smooth-tongued Jackson.”
“Or yourself,” said Miss Marple.
Mr. Rafiel ignored this last point.
“Don’t say things to irritate me,” he said. “I’ll tell you the first thing that strikes me, and which you don’t seem to have thought of. If it’s one of those three, why the devil didn’t old Palgrave recognize him before? Dash it all, they’ve all been sitting round looking at each other for the last two weeks. That doesn’t seem to make sense.”
“I think it could,” said Miss Marple.
“Well, tell me how.”
“You see, in Major Palgrave’s story he hadn’t seen this man himself at any time. It was a story told to him by a doctor. The doctor gave him the snapshot as a curiosity. Major Palgrave may have looked at the snapshot fairly closely at the time but after that he’d just stack it away in his wallet and keep it as a souvenir. Occasionally, perhaps, he’d take it out and show it to someone he was telling the story to. And another thing, Mr. Rafiel, we don’t know how long ago this happened. He didn’t give me any indication of that when he was telling the story. I mean this may have been a story he’s been telling to people for years. Five years—ten years—longer still perhaps. Some of his tiger stories go back about twenty years.”
“They would!” said Mr. Rafiel.
“So I don’t suppose for a moment that Major Palgrave would recognize the face in the snapshot if he came across the man casually. What I think happened, what I’m almost sure must have happened, is that as he told his story he fumbled for the snapshot, took it out, looked down at it studying the face and then looked up to see the same face, or one with a strong resemblance, coming towards him from a distance of about ten or twelve feet away.”
“Yes,” said Mr. Rafiel consideringly,