Caribbean Mystery - Agatha Christie [48]
“She?”
“There you are,” exclaimed Miss Marple. “It makes it all so confusing.”
“He was talking about a woman?” Mr. Rafiel asked.
“Oh, yes.”
“The snapshot was a snapshot of a woman?”
“Yes.”
“It can’t have been!”
“But it was,” Esther persisted. “He said ‘She’s here in this island. I’ll point her out to you, and then I’ll tell you the whole story.’”
Mr. Rafiel swore. In saying what he thought of the late Major Palgrave he did not mince his words.
“The probabilities are,” he finished, “that not a word of anything he said was true!”
“One does begin to wonder,” Miss Marple murmured.
“So there we are,” said Mr. Rafiel. “The old booby started telling you hunting tales. Pig sticking, tiger shooting, elephant hunting, narrow escapes from lions. One or two of them might have been fact. Several of them were fiction, and others had happened to somebody else! Then he gets on to the subject of murder and he tells one murder story to cap another murder story. And what’s more he tells them all as if they’d happened to him. Ten to one most of them were a hash-up of what he’d read in the paper, or seen on TV.”
He turned accusingly on Esther. “You admit that you weren’t listening closely. Perhaps you misunderstood what he was saying.”
“I’m certain he was talking about a woman,” said Esther obstinately, “because of course I wondered who it was.”
“Who do you think it was?” asked Miss Marple.
Esther flushed and looked slightly embarrassed.
“Oh, I didn’t really—I mean, I wouldn’t like to—”
Miss Marple did not insist. The presence of Mr. Rafiel, she thought, was inimical to her finding out exactly what suppositions Esther Walters had made. That could only be cosily brought out in a tête-à-tête between two women. And there was, of course, the possibility that Esther Walters was lying. Naturally, Miss Marple did not suggest this aloud. She registered it as a possibility but she was not inclined to believe in it. For one thing she did not think that Esther Walters was a liar (though one never knew) and for another, she could see no point in such a lie.
“But you say,” Mr. Rafiel was now turning upon Miss Marple, “you say that he told you this yarn about a murderer and that he then said he had a picture of him which he was going to show you.”
“I thought so, yes.”
“You thought so? You were sure enough to begin with!”
Miss Marple retorted with spirit.
“It is never easy to repeat a conversation and be entirely accurate in what the other party to it has said. One is always inclined to jump at what you think they meant. Then, afterwards, you put actual words into their mouths. Major Palgrave told me this story, yes. He told me that the man who told it to him, this doctor, had shown him a snapshot of the murderer; but if I am to be quite honest I must admit that what he actually said to me was ‘Would you like to see a snapshot of a murderer?’ and naturally I assumed that it was the same snapshot he had been talking about. That it was the snapshot of that particular murderer. But I have to admit that it is possible—only remotely possible, but still possible—that by an association of ideas in his mind he leaped from the snapshot he had been shown in the past, to a snapshot he had taken recently of someone here who he was convinced was a murderer.”
“Women!” snorted Mr. Rafiel in exasperation. “You’re all the same, the whole blinking lot of you! Can’t be accurate. You’re never exactly sure of what a thing was. And now,” he added irritably, “where does that leave us?” He snorted. “Evelyn Hillingdon, or Greg’s wife, Lucky? The whole thing is a mess.”
There was a slight apologetic cough. Arthur Jackson was standing at Mr. Rafiel’s elbow. He had come so noiselessly that nobody had noticed him.
“Time for your massage, sir,” he said.
Mr. Rafiel displayed immediate temper.
“What do you mean by sneaking up on me in that way and making me jump? I never heard you.”
“Very sorry, sir.”
“I don’t think I’ll have any massage today. It never does