Caribbean Mystery - Agatha Christie [5]
Tim Kendal came and bent over Miss Marple.
“Nothing special you want, is there?” he asked. “Because you’ve only got to tell me—and I could get it specially cooked for you. Hotel food, and semi-tropical at that, isn’t quite what you’re used to at home, I expect?”
Miss Marple smiled and said that that was one of the pleasures of coming abroad.
“That’s all right, then. But if there is anything—”
“Such as?”
“Well—” Tim Kendal looked a little doubtful—“Bread and butter pudding?” he hazarded.
Miss Marple smiled and said that she thought she could do without bread and butter pudding very nicely for the present.
She picked up her spoon and began to eat her passion fruit sundae with cheerful appreciation.
Then the steel band began to play. The steel bands were one of the main attractions of the islands. Truth to tell, Miss Marple could have done very well without them. She considered that they made a hideous noise, unnecessarily loud. The pleasure that everyone else took in them was undeniable, however, and Miss Marple, in the true spirit of her youth, decided that as they had to be, she must manage somehow to learn to like them. She could hardly request Tim Kendal to conjure up from somewhere the muted strains of the “Blue Danube.” (So graceful—waltzing.) Most peculiar, the way people danced nowadays. Flinging themselves about, seeming quite contorted. Oh well, young people must enjoy—Her thoughts were arrested. Because, now she came to think of it, very few of these people were young. Dancing, lights, the music of a band (even a steel band), all that surely was for youth. But where was youth? Studying, she supposed, at universities, or doing a job—with a fortnight’s holiday a year. A place like this was too far away and too expensive. This gay and carefree life was all for the thirties and the forties—and the old men who were trying to live up (or down) to their young wives. It seemed, somehow, a pity.
Miss Marple sighed for youth. There was Mrs. Kendal, of course. She wasn’t more than twenty-two or three, probably, and she seemed to be enjoying herself—but even so, it was a job she was doing.
At a table nearby Canon Prescott and his sister were sitting. They motioned to Miss Marple to join them for coffee and she did so. Miss Prescott was a thin severe-looking woman, the Canon was a round, rubicund man, breathing geniality.
Coffee was brought, and chairs were pushed a little way away from the tables. Miss Prescott opened a work bag and took out some frankly hideous table mats that she was hemming. She told Miss Marple all about the day’s events. They had visited a new Girls’ School in the morning. After an afternoon’s rest, they had walked through a cane plantation to have tea at a pension where some friends of theirs were staying.
Since the Prescotts had been at the Golden Palm longer than Miss Marple, they were able to enlighten her as to some of her fellow guests.
That very old man, Mr. Rafiel. He came every year. Fantastically rich! Owned an enormous chain of supermarkets in the North of England. The young woman with him was his secretary, Esther Walters—a widow. (Quite all right, of course. Nothing improper. After all, he was nearly eighty!)
Miss Marple accepted the propriety of the relationship with an understanding nod and the Canon remarked:
“A very nice young woman; her mother, I understand, is a widow and lives in Chichester.”
“Mr. Rafiel has a valet with him, too. Or rather a kind of Nurse Attendant—he’s a qualified masseur, I believe. Jackson, his name is. Poor Mr. Rafiel is practically paralysed. So sad—with all that money, too.”
“A generous and cheerful giver,” said Canon Prescott approvingly.
People were regrouping themselves round about, some going farther from the steel band, others crowding up to it. Major Palgrave had joined the Hillingdon-Dyson quartette.
“Now those people—” said Miss Prescott, lowering her voice quite unnecessarily