Caribbean Mystery - Agatha Christie [52]
“I don’t remember … Was it some newspaper cutting?”
Miss Marple, about to speak, shut her lips. The sun was momentarily obscured by a shadow. Evelyn Hillingdon paused beside them.
“Good morning,” she said.
“I was wondering where you were,” said Miss Prescott, looking up brightly.
“I’ve been to Jamestown, shopping.”
“Oh, I see.”
Miss Prescott looked round vaguely and Evelyn Hillingdon said:
“Oh, I didn’t take Edward with me. Men hate shopping.”
“Did you find anything of interest?”
“It wasn’t that sort of shopping. I just had to go to the chemist.”
With a smile and a slight nod she went on down the beach.
“Such nice people, the Hillingdons,” said Miss Prescott, “though she’s not really very easy to know, is she? I mean, she’s always very pleasant and all that, but one never seems to get to know her any better.”
Miss Marple agreed thoughtfully.
“One never knows what she is thinking,” said Miss Prescott.
“Perhaps that is just as well,” said Miss Marple.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Oh nothing really, only that I’ve always had the feeling that perhaps her thoughts might be rather disconcerting.”
“Oh,” said Miss Prescott, looking puzzled. “I see what you mean.” She went on with a slight change of subject. “I believe they have a very charming place in Hampshire, and a boy—or is it two boys—who have just gone—or one of them—to Winchester.”
“Do you know Hampshire well?”
“No. Hardly at all. I believe their house is somewhere near Alton.”
“I see.” Miss Marple paused and then said, “And where do the Dysons live?”
“California,” said Miss Prescott. “When they are at home, that is. They are great travellers.”
“One really knows so little about the people one meets when one is travelling,” said Miss Marple. “I mean—how shall I put it—one only knows, doesn’t one, what they choose to tell you about themselves. For instance, you don’t really know that the Dysons live in California.”
Miss Prescott looked startled.
“I’m sure Mr. Dyson mentioned it.”
“Yes. Yes, exactly. That’s what I mean. And the same thing perhaps with the Hillingdons. I mean when you say that they live in Hampshire, you’re really repeating what they told you, aren’t you?”
Miss Prescott looked slightly alarmed. “Do you mean that they don’t live in Hampshire?” she asked.
“No, no, not for one moment,” said Miss Marple, quickly apologetic. “I was only using them as an instance as to what one knows or doesn’t know about people.” She added, “I have told you that I live at St. Mary Mead, which is a place, no doubt, of which you have never heard. But you don’t, if I may say so, know it of your own knowledge, do you?”
Miss Prescott forbore from saying that she really couldn’t care less where Miss Marple lived. It was somewhere in the country and in the South of England and that is all she knew. “Oh, I do see what you mean,” she agreed hastily, “and I know that one can’t possibly be too careful when one is abroad.”
“I didn’t exactly mean that,” said Miss Marple.
There were some odd thoughts going through Miss Marple’s mind. Did she really know, she was asking herself, that Canon Prescott and Miss Prescott were really Canon Prescott and Miss Prescott? They said so. There was no evidence to contradict them. It would really be easy, would it not, to put on a dog-collar, to wear the appropriate clothes, to make the appropriate conversation. If there was a motive….
Miss Marple was fairly knowledgeable about the clergy in her part of the world, but the Prescotts came from the north. Durham, wasn’t it? She had no doubt they were the Prescotts, but still, it came back to the same thing—one believed what people said to one.
Perhaps one ought to be on one’s guard against that. Perhaps … She shook her head thoughtfully.
Nineteen
USES OF A SHOE
Canon Prescott came back from the water’s edge slightly short of breath (playing with children is always exhausting).
Presently he and his sister went back to the hotel, finding the beach a little too hot.
“But,” said Señora de Caspearo scornfully as they walked away