Caribbean Mystery - Agatha Christie [53]
Miss Marple drew a deep breath. Now or never was the time for conversation with Señora de Caspearo. Unfortunately she did not know what to say. There seemed to be no common ground on which they could meet.
“You have children, Señora?” she inquired.
“I have three angels,” said Señora de Caspearo, kissing her fingertips.
Miss Marple was rather uncertain as to whether this meant that Señora de Caspearo’s offspring were in Heaven or whether it merely referred to their characters.
One of the gentlemen in attendance made a remark in Spanish and Señora de Caspearo flung back her head appreciatively and laughed loudly and melodiously.
“You understand what he said?” she inquired of Miss Marple.
“I’m afraid not,” said Miss Marple apologetically.
“It is just as well. He is a wicked man.”
A rapid and spirited interchange of Spanish badinage followed.
“It is infamous—infamous,” said Señora de Caspearo, reverting to English with sudden gravity, “that the police do not let us go from this island. I storm, I scream, I stamp my foot—but all they say is No—No. You know how it will end—we shall all be killed.”
Her bodyguard attempted to reassure her.
“But yes—I tell you it is unlucky here. I knew it from the first—That old Major, the ugly one—he had the Evil Eye—you remember? His eyes they crossed—It is bad, that! I make the Sign of the Horns every time when he looks my way.” She made it in illustration. “Though since he is cross-eyed I am not always sure when he does look my way—”
“He had a glass eye,” said Miss Marple in an explanatory voice. “An accident, I understand, when he was quite young. It was not his fault.”
“I tell you he brought bad luck—I say it is the Evil Eye he had.”
Her hand shot out again in the well-known Latin gesture—the first finger and the little finger sticking out, the two middle ones doubled in. “Anyway,” she said cheerfully, “he is dead—I do not have to look at him any more. I do not like to look at things that are ugly.”
It was, Miss Marple thought, a somewhat cruel epitaph on Major Palgrave.
Farther down the beach Gregory Dyson had come out of the sea. Lucky had turned herself over on the sand. Evelyn Hillingdon was looking at Lucky, and her expression, for some reason, made Miss Marple shiver.
“Surely I can’t be cold—in this hot sun,” she thought.
What was the old phrase—“A goose walking over your grave—”
She got up and went slowly back to her bungalow.
On the way she passed Mr. Rafiel and Esther Walters coming down the beach. Mr. Rafiel winked at her. Miss Marple did not wink back. She looked disapproving.
She went into her bungalow and lay down on her bed. She felt old and tired and worried.
She was quite certain that there was no time to be lost—no time—to—be lost … It was getting late … The sun was going to set—the sun—one must always look at the sun through smoked glass—Where was that piece of smoked glass that someone had given her?…
No, she wouldn’t need it after all. A shadow had come over the sun blotting it out. A shadow. Evelyn Hillingdon’s shadow—No, not Evelyn Hillingdon—The Shadow (what were the words?) the Shadow of the Valley of Death. That was it. She must—what was it? Make the Sign of the Horns—to avert the Evil Eye—Major Palgrave’s Evil Eye.
Her eyelids flickered open—she had been asleep. But there was a shadow—someone peering in at her window.
The shadow moved away—and Miss Marple saw who it was—It was Jackson.
“Impertinence—peering in like that,” she thought—and added parenthetically, “Just like Jonas Parry.”
The comparison reflected no credit on Jackson.
Then she wondered why Jackson had been peering into her bedroom. To see if she was there? Or to note that she was there, but was asleep.
She got up, went into the bathroom and peered cautiously through the window.
Arthur Jackson was standing by the door of the bungalow next door. Mr. Rafiel’s bungalow. She saw him give