Caribbean Mystery - Agatha Christie [59]
It was not a highly technical book, but one that could be easily understood by a layman. Miss Marple’s face grew very grave as she read. After a minute or two she closed the book and stayed thinking. Then she bent forward and with care replaced the book where she had found it, under the mattress.
She shook her head in some perplexity. Noiselessly she rose from her chair. She walked the few steps towards the window, then turned her head sharply over her shoulder. Molly’s eyes were open but even as Miss Marple turned the eyes shut again. For a minute or two Miss Marple was not quite certain whether she might not have imagined that quick, sharp glance. Was Molly then only pretending to be asleep? That might be natural enough. She might feel that Miss Marple would start talking to her if she showed herself awake. Yes, that could be all it was.
Was she reading into that glance of Molly’s a kind of slyness that was somehow innately disagreeable? One doesn’t know, Miss Marple thought to herself, one really doesn’t know.
She decided that she would try to manage a little talk with Dr. Graham as soon as it could be managed. She came back to her chair by the bed. She decided after about five minutes or so that Molly was really asleep. No one could have lain so still, could have breathed so evenly. Miss Marple got up again. She was wearing her plimsolls today. Not perhaps very elegant, but admirably suited to this climate and comfortable and roomy for the feet.
She moved gently round the bedroom, pausing at both of the windows, which gave out in two different directions.
The hotel grounds seemed quiet and deserted. Miss Marple came back and was standing a little uncertainly before regaining her seat, when she thought she heard a faint sound outside. Like the scrape of a shoe on the loggia? She hesitated a moment then she went to the window, pushed it a little farther open, stepped out and turned her head back into the room as she spoke.
“I shall be gone only a very short time, dear,” she said, “just back to my bungalow, to see where I could possibly have put that pattern. I was so sure I had brought it with me. You’ll be quite all right till I come back, won’t you?” Then turning her head back, she nodded to herself. “Asleep, poor child. A good thing.”
She went quietly along the loggia, down the steps and turned sharp right to the path there. Passing along between the screen of some hibiscus bushes an observer might have been curious to see that Miss Marple veered sharply on to the flower bed, passed round to the back of the bungalow and entered it again through the second door there. This led directly into a small room that Tim sometimes used as an unofficial office and from that into the sitting room.
Here there were wide curtains semi-drawn to keep the room cool. Miss Marple slipped behind one of them. Then she waited. From the window here she had a good view of anyone who approached Molly’s bedroom. It was some few minutes, four or five, before she saw anything.
The neat figure of Jackson in his white uniform went up the steps of the loggia. He paused for a minute at the balcony there, and then appeared to be giving a tiny discreet tap on the door of the window that was ajar. There was no response that Miss Marple could hear. Jackson looked around him, a quick furtive glance, then he slipped inside the open doors. Miss Marple moved to the door which led into the adjoining bathroom. Miss Marple’s eyebrows rose in slight surprise. She reflected a minute or two, then walked out into the passageway and into the bathroom by the other door.
Jackson spun round from examining the shelf over the washbasin. He looked taken aback, which was not surprising.
“Oh,” he said, “I—I didn’t….”
“Mr. Jackson,” said Miss Marple, in great surprise.
“I thought you’d be here somewhere,” said Jackson.