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By Root 392 0

rather a bad reputation, but some people said it was just gossip, and that Mr. Murdoch himself liked to encourage the rumours! “Lucky” now? Well, that was easy—Marleen at the Three Crowns. Evelyn Hillingdon? She couldn’t fit Evelyn in precisely. In appearance she fitted many roles—tall thin weather-beaten Englishwomen were plentiful. Lady Caroline Wolfe, Peter Wolfe’s first wife, who had committed suicide? Or there was Leslie James—that quiet woman who seldom showed what she felt and who had sold up her house and left without ever telling anyone she was going. Colonel Hillingdon? No immediate clue there. She’d have to get to know him a little first. One of those quiet men with good manners. You never knew what they were thinking about. Sometimes they surprised you. Major Harper, she remembered, had quietly cut his throat one day. Nobody had ever known why. Miss Marple thought that she did know—but she’d never been quite sure….

Her eyes strayed to Mr. Rafiel’s table. The principal thing known about Mr. Rafiel was that he was incredibly rich, he came every year to the West Indies, he was semi-paralysed and looked like a wrinkled old bird of prey. His clothes hung loosely on his shrunken form. He might have been seventy or eighty, or even ninety. His eyes were shrewd and he was frequently rude, but people seldom took offence, partly because he was so rich, and partly because of his overwhelming personality which hypnotized you into feeling that somehow, Mr. Rafiel had the right to be rude if he wanted to.

With him sat his secretary, Mrs. Walters. She had corn-coloured hair, and a pleasant face. Mr. Rafiel was frequently very rude to her, but she never seemed to notice it—She was not so much subservient, as oblivious. She behaved like a well-trained hospital nurse. Possibly, thought Miss Marple, she had been a hospital nurse.

A young man, tall and good-looking, in a white jacket, came to stand by Mr. Rafiel’s chair. The old man looked up at him, nodded, then motioned him to a chair. The young man sat down as bidden. “Mr. Jackson, I presume,” said Miss Marple to herself—“His valet-attendant.”

She studied Mr. Jackson with some attention.

II

In the bar, Molly Kendal stretched her back, and slipped off her high-heeled shoes. Tim came in from the terrace to join her. They had the bar to themselves for the moment.

“Tired, darling?” he asked.

“Just a bit. I seem to be feeling my feet tonight.”

“Not too much for you, is it? All this? I know it’s hard work.” He looked at her anxiously.

She laughed. “Oh, Tim, don’t be ridiculous. I love it here. It’s gorgeous. The kind of dream I’ve always had, come true.”

“Yes, it would be all right—if one was just a guest. But running the show—that’s work.”

“Well, you can’t have anything for nothing, can you?” said Molly Kendal reasonably.

Tim Kendal frowned.

“You think it’s going all right? A success? We’re making a go of it?”

“Of course we are.”

“You don’t think people are saying, ‘It’s not the same as when the Sandersons were here.’”

“Of course someone will be saying that—they always do! But only some old stick-in-the-mud. I’m sure that we’re far better at the job than they were. We’re more glamorous. You charm the old pussies and manage to look as though you’d like to make love to the desperate forties and fifties, and I ogle the old gentlemen and make them feel sexy dogs—or play the sweet little daughter the sentimental ones would love to have had. Oh, we’ve got it all taped splendidly.”

Tim’s frown vanished.

“As long as you think so. I get scared. We’ve risked everything on making a job of this. I chucked my job—”

“And quite right to do so,” Molly put in quickly. “It was soul-destroying.”

He laughed and kissed the tip of her nose.

“I tell you we’ve got it taped,” she repeated. “Why do you always worry?”

“Made that way, I suppose. I’m always thinking—suppose something should go wrong.”

“What sort of thing—”

“Oh, I don’t know. Somebody might get drowned.”

“Not they. It’s one of the safest of all the beaches. And we’ve got that hulking Swede always on guard.”

“I’m a fool,