Miss Marple's final cases - Agatha Christie [29]
‘The worst of ill health is,’ said Miss Emily in a melancholy tone, ‘that one knows what a burden one is to everyone around one.
‘Lavinia is very good to me. Lavvie dear, I do so hate giving trouble but if my hot-water bottle could only be filled in the way I like it—too full it weighs on me so—on the other hand, if it is not sufficiently filled, it gets cold immediately!’
‘I’m sorry, dear. Give it to me. I will empty a little out.’
‘Perhaps, if you’re doing that, it might be refilled. There are no rusks in the house, I suppose—no, no, it doesn’t matter. I can do without. Some weak tea and a slice of lemon—no lemons? No, really, I couldn’t drink tea without lemon. I think the milk was slightly turned this morning. It has put me against milk in my tea. It doesn’t matter. I can do without my tea. Only I do feel so weak. Oysters, they say, are nourishing. I wonder if I could fancy a few? No, no, too much bother to get hold of them so late in the day. I can fast until tomorrow.’
Lavinia left the room murmuring something incoherent about bicycling down to the village.
Miss Emily smiled feebly at her guest and remarked that she did hate giving anyone any trouble.
Miss Marple told Edna that evening that she was afraid her embassy had met with no success.
She was rather troubled to find that rumours as to Gladys’s dishonesty were already going around the village.
In the post office, Miss Wetherby tackled her. ‘My dear Jane, they gave her a written reference saying she was willing and sober and respectable, but saying nothing about honesty. That seems to me most significant! I hear there was some trouble about a brooch. I think there must be something in it, you know, because one doesn’t let a servant go nowadays unless it’s something rather grave. They’ll find it most difficult to get anyone else. Girls simply will not go to Old Hall. They’re nervous coming home on their days out. You’ll see, the Skinners won’t find anyone else, and then, perhaps, that dreadful hypochondriac sister will have to get up and do something!’
Great was the chagrin of the village when it was made known that the Misses Skinner had engaged, from an agency, a new maid who, by all accounts, was a perfect paragon.
‘A three-years’ reference recommending her most warmly, she prefers the country, and actually asks less wages than Gladys. I really feel we have been most fortunate.’
‘Well, really,’ said Miss Marple, to whom these details were imparted by Miss Lavinia in the fishmonger’s shop. ‘It does seem too good to be true.’
It then became the opinion of St Mary Mead that the paragon would cry off at the last minute and fail to arrive.
None of these prognostications came true, however, and the village was able to observe the domestic treasure, by name, Mary Higgins, driving through the village in Reed’s taxi to Old Hall. It had to be admitted that her appearance was good. A most respectable-looking woman, very neatly dressed.
When Miss Marple next visited Old Hall, on the occasion of recruiting stall-holders for the vicarage fete, Mary Higgins opened the door. She was certainly a most superior-looking maid, at a guess forty years of age, with neat black hair, rosy cheeks, a plump figure discreetly arrayed in black with a white apron and cap—‘quite the good, old-fashioned type of servant,’ as Miss Marple explained afterwards, and with the proper, inaudible respectful voice, so different from the loud but adenoidal accents of Gladys.
Miss Lavinia was looking far less harassed than usual and, although she regretted that she could not take a stall owing to her preoccupation with her sister, she nevertheless tendered a handsome monetary contribution, and promised to produce a consignment of pen-wipers and babies’ socks.
Miss Marple commented on her air of well-being.
‘I really feel I owe a great deal to Mary, I am so thankful I had the resolution to get rid of that other girl. Mary is really invaluable. Cooks nicely and waits beautifully and keeps our little flat scrupulously clean—mattresses turned over every day. And she is really