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first what that meant. Her passionate longing for the girl to be alive again. I don’t think she ever suffered from remorse. I don’t think she had even that consolation. She just suffered — went on suffering year after year. And I know now what Elizabeth Temple meant. Better perhaps than she herself did. Love is a very terrible thing. It is alive to evil, it can be one of the most evil things there can be. And she had to live with that day after day, year after year. I think, you know, that Anthea was frightened of that. I think she knew more clearly the whole time what Clotilde had done and she thought that Clotilde knew that she knew. And she was afraid of what Clotilde might do. Clotilde gave that parcel to Anthea to post, the one with the pullover. She said things to me about Anthea, that she was mentally disturbed, that if she suffered from persecution or jealousy Anthea might do anything. I think — yes — that in the not so distant future — something might have happened to Anthea — an arranged suicide because of a guilty conscience — ’

‘And yet you are sorry for that woman?’ asked Sir Andrew. ‘Malignant evil is like cancer — a malignant tumour. It brings suffering.’

‘Of course,’ said Miss Marple.

‘I suppose you have been told what happened that night,’ said Professor Wanstead, ‘after your guardian angels had removed you?’

‘You mean Clotilde? She had picked up my glass of milk, I remember. She was still holding it when Miss Cooke took me out of the room. I suppose she — drank it, did she?’

‘Yes. Did you know that might happen?’

‘I didn’t think of it, no, not at the moment. I suppose I could have known it if I’d thought about it.’

‘Nobody could have stopped her. She was so quick about it, and nobody quite realized there was anything wrong in the milk.’

‘So she drank it.’

‘Does that surprise you?’

‘No, it would have seemed to her the natural thing to do, one can’t really wonder. It had come by this time that she wanted to escape — from all the things she was having to live with. Just as Verity had wanted to escape from the life that she was living there. Very odd, isn’t it, that the retribution one brings on oneself fits so closely with what has caused it.’

‘You sound sorrier for her than you were for the girl who died.’

‘No,’ said Miss Marple, ‘it’s a different kind of being sorry. I’m sorry for Verity because of all that she missed, all that she was so near to obtaining. A life of love and devotion and service to the man she had chosen, and whom she truly loved. Truly and in all verity. She missed all that and nothing can give that back to her. I’m sorry for her because of what she didn’t have. But she escaped what Clotilde had to suffer. Sorrow, misery, fear and a growing cultivation and imbibing of evil. Clotilde had to live with all those. Sorrow, frustrated love which she could never get back, she had to live with the two sisters who suspected, who were afraid of her, and she had to live with the girl she had kept there.’

‘You mean Verity?’

‘Yes. Buried in the garden, buried in the tomb that Clotilde had prepared. She was there in The Old Manor House and I think Clotilde knew she was there. It might be that she even saw her or thought she saw her, sometimes when she went to pick a spray of polygonum blossom. She must have felt very close to Verity then. Nothing worse could happen to her, could it, than that? Nothing worse…’

Chapter 23

End Pieces

I

‘That old lady gives me the creeps,’ said Sir Andrew McNeil, when he had said goodbye and thanks to Miss Marple.

‘So gentle — and so ruthless,’ said the Assistant Commissioner.

Professor Wanstead took Miss Marple down to his car which was waiting, and then returned for a few final words.

‘What do you think of her, Edmund?’

‘The most frightening woman I ever met,’ said the Home Secretary.

‘Ruthless?’ asked Professor Wanstead.

‘No, no, I don’t mean that but — well, a very frightening woman.’

‘Nemesis,’ said Professor Wanstead thoughtfully.

‘Those two women,’ said the P.P.D. man, ‘you know, the security agents who were looking after