Nemesis - Agatha Christie [2]
Well, she hadn’t wished to get mixed up in any murders, but it just happened. That was all. Simply because of an elderly Major with a glass eye who had insisted on telling her some very long and boring stories. Poor Major — now what was his name? She’d forgotten that now. Mr Rafiel and his secretary, Mrs — Mrs Walters, yes, Esther Walters, and his masseur-attendant, Jackson. It all came back. Well, well. Poor Mr Rafiel. So Mr Rafiel was dead. He had known he was going to die before very long. He had practically told her so. It seemed as though he had lasted longer than the doctors had thought. He was a strong man, an obstinate man — a very rich man.
Miss Marple remained in thought, her knitting needles working regularly, but her mind not really on her knitting. Her mind was on the late Mr Rafiel, and remembering what she could remember about him. Not an easy man to forget, really. She could conjure his appearance up mentally quite well. Yes, a very definite personality, a difficult man, an irritable man, shockingly rude sometimes. Nobody ever resented his being rude, though. She remembered that also. They didn’t resent his being rude because he was so rich. Yes, he had been very rich. He had had his secretary with him and a valet attendant, a qualified masseur. He had not been able to get about very well without help.
Rather a doubtful character that nurse-attendant had been, Miss Marple thought. Mr Rafiel had been very rude to him sometimes. He had never seemed to mind. And that, again, of course was because Mr Rafiel was so rich.
‘Nobody else would pay him half what I do,’ Mr Rafiel had said, ‘and he knows it. He’s good at his job, though.’
Miss Marple wondered whether Jackson? — Johnson? had stayed on with Mr Rafiel. Stayed on for what must have been — another year? A year and three or four months. She thought probably not. Mr Rafiel was one who liked a change. He got tired of people, tired of their ways, tired of their faces, tired of their voices.
Miss Marple understood that. She had felt the same sometimes. That companion of hers, that nice, attentive, maddening woman with her cooing voice.
‘Ah,’ said Miss Marple, ‘what a change for the better since — ’ oh dear, she’d forgotten her name now — Miss — Miss Bishop? — no, not Miss Bishop. Oh dear, how difficult it was.
Her mind went back to Mr Rafiel and to — no, it wasn’t Johnson, it had been Jackson, Arthur Jackson.
‘Oh, dear,’ said Miss Marple again, ‘I always get all the names wrong. And of course, it was Miss Knight I was thinking of. Not Miss Bishop. Why do I think of her as Miss Bishop?’ The answer came to her. Chess, of course. A chess piece. A knight. A bishop.
‘I shall be calling her Miss Castle next time I think of her, I suppose, or Miss Rook. Though, really, she’s not the sort of person who would ever rook anybody. No, indeed. And now what was the name of that nice secretary that Mr Rafiel had. Oh yes, Esther Walters. That was right. I wonder what has happened to Esther Walters? She’d inherited money? She would probably inherit money now.’
Mr Rafiel, she remembered, had told her something about that, or she had — oh, dear, what a muddle things were when you tried to remember with any kind of exactitude. Esther Walters. It had hit her badly, that business in the Caribbean, but she would have got over it. She’d been a widow, hadn’t she? Miss Marple hoped that Esther Walters had married again, some nice, kindly, reliable man. It seemed faintly unlikely. Esther Walters, she thought, had had rather a genius for liking the wrong kind of men to marry.
Miss Marple went back to thinking about Mr Rafiel. No flowers, it had said. Not that she herself would have dreamed of sending flowers to Mr Rafiel. He could buy up all the nurseries in England if he’d wanted to. And anyway, they hadn’t been on those terms. They hadn’t been — friends, or on terms of affection. They had been — what was the word she wanted? — allies. Yes, they had been allies for a very short time. A very exciting time. And he had been an ally worth having. She had known so. She