Nemesis - Agatha Christie [37]
Miss Marple looked enquiring.
‘First one thing and then another. The dreadful plane accident — in Spain it was — and everybody killed. Nasty things, aeroplanes — I’d never go in one of them. Miss Clotilde’s friends were both killed, they were husband and wife — the daughter was still at school, luckily, and escaped, but Miss Clotilde brought her here to live and did everything for her. Took her abroad for trips — to Italy and France, treated her like a daughter. She was such a happy girl — and a very sweet nature. You’d never dream that such an awful thing could happen.’
‘An awful thing. What was it? Did it happen here?’
‘No, not here, thank God. Though in a way you might say it did happen here. It was here that she met him. He was in the neighbourhood — and the ladies knew his father, who was a very rich man, so he came here to visit — that was the beginning — ’
‘They fell in love?’
‘Yes, she fell in love with him right away. He was an attractive-looking boy, with a nice way of talking and passing the time of day. You’d never think — you’d never think for one moment — ’ she broke off.
‘There was a love affair? And it went wrong? And the girl committed suicide?’
‘Suicide?’ The old woman stared at Miss Marple with startled eyes.
‘Whoever now told you that? Murder it was, barefaced murder. Strangled and her head beaten to pulp. Miss Clotilde had to go and identify her — she’s never been quite the same since. They found her body a good thirty miles from here — in the scrub of a disused quarry. And it’s believed that it wasn’t the first murder he’d done. There had been other girls. Six months she’d been missing. And the police searching far and wide. Oh! A wicked devil he was — a bad lot from the day he was born or so it seems. They say nowadays as there are those as can’t help what they do — not right in the head, and they can’t be held responsible. I don’t believe a word of it! Killers are killers. And they won’t even hang them nowadays. I know as there’s often madness as runs in old families — there was the Derwents over at Brassington — every second generation one or other of them died in the loony bin — and there was old Mrs Paulett; walked about the lanes in her diamond tiara saying she was Marie Antoinette until they shut her up. But there wasn’t anything really wrong with her — just silly like. But this boy. Yes, he was a devil right enough.’
‘What did they do to him?’
‘They’d abolished hanging by then — or else he was too young. I can’t remember it all now. They found him guilty. It may have been Bostol or Broadsand — one of those places beginning with “B” as they sent him to.’
‘What was the name of the boy?’
‘Michael — can’t remember his last name. It’s ten years ago that it happened — one forgets. Italian sort of name — like a picture. Someone who paints pictures — Raffle, that’s it — ’
‘Michael Rafiel?’
‘That’s right! There was a rumour as went about that his father being so rich got him wangled out of prison. An escape like the Bank Robbers. But I think as that was just talk — ’
So it had not been suicide. It had been murder. ‘Love!’ Elizabeth Temple had named as the cause of a girl’s death. In a way she was right. A young girl had fallen in love with a killer — and for love of him had gone unsuspecting to an ugly death.
Miss Marple gave a little shudder. On her way along the village street yesterday she had passed a newspaper placard:
EPSOM DOWNS MURDER, SECOND GIRL’S BODY DISCOVERED, YOUTH ASKED TO ASSIST POLICE.
So history repeated itself. An old pattern — an ugly pattern. Some lines of forgotten verse came haltingly into her brain:
Rose white youth, passionate, pale,
A singing stream in a silent vale,
A fairy prince in a prosy tale,
Oh there’s nothing in life so finely frail
As Rose White Youth.
Who was there to guard Youth from Pain and Death? Youth who could not, who had never been able to, guard itself. Did they know too little? Or was it that they knew too much?