Nemesis - Agatha Christie [38]
II
Miss Marple, coming down the stairs that morning, probably rather earlier than she had been expected, found no immediate sign of her hostesses. She let herself out at the front door and wandered once round the garden. It was not because she’d really enjoyed this particular garden. It was some vague feeling that there was something here that she ought to notice, something that would give her some idea, or that had given her some idea only she had not — well, frankly, she had not been bright enough to realize just what the bright idea had been. Something she ought to take note of, something that had a bearing.
She was not at the moment anxious to see any of the three sisters. She wanted to turn a few things over in her mind. The new facts that had come to her through Janet’s early tea chat.
A side gate stood open and she went through it to the village street and along a line of small shops to where a steeple poked up announcing the site of the church and its churchyard. She pushed open the lych-gate and wandered about among the graves, some dating from quite a while back, some by the far wall later ones, and one or two beyond the wall in what was obviously a new enclosure. There was nothing of great interest among the older tombs. Certain names recurred as they do in villages. A good many Princes of village origin had been buried. Jasper Prince, deeply regretted. Margery Prince, Edgar and Walter Prince, Melanie Prince, 4 years old. A family record. Hiram Broad — Ellen Jane Broad, Eliza Broad, 91 years.
She was turning away from the latter when she observed an elderly man moving in slow motion among the graves, tidying up as he walked. He gave her a salute and a ‘good morning’.
‘Good morning,’ said Miss Marple. ‘A very pleasant day.’
‘It’ll turn to rain later,’ said the old man.
He spoke with the utmost certainty.
‘There seem to be a lot of Princes and Broads buried here,’ said Miss Marple.
‘Ah yes, there’ve always been Princes here. Used to own quite a bit of land once. There have been Broads a good many years, too.’
‘I see a child is buried here. Very sad when one sees a child’s grave.’
‘Ah, that’ll be little Melanie that was. Mellie, we called her. Yes, it was a sad death. Run over, she was. Ran out into the street, went to get sweets at the sweet shop. Happens a lot nowadays with cars going through at the pace they do.’
‘It is sad to think,’ said Miss Marple, ‘that there are so many deaths all the time. And one doesn’t really notice it until one looks at the inscriptions in the churchyard. Sickness, old age, children run over, sometimes even more dreadful things. Young girls killed. Crimes, I mean.’
‘Ah, yes, there’s a lot of that about. Silly girls, I call most of ’em. And their mums haven’t got time to look after them properly nowadays — what with going out to work so much.’
Miss Marple rather agreed with his criticism, but had no wish to waste time in agreement on the trend of the day.
‘Staying at The Old Manor House, aren’t you?’ the old man asked. ‘Come here on the coach tour I saw. But it got too much for you, I suppose. Some of those that are gettin’ on can’t always take it.’
‘I did find it a little exhausting,’ confessed Miss Marple, ‘and a very kind friend of mine, a Mr Rafiel, wrote to some friends of his here and they invited me to stay for a couple of nights.’
The name, Rafiel, clearly meant nothing to the elderly gardener.
‘Mrs Glynne and her two sisters have been very kind,’ said Miss Marple. ‘I suppose they’ve lived here a long time?’
‘Not so long as that. Twenty years maybe. Belonged to old Colonel Bradbury-Scott. The Old Manor House did. Close on seventy he was when he died.’
‘Did he have any children?’
‘A son what was killed in the war. That’s why he left the place to his nieces. Nobody else to leave it to.’
He went back to his work amongst the graves.
Miss Marple went into the church. It had felt the hand of a Victorian restorer, and had bright Victorian glass in the windows. One or two brasses and some tablets on the walls were