Nemesis - Agatha Christie [4]
‘Really,’ said Miss Marple, ‘I don’t think I have ever behaved quite like that.’
Walking slowly along her garden that evening with the usual feelings of vexation rising in her, Miss Marple considered the point again. Possibly the sight of a plant of snap-dragons recalled it to her mind. Really, she had told old George again and again that she only wanted sulphur-coloured antirrhinums, not that rather ugly purple shade that gardeners always seemed so fond of. ‘Sulphur yellow,’ said Miss Marple aloud.
Someone the other side of the railing that abutted on the lane past her house turned her head and spoke.
‘I beg your pardon? You said something?’
‘I was talking to myself, I’m afraid,’ said Miss Marple, turning to look over the railing.
This was someone she did not know, and she knew most people in St Mary Mead. Knew them by sight even if not personally. It was a thickset woman in a shabby but tough tweed skirt, and wearing good country shoes. She wore an emerald pullover and a knitted woollen scarf.
‘I’m afraid one does at my age,’ added Miss Marple.
‘Nice garden you’ve got here,’ said the other woman.
‘Not particularly nice now,’ said Miss Marple. ‘When I could attend to it myself — ’
‘Oh I know. I understand just what you feel. I suppose you’ve got one of those — I have a lot of names for them, mostly very rude — elderly chaps who say they know all about gardening. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t know a thing about it. They come and have a lot of cups of tea and do a little very mild weeding. They’re quite nice, some of them, but all the same it does make one’s temper rise.’ She added, ‘I’m quite a keen gardener myself.’
‘Do you live here?’ asked Miss Marple, with some interest.
‘Well, I’m boarding with a Mrs Hastings. I think I’ve heard her speak of you. You’re Miss Marple, aren’t you?’
‘Oh yes.’
‘I’ve come as a sort of companion-gardener. My name is Bartlett, by the way. Miss Bartlett. There’s not really much to do there,’ said Miss Bartlett. ‘She goes in for annuals and all that. Nothing you can really get your teeth into.’ She opened her mouth and showed her teeth when making this remark. ‘Of course I do a few odd jobs as well. Shopping, you know, and things like that. Anyway, if you want any time put in here, I could put in an hour or two for you. I’d say I might be better than any chap you’ve got now.’
‘That would be easy,’ said Miss Marple. ‘I like flowers best. Don’t care so much for vegetables.’
‘I do vegetables for Mrs Hastings. Dull but necessary. Well, I’ll be getting along.’ Her eyes swept over Miss Marple from head to foot, as though memorizing her, then she nodded cheerfully and tramped off.
Mrs Hastings? Miss Marple couldn’t remember the name of any Mrs Hastings. Certainly Mrs Hastings was not an old friend. She had certainly never been a gardening chum. Ah, of course, it was probably those newly built houses at the end of Gibraltar Road. Several families had moved in in the last year. Miss Marple sighed, looked again with annoyance at the antirrhinums, saw several weeds which she yearned to root up, one or two exuberant suckers she would like to attack with her secateurs, and finally, sighing, and manfully resisting temptation, she made a detour round by the lane and returned to her house. Her mind recurred again to Mr Rafiel. They had been, he and she — what was the title of that book they used to quote so much when she was young? Ships that pass in the night. Rather apt it was really, when she came to think of it. Ships that pass in the night…It was in the night that she had gone to him to ask — no, to demand — help. To insist, to say no time must be lost. And he had agreed, and put things in train at once! Perhaps she had been rather lion-like on that occasion? No. No, that was quite wrong. It had not been anger she had felt. It had been insistence on something that was absolutely imperative to