Nemesis - Agatha Christie [41]
‘It must be difficult for you.’
‘Well, yes. Arguments, you see, hardly appeal in any way. Clotilde, of course, is very downright about things. She just refuses point-blank and says she doesn’t want to hear another word about it.’
‘It is difficult,’ said Miss Marple, ‘to know how to take things. Whether one should be firm. Rather authoritative. Perhaps, even, well, just a little — a little fierce, you know, or whether one should be sympathetic. Listen to things and perhaps hold out hopes which one knows are not justified. Yes, it’s difficult.’
‘But it’s easier for me because you see I go away again, and then come back now and then to stay. So it’s easy for me to pretend things may be easier soon and that something may be done. But really, the other day when I came home and I found that Anthea had tried to engage a most expensive firm of landscape gardeners to renovate the garden, to build up the greenhouse again — which is quite absurd because even if you put vines in they would not bear for another two or three years. Clotilde knew nothing about it and she was extremely angry when she discovered the estimate for this work on Anthea’s desk. She was really quite unkind.’
‘So many things are difficult,’ said Miss Marple.
It was a useful phrase which she used often.
‘I shall have to go rather early tomorrow morning, I think,’ said Miss Marple. ‘I was making enquiries at the Golden Boar where I understand the coach party assembles tomorrow morning. They are making quite an early start. Nine o’clock, I understand.’
‘Oh dear. I hope you will not find it too fatiguing.’
‘Oh, I don’t think so. I gather we are going to a place called — now wait a minute, what was it called? — Stirling St Mary. Something like that. And it does not seem to be very far away. There’s an interesting church to see on the way and a castle. In the afternoon there is a quite pleasant garden, not too many acres, but some special flowers. I feel sure that after this very nice rest that I have had here, I shall be quite all right. I understand now that I would have been very tired if I had had these days of climbing up cliffsides and all the rest of it.’
‘Well, you must rest this afternoon, so as to be fresh for tomorrow,’ said Mrs Glynne, as they went into the house. ‘Miss Marple has been to visit the church,’ said Mrs Glynne to Clotilde.
‘I’m afraid there is not very much to see,’ said Clotilde. ‘Victorian glass of a most hideous kind, I think myself. No expense spared. I’m afraid my uncle was partly to blame. He was very pleased with those rather crude reds and blues.’
‘Very crude. Very vulgar, I always think,’ said Lavinia Glynne.
Miss Marple settled down after lunch to have a nap, and she did not join her hostesses until nearly dinner time. After dinner a good deal of chat went on until it was bedtime. Miss Marple set the tone in remembrances…Remembrances of her own youth, her early days, places she had visited, travels or tours she had made, occasional people she had known.
She went to bed tired, with a sense of failure. She had learned nothing more, possibly because there was nothing more to learn. A fishing expedition where the fish did not rise — possibly because there were no fish there. Or it could be that she did not know the right bait to use?
Chapter 11
Accident
I
Miss Marple’s tea was brought at seven-thirty the following morning so as to allow her plenty of time to get up and pack her few belongings. She was just closing her small suitcase when there was a rather hurried tap on the door and Clotilde came in, looking upset.
‘Oh dear, Miss Marple, there is a young man downstairs who has called to see you. Emlyn Price. He is on the tour with you and they sent him here.’
‘Of course, I remember him. Yes. Quite young?’
‘Oh yes. Very modern-looking, and a lot of hair and all that, but he has really come to — well, to break some bad news to you. There has been, I am sorry to say, an accident.