Nemesis - Agatha Christie [51]
‘There was nothing of that kind to find. I asked him to tell me a little about you. He did not however consent to do so. He told me you were elderly. He told me that you were a person who knew about people. He told me one other thing.’ He paused.
‘What’s the other thing?’ said Miss Marple. ‘I have some natural curiosity, you know. I really can’t think of any other advantage I conceivably could have. I am slightly deaf. My eyesight is not quite as good as it used to be. I cannot really think that I have any advantages beyond the fact that I may, I suppose, seem rather foolish and simple, and am in fact, what used to be called in rather earlier days an “old pussy”. I am an old pussy. Is that the sort of thing he said?’
‘No,’ said Professor Wanstead. ‘What he said was he thought you had a very fine sense of evil.’
‘Oh,’ said Miss Marple. She was taken aback.
Professor Wanstead was watching her.
‘Would you say that was true?’ he said.
Miss Marple was quiet for quite a long time. At last she said,
‘Perhaps it is. Yes, perhaps. I have at several different times in my life been apprehensive, have recognized that there was evil in the neighbourhood, the surroundings, that the environment of someone who was evil was near me, connected with what was happening.’
She looked at him suddenly and smiled.
‘It’s rather, you know,’ she said, ‘like being born with a very keen sense of smell. You can smell a leak of gas when other people can’t do so. You can distinguish one perfume from another very easily. I had an aunt once,’ continued Miss Marple thoughtfully, ‘who said she could smell when people told a lie. She said there was quite a distinctive odour came to her. Their noses twitched, she said, and then the smell came. I don’t know if it was true or not, but — well, on several occasions she was quite remarkable. She said to my uncle once, “Don’t, Jack, engage that young man you were talking to this morning. He was telling you lies the whole time he was talking.” That turned out to be quite true.’
‘A sense of evil,’ said Professor Wanstead. ‘Well, if you do sense evil, tell me. I shall be glad to know. I don’t think I have a particular sense of evil myself. Ill-health, yes, but not — not evil up here.’ He tapped his forehead.
‘I’d better tell you briefly how I came into things now,’ said Miss Marple. ‘Mr Rafiel, as you know, died. His lawyers asked me to come and see them, apprised me of his proposition. I received a letter from him which explained nothing. After that I heard nothing more for some little time. Then I got a letter from the company who run these tours saying that Mr Rafiel before his death had made a reservation for me knowing that I should enjoy a trip very much, and wanting to give it me as a surprise present. I was very astonished but took it as an indication of the first step that I was to undertake. I was to go on this tour and presumably in the course of the tour some other indication or hint or clue or direction would come to me. I think it did. Yesterday, no, the day before, I was received on my arrival here by three ladies who live at an old manor house here and who very kindly extended an invitation to me. They had heard from Mr Rafiel, they said, who had written some time before his death, saying that a very old friend of his would be coming on this tour and would they be kind enough to put her up for two or three days as he thought she was not fit to attempt the particular ascent of this rather difficult climb up the headland to where there was a memorial tower which was the principal event of yesterday’s tour.’
‘And you took that also as an indication of what you were to do?’
‘Of course,’ said Miss Marple. ‘There can be no other reason for it. He was not a man to shower benefits for nothing, out of compassion for an old lady who wasn’t good at walking up hills. No. He wanted me to go there.’
‘And you went there? And what then?’
‘Nothing,’ said Miss Marple. ‘Three sisters.’
‘Three weird sisters?’
‘They ought to have been,’ said Miss Marple, ‘but I don’t think they were. They didn’t seem to