Nemesis - Agatha Christie [92]
Miss Marple pulled down the mass of pink wool that encircled her head, a pink wool scarf of the same kind that she had once worn in the West Indies.
‘One of my names,’ she said, ‘is Nemesis.’
‘Nemesis? And what does that mean?’
‘I think you know,’ said Miss Marple. ‘You are a very well educated woman. Nemesis is long delayed sometimes, but it comes in the end.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘About a very beautiful girl whom you killed,’ said Miss Marple.
‘Whom I killed? What do you mean?’
‘I mean the girl Verity.’
‘And why should I kill her?’
‘Because you loved her,’ said Miss Marple.
‘Of course I loved her. I was devoted to her. And she loved me.’
‘Somebody said to me not very long ago that love was a very frightening word. It is a frightening word. You loved Verity too much. She meant everything in the world to you. She was devoted to you until something else came into her life. A different kind of love came into her life. She fell in love with a boy, a young man. Not a very suitable one, not a very good specimen, not anyone with a good record, but she loved him and he loved her and she wanted to escape. To escape from the burden of the bondage of love she was living in with you. She wanted a normal woman’s life. To live with the man of her choice, to have children by him. She wanted marriage and the happiness of normality.’
Clotilde moved. She came to a chair and sat down in it, staring at Miss Marple.
‘So,’ she said, ‘you seem to understand very well.’
‘Yes, I do understand.’
‘What you say is quite true. I shan’t deny it. It doesn’t matter if I do or do not deny it.’
‘No,’ said Miss Marple, ‘you are quite right there. It will not matter.’
‘Do you know at all — can you imagine — how I have suffered?’
‘Yes,’ said Miss Marple, ‘I can imagine it. I’ve always been able to imagine things.’
‘Did you imagine the agony, the agony of thinking, of knowing you are going to lose the thing you love best in the world. And I was losing it to a miserable, depraved delinquent. A man unworthy of my beautiful, splendid girl. I had to stop it. I had to — I had to.’
‘Yes,’ said Miss Marple. ‘Sooner than let the girl go, you killed her. Because you loved her, you killed her.’
‘Do you think I could ever do a thing like that? Do you think I could strangle the girl I loved? Do you think I could bash her face in, crush her head to a pulp? Nothing but a vicious, depraved man would do a thing like that.’
‘No,’ said Miss Marple, ‘you wouldn’t do that. You loved her and you would not be able to do that.’
‘Well then, you see, you are talking nonsense.’
‘You didn’t do that to her. The girl that happened to was not the girl you loved. Verity’s here still, isn’t she? She’s here in the garden. I don’t think you strangled her. I think you gave her a drink of coffee or of milk, you gave her a painless overdose of sleeping stuff. And then when she was dead, you took her out into the garden, you pulled aside the fallen bricks of the greenhouse, and you made a vault for her there, under the floor with the bricks, and covered it over. And then the polygonum was planted there and has flowered ever since, growing bigger and stronger every year. Verity has remained here with you. You never let her go.’
‘You fool! You crazy old fool! Do you think you are ever going to get away to tell this story?’
‘I think so,’ said Miss Marple. ‘I’m not quite sure of it. You are a strong woman, a great deal stronger than I am.’
‘I’m glad you appreciate that.’
‘And you wouldn’t have any scruples,’ said Miss Marple. ‘You know one doesn’t stop at one murder. I have noticed that in the course of my life and in what I have observed of crime. You killed two girls, didn’t you? You killed the girl you loved and you killed a different girl.’
‘I killed a silly little tramp, an adolescent tart. Nora Broad. How did you know about her?’
‘I wondered,’ said Miss Marple. ‘I didn’t think from what I saw of you that you could have borne to strangle