Nemesis - Agatha Christie [96]
‘And the next thing was the death of Elizabeth Temple?’
‘No,’ said Miss Marple. ‘Actually the next thing was my arrival at The Old Manor House. The kindness of my reception and taking up my stay there under their hospitable roof. That again had been arranged by Mr Rafiel. So I knew that I must go there, but not for what reason I was to go there. It might be merely a place where more information would come to me to lead me onwards in my quest. I am sorry,’ Miss Marple said, suddenly becoming her normal apologetic and slightly fussy self, ‘I am talking at much too great a length. I really must not inflict on you all that I thought and…’
‘Please go on,’ said Professor Wanstead. ‘You may not know it but what you are telling me is particularly interesting to me. It ties up with so much I have known and seen in the work I do. Go on giving me what you felt.’
‘Yes, go on,’ said Sir Andrew McNeil.
‘It was feeling,’ said Miss Marple. ‘It wasn’t really, you know, logical deduction. It was based on a kind of emotional reaction or susceptibility to — well, I can only call it atmosphere.’
‘Yes,’ said Wanstead, ‘there is atmosphere. Atmosphere in houses, atmosphere in places, in the garden, in the forest, in a public house, in a cottage.’
‘The three sisters. That is what I thought and felt and said to myself when I went into The Old Manor House. I was so kindly received by Lavinia Glynne. There’s something about the phrase — the three sisters — that springs up in your mind as sinister. It combines with the three sisters in Russian literature, the three witches on Macbeth’s heath. It seemed to me that there was an atmosphere there of sorrow, of deep felt unhappiness, also an atmosphere of fear and a kind of struggling different atmosphere which I can only describe as an atmosphere of normality.’
‘Your last word interests me,’ said Wanstead.
‘It was due, I think, to Mrs Glynne. She was the one who came to meet me when the coach arrived and explained the invitation. She was an entirely normal and pleasant woman, a widow. She was not very happy, but when I say she was not very happy it was nothing to do with sorrow or deep unhappiness, it was just that she had the wrong atmosphere for her own character. She took me back with her and I met the other two sisters. The next morning I was to hear from an aged housemaid who brought my early morning tea, a story of past tragedy, of a girl who had been killed by her boyfriend. Of several other girls in the neighbourhood who’d fallen victims to violence, or sexual assault. I had to make my second appraisal. I had dismissed the people in the coach as not being personally concerned in my search. Somewhere still there was a killer. I had to ask myself if one of the killers could be here. Here in this house where I had been sent, Clotilde, Lavinia, Anthea. Three names of three weird sisters, three happy — unhappy — suffering — frightened — what were they? My attention was caught first by Clotilde. A tall, handsome woman. A personality. Just as Elizabeth Temple had been a personality. I felt that here where the field was limited, I must at least sum up what I could about the three sisters. Three Fates. Who could be a killer? What kind of a killer? What kind of a killing? I could feel then rising up rather slowly, rather slowly like a miasma does, an atmosphere. I don’t think there is any other word that expresses it except evil. Not necessarily that any of these three was evil, but they were certainly living in an atmosphere where evil had happened, had left its shadow or