Nemesis - Agatha Christie [98]
‘I think it was from then on,’ said Miss Marple, ‘that I knew. I came to the conclusion there had been three killings. I heard the full story of Mr Rafiel’s son, the delinquent boy, the exjailbird and I thought that he was all those things, but none of them showed him as being a killer or likely to be a killer. All the evidence was against him. There was no doubt in anyone’s mind that he had killed the girl whose name I had now learned as being Verity Hunt. But Archdeacon Brabazon put the final crown on the business, as it were. He had known those two young people. They had come to him with their story of wanting to get married and he had taken it upon himself to decide that they should get married. He thought that it was not perhaps a wise marriage, but it was a marriage that was justified by the fact that they both loved each other. The girl loved the boy with what he called a true love. A love as true as her name. And he thought that the boy, for all his bad sexual reputation, had truly loved the girl and had every intention of being faithful to her and trying to reform some of his evil tendencies. The Archdeacon was not optimistic. He did not, I think, believe it would be a thoroughly happy marriage, but it was to his mind what he called a necessary marriage. Necessary because if you love enough you will pay the price, even if the price is disappointment and a certain amount of unhappiness. But one thing I was quite sure of. That disfigured face, that battered-in head could not have been the action of a boy who really loved the girl. This was not a story of sexual assault. I was ready to take the Archdeacon’s word for that. But I knew, too, that I’d got the right clue, the clue that was given me by Elizabeth Temple. She had said that the cause of Verity’s death was Love — one of the most frightening words there is.
‘It was quite clear then,’ said Miss Marple. ‘I think I’d known for some time really. It was just the small things that hadn’t fitted in, but now they did. They fitted in with what Elizabeth Temple had said. The cause of Verity’s death. She had said first the one word “Love” and then that “Love could be the most frightening word there was”. It was all mapped out so plainly then. The overwhelming love that Clotilde had had for this girl. The girl’s hero-worship of her, dependency on her, and then as she grew a little older, her normal instincts came into play. She wanted Love. She wanted to be free to love, to marry, to have children. And along came the boy that she could love. She knew that he was unreliable, she knew he was what was technically called a bad lot, but that,’ said Miss Marple, in a more ordinary tone of voice, ‘is not what puts any girl off a boy. No. Young women like bad lots. They always have. They fall in love with bad lots. They are quite sure they can change them. And the nice, kind, steady, reliable husbands got the answer, in my young days, that one would be “a sister to them”, which never satisfied them at all. Verity fell in love with Michael Rafiel, and Michael Rafiel was prepared to turn over a new leaf and marry this girl and was sure he would never wish to look at another girl again. I don’t say this would have been a happy-ever-after thing, but it was, as the Archdeacon said quite surely, it was real love. And so they planned to get married. And I think Verity wrote to Elizabeth and told her that she was going to marry Michael Rafiel. It was arranged in secret because I think Verity did realize that what she was doing was essentially