Pocket Full of Rye - Agatha Christie [35]
Inspector Neele did not answer. He was thinking of Mary Dove. He had no definite reason for suspecting her, but that was the way his thoughts lay. There was something unexplained about her, unsatisfactory. A faint, amused antagonism. That had been her attitude after the death of Rex Fortescue. What was her attitude now? Her behaviour and manner were, as always, exemplary. There was no longer, he thought, amusement. Perhaps not even antagonism, but he wondered whether, once or twice, he had not seen a trace of fear. He had been to blame, culpably to blame, in the matter of Gladys Martin. That guilty confusion of hers he had put down to no more than a natural nervousness of the police. He had come across that guilty nervousness so often. In this case it had been something more. Gladys had seen or heard something which had aroused her suspicions. It was probably, he thought, some quite small thing, something so vague and indefinite that she had hardly liked to speak about it. And now, poor little rabbit, she would never speak.
Inspector Neele looked with some interest at the mild, earnest face of the old lady who confronted him now at Yewtree Lodge. He had been in two minds at first how to treat her, but he quickly made-up his mind. Miss Marple would be useful to him. She was upright, of unimpeachable rectitude and she had, like most old ladies, time on her hands and an old maid’s nose for scenting bits of gossip. She’d get things out of servants, and out of the women of the Fortescue family perhaps, that he and his policemen would never get. Talk, conjecture, reminiscences, repetitions of things said and done, out of it all she would pick the salient facts. So Inspector Neele was gracious.
“It’s uncommonly good of you to have come here, Miss Marple,” he said.
“It was my duty, Inspector Neele. The girl had lived in my house. I feel, in a sense, responsible for her. She was a very silly girl, you know.”
Inspector Neele looked at her appreciatively.
“Yes,” he said, “just so.”
She had gone, he felt, to the heart of the matter.
“She wouldn’t know,” said Miss Marple, “what she ought to do. If, I mean, something came up. Oh, dear, I’m expressing myself very badly.”
Inspector Neele said that he understood.
“She hadn’t got good judgement as to what was important or not, that’s what you mean, isn’t it?”
“Oh yes, exactly, Inspector.”
“When you say that she was silly—” Inspector Neele broke off.
Miss Marple took up the theme.
“She was the credulous type. She was the sort of girl who would have given her savings to a swindler, if she’d had any savings. Of course, she never did have any savings because she always spent her money on most unsuitable clothes.”
“What about men?” asked the inspector.
“She wanted a young man badly,” said Miss Marple. “In fact that’s really, I think, why she left St. Mary Mead. The competition there is very keen. So few men. She did have hopes of the young man who delivered the fish. Young Fred had a pleasant word for all the girls, but of course he didn’t mean anything by it. That upset poor Gladys quite a lot. Still, I gather she did get herself a young man in the end?”
Inspector Neele nodded.
“It seems so. Albert Evans, I gather, his name was. She seems to have met him at some holiday camp. He didn’t give her a ring or anything so maybe she made it all up. He was a mining engineer, so she told the cook.”
“That seems most unlikely,” said Miss Marple, “but I dare say it’s what he told her. As I say, she’d believe anything. You don’t connect him with this business at all?”
Inspector Neele shook his head.
“No. I don’t think there are any complications of that kind. He never seems to have visited her. He sent her a postcard from time to time, usually from a seaport—probably 4th Engineer on a boat on the Baltic run.”
“Well,” said Miss Marple, “I’m glad she had her little romance. Since her life has been