Pocket Full of Rye - Agatha Christie [62]
“No,” said Miss Marple, “you can’t change people.”
“I’d taken him and loved him and married him for what he was, and I sort of felt that I just had to—put up with it. Then things went wrong and he couldn’t face it, and he shot himself. After he died I went out to Kenya to stay with some friends there. I couldn’t stop on in England and go on meeting all—all the old crowd that knew about it all. And out in Kenya I met Lance.” Her face changed and softened. She went on looking into the fire, and Miss Marple looked at her. Presently Pat turned her head and said: “Tell me, Miss Marple, what do you really think of Percival?”
“Well, I’ve not seen very much of him. Just at breakfast usually. That’s all. I don’t think he very much likes my being here.”
Pat laughed suddenly.
“He’s mean, you know. Terribly mean about money. Lance says he always was. Jennifer complains of it, too. Goes over the housekeeping accounts with Miss Dove. Complaining of every item. But Miss Dove manages to hold her own. She’s really rather a wonderful person. Don’t you think so?”
“Yes, indeed. She reminds me of Mrs. Latimer in my own village, St. Mary Mead. She ran the WVS, you know, and the Girl Guides, and indeed, she ran practically everything there. It wasn’t for quite five years that we discovered that—oh, but I mustn’t gossip. Nothing is more boring than people talking to you about places and people whom you’ve never seen and know nothing about. You must forgive me, my dear.”
“Is St. Mary Mead a very nice village?”
“Well, I don’t know what you would call a nice village, my dear. It’s quite a pretty village. There are some nice people living in it and some extremely unpleasant people as well. Very curious things go on there just as in any other village. Human nature is much the same everywhere, is it not?”
“You go up and see Miss Ramsbottom a good deal, don’t you?” said Pat. “Now she really frightens me.”
“Frightens you? Why?”
“Because I think she’s crazy. I think she’s got religious mania. You don’t think she could be—really—mad, do you?”
“In what way, mad?”
“Oh, you know what I mean, Miss Marple, well enough. She sits up there and never goes out, and broods about sin. Well, she might have felt in the end that it was her mission in life to execute judgment.”
“Is that what your husband thinks?”
“I don’t know what Lance thinks. He won’t tell me. But I’m quite sure of one thing—that he believes that it’s someone who’s mad, and it’s someone in the family. Well, Percival’s sane enough, I should say. Jennifer’s just stupid and rather pathetic. She’s a bit nervy but that’s all, and Elaine is one of those queer, tempestuous, tense girls. She’s desperately in love with this young man of hers and she’ll never admit to herself for a moment that he’s marrying her for money?”
“You think he is marrying her for money?”
“Yes, I do. Don’t you think so?”
“I should say quite certainly,” said Miss Marple. “Like young Ellis who married Marion Bates, the rich ironmonger’s daughter. She was a very plain girl and absolutely besotted about him. However, it turned out quite well. People like young Ellis and this Gerald Wright are only really disagreeable when they’ve married a poor girl for love. They are so annoyed with themselves for doing it that they take it out on the girl. But if they marry a rich girl they continue to respect her.”
“I don’t see,” went on Pat, frowning, “how it can be anybody from outside. And so—and so that accounts for the atmosphere that is here. Everyone watching everybody else. Only something’s got to happen soon—”
“There won’t be anymore deaths,” said Miss Marple. “At least, I shouldn’t think so.”
“You can’t be sure of that.”
“Well, as a matter of fact, I am fairly sure. The murderer’s accomplished his purpose, you see.”
“His?”
“Well, his or her. One