The Mirror Crack'd - Agatha Christie [9]
‘Bathrooms, I suppose?’
‘Six new ones, I hear. And a palm court. And a pool. And what I believe they call picture windows, and they’ve knocked your husband’s study and the library into one to make a music room.’
‘Arthur will turn in his grave. You know how he hated music. Tone deaf, poor dear. His face, when some kind friend took us to the opera! He’ll probably come back and haunt them.’ She stopped and then said abruptly, ‘Does anyone ever hint that Gossington might be haunted?’
Miss Marple shook her head.
‘It isn’t,’ she said with certainty.
‘That wouldn’t prevent people saying it was,’ Mrs Bantry pointed out.
‘Nobody ever has said so.’ Miss Marple paused and then said, ‘People aren’t really foolish, you know. Not in villages.’
Mrs Bantry shot her a quick look. ‘You’ve always stuck to that, Jane. And I won’t say that you’re not right.’
She suddenly smiled.
‘Marina Gregg asked me, very sweetly and delicately, if I wouldn’t find it very painful to see my old home occupied by strangers. I assured her that it wouldn’t hurt me at all. I don’t think she quite believed me. But after all, as you know, Jane, Gossington wasn’t our home. We weren’t brought up there as children — that’s what really counts. It was just a house with a nice bit of shooting and fishing attached, that we bought when Arthur retired. We thought of it, I remember, as a house that would be nice and easy to run! How we can ever have thought that, I can’t imagine! All those staircases and passages. Only four servants! Only! Those were the days, ha ha!’ She added suddenly: ‘What’s all this about your falling down? That Knight woman ought not to let you go out by yourself.’
‘It wasn’t poor Miss Knight’s fault. I gave her a lot of shopping to do and then I —’
‘Deliberately gave her the slip? I see. Well, you shouldn’t do it, Jane. Not at your age.’
‘How did you hear about it?’
Mrs Bantry grinned.
‘You can’t keep any secrets in St Mary Mead. You’ve often told me so. Mrs Meavy told me.’
‘Mrs Meavy?’ Miss Marple looked at sea.
‘She comes in daily. She’s from the Development.’
‘Oh, the Development.’ The usual pause happened.
‘What were you doing in the Development?’ asked Mrs Bantry, curiously.
‘I just wanted to see it. To see what the people were like.’
‘And what did you think they were like?’
‘Just the same as everyone else. I don’t quite know if that was disappointing or reassuring.’
‘Disappointing, I should think.’
‘No. I think it’s reassuring. It makes you — well — recognize certain types — so that when anything occurs — one will understand quite well why and for what reason.’
‘Murder, do you mean?’
Miss Marple looked shocked.
‘I don’t know why you should assume that I think of murder all the time.’
‘Nonsense, Jane. Why don’t you come out boldly and call yourself a criminologist and have done with it?’
‘Because I am nothing of the sort,’ said Miss Marple with spirit. ‘It is simply that I have a certain knowledge of human nature — that is only natural after having lived in a small village all my life.’
‘You probably have something there,’ said Mrs Bantry thoughtfully, ‘though most people wouldn’t agree, of course. Your nephew Raymond always used to say this place was a complete backwater.’
‘Dear Raymond,’ said Miss Marple indulgently. She added: ‘He’s always been so kind. He’s paying for Miss Knight, you know.’
The thought of Miss Knight induced a new train of thought and she arose and said: ‘I’d better be going back now, I suppose.’
‘You didn’t walk all the way here, did you?’
‘Of course not. I came in Inch.’
This somewhat enigmatic pronouncement was received with complete understanding. In days very long past, Mr Inch had been the proprietor of two cabs, which met trains at the local station and which were also hired by the local ladies to take them ‘calling’, out to tea parties, and occasionally, with their daughters, to such frivolous entertainments as dances. In the fulness of time Inch, a cheery red-faced man of seventy odd, gave place to his son — known