They do it with mirrors - Agatha Christie [13]
Moreover, Carrie Louise was determined that the adopted child should never feel her position, and in making sure of this she was over-indulgent to Pippa and sometimes less than fair to Mildred.
Pippa had married and gone away to Italy, and Mildred for a time had been the only daughter of the house. But then Pippa had died and Carrie Louise had brought Pippa’s baby back to Stonygates, and once more Mildred had been out of it. There had been the new marriage — the Restarick boys. In 1934 Mildred had married Canon Strete, a scholarly antiquarian about fifteen years her senior and had gone away to live in the South of England. Presumably she had been happy — but one did not really know. There had been no children. And now here she was, back again in the same house where she had been brought up. And once again, Miss Marple thought, not particularly happy in it.
Gina, Stephen, Wally, Mildred, Miss Bellever who liked an ordered routine and was unable to enforce it. Lewis Serrocold who was clearly blissfully and whole-heartedly happy; an idealist able to translate his ideals into practical measures. In none of these personalities did Miss Marple find what Ruth’s words had led her to believe she might find. Carrie Louise seemed secure, remote at the heart of the whirlpool — as she had been all her life. What then, in that atmosphere, had Ruth felt to be wrong…? Did she, Jane Marple, feel it also?
What of the outer personalities of the whirlpool — the occupational therapists, the schoolmasters, earnest, harmless young men, confident young Dr Maverick, the three pink-faced innocent-eyed young delinquents — Edgar Lawson…
And here, just before she fell asleep, Miss Marple’s thoughts stopped and revolved speculatively round the figure of Edgar Lawson. Edgar Lawson reminded her of someone or something. There was something a little wrong about Edgar Lawson — perhaps more than a little. Edgar Lawson was maladjusted — that was the phrase, wasn’t it? But surely that didn’t, and couldn’t touch Carrie Louise?’
Mentally, Miss Marple shook her head.
What worried her was something more than that.
Chapter 5
I
Gently eluding her hostess the next morning, Miss Marple went out into the gardens. Their condition distressed her. They had once been an ambitiously set out achievement. Clumps of rhododendrons, smooth slopes of lawns, massed borders of herbaceous plants, clipped boxhedges surrounding a formal rose garden. Now all was largely derelict, the lawns raggedly mown, the borders full of weeds with tangled flowers struggling through them, the paths moss-covered and neglected. The kitchen gardens, on the other hand, enclosed by red brick walls, were prosperous and well stocked. That, presumably, was because they had a utility value. So, also, a large portion of what had once been lawn and flower garden, was now fenced off and laid out in tennis courts and a bowling green.
Surveying the herbaceous border, Miss Marple clicked her tongue vexedly and pulled up a flourishing plant of groundsel.
As she stood with it in her hand, Edgar Lawson came into view. Seeing Miss Marple, he stopped and hesitated. Miss Marple had no mind to let him escape. She called him briskly. When he came, she asked him if he knew where any gardening tools were kept.
Edgar said vaguely that there was a gardener somewhere who would know.
‘It’s such a pity to see this border so neglected,’ twittered Miss Marple. ‘I’m so fond of gardens.’ And since it was not her intention that Edgar should go in search of any necessary implement she went on quickly:
‘It’s about all an old and useless woman can find to do. Now I don’t suppose you ever bother your head about gardens, Mr Lawson. You have