A Caribbean Mystery

‘Oh, what a smashing dress you’ve got on tonight, Mrs Dyson. I’m so jealous I could tear it off your back.’ But she looked very well in her own dress, or so Miss Marple thought: a white sheath, with a pale green embroidered silk shawl thrown over her shoulders. Lucky was fingering the shawl. ‘Lovely colour! I’d like one like it.’ ‘You can get them at the shop here,’ Molly told her and passed on. She did not pause by Miss Marple’s table. Elderly ladies she usually left to her husband. ‘The old dears like a man much better,’ she used to say.

Tim Kendal came and bent over Miss Marple.

‘Nothing special you want, is there?’ he asked. ‘Because you’ve only got to tell me—and I could get it specially cooked for you. Hotel food, and semi-tropical at that, isn’t quite what you’re used to at home, I expect?’

Miss Marple smiled and said that that was one of the pleasures of coming abroad.

‘That’s all right, then. But if there is anything—’

‘Such as?’

‘Well—’ Tim Kendal looked a little doubtful—‘Bread and butter pudding?’ he hazarded.

Miss Marple smiled and said that she thought she could do without bread and butter pudding very nicely for the present.

She picked up her spoon and began to eat her passion fruit sundae with cheerful appreciation.

Then the steel band began to play. The steel bands were one of the main attractions of the islands. Truth to tell, Miss Marple could have done very well without them. She considered that they made a hideous noise, unnecessarily loud. The pleasure that everyone else took in them was undeniable, however, and Miss Marple, in the true spirit of her youth, decided that as they had to be, she must manage somehow to learn to like them. She could hardly request Tim Kendal to conjure up from somewhere the muted strains of the ‘Blue Danube’. (So graceful—waltzing.) Most peculiar, the way people danced nowadays. Flinging themselves about, seeming quite contorted. Oh well, young people must enjoy—Her thoughts were arrested. Because, now she came to think of it, very few of these people were young. Dancing, lights, the music of a band (even a steel band), all that surely was for youth. But where was youth? Studying, she supposed, at universities, or doing a job—with a fortnight’s holiday a year. A place like this was too far away and too expensive. This gay and carefree life was all for the thirties and the forties—and the old men who were trying to live up (or down) to their young wives. It seemed, somehow, a pity.

Miss Marple sighed for youth. There was Mrs Kendal, of course. She wasn’t more than twenty-two or three, probably, and she seemed to be enjoying herself—but even so, it was a job she was doing.

At a table nearby Canon Prescott and his sister were sitting. They motioned to Miss Marple to join them for coffee and she did so. Miss Prescott was a thin severe-looking woman, the Canon was a round, rubicund man, breathing geniality.

Coffee was brought, and chairs were pushed a little way away from the tables. Miss Prescott opened a work bag and took out some frankly hideous table mats that she was hemming. She told Miss Marple all about the day’s events. They had visited a new Girls’ School in the morning. After an afternoon’s rest, they had walked through a cane plantation to have tea at a pension where some friends of theirs were staying.

Since the Prescotts had been at the Golden Palm longer than Miss Marple, they were able to enlighten her as to some of her fellow guests.

That very old man, Mr Rafiel. He came every year. Fantastically rich! Owned an enormous chain of supermarkets in the North of England. The young woman with him was his secretary, Esther Walters—a widow. (Quite all right, of course. Nothing improper. After all, he was nearly eighty!)

Miss Marple accepted the propriety of the relationship with an understanding nod and the Canon remarked:

‘A very nice young woman; her mother, I understand, is a widow and lives in Chichester.’

‘Mr Rafiel has a valet with him, too. Or rather a kind of Nurse Attendant—he’s a qualified masseur, I believe. Jackson, his name is. Poor Mr Rafiel is practically paralysed. So sad—with all that money, too.’

‘A generous and cheerful giver,’ said Canon Prescott approvingly.

People were regrouping themselves round about, some going farther from the steel band, others crowding up to it. Major Palgrave had joined the Hillingdon-Dyson quartette.

‘Now those people—’ said Miss Prescott, lowering her voice quite unnecessarily since the steel band easily drowned it.

‘Yes, I was going to ask you about them.’

‘They were here last year. They spend three months every year in the West Indies, going round the different islands. The tall thin man is Colonel Hillingdon and the dark woman is his wife—they are botanists. The other two, Mr and Mrs Gregory Dyson—they’re American. He writes on butterflies, I believe. And all of them are interested in birds.’

‘So nice for people to have open-air hobbies,’ said Canon Prescott genially.

‘I don’t think they’d like to hear you call it hobbies, Jeremy,’ said his sister. ‘They have articles printed in the National Geographic and in the Royal Horticultural Journal. They take themselves very seriously.’

A loud outburst of laughter came from the table they had been observing. It was loud enough to overcome the steel band. Gregory Dyson was leaning back in his chair and thumping the table, his wife was protesting, and Major Palgrave emptied his glass and seemed to be applauding.

They hardly qualified for the moment as people who took themselves seriously.

‘Major Palgrave should not drink so much,’ said Miss Prescott acidly. ‘He has blood pressure.’

A fresh supply of Planters Punches was brought to the table.

‘It’s so nice to get people sorted out,’ said Miss Marple. ‘When I met them this afternoon I wasn’t sure which was married to which.’

There was a slight pause. Miss Prescott coughed a small dry cough, and said—‘Well, as to that—’

‘Joan,’ said the Canon in an admonitory voice. ‘Perhaps it would be wise to say no more.’

‘Really, Jeremy, I wasn’t going to say anything. Only that last year, for some reason or other—I really don’t know why—we got the idea that Mrs Dyson was Mrs Hillingdon until someone told us she wasn’t.’

‘It’s odd how one gets impressions, isn’t it?’ said Miss Marple innocently. Her eyes met Miss Prescott’s for a moment. A flash of womanly understanding passed between them.

A more sensitive man than Canon Prescott might have felt that he was de trop.

Another signal passed between the women. It said as clearly as if the words had been spoken: ‘Some other time …’

‘Mr Dyson calls his wife “Lucky”. Is that her real name or a nickname?’ asked Miss Marple.

‘It can hardly be her real name, I should think.’

‘I happened to ask him,’ said the Canon. ‘He said he called her Lucky because she was his good-luck piece. If he lost her, he said, he’d lose his luck. Very nicely put, I thought.’

‘He’s very fond of joking,’ said Miss Prescott.

The Canon looked at his sister doubtfully.

The steel band outdid itself with a wild burst of cacophony and a troupe of dancers came racing on to the floor.

Miss Marple and the others turned their chairs to watch. Miss Marple enjoyed the dancing better than the music; she liked the shuffling feet and the rhythmic sway of the bodies. It seemed, she thought, very real. It had a kind of power of understatement.

Tonight, for the first time, she began to feel slightly at home in her new environment … Up to now, she had missed what she usually found so easy, points of resemblance in the people she met, to various people known to her personally. She had, possibly, been dazzled by the gay clothes and the exotic colouring; but soon, she felt, she would be able to make some interesting comparisons.

Molly Kendal, for instance, was like that nice girl whose name she couldn’t remember, but who was a conductress on the Market Basing bus. Helped you in, and never rang the bus on until she was sure you’d sat down safely. Tim Kendal was just a little like the head waiter at the Royal George in Medchester. Self-confident, and yet, at the same time, worried. (He had had an ulcer, she remembered.) As for Major Palgrave, he was undistinguishable from General Leroy, Captain Flemming, Admiral Wicklow and Commander Richardson. She went on to someone more interesting. Greg for instance? Greg was difficult because he was American. A dash of Sir George Trollope, perhaps, always so full of jokes at the Civil Defence meetings—or perhaps Mr Murdoch the butcher. Mr Murdoch had had rather a bad reputation, but some people said it was just gossip, and that Mr Murdoch himself liked to encourage the rumours! ‘Lucky’ now? Well, that was easy—Marleen at the Three Crowns. Evelyn Hillingdon? She couldn’t fit Evelyn in precisely. In appearance she fitted many roles—tall thin weather-beaten Englishwomen were plentiful. Lady Caroline Wolfe, Peter Wolfe’s first wife, who had committed suicide? Or there was Leslie James—that quiet woman who seldom showed what she felt and who had sold up her house and left without ever telling anyone she was going. Colonel Hillingdon? No immediate clue there. She’d have to get to know him a little first. One of those quiet men with good manners. You never knew what they were thinking about. Sometimes they surprised you. Major Harper, she remembered, had quietly cut his throat one day. Nobody had ever known why. Miss Marple thought that she did know—but she’d never been quite sure …

Her eyes strayed to Mr Rafiel’s table. The principal thing known about Mr Rafiel was that he was incredibly rich, he came every year to the West Indies, he was semi-paralysed and looked like a wrinkled old bird of prey. His clothes hung loosely on his shrunken form. He might have been seventy or eighty, or even ninety. His eyes were shrewd and he was frequently rude, but people seldom took offence, partly because he was so rich, and partly because of his overwhelming personality which hypnotized you into feeling that somehow, Mr Rafiel had the right to be rude if he wanted to.

With him sat his secretary, Mrs Walters. She had corn-coloured hair, and a pleasant face. Mr Rafiel was frequently very rude to her, but she never seemed to notice it—She was not so much subservient, as oblivious. She behaved like a well-trained hospital nurse. Possibly, thought Miss Marple, she had been a hospital nurse.

A young man, tall and good-looking, in a white jacket, came to stand by Mr Rafiel’s chair. The old man looked up at him, nodded, then motioned him to a chair. The young man sat down as bidden. ‘Mr Jackson, I presume,’ said Miss Marple to herself—‘His valet-attendant.’

She studied Mr Jackson with some attention.

In the bar, Molly Kendal stretched her back, and slipped off her high-heeled shoes. Tim came in from the terrace to join her. They had the bar to themselves for the moment.

‘Tired, darling?’ he asked.

‘Just a bit. I seem to be feeling my feet tonight.’

‘Not too much for you, is it? All this? I know it’s hard work.’ He looked at her anxiously.

She laughed. ‘Oh, Tim, don’t be ridiculous. I love it here. It’s gorgeous. The kind of dream I’ve always had, come true.’

‘Yes, it would be all right—if one was just a guest. But running the show—that’s work.’

‘Well, you can’t have anything for nothing, can you?’ said Molly Kendal reasonably.

Tim Kendal frowned.

‘You think it’s going all right? A success? We’re making a go of it?’

‘Of course we are.’

‘You don’t think people are saying, “It’s not the same as when the Sandersons were here”?’

‘Of course someone will be saying that—they always do! But only some old stick-in-the-mud. I’m sure that we’re far better at the job than they were. We’re more glamorous. You charm the old pussies and manage to look as though you’d like to make love to the desperate forties and fifties, and I ogle the old gentlemen and make them feel sexy dogs—or play the sweet little daughter the sentimental ones would love to have had. Oh, we’ve got it all taped splendidly.’

Tim’s frown vanished.

‘As long as you think so. I get scared. We’ve risked everything on making a job of this. I chucked my job—’

‘And quite right to do so,’ Molly put in quickly. ‘It was soul-destroying.’

He laughed and kissed the tip of her nose.

‘I tell you we’ve got it taped,’ she repeated. ‘Why do you always worry?’

‘Made that way, I suppose. I’m always thinking—suppose something should go wrong?’

‘What sort of thing—’

‘Oh, I don’t know. Somebody might get drowned.’

‘Not they. It’s one of the safest of all the beaches. And we’ve got that hulking Swede always on guard.’

‘I’m a fool,’ said Tim Kendal. He hesitated—and then said, ‘You—haven’t had any more of those dreams, have you?’

‘That was shellfish,’ said Molly, and laughed.

CHAPTER 3

A Death in the Hotel

Miss Marple had her breakfast brought to her in bed as usual. Tea, a boiled egg, and a slice of paw-paw.

The fruit on the island, thought Miss Marple, was rather disappointing. It seemed always to be paw-paw. If she could have a nice apple now—but apples seemed to be unknown.

Now that she had been here a week, Miss Marple had cured herself of the impulse to ask what the weather was like. The weather was always the same—fine. No interesting variations.

‘The many splendoured weather of an English day,’ she murmured to herself and wondered if it was a quotation, or whether she had made it up.

There were, of course, hurricanes, or so she understood. But hurricanes were not weather in Miss Marple’s sense of the word. They were more in the nature of an Act of God. There was rain, short violent rainfall that lasted five minutes and stopped abruptly. Everything and everyone was wringing wet, but in another five minutes they were dry again.

The black West Indian girl smiled and said Good Morning as she placed the tray on Miss Marple’s knees. Such lovely white teeth and so happy and smiling. Nice natures, all these girls, and a pity they were so averse to getting married. It worried Canon Prescott a good deal. Plenty of christenings, he said, trying to console himself, but no weddings.

Miss Marple ate her breakfast and decided how she would spend her day. It didn’t really take much deciding. She would get up at her leisure, moving slowly because it was rather hot and her fingers weren’t as nimble as they used to be. Then she would rest for ten minutes or so, and she would take her knitting and walk slowly along towards the hotel and decide where she would settle herself. On the terrace overlooking the sea? Or should she go on to the bathing beach to watch the bathers and the children? Usually it was the latter. In the afternoon, after her rest, she might take a drive. It really didn’t matter very much.

Today would be a day like any other day, she said to herself.

Only, of course, it wasn’t.

Miss Marple carried out her programme as planned and was slowly making her way along the path towards the hotel when she met Molly Kendal. For once that sunny young woman was not smiling. Her air of distress was so unlike her that Miss Marple said immediately:

‘My dear, is anything wrong?’

Molly nodded. She hesitated and then said: ‘Well, you’ll have to know—everyone will have to know. It’s Major Palgrave. He’s dead.’

‘Dead?’

‘Yes. He died in the night.’

‘Oh, dear, I am sorry.’

‘Yes, it’s horrid having a death here. It makes everyone depressed. Of course—he was quite old.’

‘He seemed quite well and cheerful yesterday,’ said Miss Marple, slightly resenting this calm assumption that everyone of advanced years was liable to die at any minute.

‘He seemed quite healthy,’ she added.

‘He had high blood pressure,’ said Molly.

‘But surely there are things one takes nowadays—some kind of pill. Science is so wonderful.’

‘Oh yes, but perhaps he forgot to take his pills, or took too many of them. Like insulin, you know.’

Miss Marple did not think that diabetes and high blood pressure were at all the same kind of thing. She asked:

‘What does the doctor say?’

‘Oh, Dr Graham, who’s practically retired now, and lives in the hotel, took a look at him, and the local people came officially, of course, to give a death certificate, but it all seems quite straightforward. This kind of thing is quite liable to happen when you have high blood pressure, especially if you overdo the alcohol, and Major Palgrave was really very naughty that way. Last night, for instance.’

‘Yes, I noticed,’ said Miss Marple.

‘He probably forgot to take his pills. It is bad luck for the old boy—but people can’t live for ever, can they? But it’s terribly worrying—for me and Tim, I mean. People might suggest it was something in the food.’

‘But surely the symptoms of food poisoning and of blood pressure are quite different?’

‘Yes. But people do say things so easily. And if people decided the food was bad—and left—or told their friends—’

‘I really don’t think you need worry,’ said Miss Marple kindly. ‘As you say, an elderly man like Major Palgrave—he must have been over seventy—is quite liable to die. To most people it will seem quite an ordinary occurrence—sad, but not out of the way at all.’

‘If only,’ said Molly unhappily, ‘it hadn’t been so sudden.’

Yes, it had been very sudden, Miss Marple thought as she walked slowly on. There he had been last night, laughing and talking in the best of spirits with the Hillingdons and the Dysons.

The Hillingdons and the Dysons … Miss Marple walked more slowly still … Finally she stopped abruptly. Instead of going to the bathing beach she settled herself in a shady corner of the terrace. She took out her knitting and the needles clicked rapidly as though they were trying to match the speed of her thoughts. She didn’t like it—no, she didn’t like it. It came so pat.

She went over the occurrences of yesterday in her mind.

Major Palgrave and his stories …

That was all as usual and one didn’t need to listen very closely … Perhaps, though, it would have been better if she had.

Kenya—he had talked about Kenya and then India—the North West Frontier—and then—for some reason they had got on to murder—And even then she hadn’t really been listening …

Some famous case that had taken place out here—that had been in the newspapers—

It was after that—when he picked up her ball of wool—that he had begun telling her about a snapshot—A snapshot of a murderer—that is what he had said.

Miss Marple closed her eyes and tried to remember just exactly how that story had gone.

It had been rather a confused story—told to the Major in his club—or in somebody else’s club—told him by a doctor—who had heard it from another doctor—and one doctor had taken a snapshot of someone coming through a front door—someone who was a murderer—

Yes, that was it—the various details were coming back to her now—

And he had offered to show her that snapshot—He had got out his wallet and begun hunting through its contents—talking all the time …

And then still talking, he had looked up—had looked—not at her—but at something behind her—behind her right shoulder to be accurate. And he had stopped talking, his face had gone purple—and he had started stuffing back everything into his wallet with slightly shaky hands and had begun talking in a loud unnatural voice about elephant tusks!

A moment or two later the Hillingdons and the Dysons had joined them …

It was then that she had turned her head over her right shoulder to look … But there had been nothing and nobody to see. To her left, some distance away, in the direction of the hotel, there had been Tim Kendal and his wife; and beyond them a family group of Venezuelans. But Major Palgrave had not been looking in that direction …

Miss Marple meditated until lunch time.

After lunch she did not go for a drive.

Instead she sent a message to say that she was not feeling very well and to ask if Dr Graham would be kind enough to come and see her.

CHAPTER 4

Miss Marple Seeks Medical Attention

Dr Graham was a kindly elderly man of about sixty-five. He had practised in the West Indies for many years, but was now semi-retired, and left most of his work to his West Indian partners. He greeted Miss Marple pleasantly and asked her what the trouble was. Fortunately at Miss Marple’s age, there was always some ailment that could be discussed with slight exaggerations on the patient’s part. Miss Marple hesitated between ‘her shoulder’ and ‘her knee’, but finally decided upon the knee. Miss Marple’s knee, as she would have put it to herself, was always with her.

Dr Graham was exceedingly kindly but he refrained from putting into words the fact that at her time of life such troubles were only to be expected. He prescribed for her one of the brands of useful little pills that form the basis of a doctor’s prescriptions. Since he knew by experience that many elderly people could be lonely when they first came to St Honoré, he remained for a while gently chatting.

‘A very nice man,’ thought Miss Marple to herself, ‘and I really feel rather ashamed of having to tell him lies. But I don’t quite see what else I can do.’

Miss Marple had been brought up to have a proper regard for truth and was indeed by nature a very truthful person. But on certain occasions, when she considered it her duty so to do, she could tell lies with a really astonishing verisimilitude.

She cleared her throat, uttered an apologetic little cough, and said, in an old ladyish and slightly twittering manner:

‘There is something, Dr Graham, I would like to ask you. I don’t really like mentioning it—but I don’t quite see what else I am to do—although of course it’s quite unimportant really. But you see, it’s important to me. And I hope you will understand and not think what I am asking is tiresome or—or unpardonable in any way.’

To this opening Dr Graham replied kindly: ‘Something is worrying you? Do let me help.’

‘It’s connected with Major Palgrave. So sad about his dying. It was quite a shock when I heard it this morning.’

‘Yes,’ said Dr Graham, ‘it was very sudden, I’m afraid. He seemed in such good spirits yesterday.’ He spoke kindly, but conventionally. To him, clearly, Major Palgrave’s death was nothing out of the way. Miss Marple wondered whether she was really making something out of nothing. Was this suspicious habit of mind growing on her? Perhaps she could no longer trust her own judgment. Not that it was judgment really, only suspicion. Anyway she was in for it now! She must go ahead.

‘We were sitting talking together yesterday afternoon,’ she said. ‘He was telling me about his very varied and interesting life. So many strange parts of the globe.’

‘Yes indeed,’ said Dr Graham, who had been bored many times by the Major’s reminiscences.

‘And then he spoke of his family, boyhood rather, and I told him a little about my own nephews and nieces and he listened very sympathetically. And I showed him a snapshot I had with me of one of my nephews. Such a dear boy—at least not exactly a boy now, but always a boy to me if you understand.’

‘Quite so,’ said Dr Graham, wondering how long it would be before the old lady was going to come to the point.

‘I had handed it to him and he was examining it when quite suddenly those people—those very nice people—who collect wild flowers and butterflies, Colonel and Mrs Hillingdon I think the name is—’