grew very grave as she read. After a minute or two she closed the book and stayed thinking.
Then she bent forward and with some care replaced the book where she had found it, under the mattress.
She shook her head in some perplexity. Noiselessly she rose from her chair. She walked the few steps towards the window, then turned her head sharply over her shoulder. Molly's eyes were open but even as Miss Marple turned the eyes shut again. For a minute or two Miss Marple was not quite certain whether she might not have imagined that quick, sharp glance. Was Molly then only pretending to be asleep? That might be natural enough. She might feel that Miss Marple would start talking to her if she showed herself awake. Yes, that could be all it was.
Was she reading into that glance of Molly's a kind of slyness that was somehow innately disagreeable? One doesn't know, Miss Marple thought to herself, one really doesn't know.
She decided that she would try to manage a little talk with Dr. Graham as soon as it could be managed. She came back to her chair by the bed. She decided after about five minutes or so that Molly was really asleep. No one could have lain so still, could have breathed so evenly. Miss Marple got up again. She was wearing her plimsolls today. Not perhaps very elegant, but admirably suited to this climate and comfortable and roomy for the feet.
She moved gently round the bedroom, pausing at both of the windows, which gave out in two different directions.
The hotel grounds seemed quiet and deserted. Miss Marple came back and was standing a little uncertainly before regaining her seat, when she thought she heard a faint sound outside. Like the scrape of a shoe on the loggia? She hesitated a moment then she went to the window, pushed it a little farther open, stepped out and turned her head back into the room as she spoke.
'I shall be gone only a very short time, dear,' she said, 'just back to my bungalow, to see where I could possibly have put that pattern. I was so sure I had brought it with me. You'll be quite all right till I come back, won't you?'
Then turning her head back, she nodded to herself. 'Asleep, poor child. A good thing.'
She went quietly along the loggia, down the steps and turned sharp right to the path there. Passing along between the screen of some hibiscus bushes an observer might have been curious to see that Miss Marple veered sharply on to the flowerbed, passed round to the back of the bungalow and entered it again through the second door there. This led directly into a small room that Tim sometimes used as an unofficial office and from that into the sitting room.
Here there were wide curtains semi-drawn to keep the room cool. Miss Marple slipped behind one of them. Then she waited. From the window here she had a good view of anyone who approached Molly's bedroom. It was some few minutes, four or five, before she saw anything.
The neat figure of Jackson in his white uniform went up the steps of the loggia.
He paused for a minute at the balcony there, and then appeared to be giving a tiny discreet tap on the door of the window that was ajar. There was no response that Miss Marple could hear. Jackson looked around him, a quick furtive glance, then he slipped inside the open doors. Miss Marple moved to the door which led directly into the bedroom. She did not go through it but applied her eye to the hinge.
Jackson had walked into the room. He approached the bed and looked down for a minute on the sleeping girl. Then he turned away and walked not to the sitting room door but to the far door which led into the adjoining bathroom. Miss Marple's eyebrows rose in slight surprise. She reflected a minute or two, then walked out into the passageway and into the bathroom by the other door.
Jackson spun round from examining the shelf over the wash-basin. He looked taken aback, which was not surprising.
'Oh,' he said, 'I-I didn't…'
'Mr. Jackson,' said Miss Marple, in great surprise.
'I thought you would be here somewhere,' said Jackson.
'Did you want anything?' inquired Miss Marple.
'Actually,' said Jackson, 'I was just looking at Mrs. Kendal's brand of face cream.'
Miss Marple appreciated the fact that as Jackson was standing with a jar of face cream in his hand he had been adroit in mentioning the fact at once.
'Nice smell,' he said, wrinkling up his nose. 'Fairly good stuff, as these preparations go. The cheaper brands don't suit every skin. Bring it out in a rash as likely as not. The same thing with face powders sometimes.'
'You seem to be very knowledgeable on the subject,' said Miss Marple.
'Worked in the pharmaceutical line for a bit,' said Jackson. 'One learns to know a good deal about cosmetics there. Put stuff in a fancy jar, package it expensively, and it's astonishing what you could rook women for.'
'Is that what you-?' Miss Marple broke off deliberately.
'Well no, I didn't come in here to talk about cosmetics,' Jackson agreed.
'You've not had much time to think up a lie,' thought Miss Marple to herself. 'Let's see what you'll come out with.'
'Matter of fact,' said Jackson, 'Mrs. Walters lent her lipstick to Mrs. Kendal the other day. I came in to get it back for her. I tapped on the window and then I saw Mrs. Kendal was fast asleep, so I thought it would be quite all right if I just walked across into the bathroom and looked for it.'
'I see,' said Miss Marple. 'And did you find it?'
Jackson shook his head. 'Probably in one of her handbags,' he said lightly. 'I won't bother. Mrs. Walters didn't make a point of it. She only just mentioned it casually.' He went on, surveying the toilet preparations: 'Doesn't have very much, does she? Ah well, doesn't need it at her age. Good natural skin.'
'You must look at women with quite a different eye from ordinary men,' said Miss Marple, smiling pleasantly.
'Yes. I suppose various jobs do alter one's angle.'
'You know a good deal about drugs?'
'Oh yes. Good working acquaintance with them. If you ask me, there are too many of them about nowadays. Too many tranquilisers and pep pills and miracle drugs and all the rest of it. All right if they're given on prescription, but there are too many of them you can get without prescription. Some of them can be dangerous.'
'I suppose so,' said Miss Marple. 'Yes, I suppose so.'
'They have a great effect, you know, on behaviour. A lot of this teenage hysteria you get from time to time. It's not natural causes. The kids've been taking things. Oh, there's nothing new about it. It's been known for ages. Out in the East – not that I've ever been there – all sorts of funny things used to happen. You'd be surprised at some of the things women gave their husbands. In India, for example, in the bad old days, a young wife who married an old husband. Didn't want to get rid of him, I suppose, because she'd have been burnt on the funeral pyre, or if she wasn't burnt she'd have been treated as an outcast by the family. No catch to have been a widow in India in those days. But she could keep an elderly husband under drugs, make him semi-imbecile, give him hallucinations, drive him more or less off his head.' He shook his head. 'Yes, lot of dirty work.'
He went on: 'And witches, you know. There's a lot of interesting things known now about witches. Why did they always confess, why did they admit so readily that they were witches, that they had flown on broomsticks to the Witches' Sabbath.'
'Torture,' said Miss Marple.
'Not always,' said Jackson. 'Oh yes, torture accounted for a lot of it, but they came out with some of those confessions almost before torture was mentioned. They didn't so much confess as boast about it. Well, they rubbed themselves with ointments, you know. Anointing they used to call it. Some of the preparations, belladonna, atropine, all that sort of thing, if you rub them on the skin they give you hallucinations of levitation, of flying through the air. They thought it all was genuine, poor devils. And look at the Assassins – medieval people, out in Syria, the Lebanon, somewhere like that. They fed them Indian hemp, gave them hallucinations of paradise and houris, and endless time. They were told that that was what would happen to them after death, but to attain it they had to go and do a ritual killing. Oh, I'm not putting it in fancy language, but that's what it came to.'
'What it came to,' said Miss Marple, 'is in essence the fact that people are highly credulous.'
'Well yes, I suppose you could put it like that.'
'They believe what they are told,' said Miss Marple. 'Yes indeed, we're all inclined to do that,' she added. Then she said sharply. 'Who told you these stories about India, about the doping of husbands with datura,' and she
