'I suppose you must have had some rather exciting adventures sometimes?'
'I don't think so,' said Evelyn. Her voice was unaccentuated, slightly bored. 'Adventures always seem to happen to other people.' She yawned.
'No dangerous encounters with snakes or with wild animals or with natives gone berserk?' ('What a fool I sound,') thought Miss Marple.
'Nothing worse than insect bites,' Evelyn assured her.
'Poor Major Palgrave, you know, was bitten by a snake once,' said Miss Marple, making a purely fictitious statement.
'Was he?'
'Did he never tell you about it?'
'Perhaps. I don't remember.'
'I suppose you knew him quite well, didn't you?'
'Major Palgrave? No, hardly at all.'
'He always had so many interesting stories to tell.'
'Ghastly old bore,' said Mr. Rafiel. 'Silly fool, too. He needn't have died if he'd looked after himself properly.'
'Oh come now, Mr. Rafiel,' said Mrs. Walters.
'I know what I'm talking about. If you look after your health properly you're all right anywhere. Look at me. The doctors gave me up years ago. All right, I said, I've got my rules of health and I shall keep to them. And here I am.' He looked round proudly. It did indeed seem rather a miracle that he should be there.
'Poor Major Palgrave had high blood pressure,' said Mrs. Walters.
'Nonsense,' said Mr. Rafiel.
'Oh, but he did,' said Evelyn Hillingdon. She spoke with sudden, unexpected authority.
'Who says so?' said Mr. Rafiel. 'Did he tell you so?'
'Somebody said so.'
'He looked very red in the face,' Miss Marple contributed.
'Can't go by that,' said Mr. Rafiel. 'And anyway he didn't have high blood pressure because he told me so.'
'What do you mean, he told you so?' said Mrs. Walters. 'I mean, you can't exactly tell people you haven't got a thing.'
'Yes you can. I said to him once when he was downing all those Planters Punches, and eating too much. I said. 'You ought to watch your diet and your drink. You've got to think of your blood pressure at your age.' And he said he'd nothing to look out for in that line, that his blood pressure was very good for his age.'
'But he took some stuff for it, I believe,' said Miss Marple, entering the conversation once more. 'Some stuff called – oh, something like – was it Serenite?'
'If you ask me,' said Evelyn Hillingdon, 'I don't think he ever liked to admit that there could be anything the matter with him or that he could be ill. I think he was one of those people who are afraid of illness and therefore deny there's ever anything wrong with them.'
It was a long speech for her. Miss Marple looked thoughtfully down at the top of her dark head.
'The trouble is,' said Mr. Rafiel dictatorially 'everybody's too fond of knowing other people's ailments. They think everybody over fifty is going to die of hypertension or coronary thrombosis or one of those things – poppycock! If a man says there's nothing much wrong with him I don't suppose there is. A man ought to know about his own health. What's the time? Quarter to twelve? I ought to have had my dip long ago. Why can't you remind me about these things, Esther?'
Mrs. Walters made no protest. She rose to her feet and with some deftness assisted Mr. Rafiel to his. Together they went down the beach, she supporting him carefully. Together they stepped into the sea. Seсora de Caspearo opened her eyes and murmured: 'How ugly are old men! Oh how they are ugly! They should all be put to death at forty, or perhaps thirty-five would be better. Yes?'
Edward Hillingdon and Gregory Dyson came crunching down the beach. 'What's the water like, Evelyn?'
'Just the same as always.'
'Never much variation, is there? Where's Lucky?'
'I don't know,' said Evelyn.
Again Miss Marple looked down thoughtfully at the dark head.
'Well, now I give my imitation of a whale,' said Gregory. He threw off his gaily patterned Bermuda shirt and tore down the beach, flinging himself, puffing and panting, into the sea, doing a fast crawl. Edward Hillingdon sat down on the beach by his wife. Presently he asked, 'Coming in again?'
She smiled – put on her cap – and they went down the beach together in a much less spectacular manner. Seсora de Caspearo opened her eyes again. 'I think at first those two they are on their honeymoon, he is so charming to her, but I hear they have been married eight-nine years. It is incredible, is it not?'
'I wonder where Mrs. Dyson is?' said Miss Marple.
'That Lucky? She is with some man.'
'You- you think so?'
'It is certain,' said Seсora de Caspearo. 'She is that type. But she is not so young any longer – Her husband – already his eyes go elsewhere. He makes passes – here, there, all the time. I know.'
'Yes,' said Miss Marple, 'I expect you would know.'
Seсora de Caspearo shot a surprised glance at her. It was clearly not what she had expected from that quarter. Miss Marple, however, was looking at the waves with an air of gentle innocence.
II
'May I speak to you, ma'am, Mrs. Kendal?'
'Yes, of course,' said Molly. She was sitting at her desk in the office. Victoria Johnson, tall and buoyant in her crisp white uniform came in farther and shut the door behind her with a somewhat mysterious air.
'I like to tell you something, please, Mrs. Kendal.'
'Yes, what is it. Is anything wrong?'
'I don't know that. Not for sure. It's the old gentleman who died. The Major gentleman. He die in his sleep.'
'Yes, yes. What about it?'
'There was a bottle of pills in his room. Doctor, he asked me about them.'
'Yes?'
'The doctor said: 'Let me see what he has here on the bathroom shelf,' and he looked, you see. He see there was tooth powder and indigestion pills and aspirin and cascara pills, and then these pills in a bottle called Serenite.'
'Yes,' repeated Molly yet again.
'And the doctor looked at them. He seemed quite satisfied, and nodded his head. But I get to thinking afterwards. Those pills weren't there before. I've not seen them in his bathroom before. The others, yes. The tooth powder and the aspirin and the aftershave lotion and all the rest. But those pills, those Serenite pills, I never noticed them before.'
'So you think-' Molly looked puzzled.
'I don't know what to think,' said Victoria. 'I just think it's not right, so I think I better tell you about it. Perhaps you tell doctor? Perhaps it means something. Perhaps someone put those pills there so he take them and he died.'
'Oh, I don't think that's likely at all,' said Molly.
Victoria shook her dark head. 'You never know. People do bad things.'
Molly glanced out of the window. The place looked like an earthly paradise. With its sunshine, its sea, its coral reef, its music, its dancing, it seemed a Garden of Eden. But even in the Garden of Eden, there had been a shadow – the shadow of the Serpent. Bad things – how hateful to hear those words. 'I'll make inquiries, Victoria,'
