Colonel and Mrs Walker? Nice people. Retired Army folk. Served abroad mostly. Nice to talk to, but she didn't think there'd be anything for her there.
Miss Bentham and Miss Lumley? The elderly pussies. Unlikely to be criminals, but, being elderly pussies, they might know plenty of gossip, or have some information, or might make some illuminating remark even if it happened to come about in connection with rheumatism, arthritis or patent medicine.
Mr Caspar? Possibly a dangerous character. Very excitable. She would keep him on the list for the present.
Emlyn Price? A student presumably. Students were very violent. Would Mr Rafiel have sent her on the track of a student? Well, it would depend perhaps on what the student had done or wished to do or was going to do. A dedicated anarchist, perhaps.
'Oh dear,' said Miss Marple, suddenly exhausted, 'I must go to bed.'
Her feet ached, her back ached and her mental reactions were not, she thought, at their best. She slept at once. Her sleep was enlivened by several dreams.
One where Professor Wanstead's bushy eyebrows fell off because they were not his own eyebrows, but false ones. As she woke again, her first impression was that which so often follows dreams, a belief that the dream in question had solved everything.
'Of course,' she thought, 'of course!' His eyebrows were false and that solved the whole thing. He was the criminal.
Sadly, it came to her that nothing was solved. Professor Wanstead's eyebrows coming off was of no help at all.
Unfortunately now, she was no longer sleepy. She sat up in bed with some determination.
She sighed and slipped on her dressing-gown, moved from her bed to an upright chair, took a slightly larger notebook from her suitcase and started work.
'The project I have undertaken,' she wrote, 'is connected certainly with crime of some kind. Mr Rafiel has distinctly stated that in his letter. He said I had a flair for justice and that necessarily included a flair for crime. So crime is involved, and it is presumably not espionage or fraud or robbery, because such things have never come my way and I have no connection with such things, or knowledge of them, or special skills. What Mr Rafiel knows of me is only what he knew during the period of time when we were both in St Honore. We were connected there with a murder. Murders as reported in the press have never claimed my attention. I have never read books on criminology as a subject or really been interested in such a thing. No, it has just happened that I have found myself in the vicinity of murder rather more often than would seem normal. My attention has been directed to murders involving friends or acquaintances. These curious coincidences of connections with special subjects seem to happen to people in life. One of my aunts I remember, was on five occasions shipwrecked and a friend of mine was what I believe is officially called accident-prone. I know some of her friends refused to ride in a taxi with her. She had been in four taxi accidents and three car accidents and two railway accidents. Things like this seem to happen to certain people for no appreciable reason. I do not like to write it down but it does appear that murders seem to happen, not to me myself, thank goodness, but seem to happen in my vicinity.'
Miss Marple paused, changed her position, put a cushion in her back, and continued:
'I must try to make as logical a survey as I can of this project which I have undertaken. My instructions, or my 'briefing' as naval friends of mine put it, are so far quite inadequate. Practically nonexistent. So I must ask myself one clear question. What is all this about? Answer! I do not know. Curious and interesting. An odd way for a man like Mr Rafiel to go about things, especially when he was a successful business and financial operator. He wants me to guess, to employ my instinct, to observe and to obey such directions as are given to me or are hinted to me.
'So: Point 1. Direction will be given me. Direction from a dead man. Point 2. What is involved in my problem is justice. Either to set right an injustice or to avenge evil by bringing it to justice. This is in accord with the code word Nemesis given to me by Mr Rafiel.
'After explanations of the principle involved, I received my first factual directive. It was arranged by Mr Rafiel before his death that I was to go on Tour No. 37 of the Famous Houses and Gardens. Why? That is what I have to ask myself. Is it for some geographical or territorial reason? A connection or a clue? Some particular famous house? Or something involving some particular garden or landscape connected? This seems unlikely. The more likely explanation lies in the people or one of the people on this particular coach party. None of them is known to me personally, but one of them at least must be connected with the riddle I have to solve. Somebody among our group is connected or concerned with a murder. Somebody has information or a special link with the victim of a crime, or someone personally is himself or herself a murderer. A murderer as yet unsuspected.'
Miss Marple stopped here suddenly. She nodded her head. She was satisfied now with her analysis so far as it went.
And so to bed.
Miss Marple added to her notebook.
'Here endeth the First Day.'
Chapter 6
The following morning they visited a small Queen Anne Manor House. The drive there had not been very long or tiring. It was a very charming-looking house and had an interesting history as well as a very beautiful and unusually laid out garden.
Richard Jameson, the architect, was full of admiration for the structural beauty of the house and being the kind of young man who is fond of hearing his own voice, he slowed down in nearly every room that they went through, pointing out every special moulding or fireplace, and giving historical dates and references. Some of the group, appreciative at first, began to get slightly restive, as the somewhat monotonous lecturing went on. Some of them began to edge carefully away and fall behind the party. The local caretaker, who was in charge, was not himself too pleased at having his occupation usurped by one of the sightseers. He made a few efforts to get matters back into his own hands but Mr Jameson was unyielding. The caretaker made a last try…
'In this room, ladies and gentlemen, the White Parlour, folks call it, is where they found a body. A young man it was, stabbed with a dagger, lying on the hearthrug. Way back in seventeen hundred and something it was. It was said that the Lady Moffat of that day had a lover. He came through a small side door and up a steep staircase to this room through a loose panel there was to the left of the fireplace. Sir Richard Moffat, her husband, you see, was said to be across the seas in the Low Countries. But he came home, and in he came unexpectedly and caught 'em there together.'
He paused proudly. He was pleased at the response from his audience, glad of a respite from the architectural details which they had been having forced down their throats.
'Why, isn't that just too romantic, Henry?' said Mrs Butler in her resonant transatlantic tones. 'Why, you know, there's quite an atmosphere in this room. I feel it. I certainly can feel it.'
'Mamie is very sensitive to atmospheres,' said her husband proudly to those around him. 'Why, once when we were in an old house down in Louisiana…'
The narrative of Mamie's special sensitivity got into its swing and Miss Marple and one or two others seized their opportunity to edge gently out of the room and down the exquisitely moulded staircase to the ground floor.
'A friend of mine,' said Miss Marple to Miss Cooke and Miss Barrow who were next to her, 'had a most nerve- racking experience only a few years ago. A dead body on their library floor one morning.'
'One of the family?' asked Miss Barrow. 'An epileptic fit?'
'Oh no, it was a murder. A strange girl in evening dress. A blonde. But her hair was dyed. She was really a brunette; and oh…' Miss Marple broke off, her eyes fixed on Miss Cooke's yellow hair where it escaped from her headscarf.
It had come to her suddenly. She knew why Miss Cooke's face was familiar and she knew where she had seen her before.
