'Mr Rafiel,' he said, 'spoke to me about you at some length, Miss Marple. He suggested that I should be on this tour with you. I should in due course almost certainly make your acquaintance, since members in a tour inevitably do make each other's acquaintance, though it usually takes a day or two for them to split up, as it were, into possible groupings led by similar tastes or interests. And he further suggested to me that I should, shall we say, keep an eye on you.'
'Keep an eye on me?' said Miss Marple, showing some slight displeasure. 'And for what reason?'
'I think reasons of protection. He wanted to be quite sure that nothing should happen to you.'
'Happen to me? What should happen to me, I should like to know?'
'Possibly what happened to Miss Elizabeth Temple,' said Professor Wanstead.
Joanna Crawford came round the corner of the hotel. She was carrying a shopping basket. She passed them, nodding a little, she looked towards them with slight curiosity and went on down the street. Professor Wanstead did not speak until she had gone out of sight.
'A nice girl,' he said, 'at least I think so. Content at present to be a beast of burden to an autocratic aunt, but I have no doubt will reach the age of rebellion fairly soon.'
'What did you mean by what you said just now?' said Miss Marple, uninterested for the moment in Joanna's possible rebellion.
'That is a question which, perhaps, owing to what has happened, we shall have to discuss.'
'You mean because of the accident?'
'Yes. If it was an accident.'
'Do you think it wasn't an accident?'
'Well, I think it's just possible. That's all.'
'I don't of course know anything about it,' said Miss Marple, hesitating.
'No. You were absent from the scene. You were – shall I put it this way, were you just possibly on duty elsewhere?'
Miss Marple was silent for a moment. She looked at Professor Wanstead once or twice and then she said:
'I don't think I know exactly what you mean.'
'You are being careful. You are right to be careful.'
'I have made it a habit,' said Miss Marple.
'To be careful?'
'I should not put it exactly like that, but I have made a point of being always ready to disbelieve as well as believe anything that is told to me.'
'Yes, and you are quite right too. You don't know anything about me. You know my name from the passenger list of a very agreeable tour visiting castles and historic houses and splendid gardens. Possibly the gardens are what will interest you most.'
'Possibly.'
'There are other people here too who are interested in gardens.'
'Or profess to be interested in gardens.'
'Ah,' said Professor Wanstead. 'You have noticed that.' He went on, 'Well, it was my part, or at any rate to begin with, to observe you, to watch what you were doing, to be near at hand in case there was any possibility of – well, we might call it roughly dirty work of any kind. But things are slightly altered now. You must make up your mind if I am your enemy or your ally.'
'Perhaps you are right,' said Miss Marple. 'You put it very clearly but you have not given me any information about yourself yet on which to judge. You were a friend, I presume, of the late Mr Rafiel?'
'No,' said Professor Wanstead. 'I was not a friend of Mr Rafiel. I had met him once or twice. Once on a committee of a hospital, once at some other public event. I knew about him. He, I gather, also knew about me. If I say to you, Miss Marple, that I am a man of some eminence in my own profession, you may think me a man of bounding conceit.'
'I don't think so,' said Miss Marple. 'I should say, if you say that about yourself, that you are probably speaking the truth. You are, perhaps, a medical man.'
'Ah. You are perceptive, Miss Marple. Yes, you are quite perceptive. I have a medical degree, but I have a specialty too. I am a pathologist and psychologist. I don't carry credentials about with me. You will probably have to take my word up to a certain point, though I can show you letters addressed to me, and possibly official documents that might convince you. I undertake mainly specialist work in connection with medical jurisprudence. To put it in perfectly plain everyday language, I am interested in the different types of criminal brain. That has been a study of mine for many years. I have written books on the subject, some of them violently disputed, some of them which have attracted adherence to my ideas. I do not do very arduous work nowadays. I spend my time mainly writing up my subject, stressing certain points that have appealed to me. From time to time I come across things that strike me as interesting. Things that I want to study more closely. This, I am afraid, must seem rather tedious to you.'
'Not at all,' said Miss Marple. 'I am hoping perhaps, from what you are saying now, that you will be able to explain to me certain things which Mr Rafiel did not see fit to explain to me. He asked me to embark upon a certain project but he gave me no useful information on which to work. He left me to accept it and proceed, as it were, completely in the dark. It seemed to me extremely foolish of him to treat the matter in that way.'
'But you accepted it?'
'I accepted it. I will be quite honest with you. I had a financial incentive.'
'Did that weigh with you?'
Miss Marple was silent for a moment and then she said slowly, 'You may not believe it, but my answer to that is, 'Not really'.'
'I am not surprised. But your interest was aroused. That is what you are trying to tell me.'
'Yes. My interest was aroused. I had known Mr Rafiel not well, casually, but for a certain period of time, some weeks in fact – in the West Indies. I see you know about it, more or less.'
'I know that that was where Mr Rafiel met you and where – shall I say – you two collaborated.'
Miss Marple looked at him rather doubtfully. 'Oh,' she said, 'he said that, did he?' She shook her head.
'Yes, he did,' said Professor Wanstead. 'He said you had a remarkable flair for criminal matters.'
Miss Marple raised her eyebrows as she looked at him.
'And I suppose that seems to you most unlikely,' she said. 'It surprises you.'
'I seldom allow myself to be surprised at what happens,' said Professor Wanstead. 'Mr Rafiel was a very shrewd and astute man, a good judge of people. He thought that you, too, were a good judge of people.'
'I would not set myself up as a good judge of people,' said Miss Marple. 'I would only say that certain people remind me of certain other people that I have known, and that therefore I can presuppose a certain likeness between the way they would act. If you think I know all about what I am supposed to be doing here, you are wrong.'
'By accident more than design,' said Professor Wanstead, 'we seem to have settled here in a particularly suitable spot for discussion of certain matters. We do not appear to be overlooked, we cannot easily be overheard, we are not near a window or a door and there is no balcony or window overhead. In fact, we can talk.'
'I should appreciate that,' said Miss Marple. 'I am stressing the fact that I am myself completely in the dark as to what I am doing or supposed to be doing. I don't know why Mr Rafiel wanted it that way.'
'I think I can guess that. He wanted you to approach a certain set of facts, of happenings, unbiased by what anyone would tell you first.'
'So you are not going to tell me anything, either?' Miss Marple sounded irritated. 'Really!' she said, 'there are limits.'
'Yes,' said Professor Wanstead. He smiled suddenly. 'I agree with you. We must do away with some of these limits. I am going to tell you certain facts that will make certain things fairly clear to you. You in turn may be able to tell me certain facts.'
'I rather doubt it,' said Miss Marple. 'One or two rather peculiar indications perhaps, but indications are not facts.'
'Therefore -' said Professor Wanstead, and paused.
'For goodness' sake, tell me something,' said Miss Marple.
