Chapter 18
When Miss Marple, slightly out of breath and rather tired, got back to the Golden Boar, the receptionist came out from her pen and across to greet her.
'Oh, Miss Marple, there is someone here who wants to speak to you. Archdeacon Brabazon.'
'Archdeacon Brabazon?' Miss Marple looked puzzled.
'Yes. He's been trying to find you. He had heard you were with this tour and he wanted to talk to you before you might have left or gone to London. I told him that some of them were going back to London by the later train this afternoon, but he is very, very anxious to speak to you before you go. I have put him in the television lounge. It is quieter there. The other is very noisy just at this moment.'
Slightly surprised, Miss Marple went to the room indicated. Archdeacon Brabazon turned out to be the elderly cleric whom she had noticed at the memorial service.
He rose and came towards her.
'Miss Marple. Miss Jane Marple?'
'Yes, that is my name. You wanted -'
'I am Archdeacon Brabazon. I came here this morning to attend the service for a very old friend of mine, Miss Elizabeth Temple.'
'Oh yes?' said Miss Marple. 'Do sit down.'
'Thank you, I will. I am not quite as strong as I was.' He lowered himself carefully into a chair.
'And you -'
Miss Marple sat down beside him.
'Yes,' she said, 'you wanted to see me?'
'Well, I must explain how that comes about. I'm quite aware that I am a complete stranger to you. As a matter of fact I made a short visit to the hospital at Carristown, talking to the matron before going on to the church here. It was she who told me that before she died Elizabeth had asked to see a fellow member of the tour, Miss Jane Marple. And that Miss Jane Marple had visited her and sat with her just a very, very short time before Elizabeth died.'
He looked at her anxiously.
'Yes,' said Miss Marple, 'that is so. It surprised me to be sent for.'
'You are an old friend of hers?'
'No,' said Miss Marple. 'I only met her on this tour. That's why I was surprised. We had expressed ideas to each other, occasionally sat next to each other in the coach, and had struck up quite an acquaintanceship. But I was surprised that she should have expressed a wish to see me when she was so ill.'
'Yes. Yes, I can quite imagine that. She was, as I have said, a very old friend of mine. In fact, she was coming to see me, to visit me. I live in Fillminster, which is where your coach tour will be stopping the day after tomorrow. And by arrangement she was coming to visit me there, she wanted to talk to me about various matters about which she thought I could help her.'
'I see,' said Miss Marple. 'May I ask you a question? I hope it is not too intimate a question.'
'Of course, Miss Marple. Ask me anything you like.'
'One of the things Miss Temple said to me was that her presence on the tour was not merely because she wished to visit historic homes and gardens. She described it by a rather unusual word to use, as pilgrimage.'
'Did she,' said Archdeacon Brabazon. 'Did she indeed now? Yes, that's interesting. Interesting and perhaps significant.'
'So what I am asking you is, do you think that the pilgrimage she spoke of was her visit to you?'
'I think it must have been,' said the Archdeacon. 'Yes, I think so.'
'We had been talking,' said Miss Marple, 'about a young girl. A girl called Verity.'
'Ah yes. Verity Hunt.'
'I did not know her surname. Miss Temple, I think, mentioned her only as Verity.'
'Verity Hunt is dead,' said the Archdeacon. 'She died quite a number of years ago. Did you know that?'
'Yes,' said Miss Marple. 'I knew it. Miss Temple and I were talking about her. Miss Temple told me something that I did not know. She said she had been engaged to be married to the son of a Mr Rafiel. Mr Rafiel is, or again I must say was, a friend of mine. Mr Rafiel has paid the expenses of this tour out of his kindness. I think, though that possibly he wanted, indeed intended, me to meet Miss Temple on this tour. I think he thought she could give me certain information.'
'Certain information about Verity?'
'Yes.'
'That is why she was coming to me. She wanted to know certain facts.'
'She wanted to know,' said Miss Marple, 'why Verity broke off her engagement to marry Mr Rafiel's son.'
'Verity,' said Archdeacon Brabazon, 'did not break off her engagement. I am certain of that. As certain as one can be of anything.'
' Miss Temple did not know that, did she?'
'No. I think she was puzzled and unhappy about what happened and was coming to me to ask me why the marriage did not take place.'
'And why did it not take place?' asked Miss Marple. 'Please do not think that I am unduly curious. It's not idle curiosity that is driving me. I too am on, not a pilgrimage, but what I should call a mission. I too want to know why Michael Rafiel and Verity Hunt did not marry.'
The Archdeacon studied her for a moment or two.
'You are involved in some way,' he said. 'I see that.'
'I am involved,' said Miss Marple, 'by the dying wishes of Michael Rafiel's father. He asked me to do this for him.'
'I have no reason not to tell you all I know,' said the Archdeacon slowly. 'You are asking me what Elizabeth Temple would have been asking me, you are asking me something I do not know myself. Those two young people, Miss Marple, intended to marry. They had made arrangements to marry. I was going to marry them. It was a marriage, I gather, which was being kept secret. I knew both these young people. I knew that dear child Verity from a long way back. I prepared her for confirmation, I used to hold services in Lent, for Easter, on other occasions, in Elizabeth Temple's school. A very fine school it was, too. A very fine woman she was. A wonderful teacher with a great sense of each girl's capabilities – for what she was best fitted for in studies. She urged careers on girls she thought would relish careers, and did not force girls that she felt were not really suited to them. She was a great woman and a very dear friend. Verity was one of the most beautiful children, girls, rather that I have come across. Beautiful in mind, in heart, as well as in appearance. She had the great misfortune to lose her parents before she was truly adult. They were both killed in a charter plane going on a holiday to Italy. Verity went to live when she left school with a Miss Clotilde Bradbury-Scott whom you know, probably, as living here. She had been a close friend of Verity's mother. There are three sisters, though the second one was married and living abroad, so there were only two of them living here. Clotilde, the eldest one, became extremely attached to Verity. She did everything possible to give her a happy life. She took her abroad once or twice, gave her art lessons in Italy and loved and cared for her dearly in every way. Verity, too, came to love her probably as much as she could have loved her own mother. She depended on Clotilde. Clotilde herself was an intellectual and well educated woman. She did not urge a university career on Verity, but this I gather was really because Verity did not really yearn after one. She preferred to study art and music and such subjects. She lived here at The Old Manor House and had, I think, a very happy life. She always seemed to be happy. Naturally, I did not see her after she came here since Fillminster where I was in the cathedral, is nearly sixty miles from here. I wrote to her at Christmas and other festivals, and she remembered me always with a Christmas card. But I saw nothing of her until the day came when she suddenly turned up, a very beautiful and fully grown young woman by then, with an attractive young man whom I also happened to know slightly, Mr Rafiel's son, Michael. They came to me because they were in love with each other and wanted to get married.'
'And you agreed to marry them?'
