'Death?' said Miss Marple. She was remembering that one word that Elizabeth Temple had said which had sounded like the deep tone of a bell.
'Yes.' Archdeacon Brabazon sighed. 'Death.'
'Love,' said Miss Marple thoughtfully.
'By that you mean -' he hesitated.
'It's what Miss Temple said to me. I said 'What killed her?' and she said 'Love' and that love was the most frightening word in the world. The most frightening word.'
'I see,' said the Archdeacon. 'I see or I think I see.'
'What is your solution?'
'Split personality,' he sighed. 'Something that is not apparent to other people unless they are technically qualified to observe it. Jekyll and Hyde are real, you know. They were not Stevenson's invention as such. Michael Rafiel was – must have been – schizophrenic. He had a dual personality. I have no medical knowledge, no psychoanalytic experience. But there must have been in him the two parts of two identities. One, a well-meaning, almost lovable boy, a boy perhaps whose principal attraction was his wish for happiness. But there was also a second personality, someone who was forced by some mental deformation perhaps, something we as yet are not sure of – to kill – not an enemy, but the person he loved, and so he killed Verity. Not knowing perhaps why he had to or what it meant. There are very frightening things in this world of ours, mental quirks, mental disease or deformity of a brain. One of my parishioners was a very sad case in point. Two elderly women living together, pensioned. They had been friends in service together somewhere. They appeared to be a happy couple. And yet one day one of them killed the other. She sent for an old friend of hers, the vicar of her parish, and said: 'I have killed Louisa. It is very sad,' she said, 'but I saw the devil looking out of her eyes and I knew I was being commanded to kill her.' Things like that make one sometimes despair of living. One says why? and how? and yet one day knowledge will come. Doctors will find out or learn just some small deformity of a chromosome or gene. Some gland that overworks or leaves off working.'
'So you think that's what happened?' said Miss Marple.
'It did happen. The body was not found, I know, for some time afterwards. Verity just disappeared. She went away from home and was not seen again…'
'But it must have happened then, that very day -'
'But surely at the trial -'
'You mean after the body was found, when the police finally arrested Michael?'
'He had been one of the first, you know, to be asked to come and give assistance to the police. He had been seen about with the girl, she had been noticed in his car. They were sure all along that he was the man they wanted. He was their first suspect, and they never stopped suspecting him. The other young men who had known Verity were questioned, and one and all had alibis or lack of evidence. They continued to suspect Michael, and finally the body was found. Strangled and the head and face disfigured with heavy blows. A mad frenzied attack. He wasn't sane when he struck those blows. Mr Hyde, let us say, had taken over.'
Miss Marple shivered.
The Archdeacon went on, his voice low and sad. 'And yet, even now sometimes, I hope and feel that it was some other young man who killed her. Someone who was definitely mentally deranged, though no one had any idea of it. Some stranger, perhaps, whom she had met in the neighbourhood. Someone whom she had met by chance, who had given her a lift in a car, and then -' He shook his head.
'I suppose that could have been true,' said Miss Marple.
'Mike made a bad impression in court,' said the Archdeacon. 'Told foolish and senseless lies. Lied as to where his car had been. Got his friends to give him impossible alibis. He was frightened. He said nothing of his plan to marry. I believe his Counsel was of the opinion that that would tell against him that she might have been forcing him to marry her and that he didn't want to. It's so long ago now, I remember no details. But the evidence was dead against him. He was guilty and he looked guilty.
'So you see, do you not, Miss Marple, that I'm a very sad and unhappy man. I made the wrong judgement, I encouraged a very sweet and lovely girl to go to her death, because I did not know enough of human nature. I was ignorant of the danger she was running. I believed that if she had had any fear of him, any sudden knowledge of something evil in him, she would have broken her pledge to marry him and have come to me and told me of her fear, of her new knowledge of him. But nothing of that ever happened. Why did he kill her? Did he kill her because perhaps he knew she was going to have a child? Because by now he had formed a tie with some other girl and did not want to be forced to marry Verity? I can't believe it. Or was it some entirely different reason. Because she had suddenly felt a fear of him, a knowledge of danger from him, and had broken off her association with him? Did that rouse his anger, his fury, and did that lead him to violence and to killing her? One does not know.'
'You do not know?' said Miss Marple, 'but you do still know and believe one thing, don't you?'
'What do you mean exactly by 'believe'? Are you talking from the religious point of view?'
'Oh no,' said Miss Marple, 'I didn't mean that. I mean, there seems to be in you, or so I feel it, a very strong belief that those two loved each other, that they meant to marry, but that something happened that prevented it. Something that ended in her death, but you still really believe that they were coming to you to get married that day?'
'You are quite right, my dear. Yes, I cannot help still believing in two lovers who wished to get married, who were ready to take each other on for better, for worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health. She loved him and she would have taken him for better or for worse. As far as she had gone, she took him for worse. It brought about her death.'
'You must go on believing as you do,' said Miss Marple. 'I think, you know, that I believe it too.'
'But then what?'
'I don't know yet,' said Miss Marple. 'I'm not sure, but I think Elizabeth Temple did know or was beginning to know what happened. A frightening word, she said. Love. I thought when she spoke that what she meant was that because of a love affair Verity committed suicide. Because she found out something about Michael, or because something about Michael suddenly upset her and revolted her. But it couldn't have been suicide.'
'No,' said the Archdeacon, 'that couldn't be so. The injuries were described very fully at the trial. You don't commit suicide by beating in your own head.'
'Horrible!' said Miss Marple. 'Horrible! And you couldn't do that to anyone you loved even if you had to kill 'for love', could you? If he'd killed her, he couldn't have done it that way. Strangling perhaps, but you wouldn't beat in the face and the head that you loved.' She murmured, 'Love, love a frightening word.'
Chapter 19
The coach was drawn up in front of the Golden Boar on the following morning. Miss Marple had come down and was saying good-bye to various friends. She found Mrs Riseley-Porter in a state of high indignation.
'Really, girls nowadays,' she said. 'No vigour. No stamina.'
Miss Marple looked at her enquiringly.
'Joanna, I mean. My niece.'
'Oh dear. Is she not well?'
'Well, she says not. I can't see anything much the matter with her. She says she's got a sore throat, she feels she might have a temperature coming on. All nonsense, I think.'
'Oh, I'm very sorry,' said Miss Marple. 'Is there anything I can do? Look after her?'
'I should leave her alone, if I were you,' said Mrs Riseley-Porter. 'If you ask me, it's all an excuse.'
Miss Marple looked enquiringly at her once more.
'Girls are so silly. Always falling in love.'
'Emlyn Price?' said Miss Marple.
'Oh, so you've noticed it too. Yes, they're really getting to a stage of spooning about together. I don't much care for him anyway. One of these long-haired students, you know. Always going on demos or something like that.
