命案目睹记5
时间：2025-10-20 07:15:19
（单词翻译:单击）
Three
“Less serious? Fiddlesticks!” said Mrs. McGillicuddy. “It was murder!”
She looked defiantly at Miss Marple and Miss Marple looked back at her.
“Go on, Jane,” said Mrs. McGillicuddy. “Say it was all a mistake! Say I
imagined the whole thing! That’s what you think now, isn’t it?”
“Anyone can be mistaken,” Miss Marple pointed out gently. “Anybody,
Elspeth—even you. I think we must bear that in mind. But I still think, you
know, that you were most probably not mistaken… You use glasses for
reading, but you’ve got very good far sight—and what you saw impressed
you very powerfully. You were definitely suffering from shock when you
arrived here.”
“It’s a thing I shall never forget,” said Mrs. McGillicuddy with a shudder.
“The trouble is, I don’t see what I can do about it!”
“I don’t think,” said Miss Marple thoughtfully, “that there’s anything
more you can do about it.” (If Mrs. McGillicuddy had been alert to the
tones of her friend’s voice, she might have noticed a very faint stress laid
on the you.) “You’ve reported what you saw—to the railway people and to
the police. No, there’s nothing more you can do.”
“That’s a relief, in a way,” said Mrs. McGillicuddy, “because as you
know, I’m going out to Ceylon immediately after Christmas—to stay with
Roderick, and I certainly do not want to put that visit off— I’ve been look-
ing forward to it so much. Though of course I would put it off if I thought it
was my duty,” she added conscientiously.
“I’m sure you would, Elspeth, but as I say, I consider you’ve done
everything you possibly could do.”
“It’s up to the police,” said Mrs. McGillicuddy. “And if the police choose
to be stupid—”
Miss Marple shook her head decisively.
“Oh, no,” she said, “the police aren’t stupid. And that makes it interest-
ing, doesn’t it?”
Mrs. McGillicuddy looked at her without comprehension and Miss
Marple reaffirmed her judgment of her friend as a woman of excellent
principles and no imagination.
“One wants to know,” said Miss Marple, “what really happened.”
“She was killed.”
“Yes, but who killed her, and why, and what happened to her body?
Where is it now?”
“That’s the business of the police to find out.”
“Exactly—and they haven’t found out. That means, doesn’t it, that the
man was clever — very clever. I can’t imagine, you know,” said Miss
Marple, knitting her brows, “how he disposed of it… You kill a woman in a
fit of passion—it must have been unpremeditated, you’d never choose to
kill a woman in such circumstances just a few minutes before running
into a big station. No, it must have been a quarrel—jealousy—something
of that kind. You strangle her—and there you are, as I say, with a dead
body on your hands and on the point of running into a station. What could
you do except as I said at first, prop the body up in a corner as though
asleep, hiding the face, and then yourself leave the train as quickly as pos-
sible. I don’t see any other possibility — and yet there must have been
one….”
Miss Marple lost herself in thought.
Mrs. McGillicuddy spoke to her twice before Miss Marple answered.
“You’re getting deaf, Jane.”
“Just a little, perhaps. People do not seem to me to enunciate their words
as clearly as they used to do. But it wasn’t that I did not hear you. I’m
afraid I wasn’t paying attention.”
“I just asked about the trains to London tomorrow. Would the afternoon
be all right? I’m going to Margaret’s and she isn’t expecting me before
teatime.”
“I wonder, Elspeth, if you would mind going up by the 12:15? We could
have an early lunch.”
“Of course and—” Miss Marple went on, drowning her friend’s words:
“And I wonder, too, if Margaret would mind if you didn’t arrive for tea—
if you arrived about seven, perhaps?”
Mrs. McGillicuddy looked at her friend curiously.
“What’s on your mind, Jane?”
“I suggest, Elspeth, that I should travel up to London with you, and that
we should travel down again as far as Brackhampton in the train you trav-
elled by the other day. You would then return to London from Brack-
hampton and I would come on here as you did. I, of course, would pay the
fares,” Miss Marple stressed this point firmly.
Mrs. McGillicuddy ignored the financial aspect.
“What on earth do you expect, Jane?” she asked. “Another murder?”
“Certainly not,” said Miss Marple shocked. “But I confess I should like to
see for myself, under your guidance, the—the—really it is most difficult to
find the correct term—the terrain of the crime.”
So accordingly on the following day Miss Marple and Mrs. McGillicuddy
found themselves in two opposite corners of a first-class carriage speeding
out of London by the 4:50 from Paddington. Paddington had been even
more crowded than on the preceding Friday—as there were now only two
days to go before Christmas, but the 4:50 was comparatively peaceful—at
any rate, in the rear portion.
On this occasion no train drew level with them, or they with another
train. At intervals trains flashed past them towards London. On two occa-
sions trains flashed past them the other way going at high speed. At inter-
vals Mrs. McGillicuddy consulted her watch doubtfully.
“It’s hard to tell just when—we’d passed through a station I know…” But
they were continually passing through stations.
“We’re due in Brackhampton in five minutes,” said Miss Marple.
A ticket collector appeared in the doorway. Miss Marple raised her eyes
interrogatively. Mrs. McGillicuddy shook her head. It was not the same
ticket collector. He clipped their tickets, and passed on staggering just a
little as the train swung round a long curve. It slackened speed as it did so.
“I expect we’re coming into Brackhampton,” said Mrs. McGillicuddy.
“We’re getting into the outskirts, I think,” said Miss Marple.
There were lights flashing past outside, buildings, an occasional glimpse
of streets and trams. Their speed slackened further. They began crossing
points.
“We’ll be there in a minute,” said Mrs. McGillicuddy, “and I can’t really
see this journey has been any good at all. Has it suggested anything to you,
Jane?”
“I’m afraid not,” said Miss Marple in a rather doubtful voice.
“A sad waste of good money,” said Mrs. McGillicuddy, but with less dis-
approval than she would have used had she been paying for herself. Miss
Marple had been quite adamant on that point.
“All the same,” said Miss Marple, “one likes to see with one’s own eyes
where a thing happened. This train’s just a few minutes late. Was yours on
time on Friday?”
“I think so. I didn’t really notice.”
The train drew slowly into the busy length of Brackhampton station.
The loudspeaker announced hoarsely, doors opened and shut, people got
in and out, milled up and down the platform. It was a busy crowded scene.
Easy, thought Miss Marple, for a murderer to merge into that crowd, to
leave the station in the midst of that pressing mass of people, or even to
select another carriage and go on in the train wherever its ultimate destin-
ation might be. Easy to be one male passenger amongst many. But not so
easy to make a body vanish into thin air. That body must be somewhere.
Mrs. McGillicuddy had descended. She spoke now from the platform,
through the open window.
“Now take care of yourself, Jane,” she said. “Don’t catch a chill. It’s a
nasty treacherous time of year, and you’re not so young as you were.”
“I know,” said Miss Marple.
“And don’t let’s worry ourselves anymore over all this. We’ve done what
we could.”
Miss Marple nodded, and said:
“Don’t stand about in the cold, Elspeth. Or you’ll be the one to catch a
chill. Go and get yourself a good hot cup of tea in the Restaurant Room.
You’ve got time, twelve minutes before your train back to town.”
“I think perhaps I will. Good-bye, Jane.”
“Good-bye, Elspeth. A happy Christmas to you. I hope you find Margaret
well. Enjoy yourself in Ceylon, and give my love to dear Roderick—if he
remembers me at all, which I doubt.”
“Of course he remembers you—very well. You helped him in some way
when he was at school—something to do with money that was disappear-
ing from a locker—he’s never forgotten it.”
“Oh, that!” said Miss Marple.
Mrs. McGillicuddy turned away, a whistle blew, the train began to
move. Miss Marple watched the sturdy thickset body of her friend recede.
Elspeth could go to Ceylon with a clear conscience—she had done her duty
and was freed from further obligation.
Miss Marple did not lean back as the train gathered speed. Instead she
sat upright and devoted herself seriously to thought. Though in speech
Miss Marple was woolly and diffuse, in mind she was clear and sharp. She
had a problem to solve, the problem of her own future conduct; and, per-
haps strangely, it presented itself to her as it had to Mrs. McGillicuddy, as
a question of duty.
Mrs. McGillicuddy had said that they had both done all that they could
do. It was true of Mrs. McGillicuddy but about herself Miss Marple did not
feel so sure.
It was a question, sometimes, of using one’s special gifts… But perhaps
that was conceited… After all, what could she do? Her friend’s words came
back to her, “You’re not so young as you were….”
Dispassionately, like a general planning a campaign, or an accountant
assessing a business, Miss Marple weighed up and set down in her mind
the facts of and against further enterprise. On the credit side were the fol-
lowing:
1. My long experience of life and human nature.
2. Sir Henry Clithering and his godson (now at Scotland Yard, I be-
lieve), who was so very nice in the Little Paddocks case.
3. My nephew Raymond’s second boy, David, who is, I am almost
sure, in British Railways.
4. Griselda’s boy Leonard who is so very knowledgeable about maps.
Miss Marple reviewed these assets and approved them. They were all very
necessary, to reinforce the weaknesses on the debit side—in particular her
own bodily weakness.
“It is not,” thought Miss Marple, “as though I could go here, there and
everywhere, making inquiries and finding out things.”
Yes, that was the chief objection, her own age and weakness. Although,
for her age, her health was good, yet she was old. And if Dr. Haydock had
strictly forbidden her to do practical gardening he would hardly approve
of her starting out to track down a murderer. For that, in effect, was what
she was planning to do—and it was there that her loophole lay. For if
heretofore murder had, so to speak, been forced upon her, in this case it
would be that she herself set out deliberately to seek it. And she was not
sure that she wanted to do so… She was old—old and tired. She felt at this
moment, at the end of a tiring day, a great reluctance to enter upon any
project at all. She wanted nothing at all but to march home and sit by the
fire with a nice tray of supper, and go to bed, and potter about the next
day just snipping off a few things in the garden, tidying up in a very mild
way, without stooping, without exerting herself….
“I’m too old for anymore adventures,” said Miss Marple to herself,
watching absently out of the window the curving line of an embank-
ment….
A curve….
Very faintly something stirred in her mind… Just after the ticket col-
lector had clipped their tickets….
It suggested an idea. Only an idea. An entirely different idea….
A little pink flush came into Miss Marple’s face. Suddenly she did not
feel tired at all!
“I’ll write to David tomorrow morning,” she said to herself.
And at the same time another valuable asset flashed through her mind.
“Of course. My faithful Florence!”
©2005-2010英文阅读网