命案目睹记10
时间：2025-10-20 07:18:01
（单词翻译:单击）
Five
“I suppose it will be all right if I just practise a few iron shots in the park?”
asked Lucy.
“Oh, yes, certainly. Are you fond of golf?”
“I’m not much good, but I like to keep in practice. It’s a more agreeable
form of exercise than just going for a walk.”
“Nowhere to walk outside this place,” growled Mr. Crackenthorpe.
“Nothing but pavements and miserable little band boxes of houses. Like to
get hold of my land and build more of them. But they won’t until I’m dead.
And I’m not going to die to oblige anybody. I can tell you that! Not to ob-
lige anybody!”
Emma Crackenthorpe said mildly:
“Now, Father.”
“I know what they think — and what they’re waiting for. All of ’em.
Cedric, and that sly fox Harold with his smug face. As for Alfred, I wonder
he hasn’t had a shot at bumping me off himself. Not sure he didn’t, at
Christmas-time. That was a very odd turn I had. Puzzled old Quimper. He
asked me a lot of discreet questions.”
“Everyone gets these digestive upsets now and again, Father.”
“All right, all right, say straight out that I ate too much! That’s what you
mean. And why did I eat too much? Because there was too much food on
the table, far too much. Wasteful and extravagant. And that reminds me—
you, young woman. Five potatoes you sent in for lunch—good-sized ones
too. Two potatoes are enough for anybody. So don’t send in more than
four in future. The extra one was wasted today.”
“It wasn’t wasted, Mr. Crackenthorpe. I’ve planned to use it in a Spanish
omelette tonight.”
“Urgh!” As Lucy went out of the room carrying the coffee tray she heard
him say, “Slick young woman, that, always got all the answers. Cooks well,
though—and she’s a handsome kind of girl.”
Lucy Eyelesbarrow took a light iron out of the set of golf clubs she had
had the forethought to bring with her, and strolled out into the park,
climbing over the fence.
She began playing a series of shots. After five minutes or so, a ball, ap-
parently sliced, pitched on the side of the railway embankment. Lucy
went up and began to hunt about for it. She looked back towards the
house. It was a long way away and nobody was in the least interested in
what she was doing. She continued to hunt for the ball. Now and then she
played shots from the embankment down into the grass. During the after-
noon she searched about a third of the embankment. Nothing. She played
her ball back towards the house.
Then, on the next day, she came upon something. A thorn bush growing
about halfway up the bank had been snapped off. Bits of it lay scattered
about. Lucy examined the tree itself. Impaled on one of the thorns was a
torn scrap of fur. It was almost the same colour as the wood, a pale
brownish colour. Lucy looked at it for a moment, then she took a pair of
scissors out of her pocket and snipped it carefully in half. The half she had
snipped off she put in an envelope which she had in her pocket. She came
down the steep slope searching about for anything else. She looked care-
fully at the rough grass of the field. She thought she could distinguish a
kind of track which someone had made walking through the long grass.
But it was very faint—not nearly so clear as her own tracks were. It must
have been made some time ago and it was too sketchy for her to be sure
that it was not merely imagination on her part.
She began to hunt carefully down in the grass at the foot of the embank-
ment just below the broken thorn bush. Presently her search was rewar-
ded. She found a powder compact, a small cheap enamelled affair. She
wrapped it in her handkerchief and put it in her pocket. She searched on
but did not find anything more.
On the following afternoon, she got into her car and went to see her in-
valid aunt. Emma Crackenthorpe said kindly, “Don’t hurry back. We
shan’t want you until dinner-time.”
“Thank you, but I shall be back by six at the latest.”
No. 4 Madison Road was a small drab house in a small drab street. It
had very clean Nottingham lace curtains, a shining white doorstep and a
well-polished brass door handle. The door was opened by a tall, grim-look-
ing woman, dressed in black with a large knob of iron-grey hair.
She eyed Lucy in suspicious appraisal as she showed her in to Miss
Marple.
Miss Marple was occupying the back sitting room which looked out on
to a small tidy square of garden. It was aggressively clean with a lot of
mats and doilies, a great many china ornaments, a rather big Jacobean
suite and two ferns in pots. Miss Marple was sitting in a big chair by the
fire busily engaged in crocheting.
Lucy came in and shut the door. She sat down in the chair facing Miss
Marple.
“Well!” she said. “It looks as though you were right.”
She produced her finds and gave details of their finding.
A faint flush of achievement came into Miss Marple’s cheeks.
“Perhaps one ought not to feel so,” she said, “but it is rather gratifying to
form a theory and get proof that it is correct!”
She fingered the small tuft of fur. “Elspeth said the woman was wearing
a light-coloured fur coat. I suppose the compact was in the pocket of the
coat and fell out as the body rolled down the slope. It doesn’t seem dis-
tinctive in any way, but it may help. You didn’t take all the fur?”
“No, I left half of it on the thorn bush.”
Miss Marple nodded approval.
“Quite right. You are very intelligent, my dear. The police will want to
check exactly.”
“You are going to the police—with these things?”
“Well—not quite yet…” Miss Marple considered: “It would be better, I
think, to find the body first. Don’t you?”
“Yes, but isn’t that rather a tall order? I mean, granting that your estim-
ate is correct. The murderer pushed the body out of the train, then pre-
sumably got out himself at Brackhampton and at some time—probably
that same night—came along and removed the body. But what happened
after that? He may have taken it anywhere.”
“Not anywhere,” said Miss Marple. “I don’t think you’ve followed the
thing to its logical conclusion, my dear Miss Eyelesbarrow.”
“Do call me Lucy. Why not anywhere?”
“Because, if so, he might much more easily have killed the girl in some
lonely spot and driven the body away from there. You haven’t appreciated
—”
Lucy interrupted.
“Are you saying—do you mean—that this was a premeditated crime?”
“I didn’t think so at first,” said Miss Marple. “One wouldn’t—naturally. It
seemed like a quarrel and a man losing control and strangling the girl and
then being faced with the problem which he had to solve within a few
minutes. But it really is too much of a coincidence that he should kill the
girl in a fit of passion, and then look out of the window and find the train
was going round a curve exactly at a spot where he could tip the body out,
and where he could be sure of finding his way later and removing it! If
he’d just thrown her out there by chance, he’d have done no more about
it, and the body would, long before now, have been found.”
She paused. Lucy stared at her.
“You know,” said Miss Marple thoughtfully, “it’s really quite a clever
way to have planned a crime—and I think it was very carefully planned.
There’s something so anonymous about a train. If he’d killed her in the
place where she lived, or was staying, somebody might have noticed him
come or go. Or if he’d driven her out in the country somewhere, someone
might have noticed the car and its number and make. But a train is full of
strangers coming and going. In a non-corridor carriage, alone with her, it
was quite easy—especially if you realize that he knew exactly what he was
going to do next. He knew—he must have known—all about Rutherford
Hall — its geographical position, I mean, its queer isolation — an island
bounded by railway lines.”
“It is exactly like that,” said Lucy. “It’s an anachronism out of the past.
Bustling urban life goes on all around it, but doesn’t touch it. The trades-
people deliver in the mornings and that’s all.”
“So we assume, as you said, that the murderer comes to Rutherford Hall
that night. It is already dark when the body falls and no one is likely to dis-
cover it before the next day.”
“No, indeed.”
“The murderer would come—how? In a car? Which way?”
Lucy considered.
“There’s a rough lane, alongside a factory wall. He’d probably come that
way, turn in under the railway arch and along the back drive. Then he
could climb the fence, go along at the foot of the embankment, find the
body, and carry it back to the car.”
“And then,” continued Miss Marple, “he took it to some place he had
already chosen beforehand. This was all thought out, you know. And I
don’t think, as I say, that he would take it away from Rutherford Hall, or if
so, not very far. The obvious thing, I suppose, would be to bury it some-
where?” She looked inquiringly at Lucy.
“I suppose so,” said Lucy considering. “But it wouldn’t be quite as easy
as it sounds.”
Miss Marple agreed.
“He couldn’t bury it in the park. Too hard work and very noticeable.
Somewhere where the earth was turned already?”
“The kitchen garden, perhaps, but that’s very close to the gardener’s cot-
tage. He’s old and deaf—but still it might be risky.”
“Is there a dog?”
“No.”
“Then in a shed, perhaps, or an outhouse?”
“That would be simpler and quicker… There are a lot of unused old
buildings; broken down pigsties, harness rooms, workshops that nobody
ever goes near. Or he might perhaps thrust it into a clump of rhododen-
drons or shrubs somewhere.”
Miss Marple nodded.
“Yes, I think that’s much more probable.”
There was a knock on the door and the grim Florence came in with a
tray.
“Nice for you to have a visitor,” she said to Miss Marple, “I’ve made you
my special scones you used to like.”
“Florence always made the most delicious tea cakes,” said Miss Marple.
Florence, gratified, creased her features into a totally unexpected smile
and left the room.
“I think, my dear,” said Miss Marple, “we won’t talk anymore about
murder during tea. Such an unpleasant subject!”
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