黑麦奇案21
时间：2025-10-10 08:29:24
（单词翻译:单击）
Chapter Thirteen
An elderly lady travelling by train had bought three morning papers, and
each of them as she finished it, folded it and laid it aside, showed the same
headline. It was no longer a question now of a small paragraph hidden
The old lady sat very upright, looking out of the window of the train, her
took a Circle train to another London terminus and thence on to Baydon
Heath.
At the station she signalled a taxi and asked to be taken to Yewtree
was Miss Marple that she gained admittance to what was now practically
possible. Though an army of reporters and photographers were being kept
at bay by the police, Miss Marple was allowed to drive in without ques-
tion, so impossible would it have been to believe that she was anyone but
an elderly relative of the family.
Miss Marple paid off the taxi in a careful assortment11 of small change,
and rang the front doorbell. Crump opened it and Miss Marple summed
him up with an experienced glance. “A shifty eye,” she said to herself.
“Scared to death, too.”
Crump saw a tall, elderly lady wearing an old-fashioned tweed coat and
skirt, a couple of scarves and a small felt hat with a bird’s wing. The old
“Yes, madam?” in his best and most respectful voice.
“Could I see the mistress of the house, please?” said Miss Marple.
Crump drew back to let her in. He picked up the suitcase and put it care-
Miss Marple helped him out.
“I have come,” she said, “to speak about the poor girl who was killed.
Gladys Martin.”
“Oh, I see, madam. Well in that case—” he broke off, and looked towards
the library door from which a tall young woman had just emerged. “This
is Mrs. Lance Fortescue, madam,” he said.
Pat came forward and she and Miss Marple looked at each other. Miss
Marple was aware of a faint feeling of surprise. She had not expected to
see someone like Patricia Fortescue in this particular house. Its interior
was much as she had pictured it, but Pat did not somehow match with that
interior.
“It’s about Gladys, madam,” said Crump helpfully.
Pat said rather hesitatingly:
“Will you come in here? We shall be quite alone.”
She led the way into the library and Miss Marple followed her.
“because perhaps I shan’t be much good. You see my husband and I only
came back from Africa a few days ago. We don’t really know anything
much about the household. But I can fetch my sister-in-law or my brother-
in-law’s wife.”
Miss Marple looked at the girl and liked her. She liked her gravity and
her simplicity17. For some strange reason she felt sorry for her. A back-
would have been much more suitable than this richly furnished interior
Mead, Miss Marple had met many Pats and knew them well. She felt at
home with this rather unhappy-looking girl.
“It’s very simple, really,” said Miss Marple, taking off her gloves care-
fully and smoothing out the fingers of them. “I read in the paper, you see,
about Gladys Martin having been killed. And of course I know all about
her. She comes from my part of the country. I trained her, in fact, for do-
mestic service. And since this terrible thing has happened to her, I felt—
well, I felt that I ought to come and see if there was anything I could do
about it.”
“Yes,” said Pat. “Of course. I see.”
And she did see. Miss Marple’s action appeared to her natural and inev-
itable.
“I think it’s a very good thing you have come,” said Pat. “Nobody seems
to know very much about her. I mean relations and all that.”
“No,” said Miss Marple, “of course not. She hadn’t got any relations. She
sadly short of funds. We do our best for the girls there, try to give them a
good training and all that. Gladys came to me when she was seventeen
and I taught her how to wait at table and keep the silver and everything
like that. Of course she didn’t stay long. They never do. As soon as she got
a little experience, she went and took a job in a café. The girls nearly al-
ways want to do that. They think it’s freer, you know, and a gayer life. Per-
“I never even saw her,” said Pat. “Was she a pretty girl?”
“Oh, no,” said Miss Marple, “not at all. Adenoids, and a good many spots.
She was rather pathetically stupid, too. I don’t suppose,” went on Miss
Marple thoughtfully, “that she ever made many friends anywhere. She
was very keen on men, poor girl. But men didn’t take much notice of her
and other girls rather made use of her.”
“It sounds rather cruel,” said Pat.
“Yes, my dear,” said Miss Marple, “life is cruel, I’m afraid. One doesn’t
really know what to do with the Gladyses. They enjoy going to the pictures
and all that, but they’re always thinking of impossible things that can’t
possibly happen to them. Perhaps that’s happiness of a kind. But they get
disappointed. I think Gladys was disappointed in café and restaurant life.
hard on the feet. Probably that’s why she came back into private service.
Do you know how long she’d been here?”
Pat shook her head.
“Not very long, I should think. Only a month or two.” Pat paused and
caught up in this thing. I suppose she’d seen something or noticed some-
thing.”
“It was the clothes-peg that really worried me,” said Miss Marple in her
gentle voice.
“The clothes-peg?”
“Yes. I read about it in the papers. I suppose it is true? That when she
was found there was a clothes-peg clipped onto her nose.”
Pat nodded. The colour rose to Miss Marple’s pink cheeks.
“That’s what made me so very angry, if you can understand, my dear. It
was such a cruel, contemptuous gesture. It gave me a kind of picture of the
human dignity. Particularly if you’ve already killed.”
Pat said slowly:
“I think I see what you mean.” She got up. “I think you’d better come
You’ll like him, I think. He’s a very human person.” She gave a sudden,
quick shiver. “The whole thing is such a horrible nightmare. Pointless.
Mad. Without rhyme or reason in it.”
“I wouldn’t say that, you know,” said Miss Marple. “No, I wouldn’t say
that.”
Inspector Neele was looking tired and haggard. Three deaths and the
be shaping in well-known fashion had gone suddenly haywire. Adele For-
tescue, that appropriate suspect, was now the second victim of an incom-
prehensible murder case. At the close of that fatal day the assistant com-
missioner had sent for Neele and the two men had talked far into the
night.
In spite of his dismay, or rather behind it, Inspector Neele had felt a
faint inward satisfaction. That pattern of the wife and the lover. It had
been too slick, too easy. He had always mistrusted it. And now that mis-
striding up and down his room and frowning. “It looks to me, Neele, as
though we’ve got someone mentally unhinged to deal with. First the hus-
band, then the wife. But the very circumstances of the case seem to show
that it’s an inside job. It’s all there, in the family. Someone who sat down
to breakfast with Fortescue put taxine in his coffee or on his food,
someone who had tea with the family that day put potassium cyanide in
Adele Fortescue’s cup of tea. Someone trusted, unnoticed, one of the fam-
ily. Which of ’em, Neele?”
Neele said dryly:
“Percival wasn’t there, so that lets him out again. That lets him out
again,” Inspector Neele repeated.
The AC looked at him sharply. Something in the repetition had attracted
his attention.
“What’s the idea, Neele? Out with it, man.”
“Nothing, sir. Not so much as an idea. All I say is it was very convenient
for him.”
“A bit too convenient, eh?” The AC reflected and shook his head. “You
think he might have managed it somehow? Can’t see how, Neele. No, I
can’t see how.”
He added: “And he’s a cautious type, too.”
“But quite intelligent, sir.”
“You don’t fancy the women. Is that it? Yet the women are indicated.
Elaine Fortescue and Percival’s wife. They were at breakfast and they
were at tea that day. Either of them could have done it. No signs of any-
thing abnormal about them? Well, it doesn’t always show. There might be
something in their past medical record.”
Inspector Neele did not answer. He was thinking of Mary Dove. He had
no definite reason for suspecting her, but that was the way his thoughts
lay. There was something unexplained about her, unsatisfactory. A faint,
amused antagonism29. That had been her attitude after the death of Rex
Fortescue. What was her attitude now? Her behaviour and manner were,
as always, exemplary. There was no longer, he thought, amusement. Per-
haps not even antagonism, but he wondered whether, once or twice, he
the matter of Gladys Martin. That guilty confusion of hers he had put
down to no more than a natural nervousness of the police. He had come
across that guilty nervousness so often. In this case it had been something
more. Gladys had seen or heard something which had aroused her suspi-
cions. It was probably, he thought, some quite small thing, something so
vague and indefinite that she had hardly liked to speak about it. And now,
poor little rabbit, she would never speak.
Inspector Neele looked with some interest at the mild, earnest face of
the old lady who confronted him now at Yewtree Lodge. He had been in
two minds at first how to treat her, but he quickly made-up his mind. Miss
Marple would be useful to him. She was upright, of unimpeachable31
rectitude and she had, like most old ladies, time on her hands and an old
and out of the women of the Fortescue family perhaps, that he and his po-
licemen would never get. Talk, conjecture33, reminiscences, repetitions of
things said and done, out of it all she would pick the salient facts. So In-
spector Neele was gracious.
“It’s uncommonly34 good of you to have come here, Miss Marple,” he said.
“It was my duty, Inspector Neele. The girl had lived in my house. I feel,
in a sense, responsible for her. She was a very silly girl, you know.”
Inspector Neele looked at her appreciatively.
“Yes,” he said, “just so.”
She had gone, he felt, to the heart of the matter.
“She wouldn’t know,” said Miss Marple, “what she ought to do. If, I
mean, something came up. Oh, dear, I’m expressing myself very badly.”
Inspector Neele said that he understood.
“She hadn’t got good judgement as to what was important or not, that’s
what you mean, isn’t it?”
“Oh yes, exactly, Inspector.”
“When you say that she was silly—” Inspector Neele broke off.
Miss Marple took up the theme.
never did have any savings because she always spent her money on most
unsuitable clothes.”
“What about men?” asked the inspector.
“She wanted a young man badly,” said Miss Marple. “In fact that’s really,
I think, why she left St. Mary Mead. The competition there is very keen. So
few men. She did have hopes of the young man who delivered the fish.
Young Fred had a pleasant word for all the girls, but of course he didn’t
mean anything by it. That upset poor Gladys quite a lot. Still, I gather she
did get herself a young man in the end?”
Inspector Neele nodded.
“It seems so. Albert Evans, I gather, his name was. She seems to have
met him at some holiday camp. He didn’t give her a ring or anything so
maybe she made it all up. He was a mining engineer, so she told the cook.”
“That seems most unlikely,” said Miss Marple, “but I dare say it’s what
he told her. As I say, she’d believe anything. You don’t connect him with
this business at all?”
Inspector Neele shook his head.
“No. I don’t think there are any complications of that kind. He never
seems to have visited her. He sent her a postcard from time to time, usu-
ally from a seaport—probably 4th Engineer on a boat on the Baltic run.”
“Well,” said Miss Marple, “I’m glad she had her little romance. Since her
Inspector, it makes me very, very angry.” And she added, as she had said
to Pat Fortescue, “Especially the clothes-peg. That, Inspector, was really
wicked.”
Inspector Neele looked at her with interest.
“I know just what you mean, Miss Marple,” he said.
Miss Marple coughed apologetically.
“I wonder—I suppose it would be great presumption38 on my part—if only
This is a wicked murderer, Inspector Neele, and the wicked should not go
unpunished.”
“That’s an unfashionable belief nowadays, Miss Marple,” Inspector
Neele said rather grimly. “Not that I don’t agree with you.”
“There is an hotel near the station, or there’s the Golf Hotel,” said Miss
Marple tentatively, “and I believe there’s a Miss Ramsbottom in this house
who is interested in foreign missions.”
Inspector Neele looked at Miss Marple appraisingly40.
“Yes,” he said. “You’ve got something there, maybe. I can’t say that I’ve
had great success with the lady.”
“It’s really very kind of you, Inspector Neele,” said Miss Marple. “I’m so
glad you don’t think I’m just a sensation hunter.”
Inspector Neele gave a sudden, rather unexpected smile. He was think-
ing to himself that Miss Marple was very unlike the popular idea of an
was.
“Newspapers,” said Miss Marple, “are often so sensational42 in their ac-
counts. But hardly, I fear, as accurate as one might wish.” She looked in-
quiringly at Inspector Neele. “If one could be sure of having just the sober
facts.”
they’re as follows. Mr. Fortescue died in his office as a result of taxine
“Very convenient,” Miss Marple said.
“Possibly,” said Inspector Neele, “but we’ve no evidence as to that. As
yet, that is.” He stressed the point because it was here that he thought Miss
made in the house, Miss Marple was quite likely to come upon traces of it.
als and herb teas herself. She would know methods of making and meth-
ods of disposal.
“And Mrs. Fortescue?”
“Mrs. Fortescue had tea with the family in the library. The last person to
leave the room and the tea table was Miss Elaine Fortescue, her step-
daughter. She states that as she left the room Mrs. Fortescue was pouring
herself out another cup of tea. Some twenty minutes or half hour later
Miss Dove, who acts as housekeeper47, went in to remove the tea tray. Mrs.
Fortescue was still sitting on the sofa, dead. Beside her was a tea cup a
quarter full and in the dregs of it was potassium cyanide.”
“Exactly.”
“Such dangerous stuff,” murmured Miss Marple. “One has it to take
wasps’ nests but I’m always very, very careful.”
“You’re quite right,” said Inspector Neele. “There was a packet of it in
the gardener’s shed here.”
“Again very convenient,” said Miss Marple. She added, “Was Mrs. For-
tescue eating anything?”
“Yes, there was honey and scones, chocolate cake and swiss roll and
cyanide was in the tea, Miss Marple.”
“Oh, yes, yes. I quite understand that. I was just getting the whole pic-
ture, so to speak. Rather significant, don’t you think?”
He looked at her in a slightly puzzled fashion. Her cheeks were pink, her
eyes were bright.
“And the third death, Inspector Neele?”
“Well, the facts there seem clear enough, too. The girl, Gladys, took in
the tea tray, then she brought the next tray into the hall, but left it there.
She’d been rather absentminded all the day, apparently52. After that no one
saw her. The cook, Mrs. Crump, jumped to the conclusion that the girl had
gone out for the evening without telling anybody. She based her belief, I
think, on the fact that the girl was wearing a good pair of nylon stockings
and her best shoes. There, however, she was proved quite wrong. The girl
had obviously remembered suddenly that she had not taken in some
clothes that were drying outside on the clothesline. She ran out to fetch
them in, had taken down half of them apparently, when somebody took
her unawares by slipping a stocking round her neck and—well, that was
that.”
“Someone from outside?” said Miss Marple.
“Perhaps,” said Inspector Neele. “But perhaps someone from inside.
Someone who’d been waiting his or her opportunity to get the girl alone.
The girl was upset, nervous, when we first questioned her, but I’m afraid
we didn’t quite appreciate the importance of that.”
“Oh, but how could you,” cried Miss Marple, “because people so often do
look guilty and embarrassed when they are questioned by the police.”
“That’s just it. But this time, Miss Marple, it was rather more than that. I
think the girl Gladys had seen someone performing some action that
seemed to her needed explanation. It can’t, I think, have been anything
very definite. Otherwise she would have spoken out. But I think she did be-
tray the fact to the person in question. That person realized that Gladys
was a danger.”
“And so Gladys was strangled and a clothes-peg clipped on her nose,”
murmured Miss Marple to herself.
Miss Marple shook her head.
“Hardly unnecessary. It does all make a pattern, doesn’t it?”
Inspector Neele looked at her curiously.
“I don’t quite follow you, Miss Marple. What do you mean by a pattern?”
“Well, I mean it does seem—I mean, regarded as a sequence, if you un-
derstand—well, one can’t get away from facts, can one?”
“I don’t think I quite understand.”
“Well, I mean—first we have Mr. Fortescue. Rex Fortescue. Killed in his
office in the city. And then we have Mrs. Fortescue, sitting here in the lib-
rary and having tea. There were scones and honey. And then poor Gladys
with the clothes-peg on her nose. Just to point the whole thing. That very
charming Mrs. Lance Fortescue said to me that there didn’t seem to be any
rhyme or reason in it, but I couldn’t agree with her, because it’s the rhyme
that strikes one, isn’t it?”
Inspector Neele said slowly: “I don’t think—”
Miss Marple went on quickly:
“I expect you’re about thirty- five or thirty- six, aren’t you, Inspector
Neele? I think there was rather a reaction just then, when you were a little
boy, I mean, against nursery rhymes. But if one has been brought up on
Mother Goose — I mean it is really highly significant, isn’t it? What I
wondered was,” Miss Marple paused, then appearing to take her courage
in her hands went on bravely: “Of course it is great impertinence I know,
on my part, saying this sort of thing to you.”
“Please say anything you like, Miss Marple.”
“Well, that’s very kind of you. I shall. Though, as I say, I do it with the ut-
most diffidence because I know I am very old and rather muddleheaded,
and I dare say my idea is of no value at all. But what I mean to say is have
you gone into the question of blackbirds?”
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1
flaring
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| a.火焰摇曳的，过份艳丽的 | |
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aged
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| adj.年老的，陈年的 | |
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yew
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| n.紫杉属树木 | |
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lodge
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| v.临时住宿，寄宿，寄存，容纳；n.传达室，小旅馆 | |
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distress
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| n.苦恼，痛苦，不舒适；不幸；vt.使悲痛 | |
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disapproval
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| n.反对，不赞成 | |
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mead
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| n.蜂蜜酒 | |
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junction
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| n.连接，接合；交叉点，接合处，枢纽站 | |
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fluffy
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| adj.有绒毛的，空洞的 | |
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fortress
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| n.堡垒，防御工事 | |
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assortment
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| n.分类，各色俱备之物，聚集 | |
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reposed
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| v.将（手臂等）靠在某人（某物）上( repose的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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fully
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| adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地 | |
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dubiously
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| adv.可疑地，怀疑地 | |
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specially
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| adv.特定地；特殊地；明确地 | |
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haps
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| n.粗厚毛披巾；偶然，机会，运气( hap的名词复数 ) | |
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simplicity
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| n.简单，简易；朴素；直率，单纯 | |
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vaguely
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| adv.含糊地，暖昧地 | |
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pony
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| adj.小型的；n.小马 | |
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orphanage
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| n.孤儿院 | |
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glamorous
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| adj.富有魅力的；美丽动人的；令人向往的 | |
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futile
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| adj.无效的，无用的，无希望的 | |
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affront
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| n./v.侮辱，触怒 | |
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inspector
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| n.检查员，监察员，视察员 | |
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whooping
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| 发嗬嗬声的，发咳声的 | |
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justified
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| a.正当的，有理的 | |
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entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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stolid
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| adj.无动于衷的，感情麻木的 | |
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antagonism
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| n.对抗，敌对，对立 | |
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culpably
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| adv.该罚地，可恶地 | |
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unimpeachable
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| adj.无可指责的；adv.无可怀疑地 | |
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scenting
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| vt.闻到（scent的现在分词形式） | |
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conjecture
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| n./v.推测，猜测 | |
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uncommonly
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| adv. 稀罕(极，非常) | |
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credulous
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| adj.轻信的，易信的 | |
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savings
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| n.存款，储蓄 | |
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tightened
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| 收紧( tighten的过去式和过去分词 )； （使）变紧； （使）绷紧； 加紧 | |
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presumption
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| n.推测，可能性，冒昧，放肆，[法律]推定 | |
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humble
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| adj.谦卑的，恭顺的；地位低下的；v.降低，贬低 | |
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appraisingly
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| adv.以品评或评价的眼光 | |
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avenging
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| adj.报仇的，复仇的v.为…复仇，报…之仇( avenge的现在分词 )；为…报复 | |
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sensational
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| adj.使人感动的，非常好的，轰动的，耸人听闻的 | |
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undue
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| adj.过分的；不适当的；未到期的 | |
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brew
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| v.酿造，调制 | |
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concoction
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| n.调配(物)；谎言 | |
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pussy
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| n.(儿语)小猫，猫咪 | |
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housekeeper
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| n.管理家务的主妇，女管家 | |
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immediate
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| adj.立即的；直接的，最接近的；紧靠的 | |
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sumptuous
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| adj.豪华的，奢侈的，华丽的 | |
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scones
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| n.烤饼，烤小圆面包( scone的名词复数 ) | |
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51
curiously
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| adv.有求知欲地；好问地；奇特地 | |
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52
apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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53
sneering
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| 嘲笑的，轻蔑的 | |
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54
bravado
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| n.虚张声势，故作勇敢，逞能 | |
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55
flustered
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| adj.慌张的；激动不安的v.使慌乱，使不安( fluster的过去式和过去分词) | |
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