伯特伦旅馆之谜11
时间：2026-01-04 07:38:41
（单词翻译:单击）
II
Miss Marple had a very enjoyable time at Robinson & Cleaver’s. Besides
purchasing expensive but delicious sheets—she loved linen sheets with
their texture and their coolness—she also indulged in a purchase of good
quality red-bordered glass cloths. Really the difficulty in getting proper
glass cloths nowadays! Instead, you were offered things that might as well
have been ornamental tablecloths, decorated with radishes or lobsters or
the Tour Eiffel or Trafalgar Square, or else littered with lemons and or-
anges. Having given her address in St. Mary Mead, Miss Marple found a
convenient bus which took her to the Army & Navy Stores.
The Army & Navy Stores had been a haunt of Miss Marple’s aunt in days
long gone. It was not, of course, quite the same nowadays. Miss Marple
cast her thoughts back to Aunt Helen seeking out her own special man in
the grocery department, settling herself comfortably in a chair, wearing a
bonnet and what she always called her “black poplin” mantle. Then there
would ensue a long hour with nobody in a hurry and Aunt Helen thinking
of every conceivable grocery that could be purchased and stored up for fu-
ture use. Christmas was provided for, and there was even a far-off look to-
wards Easter. The young Jane had fidgeted somewhat, and had been told
to go and look at the glass department by way of amusement.
Having finished her purchases, Aunt Helen would then proceed to
lengthy inquiries about her chosen shop-assistant’s mother, wife, second
boy and crippled sister-in-law. Having had a thoroughly pleasant morn-
ing, Aunt Helen would say in the playful manner of those times, “And how
would a little girl feel about some luncheon?” Whereupon they went up in
the lift to the fourth floor and had luncheon which always finished with a
strawberry ice. After that, they bought half a pound of coffee chocolate
creams and went to a matinée in a four wheeler.
Of course, the Army & Navy Stores had had a good many face lifts since
those days. In fact, it was now quite unrecognizable from the old times. It
was gayer and much brighter. Miss Marple, though throwing a kindly and
indulgent smile at the past, did not object to the amenities of the present.
There was still a restaurant, and there she repaired to order her lunch.
As she was looking carefully down the menu and deciding what to have,
she looked across the room and her eyebrows went up a little. How ex-
traordinary coincidence was! Here was a woman she had never seen till
the day before, though she had seen plenty of newspaper photographs of
her—at race meetings, in Bermuda, or standing by her own plane or car.
Yesterday, for the first time, she had seen her in the flesh. And now, as
was so often the case, there was the coincidence of running into her again
in a most unlikely place. For somehow she did not connect lunch at the
Army & Navy Stores with Bess Sedgwick. She would not have been sur-
prised to see Bess Sedgwick emerging from a den in Soho, or stepping out
of Covent Garden Opera House in evening dress with a diamond tiara on
her head. But somehow, not in the Army & Navy Stores which in Miss
Marple’s mind was, and always would be, connected with the armed
forces, their wives, daughters, aunts and grandmothers. Still, there Bess
Sedgwick was, looking as usual very smart, in her dark suit and her emer-
ald shirt, lunching at a table with a man. A young man with a lean hawk-
like face, wearing a black leather jacket. They were leaning forward talk-
ing earnestly together, forking in mouthfuls of food as though they were
quite unaware what they were eating.
An assignation, perhaps? Yes, probably an assignation. The man must be
fifteen or twenty years younger than she was—but Bess Sedgwick was a
magnetically attractive woman.
Miss Marple looked at the young man consideringly and decided that he
was what she called a “handsome fellow.” She also decided that she didn’t
like him very much. “Just like Harry Russell,” said Miss Marple to herself,
dredging up a prototype as usual from the past. “Never up to any good.
Never did any woman who had anything to do with him any good either.
“She wouldn’t take advice from me,” thought Miss Marple, “but I could
give her some.” However, other people’s love affairs were no concern of
hers, and Bess Sedgwick, by all accounts, could take care of herself very
well when it came to love affairs.
Miss Marple sighed, ate her lunch, and meditated a visit to the station-
ery department.
Curiosity, or what she preferred herself to call “taking an interest” in
other people’s affairs, was undoubtedly one of Miss Marple’s characterist-
ics.
Deliberately leaving her gloves on the table, she rose and crossed the
floor to the cash desk, taking a route that passed close to Lady Sedgwick’s
table. Having paid her bill she “discovered” the absence of her gloves and
returned to get them—unfortunately dropping her handbag on the return
route. It came open and spilled various oddments. A waitress rushed to as-
sist her in picking them up, and Miss Marple was forced to show a great
shakiness and dropped coppers and keys a second time.
She did not get very much by these subterfuges but they were not en-
tirely in vain—and it was interesting that neither of the two objects of her
curiosity spared as much as a glance for the dithery old lady who kept
dropping things.
As Miss Marple waited for the lift down she memorized such scraps as
she had heard.
“What about the weather forecast?”
“OK. No fog.”
“All set for Lucerne?”
“Yes. Plane leaves 9:40.”
That was all she had got the first time. On the way back it had lasted a
little longer.
Bess Sedgwick had been speaking angrily.
“What possessed you to come to Bertram’s yesterday—you shouldn’t have
come near the place.”
“It’s all right. I asked if you were staying there and everyone knows we’re
close friends—”
“That’s not the point. Bertram’s is all right for me—Not for you. You stick
out like a sore thumb. Everyone stares at you.”
“Let them!”
“You really are an idiot. Why—why? What reasons did you have? You had a
reason—I know you….”
“Calm down, Bess.”
“You’re such a liar!”
That was all she had been able to hear. She found it interesting.
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