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Two
cheap day return) Miss Marple, in a precise and businesslike fashion, col-
lected certain data.
“Carrie Louise and I have corresponded after a fashion, but it has
largely been a matter of Christmas cards or calendars. It’s just the facts I
should like, Ruth dear—and also some idea as to whom exactly I shall en-
counter in the household at Stonygates.”
“Well, you know about Carrie Louise’s marriage to Gulbrandsen. There
were no children and Carrie Louise took that very much to heart. Gul-
adopted a child. Pippa, they called her—a lovely little creature. She was
just two years old when they got her.”
“Where did she come from? What was her background?”
“Really, now, Jane, I can’t remember—if I ever heard, that is. An adop-
tion society, maybe? Or some unwanted child that Gulbrandsen had heard
about. Why? Do you think it’s important?”
“Well, one always likes to know the background, so to speak. But please
go on.”
“The next thing that happened was that Carrie Louise found that she
was going to have a baby after all. I understand from doctors that that
quite often happens.”
Miss Marple nodded.
“I believe so.”
“Anyway, it did happen, and in a funny kind of way, Carrie Louise was
almost disconcerted, if you can understand what I mean. Earlier, of
course, she’d have been wild with joy. As it was, she’d given such a de-
voted love to Pippa that she felt quite apologetic to Pippa for putting her
really a very unattractive child. Took after the Gulbrandsens—who were
anxious to make no difference between the adopted child and her own
child that I think she rather tended to overindulge Pippa and pass over
Mildred. Sometimes I think that Mildred resented it. However I didn’t see
them often. Pippa grew up a very beautiful girl and Mildred grew up a
plain one. Eric Gulbrandsen died when Mildred was fifteen and Pippa
eighteen. At twenty Pippa married an Italian, the Marchese di San Severi-
ano—oh quite a genuine Marchese—not an adventurer, or anything like
that. She was by way of being an heiress (naturally, or San Severiano
wouldn’t have married her—you know what Italians are!). Gulbrandsen
left an equal sum in trust for both his own and his adopted daughter. Mil-
dred married a Canon Strete—a nice man but given to colds in the head.
About ten or fifteen years older than she was. Quite a happy marriage, I
believe.
“He died a year ago and Mildred has come back to Stonygates to live
with her mother. But that’s getting on too fast; I’ve skipped a marriage or
two. I’ll go back to them. Pippa married her Italian. Carrie Louise was
quite pleased about the marriage. Guido had beautiful manners and was
very handsome, and he was a fine sportsman. A year later Pippa had a
daughter and died in childbirth. It was a terrible tragedy and Guido San
Severiano was very cut up. Carrie Louise went to and fro between Italy
and England a good deal and it was in Rome that she met Johnnie Re-
starick and married him. The Marchese married again and he was quite
willing for his little daughter to be brought up in England by her exceed-
ingly wealthy grandmother. So they all settled down at Stonygates, John-
nie Restarick and Carrie Louise, and Johnnie’s two boys, Alexis and
Stephen (Johnnie’s first wife was a Russian), and the baby Gina. Mildred
married her Canon soon afterwards. Then came all this business of John-
nie and the Yugoslavian woman and the divorce. The boys still came to
in 1938, I think it was, Carrie Louise married Lewis.”
Mrs. Van Rydock paused for breath.
“You’ve not met Lewis?”
Miss Marple shook her head.
“No, I think I last saw Carrie Louise in 1928. She very sweetly took me to
Covent Garden—to the Opera.”
“Oh yes. Well, Lewis was a very suitable person for her to marry. He
was the head of a very celebrated8 firm of chartered accountants. I think
he met her first over some question of the finances of the Gulbrandsen
Trust and the College. He was well off, just about her own age, and a man
of absolutely upright life. But he was a crank. He was absolutely rabid on
the subject of the redemption of young criminals.”
Ruth Van Rydock sighed.
“As I said just now, Jane, there are fashions in philanthropy. In Gul-
brandsen’s time it was education. Before that it was soup kitchens—”
Miss Marple nodded.
mother used to do it.”
“That’s right. Feeding the body gave way to feeding the mind. Everyone
went mad on educating the lower classes. Well, that’s passed. Soon, I ex-
pect, the fashionable thing to do will be not to educate your children, pre-
serve their illiteracy10 carefully until they’re eighteen. Anyway the Gul-
brandsen Trust and Education Fund was in some difficulties because the
state was taking over its functions. Then Lewis came along with his pas-
fession—auditing accounts where ingenious young men had perpetrated
frauds. He was more and more convinced that juvenile delinquents were
not subnormal — that they had excellent brains and abilities and only
needed the right direction.”
true. I remember—”
She broke off and glanced at her watch.
“Oh dear—I mustn’t miss the 6:30.”
Ruth Van Rydock said urgently:
“And you will go to Stonygates?”
“If Carrie Louise asks me—”
“She will ask you. You’ll go? Promise, Jane?”
Jane Marple promised.
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