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Three
passenger handed out her suitcase after her, and Miss Marple, clutching a
string bag, a faded leather handbag and some miscellaneous wraps,
uttered appreciative3 twitters of thanks.
“So kind of you, I’m sure … So difficult nowadays—not many porters. I
The twitters were drowned by the booming noise of the station announ-
and was about to proceed to various unidentifiable stations.
Market Kindle was a large empty windswept station with hardly any
passengers or railway staff to be seen on it. Its claim to distinction lay in
having six platforms and a bay where a very small train of one carriage
Miss Marple, rather more shabbily dressed than was her custom (so
lucky that she hadn’t given away the old speckledy), was peering around
her uncertainly when a young man came up to her.
“Miss Marple?” he said. His voice had an unexpectedly dramatic quality
part he was playing in amateur theatricals8. “I’ve come to meet you—from
Stonygates.”
Miss Marple looked gratefully at him, a charming helpless looking old
lady with, if he had chanced to notice it, very shrewd blue eyes. The per-
sonality of the young man did not quite match his voice. It was less im-
“Oh, thank you,” said Miss Marple. “There’s just this suitcase.”
She noticed that the young man did not pick up her suitcase himself. He
“Bring it out, please,” he said, and added importantly, “For Stonygates.”
The porter said cheerfully:
“Rightyho. Shan’t be long.”
Miss Marple fancied that her new acquaintance was not too pleased
about this. It was as if Buckingham Palace had been dismissed as no more
important than 3 Laburnum Road.
He said, “The railways get more impossible every day!”
Guiding Miss Marple towards the exit, he said: “I’m Edgar Lawson. Mrs.
Serrocold asked me to meet you. I help Mr. Serrocold in his work.”
There was again the faint insinuation that a busy and important man
his employer’s wife.
And again the impression was not wholly convincing—it had a theat-
rical flavour.
Miss Marple began to wonder about Edgar Lawson.
They came out of the station and Edgar guided the old lady to where a
He was just saying, “Will you come in front with me, or would you
prefer the back?” when there was a diversion.
A new gleaming two-seater Rolls Bentley came purring into the station
yard and drew up in front of the Ford. A very beautiful young woman
jumped out of it and came across to them. The fact that she wore dirty cor-
duroy slacks and a simple aertex shirt open at the neck seemed somehow
to enhance the fact that she was not only beautiful but expensive.
“There you are, Edgar. I thought I wouldn’t make it in time. I see you’ve
got Miss Marple. I came to meet her.” She smiled dazzlingly at Miss Marple
showing a row of lovely teeth in a sunburnt southern face. “I’m Gina,” she
said. “Carrie Louise’s granddaughter. What was your journey like? Simply
then you can get in better.”
Edgar’s face flushed. He protested.
“Look here, Gina, I came to meet Miss Marple. It was all arranged….”
Again the teeth flashed in that wide, lazy smile.
“Oh I know, Edgar, but I suddenly thought it would be nice if I came
along. I’ll take her with me and you can wait and bring her cases up.”
She slammed the door on Miss Marple, ran round to the other side,
jumped in the driving seat, and they purred swiftly out of the station.
Looking back, Miss Marple noticed Edgar Lawson’s face.
“I don’t think, my dear,” she said, “that Mr. Lawson is very pleased.”
Gina laughed.
You’d really think he mattered!”
Miss Marple asked, “Doesn’t he matter?”
“Edgar?” There was an unconscious note of cruelty in Gina’s scornful
laugh. “Oh, he’s bats anyway.”
“Bats?”
“They’re all bats at Stonygates,” said Gina. “I don’t mean Lewis and
Grandam and me and the boys—and not Miss Bellever, of course. But the
others. Sometimes I feel I’m going a bit bats myself living there. Even Aunt
Mildred goes out on walks and mutters to herself all the time—and you
don’t expect a Canon’s widow to do that, do you?”
They swung out of the station approach and accelerated up the smooth-
surfaced, empty road. Gina shot a swift, sideways glance at her compan-
ion.
“You were at school with Grandam, weren’t you? It seems so queer.”
to think that age was once young and pigtailed and struggled with decim-
als and English literature.
be rude, “have been a very long time ago.”
“Yes, indeed,” said Miss Marple. “You feel that more with me than you
do with your grandmother, I expect?”
Gina nodded. “It’s cute of you saying that. Grandam, you know, gives
“It is a long time since I’ve seen her. I wonder if I shall find her much
changed.”
she broke off, and then asked, “Have you been to Stonygates before?”
“No, never. I’ve heard a great deal about it, of course.”
“It’s pretty ghastly really,” said Gina cheerfully. “A sort of Gothic mon-
in a way. Only, of course, everything’s madly earnest, and you tumble
over psychiatrists25 everywhere underfoot. Enjoying themselves madly.
Rather like scoutmasters, only worse. The young criminals are rather pets,
some of them. One showed me how to diddle locks with a bit of wire and
one angelic-faced boy gave me a lot of points about coshing people.”
Miss Marple considered this information thoughtfully.
“It’s the thugs I like best,” said Gina. “I don’t fancy the queers so much.
think it’s repressed desires and disordered home life and their mothers
getting off with soldiers and all that. I don’t really see it myself because
some people have had awful home lives and yet have managed to turn out
quite all right.”
“I’m sure it is all a very difficult problem,” said Miss Marple.
Gina laughed, again showing her magnificent teeth.
“It doesn’t worry me much. I suppose some people have these sorts of
urges to make the world a better place. Lewis is quite dippy about it all—
he’s going to Aberdeen next week because there’s a case coming up in the
police court—a boy with five previous convictions.”
“The young man who met me at the station? Mr. Lawson. He helps Mr.
Serrocold, he told me. Is he his secretary?”
“Oh Edgar hasn’t brains enough to be a secretary. He’s a case, really. He
used to stay at hotels and pretend he was a V.C. or a fighter pilot and bor-
row money and then do a flit. I think he’s just a rotter. But Lewis goes
through a routine with them all. Makes them feel one of the family and
gives them jobs to do and all that to encourage their sense of responsibil-
ity. I daresay we shall be murdered by one of them one of these days.”
Gina laughed merrily.
Miss Marple did not laugh.
was standing on duty in a military manner and drove up a drive flanked
with rhododendrons. The drive was badly kept and the grounds seemed
neglected.
Interpreting her companion’s glance, Gina said, “No gardeners during
the war, and since we haven’t bothered. But it does look rather terrible.”
They came round a curve and Stonygates appeared in its full glory. It
to plutocracy29. Philanthropy had added to it in various wings and outbuild-
ings which, while not positively30 dissimilar in style, had robbed the struc-
“Hideous, isn’t it?” said Gina affectionately. “There’s Grandam on the
terrace. I’ll stop here and you can go and meet her.”
Miss Marple advanced along the terrace towards her old friend.
From a distance, the slim little figure looked curiously girlish in spite of
the stick on which she leaned and her slow and obviously rather painful
progress. It was as though a young girl was giving an exaggerated imita-
tion of old age.
“Jane,” said Mrs. Serrocold.
“Dear Carrie Louise.”
Yes, unmistakably Carrie Louise. Strangely unchanged, strangely youth-
to youth. Her hair was grey, but it had always been of a silvery fairness
and the colour had changed very little. Her skin had still a rose leaf pink
“I do blame myself,” said Carrie Louise in her sweet voice, “for letting it
be so long. Years since I saw you, Jane dear. It’s just lovely that you’ve
come at last to pay us a visit here.”
From the end of the terrace Gina called:
“You ought to come in, Grandam. It’s getting cold—and Jolly will be furi-
ous.”
Carrie Louise gave her little silvery laugh.
“They all fuss about me so,” she said. “They rub it in that I’m an old wo-
man.”
“And you don’t feel like one.”
“No, I don’t, Jane. In spite of all my aches and pains—and I’ve got plenty.
Inside I go on feeling just a chit like Gina. Perhaps everyone does. The
glass shows them how old they are and they just don’t believe it. It seems
only a few months ago that we were at Florence. Do you remember
Fräulein Schweich and her boots?”
The two elderly women laughed together at events that had happened
nearly half a century ago.
well-cut tweeds.
She said fiercely:
“It’s absolutely crazy of you, Cara, to stay out so late. You’re absolutely
“Don’t scold me, Jolly,” said Carrie Louise pleadingly. She introduced
Miss Bellever to Miss Marple.
“This is Miss Bellever who is simply everything to me. Nurse, dragon,
watchdog, secretary, housekeeper40, and very faithful friend.”
sign of emotion.
“I do what I can,” she said gruffly. “This is a crazy household. You
simply can’t arrange any kind of planned routine.”
“Darling Jolly, of course you can’t. I wonder why you ever try. Where
are you putting Miss Marple?”
“In the Blue Room. Shall I take her up?” asked Miss Bellever.
“Yes, please do, Jolly. And then bring her down to tea. It’s in the library
today, I think.”
The Blue Room had heavy curtains of a rich, faded blue brocade that
must have been, Miss Marple thought, about fifty years old. The furniture
was mahogany, big and solid, and the bed was a vast mahogany four-
poster. Miss Bellever opened a door into a connecting bathroom. This was
mium.
She observed grimly:
“John Restarick had ten bathrooms put into the house when he married
He wouldn’t hear of the rest being altered—said the whole place was a
perfect period piece. Did you ever know him at all?”
“No, I never met him. Mrs. Serrocold and I have met very seldom
though we have always corresponded.”
“He was an agreeable fellow,” said Miss Bellever. “No good, of course! A
complete rotter. But pleasant to have about the house. Great charm. Wo-
Cara’s type.”
She added, with a brusque resumption of her practical manner:
Receiving an affirmative answer, she said that Miss Marple would find
her waiting at the top of the stairs.
Miss Marple went into the bathroom and washed her hands and dried
them a little nervously on a very beautiful orchid coloured face towel.
Then she removed her hat and patted her soft white hair into place.
Opening her door she found Miss Bellever waiting for her and was con-
ducted down the big gloomy staircase and across a vast dark hall and into
a room where bookshelves went up to the ceiling and a big window
looked out over an artificial lake.
Carrie Louise was standing by the window and Miss Marple joined her.
“What a very imposing house this is,” said Miss Marple. “I feel quite lost
in it.”
“Yes, I know. It’s ridiculous, really. It was built by a prosperous iron
master—or something of that kind. He went bankrupt not long after. I
don’t wonder really. There were about fourteen living rooms—all enorm-
ous. I’ve never seen what people can want with more than one sitting
room. And all those huge bedrooms. Such a lot of unnecessary space. Mine
is terribly overpowering—and quite a long way to walk from the bed to
“You haven’t had it modernized and redecorated?”
Carrie Louise looked vaguely surprised.
“No. On the whole it’s very much as it was when I first lived here with
Eric. It’s been repainted, of course, but they always do it the same colour.
Those things don’t really matter, do they? I mean I shouldn’t have felt jus-
tified in spending a lot of money on that kind of thing when there are so
many things that are so much more important.”
“Have there been no changes at all in the house?”
“Oh yes—heaps of them. We’ve just kept a kind of block in the middle of
the house as it was—the Great Hall and the rooms off and over. They’re
the best ones and Johnnie—my second husband—was lyrical over them
and said they should never be touched or altered—and, of course, he was
an artist and a designer and he knew about these things. But the East and
West wings have been completely remodelled49. All the rooms partitioned
off and divided up, so that we have offices, and bedrooms for the teaching
staff, and all that. The boys are all in the College building—you can see it
from here.”
Miss Marple looked out towards where large red brick buildings showed
through a belt of sheltering trees. Then her eyes fell on something nearer
at hand, and she smiled a little.
“What a very beautiful girl Gina is,” she said.
Carrie Louise’s face lit up.
“Yes, isn’t she?” she said softly. “It’s so lovely to have her back here
again. I sent her to America at the beginning of the war—to Ruth. Did Ruth
talk about her at all?”
“No. At least she did just mention her.”
Carrie Louise sighed.
“Poor Ruth! She was frightfully upset over Gina’s marriage. But I’ve told
her again and again that I don’t blame her in the least. Ruth doesn’t real-
ise, as I do, that the old barriers and class shibboleths50 are gone—or at any
rate are going.
“Gina was doing war work—and she met this young man. He was a mar-
ine and had a very good war record. And a week later they were married.
It was all far too quick, of course, no time to find out if they were really
suited to each other—but that’s the way of things nowadays. Young people
belong to their generation. We may think they’re unwise in many of their
doings, but we have to accept their decisions. Ruth, though, was terribly
upset.”
“She didn’t consider the young man suitable?”
“She kept saying that one didn’t know anything about him. He came
from the middle west and he hadn’t any money—and naturally no profes-
sion. There are hundreds of boys like that everywhere — but it wasn’t
Ruth’s idea of what was right for Gina. However, the thing was done. I was
so glad when Gina accepted my invitation to come over here with her hus-
band. There’s so much going on here—jobs of every kind, and if Walter
wants to specialise in medicine or get a degree or anything he could do it
in this country. After all, this is Gina’s home. It’s delightful51 to have her
back, to have someone so warm and gay and alive in the house.”
Miss Marple nodded and looked out of the window again at the two
young people standing near the lake.
“They’re a remarkably52 handsome couple, too,” she said. “I don’t wonder
Gina fell in love with him!”
“Oh, but that—that isn’t Wally.” There was, quite suddenly, a touch of
embarrassment53, or restraint, in Mrs. Serrocold’s voice. “That’s Steve—the
younger of Johnnie Restarick’s two boys. When Johnnie—when he went
away, he’d no place for the boys in the holidays, so I always had them
here. They look on this as their home. And Steve’s here permanently54 now.
He runs our dramatic branch. We have a theatre, you know, and plays—
venile crime is due to exhibitionism; most of the boys have had such a
them feel heroes. We urge them to write their own plays and act in them
and design and paint their own scenery. Steve is in charge of the theatre.
He’s so keen and enthusiastic. It’s wonderful what life he’s put into the
whole thing.”
“I see,” said Miss Marple slowly.
Her long distance sight was good (as many of her neighbours knew to
their cost in the village of St. Mary Mead) and she saw very clearly the
dark handsome face of Stephen Restarick as he stood facing Gina, talking
eagerly. Gina’s face she could not see, since the girl had her back to them,
but there was no mistaking the expression in Stephen Restarick’s face.
“It isn’t any business of mine,” said Miss Marple, “but I suppose you real-
ise, Carrie Louise, that he’s in love with her.”
“Oh no—” Carrie Louise looked troubled. “Oh no, I do hope not.”
“You were always up in the clouds, Carrie Louise. There’s not the least
doubt about it.”
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