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One
I
Miss Jane Marple was sitting by her window. The window looked over her
garden, once a source of pride to her. That was no longer so. Nowadays
bidden her for some time now. No stooping, no digging, no planting—at
his best, no doubt. But his best, such as it was (which was not much) was
only the best according to his lights, and not according to those of his em-
ployer. Miss Marple knew exactly what she wanted done, and when she
wanted it done, and instructed him duly. Old Laycock then displayed his
particular genius which was that of enthusiastic agreement and subse-
quent lack of performance.
“That’s right, missus. We’ll have them mecosoapies there and the Can-
terburys along the wall and as you say it ought to be got on with first thing
next week.”
Laycock’s excuses were always reasonable, and strongly resembled
those of Captain George’s in Three Men in a Boat for avoiding going to sea.
In the captain’s case the wind was always wrong, either blowing off shore
or in shore, or coming from the unreliable west, or the even more treach-
erous east. Laycock’s was the weather. Too dry—too wet—waterlogged—a
nip of frost in the air. Or else something of great importance had to come
grow inordinate4 quantities). Laycock’s own principles of gardening were
simple and no employer, however knowledgeable5, could wean him from
them.
They consisted of a great many cups of tea, sweet and strong, as an en-
and a certain amount of bedding out of his own favourite plants, mainly
asters and salvias—to “make a nice show,” as he put it, in summer. He was
all in favour of syringeing roses for green-fly, but was slow to get around
to it, and a demand for deep trenching for sweet peas was usually
countered by the remark that you ought to see his own sweet peas! A
proper treat last year, and no fancy stuff done beforehand.
To be fair, he was attached to his employers, humoured their fancies in
horticulture (so far as no actual hard work was involved) but vegetables
he knew to be the real stuff of life; a nice Savoy, or a bit of curly kale;
flowers were fancy stuff such as ladies liked to go in for, having nothing
better to do with their time. He showed his affection by producing
presents of the aforementioned asters, salvias, lobelia edging, and summer
“Been doing some work at them new houses over at the Development.
Want their gardens laid out nice, they do. More plants than they needed so
I brought along a few, and I’ve put ’em in where them old-fashioned roses
ain’t looking so well.”
and picked up her knitting.
a sense, of course, nothing was what it had been. You could blame the war
(both the wars) or the younger generation, or women going out to work,
or the atom bomb, or just the Government—but what one really meant
was the simple fact that one was growing old. Miss Marple, who was a
very sensible lady, knew that quite well. It was just that, in a queer way,
she felt it more in St. Mary Mead, because it had been her home for so
long.
St. Mary Mead, the old world core of it, was still there. The Blue Boar
was there, and the church and the vicarage and the little nest of Queen
Anne and Georgian houses, of which hers was one. Miss Hartnell’s house
Miss Wetherby had passed on and her house was now inhabited by the
bank manager and his family, having been given a face-lift by the painting
of doors and windows a bright royal blue. There were new people in most
of the other old houses, but the houses themselves were little changed in
appearances since the people who had bought them had done so because
they liked what the house agent called “old world charm.” They just added
cookers, and dishwashers.
But though the houses looked much as before, the same could hardly be
said of the village street. When shops changed hands there, it was with a
unrecognizable with new super windows behind which the refrigerated
fish gleamed. The butcher had remained conservative—good meat is good
meat, if you have the money to pay for it. If not, you take the cheaper cuts
changed, for which Miss Hartnell and Miss Marple and others daily
thanked Heaven. So obliging, comfortable chairs to sit in by the counter,
end of the street, however, where Mr. Toms had once had his basket shop
stood a glittering new supermarket—anathema to the elderly ladies of St.
Mary Mead.
“Packets of things one’s never even heard of,” exclaimed Miss Hartnell.
“All these great packets of breakfast cereal instead of cooking a child a
proper breakfast of bacon and eggs. And you’re expected to take a basket
yourself and go round looking for things—it takes a quarter of an hour
sometimes to find all one wants—and usually made up in inconvenient17
sizes, too much or too little. And then a long queue waiting to pay as you
go out. Most tiring. Of course it’s all very well for the people from the De-
velopment—”
At this point she stopped.
Because, as was now usual, the sentence came to an end there. The De-
its own, and a capital letter.
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