黑麦奇案38

时间：2025-10-10 08:34:32

（单词翻译:单击）

Chapter Twenty-Two
It was growing dark. Miss Marple had taken her knitting over to the win-
dow in the library. Looking out of the glass pane1 she saw Pat Fortescue
walking up and down the terrace outside. Miss Marple unlatched the win-
dow and called through it.
“Come in, my dear. Do come in. I’m sure it’s much too cold and damp for
you to be out there without a coat on.”
Pat obeyed the summons. She came in and shut the window and turned
on two of the lamps.
“Yes,” she said, “it’s not a very nice afternoon.” She sat down on the sofa
by Miss Marple. “What are you knitting?”
“Oh, just a little matinée coat, dear. For a baby, you know. I always say
young mothers can’t have too many matinée coats for their babies. It’s the
second size. I always knit the second size. Babies so soon grow out of the
first size.”
Pat stretched out long legs towards the fire.
“It’s nice in here today,” she said. “With the fire and the lamps and you
knitting things for babies. It all seems cosy2 and homely3 and like England
ought to be.”
“It’s like England is,” said Miss Marple. “There are not so many Yewtree
Lodges4, my dear.”
“I think that’s a good thing,” said Pat. “I don’t believe this was ever a
happy house. I don’t believe anybody was ever happy in it, in spite of all
the money they spent and the things they had.”
“No,” Miss Marple agreed. “I shouldn’t say it had been a happy house.”
“I suppose Adele may have been happy,” said Pat. “I never met her, of
course, so I don’t know, but Jennifer is pretty miserable5 and Elaine’s been
eating her heart out over a young man whom she probably knows in her
heart of hearts doesn’t care for her. Oh, how I want to get away from
here!” She looked at Miss Marple and smiled suddenly. “D’you know,” she
said, “that Lance told me to stick as close to you as I could. He seemed to
think I should be safe that way.”
“Your husband’s no fool,” said Miss Marple.
“No. Lance isn’t a fool. At least, he is in someways. But I wish he’d tell
me exactly what he’s afraid of. One thing seems clear enough. Somebody
in this house is mad, and madness is always frightening because you don’t
know how mad people’s minds will work. You don’t know what they’ll do
next.”
“My poor child,” said Miss Marple.
“Oh, I’m all right, really. I ought to be tough enough by now.”
Miss Marple said gently:
“You’ve had a good deal of unhappiness, haven’t you, my dear?”
“Oh, I’ve had some very good times, too. I had a lovely childhood in Ire-
land, riding, hunting, and a great big, bare, draughty house with lots and
lots of sun in it. If you’ve had a happy childhood, nobody can take that
away from you, can they? It was afterwards—when I grew up—that things
seemed always to go wrong. To begin with, I suppose, it was the war.”
“Your husband was a fighter pilot, wasn’t he?”
“Yes. We’d only been married about a month when Don was shot
down.” She stared ahead of her into the fire. “I thought at first I wanted to
die too. It seemed so unfair, so cruel. And yet—in the end—I almost began
to see that it had been the best thing. Don was wonderful in the war.
Brave and reckless and gay. He had all the qualities that are needed,
wanted in a war. But I don’t believe, somehow, peace would have suited
him. He had a kind of—oh, how shall I put it?—arrogant insubordination.
He wouldn’t have fitted in or settled down. He’d have fought against
things. He was—well, antisocial in a way. No, he wouldn’t have fitted in.”
“It’s wise of you to see that, my dear.” Miss Marple bent6 over her knit-
ting, picked up a stitch, counted under her breath, “Three plain, two purl,
slip one, knit two together,” and then said aloud: “And your second hus-
band, my dear?”
“Freddy? Freddy shot himself.”
“Oh dear. How very sad. What a tragedy.”
“We were very happy together,” said Pat. “I began to realize, about two
years after we were married, that Freddy wasn’t — well, wasn’t always
straight. I began to find out the sort of things that were going on. But it
didn’t seem to matter, between us two, that is. Because, you see, Freddy
loved me and I loved him. I tried not to know what was going on. That was
cowardly of me, I suppose, but I couldn’t have changed him you know.
You can’t change people.”
“No,” said Miss Marple, “you can’t change people.”
“I’d taken him and loved him and married him for what he was, and I
sort of felt that I just had to—put up with it. Then things went wrong and
he couldn’t face it, and he shot himself. After he died I went out to Kenya
to stay with some friends there. I couldn’t stop on in England and go on
meeting all—all the old crowd that knew about it all. And out in Kenya I
met Lance.” Her face changed and softened7. She went on looking into the
fire, and Miss Marple looked at her. Presently Pat turned her head and
said: “Tell me, Miss Marple, what do you really think of Percival?”
“Well, I’ve not seen very much of him. Just at breakfast usually. That’s
all. I don’t think he very much likes my being here.”
Pat laughed suddenly.
“He’s mean, you know. Terribly mean about money. Lance says he al-
ways was. Jennifer complains of it, too. Goes over the housekeeping ac-
counts with Miss Dove. Complaining of every item. But Miss Dove man-
ages to hold her own. She’s really rather a wonderful person. Don’t you
think so?”
“Yes, indeed. She reminds me of Mrs. Latimer in my own village, St.
Mary Mead8. She ran the WVS, you know, and the Girl Guides, and indeed,
she ran practically everything there. It wasn’t for quite five years that we
discovered that—oh, but I mustn’t gossip. Nothing is more boring than
people talking to you about places and people whom you’ve never seen
and know nothing about. You must forgive me, my dear.”
“Is St. Mary Mead a very nice village?”
“Well, I don’t know what you would call a nice village, my dear. It’s
quite a pretty village. There are some nice people living in it and some ex-
tremely unpleasant people as well. Very curious things go on there just as
in any other village. Human nature is much the same everywhere, is it
not?”
“You go up and see Miss Ramsbottom a good deal, don’t you?” said Pat.
“Now she really frightens me.”
“Frightens you? Why?”
“Because I think she’s crazy. I think she’s got religious mania9. You don’t
think she could be—really—mad, do you?”
“In what way, mad?”
“Oh, you know what I mean, Miss Marple, well enough. She sits up there
and never goes out, and broods about sin. Well, she might have felt in the
end that it was her mission in life to execute judgment10.”
“Is that what your husband thinks?”
“I don’t know what Lance thinks. He won’t tell me. But I’m quite sure of
one thing—that he believes that it’s someone who’s mad, and it’s someone
in the family. Well, Percival’s sane11 enough, I should say. Jennifer’s just stu-
pid and rather pathetic. She’s a bit nervy but that’s all, and Elaine is one of
those queer, tempestuous12, tense girls. She’s desperately13 in love with this
young man of hers and she’ll never admit to herself for a moment that
he’s marrying her for money?”
“You think he is marrying her for money?”
“Yes, I do. Don’t you think so?”
“I should say quite certainly,” said Miss Marple. “Like young Ellis who
married Marion Bates, the rich ironmonger’s daughter. She was a very
plain girl and absolutely besotted about him. However, it turned out quite
well. People like young Ellis and this Gerald Wright are only really dis-
agreeable when they’ve married a poor girl for love. They are so annoyed
with themselves for doing it that they take it out on the girl. But if they
marry a rich girl they continue to respect her.”
“I don’t see,” went on Pat, frowning, “how it can be anybody from out-
side. And so—and so that accounts for the atmosphere that is here. Every-
one watching everybody else. Only something’s got to happen soon—”
“There won’t be anymore deaths,” said Miss Marple. “At least, I
shouldn’t think so.”
“You can’t be sure of that.”
“Well, as a matter of fact, I am fairly sure. The murderer’s accomplished14
his purpose, you see.”
“His?”
“Well, his or her. One says his for convenience.”
“You say his or her purpose. What sort of purpose?”
Miss Marple shook her head—she was not yet quite sure herself.

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点击收听单词发音收听单词发音  

1 pane OKKxJ     
n.窗格玻璃，长方块
参考例句：
  • He broke this pane of glass.他打破了这块窗玻璃。
  • Their breath bloomed the frosty pane.他们呼出的水气，在冰冷的窗玻璃上形成一层雾。
2 cosy dvnzc5     
adj.温暖而舒适的，安逸的
参考例句：
  • We spent a cosy evening chatting by the fire.我们在炉火旁聊天度过了一个舒适的晚上。
  • It was so warm and cosy in bed that Simon didn't want to get out.床上温暖而又舒适，西蒙简直不想下床了。
3 homely Ecdxo     
adj.家常的，简朴的；不漂亮的
参考例句：
  • We had a homely meal of bread and cheese.我们吃了一顿面包加乳酪的家常便餐。
  • Come and have a homely meal with us,will you?来和我们一起吃顿家常便饭，好吗？
4 lodges bd168a2958ee8e59c77a5e7173c84132     
v.存放( lodge的第三人称单数 )；暂住；埋入；（权利、权威等）归属
参考例句：
  • But I forget, if I ever heard, where he lodges in Liverpool. 可是我记不得有没有听他说过他在利物浦的住址。 来自辞典例句
  • My friend lodges in my uncle's house. 我朋友寄居在我叔叔家。 来自辞典例句
5 miserable g18yk     
adj.悲惨的，痛苦的；可怜的，糟糕的
参考例句：
  • It was miserable of you to make fun of him.你取笑他，这是可耻的。
  • Her past life was miserable.她过去的生活很苦。
6 bent QQ8yD     
n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的
参考例句：
  • He was fully bent upon the project.他一心扑在这项计划上。
  • We bent over backward to help them.我们尽了最大努力帮助他们。
7 softened 19151c4e3297eb1618bed6a05d92b4fe     
（使）变软( soften的过去式和过去分词 )； 缓解打击； 缓和； 安慰
参考例句：
  • His smile softened slightly. 他的微笑稍柔和了些。
  • The ice cream softened and began to melt. 冰淇淋开始变软并开始融化。
8 mead BotzAK     
n.蜂蜜酒
参考例句：
  • He gave me a cup of mead.他给我倒了杯蜂蜜酒。
  • He drank some mead at supper.晚饭时他喝了一些蜂蜜酒。
9 mania 9BWxu     
n.疯狂；躁狂症，狂热，癖好
参考例句：
  • Football mania is sweeping the country.足球热正风靡全国。
  • Collecting small items can easily become a mania.收藏零星物品往往容易变成一种癖好。
10 judgment e3xxC     
n.审判；判断力，识别力，看法，意见
参考例句：
  • The chairman flatters himself on his judgment of people.主席自认为他审视人比别人高明。
  • He's a man of excellent judgment.他眼力过人。
11 sane 9YZxB     
adj.心智健全的，神志清醒的，明智的，稳健的
参考例句：
  • He was sane at the time of the murder.在凶杀案发生时他的神志是清醒的。
  • He is a very sane person.他是一个很有头脑的人。
12 tempestuous rpzwj     
adj.狂暴的
参考例句：
  • She burst into a tempestuous fit of anger.她勃然大怒。
  • Dark and tempestuous was night.夜色深沉，狂风肆虐，暴雨倾盆。
13 desperately cu7znp     
adv.极度渴望地，绝望地，孤注一掷地
参考例句：
  • He was desperately seeking a way to see her again.他正拼命想办法再见她一面。
  • He longed desperately to be back at home.他非常渴望回家。
14 accomplished UzwztZ     
adj.有才艺的；有造诣的；达到了的
参考例句：
  • Thanks to your help,we accomplished the task ahead of schedule.亏得你们帮忙,我们才提前完成了任务。
  • Removal of excess heat is accomplished by means of a radiator.通过散热器完成多余热量的排出。

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