I
It was mid-morning on the beach below the hotel.
Evelyn Hillingdon came out of the water and dropped on the warm golden sand. She took off her bathing cap and shook her dark head vigorously.
The beach was not a very big one. People tended to congregate there in the mornings and about 11:30 there was always something of a social reunion. To Evelyn’s left in one of the exotic-looking modern basket chairs lay Señora de Caspearo, a handsome woman from Venezuela. Next to her was old Mr. Rafiel who was by now the doyen of the Golden Palm Hotel and held the sway that only an elderly invalid of great wealth could attain. Esther Walters was in attendance on him. She usually had her shorthand notebook and pencil with her in case Mr. Rafiel should suddenly think of urgent business cables which must be got off at once. Mr. Rafiel in beach attire was incredibly desiccated, his bones draped with festoons of dry skin. Though looking like a man on the point of death, he had looked exactly the same for at least the last eight years—or so it was said in the islands. Sharp blue eyes peered out of his wrinkled cheeks, and his principal pleasure in life was denying robustly anything that anyone else said.
Miss Marple was also present. As usual she sat and knitted and listened to what went on, and very occasionally joined in the conversation. When she did so, everyone was surprised because they had usually forgotten that she was there! Evelyn Hillingdon looked at her indulgently, and thought that she was a nice old pussy.
Señora de Caspearo rubbed some more oil on her long beautiful legs and hummed to herself. She was not a woman who spoke much. She looked discontentedly at the flask of sun oil.
“This is not so good as Frangipanio,” she said, sadly. “One cannot get it here. A pity.” Her eyelids drooped again.
“Are you going in for your dip now, Mr. Rafiel?” asked Esther Walters.
“I’ll go in when I’m ready,” said Mr. Rafiel, snappishly.
“It’s half past eleven,” said Mrs. Walters.
“What of it?” said Mr. Rafiel. “Think I’m the kind of man to be tied by the clock? Do this at the hour, do this at twenty minutes past, do that at twenty to—bah!”
Mrs. Walters had been in attendance on Mr. Rafiel long enough to have adopted her own formula for dealing with him. She knew that he liked a good space of time in which to recover from the exertion of bathing and she had therefore reminded him of the time, allowing a good ten minutes for him to rebut her suggestion and then be able to adopt it without seeming to do so.
“I don’t like these espadrilles,” said Mr. Rafiel raising a foot and looking at it. “I told that fool Jackson so. The man never pays attention to a word I say.”
“I’ll fetch you some others, shall I, Mr. Rafiel?”
“No, you won’t, you’ll sit here and keep quiet. I hate people rushing about like clucking hens.”
Evelyn shifted slightly in the warm sand, stretching out her arms.
Miss Marple, intent on her knitting—or so it seemed—stretched out a foot, then hastily she apologized.
“I’m so sorry, so very sorry, Mrs. Hillingdon. I’m afraid I kicked you.”
“Oh, it’s quite all right,” said Evelyn. “This beach gets rather crowded.”
“Oh, please don’t move. Please. I’ll move my chair a little back so that I won’t do it again.”
As Miss Marple resettled herself, she went on talking in a childish and garrulous manner.
“It still seems so wonderful to be here! I’ve never been to the West Indies before, you know. I thought it was the kind of place I never should come to and here I am. All by the kindness of my dear nephew. I suppose you know this part of the world very well, don’t you, Mrs. Hillingdon?”
“I have been in this island once or twice before and of course in most of the others.”
“Oh yes. Butterflies isn’t it, and wild flowers? You and your—your friends—or are they relations?”
“Friends. Nothing more.”
“And I suppose you go about together a great deal because of your interests being the same?”
“Yes. We’ve travelled together for some years now.”
“I suppose you must have had some rather exciting adventures sometimes?”
“I don’t think so,” said Evelyn. Her voice was unaccentuated, slightly bored. “Adventures always seem to happen to other people.” She yawned.
“No dangerous encounters with snakes or with wild animals or with natives gone berserk?”
(“What a fool I sound,” thought Miss Marple.)
“Nothing worse than insect bites,” Evelyn assured her.
“Poor Major Palgrave, you know, was bitten by a snake once,” said Miss Marple, making a purely fictitious statement.
“Was he?”
“Did he never tell you about it?”
“Perhaps. I don’t remember.”
“I suppose you knew him quite well, didn’t you?”
“Major Palgrave? No, hardly at all.”
“He always had so many interesting stories to tell.”
“Ghastly old bore,” said Mr. Rafiel. “Silly fool, too. He needn’t have died if he’d looked after himself properly.”
“Oh come now, Mr. Rafiel,” said Mrs. Walters.
“I know what I’m talking about. If you look after your health properly you’re all right anywhere. Look at me. The doctors gave me up years ago. All right, I said, I’ve got my own rules of health and I shall keep to them. And here I am.”
He looked round proudly.
It did indeed seem rather a mistake that he should be there.
“Poor Major Palgrave had high blood pressure,” said Mrs. Walters.
“Nonsense,” said Mr. Rafiel.
“Oh, but he did,” said Evelyn Hillingdon. She spoke with sudden, unexpected authority.
“Who says so?” said Mr. Rafiel. “Did he tell you so?”
“Somebody said so.”
“He looked very red in the face,” Miss Marple contributed.
“Can’t go by that,” said Mr. Rafiel. “And anyway he didn’t have high blood pressure because he told me so.”
“What do you mean, he told you so?” said Mrs. Walters. “I mean, you can’t exactly tell people you haven’t got a thing.”
“Yes you can. I said to him once when he was downing all those Planters Punches, and eating too much, I said, ‘You ought to watch your diet and your drink. You’ve got to think of your blood pressure at your age.’ And he said he’d nothing to look out for in that line, that his blood pressure was very good for his age.”
“But he took some stuff for it, I believe,” said Miss Marple, entering the conversation once more. “Some stuff called—oh, something like—was it Serenite?”
“If you ask me,” said Evelyn Hillingdon, “I don’t think he ever liked to admit that there could be anything the matter with him or that he could be ill. I think he was one of those people who are afraid of illness and therefore deny there’s ever anything wrong with them.”
It was a long speech for her. Miss Marple looked thoughtfully down at the top of her dark head.
“The trouble is,” said Mr. Rafiel dictatorially, “everybody’s too fond of knowing other people’s ailments. They think everybody over fifty is going to die of hypertension or coronary thrombosis or one of those things—poppycock! If a man says there’s nothing much wrong with him I don’t suppose there is. A man ought to know about his own health. What’s the time? Quarter to twelve? I ought to have had my dip long ago. Why can’t you remind me about these things, Esther?”
Mrs. Walters made no protest. She rose to her feet and with some deftness assisted Mr. Rafiel to his. Together they went down the beach, she supporting him carefully. Together they stepped into the sea.
Señora de Caspearo opened her eyes and murmured: “How ugly are old men! Oh how they are ugly! They should all be put to death at forty, or perhaps thirty-five would be better. Yes?”
Edward Hillingdon and Gregory Dyson came crunching down the beach.
“What’s the water like, Evelyn?”
“Just the same as always.”
“Never much variation, is there? Where’s Lucky?”
“I don’t know,” said Evelyn.
Again Miss Marple looked down thoughtfully at the dark head.
“Well, now I give my imitation of a whale,” said Gregory. He threw off his gaily patterned Bermuda shirt and tore down the beach, flinging himself, puffing and panting, into the sea, doing a fast crawl. Edward Hillingdon sat down on the beach by his wife. Presently he asked, “Coming in again?”
She smiled—put on her cap—and they went down the beach together in a much less spectacular manner.
Señora de Caspearo opened her eyes again.
“I think at first those two they are on their honeymoon, he is so charming to her, but I hear they have been married eight—nine years. It is incredible, is it not?”
“I wonder where Mrs. Dyson is?” said Miss Marple.
“That Lucky? She is with some man.”
“You—you think so?”
“It is certain,” said Señora de Caspearo. “She is that type. But she is not so young any longer—Her husband—already his eyes go elsewhere—He makes passes—here, there, all the time. I know.”
“Yes,” said Miss Marple. “I expect you would know.”
Señora de Caspearo shot a surprised glance at her. It was clearly not what she had expected from that quarter.
Miss Marple, however, was looking at the waves with an air of gentle innocence.
II
“May I speak to you, ma’am, Mrs. Kendal?”
“Yes, of course,” said Molly. She was sitting at her desk in the office.
Victoria Johnson, tall and buoyant in her crisp white uniform, came in farther and shut the door behind her with a somewhat mysterious air.
“I like to tell you something, please, Mrs. Kendal.”
“Yes, what is it? Is anything wrong?”
“I don’t know that. Not for sure. It’s the old gentleman who died. The Major gentleman. He die in his sleep.”
“Yes, yes. What about it?”
“There was a bottle of pills in his room. Doctor, he asked me about them.”
“Yes?”
“The doctor said—‘Let me see what he has here on the bathroom shelf,’ and he looked, you see. He see there was tooth powder and indigestion pills and aspirin and cascara pills, and then these pills in a bottle called Serenite.”
“Yes,” repeated Molly yet again.
“And the doctor looked at them. He seemed quite satisfied, and nodded his head. But I get to thinking afterwards. Those pills weren’t there before. I’ve not seen them in his bathroom before. The others, yes. The tooth powder and the aspirin and the aftershave lotion and all the rest. But those pills, those Serenite pills, I never noticed them before.”
“So you think—” Molly looked puzzled.
“I don’t know what to think,” said Victoria. “I just think it’s not right, so I think I better tell you about it. Perhaps you tell doctor? Perhaps it means something. Perhaps someone put those pills there so he take them and he died.”
“Oh, I don’t think that’s likely at all,” said Molly.
Victoria shook her dark head. “You never know. People do bad things.”
Molly glanced out of the window. The place looked like an earthly paradise. With its sunshine, its sea, its coral reef, its music, its dancing, it seemed a Garden of Eden. But even in the Garden of Eden, there had been a shadow—the shadow of the Serpent—Bad things—how hateful to hear those words.
“I’ll make inquiries, Victoria,” she said sharply. “Don’t worry. And above all don’t go starting a lot of silly rumours.”
Tim Kendal came in, just as Victoria was, somewhat unwillingly, leaving.
“Anything wrong, Molly?”
She hesitated—but Victoria might go to him—She told him what the girl had said.
“I don’t see what all this rigmarole—what were these pills anyway?”
“Well, I don’t really know, Tim. Dr. Robertson when he came said they—were something to do with blood pressure, I think.”
“Well, that would be all right, wouldn’t it? I mean, he had high blood pressure, and he would be taking things for it, wouldn’t he? People do. I’ve seen them, lots of times.”
“Yes,” Molly hesitated, “but Victoria seemed to think that he might have taken one of these pills and it would have killed him.”
“Oh darling, that is a bit too melodramatic! You mean that somebody might have changed his blood pressure pills for something else, and that they poisoned him?”
“It does sound absurd,” said Molly apologetically, “when you say it like that. But that seemed to be what Victoria thought!”
“Silly girl! We could go and ask Dr. Graham about it, I suppose he’d know. But really it’s such nonsense that it’s not worth bothering him.”
“That’s what I think.”
“What on earth made the girl think anybody would have changed the pills? You mean, put different pills into the same bottle?”
“I didn’t quite gather,” said Molly, looking rather helpless. “Victoria seemed to think that was the first time that Serenite bottle had been there.”
“Oh but that’s nonsense,” said Tim Kendal. “He had to take those pills all the time to keep his blood pressure down.” And he went off cheerfully to consult with Fernando the maître d’hôtel.
But Molly could not dismiss the matter so lightly. After the stress of lunch was over she said to her husband:
“Tim—I’ve been thinking—If Victoria is going around talking about this perhaps we ought just to ask someone about it?”
“My dear girl! Robertson and all the rest of them came and looked at everything and asked all the questions they wanted at the time.”
“Yes, but you know how they work themselves up, these girls—”
“Oh, all right! I’ll tell you what—we’ll go and ask Graham—he’ll know.”
Dr. Graham was sitting on his loggia with a book. The young couple came in and Molly plunged into her recital. It was a little incoherent and Tim took over.
“Sounds rather idiotic,” he said apologetically, “but as far as I can make out, this girl has got it into her head that someone put some poison tablets in the—what’s the name of the stuff—Sera—something bottle.”
“But why should she get this idea into her head?” asked Dr. Graham. “Did she see anything or hear anything or—I mean, why should she think so?”
“I don’t know,” said Tim rather helplessly. “Was it a different bottle? Was that it, Molly?”
“No,” said Molly. “I think what she said was that there was a bottle there labelled—Seven—Seren—”
“Serenite,” said the doctor. “That’s quite right. A well-known preparation. He’d been taking it regularly.”
“Victoria said she’d never seen it in his room before.”
“Never seen it in his room before?” said Graham sharply. “What does she mean by that?”
“Well, that’s what she said. She said there were all sorts of things on the bathroom shelf. You know, tooth powder, aspirin and aftershave and—oh—she rattled them off gaily. I suppose she’s always cleaning them and so she knows them all off by heart. But this one—the Serenite—she hadn’t seen it there until the day after he died.”
“That’s very odd,” said Dr. Graham, rather sharply. “Is she sure?”
The unusual sharpness of his tone made both of the Kendals look up at him. They had not expected Dr. Graham to take up quite this attitude.
“She sounded sure,” said Molly slowly.
“Perhaps she just wanted to be sensational,” suggested Tim.
“I think perhaps,” said Dr. Graham, “I’d better have a few words with the girl myself.”
Victoria displayed a distinct pleasure at being allowed to tell her story.
“I don’t want to get in no trouble,” she said. “I didn’t put that bottle there and I don’t know who did.”
“But you think it was put there?” asked Graham.
“Well, you see, Doctor, it must have been put there if it wasn’t there before.”
“Major Palgrave could have kept it in a drawer—or a dispatch-case, something like that.”
Victoria shook her head shrewdly.
“Wouldn’t do that if he was taking it all the time, would he?”
“No,” said Graham reluctantly. “No, it was stuff he would have to take several times a day. You never saw him taking it or anything of that kind?”
“He didn’t have it there before. I just thought—word got round as that stuff had something to do with his death, poisoned his blood or something, and I thought maybe he had an enemy put it there so as to kill him.”
“Nonsense, my girl,” said the doctor robustly. “Sheer nonsense.” Victoria looked shaken.
“You say as this stuff was medicine, good medicine?” she asked doubtfully.
“Good medicine, and what is more, necessary medicine,” said Dr. Graham. “So you needn’t worry, Victoria. I can assure you there was nothing wrong with that medicine. It was the proper thing for a man to take who had his complaint.”
“Surely you’ve taken a load off my mind,” said Victoria. She showed white teeth at him in a cheerful smile.
But the load was not taken off Dr. Graham’s mind. That uneasiness of his that had been so nebulous was now becoming tangible.
Chapter 7.Morning on the beach