The Mirror Crack’d From Side to Side. Агата Кристи

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СКАЧАТЬ back over them affectionately thinking of all the little woolly coats she had knitted for their subsequent offspring. They had not been very good with the telephone, and no good at all at arithmetic. On the other hand, they knew how to wash up, and how to make a bed. They had had skills, rather than education. It was odd that nowadays it should be the educated girls who went in for all the domestic chores. Students from abroad, girls au pair, university students in the vacation, young married women like Cherry Baker, who lived in spurious Closes on new building developments.

      There were still, of course, people like Miss Knight. This last thought came suddenly as Miss Knight’s tread overhead made the lustres on the mantelpiece tinkle warningly. Miss Knight had obviously had her afternoon rest and would now go out for her afternoon walk. In a moment she would come to ask Miss Marple if she could get her anything in the town. The thought of Miss Knight brought the usual reaction to Miss Marple’s mind. Of course, it was very generous of dear Raymond (her nephew) and nobody could be kinder than Miss Knight, and of course that attack of bronchitis had left her very weak, and Dr Haydock had said very firmly that she must not go on sleeping alone in the house with only someone coming in daily, but—She stopped there. Because it was no use going on with the thought which was ‘If only it could have been someone other than Miss Knight.’ But there wasn’t much choice for elderly ladies nowadays. Devoted maidservants had gone out of fashion. In real illness you could have a proper hospital nurse, at vast expense and procured with difficulty, or you could go to hospital. But after the critical phase of illness had passed, you were down to the Miss Knights.

      There wasn’t, Miss Marple reflected, anything wrong about the Miss Knights other than the fact that they were madly irritating. They were full of kindness, ready to feel affection towards their charges, to humour them, to be bright and cheerful with them and in general to treat them as slightly mentally afflicted children.

      ‘But I,’ said Miss Marple to herself, ‘although I may be old, am not a mentally afflicted child.’

      At this moment, breathing rather heavily, as was her custom, Miss Knight bounced brightly into the room. She was a big, rather flabby woman of fifty-six with yellowing grey hair very elaborately arranged, glasses, a long thin nose, and below it a good-natured mouth and a weak chin.

      ‘Here we are!’ she exclaimed with a kind of beaming boisterousness, meant to cheer and enliven the sad twilight of the aged. ‘I hope we’ve had our little snooze?’

      ‘I have been knitting,’ Miss Marple replied, putting some emphasis on the pronoun, ‘and,’ she went on, confessing her weakness with distaste and shame, ‘I’ve dropped a stitch.’

      ‘Oh dear, dear,’ said Miss Knight. ‘Well, we’ll soon put that right, won’t we?’

      ‘You will,’ said Miss Marple. ‘I, alas, am unable to do so.’

      The slight acerbity of her tone passed quite unnoticed. Miss Knight, as always, was eager to help.

      ‘There,’ she said after a few moments. ‘There you are, dear. Quite all right now.’

      Though Miss Marple was perfectly agreeable to be called ‘dear’ (and even ‘ducks’) by the woman at the greengrocer or the girl at the paper shop, it annoyed her intensely to be called ‘dear’ by Miss Knight. Another of those things that elderly ladies have to bear. She thanked Miss Knight politely.

      ‘And now I’m just going out for my wee toddle,’ said Miss Knight humorously. ‘Shan’t be long.’

      ‘Please don’t dream of hurrying back,’ said Miss Marple politely and sincerely.

      ‘Well, I don’t like to leave you too long on your own, dear, in case you get moped.’

      ‘I assure you I am quite happy,’ said Miss Marple. ‘I probably shall have’ (she closed her eyes) ‘a little nap.’

      ‘That’s right, dear. Anything I can get you?’

      Miss Marple opened her eyes and considered.

      ‘You might go into Longdon’s and see if the curtains are ready. And perhaps another skein of the blue wool from Mrs Wisley. And a box of blackcurrant lozenges at the chemist’s. And change my book at the library—but don’t let them give you anything that isn’t on my list. This last one was too terrible. I couldn’t read it.’ She held out The Spring Awakens.

      ‘Oh dear dear! Didn’t you like it? I thought you’d love it. Such a pretty story.’

      ‘And if it isn’t too far for you, perhaps you wouldn’t mind going as far as Halletts and see if they have one of those up-and-down egg whisks—not the turn-the-handle kind.’

      (She knew very well they had nothing of the kind, but Halletts was the farthest shop possible.)

      ‘If all this isn’t too much—’ she murmured.

      But Miss Knight replied with obvious sincerity.

      ‘Not at all. I shall be delighted.’

      Miss Knight loved shopping. It was the breath of life to her. One met acquaintances, and had the chance of a chat, one gossiped with the assistants, and had the opportunity of examining various articles in the various shops. And one could spend quite a long time engaged in these pleasant occupations without any guilty feeling that it was one’s duty to hurry back.

      So Miss Knight started off happily, after a last glance at the frail old lady resting so peacefully by the window.

      After waiting a few minutes in case Miss Knight should return for a shopping bag, or her purse, or a handkerchief (she was a great forgetter and returner), and also to recover from the slight mental fatigue induced by thinking of so many unwanted things to ask Miss Knight to get, Miss Marple rose briskly to her feet, cast aside her knitting and strode purposefully across the room and into the hall. She took down her summer coat from its peg, a stick from the hall stand and exchanged her bedroom slippers for a pair of stout walking shoes. Then she left the house by the side door.

      ‘It will take her at least an hour and a half,’ Miss Marple estimated to herself. ‘Quite that—with all the people from the Development doing their shopping.’

      Miss Marple visualized Miss Knight at Longdon’s making abortive inquiries re curtains. Her surmises were remarkably accurate. At this moment Miss Knight was exclaiming, ‘Of course, I felt quite sure in my own mind they wouldn’t be ready yet. But of course I said I’d come along and see when the old lady spoke about it. Poor old dears, they’ve got so little to look forward to. One must humour them. And she’s a sweet old lady. Failing a little now, it’s only to be expected—their faculties get dimmed. Now that’s a pretty material you’ve got there. Do you have it in any other colours?’

      A pleasant twenty minutes passed. When Miss Knight had finally departed, the senior assistant remarked with a sniff, ‘Failing, is she? I’ll believe that when I see it for myself. Old Miss Marple has always been as sharp as a needle, and I’d say she still is.’ She then gave her attention to a young woman in tight trousers and a sail-cloth jersey who wanted plastic material with crabs on it for bathroom curtains.

      ‘Emily Waters, that’s who she reminds me of,’ Miss Marple was saying to herself, with the satisfaction it always gave her to match up a human personality with one known in the past. ‘Just the same bird brain. Let me see, what happened to Emily?’

      Nothing СКАЧАТЬ