They Do It With Mirrors. Агата Кристи
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Название: They Do It With Mirrors
Автор: Агата Кристи
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Зарубежные детективы
isbn: 9780007422852
isbn:
‘You’ve not met Lewis?’
Miss Marple shook her head.
‘No, I think I last saw Carrie Louise in 1928. She very sweetly took me to Covent Garden—to the Opera.’
‘Oh yes. Well, Lewis was a very suitable person for her to marry. He was the head of a very celebrated firm of chartered accountants. I think he met her first over some questions of the finances of the Gulbrandsen Trust and the College. He was well off, just about her own age, and a man of absolutely upright life. But he was a crank. He was absolutely rabid on the subject of the redemption of young criminals.’
Ruth Van Rydock sighed.
‘As I said just now, Jane, there are fashions in philanthropy. In Gulbrandsen’s time it was education. Before that it was soup kitchens—’
Miss Marple nodded.
‘Yes, indeed. Port wine jelly and calf’s head broth taken to the sick. My mother used to do it.’
‘That’s right. Feeding the body gave way to feeding the mind. Everyone went mad on educating the lower classes. Well, that’s passed. Soon, I expect, the fashionable thing to do will be not to educate your children, preserve their illiteracy carefully until they’re eighteen. Anyway the Gulbrandsen Trust and Education Fund was in some difficulties because the State was taking over its functions. Then Lewis came along with his passionate enthusiasm about constructive training for juvenile delinquents. His attention had been drawn to the subject first in the course of his profession—auditing accounts where ingenious young men had perpetrated frauds. He was more and more convinced that juvenile delinquents were not subnormal—that they had excellent brains and abilities and only needed right direction.’
‘There is something in that,’ said Miss Marple. ‘But it is not entirely true. I remember—’
She broke off and glanced at her watch.
‘Oh dear—I mustn’t miss the 6.30.’
Ruth Van Rydock said urgently:
‘And you will go to Stonygates?’
Gathering up her shopping bag and her umbrella Miss Marple said:
‘If Carrie Louise asks me—’
‘She will ask you. You’ll go? Promise, Jane?’
Jane Marple promised.
Miss Marple got out of the train at Market Kindle station. A kindly fellow passenger handed out her suitcase after her, and Miss Marple, clutching a string bag, a faded leather handbag and some miscellaneous wraps, uttered appreciative twitters of thanks.
‘So kind of you, I’m sure … So difficult nowadays—not many porters. I get so flustered when I travel.’
The twitters were drowned by the booming noise of the station announcer saying loudly but indistinctly that the 3.18 was standing at Platform 1, 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 was puffing importantly.
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 about it, as though the utterance of her name were the first words of a part he was playing in amateur theatricals. ‘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 personality of the young man did not quite match his voice. It was less important, one might almost say insignificant. His eyelids had a trick of fluttering nervously.
‘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 flipped a finger at a porter who was trundling some packing cases past on a trolley.
‘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 had, very charmingly, put important affairs on one side out of chivalry to his employer’s wife.
And again the impression was not wholly convincing—it had a theatrical flavour.
Miss Marple began to wonder about Edgar Lawson.
They came out of the station and Edgar guided the old lady to where a rather elderly Ford V. 8 was standing.
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 corduroy slacks and a simple 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 foul? What a nice string bag. I love string bags. I’ll take it and the coats and 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 СКАЧАТЬ