The Body in the Library. Агата Кристи

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СКАЧАТЬ flamboyant figure of a girl. A girl with unnaturally fair hair dressed up off her face in elaborate curls and rings. Her thin body was dressed in a backless evening-dress of white spangled satin. The face was heavily made-up, the powder standing out grotesquely on its blue swollen surface, the mascara of the lashes lying thickly on the distorted cheeks, the scarlet of the lips looking like a gash. The finger-nails were enamelled in a deep blood-red and so were the toenails in their cheap silver sandal shoes. It was a cheap, tawdry, flamboyant figure—most incongruous in the solid old-fashioned comfort of Colonel Bantry’s library.

      Mrs Bantry said in a low voice:

      ‘You see what I mean? It just isn’t true!’

      The old lady by her side nodded her head. She looked down long and thoughtfully at the huddled figure.

      She said at last in a gentle voice:

      ‘She’s very young.’

      ‘Yes—yes—I suppose she is.’ Mrs Bantry seemed almost surprised—like one making a discovery.

      Miss Marple bent down. She did not touch the girl. She looked at the fingers that clutched frantically at the front of the girl’s dress, as though she had clawed it in her last frantic struggle for breath.

      There was the sound of a car scrunching on the gravel outside. Constable Palk said with urgency:

      ‘That’ll be the Inspector …’

      True to his ingrained belief that the gentry didn’t let you down, Mrs Bantry immediately moved to the door. Miss Marple followed her. Mrs Bantry said:

      ‘That’ll be all right, Palk.’

      Constable Palk was immensely relieved.

      Hastily downing the last fragments of toast and marmalade with a drink of coffee, Colonel Bantry hurried out into the hall and was relieved to see Colonel Melchett, the Chief Constable of the county, descending from a car with Inspector Slack in attendance. Melchett was a friend of the Colonel’s. Slack he had never much taken to—an energetic man who belied his name and who accompanied his bustling manner with a good deal of disregard for the feelings of anyone he did not consider important.

      ‘Morning, Bantry,’ said the Chief Constable. ‘Thought I’d better come along myself. This seems an extraordinary business.’

      ‘It’s—it’s—’ Colonel Bantry struggled to express himself. ‘It’s incredible—fantastic!’

      ‘No idea who the woman is?’

      ‘Not the slightest. Never set eyes on her in my life.’

      ‘Butler know anything?’ asked Inspector Slack.

      ‘Lorrimer is just as taken aback as I am.’

      ‘Ah,’ said Inspector Slack. ‘I wonder.’

      Colonel Bantry said:

      ‘There’s breakfast in the dining-room, Melchett, if you’d like anything?’

      ‘No, no—better get on with the job. Haydock ought to be here any minute now—ah, here he is.’

      Another car drew up and big, broad-shouldered Doctor Haydock, who was also the police surgeon, got out. A second police car had disgorged two plain-clothes men, one with a camera.

      ‘All set—eh?’ said the Chief Constable. ‘Right. We’ll go along. In the library, Slack tells me.’

      Colonel Bantry groaned.

      ‘It’s incredible! You know, when my wife insisted this morning that the housemaid had come in and said there was a body in the library, I just wouldn’t believe her.’

      ‘No, no, I can quite understand that. Hope your missus isn’t too badly upset by it all?’

      ‘She’s been wonderful—really wonderful. She’s got old Miss Marple up here with her—from the village, you know.’

      ‘Miss Marple?’ The Chief Constable stiffened. ‘Why did she send for her?’

      ‘Oh, a woman wants another woman—don’t you think so?’

      Colonel Melchett said with a slight chuckle:

      ‘If you ask me, your wife’s going to try her hand at a little amateur detecting. Miss Marple’s quite the local sleuth. Put it over us properly once, didn’t she, Slack?’

      Inspector Slack said: ‘That was different.’

      ‘Different from what?’

      ‘That was a local case, that was, sir. The old lady knows everything that goes on in the village, that’s true enough. But she’ll be out of her depth here.’

      Melchett said dryly: ‘You don’t know very much about it yourself yet, Slack.’

      ‘Ah, you wait, sir. It won’t take me long to get down to it.’

      In the dining-room Mrs Bantry and Miss Marple, in their turn, were partaking of breakfast.

      After waiting on her guest, Mrs Bantry said urgently:

      ‘Well, Jane?’

      Miss Marple looked up at her, slightly bewildered.

      Mrs Bantry said hopefully:

      ‘Doesn’t it remind you of anything?’

      For Miss Marple had attained fame by her ability to link up trivial village happenings with graver problems in such a way as to throw light upon the latter.

      ‘No,’ said Miss Marple thoughtfully, ‘I can’t say that it does—not at the moment. I was reminded a little of Mrs Chetty’s youngest—Edie, you know—but I think that was just because this poor girl bit her nails and her front teeth stuck out a little. Nothing more than that. And, of course,’ went on Miss Marple, pursuing the parallel further, ‘Edie was fond of what I call cheap finery, too.’

      ‘You mean her dress?’ said Mrs Bantry.

      ‘Yes, a very tawdry satin—poor quality.’

      Mrs Bantry said:

      ‘I know. One of those nasty little shops where everything is a guinea.’ She went on hopefully:

      ‘Let me see, what happened to Mrs Chetty’s Edie?’

      ‘She’s just gone into her second place—and doing very well, I believe.’

      Mrs Bantry felt slightly disappointed. The village parallel didn’t seem to be exactly hopeful.

      ‘What I can’t make out,’ said Mrs Bantry, ‘is what she could possibly be doing in Arthur’s study. The window was forced, Palk tells me. She might have come down here with a burglar and then they quarrelled—but that seems such nonsense, doesn’t it?’

      ‘She was hardly СКАЧАТЬ