At Bertram’s Hotel. Агата Кристи

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       CHAPTER 2

      ‘And I suppose you’re still living at that dear St Mary Mead?’ Lady Selina was asking. ‘Such a sweet unspoilt village. I often think about it. Just the same as ever, I suppose?’

      ‘Well, not quite.’ Miss Marple reflected on certain aspects of her place of residence. The new Building Estate. The additions to the Village Hall, the altered appearance of the High Street with its up-to-date shop fronts—She sighed. ‘One has to accept change, I suppose.’

      ‘Progress,’ said Lady Selina vaguely. ‘Though it often seems to me that it isn’t progress. All these smart plumbing fixtures they have nowadays. Every shade of colour and superb what they call “finish”—but do any of them really pull? Or push, when they’re that kind. Every time you go to a friend’s house, you find some kind of a notice in the loo—“Press sharply and release,” “Pull to the left,” “Release quickly.” But in the old days, one just pulled up a handle any kind of way, and cataracts of water came at once—There’s the dear Bishop of Medmenham,’ Lady Selina broke off to say, as a handsome, elderly cleric passed by. ‘Practically quite blind, I believe. But such a splendid militant priest.’

      A little clerical talk was indulged in, interspersed by lady Selina’s recognition of various friends and acquaintances, many of whom were not the people she thought they were. She and Miss Marple talked a little of ‘old days’, though Miss Marple’s upbringing, of course, had been quite different from Lady Selina’s, and their reminiscences were mainly confined to the few years when Lady Selina, a recent widow of severely straitened means, had taken a small house in the village of St Mary Mead during the time her second son had been stationed at an airfield nearby.

      ‘Do you always stay here when you come up, Jane? Odd I haven’t seen you here before.’

      ‘Oh no, indeed. I couldn’t afford to, and anyway, I hardly ever leave home these days. No, it was a very kind niece of mine who thought it would be a treat for me to have a short visit to London. Joan is a very kind girl—at least perhaps hardly a girl.’ Miss Marple reflected with a qualm that Joan must now be close on fifty. ‘She is a painter, you know. Quite a well-known painter. Joan West. She had an exhibition not long ago.’

      Lady Selina had little interest in painters, or indeed in anything artistic. She regarded writers, artists and musicians as a species of clever performing animal; she was prepared to feel indulgent towards them, but to wonder privately why they wanted to do what they did.

      ‘This modern stuff, I suppose,’ she said, her eyes wandering. ‘There’s Cicely Longhurst—dyed her hair again, I see.’

      ‘I’m afraid dear Joan is rather modern.’

      Here Miss Marple was quite wrong. Joan West had been modern about twenty years ago, but was now regarded by the young arriviste artists as completely old-fashioned.

      Casting a brief glance at Cicely Longhurst’s hair, Miss Marple relapsed into a pleasant remembrance of how kind Joan had been. Joan had actually said to her husband, ‘I wish we could do something for poor old Aunt Jane. She never gets away from home. Do you think she’d like to go to Bournemouth for a week or two?’

      ‘Good idea,’ said Raymond West. His last book was doing very well indeed, and he felt in a generous mood.

      ‘She enjoyed her trip to the West Indies, I think, though it was a pity she had to get mixed up in a murder case. Quite the wrong thing at her age.’

      ‘That sort of thing seems to happen to her.’

      Raymond was very fond of his old aunt and was constantly devising treats for her, and sending her books that he thought might interest her. He was surprised when she often politely declined the treats, and though she always said the books were ‘so interesting’ СКАЧАТЬ