At Bertram’s Hotel. Агата Кристи

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СКАЧАТЬ told me I ought to try it. I think they’re right. I’ve just had the most marvellous doughnut.’

      ‘My dear, they have real muffins too.’

      ‘Muffins,’ said Lady Sedgwick thoughtfully. ‘Yes …’ She seemed to concede the point. ‘Muffins!’

      She nodded and went on towards the lift.

      ‘Extraordinary girl,’ said Lady Selina. To her, like to Miss Marple, every woman under sixty was a girl. ‘Known her ever since she was a child. Nobody could do anything with her. Ran away with an Irish groom when she was sixteen. They managed to get her back in time—or perhaps not in time. Anyway they bought him off and got her safely married to old Coniston—thirty years older than she was, awful old rip, quite dotty about her. That didn’t last long. She went off with Johnnie Sedgwick. That might have stuck if he hadn’t broken his neck steeplechasing. After that she married Ridgway Becker, the American yacht owner. He divorced her three years ago and I hear she’s taken up with some Racing Motor Driver—a Pole or something. I don’t know whether she’s actually married or not. After the American divorce she went back to calling herself Sedgwick. She goes about with the most extraordinary people. They say she takes drugs … I don’t know, I’m sure.’

      ‘One wonders if she is happy,’ said Miss Marple.

      Lady Selina, who had clearly never wondered anything of the kind, looked rather startled.

      ‘She’s got packets of money, I suppose,’ she said doubtfully. ‘Alimony and all that. Of course that isn’t everything …’

      ‘No, indeed.’

      ‘And she’s usually got a man—or several men—in tow.’

      ‘Yes?’

      ‘Of course when some women get to that age, that’s all they want … But somehow—’

      She paused.

      ‘No,’ said Miss Marple. ‘I don’t think so either.’

      There were people who would have smiled in gentle derision at this pronouncement on the part of an old-fashioned old lady who could hardly be expected to be an authority on nymphomania, and indeed it was not a word that Miss Marple would have used—her own phrase would have been ‘always too fond of men’. But Lady Selina accepted her opinion as a confirmation of her own.

      ‘There have been a lot of men in her life,’ she pointed out.

      ‘Oh yes, but I should say, wouldn’t you, that men were an adventure to her, not a need?’

      And would any woman, Miss Marple wondered, come to Bertram’s Hotel for an assignation with a man? Bertram’s was very definitely not that sort of place. But possibly that could be, to someone of Bess Sedgwick’s disposition, the very reason for choosing it.

      She sighed, looked up at the handsome grandfather clock decorously ticking in the corner, and rose with the careful effort of the rheumatic to her feet. She walked slowly towards the lift. Lady Selina cast a glance around her and pounced upon an elderly gentleman of military appearance who was reading the Spectator.

      ‘How nice to see you again. Er—it is General Arlington, isn’t it?’

      But with great courtesy the old gentleman declined being General Arlington. Lady Selina apologized, but was not unduly discomposed. She combined short sight with optimism and since the thing she enjoyed most was meeting old friends and acquaintances, she was always making this kind of mistake. Many other people did the same, since the lights were pleasantly dim and heavily shaded. But nobody ever took offence—usually indeed it seemed to give them pleasure.

      Miss Marple smiled to herself as she waited for the lift to come down. So like Selina! Always convinced that she knew everybody. She herself could not compete. Her solitary achievement in that line had been the handsome and well-gaitered Bishop of Westchester whom she had addressed affectionately as ‘dear Robbie’ and who had responded with equal affection and with memories of himself as a child in a Hampshire vicarage calling out lustily ‘Be a crocodile now, Aunty Janie. Be a crocodile and eat me.’

      The lift came down, the uniformed middle-aged man threw open the door. Rather to Miss Marple’s surprise the alighting passenger was Bess Sedgwick whom she had seen go up only a minute or two before.

      And then, one foot poised, Bess Sedgwick stopped dead, with a suddenness that surprised Miss Marple and made her own forward step falter. Bess Sedgwick was staring over Miss Marple’s shoulder with such concentration that the old lady turned her own head.

      The commissionaire had just pushed open the two swing doors of the entrance and was holding them to let two women pass through into the lounge. One of them was a fussy looking middle-aged lady wearing a rather unfortunate flowered violet hat, the other was a tall, simply but smartly dressed, girl of perhaps seventeen or eighteen with long straight flaxen hair.

      Bess Sedgwick pulled herself together, wheeled round abruptly and re-entered the lift. As Miss Marple followed her in, she turned to her and apologized.

      ‘I’m so sorry. I nearly ran into you.’ She had a warm friendly voice. ‘I just remembered I’d forgotten something—which sounds nonsense but isn’t really.’

      ‘Second floor?’ said the operator. Miss Marple smiled and nodded in acknowledgment of the apology, got out and walked slowly along to her room, pleasurably turning over sundry little unimportant problems in her mind as was so often her custom.

      For instance what Lady Sedgwick had said wasn’t true. She had only just gone up to her room, and it must have been then that she ‘remembered she had forgotten something’ (if there had been any truth in that statement at all) and had come down to find it. Or had she perhaps come down to meet someone or look for someone? But if so, what she had seen as the lift door opened had startled and upset her, and she had immediately swung into the lift again and gone up so as not to meet whoever it was she had seen.

      It must have been the two newcomers. The middle-aged woman and the girl. Mother and daughter? No, Miss Marple thought, not mother and daughter.

      Even at Bertram’s, thought Miss Marple, happily, interesting things could happen …

       CHAPTER 3

      ‘Er—is Colonel Luscombe—?’

      The woman in the violet hat was at the desk. Miss Gorringe smiled in a welcoming manner and a page, who had been standing at the ready, was immediately dispatched but had no need to fulfil his errand, as Colonel Luscombe himself entered the lounge at that moment and came quickly across to the desk.

      ‘How do you do, Mrs Carpenter.’ He shook hands politely, then turned to the girl. ‘My dear Elvira.’ He took both her hands affectionately in his. ‘Well, well, this is nice. Splendid—splendid. Come and let’s sit down.’ He led them to chairs, established them. ‘Well, well,’ he repeated, ‘this is nice.’

      The effort he made was somewhat palpable as was his lack of ease. He could hardly go on saying how nice this was. The two ladies were not very helpful. Elvira smiled very sweetly. Mrs СКАЧАТЬ