Nemesis. Агата Кристи

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СКАЧАТЬ his will. Perhaps some book on rare flowers that had been in his library and which he thought would please an old lady who was keen on gardening. Or perhaps a cameo brooch which had belonged to some great-aunt of his. She amused herself by these fancies. They were only fancies, she thought, because in either case it would merely be a case of the Executors—if these lawyers were the Executors—forwarding her by post any such object. They would not have wanted an interview.

      ‘Oh well,’ said Miss Marple, ‘I shall know next Tuesday.’

      ‘Wonder what she’ll be like,’ said Mr Broadribb to Mr Schuster, glancing at the clock as he did so.

      ‘She’s due in a quarter of an hour,’ said Mr Schuster. ‘Wonder if she’ll be punctual?’

      ‘Oh, I should think so. She’s elderly, I gather, and much more punctilious than the young scatter-brains of today.’

      ‘Fat or thin, I wonder?’ said Mr Schuster.

      Mr Broadribb shook his head.

      ‘Didn’t Rafiel ever describe her to you?’ asked Mr Schuster.

      ‘He was extraordinarily cagey in everything he said about her.’

      ‘The whole thing seems very odd to me,’ said Mr Schuster. ‘If we only knew a bit more about what it all meant …’

      ‘It might be,’ said Mr Broadribb thoughtfully, ‘something to do with Michael.’

      ‘What? After all these years? Couldn’t be. What put that into your head? Did he mention—’

      ‘No, he didn’t mention anything. Gave me no clue at all as to what was in his mind. Just gave me instructions.’

      ‘Think he was getting a bit eccentric and all that towards the end?’

      ‘Not in the least. Mentally he was as brilliant as ever. His physical ill-health never affected his brain, anyway. In the last two months of his life he made an extra two hundred thousand pounds. Just like that.’

      ‘He had a flair,’ said Mr Schuster with due reverence. ‘Certainly, he always had a flair.’

      ‘A great financial brain,’ said Mr Broadribb, also in a tone of reverence suitable to the sentiment. ‘Not many like him, more’s the pity.’

      A buzzer went on the table. Mr Schuster picked up the receiver. A female voice said,

      ‘Miss Jane Marple is here to see Mr Broadribb by appointment.’

      Mr Schuster looked at his partner, raising an eyebrow for an affirmative or a negative. Mr Broadribb nodded.

      ‘Show her up,’ said Mr Schuster. And he added, ‘Now we’ll see.’

      Miss Marple entered a room where a middle-aged gentleman with a thin, spare body and a long rather melancholy face rose to greet her. This apparently was Mr Broadribb, whose appearance somewhat contradicted his name. With him was a rather younger middle-aged gentleman of definitely more ample proportions. He had black hair, small keen eyes and a tendency to a double chin.

      ‘My partner, Mr Schuster,’ Mr Broadribb presented.

      ‘I hope you didn’t feel the stairs too much,’ said Mr Schuster. ‘Seventy if she is a day—nearer eighty perhaps,’ he was thinking in his own mind.

      ‘I always get a little breathless going upstairs.’

      ‘An old-fashioned building this,’ said Mr Broadribb apologetically. ‘No lift. Ah well, we are a very long established firm and we don’t go in for as many of the modern gadgets as perhaps our clients expect of us.’

      ‘This room has very pleasant proportions,’ said Miss Marple, politely.

      She accepted the chair that Mr Broadribb drew forward for her. Mr Schuster, in an unobtrusive sort of way, left the room.

      ‘I hope that chair is comfortable,’ said Mr Broadribb. ‘I’ll pull that curtain slightly, shall I? You may feel the sun a little too much in your eyes.’

      ‘Thank you,’ said Miss Marple, gratefully.

      She sat there, upright as was her habit. She wore a light tweed suit, a string of pearls and a small velvet toque. To himself Mr Broadribb was saying, ‘The Provincial Lady. A good type. Fluffy old girl. May be scatty—may not. Quite a shrewd eye. I wonder where Rafiel came across her. Somebody’s aunt, perhaps, up from the country?’ While these thoughts passed through his head, he was making the kind of introductory small talk relating to the weather, the unfortunate effects of late frosts early in the year and such other remarks as he considered suitable.

      Miss Marple made the necessary responses and sat placidly awaiting the opening of preliminaries to the meeting.

      ‘You will be wondering what all this is about,’ said Mr Broadribb, shifting a few papers in front of him and giving her a suitable smile. ‘You’ve heard, no doubt, of Mr Rafiel’s death, or perhaps you saw it in the paper.’

      ‘I saw it in the paper,’ said Miss Marple.

      ‘He was, I understand, a friend of yours.’

      ‘I met him first just over a year ago,’ said Miss Marple. ‘In the West Indies,’ she added.

      ‘Ah. I remember. He went out there, I believe, for his health. It did him some good, perhaps, but he was already a very ill man, badly crippled, as you know.’

      ‘Yes,’ said Miss Marple.

      ‘You knew him well?’

      ‘No,’ said Miss Marple, ‘I would not say that. We were fellow visitors in a hotel. We had occasional conversations. I never saw him again after my return to England. I live very quietly in the country, you see, and I gather that he was completely absorbed in business.’

      ‘He continued transacting business right up—well, I could almost say right up to the day of his death,’ said Mr Broadribb. ‘A very fine financial brain.’

      ‘I am sure that was so,’ said Miss Marple. ‘I realized quite soon that he was a—well, a very remarkable character altogether.’

      ‘I don’t know if you have any idea—whether you’ve been given any idea at some time by Mr Rafiel—as to what this proposition is that I have been instructed to put up to you?’

      ‘I cannot imagine,’ said Miss Marple, ‘what possible kind of proposition Mr Rafiel might have wanted to put up to me. It seems most unlikely.’

      ‘He had a very high opinion of you.’

      ‘That is kind of him, but hardly justified,’ said Miss Marple. ‘I am a very simple person.’

      ‘As you no doubt realize, he died a very rich man. The provisions of his Will are on the whole fairly simple. He had already made dispositions of his fortune some time before his death. Trusts and other beneficiary arrangements.’

      ‘That is, I believe, very usual procedure nowadays,’ said Miss Marple, ‘though I am not at СКАЧАТЬ