thinking–watching the clenching and unclenching
of Jennifer’s hands. Miss Marple
thought that for some reason Jennifer Fortescue
was very badly frightened indeed.
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22
IT was growing dark. Miss Marple had
taken her knitting over to the window in
the library. Looking out of the glass pane
she saw Pat Fortescue walking up and down
the terrace outside. Miss Marple unlatched
the window and called through it.
“Come in, my dear. Do come in. I’m sure
it’s much too cold and damp for you to be out
there without a coat on.”
Pat obeyed the summons. She came in and
shut the window and turned on two of the
lamps.
“Yes,” she said, “it’s not a very nice
afternoon.” She sat down on the sofa by Miss
Marple “What are you knitting?”
“Oh, just a little matinee coat, dear. For a
baby, you know. I always say young mothers
can’t have too many matinee coats for their
babies. It’s the second size. I always knit the
second size. Babies so soon grow out of the
first size.”
Pat stretched out long legs towards the fire.
“It’s nice in here to-day,” she said. “With
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the fire and the lamps and you knitting things
for babies. It all seems cosy and homely and
like England ought to be.”
“It’s like England is,” said Miss Marple.
“There are not so many Yewtree Lodges, my
dear.”
“I think that’s a good thing,” said Pat. “I
don’t believe this was ever a happy house. I
don’t believe anybody was ever happy in it, in
spite of all the money they spent and the
things they had.”
“No,” Miss Marple agreed. “I shouldn’t
say it had been a happy house.”
“I suppose Adele may have been happy,”
said Pat. “I never met her, of course, so I
don’t know, but Jennifer is pretty miserable
and Elaine’s been eating her heart out over a
young man whom she probably knows in her
heart of hearts doesn’t care for her. Oh, how I
want to get away from here!” She looked at
Miss Marple and smiled suddenly. “D’you
know,” she said, “that Lance told me to stick
as close to you as I could. He seemed to think
I should be safe that way.”
“Your husband’s no fool,” said Miss
Marple.
“No. Lance isn’t a fool. At least, he is in
some ways. But I wish he’d tell me exactly
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what he’s afraid of. One thing seems clear
enough. Somebody in this house is mad, and
madness is always frightening because you
don’t know how mad people’s minds will
work. You don’t know what they’ll do next.”
“My poor child,” said Miss Marple.
“Oh, I’m all right, really. I ought to be
tough enough by now.”
Miss Marple said gently:
“You’ve had a good deal of unhappiness,
haven’t you, my dear?”
“Oh, I’ve had some very good times, too. I
had a lovely childhood in Ireland, riding,
hunting, and a great big, bare, draughty
house with lots and lots of sun in it. If you’ve
had a happy childhood, nobody can take that
away from you, can they? It was afterwards—
when I grew up—that things seemed always
to go wrong. To begin with, I suppose, it was
the war.”
“Your husband was a fighter pilot, wasn’t
he?”
“Yes. We’d only been married about a
month when Don was shot down.” She stared
ahead other into the fire. “I thought at first I
wanted to die too. It seemed so unfair, so
cruel. And yet—in the end—1 almost began to
see that it had been the best thing. Don was
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wonderful in the war. Brave and reckless and
gay. He had all the qualities that are needed,
wanted in a war. But I don’t believe, somehow,
peace would have suited him. He had a
kind of–oh, how shall I put it?–arrogant
insubordination. He wouldn’t have fitted in
or settled down. He’d have fought against
things. He was–well, anti-social in a way.
No, he wouldn’t have fitted in.”
“It’s wise of you to see that, my dear.”
Miss Marple bent over her knitting, picked
up a stitch, counted under her breath,
“Three plain, two purl, slip one, knit two