“Major Palgrave never mentioned to me that he had high blood pressure,” said Miss Marple. “Did he to you?”
“He said so to somebody—I don’t know who. It may have been to Mr. Rafter. I know Mr. Rafter says just the opposite—but then he’s like that! Certainly Jackson mentioned it to me once. He said the Major ought to be more careful over the alcohol he took.”
“I see,” said Miss Marple, thoughtfully. She went on: “I expect you found him rather a boring old man? He told a lot of stories and I expect repeated himself a good deal.”
“That’s the worst of it,” said Esther. “You do hear the same story again and again unless you can manage to be quick enough and fend him off.”
“Of course I didn’t mind so much,” said Miss Marple, “because I’m used to that sort of thing. If I get stories told to me rather often, I don’t really mind hearing them again because I’ve usually forgotten them.”
“There is that,” said Esther and laughed cheerfully.
“There was one story he was very fond of telling,” said Miss Marple, “about a murder. I expect he told you that, didn’t he?”
Esther Walters opened her handbag and started searching through it. She drew out her lipstick saying, “I thought I’d lost it.” Then she asked, “I beg your pardon, what did you say?”
“I asked if Major Palgrave told you his favourite murder story?”
“I believe he did, now I come to think of it. Something about someone who gassed themselves, wasn’t it? Only really it was the wife who gassed him. I mean she’d given him a sedative of some kind and then stuck his head in the gas oven. Was that it?”
“I don’t think that was exactly it,” said Miss Marple. She looked at Esther Walters thoughtfully.
“He told such a lot of stories,” said Esther Walters, apologetically, “and as I said, one didn’t always listen.”
“He had a snapshot,” said Miss Marple, “that he used to show people.”
“I believe he did . . . I can’t remember what it was now. Did he show it to you?”
“No,” said Miss Marple. “He didn’t show it to me. We were interrupted—”
9
MISS PRESCOTT AND OTHERS
“THE story I heard,” began Miss Prescott, lowering her voice, and looking carefully around.
Miss Marple drew her chair a little closer. It had been some time before she had been able to get together with Miss Prescott for a heart-to-heart chat. This was owing to the fact that clergymen are very strong family men so that Miss Prescott was nearly always accompanied by her brother, and there was no doubt that Miss Marple and Miss Prescott found it less easy to take their back hair down in a good gossip when the jovial Canon was of their company.
“It seems,” said Miss Prescott, “though of course I don’t want to talk any scandal and I really know nothing about it—”
“Oh, I quite understand,” said Miss Marple.
“It seems there was some scandal when his first wife was still alive! Apparently this woman, Lucky—such a name!—who I think was a cousin of his first wife, came out here and joined them and I think did some work with him on flowers or butterflies or whatever it was. And people talked a lot because they got on so well together—if you know what I mean.”
“People do notice things so much, don’t they,” said Miss Marple.
“And then of course, when his wife died rather suddenly—”
“She died here, on this island?”
“No. No, I think they were in Martinique or Tobago at the time.”
“I see.”
“But I gathered from some other people who were there at the time, and who came on here and talked about things, that the doctor wasn’t very satisfied.”
“Indeed,” said Miss Marple, with interest.
“It was only gossip,” of course, “but—well, Mr. Dyson certainly married again very quickly.” She lowered her voice again. “Only a month I believe.”
“Only a month,” said Miss Marple.
The two women looked at each other.
“It seemed—unfeeling,” said Miss Prescott.
“Yes,” said Miss Marple. “It certainly did.” She added delicately, “Was there—any money?”