“Who did he see?”
“I’ve thought about that a good deal,” said Miss Marple. “I was sitting outside my bungalow, and he was sitting nearly opposite me and—whatever he saw, he saw over my right shoulder.”
“Someone coming along the path then from behind you on the right, the path from the creek and the car park.”
“Yes.”
“Was anyone coming along the path?”
“Mr. and Mrs. Dyson and Colonel and Mrs. Hillingdon.”
“Anybody else?”
“Not that I can find out. Of course, your bungalow would also be in his line of vision . . .”
“Ah. Then we include—shall we say—Esther Walters and my chap, Jackson. Is that right? Either of them, I suppose, might have come out of the bungalow and gone back inside again without your seeing them.”
“They might have,” said Miss Marple, “I didn’t turn my head at once.”
“The Dysons, the Hillingdons, Esther, Jackson. One of them’s a murderer. Or of course, myself,” he added, obviously as an afterthought.
Miss Marple smiled faintly.
“And he spoke of the murderer as a man?”
“Yes.”
“Right. That cuts out Evelyn Hillingdon, Lucky and Esther Walters. So your murderer, allowing that all this farfetched nonsense is true, your murderer is Dyson, Hillingdon or my smooth-tongued Jackson.”
“Or yourself,” said Miss Marple.
Mr. Rafter ignored this last point.
“Don’t say things to irritate me,” he said. “I’ll tell you the first thing that strikes me, and which you don’t seem to have thought of. If it’s one of those three, why the devil didn’t old Palgrave recognise him before? Dash it all, they’ve all been sitting round looking at each other for the last two weeks. That doesn’t seem to make sense.”
“I think it could,” said Miss Marple.
“Well, tell me how.”
“You see, in Major Palgrave’s story he hadn’t seen this man himself at any time. It was a story told to him by a doctor. The doctor gave him the snapshot as a curiosity. Major Palgrave may have looked at the snapshot fairly closely at the time but after that he’d just stuck it away in his wallet and kept it as a souvenir. Occasionally, perhaps, he’d take it out and show it to someone he was telling the story to. And another thing, Mr. Rafter, we don’t know how long ago this happened. He didn’t give me any indication of that when he was telling the story. I mean this may have been a story he’s been telling to people for years. Five years. Ten years. Longer still perhaps. Some of his tiger stories go back about twenty years.”
“They would!” said Mr. Rafter.
“So I don’t suppose for a moment that Major Palgrave would recognise the face in the snapshot if he came across the man casually. What I think happened, what I’m almost sure must have happened, is that as he told his story he fumbled for the snapshot, took it out, looked down at it studying the face and then looked up to see the same face, or one with a strong resemblance coming towards him from a distance of about ten or twelve feet away.”
“Yes,” said Mr. Rafter consideringly, “Yes, that’s possible.”
“He was taken aback,” said Miss Marple, “and he shoved it back in his wallet and began to talk loudly about something else.”
“He couldn’t have been sure,” said Mr. Rafter, shrewdly.
“No,” said Miss Marple, “he couldn’t have been sure. But of course afterwards he would have studied the snapshot very carefully and would have looked at the man and tried to make up his mind whether it was just a likeness or whether it could actually be the same person.”
Mr. Rafter reflected a moment or two, then he shook his head. “There’s something wrong here. The motive’s inadequate. Absolutely inadequate. He was speaking to you loudly, was he?”
“Yes,” said Miss Marple, “quite loudly. He always did.”
“True enough. Yes, he did shout. So whoever was approaching would hear what he said?”
“I should imagine you could hear it for quite a good radius round.”
Mr. Rafter shook his head again. He said, “It’s fantastic, too fantastic. Anybody would laugh at such a story. Here’s an old booby telling a story about another story somebody told him, and showing a snapshot, and all of it centring round a murder which had taken place years ago! Or at any rate, a year or two. How on earth can that worry the man in question. No evidence, just a bit of hearsay, a story at third hand. He could even admit a likeness, he could say: ‘Yes, I do look rather like that fellow, don’t I! Ha, ha!’ Nobody’s going to take old Palgrave’s identification seriously. Don’t tell me so, because I won’t believe it. No, the chap, if it was the chap, had nothing to fear—nothing whatever. It’s the kind of accusation he can just laugh off. Why on earth should he proceed to murder old Palgrave? It’s absolutely unnecessary. You must see that.”