“He is not, I think, a happy man,” offered Miss Marple.
Mr. Rafter looked at her thoughtfully.
“Do you think a murderer ought to be a happy man?”
Miss Marple coughed. “Well, they usually have been in my experience.”
“I don’t suppose your experience has gone very far,” said Mr. Rafter.
In this assumption, as Miss Marple could have told him, he was wrong. But she forbore to contest his statement. Gentlemen, she knew, did not like to be put right in their facts.
“I rather fancy Hillingdon myself,” said Mr. Rafter. “I’ve an idea that there is something a bit odd going on between him and his wife. You noticed it at all?”
“Oh yes,” said Miss Marple, “I have noticed it. Their behaviour is perfect in public, of course, but that one would expect.”
“You probably know more about those sort of people than I would,” said Mr. Rafter. “Very well, then, everything is in perfectly good taste but it’s a probability that, in a gentlemanly way, Edward Hillingdon is contemplating doing away with Evelyn Hillingdon. Do you agree?”
“If so,” said Miss Marple, “there must be another woman.”
“But what woman?”
Miss Marple shook her head in a dissatisfied manner.
“I can’t help feeling—I really can’t—that it’s not all quite as simple as that.”
“Well, who shall we consider next—Jackson? We leave me out of it.”
Miss Marple smiled for the first time.
“And why do we leave you out of it, Mr. Rafter?”
“Because if you want to discuss the possibilities of my being a murderer you’d have to do it with somebody else. Waste of time talking about it to me. And anyway, I ask you, am I cut out for the part? Helpless, hauled out of bed like a dummy, dressed, wheeled about in a chair, shuffled along for a walk. What earthly chance have I of going and murdering anyone?”
“Probably as good a chance as anyone else,” said Miss Marple vigorously.
“And how do you make that out?”
“Well, you would agree yourself, I think, that you have brains?”
“Of course I’ve got brains,” declared Mr. Rafter. “A good deal more than anybody else in this community, I’d say.”
“And having brains,” went on Miss Marple, “would enable you to overcome the physical difficulties of being a murderer.”
“It would take some doing!”
“Yes,” said Miss Marple, “it would take some doing. But then, I think, Mr. Rafter, you would enjoy that.”
Mr. Rafter stared at her for quite a long time and then he suddenly laughed.
“You’ve got a nerve!” he said. “Not quite the gentle fluffy old lady you look, are you? So you really think I’m a murderer?”
“No,” said Miss Marple, “I do not.”
“And why?”
“Well, really, I think just because you have got brains. Having brains, you can get most things you want, without having recourse to murder. Murder is stupid.”
“And anyway who the devil should I want to murder?”
“That would be a very interesting question,” said Miss Marple. “I have not yet had the pleasure of sufficient conversation with you to evolve a theory as to that.”
Mr. Rafter’s smile broadened.
“Conversations with you might be dangerous,” he said.
“Conversations are always dangerous, if you have something to hide,” said Miss Marple.
“You may be right. Let’s get on to Jackson. What do you think of Jackson?”
“It is difficult for me to say. I have not had the opportunity really of any conversation with him.”
“So you’ve no views on the subject?”
“He reminds me a little,” said Miss Marple reflectively, “of a young man in the Town Clerk’s office near where I live, Jonas Parry.”
“And?” Mr. Rafter asked and paused.
“He was not,” said Miss Marple, “very satisfactory.”
“Jackson’s not wholly satisfactory either. He suits me all right. He’s first class at his job, and he doesn’t mind being sworn at. He knows he’s damn well paid and so he puts up with things. I wouldn’t employ him in a position of trust, but I don’t have to trust him. Maybe his past is blameless, maybe it isn’t. His references were all right but I discern—shall I say, a note of reserve. Fortunately, I’m not a man who has any guilty secrets, so I’m not a subject for blackmail.”