“I see,” said Miss Marple. “And did you find it?”
Jackson shook his head. “Probably in one of her handbags,” he said lightly. “I won’t bother. Mrs. Walters didn’t make a point of it. She only just mentioned it casually.” He went on, surveying the toilet preparations: “Doesn’t have very much, does she? Ah well, doesn’t need it at her age. Good natural skin.”
“You must look at women with quite a different eye from ordinary men,” said Miss Marple, smiling pleasantly.
“Yes. I suppose various jobs do alter one’s angle.”
“You know a good deal about drugs?”
“Oh yes. Good working acquaintance with them. If you ask me, there are too many of them about nowadays. Too many tranquillisers and pep pills and miracle drugs and all the rest of it. All right if they’re given on prescription, but there are too many of them you can get without prescription. Some of them can be dangerous.”
“I suppose so,” said Miss Marple. “Yes, I suppose so.”
“They have a great effect, you know, on behaviour. A lot of this teenage hysteria you get from time to time. It’s not natural causes. The kids’ve been taking things. Oh, there’s nothing new about it. It’s been known for ages. Out in the East—not that I’ve ever been there—all sorts of funny things used to happen. You’d be surprised at some of the things women gave their husbands. In India, for example, in the bad old days, a young wife who married an old husband. Didn’t want to get rid of him, I suppose, because she’d have been burnt on the funeral pyre, or if she wasn’t burnt she’d have been treated as an outcast by the family. No catch to have been a widow in India in those days. But she could keep an elderly husband under drugs, make him semi-imbecile, give him hallucinations, drive him more or less off his head.” He shook his head. “Yes, lot of dirty work.”
He went on: “And witches, you know. There’s a lot of interesting things known now about witches. Why did they always confess, why did they admit so readily that they were witches, that they had flown on broomsticks to the Witches’ Sabbath.”
“Torture,” said Miss Marple.
“Not always,” said Jackson. “Oh yes, torture accounted for a lot of it, but they came out with some of those confessions almost before torture was mentioned. They didn’t so much confess as boast about it. Well, they rubbed themselves with ointments, you know. Anointing they used to call it. Some of the preparations, belladonna, atropine, all that sort of thing, if you rub them on the skin they give you hallucinations of levitation, of flying through the air. They thought it all was genuine, poor devils. And look at the Assassins—medieval people, out in Syria, the Lebanon, somewhere like that. They fed them Indian hemp, gave them hallucinations of paradise and houris, and endless time. They were told that that was what would happen to them after death, but to attain it they had to go and do a ritual killing. Oh, I’m not putting it in fancy language, but that’s what it came to.”
“What it came to,” said Miss Marple, “is in essence the fact that people are highly credulous.”
“Well yes, I suppose you could put it like that.”
“They believe what they are told,” said Miss Marple. “Yes indeed, we’re all inclined to do that,” she added. Then she said sharply. “Who told you these stories about India, about the doping of husbands with datura,” and she added sharply, before he could answer, “Was it Major Palgrave?”
Jackson looked slightly surprised.
“Well—yes, as a matter of fact, it was. He told me a lot of stories like that. Of course most of it must have been before his time, but he seemed to know all about it.”
“Major Palgrave was under the impression that he knew a lot about everything,” said Miss Marple. “He was often inaccurate in what he told people.” She shook her head thoughtfully. “Major Palgrave,” she said, “has a lot to answer for.”
There was a slight sound from the adjoining bedroom. Miss Marple turned her head sharply. She went quickly out of the bathroom into the bedroom. Lucky Dyson was standing just inside the window.