“Mr. Dyson calls his wife ‘Lucky’. Is that her real name or a nickname?” asked Miss Marple.
“It can hardly be her real name, I should think.”
“I happened to ask him,” said the Canon. “He said he called her Lucky because she was his good luck piece. If he lost her, he said, he’d lose his luck. Very nicely put, I thought.”
“He’s very fond of joking,” said Miss Prescott. The Canon looked at his sister doubtfully.
The steel band outdid itself with a wild burst of cacophony and a troupe of dancers came racing on to the floor. Miss Marple and the others turned their chairs to watch. Miss Marple enjoyed the dancing better than the music, she liked the shuffling feet and the rhythmic sway of the bodies. It seemed, she thought, very real. It had a kind of power of understatement.
Tonight, for the first time, she began to feel slightly at home in her new environment . . . Up to now, she had missed what she usually found so easily, points of resemblance in the people she met, to various people known to her personally. She had, possibly, been dazzled by the gay clothes and the exotic colouring; but soon, she felt, she would be able to make some interesting comparisons.
Molly Kendal, for instance, was like that nice girl whose name she couldn’t remember, but who was a conductress on the Market Basing bus. Helped you in, and never rang the bus on until she was sure you’d sat down safely. Tim Kendal was just a little like the head waiter at the Royal George in Medchester. Self-confident, and yet, at the same time, worried. (He had had an ulcer, she remembered.) As for Major Palgrave, he was indistinguishable from General Leroy, Captain Flemming, Admiral Wicklow and Commander Richardson. She went on to someone more interesting. Greg, for instance. Greg was difficult because he was American. A dash of Sir George Trollope, perhaps, always so full of jokes at the Civil Defence meetings—or perhaps Mr. Murdoch the butcher. Mr. Murdoch had had rather a bad reputation, but some people said it was just gossip, and that Mr. Murdoch himself liked to encourage the rumours! “Lucky” now? Well, that was easy—Marleen at the Three Crowns. Evelyn Hillingdon? She couldn’t fit Evelyn in precisely. In appearance she fitted many roles—tall thin weather-beaten Englishwomen were plentiful. Lady Caroline Wolfe, Peter Wolfe’s first wife, who had committed suicide? Or there was Leslie James—that quiet woman who seldom showed what she felt and who had sold up her house and left without ever telling anyone she was going. Colonel Hillingdon? No immediate clue there. She’d have to get to know him a little first. One of those quiet men with good manners. You never knew what they were thinking about. Sometimes they surprised you. Major Harper, she remembered, had quietly cut his throat one day. Nobody had ever known why. Miss Marple thought that she did know—but she’d never been quite sure . . . Her eyes strayed to Mr. Rafter’s table. The principal thing known about Mr. Rafter was that he was incredibly rich, he came every year to the West Indies, he was semi-paralysed and looked like a wrinkled old bird of prey. His clothes hung loosely on his shrunken form. He might have been seventy or eighty, or even ninety. His eyes were shrewd and he was frequently rude, but people seldom took offence, partly because he was so rich, and partly because of his overwhelming personality which hypnotised you into feeling that somehow, Mr. Rafter had the right to be rude if he wanted to.
With him sat his secretary, Mrs. Walters. She had corn-coloured hair, and a pleasant face. Mr. Rafter was frequently very rude to her, but she never seemed to notice it. She was not so much subservient, as oblivious. She behaved like a well-trained hospital nurse. Possibly, thought Miss Marple, she had been a hospital nurse. A young man, tall and good-looking, in a white jacket, came to stand by Mr. Rafter’s chair. The old man looked up at him, nodded, then motioned him to a chair. The young man sat down as bidden. “Mr. Jackson, I presume,” said Miss Marple to herself. “His valet-attendant.”