‘You were at school with Grandam, weren’t you? It seems so queer.’
Miss Marple knew perfectly what she meant. To youth it seems very odd to think that age was once young and pigtailed and struggled with decimals and English literature.
‘It must,’ said Gina with awe in her voice, and obviously not meaning to be rude, ‘have been a very long time ago.’
‘Yes, indeed,’ said Miss Marple. ‘You feel that more with me than you do with your grandmother, I expect?’
Gina nodded. ‘It’s cute of you saying that. Grandam, you know, gives one a curiously ageless feeling.’
‘It is a long time since I’ve seen her. I wonder if I shall find her much changed.’
‘Her hair’s grey, of course,’ said Gina vaguely. ‘And she walks with a stick because of her arthritis. It’s got much worse lately. I suppose that -‘ she broke off, and then asked: ‘Have you been to Stonygates before?’
‘No, never. I’ve heard a great deal about it, of course.’
‘It’s pretty ghastly, really,’ said Gina cheerfully. ‘A sort of Gothic monstrosity. What Steve calls Best Victorian Lavatory period. But it’s fun, too, in a way.
Only of course everything’s madly earnest, and you tumble over psychiatrists everywhere underfoot. Enjoy-ing themselves madly. Rather like Scout-masters, only worse. The young criminals are rather pets, some of them. One showed me how to diddle locks with a bit of wire and one angelic-faced boy gave me a lot of points about coshing people.’
Miss Marple considered this information thoughtfully.
‘It’s the thugs I like best,’ said Gina. ‘I don’t fancy the queers so much. Of course Lewis and Dr Maverick think they’re all queer – I mean they think it’s repressed desires and disordered home life and their mothers getting off with soldiers and all that. I don’t really see it myself because some people have had awful home lives and yet have managed to turn out quite all right.’
‘I’m sure it is all a very difficult problem,’ said Miss Marple.
Gina laughed, again showing her magnificent teeth.
‘It doesn’t worry me much. I suppose some people have these sort of urges to make the world a better place.
Lewis is quite dippy about it all – he’s going to Aberdeen next week because there’s a case coming up in the police court – a boy with five previous convictions.’
‘The young man who met me at the station? Mr Lawson. He helps Mr Serrocold, he told me. Is he his secretary?’
‘Oh Edgar hasn’t brains enough to be a secretary. He’s a case, really. He used to stay at hotels and pretend he was a V.C. or a fighter pilot and borrow money and then do a flit. I think he’s just a rotter. But Lewis goes through a routine with them all. Makes them feel one of the family and gives them jobs to do and all that to encourage their sense of responsibility. I daresay we shall be murdered by one of them one of these days.’ Gina laughed merrily.
Miss Marple did not laugh.
They turned in through some imposing gates where a Commissionaire was standing on duty in a military manner and drove up a drive flanked with rhododen-drons.
The drive was badly kept and the grounds seemed neglected.
Interpreting her companion’s glance, Gina said, ‘No gardeners during the war, and since we haven’t bothered.
But it does look rather terrible.’
They came round a curve and Stonygates appeared in its full gloryl It was, as Gina had said, a vast edifice of Victorian Gothic – a kind of temple to Plutocracy.
Philanthropy had added to it in various wings and out-buildings which, while not positively dissimilar in style, had robbed the structure as a whole of any cohesion or purpose.
‘Hideous, isn’t it?’ said Gina affectionately. ‘There’s Grandam on the terrace. I’ll stop here and you can go and meet her.’
Miss Marple advanced along the terrace towards her old friend.
From a distance, the slim little figure looked curiously girlish in spite of the stick on which she leaned and her slow and obviously rather painful progress. It was as though a young girl was giving an exaggerated imitation of old age.