“No secrets?” said Miss Marple, thoughtfully. “Surely, Mr. Rafter, you have business secrets?”
“Not where Jackson can get at them. No. Jackson is a smooth article, one might say, but I really don’t see him as a murderer. I’d say that wasn’t his line at all.”
He paused a minute and then said suddenly, “Do you know, if one stands back and takes a good look at all this fantastic business, Major Palgrave and his ridiculous stories and all the rest of it, the emphasis is entirely wrong. I’m the person who ought to be murdered.”
Miss Marple looked at him in some surprise.
“Proper type casting,” explained Mr. Rafter. “Who’s the victim in murder stories? Elderly men with lots of money.”
“And lots of people with a good reason for wishing him out of the way, so as to get that money,” said Miss Marple. “Is that true also?”
“Well—” Mr. Rafter considered, “I can count up to five or six men in London who wouldn’t burst into tears if they read my obituary in The Times. But they wouldn’t go as far to do anything to bring about my demise. After all, why should they? I’m expected to die any day. In fact the bug-blighters are astonished that I’ve lasted so long. The doctors are surprised too.”
“You have of course, a great will to live,” said Miss Marple.
“You think that’s odd, I suppose,” said Mr. Rafter.
Miss Marple shook her head. “Oh no,” she said, “I think it’s quite natural. Life is more worth living, more full of interest when you are likely to lose it. It shouldn’t be, perhaps, but it is. When you’re young and strong and healthy, and life stretches ahead of you, living isn’t really important at all. It’s young people who commit suicide easily, out of despair from love, sometimes from sheer anxiety and worry. But old people know how valuable life is and how interesting.”
“Hah!” said Mr. Rafter, snorting. “Listen to a couple of old crocks.”
“Well, what I said is true, isn’t it?” demanded Miss Marple.
“Oh, yes,” said Mr. Rafter, “it’s true enough. But don’t you think I’m right when I say that I ought to be cast as the victim?”
“It depends on who has reason to gain by your death,” said Miss Marple.
“Nobody, really,” said Mr. Rafter. “Apart, as I’ve said, from my competitors in the business world who, as I have also said, can count comfortably on my being out of it before very long. I’m not such a fool as to leave a lot of money divided up among my relations. Precious little they’d get of it after Government had taken practically the lot. Oh no, I’ve attended to all that years ago. Settlements, trusts, and all the rest of it.”
“Jackson, for instance, wouldn’t profit by your death?”
“He wouldn’t get a penny,” said Mr. Rafter cheerfully. “I pay him double the salary that he’d get from anyone else. That’s because he has to put up with my bad temper, and he knows quite well that he will be the loser when I die.”
“And Mrs. Walters?”
“The same goes for Esther. She’s a good girl. First-class secretary, intelligent, good-tempered, understands my ways, doesn’t turn a hair if I fly off the handle, couldn’t care less if I insult her. Behaves like a nice nursery governess in charge of an outrageous and obstreperous child. She irritates me a bit sometimes, but who doesn’t? There’s nothing outstanding about her. She’s rather a commonplace young woman in many ways, but I couldn’t have anyone who suited me better. She’s had a lot of trouble in her life. Married a man who wasn’t much good. I’d say she never had much judgement when it came to men. Some women haven’t. They fall for anyone who tells them a hard luck story. Always convinced that all the man needs is proper female understanding. That, once married to her, he’ll pull up his socks and make a go of life! But of course that type of man never does. Anyway, fortunately her unsatisfactory husband died, drank too much at a party one night and stepped in front of a bus. Esther had a daughter to support and she went back to her secretarial job. She’s been with me five years. I made it quite clear to her from the start that she need have no expectations from me in the event of my death. I paid her from the start a very large salary, and that salary I’ve augmented by as much as a quarter as much again each year. However decent and honest people are, one should never trust anybody. That’s why I told Esther quite clearly that she’d nothing to hope for from my death. Every year I live she’ll get a bigger salary. If she puts most of that aside every year—and that’s what I think she has done—she’ll be quite a well-to-do woman by the time I kick the bucket. I’ve made myself responsible for her daughter’s schooling and I’ve put a sum in trust for the daughter which she’ll get when she comes of age. So Mrs. Esther Walters is very comfortably placed. My death, let me tell you, would mean a serious financial loss to her.” He looked very hard at Miss Marple. “She fully realises all that. She’s very sensible, Esther is.”