Miss Prescott looked slightly alarmed. “Do you mean that they don’t live in Hampshire?” she asked.
“No, no, not for one moment,” said Miss Marple, quickly apologetic. “I was only using them as an instance as to what one knows or doesn’t know about people.” She added, “I have told you that I live at St. Mary Mead, which is a place, no doubt, of which you have never heard. But you don’t, if I may say so, know it of your own knowledge, do you?”
Miss Prescott forbore from saying that she really couldn’t care less where Miss Marple lived. It was somewhere in the country and in the south of England and that is all she knew. “Oh, I do see what you mean,” she agreed hastily, “and I know that one can’t possibly be too careful when one is abroad.”
“I didn’t exactly mean that.” said Miss Marple.
There were some odd thoughts going through Miss Marple’s mind. Did she really know, she was asking herself, that Canon Prescott and Miss Prescott were really Canon Prescott and Miss Prescott?
They said so. There was no evidence to contradict them. It would really be easy, would it not, to put on a dog-collar, to wear the appropriate clothes, to make the appropriate conversation. If there was a motive . . .
Miss Marple was fairly knowledgeable about the clergy in her part of the world, but the Prescotts came from the north. Durham, wasn’t it? She had no doubt they were the Prescotts, but still, it came back to the same thing—one believed what people said to one. Perhaps one ought to be on one’s guard against that. Perhaps . . . She shook her head thoughtfully.
19
USES OF A SHOE
CANON PRESCOTT came back from the water’s edge slightly short of breath (playing with children is always exhausting).
Presently he and his sister went back to the hotel, finding the beach a little too hot.
“But,” said Señora de Caspearo scornfully as they walked away, “How can a beach be too hot? It is nonsense that. And look what she wears—her arms and her neck are all covered up. Perhaps it is as well, that. Her skin it is hideous, like a plucked chicken.”
Miss Marple drew a deep breath. Now or never was the time for conversation with Señora de Caspearo. Unfortunately she did not know what to say. There seemed to be no common ground on which they could meet.
“You have children, Señora?” she inquired.
“I have three angels,” said Señora de Caspearo, kissing her fingertips. Miss Marple was rather uncertain as to whether this meant that Señora de Caspearo’s offspring were in Heaven or whether it merely referred to their characters. One of the gentlemen in attendance made a remark in Spanish and Señora de Caspearo flung back her head appreciatively and laughed loudly and melodiously.
“You understand what he said?” she inquired of Miss Marple.
“I’m afraid not,” said Miss Marple apologetically.
“It is just as well. He is a wicked man.”
A rapid and spirited interchange of Spanish followed.
“It is infamous—infamous,” said Señora de Caspearo, reverting to English with sudden gravity, “that the police do not let us go from this island. I storm, I scream, I stamp my foot, but all they say is No. No. You know how it will end, we shall all be killed.”
Her bodyguard attempted to reassure her.
“But yes. I tell you it is unlucky here. I knew it from the first. That old Major, the ugly one, he had the Evil Eye. You remember? His eyes they crossed. It is bad, that! I make the Sign of the Horns every time when he looks my way.” She made it in illustration. “Though since he is cross-eyed I am not always sure when he does look my way—”
“He had a glass eye,” said Miss Marple in an explanatory voice. “An accident, I understand, when he was quite young. It was not his fault.”
“I tell you he brought bad luck. I say it is the evil eye he had.”
Her hand shot out again in the well-known Latin gesture: the first finger and the little finger sticking out, the two middle ones doubled in. “Anyway,” she said cheerfully, “he is dead. I do not have to look at him anymore. I do not like to look at things that are ugly.”