‘He died a year ago and Mildred has come back to Stonygates to live with her mother. But that’s getting on too fast, I’ve skipped a marriage or two. I’ll go back to them. Pippa married her Italian. Carrie Louise was quite pleased about the marriage. Guido had beautiful manners and was very handsome, and he was a fine sportsman. A year later Pippa had a daughter and died in childbirth. It was a terrible tragedy and Guido San
Severiano was very cut up. Carrie Louise went to and fro between Italy and England a good deal, and it was in Rome that she met Johnnie Restarick and married him.
The Marchese married again and he was quite willing for his little daughter to be brought up in England by her exceedingly wealthy grandmother. So they all settled down at Stonygates, Johnnie Restarick and Carrie Louise, and Johnnie’s two boys, Alexis and Stephen (Johnnie’s first wife was a Russian) and the baby Gina.
Mildred married her Canon soon afterwards. Then came all this business of Johnnie and the Yugoslavian woman and the divorce. The boys still came to Stonygates for their holidays and were devoted to Carrie Louise, and then in 1938, I think it was, Carrie Louise married Lewis.’ Mrs Van Rydock paused for breath.
‘You’ve not met Lewis?’ Miss Marple shook her head.
‘No, I think I last saw Carrie Louise in 1928. She very sweetly took me to Covent Garden – to the Opera.’ ‘Oh yes. Well, Lewis was a very suitable person for her to marry. He was the head of a very celebrated firm of chartered accountants. I think he met her first over some questions of the finances of the Gulbrandsen Trust and the College. He was well off, just about her own age, and a man of absolutely upright life. But he was a crank. He was absolutely rabid on the subject of the redemption of young criminals.’ Ruth Van Rydock sighed.
‘As I said just now, Jane, there are fashions in philanthropy. In Gulbrandsen’s time it was education.
Before that it was soup kitchens ‘ Miss Marple nodded.
‘Yes, indeed. Port wine jelly and calf’s head broth taken to the sick. My mother used to do it.’ ‘That’s right. Feeding the body gave way to feeding the mind. Everyone went mad on educating the lower classes.
Well, that’s passed. Soon, I expect, the fashionable thing to do will be not to educate your children, preserve their illiteracy carefully until they’re eighteen. Anyway the Gulbrandsen Trust and Education Fund was in some difficulties because the State was taking over its functions.
Then Lewis came along with his passionate enthusiasm about constructive training for juvenile delinquents. His attention had been drawn to the subject first in the course of his profession – auditing accounts where ingenious young men had perpetrated frauds. He was more and more convinced that juvenile delinquents were not subnormal – that they had excellent brains and abilities and only needed right direction.’ ‘There is something in that,’ said Miss Marple. ‘But it is not entirely true. I remember ‘ She broke off and glanced at her watch.
‘Oh dear – I mustn’t miss the 6.30.’ Ruth Van Rydock said urgently: ‘And you will go to Stonygates?’ Gathering up her shopping bag and her umbrella Miss Marple said: ‘If Carrie Louise asks me ‘ ‘She will ask you. You’ll go? Promise, Jane?’ Jane Marple promised.
CHAPTER 3
Miss Marple got out of the train at Market Kindle station. A kindly fellow passenger handed out her suitcase after her, and Miss Marple, clutching a string bag, a faded leather handbag and some miscellaneous wraps, uttered appreciative twitters of thanks.
‘So kind of you, I’m sure… So difficult nowadays not many porters. I get so flustered when I travel.’ The twitters were drowned by the booming noise of the station announcer saying loudly but indistinctly that the 3.18 was standing at Platform 1, and was about to proceed to various unidentifiable stations.
Market Kindle was a large empty windswept station with hardly any passengers or railway staff to be seen on it. Its claim to distinction lay in having six platforms and a bay where a very small train of one carriage was puffing importantly.