寓所谜案4

Three

“Nasty old cat,” said Griselda, as soon as the door was closed.

She made a face in the direction of the departing visitors and thenlooked at me and laughed.

“Len, do you really suspect me of having an affair with Lawrence Red-ding?”

“My dear, of course not.”

“But you thought Miss Marple was hinting at it. And you rose to my de-fence simply beautifully. Like—like an angry tiger.”

A momentary¹ uneasiness assailed² me. A clergyman of the Church ofEngland ought never to put himself in the position of being described asan angry tiger.

“I felt the occasion could not pass without a protest,” I said. “ButGriselda, I wish you would be a little more careful in what you say.”

“Do you mean the cannibal story?” she asked. “Or the suggestion thatLawrence was painting me in the nude³! If they only knew that he waspainting me in a thick cloak with a very high fur collar—the sort of thingthat you could go quite purely⁴ to see the Pope in—not a bit of sinful fleshshowing anywhere! In fact, it’s all marvellously pure. Lawrence nevereven attempts to make love to me—I can’t think why.”

“Surely knowing that you’re a married woman—”

“Don’t pretend to come out of the ark, Len. You know very well that anattractive young woman with an elderly husband is a kind of gift fromheaven to a young man. There must be some other reason—it’s not thatI’m unattractive—I’m not.”

“Surely you don’t want him to make love to you?”

“N-n-o,” said Griselda, with more hesitation⁵ than I thought becoming.

“If he’s in love with Lettice Protheroe—”

“Miss Marple didn’t seem to think he was.”

“Miss Marple may be mistaken.”

“She never is. That kind of old cat is always right.” She paused a minuteand then said, with a quick sidelong glance at me: “You do believe me,don’t you? I mean, that there’s nothing between Lawrence and me.”

“My dear Griselda,” I said, surprised. “Of course.”

My wife came across and kissed me.

“I wish you weren’t so terribly easy to deceive, Len. You’d believe mewhatever I said.”

“I should hope so. But, my dear, I do beg of you to guard your tongueand be careful of what you say. These women are singularly deficient⁶ inhumour, remember, and take everything seriously.”

“What they need,” said Griselda, “is a little immorality⁷ in their lives.

Then they wouldn’t be so busy looking for it in other people’s.”

And on this she left the room, and glancing at my watch I hurried out topay some visits that ought to have been made earlier in the day.

The Wednesday evening service was sparsely⁸ attended as usual, butwhen I came out through the church, after disrobing in the vestry, it wasempty save for a woman who stood staring up at one of our windows. Wehave some rather fine old stained glass, and indeed the church itself iswell worth looking at. She turned at my footsteps, and I saw that it wasMrs. Lestrange.

We both hesitated a moment, and then I said:

“I hope you like our little church.”

“I’ve been admiring the screen,” she said.

Her voice was pleasant, low, yet very distinct, with a clearcut enunci-ation. She added:

“I’m so sorry to have missed your wife yesterday.”

We talked a few minutes longer about the church. She was evidently acultured woman who knew something of Church history and architecture.

We left the building together and walked down the road, since one way tothe Vicarage led past her house. As we arrived at the gate, she said pleas-antly:

“Come in, won’t you? And tell me what you think of what I have done.”

I accepted the invitation. Little Gates had formerly⁹ belonged to anAnglo-Indian colonel, and I could not help feeling relieved by the disap-pearance of the brass¹⁰ tables and Burmese idols¹¹. It was furnished now verysimply, but in exquisite¹² taste. There was a sense of harmony and restabout it.

Yet I wondered more and more what had brought such a woman as Mrs.

Lestrange to St. Mary Mead¹³. She was so very clearly a woman of the worldthat it seemed a strange taste to bury herself in a country village.

In the clear light of her drawing room I had an opportunity of observingher closely for the first time.

She was a very tall woman. Her hair was gold with a tinge¹⁴ of red in it.

Her eyebrows¹⁵ and eyelashes were dark, whether by art or by nature Icould not decide. If she was, as I thought, made up, it was done very artist-ically. There was something Sphinxlike about her face when it was in re-pose and she had the most curious eyes I have ever seen—they were al-most golden in shade.

Her clothes were perfect and she had all the ease of manner of a well-bred woman, and yet there was something about her that was incongru-ous and baffling. You felt that she was a mystery. The word Griselda hadused occurred to me—sinister. Absurd, of course, and yet—was it so ab-surd? The thought sprang unbidden into my mind: “This woman wouldstick at nothing.”

Our talk was on most normal lines—pictures, books, old churches. Yetsomehow I got very strongly the impression that there was something else—something of quite a different nature that Mrs. Lestrange wanted to sayto me.

I caught her eye on me once or twice, looking at me with a curious hesit-ancy, as though she were unable to make up her mind. She kept the talk, Inoticed, strictly¹⁶ to impersonal¹⁷ subjects. She made no mention of a hus-band or relations.

But all the time there was that strange urgent appeal in her glance. Itseemed to say: “Shall I tell you? I want to. Can’t you help me?”

Yet in the end it died away—or perhaps it had all been my fancy. I hadthe feeling that I was being dismissed. I rose and took my leave. As I wentout of the room, I glanced back and saw her staring after me with apuzzled, doubtful expression. On an impulse I came back:

“If there is anything I can do—”

She said doubtfully: “It’s very kind of you—”

We were both silent. Then she said:

“I wish I knew. It’s difficult. No, I don’t think anyone can help me. Butthank you for offering to do so.”

That seemed final, so I went. But as I did so, I wondered. We are notused to mysteries in St. Mary Mead.

So much is this the case that as I emerged from the gate I was pouncedupon. Miss Hartnell is very good at pouncing¹⁸ in a heavy and cumbrousway.

“I saw you!” she exclaimed with ponderous¹⁹ humour. “And I was so ex-cited. Now you can tell us all about it.”

“About what?”

“The mysterious lady! Is she a widow or has she a husband some-where?”

“I really couldn’t say. She didn’t tell me.”

“How very peculiar²⁰. One would think she would be certain to mentionsomething casually²¹. It almost looks, doesn’t it, as though she had a reasonfor not speaking?”

“I really don’t see that.”

“Ah! But as dear Miss Marple says, you are so unworldly, dear Vicar. Tellme, has she known Dr. Haydock long?”

“She didn’t mention him, so I don’t know.”

“Really? But what did you talk about then?”

“Pictures, music, books,” I said truthfully.

Miss Hartnell, whose only topics of conversation are the purely per-sonal, looked suspicious and unbelieving. Taking advantage of a moment-ary hesitation on her part as to how to proceed next, I bade her good nightand walked rapidly away.

I called in at a house farther down the village and returned to the Vicar-age by the garden gate, passing, as I did so, the danger point of MissMarple’s garden. However, I did not see how it was humanly possible forthe news of my visit to Mrs. Lestrange to have yet reached her ears, so Ifelt reasonably safe.

As I latched²² the gate, it occurred to me that I would just step down to theshed in the garden which young Lawrence Redding was using as a studio,and see for myself how Griselda’s portrait was progressing.

I append a rough sketch²³ here which will be useful in the light of afterhappenings, only sketching²⁴ in such details as are necessary.

I had no idea there was anyone in the studio. There had been no voicesfrom within to warn me, and I suppose that my own footsteps made nonoise upon the grass.

I opened the door and then stopped awkwardly on the threshold. Forthere were two people in the studio, and the man’s arms were round thewoman and he was kissing her passionately²⁵.

The two people were the artist, Lawrence Redding, and Mrs. Protheroe.

I backed out precipitately²⁶ and beat a retreat to my study. There I satdown in a chair, took out my pipe, and thought things over. The discoveryhad come as a great shock to me. Especially since my conversation withLettice that afternoon, I had felt fairly certain that there was some kind ofunderstanding growing up between her and the young man. Moreover, Iwas convinced that she herself thought so. I felt positive that she had noidea of the artist’s feelings for her stepmother.

A nasty tangle²⁸. I paid a grudging²⁹ tribute to Miss Marple. She had notbeen deceived but had evidently suspected the true state of things with afair amount of accuracy. I had entirely³⁰ misread her meaning glance atGriselda.

I had never dreamt of considering Mrs. Protheroe in the matter. Therehas always been rather a suggestion of Caesar’s wife about Mrs. Protheroe—a quiet, self-contained woman whom one would not suspect of any greatdepths of feeling.

I had got to this point in my meditations³¹ when a tap on my study win-dow aroused me. I got up and went to it. Mrs. Protheroe was standing²⁷ out-side. I opened the window and she came in, not waiting for an invitationon my part. She crossed the room in a breathless sort of way and droppeddown on the sofa.

I had the feeling that I had never really seen her before. The quiet self-contained woman that I knew had vanished. In her place was a quick-breathing, desperate creature. For the first time I realized that Anne Pro-theroe was beautiful.

She was a brown-haired woman with a pale face and very deep set greyeyes. She was flushed now and her breast heaved. It was as though astatue had suddenly come to life. I blinked my eyes at the transformation³².

“I thought it best to come,” she said. “You—you saw just now?” I bowedmy head.

She said very quietly: “We love each other….”

And even in the middle of her evident distress³³ and agitation³⁴ she couldnot keep a little smile from her lips. The smile of a woman who sees some-thing very beautiful and wonderful.

I still said nothing, and she added presently:

“I suppose to you that seems very wrong?”

“Can you expect me to say anything else, Mrs. Protheroe?”

“No—no, I suppose not.”

I went on, trying to make my voice as gentle as possible:

“You are a married woman—”

She interrupted me.

“Oh! I know—I know. Do you think I haven’t gone over all that againand again? I’m not a bad woman really—I’m not. And things aren’t—aren’t—as you might think they are.”

I said gravely: “I’m glad of that.”

She asked rather timorously³⁵:

“Are you going to tell my husband?”

I said rather dryly:

“There seems to be a general idea that a clergyman is incapable³⁶ of be-having like a gentleman. That is not true.”

She threw me a grateful glance.

“I’m so unhappy. Oh! I’m so dreadfully unhappy. I can’t go on. I simplycan’t go on. And I don’t know what to do.” Her voice rose with a slightlyhysterical note in it. “You don’t know what my life is like. I’ve been miser-able with Lucius from the beginning. No woman could be happy with him.

I wish he were dead … It’s awful, but I do … I’m desperate. I tell you, I’mdesperate.” She started and looked over at the window.

“What was that? I thought I heard someone? Perhaps it’s Lawrence.”

I went over to the window which I had not closed as I had thought. Istepped out and looked down the garden, but there was no one in sight.

Yet I was almost convinced that I, too, had heard someone. Or perhaps itwas her certainty that had convinced me.

When I reentered the room she was leaning forward, drooping³⁷ her headdown. She looked the picture of despair. She said again:

“I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to do.”

I came and sat down beside her. I said the things I thought it was myduty to say, and tried to say them with the necessary conviction, uneasilyconscious all the time that that same morning I had given voice to the sen-timent that a world without Colonel Protheroe in it would be improved forthe better.

Above all, I begged her to do nothing rash. To leave her home and herhusband was a very serious step.

I don’t suppose I convinced her. I have lived long enough in the world toknow that arguing with anyone in love is next door to useless, but I dothink my words brought to her some measure of comfort.

When she rose to go, she thanked me, and promised to think over what Ihad said.

Nevertheless, when she had gone, I felt very uneasy. I felt that hitherto Ihad misjudged Anne Protheroe’s character. She impressed me now as avery desperate woman, the kind of woman who would stick at nothingonce her emotions were aroused. And she was desperately³⁸, wildly, madlyin love with Lawrence Redding, a man several years younger than herself.

I didn’t like it.

 

分享到：