黑麦奇案50

时间：2025-10-10 08:37:54

（单词翻译:单击）

II
Miss Marple reached home late that evening.
Kitty—the latest graduate from St. Faith’s Home—let her in and greeted
her with a beaming face.
“I’ve got a herring for your supper, miss. I’m so glad to see you home—
you’ll find everything very nice in the house. Regular spring cleaning I’ve
had.”
“That’s very nice, Kitty—I’m glad to be home.”
Six spider’s webs on the cornice, Miss Marple noted1. These girls never
raised their heads! She was none the less too kind to say so.
“Your letters is on the hall table, miss. And there’s one as went to Daisy-
mead2 by mistake. Always doing that, aren’t they? Does look a bit alike,
Dane and Daisy, and the writing’s so bad I don’t wonder this time. They’ve
been away there and the house shut up, they only got back and sent it
round today. Said as how they hoped it wasn’t important.”
Miss Marple picked up her correspondence. The letter to which Kitty
had referred was on top of the others. A faint chord of remembrance
stirred in Miss Marple’s mind at the sight of the blotted3 scrawled4 hand-
writing. She tore it open.
Dear Madam,
I hope as you’ll forgive me writing this but I really don’t
know what to do indeed I don’t and I never meant no
harm. Dear madam, you’ll have seen the newspapers it
was murder they say but it wasn’t me that did it, not
really, because I would never do anything wicked like that
and I know as how he wouldn’t either. Albert, I mean. I’m
telling this badly, but you see we met last summer and was
going to be married only Bert hadn’t got his rights, he’d
been done out of them, swindled by this Mr. Fortescue
who’s dead. And Mr. Fortescue he just denied everything
and of course everybody believed him and not Bert because
he was rich and Bert was poor. But Bert had a friend who
works in a place where they make these new drugs and
there’s what they call a truth drug you’ve read about it
perhaps in the paper and it makes people speak the truth
whether they want to or not. Bert was going to see Mr. For-
tescue in his office on Nov. 5th and taking a lawyer with
him and I was to be sure to give him the drug at breakfast
that morning and then it would work just right for when
they came and he’d admit as all what Bert said was quite
true. Well, madam, I put it in the marmalade but now he’s
dead and I think as how it must have been too strong but it
wasn’t Bert’s fault because Bert would never do a thing
like that but I can’t tell the police because maybe they’d
think Bert did it on purpose which I know he didn’t. Oh,
madam, I don’t know what to do or what to say and the
police are here in the house and it’s awful and they ask you
questions and look at you so stern and I don’t know what
to do and I haven’t heard from Bert. Oh, madam, I don’t
like to ask it of you but if you could only come here and
help me they’d listen to you and you were always so kind to
me, and I didn’t mean anything wrong and Bert didn’t
either. If you could only help us. Yours respectfully,
Gladys Martin.
P. S.—I’m enclosing a snap of Bert and me. One of the boys
took it at the camp and give it me. Bert doesn’t know I’ve
got it—he hates being snapped. But you can see, madam,
what a nice boy he is.
Miss Marple, her lips pursed together, stared down at the photograph.
The pair pictured there were looking at each other. Miss Marple’s eyes
went from Gladys’s pathetic adoring face, the mouth slightly open, to the
other face—the dark handsome smiling face of Lance Fortescue.
The last words of the pathetic letter echoed in her mind:
You can see what a nice boy he is.
The tear rose in Miss Marple’s eyes. Succeeding pity, there came anger—
anger against a heartless killer5.
And then, displacing both these emotions, there came a surge of tri-
umph—the triumph some specialist might feel who has successfully recon-
structed an extinct animal from a fragment of jawbone and a couple of
teeth.

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1 noted 5n4zXc     
adj.著名的，知名的
参考例句：
  • The local hotel is noted for its good table.当地的那家酒店以餐食精美而著称。
  • Jim is noted for arriving late for work.吉姆上班迟到出了名。
2 mead BotzAK     
n.蜂蜜酒
参考例句：
  • He gave me a cup of mead.他给我倒了杯蜂蜜酒。
  • He drank some mead at supper.晚饭时他喝了一些蜂蜜酒。
3 blotted 06046c4f802cf2d785ce6e085eb5f0d7     
涂污( blot的过去式和过去分词 )； （用吸墨纸）吸干
参考例句：
  • She blotted water off the table with a towel. 她用毛巾擦干桌上的水。
  • The blizzard blotted out the sky and the land. 暴风雪铺天盖地而来。
4 scrawled ace4673c0afd4a6c301d0b51c37c7c86     
乱涂，潦草地写( scrawl的过去式和过去分词 )
参考例句：
  • I tried to read his directions, scrawled on a piece of paper. 我尽量弄明白他草草写在一片纸上的指示。
  • Tom scrawled on his slate, "Please take it -- I got more." 汤姆在他的写字板上写了几个字：“请你收下吧，我多得是哩。”
5 killer rpLziK     
n.杀人者，杀人犯，杀手，屠杀者
参考例句：
  • Heart attacks have become Britain's No.1 killer disease.心脏病已成为英国的头号致命疾病。
  • The bulk of the evidence points to him as her killer.大量证据证明是他杀死她的。

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