III

When Miss Marple came out of the hotel and joined Mrs. Bantry a fewminutes later, Hugo McLean and Adelaide Jefferson were walking downthe path to the sea together.

Seating herself, Miss Marple remarked:

“He seems very devoted.”

“He’s been devoted for years! One of those men.”

“I know. Like Major Bury. He hung round an Anglo-Indian widow forquite ten years. A joke among her friends! In the end she gave in—but un-fortunately ten days before they were to have been married she ran awaywith the chauffeur! Such a nice woman, too, and usually so well bal-anced.”

“People do do very odd things,” agreed Mrs. Bantry. “I wish you’d beenhere just now, Jane. Addie Jefferson was telling me all about herself—howher husband went through all his money but they never let Mr. Jeffersonknow. And then, this summer, things felt different to her—”

Miss Marple nodded.

“Yes. She rebelled, I suppose, against being made to live in the past?

After all, there’s a time for everything. You can’t sit in the house with theblinds down forever. I suppose Mrs. Jefferson just pulled them up andtook off her widow’s weeds, and her father-in-law, of course, didn’t like it.

Felt left out in the cold, though I don’t suppose for a minute he realizedwho put her up to it. Still, he certainly wouldn’t like it. And so, of course,like old Mr. Badger when his wife took up Spiritualism, he was just ripefor what happened. Any fairly nice-looking young girl who listened pret-tily would have done.”

“Do you think,” said Mrs. Bantry, “that that cousin, Josie, got her downhere deliberately—that it was a family plot?”

Miss Marple shook her head.

“No, I don’t think so at all. I don’t think Josie has the kind of mind thatcould foresee people’s reactions. She’s rather dense in that way. She’s gotone of those shrewd, limited, practical minds that never do foresee the fu-ture and are usually astonished by it.”

“It seems to have taken everyone by surprise,” said Mrs. Bantry. “Addie—and Mark Gaskell too, apparently.”

Miss Marple smiled.

“I dare say he had his own fish to fry. A bold fellow with a roving eye!

Not the man to go on being a sorrowing widower for years, no matter howfond he may have been of his wife. I should think they were both restlessunder old Mr. Jefferson’s yoke of perpetual remembrance.

“Only,” added Miss Marple cynically, “it’s easier for gentlemen, ofcourse.”