周二晚间俱乐部
时间：2026-02-04 03:22:40
（单词翻译:单击）
THE TUESDAY NIGHT CLUB
“Unsolved mysteries.”
Raymond West blew out a cloud of smoke and repeated the words with
a kind of deliberate self-conscious pleasure.
“Unsolved mysteries.”
He looked round him with satisfaction. The room was an old one with
broad black beams across the ceiling and it was furnished with good old
furniture that belonged to it. Hence Raymond West’s approving glance. By
profession he was a writer and he liked the atmosphere to be flawless. His
Aunt Jane’s house always pleased him as the right setting for her personal-
ity. He looked across the hearth to where she sat erect in the big grand-
father chair. Miss Marple wore a black brocade dress, very much pinched
in round the waist. Mechlin lace was arranged in a cascade down the front
of the bodice. She had on black lace mittens, and a black lace cap sur-
mounted the piled-up masses of her snowy hair. She was knitting—some-
thing white and soft and fleecy. Her faded blue eyes, benignant and
kindly, surveyed her nephew and her nephew’s guests with gentle pleas-
ure. They rested first on Raymond himself, self-consciously debonair, then
on Joyce Lemprière, the artist, with her close- cropped black head and
queer hazel-green eyes, then on that well-groomed man of the world, Sir
Henry Clithering. There were two other people in the room, Dr. Pender,
the elderly clergyman of the parish, and Mr. Petherick, the solicitor, a
dried-up little man with eyeglasses which he looked over and not through.
Miss Marple gave a brief moment of attention to all these people and re-
turned to her knitting with a gentle smile upon her lips.
Mr. Petherick gave the dry little cough with which he usually prefaced
his remarks.
“What is that you say, Raymond? Unsolved mysteries? Ha—and what
about them?”
“Nothing about them,” said Joyce Lemprière. “Raymond just likes the
sound of the words and of himself saying them.”
Raymond West threw her a glance of reproach at which she threw back
her head and laughed.
“He is a humbug, isn’t he, Miss Marple?” she demanded. “You know that,
I am sure.”
Miss Marple smiled gently at her but made no reply.
“Life itself is an unsolved mystery,” said the clergyman gravely.
Raymond sat up in his chair and flung away his cigarette with an im-
pulsive gesture.
“That’s not what I mean. I was not talking philosophy,” he said. “I was
thinking of actual bare prosaic facts, things that have happened and that
no one has ever explained.”
“I know just the sort of thing you mean, dear,” said Miss Marple. “For in-
stance Mrs. Carruthers had a very strange experience yesterday morning.
She bought two gills of picked shrimps at Elliot’s. She called at two other
shops and when she got home she found she had not got the shrimps with
her. She went back to the two shops she had visited but these shrimps had
completely disappeared. Now that seems to me very remarkable.”
“A very fishy story,” said Sir Henry Clithering gravely.
“There are, of course, all kinds of possible explanations,” said Miss
Marple, her cheeks growing slightly pinker with excitement. “For instance,
somebody else—”
“My dear Aunt,” said Raymond West with some amusement, “I didn’t
mean that sort of village incident. I was thinking of murders and disap-
pearances—the kind of thing that Sir Henry could tell us about by the
hour if he liked.”
“But I never talk shop,” said Sir Henry modestly. “No, I never talk shop.”
Sir Henry Clithering had been until lately Commissioner of Scotland
Yard.
“I suppose there are a lot of murders and things that never are solved by
the police,” said Joyce Lemprière.
“That is an admitted fact, I believe,” said Mr. Petherick.
“I wonder,” said Raymond West, “what class of brain really succeeds
best in unravelling a mystery? One always feels that the average police de-
tective must be hampered by lack of imagination.”
“That is the layman’s point of view,” said Sir Henry dryly.
“You really want a committee,” said Joyce, smiling. “For psychology and
imagination go to the writer—”
She made an ironical bow to Raymond but he remained serious.
“The art of writing gives one an insight into human nature,” he said
gravely. “One sees, perhaps, motives that the ordinary person would pass
by.”
“I know, dear,” said Miss Marple, “that your books are very clever. But
do you think that people are really so unpleasant as you make them out to
be?”
“My dear Aunt,” said Raymond gently, “keep your beliefs. Heaven forbid
that I should in any way shatter them.”
“I mean,” said Miss Marple, puckering her brow a little as she counted
the stitches in her knitting, “that so many people seem to me not to be
either bad or good, but simply, you know, very silly.”
Mr. Petherick gave his dry little cough again.
“Don’t you think, Raymond,” he said, “that you attach too much weight
to imagination? Imagination is a very dangerous thing, as we lawyers
know only too well. To be able to sift evidence impartially, to take the facts
and look at them as facts—that seems to me the only logical method of ar-
riving at the truth. I may add that in my experience it is the only one that
succeeds.”
“Bah!” cried Joyce, flinging back her black head indignantly. “I bet I
could beat you all at this game. I am not only a woman—and say what you
like, women have an intuition that is denied to men—I am an artist as
well. I see things that you don’t. And then, too, as an artist I have knocked
about among all sorts and conditions of people. I know life as darling Miss
Marple here cannot possibly know it.”
“I don’t know about that, dear,” said Miss Marple. “Very painful and dis-
tressing things happen in villages sometimes.”
“May I speak?” said Dr. Pender smiling. “It is the fashion nowadays to
decry the clergy, I know, but we hear things, we know a side of human
character which is a sealed book to the outside world.”
“Well,” said Joyce, “it seems to me we are a pretty representative gather-
ing. How would it be if we formed a Club? What is today? Tuesday? We
will call it The Tuesday Night Club. It is to meet every week, and each
member in turn has to propound a problem. Some mystery of which they
have personal knowledge, and to which, of course, they know the answer.
Let me see, how many are we? One, two, three, four, five. We ought really
to be six.”
“You have forgotten me, dear,” said Miss Marple, smiling brightly.
Joyce was slightly taken aback, but she concealed the fact quickly.
“That would be lovely, Miss Marple,” she said. “I didn’t think you would
care to play.”
“I think it would be very interesting,” said Miss Marple, “especially with
so many clever gentlemen present. I am afraid I am not clever myself, but
living all these years in St. Mary Mead does give one an insight into hu-
man nature.”
“I am sure your cooperation will be very valuable,” said Sir Henry, cour-
teously.
“Who is going to start?” said Joyce.
“I think there is no doubt as to that,” said Dr. Pender, “when we have the
great good fortune to have such a distinguished man as Sir Henry staying
with us—”
He left his sentence unfinished, making a courtly bow in the direction of
Sir Henry.
The latter was silent for a minute or two. At last he sighed and recrossed
his legs and began:
“It is a little difficult for me to select just the kind of thing you want, but
I think, as it happens, I know of an instance which fits these conditions
very aptly. You may have seen some mention of the case in the papers of a
year ago. It was laid aside at the time as an unsolved mystery, but, as it
happens, the solution came into my hands not very many days ago.
“The facts are very simple. Three people sat down to a supper consist-
ing, amongst other things, of tinned lobster. Later in the night, all three
were taken ill, and a doctor was hastily summoned. Two of the people re-
covered, the third one died.”
“Ah!” said Raymond approvingly.
“As I say, the facts as such were very simple. Death was considered to be
due to ptomaine poisoning, a certificate was given to that effect, and the
victim was duly buried. But things did not rest at that.”
Miss Marple nodded her head.
“There was talk, I suppose,” she said, “there usually is.”
“And now I must describe the actors in this little drama. I will call the
husband and wife Mr. and Mrs. Jones, and the wife’s companion Miss
Clark. Mr. Jones was a traveller for a firm of manufacturing chemists. He
was a good-looking man in a kind of coarse, florid way, aged about fifty.
His wife was a rather commonplace woman, of about forty-five. The com-
panion, Miss Clark, was a woman of sixty, a stout cheery woman with a
beaming rubicund face. None of them, you might say, very interesting.
“Now the beginning of the troubles arose in a very curious way. Mr.
Jones had been staying the previous night at a small commercial hotel in
Birmingham. It happened that the blotting paper in the blotting book had
been put in fresh that day, and the chambermaid, having apparently noth-
ing better to do, amused herself by studying the blotter in the mirror just
after Mr. Jones had been writing a letter there. A few days later there was
a report in the papers of the death of Mrs. Jones as the result of eating
tinned lobster, and the chambermaid then imparted to her fellow servants
the words that she had deciphered on the blotting pad. They were as fol-
lows: Entirely dependent on my wife . . . when she is dead I will . . . hundreds
and thousands. . . .
“You may remember that there had recently been a case of a wife being
poisoned by her husband. It needed very little to fire the imagination of
these maids. Mr. Jones had planned to do away with his wife and inherit
hundreds of thousands of pounds! As it happened one of the maids had re-
lations living in the small market town where the Joneses resided. She
wrote to them, and they in return wrote to her. Mr. Jones, it seemed, had
been very attentive to the local doctor’s daughter, a good-looking young
woman of thirty-three. Scandal began to hum. The Home Secretary was
petitioned. Numerous anonymous letters poured into Scotland Yard all ac-
cusing Mr. Jones of having murdered his wife. Now I may say that not for
one moment did we think there was anything in it except idle village talk
and gossip. Nevertheless, to quiet public opinion an exhumation order
was granted. It was one of these cases of popular superstition based on
nothing solid whatever, which proved to be so surprisingly justified. As a
result of the autopsy sufficient arsenic was found to make it quite clear
that the deceased lady had died of arsenical poisoning. It was for Scotland
Yard working with the local authorities to prove how that arsenic had
been administered, and by whom.”
“Ah!” said Joyce. “I like this. This is the real stuff.”
“Suspicion naturally fell on the husband. He benefited by his wife’s
death. Not to the extent of the hundreds of thousands romantically ima-
gined by the hotel chambermaid, but to the very solid amount of £8000.
He had no money of his own apart from what he earned, and he was a
man of somewhat extravagant habits with a partiality for the society of
women. We investigated as delicately as possible the rumour of his attach-
ment to the doctor’s daughter; but while it seemed clear that there had
been a strong friendship between them at one time, there had been a most
abrupt break two months previously, and they did not appear to have
seen each other since. The doctor himself, an elderly man of a straightfor-
ward and unsuspicious type, was dumbfounded at the result of the
autopsy. He had been called in about midnight to find all three people suf-
fering. He had realized immediately the serious condition of Mrs. Jones,
and had sent back to his dispensary for some opium pills, to allay the pain.
In spite of all his efforts, however, she succumbed, but not for a moment
did he suspect that anything was amiss. He was convinced that her death
was due to a form of botulism. Supper that night had consisted of tinned
lobster and salad, trifle and bread and cheese. Unfortunately none of the
lobster remained—it had all been eaten and the tin thrown away. He had
interrogated the young maid, Gladys Linch. She was terribly upset, very
tearful and agitated, and he found it hard to get her to keep to the point,
but she declared again and again that the tin had not been distended in
any way and that the lobster had appeared to her in a perfectly good con-
dition.
“Such were the facts we had to go upon. If Jones had feloniously admin-
istered arsenic to his wife, it seemed clear that it could not have been done
in any of the things eaten at supper, as all three persons had partaken of
the meal. Also—another point—Jones himself had returned from Birming-
ham just as supper was being brought in to table, so that he would have
had no opportunity of doctoring any of the food beforehand.”
“What about the companion?” asked Joyce—“the stout woman with the
good-humoured face.”
Sir Henry nodded.
“We did not neglect Miss Clark, I can assure you. But it seemed doubtful
what motive she could have had for the crime. Mrs. Jones left her no leg-
acy of any kind and the net result of her employer’s death was that she
had to seek for another situation.”
“That seems to leave her out of it,” said Joyce thoughtfully.
“Now one of my inspectors soon discovered a significant fact,” went on
Sir Henry. “After supper on that evening Mr. Jones had gone down to the
kitchen and had demanded a bowl of cornflour for his wife who had com-
plained of not feeling well. He had waited in the kitchen until Gladys
Linch prepared it, and then carried it up to his wife’s room himself. That, I
admit, seemed to clinch the case.”
The lawyer nodded.
“Motive,” he said, ticking the points off on his fingers. “Opportunity. As a
traveller for a firm of druggists, easy access to the poison.”
“And a man of weak moral fibre,” said the clergyman.
Raymond West was staring at Sir Henry.
“There is a catch in this somewhere,” he said. “Why did you not arrest
him?”
Sir Henry smiled rather wryly.
“That is the unfortunate part of the case. So far all had gone swim-
mingly, but now we come to the snags. Jones was not arrested because on
interrogating Miss Clark she told us that the whole of the bowl of corn-
flour was drunk not by Mrs. Jones but by her.
“Yes, it seems that she went to Mrs. Jones’s room as was her custom.
Mrs. Jones was sitting up in bed and the bowl of cornflour was beside her.
“‘I am not feeling a bit well, Milly,’ she said. ‘Serves me right, I suppose,
for touching lobster at night. I asked Albert to get me a bowl of cornflour,
but now that I have got it I don’t seem to fancy it.’
“‘A pity,’ commented Miss Clark —‘it is nicely made too, no lumps.
Gladys is really quite a nice cook. Very few girls nowadays seem to be able
to make a bowl of cornflour nicely. I declare I quite fancy it myself, I am
that hungry.’
“‘I should think you were with your foolish ways,’ said Mrs. Jones.
“I must explain,” broke off Sir Henry, “that Miss Clark, alarmed at her
increasing stoutness, was doing a course of what is popularly known as
‘banting.’
“‘It is not good for you, Milly, it really isn’t,’ urged Mrs. Jones. ‘If the
Lord made you stout he meant you to be stout. You drink up that bowl of
cornflour. It will do you all the good in the world.’
“And straight away Miss Clark set to and did in actual fact finish the
bowl. So, you see, that knocked our case against the husband to pieces.
Asked for an explanation of the words on the blotting book Jones gave one
readily enough. The letter, he explained, was in answer to one written
from his brother in Australia who had applied to him for money. He had
written, pointing out that he was entirely dependent on his wife. When his
wife was dead he would have control of money and would assist his
brother if possible. He regretted his inability to help but pointed out that
there were hundreds and thousands of people in the world in the same
unfortunate plight.”
“And so the case fell to pieces?” said Dr. Pender.
“And so the case fell to pieces,” said Sir Henry gravely. “We could not
take the risk of arresting Jones with nothing to go upon.”
There was a silence and then Joyce said, “And that is all, is it?”
“That is the case as it has stood for the last year. The true solution is now
in the hands of Scotland Yard, and in two or three days’ time you will
probably read of it in the newspapers.”
“The true solution,” said Joyce thoughtfully. “I wonder. Let’s all think for
five minutes and then speak.”
Raymond West nodded and noted the time on his watch. When the five
minutes were up he looked over at Dr. Pender.
“Will you speak first?” he said.
The old man shook his head. “I confess,” he said, “that I am utterly
baffled. I can but think that the husband in some way must be the guilty
party, but how he did it I cannot imagine. I can only suggest that he must
have given her the poison in some way that has not yet been discovered,
although how in that case it should have come to light after all this time I
cannot imagine.”
“Joyce?”
“The companion!” said Joyce decidedly. “The companion every time!
How do we know what motive she may have had? Just because she was
old and stout and ugly it doesn’t follow that she wasn’t in love with Jones
herself. She may have hated the wife for some other reason. Think of be-
ing a companion—always having to be pleasant and agree and stifle your-
self and bottle yourself up. One day she couldn’t bear it any longer and
then she killed her. She probably put the arsenic in the bowl of cornflour
and all that story about eating it herself is a lie.”
“Mr. Petherick?”
The lawyer joined the tips of his fingers together professionally. “I
should hardly like to say. On the facts I should hardly like to say.”
“But you have got to, Mr. Petherick,” said Joyce. “You can’t reserve
judgement and say ‘without prejudice,’ and be legal. You have got to play
the game.”
“On the facts,” said Mr. Petherick, “there seems nothing to be said. It is
my private opinion, having seen, alas, too many cases of this kind, that the
husband was guilty. The only explanation that will cover the facts seems
to be that Miss Clark for some reason or other deliberately sheltered him.
There may have been some financial arrangement made between them.
He might realize that he would be suspected, and she, seeing only a future
of poverty before her, may have agreed to tell the story of drinking the
cornflour in return for a substantial sum to be paid to her privately. If that
was the case it was of course most irregular. Most irregular indeed.”
“I disagree with you all,” said Raymond. “You have forgotten the one im-
portant factor in the case. The doctor’s daughter. I will give you my reading
of the case. The tinned lobster was bad. It accounted for the poisoning
symptoms. The doctor was sent for. He finds Mrs. Jones, who has eaten
more lobster than the others, in great pain, and he sends, as you told us,
for some opium pills. He does not go himself, he sends. Who will give the
messenger the opium pills? Clearly his daughter. Very likely she dispenses
his medicines for him. She is in love with Jones and at this moment all the
worst instincts in her nature rise and she realizes that the means to pro-
cure his freedom are in her hands. The pills she sends contain pure white
arsenic. That is my solution.”
“And now, Sir Henry, tell us,” said Joyce eagerly.
“One moment,” said Sir Henry. “Miss Marple has not yet spoken.”
Miss Marple was shaking her head sadly.
“Dear, dear,” she said. “I have dropped another stitch. I have been so in-
terested in the story. A sad case, a very sad case. It reminds me of old Mr.
Hargraves who lived up at the Mount. His wife never had the least suspi-
cion—until he died, leaving all his money to a woman he had been living
with and by whom he had five children. She had at one time been their
housemaid. Such a nice girl, Mrs. Hargraves always said—thoroughly to
be relied upon to turn the mattresses every day — except Fridays, of
course. And there was old Hargraves keeping this woman in a house in
the neighbouring town and continuing to be a Churchwarden and to hand
round the plate every Sunday.”
“My dear Aunt Jane,” said Raymond with some impatience. “What has
dead and gone Hargraves got to do with the case?”
“This story made me think of him at once,” said Miss Marple. “The facts
are so very alike, aren’t they? I suppose the poor girl has confessed now
and that is how you know, Sir Henry.”
“What girl?” said Raymond. “My dear Aunt, what are you talking
about?”
“That poor girl, Gladys Linch, of course—the one who was so terribly
agitated when the doctor spoke to her—and well she might be, poor thing.
I hope that wicked Jones is hanged, I am sure, making that poor girl a
murderess. I suppose they will hang her too, poor thing.”
“I think, Miss Marple, that you are under a slight misapprehension,”
began Mr. Petherick.
But Miss Marple shook her head obstinately and looked across at Sir
Henry.
“I am right, am I not? It seems so clear to me. The hundreds and thou-
sands—and the trifle—I mean, one cannot miss it.”
“What about the trifle and the hundreds and thousands?” cried Ray-
mond.
His aunt turned to him.
“Cooks nearly always put hundreds and thousands on trifle, dear,” she
said. “Those little pink and white sugar things. Of course when I heard
that they had trifle for supper and that the husband had been writing to
someone about hundreds and thousands, I naturally connected the two
things together. That is where the arsenic was—in the hundreds and thou-
sands. He left it with the girl and told her to put it on the trifle.”
“But that is impossible,” said Joyce quickly. “They all ate the trifle.”
“Oh, no,” said Miss Marple. “The companion was banting, you remem-
ber. You never eat anything like trifle if you are banting; and I expect
Jones just scraped the hundreds and thousands off his share and left them
at the side of his plate. It was a clever idea, but a very wicked one.”
The eyes of the others were all fixed upon Sir Henry.
“It is a very curious thing,” he said slowly, “but Miss Marple happens to
have hit upon the truth. Jones had got Gladys Linch into trouble, as the
saying goes. She was nearly desperate. He wanted his wife out of the way
and promised to marry Gladys when his wife was dead. He doctored the
hundreds and thousands and gave them to her with instructions how to
use them. Gladys Linch died a week ago. Her child died at birth and Jones
had deserted her for another woman. When she was dying she confessed
the truth.”
There was a few moments’ silence and then Raymond said:
“Well, Aunt Jane, this is one up to you. I can’t think how on earth you
managed to hit upon the truth. I should never have thought of the little
maid in the kitchen being connected with the case.”
“No, dear,” said Miss Marple, “but you don’t know as much of life as I
do. A man of that Jones’s type—coarse and jovial. As soon as I heard there
was a pretty young girl in the house I felt sure that he would not have left
her alone. It is all very distressing and painful, and not a very nice thing to
talk about. I can’t tell you the shock it was to Mrs. Hargraves, and a nine
days’ wonder in the village.”
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