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THE BLOODSTAINED PAVEMENT
“It’s curious,” said Joyce Lemprière, “but I hardly like telling you my story.
It happened a long time ago—five years ago to be exact—but it’s sort of
haunted me ever since. The smiling, bright, top part of it—and the hidden
gruesomeness underneath. And the queer thing is that the sketch I painted
at the time has become tinged with the same atmosphere. When you look
at it first it is just a rough sketch of a little steep Cornish street with the
sunlight on it. But if you look long enough at it something sinister creeps
in. I have never sold it but I never look at it. It lives in the studio in a
corner with its face to the wall.
“The name of the place was Rathole. It is a queer little Cornish fishing
village, very picturesque—too picturesque perhaps. There is rather too
much of the atmosphere of ‘Ye Olde Cornish Tea House’ about it. It has
shops with bobbed-headed girls in smocks doing hand-illuminated mot-
toes on parchment. It is pretty and it is quaint, but it is very self- con-
sciously so.”
“Don’t I know,” said Raymond West, groaning. “The curse of the chara-
banc, I suppose. No matter how narrow the lanes leading down to them no
picturesque village is safe.”
Joyce nodded.
“They are narrow lanes that lead down to Rathole and very steep, like
the side of a house. Well, to get on with my story. I had come down to
Cornwall for a fortnight, to sketch. There is an old inn in Rathole, The Pol-
harwith Arms. It was supposed to be the only house left standing by the
Spaniards when they shelled the place in fifteen hundred and something.”
“Not shelled,” said Raymond West, frowning. “Do try to be historically
accurate, Joyce.”
“Well, at all events they landed guns somewhere along the coast and
they fired them and the houses fell down. Anyway that is not the point.
The inn was a wonderful old place with a kind of porch in front built on
four pillars. I got a very good pitch and was just settling down to work
when a car came creeping and twisting down the hill. Of course, it would
stop before the inn—just where it was most awkward for me. The people
got out—a man and a woman—I didn’t notice them particularly. She had a
kind of mauve linen dress on and a mauve hat.
“Presently the man came out again and to my great thankfulness drove
the car down to the quay and left it there. He strolled back past me to-
wards the inn. Just at that moment another beastly car came twisting
down, and a woman got out of it dressed in the brightest chintz frock I
have ever seen, scarlet poinsettias, I think they were, and she had on one
of those big native straw hats—Cuban, aren’t they?—in very bright scarlet.
“This woman didn’t stop in front of the inn but drove the car farther
down the street towards the other one. Then she got out and the man see-
ing her gave an astonished shout. ‘Carol,’ he cried, ‘in the name of all that
is wonderful. Fancy meeting you in this out-of-the-way spot. I haven’t seen
you for years. Hello, there’s Margery—my wife, you know. You must come
and meet her.’
“They went up the street towards the inn side by side, and I saw the
other woman had just come out of the door and was moving down to-
wards them. I had had just a glimpse of the woman called Carol as she
passed by me. Just enough to see a very white powdered chin and a flam-
ing scarlet mouth and I wondered—I just wondered—if Margery would be
so very pleased to meet her. I hadn’t seen Margery near to, but in the dis-
tance she looked dowdy and extra prim and proper.
“Well, of course, it was not any of my business but you get very queer
little glimpses of life sometimes, and you can’t help speculating about
them. From where they were standing I could just catch fragments of their
conversation that floated down to me. They were talking about bathing.
The husband, whose name seemed to be Denis, wanted to take a boat and
row round the coast. There was a famous cave well worth seeing, so he
said, about a mile along. Carol wanted to see the cave too but suggested
walking along the cliffs and seeing it from the land side. She said she
hated boats. In the end they fixed it that way. Carol was to go along the
cliff path and meet them at the cave, and Denis and Margery would take a
boat and row round.
“Hearing them talk about bathing made me want to bathe too. It was a
very hot morning and I wasn’t doing particularly good work. Also, I fan-
cied that the afternoon sunlight would be far more attractive in effect. So I
packed up my things and went off to a little beach that I knew of—it was
quite the opposite direction from the cave, and was rather a discovery of
mine. I had a ripping bathe there and I lunched off a tinned tongue and
two tomatoes, and I came back in the afternoon full of confidence and en-
thusiasm to get on with my sketch.
“The whole of Rathole seemed to be asleep. I had been right about the
afternoon sunlight, the shadows were far more telling. The Polhar with
Arms was the principal note of my sketch. A ray of sunlight came slanting
obliquely down and hit the ground in front of it and had rather a curious
effect. I gathered that the bathing party had returned safely, because two
bathing dresses, a scarlet one and a dark blue one, were hanging from the
balcony, drying in the sun.
“Something had gone a bit wrong with one corner of my sketch and I
bent over it for some moments doing something to put it right. When I
looked up again there was a figure leaning against one of the pillars of The
Polharwith Arms, who seemed to have appeared there by magic. He was
dressed in seafaring clothes and was, I suppose, a fisherman. But he had a
long dark beard, and if I had been looking for a model for a wicked Span-
ish captain I couldn’t have imagined anyone better. I got to work with fe-
verish haste before he should move away, though from his attitude he
looked as though he was pefectly prepared to prop up the pillars through
all eternity.
“He did move, however, but luckily not until I had got what I wanted. He
came over to me and he began to talk. Oh, how that man talked.
“‘Rathole,’ he said, ‘was a very interesting place.’
“I knew that already but although I said so that didn’t save me. I had the
whole history of the shelling—I mean the destroying—of the village, and
how the landlord of the Polharwith Arms was the last man to be killed.
Run through on his own threshold by a Spanish captain’s sword, and of
how his blood spurted out on the pavement and no one could wash out the
stain for a hundred years.
“It all fitted in very well with the languorous drowsy feeling of the after-
noon. The man’s voice was very suave and yet at the same time there was
an undercurrent in it of something rather frightening. He was very obse-
quious in his manner, yet I felt underneath he was cruel. He made me un-
derstand the Inquisition and the terrors of all the things the Spaniards did
better than I have ever done before.
“All the time he was talking to me I went on painting, and suddenly I
realized that in the excitement of listening to his story I had painted in
something that was not there. On that white square of pavement where
the sun fell before the door of The Polharwith Arms, I had painted in
bloodstains. It seemed extraordinary that the mind could play such tricks
with the hand, but as I looked over towards the inn again I got a second
shock. My hand had only painted what my eyes saw—drops of blood on
the white pavement.
“I stared for a minute or two. Then I shut my eyes, said to myself, ‘Don’t
be so stupid, there’s nothing there, really,’ then I opened them again, but
the bloodstains were still there.
“I suddenly felt I couldn’t stand it. I interrupted the fisherman’s flood of
language.
“‘Tell me,’ I said, ‘my eyesight is not very good. Are those bloodstains on
that pavement over there?’
“He looked at me indulgently and kindly.
“‘No bloodstains in these days, lady. What I am telling you about is
nearly five hundred years ago.’
“‘Yes,’ I said, ‘but now—on the pavement’—the words died away in my
throat. I knew—I knew that he wouldn’t see what I was seeing. I got up and
with shaking hands began to put my things together. As I did so the young
man who had come in the car that morning came out of the inn door. He
looked up and down the street perplexedly. On the balcony above his wife
came out and collected the bathing things. He walked down towards the
car but suddenly swerved and came across the road towards the fisher-
man.
“‘Tell me, my man,’ he said. ‘You don’t know whether the lady who came
in that second car there has got back yet?’
“‘Lady in a dress with flowers all over it? No, sir, I haven’t seen her. She
went along the cliff towards the cave this morning.’
“‘I know, I know. We all bathed there together, and then she left us to
walk home and I have not seen her since. It can’t have taken her all this
time. The cliffs round here are not dangerous, are they?’
“‘It depends, sir, on the way you go. The best way is to take a man what
knows the place with you.’
“He very clearly meant himself and was beginning to enlarge on the
theme, but the young man cut him short unceremoniously and ran back
towards the inn calling up to his wife on the balcony.
“‘I say, Margery, Carol hasn’t come back yet. Odd, isn’t it?’
“I didn’t hear Margery’s reply, but her husband went on. ‘Well, we can’t
wait any longer. We have got to push on to Penrithar. Are you ready? I
will turn the car.’
“He did as he had said, and presently the two of them drove off together.
Meanwhile I had deliberately been nerving myself to prove how ridicu-
lous my fancies were. When the car had gone I went over to the inn and
examined the pavement closely. Of course there were no bloodstains
there. No, all along it had been the result of my distorted imagination. Yet,
somehow, it seemed to make the thing more frightening. It was while I
was standing there that I heard the fisherman’s voice.
“He was looking at me curiously. ‘You thought you saw bloodstains here,
eh, lady?’
“I nodded.
“‘That is very curious, that is very curious. We have got a superstition
here, lady. If anyone sees those bloodstains—’
“He paused.
“‘Well?’ I said.
“He went on in his soft voice, Cornish in intonation, but unconsciously
smooth and well- bred in its pronunciation, and completely free from
Cornish turns of speech.
“‘They do say, lady, that if anyone sees those bloodstains that there will
be a death within twenty-four hours.’
“Creepy! It gave me a nasty feeling all down my spine.
“He went on persuasively. ‘There is a very interesting tablet in the
church, lady, about a death—’
“‘No thanks,’ I said decisively, and I turned sharply on my heel and
walked up the street towards the cottage where I was lodging. Just as I got
there I saw in the distance the woman called Carol coming along the cliff
path. She was hurrying. Against the grey of the rocks she looked like some
poisonous scarlet flower. Her hat was the colour of blood. . . .
“I shook myself. Really, I had blood on the brain.
“Later I heard the sound of her car. I wondered whether she too was go-
ing to Penrithar; but she took the road to the left in the opposite direction.
I watched the car crawl up the hill and disappear, and I breathed some-
how more easily. Rathole seemed its quiet sleepy self once more.”
“If that is all,” said Raymond West as Joyce came to a stop, “I will give
my verdict at once. Indigestion, spots before the eyes after meals.”
“It isn’t all,” said Joyce. “You have got to hear the sequel. I read it in the
paper two days later under the heading of ‘Sea Bathing Fatality.’ It told
how Mrs. Dacre, the wife of Captain Denis Dacre, was unfortunately
drowned at Landeer Cove, just a little farther along the coast. She and her
husband were staying at the time at the hotel there, and had declared
their intention of bathing, but a cold wind sprang up. Captain Dacre had
declared it was too cold, so he and some other people in the hotel had
gone off to the golf links nearby. Mrs. Dacre, however, had said it was not
too cold for her and she went off alone down to the cove. As she didn’t re-
turn her husband became alarmed, and in company with his friends went
down to the beach. They found her clothes lying beside a rock, but no
trace of the unfortunate lady. Her body was not found until nearly a week
later when it was washed ashore at a point some distance down the coast.
There was a bad blow on her head which had occurred before death, and
the theory was that she must have dived into the sea and hit her head on a
rock. As far as I could make out her death would have occurred just
twenty-four hours after the time I saw the bloodstains.”
“I protest,” said Sir Henry. “This is not a problem—this is a ghost story.
Miss Lemprière is evidently a medium.”
Mr. Petherick gave his usual cough.
“One point strikes me—” he said, “that blow on the head. We must not, I
think, exclude the possibility of foul play. But I do not see that we have
any data to go upon. Miss Lemprière’s hallucination, or vision, is interest-
ing certainly, but I do not see clearly the point on which she wishes us to
pronounce.”
“Indigestion and coincidence,” said Raymond, “and anyway you can’t be
sure that they were the same people. Besides, the curse, or whatever it
was, would only apply to the actual inhabitants of Rathole.”
“I feel,” said Sir Henry, “that the sinister seafaring man has something to
do with this tale. But I agree with Mr. Petherick, Miss Lemprière has given
us very little data.”
Joyce turned to Dr. Pender who smilingly shook his head.
“It is a most interesting story,” he said, “but I am afraid I agree with Sir
Henry and Mr. Petherick that there is very little data to go upon.”
Joyce then looked curiously at Miss Marple, who smiled back at her.
“I, too, think you are just a little unfair, Joyce dear,” she said. “Of course,
it is different for me. I mean, we, being women, appreciate the point about
clothes. I don’t think it is a fair problem to put to a man. It must have
meant a lot of rapid changing. What a wicked woman! And a still more
wicked man.”
Joyce stared at her.
“Aunt Jane,” she said. “Miss Marple, I mean, I believe—I do really be-
lieve you know the truth.”
“Well, dear,” said Miss Marple, “it is much easier for me sitting here
quietly than it was for you—and being an artist you are so susceptible to
atmosphere, aren’t you? Sitting here with one’s knitting, one just sees the
facts. Bloodstains dropped on the pavement from the bathing dress
hanging above, and being a red bathing dress, of course, the criminals
themselves did not realize it was bloodstained. Poor thing, poor young
thing!”
“Excuse me, Miss Marple,” said Sir Henry, “but you do know that I am
entirely in the dark still. You and Miss Lemprière seem to know what you
are talking about, but we men are still in utter darkness.”
“I will tell you the end of the story now,” said Joyce. “It was a year later.
I was at a little east coast seaside resort, and I was sketching, when sud-
denly I had that queer feeling one has of something having happened be-
fore. There were two people, a man and a woman, on the pavement in
front of me, and they were greeting a third person, a woman dressed in a
scarlet poinsettia chintz dress. ‘Carol, by all that is wonderful! Fancy meet-
ing you after all these years. You don’t know my wife? Joan, this is an old
friend of mine, Miss Harding.’
“I recognized the man at once. It was the same Denis I had seen at
Rathole. The wife was different—that is, she was a Joan instead of a Mar-
gery; but she was the same type, young and rather dowdy and very incon-
spicuous. I thought for a minute I was going mad. They began to talk of go-
ing bathing. I will tell you what I did. I marched straight then and there to
the police station. I thought they would probably think I was off my head,
but I didn’t care. And as it happened everything was quite all right. There
was a man from Scotland Yard there, and he had come down just about
this very thing. It seems—oh, it’s horrible to talk about—that the police
had got suspicions of Denis Dacre. That wasn’t his real name—he took dif-
ferent names on different occasions. He got to know girls, usually quiet in-
conspicuous girls without many relatives or friends, he married them and
insured their lives for large sums and then—oh, it’s horrible! The woman
called Carol was his real wife, and they always carried out the same plan.
That is really how they came to catch him. The insurance companies be-
came suspicious. He would come to some quiet seaside place with his new
wife, then the other woman would turn up and they would all go bathing
together. Then the wife would be murdered and Carol would put on her
clothes and go back in the boat with him. Then they would leave the place,
wherever it was, after inquiring for the supposed Carol and when they got
outside the village Carol would hastily change back into her own flamboy-
ant clothes and her vivid makeup and would go back there and drive off
in her own car. They would find out which way the current was flowing
and the supposed death would take place at the next bathing place along
the coast that way. Carol would play the part of the wife and would go
down to some lonely beach and would leave the wife’s clothes there by a
rock and depart in her flowery chintz dress to wait quietly until her hus-
band could rejoin her.
“I suppose when they killed poor Margery some of the blood must have
spurted over Carol’s bathing suit, and being a red one they didn’t notice it,
as Miss Marple says. But when they hung it over the balcony it dripped.
Ugh!” she gave a shiver. “I can see it still.”
“Of course,” said Sir Henry, “I remember very well now. Davis was the
man’s real name. It had quite slipped my memory that one of his many ali-
ases was Dacre. They were an extraordinarily cunning pair. It always
seemed so amazing to me that no one spotted the change of identity. I sup-
pose, as Miss Marple says, clothes are more easily identified than faces;
but it was a very clever scheme, for although we suspected Davis it was
not easy to bring the crime home to him as he always seemed to have an
unimpeachable alibi.”
“Aunt Jane,” said Raymond, looking at her curiously, “how do you do it?
You have lived such a peaceful life and yet nothing seems to surprise you.”
“I always find one thing very like another in this world,” said Miss
Marple. “There was Mrs. Green, you know, she buried five children—and
every one of them insured. Well, naturally, one began to get suspicious.”
She shook her head.
“There is a great deal of wickedness in village life. I hope you dear
young people will never realize how very wicked the world is.”
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