A Caribbean Mystery

CHAPTER 5 Miss Marple Makes a Decision

The funeral service was said over the body of the late Major Palgrave on the following day. Miss Marple attended in company with Miss Prescott. The Canon read the service—after that life went on as usual.

Major Palgrave’s death was already only an incident, a slightly unpleasant incident, but one that was soon forgotten. Life here was sunshine, sea, and social pleasures. A grim visitor had interrupted these activities, casting a momentary shadow, but the shadow was now gone. After all, nobody had known the deceased very well. He had been rather a garrulous elderly man of the club-bore type, always telling you personal reminiscences that you had no particular desire to hear. He had had little to anchor himself to any particular part of the world. His wife had died many years ago. He had had a lonely life and a lonely death. But it had been the kind of loneliness that spends itself in living amongst people, and in passing the time that way not unpleasantly. Major Palgrave might have been a lonely man, he had also been quite a cheerful one. He had enjoyed himself in his own particular way. And now he was dead, buried, and nobody cared very much, and in another week’s time nobody would even remember him or spare him a passing thought.

The only person who could possibly be said to miss him was Miss Marple. Not indeed out of any personal affection, but he represented a kind of life that she knew. As one grew older, so she reflected to herself, one got more and more into the habit of listening; listening possibly without any great interest, but there had been between her and the Major the gentle give and take of two old people. It had had a cheerful, human quality. She did not actually mourn Major Palgrave but she missed him.

On the afternoon of the funeral, as she was sitting knitting in her favourite spot, Dr Graham came and joined her. She put her needles down and greeted him. He said at once, rather apologetically:

‘I am afraid I have rather disappointing news, Miss Marple.’

‘Indeed? About my—’

‘Yes. We haven’t found that precious snapshot of yours. I’m afraid that will be a disappointment to you.’

‘Yes. Yes it is. But of course it does not really matter. It was a sentimentality. I do realize that now. It wasn’t in Major Palgrave’s wallet?’

‘No. Nor anywhere else among his things. There were a few letters and newspaper clippings and odds and ends, and a few old photographs, but no sign of a snapshot such as you mentioned.’

‘Oh dear,’ said Miss Marple. ‘Well, it can’t be helped … Thank you very much, Dr Graham, for the trouble you’ve taken.’

‘Oh it was no trouble, indeed. But I know quite well from my own experience how much family trifles mean to one, especially as one is getting older.’

The old lady was really taking it very well, he thought. Major Palgrave, he presumed, had probably come across the snapshot when taking something out of his wallet, and not even realizing how it had come there, had torn it up as something of no importance. But of course it was of great importance to this old lady. Still, she seemed quite cheerful and philosophical about it.

Internally, however, Miss Marple was far from being either cheerful or philosophical. She wanted a little time in which to think things out, but she was also determined to use her present opportunities to the fullest effect.

She engaged Dr Graham in conversation with an eagerness which she did not attempt to conceal. That kindly man, putting down her flow of talk to the natural loneliness of an old lady, exerted himself to divert her mind from the loss of the snapshot, by conversing easily and pleasantly about life in St Honoré, and the various interesting places perhaps Miss Marple might like to visit. He hardly knew himself how the conversation drifted back to Major Palgrave’s decease.

‘It seems so sad,’ said Miss Marple. ‘To think of anyone dying like this away from home. Though I gather, from what he himself told me, that he had no immediate family. It seems he lived by himself in London.’

‘He travelled a fair amount, I believe,’ said Dr Graham. ‘At any rate in the winters. He didn’t care for our English winters. Can’t say I blame him.’

‘No, indeed,’ said Miss Marple. ‘And perhaps he had some special reason like a weakness of the lungs or something which made it necessary for him to winter abroad?’

‘Oh no, I don’t think so.’

‘He had high blood pressure, I believe. So sad nowadays. One hears so much of it.’

‘He spoke about it to you, did he?’

‘Oh no. No, he never mentioned it. It was somebody else who told me.’

‘Ah, really.’

‘I suppose,’ went on Miss Marple, ‘that death was to be expected under those circumstances.’

‘Not necessarily,’ said Dr Graham. ‘There are methods of controlling blood pressure nowadays.’

‘His death seemed very sudden—but I suppose you weren’t surprised.’

‘Well I wasn’t particularly surprised in a man of that age. But I certainly didn’t expect it. Frankly, he always seemed to me in very good form, but I hadn’t ever attended him professionally. I’d never taken his blood pressure or anything like that.’

‘Does one know—I mean, does a doctor know—when a man has high blood pressure just by looking at him?’ Miss Marple inquired with a kind of dewy innocence.

‘Not just by looking,’ said the doctor, smiling. ‘One has to do a bit of testing.’

‘Oh I see. That dreadful thing when you put a rubber band round somebody’s arm and blow it up—I dislike it so much. But my doctor said that my blood pressure was really very good for my age.’

‘Well, that’s good hearing,’ said Dr Graham.

‘Of course, the Major was rather fond of Planters Punch,’ said Miss Marple thoughtfully.

‘Yes. Not the best thing with blood pressure—alcohol.’

‘One takes tablets, doesn’t one, or so I have heard?’

‘Yes. There are several on the market. There was a bottle of one of them in his room—Serenite.’

‘How wonderful science is nowadays,’ said Miss Marple. ‘Doctors can do so much, can’t they?’

‘We all have one great competitor,’ said Dr Graham. ‘Nature, you know. And some of the good old-fashioned home remedies come back from time to time.’

‘Like putting cobwebs on a cut?’ said Miss Marple. ‘We always used to do that when I was a child.’

‘Very sensible,’ said Dr Graham.

‘And a linseed poultice on the chest and rubbing in camphorated oil for a bad cough.’

‘I see you know it all!’ said Dr Graham laughing. He got up. ‘How’s the knee? Not been too troublesome?’

‘No, it seems much, much better.’

‘Well, we won’t say whether that’s Nature or my pills,’ said Dr Graham. ‘Sorry I couldn’t have been of more help to you.’

‘But you have been most kind—I am really ashamed of taking up your time—Did you say that there were no photographs in the Major’s wallet?’

‘Oh yes—a very old one of the Major himself as quite a young man on a polo pony—and one of a dead tiger—He was standing with his foot on it. Snaps of that sort—memories of his younger days—But I looked very carefully, I assure you, and the one you describe of your nephew was definitely not there—’

‘Oh I’m sure you looked carefully—I didn’t mean that—I was just interested—We all tend to keep such very odd things—’

‘Treasures from the past,’ said the doctor smiling.

He said goodbye and departed.

Miss Marple remained looking thoughtfully at the palm trees and the sea. She did not pick up her knitting again for some minutes. She had a fact now. She had to think about that fact and what it meant. The snapshot that the Major had brought out of his wallet and replaced so hurriedly was not there after he died. It was not the sort of thing the Major would throw away. He had replaced it in his wallet and it ought to have been in his wallet after his death. Money might have been stolen, but no one would want to steal a snapshot. Unless, that is, they had a special reason for so doing …

Miss Marple’s face was grave. She had to take a decision. Was she, or was she not, going to allow Major Palgrave to remain quietly in his grave? Might it not be better to do just that? She quoted under her breath. ‘Duncan is dead. After Life’s fitful fever he sleeps well!’ Nothing could hurt Major Palgrave now. He had gone where danger could not touch him. Was it just a coincidence that he should have died on that particular night? Or was it just possibly not a coincidence? Doctors accepted the deaths of elderly men so easily. Especially since in his room there had been a bottle of the tablets that people with high blood pressure had to take every day of their lives. But if someone had taken the snapshot from the Major’s wallet, that same person could have put that bottle of tablets in the Major’s room. She herself never remembered seeing the Major take tablets; he had never spoken about his blood pressure to her. The only thing he had ever said about his health was the admission—‘Not as young as I was.’ He had been occasionally a little short of breath, a trifle asthmatic, nothing else. But someone had mentioned that Major Palgrave had high blood pressure—Molly? Miss Prescott? She couldn’t remember.

Miss Marple sighed, then admonished herself in words, though she did not speak those words aloud.

‘Now, Jane, what are you suggesting or thinking? Are you, perhaps, just making the whole thing up? Have you really got anything to build on?’

She went over, step by step, as nearly as she could, the conversation between herself and the Major on the subject of murder and murderers.

‘Oh dear,’ said Miss Marple. ‘Even if—really, I don’t see how I can do anything about it—’

But she knew that she meant to try.