Diana Glass
The Help
‘It really all comes down,’ Miss Marple says, ‘to hair and dogs.’
‘Hair and … dogs?’ Mrs Bantry repeats, faintly.
‘Oh, and nuns!’ says Miss Marple, quite cheerfully. ‘Hair, dogs and nuns. Some clever – and very wicked – planning. And several rather foolish mistakes.’
‘But Catherine Narracott and Sylvia Sinclair hated one another!’
Miss Marple nods again. ‘Yes. We have all seen that. Haven’t we? The martini thrown in the restaurant, the disdain. In fact, I wonder if we have seen it a little too clearly. If the performance was not a little too convincing, a little too perfect.
‘The scene we all witnessed in the restaurant … it seemed to me not to fit. Particularly for someone of Catherine Narracott’s sort of upbringing.
The English upper classes, in my experience, employ similar tactics to the breeding of young women as to horses.
I am not saying that they are one and the same thing.
But there are certain aspects of one’s upbringing – and as a late-Victorian I do not say this lightly – that are very difficult to overcome, even with a great effort of will.
‘Think of Catherine Narracott, a young woman educated and bred at Cheltenham Ladies’ College and finishing school.
“I would never normally make such a scene,” she said.
And that is precisely the point … she never would.
Her breeding and education would absolutely prevent it, even under the strongest of provocations.
For an Englishwoman from a certain level of society, brought up in a certain way, the breeding would always be the stronger: just as certain show jumpers are so well bred that they will injure themselves fatally attempting a jump that is too big, rather than shying away from it.
It wouldn’t even matter how much wine she had drunk which, by the way, was probably not nearly so much as she made out, because she was too coherent for that.
Certainly not enough, anyway, to cause her to take leave of her senses.
No … only enough to give her the courage to do the thing she knew she had to do: the thing that was essential in establishing an animus between the two women for all to see.
‘Then there was the little conversation you overheard in the women’s bathroom, Diana, afterwards.
Sylvia Sinclair congratulating Catherine Narracott on her “show”.
Of course, one might assume that all of this was laced with sarcasm but actually it sounds as though there was no display of hostility until after – oh, excuse me for saying this’ ? Miss Marple looks suddenly overcome by Victorian modesty – ‘until you flushed the lavatory and they knew they were not alone together.’
Mrs Bantry’s eyes widen. ‘But Jane. My goodness. Do you mean …’
‘I mean that the whole display in the dining room was to demonstrate ill will between the women and in doing so conceal something other than hate. Perhaps the opposite of hate. But at the very least a connection between them. It is so simple and rather clever, in a way. Because of course no one would question the validity of an alibi that had been given by a near-stranger, but especially not a stranger with an enmity towards the other.’
‘The alibis are one thing,’ I say. ‘But for the first murder neither of the two women were there. I didn’t see them in Reception and by all accounts they were both in the spa when Narracott’s flask was tampered with. They were seen by others!’
‘Yes,’ Mrs Bantry says. ‘Sylvia was seen on her way to the spa – and I saw both of them inside the spa with my own eyes!’
Miss Marple nods, agreeably. ‘You saw Catherine Narracott, Dolly, I have no doubt of that.’
‘And Sylvia Sinclair!’
‘But did you really, my dear?’
‘Well, I saw her in the hammam …’
‘Through the steam?’ Miss Marple asks.
‘Yes. I suppose not very clearly. Mainly the hair.’
Miss Marple says nothing, her expression quite serene, letting Mrs Bantry’s comment sit for a moment.
‘Oh, I see,’ Mrs Bantry says. ‘You mean that the hair might have been a wig …’
Miss Marple nods. ‘The power of simple suggestion and the steam, obscuring everything else. That was something else that didn’t fit for me.
The hair. I kept thinking of Mr Geffin and the barber.
Do you remember, Dolly? The business with the Turkish barber?
’ Mrs Bantry looks rather put out to admit that she does not.
‘Well,’ Miss Marple says, ‘you remember my little maid, Gladys? Her cousin was the daily for the Geffins. George Geffin claimed one day that he had spent the afternoon at the barber, in London. He was indeed clean shaven, when Mrs Geffin got home, so she didn’t think anything of it until she saw his ears. ’
‘His ears?’ Mrs Bantry asks.
‘Yes! At the Turkish barber’s they always use a match to burn the …
’ Miss Marple’s mouth pinches a little in distaste, ‘the hairs inside. So Mr Geffin had remembered that he needed to give himself a wet shave, for the story to hold. But it is very difficult and I imagine extremely unpleasant to burn one’s own ear hair.
Men are so silly in thinking that we women are going to be blind to such details.
I think it was indeed one of the things Mrs Geffin most enjoyed about her husband’s trips to the barber’s, even more than his smooth jaw.
So she saw through the whole thing straight away.
At first there was some accusation of an …
indiscretion. In fact he had been at the horses, which may have been worse: the household budget, you know.
So there you have it,’ she says, rather triumphantly, as though this explains everything.
‘But Jane,’ Mrs Bantry says, with the faintest note of exasperation to her tone. ‘I know you do like your … comparisons. But really, what on earth can all this have to do with Mr Geffin’s ears?’
‘Well,’ says Miss Marple pleasantly, ‘Sylvia Sinclair claimed that she was in the hammam the whole morning. And yet she appeared at her interview with that beautifully set style; the same style precisely that she had had before the murder. If she really had entered the hammam the steam would have done for it completely. I feel very silly for not seeing that sooner, because it should have told me that she simply could not have been there, just as clearly as Mrs Geffin knew her husband had not been to the Turkish barber’s. ’
I say: ‘But what about all the others who saw her leaving the hotel for the spa, with her dog in tow?’
‘Ah,’ Miss Marple says, ‘there was something you said on the first day, I think, Dolly: “she is like an icon.” About her hair, her dark glasses, her coat …
all of them marking her out as clearly as a king might be marked out by his crown.
It made me think how one might be able to manipulate impressions, using those simple elements, the signifiers that made up the icon.
If one saw them, one might not look too hard to see beyond them …
would simply accept the icon for what it seemed.
I do not think anyone saw the actress that morning at close quarters.
‘The hair, the sunglasses, the coat, the dog: they would all make a very effective disguise. No one would look more closely – why should they? Incidentally, I thought it odd, when Bruno Crane charged into Catherine Narracott’s bedroom, that instead of standing in front of the chest of drawers, with her underwear exposed for all to see, she chose to stand in front of the wardrobe.
A girl of her upbringing, not rushing to conceal her unmentionables!
Did you, too, glimpse the white fur, the winter ermine, among the others in the wardrobe?
When did you see Catherine Narracott wear white on any other occasion?
This was a woman with a faultless knowledge of what suited her and she did not wear white, knowing it would wash out one with her colouring.
’ For a moment she goes very still; as though she has just thought of something else.
‘Perhaps, now I come to think of it, Bruno Crane saw the white fur too, and was led to try and blackmail her …
‘But back to that morning in the spa. We come to the one truly face-to-face interaction Sylvia Sinclair had to have: with the spa’s receptionist. The only person who presented a real challenge – by which I mean the only person who would see the actress at a shorter distance before she entered the changing room and became, I am sure, Catherine Narracott once more – was that woman.
But then the dog jumped up and frightened her to death!
How much would any of us notice if we had a huge animal leaping up at us and barking? Which brings me on to the dog …’
‘The dog!’ Mrs Bantry explodes. ‘Jane, you aren’t going to tell us the poor animal had anything to do with it?’
‘Only in the sense of what it didn’t do, dear.
Another rather silly mistake. The evening when Catherine Narracott threw the glass of martini in Sylvia Sinclair’s face.
The creature was on a leash but to judge by the rest of its behaviour it should have leapt up at her …
especially in such circumstances. A dog would view something like that as an attack on its mistress.
It certainly behaved far more aggressively with everyone else – even members of staff who were simply asking Sylvia Sinclair a question.
You saw how it was in the hallway just now!
I hope that poor man recovers. But with Catherine Narracott …
nothing. I did not think much of it at the time because I don’t have all that much experience with dogs.
But later, talking to that woman in the spa and then observing how it was to others, it occurred to me that there was something odd.
That night in the restaurant the dog’s reaction – or lack thereof – showed most clearly that it knew Catherine Narracott.
A great mistake, really, though again they got away with it at the time because the scene itself caused such a commotion. ’
‘But then how did Sylvia kill him?’ I ask. ‘If you’re saying it was Catherine Narracott in the spa the entire time?’
‘Ah,’ Miss Marple says. ‘Well. There was a lot of fuss made about the maid who no one recognised, poor thing, and the fact that she was carrying laundry at that time of the morning. Well of course that has all been put to bed. But what about a nun? A much better costume than a maid, really. With her famous platinum hair covered, a face free of all make-up and her figure swamped in fabric, who would recognise her? What a clever way of hiding in plain sight! Nuns are like the elderly: their individuality disappears to the outside world. I would bet many of the guests here would be hard pressed to distinguish Dolly and I, though I am a little taller.’
‘And I a good deal broader!’ Mrs Bantry says.
‘With nuns, no one really sees the person,’ Miss Marple says.
‘They see another kind of icon, if you like. Actually, I say a nun, but I wonder if at other times there weren’t two of them.
The pair we saw on that first day, with their sunglasses on, on the terrace, chatting away when Anthony Narracott was up on the mountain … I think that was no coincidence.’
‘You don’t really mean that they were sitting there in plain sight?’ Mrs Bantry exclaims.
‘I can’t be sure,’ says Miss Marple. ‘But really, what an ingenious way to meet up and discuss any plans that might need to be gone through. But luckily, for us at least, they made another mistake here. On the morning of Anthony Narracott’s murder they forgot – or more likely didn’t know – about Terce.
We learned on the second day here that the nuns are up the mountain for the third prayer of the day, around nine o’clock, worshipping at the statue of the Virgin.
The nun in Reception was seen a little after nine o’clock meaning they were in the wrong place.
Whoever was impersonating her had planned carefully, but not carefully enough. ’
‘Bruno Crane’s murder,’ Mrs Bantry says, ‘we know that can’t have been Catherine Narracott, because she was sitting with us for the whole tobogganing competition, when it must have taken place.’
‘And Sylvia Sinclair was one of the few people who was not in the crowd or the competition at the event,’ I say, ‘she was sitting drinking martinis in the hotel when we got back there as though she’d been there all day.’
Miss Marple nods. ‘Didn’t you say, Diana, that there was a couloir that would have made a good getaway?
I think it was no coincidence that such a show was made of Sylvia Sinclair being an absolutely terrible skier the day before.
I have no doubt that she is a very talented actress, for all that people seem to talk of her as though her talents equate mainly to her bust-waist-hip ratio.
She grew up in Montana, didn’t she? I suspect they have mountains there!
I did wonder, Diana, when you said you saw her falling over at the hot chocolate spot the day before, how she could possibly have got there, alone, if she was so awful at it.
And if she didn’t want to reveal she was a good skier she wouldn’t have been able to risk coming down via the piste. ’
‘She would have had to come cross-country, through the trees,’ I say.
‘Which means she’s even better than most. So she could have come down via the couloir after killing Bruno Crane.
And if she had, she could have been most of the way back in minutes, disguised in some shapeless clothing, with very few guests or even staff around to see her because most were watching the tobogganing. ’
‘Then for the third murder,’ Miss Marple says, thoughtfully, ‘the discovery of Moreau’s true identity helps us to understand why he had to be killed.
The women must have discovered that he too was here for the gold and felt he posed a danger to them.
I wonder when they learned it. The apparent hastiness of his murder compared to the others suggests it was more recently.
‘Sylvia Sinclair, having committed the other two murders, made well and sure she was out on a long sleigh ride while it took place, so there was no chance that suspicion could fall on her. It must all have been Catherine Narracott’s work instead, using the key they stole from you, Dolly—’ She stops, because the hotel manager has just burst into the room, still looking very wan and now apparently in a state of panic.
‘They have gone,’ he says. ‘I have had staff search the hotel from top to bottom, Mesdames,’ he pants. ‘But they are nowhere to be seen.’
‘How can they have escaped?’ Mrs Bantry asks. ‘The mountain tunnel is still blocked. There’s no way down!’
‘Up,’ says Miss Marple, lightly. ‘Over the mountain, I expect.’