Epilogue
Diana
St Mary Mead – a month later
‘So how did you do it, Jane?’ Mrs Bantry asks, brandishing a copy of the paper.
I’ve read the headline already: WIFE CHIEF SUSPECT IN NARRACOTT DEATH!
Hearing at Old Bailey today following dramatic arrest by Italian police.
‘Explain it all to us properly, won’t you?
You were so mysterious at the time, but I just know it was your doing … somehow.’
Miss Marple looks to the window, to where some rose canes tap against the pane as though politely requesting entrance.
‘I must prune before the spring growth starts,’ she says.
‘But this weather! And my rheumatism was not improved by the mountains.’ Then, as though this last word reminds her of Mrs Bantry’s question: ‘Well. You know, Dolly, that in the past I have made a habit of springing … I suppose for want of a better word one might say traps – upon culprits. I did so in this case, too. Simply not within the confines of the hotel.’
‘What can you mean? How?’
‘I telephoned to Sir Henry Clithering. I asked him to use his old connections at the International Criminal Police Commission to have police waiting in Venice. It was a gamble, but all my little traps are gambles, really.’
‘But Miss Marple,’ I say, ‘I’m sorry but I don’t quite follow. Why Venice? Why the Orient Express?’
‘There are only so many places you can go if you are Sylvia Sinclair,’ Miss Marple says. ‘Even if you are in disguise … even if you remove the parts that make up the “icon”, as it were. Sooner or later, you will be recognised. In the Western world, that is, where people watch your films.
‘Sometimes people reveal more than they mean to,’ she continues.
‘Sylvia made that odd reference to a “girl wanting to run off and hide in Illinois or Istanbul”.
Illinois would not really be possible. But Raymond, who is so reliable about anything culturally au courant, tells me that Istanbul is something of a haven for creative types wanting to “fall off the map” as it were.
Rather like Marrakech – except that I think would be out of the question for our murderers because it is a French protectorate and therefore extradition might be possible.
‘So I thought about what I might do if I were in her – in their situation. They couldn’t go anywhere likely to have an agreement with the British government.
They had to disappear – to go somewhere where Sylvia Sinclair is less known.
Just as she talked of wishing to do. They had the gold, so they would be able to buy a nice kind of life somewhere …
and I’m sure Istanbul would do as well as most places.
Apparently there is some wonderful history there, and some very beautiful houses.
My great aunt, who had a great deal of trouble with her philandering diplomat husband, told me on her deathbed that she had at one time thought seriously about running off with an Effendi who had a beautiful yali on the shores of the Bosphorus …
’ She stops and gives a small, modest cough.
‘Anyway. That is how I did it. It was a guess. But not a very wild one, I shouldn’t think.
And the thing about being elderly is one learns that one gets rather good – by hard-learned necessity – at asking for help, at calling in favours.
In youth, one feels one must rush off and do everything oneself.
’ I feel gently implicated by her words.
‘Of course, that is very noble and brave.’ She smiles at me with genuine kindness.
‘But just sometimes the other can be even more effective.’
‘Jane,’ Mrs Bantry says. ‘I hope you won’t mind my saying this, but it is almost uncanny, your ability to think yourself into the mind of a murderer.’
Miss Marple makes a prim little pinch of her mouth, apparently nothing more can tastefully be said on the matter. Then: ‘Would you like any more cherry brandy, Dolly? And you, Diana, my dear?’
We both accept a little more.
Mrs Bantry says, ‘Anthony Narracott and Bruno Crane were clearly very unpleasant characters and Inspector Moreau – sorry, I know that wasn’t his real rank or name but I still can’t quite think of him any other way – was evidently not at all the Good Samaritan he seemed …
so didn’t you have a tiny modicum of sympathy with those women? ’
‘No,’ says Miss Marple, sharply. ‘There can be no excuse for taking the life of another human being. And you are forgetting that they shot Diana! If the gondola attendant hadn’t come for her she would have been left for dead on the mountain.
They were desperate, yes, but evil thrives in desperation.
‘The men they killed were wicked men. But one cannot extinguish wickedness with more of the same. It is like a stain, an infection. It only grows …’ Her voice has changed.
It is somewhat lower, harsher. She seems to sit a little straighter in her chair and her look is at once distant and severe.
Then the moment seems to pass and it is as though we have the ordinary, frailer Miss Marple returned to us once more.
‘Would you like to stay for supper, Diana?’ she asks. ‘I’m sure there is enough to go around, perhaps with a couple of potatoes. I can see …’
‘No, thank you, Miss Marple,’ I say. ‘I should be going soon. My taxi to Milchester station will be here soon.’
‘Back to Paddington?’
‘Yes.’
‘It is good to see you looking well, Diana,’ Mrs Bantry says, from her armchair.
‘I only wish you hadn’t had to leave me.
I’m already in such a muddle since your departure.
And I have great friends here – Jane, please do not be in the least offended by this – but it has been nice to have someone young around one.
Everyone I know seems so very old now. I suppose I do have a new companion,’ she smiles indulgently at the scraggly wolfhound, lying beside the fire, who seems to have mellowed in the quiet of the English countryside. ‘But he’s not much use at Bridge.’
‘What do you think you will do, Diana?’ Miss Marple asks.
‘Oh,’ I say, ‘I don’t know. I’ve got a new job at the Foreign Office.
Secretarial, because they don’t let us women do a great deal more than that – but, you know, I was thinking I’d like to try and get away and see the world.
After I make sure the world knows what Narracott really was.
I have the photographs. It isn’t enough that he died.
I have to make sure that people learn there are men like him in the world.
Plenty more, I have no doubt, who will get away with even worse. ’
Miss Marple nods, as though this makes sense to her.
‘And you?’ I say. ‘Will you go abroad again?’
‘Not in a hurry, I think,’ Miss Marple says.
‘I often find quite enough to interest me and keep me busy at home. If I do travel overseas, it will not be to the mountains again – or indeed any cold climate. My rheumatism, you know. Yesterday I pulled out some bindweed – only a very little and one always knows it is so hopeless anyway because the roots go so far underground – and I have had to spend the whole of today sitting just to recover. The cold was not good for my joints.’
‘Perhaps somewhere warm, dear?’ Mrs Bantry suggests.
‘Perhaps,’ Miss Marple nods. ‘Raymond keeps suggesting the Caribbean but I’m not sure the heat would suit me – and the expense! I don’t think it likely I shall ever go. But I do know I am finished with mountains.’
‘I thought we would never escape them,’ Mrs Bantry says. ‘Amazing, really, how quickly they managed to mend the tunnel. One has to admire the efficiency of the Swiss. The greatest miracle, of course, was your recovery, Diana. Thank goodness for the quick thinking of that gondola attendant.’
My hand goes instinctively to my side, where they stitched me back together. It is the funny thing about physical pain – one can’t really remember it. All I can remember is that sense of surrender. How terrifyingly easy it felt.
‘It wasn’t … pleasant,’ I say. ‘Everything that happened there. But at the same time,’ I pause, think of how to put this, ‘I felt as if I’d discovered some part of myself I’d forgotten was there.
There was a kind of … of thrill in it, in spite of the darkness.
And I had a purpose. A raison d’être.’ I look carefully at Miss Marple to check that she isn’t appalled.
‘If that doesn’t sound too dreadful. I think perhaps what I mean is that I don’t want a safe life.
’ I look for another way to express it. ‘I want a useful life.’
Miss Marple looks at me and I am sure I see a knowing brightness kindle there in the faded blue gaze. ‘My dear,’ she says. ‘I quite understand. In fact, I know exactly what you mean.’