Read Online A Caribbean Mystery by Agatha Christie - Free Book Online

themselves, don't they?” said Esther. “To forget about illnesses and deaths and income tax and frozen pipes and all the rest of it. They don't like-” she went on, with a sudden flash of an entirely different manner-“any reminders of mortality.”
    Miss Marple laid down her knitting. “Now that is very well put, my dear,” she said, “very well put indeed. Yes, it is as you say.”
    “And you see they're quite a young couple,” went on Esther Walters. “They only just took over from the Sandersons six months ago and they're terribly worried about whether they're going to succeed or not, because they haven't had much experience.”
    “And you think this might be really disadvantageous to them?”
    “Well, no, I don't, frankly,” said Esther Walters. “I don't think people remember anything for more than a day or two, not in this atmosphere of we've-all-come-out-here-to-enjoy-ourselves-let's-get-on-with-it. I think a death just gives them a jolt for about twenty-four hours or so and then they don't think of it again once the funeral is over. Not unless they're reminded of it, that is. I've told Molly so, but of course she is a worrier.”
    “Mrs. Kendal is a worrier? She always seems so carefree.”
    “I think a lot of that is put on,” said Esther slowly. “Actually, I think she's one of those anxious sort of people who can't help worrying all the time that things may go wrong.”
    “I should have thought he worried more than she did.”
    “No, I don't think so. I think she's the worrier and he worries because she worries, if you know what I mean.”
    “That is interesting,” said Miss Marple.
    “I think Molly wants desperately to try and appear very gay and to be enjoying herself. She works at it very hard but the effort exhausts her. Then she has these odd fits of depression. She's not-well not really well-balanced.”
    “Poor child,” said Miss Marple. “There certainly are people like that, and very often outsiders don't suspect it.”
    “No, they put on such a good show, don't they? However,” Esther added, “I don't think Molly has really anything to worry about in this case. I mean, people are dying of coronary thrombosis or cerebral haemorrhage or things of that kind all the time nowadays. Far more than they used to, as far as I can see. It's only food poisoning or typhoid or something like that, that makes people get het up.”
    “Major Palgrave never mentioned to me that he had high blood pressure,” said Miss Marple. “Did he to you?”
    “He said so to somebody-I don't know who. It may have been to Mr. Rafiel. I know Mr. Rafiel says just the opposite-but then he's like that! Certainly Jackson mentioned it to me once. He said the Major ought to be more careful over the alcohol he took.”
    “I see,” said Miss Marple, thoughtfully. She went on: “I expect you found him rather a boring old man? He told a lot of stories and I expect repeated himself a good deal.”
    “That's the worst of it,” said Esther. “You do hear the same story again and again unless you can manage to be quick enough and fend him off.”
    “Of course I didn't mind so much,” said Miss Marple, “because I'm used to that sort of thing. If I get stories told to me rather often, I don't really mind hearing them again because I've usually forgotten them.”
    “There is that,” said Esther and laughed cheerfully.
    “There was one story he was very fond of telling,” said Miss Marple, “about a murder. I expect he told you that, didn't he?”
    Esther Walters opened her handbag and started searching through it. She drew out her lipstick saying, “I thought I'd lost it.” Then she asked, “I beg your pardon, what did you say?”
    “I asked if Major Palgrave told you his favourite murder story?”
    “I believe he did, now I come to think of it. Something about someone who gassed themselves, wasn't it? Only really it was the wife who gassed him. I mean she'd given him a sedative of some kind and then