A Caribbean Mystery: A Miss Marple Mystery by Agatha Christie

Author:Agatha Christie [Christie, Agatha]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
ISBN: 9780062073686
Amazon: 0062073680
Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks
Published: 2011-04-12T05:00:00+00:00

III

“We don’t want to worry you, Mrs. Kendal, but we have to have your account of just how you came to find this girl. Dr. Graham says you are sufficiently recovered to talk about it now.”

“Oh yes,” said Molly, “I’m really quite all right again.” She gave them a small nervous smile. “It was just the shock—It was rather awful, you know.”

“Yes, indeed it must have been—I understand you went for a walk after dinner.”

“Yes—I often do.”

Her eyes shifted, Daventry noticed, and the fingers of her hands twined and untwined about each other.

“What time would that have been, Mrs. Kendal?” asked Weston.

“Well, I don’t really know—we don’t go much by the time.”

“The steel band was still playing?”

“Yes—at least—I think so—I can’t really remember.”

“And you walked—which way?”

“Oh, along the beach path.”

“To the left or the right?”

“Oh! First one way—and then the other—I—I—really didn’t notice.”

“Why didn’t you notice, Mrs. Kendal?”

She frowned.

“I suppose I was—well—thinking of things.”

“Thinking of anything particular?”

“No—No—Nothing particular—Just things that had to be done—seen to—in the hotel.” Again that nervous twining and untwining of fingers. “And then—I noticed something white—in a clump of hibiscus bushes—and I wondered what it was. I stopped and—and pulled—” She swallowed convulsively—“And it was her—Victoria—all huddled up—and I tried to raise her head up and I got—blood—on my hands.”

She looked at them and repeated wonderingly as though recalling something impossible:

“Blood—on my hands.”

“Yes—Yes—A very dreadful experience. There is no need for you to tell us more about that part of it—How long had you been walking, do you think, when you found her—”

“I don’t know—I have no idea.”

“An hour? Half an hour? Or more than an hour—”

“I don’t know,” Molly repeated.

Daventry asked in a quiet everyday voice:

“Did you take a knife with you on your—walk?”

“A knife?” Molly sounded surprised. “Why should I take a knife?”

“I only ask because one of the kitchen staff mentioned that you had a knife in your hand when you went out of the kitchen into the garden.”

Molly frowned.

“But I didn’t go out of the kitchen—oh you mean earlier—before dinner—I—I don’t think so—”

“You had been rearranging the cutlery on the tables, perhaps.”

“I have to, sometimes. They lay things wrong—not enough knives—or too many. The wrong number of forks and spoons—that sort of thing.”

“So you may have gone out of the kitchen that evening carrying a knife in your hand?”

“I don’t think I did—I’m sure I didn’t—” She added—“Tim was there—he would know. Ask him.”

“Did you like this girl—Victoria—was she good at her work?” asked Weston.

“Yes—she was a very nice girl.”

“You had no dispute with her?”

“Dispute? No.”

“She had never threatened you—in any way?”

“Threatened me? What do you mean?”

“It doesn’t matter—You have no idea of who could have killed her? No idea at all?”

“None.” She spoke positively.

“Well, thank you, Mrs. Kendal.” He smiled. “It wasn’t so terrible, was it?”

“That’s all?”

“That’s all for now.”

Daventry got up, opened the door for her, and watched her go out.

“Tim would know,” he quoted as he returned to his chair. “And Tim says definitely that she didn’t have a knife.

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