Miss Marple Bundle by Agatha Christie

Author:Agatha Christie
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-02-15T16:00:00+00:00

She was a brown-haired woman with a pale face and very deep set grey eyes. She was flushed now and her breast heaved. It was as though a statue had suddenly come to life. I blinked my eyes at the transformation.

‘I thought it best to come,’ she said. ‘You – you saw just now?’ I bowed my head.

She said very quietly: ‘We love each other…’

And even in the middle of her evident distress and agitation she could not keep a little smile from her lips. The smile of a woman who sees something very beautiful and wonderful.

I still said nothing, and she added presently:

‘I suppose to you that seems very wrong?’

‘Can you expect me to say anything else, Mrs Protheroe?’

‘No – no, I suppose not.’

I went on, trying to make my voice as gentle as possible:

‘You are a married woman –’

She interrupted me.

‘Oh! I know – I know. Do you think I haven’t gone over all that again and again? I’m not a bad woman really – I’m not. And things aren’t – aren’t – as you might think they are.’

I said gravely: ‘I’m glad of that.’

She asked rather timorously:

‘Are you going to tell my husband?’

I said rather dryly:

‘There seems to be a general idea that a clergyman is incapable of behaving like a gentleman. That is not true.’

She threw me a grateful glance.

‘I’m so unhappy. Oh! I’m so dreadfully unhappy. I can’t go on. I simply can’t go on. And I don’t know what to do.’ Her voice rose with a slightly hysterical note in it. ‘You don’t know what my life is like. I’ve been miserable with Lucius from the beginning. No woman could be happy with him. I wish he were dead…It’s awful, but I do…I’m desperate. I tell you, I’m desperate.’ She started and looked over at the window.

‘What was that? I thought I heard someone? Perhaps it’s Lawrence.’

I went over to the window which I had not closed as I had thought. I stepped out and looked down the garden, but there was no one in sight. Yet I was almost convinced that I, too, had heard someone. Or perhaps it was her certainty that had convinced me.

When I re-entered the room she was leaning forward, drooping her head down. She looked the picture of despair. She said again:

‘I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to do.’

I came and sat down beside her. I said the things I thought it was my duty to say, and tried to say them with the necessary conviction, uneasily conscious all the time that that same morning I had given voice to the sentiment that a world without Colonel Protheroe in it would be improved for the better.

Above all, I begged her to do nothing rash. To leave her home and her husband was a very serious step.

I don’t suppose I convinced her. I have lived long enough in the world to know that arguing with anyone in love is next door to useless, but I do think my words brought to her some measure of comfort.

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