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" - murdered her and buried her in the garden!"
"So that is why he overcharged me for topside of beef," Miss Jane Marple said, calmly knitting a small white sock. Still recovering from her recent illness, she smiled at her friend of long standing, Mrs. Dolly Bantry of Gossington Hall.
"I didn't expect you to believe the rumours," Mrs. Bantry said. "After all, if they're true, I've lost both my second gardener and my cook! And young Anthony truly understands compost," she said.
"Parkes was very apologetic about the overcharge," said Miss Marple's live-in companion, the efficient Lucy Eyelesbarrow. A former First in Mathematics at Oxford, she had most brilliantly managed Miss Marple through her convalescence from pneumonia, and was perhaps becoming a little bored of the place. "Our St. Mary Mead butcher is not a person I can quite picture burying his wife under the rose-bushes."
"Oh, certainly not under his roses. Parkes grows Albertines, they need a drier soil. Under his petunias would be better, they prefer a more robust bed," Dolly Bantry said. "Not that he did, of course. I hope he didn't. I've wanted a cutting of his Petunia exserta for years. I've not seen such a vivid shade of red anywhere else." She reluctantly wrenched herself from her dream of gardening, returning to her immediate concerns. "Now if Arthur gets his indigestion again, I don't know what I'll do."
"Your cook, Madeline Parkes, has a fine hand. But in Sunday school she was a most unpleasant child. I recall she pinched the other girls black and blue when the teacher wasn't looking, and stole a book prize when she failed to win it for herself," Miss Marple said, turning the next row of her knitting.
"You can't expect a good cook to stay in a village where her father's believed to have murdered her stepmother over jealousy for my second gardener," Dolly Bantry said. "All nonsense, of course. Anthony is at the death-bed of a great aunt in Cumberland. Or was it his uncle, and was it Cornwall? I don't think he ever attempted to elope with Galina Parkes, slinky as she may be."
Mrs. Parkes was the butcher's war-time bride, considered too attractive and too foreign for St. Mary Mead. Nobody knew the least information of her antecedents. Impertinent questioners generally found her pleading them to speak more slowly until they were forced to retire baffled.
"Didn't you say, Dolly, that she visited your servants quite often?" Miss Marple said.
"Madeline is her stepdaughter, though they're not so far apart in age," Mrs. Bantry said. "Everyone knows it put her nose out of joint to get a stepmother. Young Anthony might be an attraction, but somehow - don't ask me how - I would have thought Madeline Parkes was the one to prefer him."
"It might be, Dolly, that you heard some sentence or saw some expression on a person's face that you've forgotten, but the impression of it remains," Miss Marple said. "I wouldn't worry ... "
There was a knock at the front door, followed by a variety of other noises: a vase rattling, a petticoat catching on a stray armchair, pieces of peppermint rock shattering on the stairs, and a fountain pen rolling away from its owner. Griselda Clement, the vicar's wife, walked into Miss Marple's sitting-room.
"I'm glad I should find you here - " she began breathlessly. " - all of you - " But most of Griselda Clement's freckled grin went to Mrs. Marple. " - for a consultation! It's Mrs. Parkes the butcher's wife - she's young and different and people never would leave off clapper-clawing her. They say she ran away or her husband went into a jealous rage, but I'm sure she didn't. What do you think?"
"I think you should take that pouffe, dear, and sit down to catch your breath," Mrs. Marple advised, her fingers still twinkling through soft white wool.
"They say he buried her and perhaps her lover too underneath the petunias, but none of us think that," Dolly Bantry said. "Evidence number one: Galina Parkes has left St. Mary Mead - in a literal if not spiritual sense. Evidence number two: Parkes overcharged Jane for topside of beef, and is digging up his garden. Evidence number three: my second gardener, a handsome young man, has also departed St. Mary Mead. And so the town's gossip is about to give my poor Arthur indigestion, when my cook - the victim's stepdaughter - is certain to depart in disgust, and I daresay my borders will never have such good composting again."
"Very good, Dolly. The topside of beef is the strongest point. Parkes has been so reliable all these years. There is wickedness and hatred for him in this, and that I can't stand," Miss Marple said, in the voice of Nemesis with a fluffy white sock.
"But it's a tangle. Ask someone where they got it from and they say their cousin; ask the cousin and they say the woman collecting old clothes; ask the old-clothes woman and she'll say it was the first person!" Griselda said. "Len would say it's the Nemean stables - or the Augean hydra, or some apt classical quotation. How is that possible to fight?"
"Madeline Parkes has an excellent receipt for rusks," Miss Marple said. "Lucy, would you mind visiting Gossington Hall and asking her for it?"
"I see. And while I'm there ask Tom for a few cuttings, the housekeeper for advice on fresh fish, and generally keep my ears open?" the formidable Miss Eyelesbarrow said.
"Thank you, dear."
"Well," Lucy Eyelesbarrow said, "Madeline Parkes is a spiteful, sneaking, vicious - cat !" Her audience, Miss Marple and Griselda Clement, gave her understanding nods.
"Then poor Arthur will suffer from indigestion," Miss Marple said. "I wonder if young Irene - but never mind. Go on, Lucy."
"Left open all the innuendo I wanted to believe about her stepmother, and her own father too!" Lucy said. "That Anthony - oh, he said it was his great-uncle, or was it his cousin?" She imitated Madeline Parkes' false uncertainty. "Spiteful against him as well. I wouldn't be surprised if she started the worst of the rumours. She's one of those people who make you want to scrub a bathroom clean as soon as you leave them."
"That's very important," Miss Marple said. "If it was true , then Madeline Parkes wouldn't say it, you see. She'll take advantage of what's happened to her stepmother to hurt those she wants to hurt, but if she believed anything serious she'd run from it. That kind of person is a coward underneath. Like the churchwarden who liked to bluster about wrongdoing in others at the first opportunity, but ran off the moment someone noticed what his wife was doing with the church collection money."
"I don't believe Galina Parkes has done anything her mother wouldn't do - or that anything's happened to her!" Griselda said stoutly. "Perhaps we can fight it with our own rumours. Maybe she's a secret Russian countess, gone away to claim some grand fortune - She is Russian, I know. Len spoke to her and he knows. Her family were killed in the war."
"The trouble with false rumours is that people believe them, and that is worse," Miss Marple said. "Do you remember when little Johnny Ridley had those nightmares about cannibals? Of course, it was his aunt who foolishly repeated a rumour that she heard. Gossip is, after all, so challenging."
Griselda, responsible for a certain tale, flushed at a past memory. "It was self defence; you know what Mrs. Price Ridley is like. I won't let her get her claws any further into Mrs. Parkes." There was perhaps some fellow feeling in her fire. Like Galina Parkes, Griselda Clement was also young, attractive, and incongruously exotic in her position within the village.
"When was the last time you saw her?" Miss Marple said. "I can't yet stir from my house, so you young people must be my eyes and ears."
"I may have been the last person to see her," Griselda said. "Call me a suspicious person, if you will! We know she left St. Mary Mead on the ninth, three weeks ago. Most likely by the early train since nobody saw her after that. I saw her on the eighth, at about five o'clock since I was hurrying to the Mothers' Meeting night. She had flowers in her hands - you know, a bouquet from Bowen's flower shop. Mrs. Parkes always arranged them in that red glass vase in her husband's shop, to make the place look nicer. I remember her almost running back on that night; that was a little strange. And I know something else," Griselda added with satisfaction, "the same bouquet is still in Parkes' shop. The last gift from her and he's kept it. Parkes is a romantic at heart."
"I know Irene Bowen," Miss Marple said, "she came to me as a raw girl. She made excellent omelettes and roasts. She didn't choose to go into service, because her father inherited some money from an aunt, enough to buy the flower-shop. They made quite a success of it. Lucy, I'd like you to buy some flowers from the same shop. If possible, the same bouquet in all particulars, from Irene Bowen at the counter. It may - of course it may come to nothing."
"Irene's far nicer than Madeline," Griselda said. "If the young men had any sense - But they never do. And the old men don't either, because Len married the most ridiculous, frivolous, flibbertigibbet of a girl he could find - "
"You've made your husband very happy, my dear," Miss Marple said. "Much like Mr. Parkes and young Galina. You can never turn someone away from making a decision of that sort, but Len has an excellent digestion and you have an excellent temper. Parkes is like you in that respect."
"And Galina Parkes eats like Len - small morsels of manna," Griselda said. "Kept herself to one of Lucy's sponge-biscuits at the church fête - admirable restraint! How the young matron keeps a fine figure." Yet Griselda's smile at her reflection in the corner of the glass showed no true dissatisfaction with her own rounded cheeks.
Later that afternoon, the efficient Lucy Eyelesbarrow carefully unfolded white daisies, red tulips, bell flowers and curling strips of maiden-hair fern from a damp newspaper. She made almost no change to the arrangement to place it in the vase on Miss Marple's mantelpiece, a gift from her nephew. The china vase was intended to suggest a cabbage-rose, pink in colour and excessively tumescent.
"Very lovely. Yes, Irene selects them beautifully," Miss Marple said. "Do you think you could give me the paper? The Bowens get the London papers cheap, from a cousin, I believe. Some of the articles can be indelicate, but there are also the sales - so very important - and sometimes a nice photograph. Showing that amount of skin, though, is not flattering to the complexion ... "
"Griselda Clement spoke of Galina Parkes being in a hurry," Lucy said. "Irene put it differently. Stars in her eyes as she went , she said - just those words. She was happy that day before she disappeared. Perhaps too happy."
"I have one last favour to ask you, Lucy," Miss Marple said, looking up from her London paper. "If it is satisfactory - I do hope it will be clear. So much, you know, can be muddy and difficult to know - There may be a little more tedious work for you. Village life, you know, can be so intricate."
"You know I'm game to find the missing lady," Lucy Eyelesbarrow said. "Dispatch me over hill and dale to your liking!"
A fortnight later, Miss Marple, thoroughly bundled in wool and furs, travelled to the London sales with Mrs. Bantry, Lucy Eyelesbarrow, and Griselda Clement. Following some rather excellent bargains in table-linen, pillowcases, and hosiery, they enjoyed a leisurely tea and went on to the theatre.
The strains of Swan Lake's melody rose. It was the final night. Arakelova, the famous Russian dancer, performed for the first time in years. She was superbly ethereal as Odette, pleading and compelling and leading her prince to their fate.
And behind her, the chorus of swans spun and pirouetted as if weightless across the stage. Galina Parkes was the second girl from the right. There was nothing to say during such a performance, but afterwards Dolly Bantry found plenty.
"And so you eloped to join the ballet corps?" Mrs. Bantry demanded in the dressing-room.
"Oh, yes - my husband did not wish a scandal, you see. It is not good to be a dancer. But I danced with Arakelova before the war, before I married John, and when I saw the newspaper article in the flowers I could not miss her return. So I flew on the next train to join the company - I danced it a hundred times before, you see, and they trusted me," Galina said. She bent her head to the huge cluster of Albertine roses in her hands. "I hope it was a good performance."
"It was splendid, as I'm sure you already know, and we'll not breathe a word of it to St. Mary Mead," Dolly Bantry promised. "You are going back to your husband, aren't you?"
"Yes. This was my first love, but my second will be longer and truer," Galina said. "I return to-morrow." They could see the stars in her eyes.
"Just see that you do! Indirectly, you see, I lost my cook because of it all," Dolly Bantry said, "but Irene Bowen is a much nicer girl, you see, and Madeline's gone to another county with a better salary, so she'll not complain, and Anthony's putting in some excellent compost," she added irrelevantly. "So pleased he decided to stay on."
"All's well that ends well, journeys end in lovers' meetings," Griselda said. "But beware - for I come to give you a grim and deadly warning, Galina! There is nothing in St. Mary Mead that Miss Marple doesn't know."
Galina Parkes gave another starry smile, as if to say there was a final precious secret within her.
"Such a delightful performance," Miss Marple said. "We're here to congratulate you. And I have knitted you these. Just in case."
She gave Galina Parkes a small package of soft fluffy white socks.