LITMIR.BIZ

       CHAPTER 4

       Esther Walters

      Esther Anderson came out of the supermarket and went towards where she had parked her car. Parking grew more difficult every day, she thought. She collided with somebody, an elderly woman limping a little who was walking towards her. She apologized, and the other woman made an exclamation.

      ‘Why, indeed, it’s—surely—it’s Mrs Walters, isn’t it? Esther Walters? You don’t remember me, I expect. Jane Marple. We met in the hotel in St Honoré, oh—quite a long time ago. A year and a half.’

      ‘Miss Marple? So it is, of course. Fancy seeing you!’

      ‘How very nice to see you. I am lunching with some friends near here but I have to pass back through Alton later. Will you be at home this afternoon? I should so like to have a nice chat with you. It’s so nice to see an old friend.’

      ‘Yes, of course. Any time after 3 o’clock.’

      The arrangement was ratified.

      ‘Old Jane Marple,’ said Esther Anderson, smiling to herself. ‘Fancy her turning up. I thought she’d died a long time ago.’

      Miss Marple rang the bell of Winslow Lodge at 3.30 precisely. Esther opened the door to her and brought her in.

      Miss Marple sat down in the chair indicated to her, fluttering a little in the restless manner that she adopted when slightly flustered. Or at any rate, when she was seeming to be slightly flustered. In this case it was misleading, since things had happened exactly as she had hoped they would happen.

      ‘It’s so nice to see you,’ she said to Esther. ‘So very nice to see you again. You know, I do think things are so very odd in this world. You hope you’ll meet people again and you’re quite sure you will. And then time passes and suddenly it’s all such a surprise.’

      ‘And then,’ said Esther, ‘one says it’s a small world, doesn’t one?’

      ‘Yes, indeed, and I think there is something in that. I mean it does seem a very large world and the West Indies are such a very long way away from England. Well, I mean, of course I might have met you anywhere. In London or at Harrods. On a railway station or in a bus. There are so many possibilities.’

      ‘Yes, there are a lot of possibilities,’ said Esther. ‘I certainly shouldn’t have expected to meet you just here because this isn’t really quite your part of the world, is it?’

      ‘No. No, it isn’t. Not that you’re really so very far from St Mary Mead where I live. Actually, I think it’s only about twenty-five miles. But twenty-five miles in the country, when one hasn’t got a car—and of course I couldn’t afford a car, and anyway, I mean, I can’t drive a car—so it wouldn’t be much to the point, so one really only does see one’s neighbours on the bus route, or else go by a taxi from the village.’

      ‘You’re looking wonderfully well,’ said Esther.

      ‘I was just going to say you were looking wonderfully well, my dear. I had no idea you lived in this part of the world.’

      ‘I have only done so for a short time. Since my marriage, actually.’

      ‘Oh, I didn’t know. How interesting. I suppose I must have missed it. I always do look down the marriages.’

      ‘I’ve been married four or five months,’ said Esther. ‘My name is Anderson now.’

      ‘Mrs Anderson,’ said Miss Marple. ‘Yes. I must try and remember that. And your husband?’

      It would be unnatural, she thought, if she did not ask about the husband. Old maids were notoriously inquisitive.

      ‘He is an engineer,’ said Esther. ‘He runs the Time and Motion Branch. He is,’ she hesitated—‘a little younger than I am.’

      ‘Much better,’ said Miss Marple immediately. ‘Oh, much better, my dear. In these days men age so much quicker than women. I know it used not to be said so, but actually it’s true. I mean, they get more things the matter with them. I think, perhaps, they worry and work too much. And then they get high blood pressure or low blood pressure or sometimes a little heart trouble. They’re rather prone to gastric ulcers, too. I don’t think we worry so much, you know. I think we’re a tougher sex.’

      ‘Perhaps we are,’ said Esther.

      She smiled now at Miss Marple, and Miss Marple felt reassured. The last time she had seen Esther, Esther had looked as though she hated her and probably she had hated her at that moment. But now, well now, perhaps, she might even feel slightly grateful. She might have realized that she, herself, might even have been under a stone slab in a respectable churchyard, instead of living a presumably happy life with Mr Anderson.

      ‘You look very well,’ she said, ‘and very gay.’

      ‘So do you, Miss Marple.’

      ‘Well, of course, I am rather older now. And one has so many ailments. I mean, not desperate ones, nothing of that kind, but I mean one has always some kind of rheumatism or some kind of ache and pain somewhere. One’s feet are not what one would like feet to be. And there’s usually one’s back or a shoulder or painful hands. Oh, dear, one shouldn’t talk about these things. What a very nice house you have.’

      ‘Yes, we haven’t been in it very long. We moved in about four months ago.’

      Miss Marple looked round. She had rather thought that that was the case. She thought, too, that when they had moved in they had moved in on quite a handsome scale. The furniture was expensive, it was comfortable, comfortable and just this side of luxury. Good curtains, good covers, no particular artistic taste displayed, but then she would not have expected that. She thought she knew the reason for this appearance of prosperity. She thought it had come about on the strength of the late Mr Rafiel’s handsome legacy to Esther. She was glad to think that Mr Rafiel had not changed his mind.

      ‘I expect you saw the notice of Mr Rafiel’s death,’ said Esther, speaking almost as if she knew what was in Miss Marple’s mind.

      ‘Yes. Yes, indeed I did. It was about a month ago now, wasn’t it? I was so sorry. Very distressed really, although, well, I suppose one knew—he almost admitted it himself, didn’t he? He hinted several times that it wouldn’t be very long. I think he was quite a brave man about it all, don’t you?’

      ‘Yes, he was a very brave man, and a very kind one really,’ said Esther. ‘He told me, you know, when I first worked for him, that he was going to give me a very good salary but that I would have to save out of it because I needn’t expect to have anything more from him. Well, I certainly didn’t expect to have anything more from him. He was very much a man of his word, wasn’t he? But apparently he changed his mind.’

      ‘Yes,’ said Miss Marple. ‘Yes. I am very glad of that. I thought perhaps—not that he, of course, said anything—but I wondered.’

      ‘He left me a very big legacy,’ said Esther. ‘A surprisingly large sum of money. It came as a very great surprise. I could hardly believe it at first.’

      ‘I think he wanted it to be a surprise to you. I think he was perhaps that kind of man,’ said Miss Marple. She added: ‘Did he leave anything to—oh,

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