They Do It With Mirrors

They walked together to a side door. In the doorway a gaunt elderly lady met them. She had an arrogant nose, a short haircut and wore stout well-cut tweeds.

She said fiercely:

‘It’s absolutely crazy of you, Cara, to stay out so late. You’re absolutely incapable of taking care of yourself. What will Mr Serrocold say?’

‘Don’t scold me, Jolly,’ said Carrie Louise pleadingly.

She introduced Miss Bellever to Miss Marple.

‘This is Miss Bellever, who is simply everything to me. Nurse, dragon, watchdog, secretary, housekeeper and very faithful friend.’

Juliet Bellever sniffed, and the end of her big nose turned rather pink, a sign of emotion.

‘I do what I can,’ she said gruffly. ‘This is a crazy household. You simply can’t arrange any kind of planned routine.’

‘Darling Jolly, of course you can’t. I wonder why you ever try. Where are you putting Miss Marple?’

‘In the Blue Room. Shall I take her up?’ asked Miss Bellever.

‘Yes, please do, Jolly. And then bring her down to tea. It’s in the library today, I think.’

The Blue Room had heavy curtains of a rich faded blue brocade that must have been, Miss Marple thought, about fifty years old. The furniture was mahogany, big and solid, and the bed was a vast mahogany fourposter. Miss Bellever opened a door into a connecting bathroom. This was unexpectedly modern, orchid in colouring and with much dazzling chromium.

She observed grimly:

‘John Restarick had ten bathrooms put into the house when he married Cara. The plumbing is about the only thing that’s ever been modernized. He wouldn’t hear of the rest being altered—said the whole place was a perfect Period Piece. Did you ever know him at all?’

‘No, I never met him. Mrs Serrocold and I have met very seldom though we have always corresponded.’

‘He was an agreeable fellow,’ said Miss Bellever. ‘No good, of course! A complete rotter. But pleasant to have about the house. Great charm. Women liked him far too much. That was his undoing in the end. Not really Cara’s type.’

She added with a brusque resumption of her practical manner:

‘The housemaid will unpack for you. Do you want a wash before tea?’

Receiving an affirmative answer, she said that Miss Marple would find her waiting at the top of the stairs.

Miss Marple went into the bathroom and washed her hands and dried them a little nervously on a very beautiful orchid-coloured face towel. Then she removed her hat and patted her soft white hair into place.

Opening her door, she found Miss Bellever waiting for her, and was conducted down the big gloomy staircase and across a vast dark hall and into a room where bookshelves went up to the ceiling and a big window looked out over an artificial lake.

Carrie Louise was standing by the window and Miss Marple joined her.

‘What a very imposing house this is,’ said Miss Marple. ‘I feel quite lost in it.’

‘Yes, I know. It’s ridiculous, really. It was built by a prosperous iron master—or something of that kind. He went bankrupt not long after. I don’t wonder really. There were about fourteen living-rooms—all enormous. I’ve never seen what people can want with more than one sitting-room. And all those huge bedrooms. Such a lot of unnecessary space. Mine is terribly overpowering—and quite a long way to walk from the bed to the dressing table. And great heavy dark crimson curtains.’

‘You haven’t had it modernized and redecorated?’

Carrie Louise looked vaguely surprised.

‘No. On the whole it’s very much as it was when I first lived here with Eric. It’s been repainted, of course, but they always do it the same colour. Those things don’t really matter, do they? I mean I shouldn’t have felt justified in spending a lot of money on that kind of thing when there are so many things that are so much more important.’

‘Have there been no changes at all in the house?’

‘Oh—yes—heaps of them. We’ve just kept a kind of block in the middle of the house as it was—the Great Hall and the rooms off and over. They’re the best ones and Johnnie—my second husband—was lyrical over them and said they should never be touched or altered—and of course he was an artist and a designer and he knew about these things. But the East and West wings have been completely remodelled. All the rooms partitioned off and divided up, so that we have offices, and bedrooms for the teaching staff, and all that. The boys are all in the College building—you can see it from here.’

Miss Marple looked out towards where large red brick buildings showed through a belt of sheltered trees. Then her eyes fell on something nearer at hand, and she smiled a little.

‘What a very beautiful girl Gina is,’ she said.

Carrie Louise’s face lit up.

‘Yes, isn’t she?’ she said softly. ‘It’s so lovely to have her back here again. I sent her to America at the beginning of the war—to Ruth. Did Ruth talk about her at all?’

‘No. At least she did just mention her.’

Carrie Louise sighed.

‘Poor Ruth! She was frightfully upset over Gina’s marriage. But I’ve told her again and again that I don’t blame her in the least. Ruth doesn’t realize, as I do, that the old barriers and class shibboleths are gone—or at any rate are going.

‘Gina was doing her war work—and she met this young man. He was a Marine and had a very good war record. And a week later they were married. It was all far too quick, of course, no time to find out if they were really suited to each other—but that’s the way of things nowadays. Young people belong to their generation. We may think they’re unwise in many of their doings, but we have to accept their decisions. Ruth, though, was terribly upset.’

‘She didn’t consider the young man suitable?’

‘She kept saying that one didn’t know anything about him. He came from the Middle West and he hadn’t any money—and naturally no profession. There are hundreds of boys like that everywhere—but it wasn’t Ruth’s idea of what was right for Gina. However, the thing was done. I was so glad when Gina accepted my invitation to come over here with her husband. There’s so much going on here—jobs of every kind, and if Walter wants to specialize in medicine or get a degree or anything he could do it in this country. After all, this is Gina’s home. It’s delightful to have her back, to have someone so warm and gay and alive in the house.’

Miss Marple nodded and looked out of the window again at the two young people standing near the lake.

‘They’re a remarkably handsome couple, too,’ she said. ‘I don’t wonder Gina fell in love with him!’

‘Oh, but that—that isn’t Wally.’ There was, quite suddenly, a touch of embarrassment, or restraint, in Mrs Serrocold’s voice. ‘That’s Steve—the younger of Johnnie Restarick’s two boys. When Johnnie—when he went away, he’d no place for the boys in the holidays, so I always had them here. They look on this as their home. And Steve’s here permanently now. He runs our dramatic branch. We have a theatre, you know, and plays—we encourage all the artistic instincts. Lewis says that so much of this juvenile crime is due to exhibitionism, most of the boys have had such a thwarted unhappy home life, and these hold-ups and burglaries make them feel heroes. We urge them to write their own plays and act in them and design and paint their own scenery. Steve is in charge of the theatre. He’s so keen and enthusiastic. It’s wonderful what life he’s put into the whole thing.’

‘I see,’ said Miss Marple slowly.

Her long-distance sight was good (as many of her neighbours knew to their cost in the village of St Mary Mead) and she saw very clearly the dark handsome face of Stephen Restarick as he stood facing Gina, talking eagerly. Gina’s face she could not see, since the girl had her back to them, but there was no mistaking the expression in Stephen Restarick’s face.

‘It isn’t any business of mine,’ said Miss Marple, ‘but I suppose you realize, Carrie Louise, that he’s in love with her.’

‘Oh no—’ Carrie Louise looked troubled. ‘Oh no, I do hope not.’

‘You were always up in the clouds, Carrie Louise. There’s not the least doubt about it.’

CHAPTER 4 (#ulink_938563f6-ee05-5d34-9b1c-1d9317ffd036)

Before Mrs Serrocold could say anything, her husband came in from the hall carrying some open letters in his hand.

Lewis Serrocold was a short man, not particularly impressive in appearance, but with a personality that immediately marked him out. Ruth had once said of him that he was more like a dynamo than a human being. He usually concentrated entirely on what was immediately occupying his attention and paid no attention to the objects or persons who were surrounding them.