Complete Short Stories of Miss Marple Read Online Free PDF Page B

came creeping and twisting down the hill. Of course, it would stop before the inn – just where it was most awkward for me. The people got out – a man and a woman – I didn't notice them particularly. She had a kind of mauve linen dress on and a mauve hat.
    'Presently the man came out again and, to my great thankfulness, drove the car down to the quay and left it there. He strolled back past me toward the inn. Just at that moment another beastly car came twisting down, and a woman got out of it, dressed in the brightest chintz frock I have ever seen, scarlet poinsettias, I think they were, and she had on one of these big native straw hats – Cuban, aren't they? – in very bright scarlet.
    'This woman didn't stop in front of the inn but drove the car farther down the street toward the other one. Then she got out and the man, seeing her, gave an astonished shout. 'Carol,' he cried, 'in the name of all that is wonderful. Fancy meeting you in this out-of-the-way spot. I haven't seen you for years. Hello, there's Margery – my wife, you know. You must come and meet her.'
    'They went up the street toward the inn side by side, and I saw the other woman had just come out of the door and was moving down toward them. I had had just a glimpse of the woman called Carol as she passed by me. Just enough to see a very white powdered chin and a flaming scarlet mouth, and I wondered – I just wondered – if Margery would be so very pleased to meet her. I hadn't seen Margery near to, but in the distance she looked dowdy and extra prim and proper.
    'Well, of course, it was not any of my business, but you get very queer little glimpses of life sometimes, and you can't help speculating about them.
    'From where they were standing I could just catch fragments of their conversation that floated down to me. They were talking about bathing. The husband, whose name seemed to be Denis, wanted to take a boat and row around the coast. There was a famous cave well worth seeing, so he said, about a mile along. Carol wanted to see the cave, too, but she suggested walking along the cliffs and seeing it from the land side. She said she hated boats. In the end, they fixed it that way. Carol was to go along the cliff path and to meet them at the cave, and Denis and Margery would take a boat and row round.
    'Hearing them talk about bathing made me want to bathe too. It was a very hot morning and I wasn't doing particularly good work. Also, I fancied that the afternoon sunlight would be far more attractive in effect. So I packed up my things and went off to a little beach that I knew of – it was quite the opposite direction from the cave and was rather a discovery of mine. I had a ripping swim there and I lunched off a tinned tongue and two tomatoes, and I came back in the afternoon full of confidence and enthusiasm to get on with my sketch.
    'The whole of Rathole seemed to be asleep. I had been right about the afternoon sunlight – the shadows were far more telling. The Polharwith Arms was the principal note of my sketch. A ray of sunlight came slanting obliquely down and hit the ground in front of it and had rather a curious effect. I gathered that the bathing party had returned safely, because two bathing dresses, a scarlet one and a dark-blue one, were hanging from the balcony, drying in the sun.
    'Something had gone a bit wrong with one corner of my sketch and I bent over it for some moments, doing something to put it right. When I looked up again there was a figure leaning against one of the pillars of the Polharwith Arms, who seemed to have appeared there by magic. He was dressed in seafaring clothes and was, I suppose, a fisherman. But he had a long dark beard, and if I had been looking for a model for a wicked Spanish captain, I couldn't have imagined anyone better. I got to work with feverish haste before he should move away, though from his attitude he looked as though he was perfectly prepared to prop up the pillars through all