4.50 from Paddington. Agatha Christie
embraced by the Sanitary Inspector? But why does it matter which train it was? A week-end at Porthcawl perhaps? Thank you for the pullover. Just what I wanted. How’s the garden? Not very active this time of year, I should imagine.
Yours ever,
David’
Miss Marple smiled a little, then considered the information thus presented to her. Mrs McGillicuddy had said definitely that the carriage had not been a corridor one. Therefore—not the Swansea express. The 4.33 was indicated.
Also some more travelling seemed unavoidable. Miss Marple sighed, but made her plans.
She went up to London as before on the 12.15, but this time returned not by the 4.50, but by the 4.33 as far as Brackhampton. The journey was uneventful, but she registered certain details. The train was not crowded—4.33 was before the evening rush hour. Of the first-class carriages only one had an occupant—a very old gentleman reading the New Statesman. Miss Marple travelled in an empty compartment and at the two stops, Haling Broadway and Barwell Heath, leaned out of the window to observe passengers entering and leaving the train. A small number of third-class passengers got in at Haling Broadway. At Barwell Heath several third-class passengers got out. Nobody entered or left a first-class carriage except the old gentleman carrying his New Statesman.
As the train neared Brackhampton, sweeping around a curve of line, Miss Marple rose to her feet and stood experimentally with her back to the window over which she had drawn down the blind.
Yes, she decided, the impetus of the sudden curving of the line and the slackening of speed did throw one off one’s balance back against the window and the blind might, in consequence, very easily fly up. She peered out into the night. It was lighter than it had been when Mrs McGillicuddy had made the same journey—only just dark, but there was little to see. For observation she must make a daylight journey.
On the next day she went up by the early morning train, purchased four linen pillow-cases (tut-tutting at the price!) so as to combine investigation with the provision of household necessities, and returned by a train leaving Paddington at twelve fifteen. Again she was alone in a first-class carriage. ‘This taxation,’ thought Miss Marple, ‘that’s what it is. No one can afford to travel first class except business men in the rush hours. I suppose because they can charge it to expenses.’
About a quarter of an hour before the train was due at Brackhampton, Miss Marple got out the map with which Leonard had supplied her and began to observe the country-side. She had studied the map very carefully beforehand, and after noting the name of a station they passed through, she was soon able to identify where she was just as the train began to slacken for a curve. It was a very considerable curve indeed. Miss Marple, her nose glued to the window, studied the ground beneath her (the train was running on a fairly high embankment) with close attention. She divided her attention between the country outside and the map until the train finally ran into Brackhampton.
That night she wrote and posted a letter addressed to Miss Florence Hill, 4 Madison Road, Brackhampton … On the following morning, going to the County library, she studied a Brackhampton directory and gazetteer, and a County history.
Nothing so far had contradicted the very faint and sketchy idea that had come to her. What she had imagined was possible. She would go no further than that.
But the next step involved action—a good deal of action—the kind of action for which she, herself, was physically unfit. If her theory were to be definitely proved or disproved, she must at this point have help from some other source. The question was—who? Miss Marple reviewed various names and possibilities, rejecting them all with a vexed shake of the head. The intelligent people on whose intelligence she could rely were all far too busy. Not only had they all got jobs of varying importance, their leisure hours were usually apportioned long beforehand. The unintelligent who had time on their hands were simply, Miss Marple decided, no good.
She pondered in growing vexation and perplexity.
Then suddenly her forehead cleared. She ejaculated aloud a name.
‘Of course!’ said Miss Marple. ‘Lucy Eyelesbarrow!’
The name of Lucy Eyelesbarrow had already made itself felt in certain circles.
Lucy Eyelesbarrow was thirty-two. She had taken a First in Mathematics at Oxford, was acknowledged to have a brilliant mind and was confidently expected to take up a distinguished academic career.
But Lucy Eyelesbarrow, in addition to scholarly brilliance, had a core of good sound common sense. She could not fail to observe that a life of academic distinction was singularly ill rewarded. She had no desire whatever to teach and she took pleasure in contacts with minds much less brilliant than her own. In short, she had a taste for people, all sorts of people—and not the same people the whole time. She also, quite frankly, liked money. To gain money one must exploit shortage.
Lucy Eyelesbarrow hit at once upon a very serious shortage—the shortage of any kind of skilled domestic labour. To the amazement of her friends and fellow-scholars, Lucy Eyelesbarrow entered the field of domestic labour.
Her success was immediate and assured. By now, after a lapse of some years, she was known all over the British Isles. It was quite customary for wives to say joyfully to husbands, ‘It will be all right. I can go with you to the States. I’ve got Lucy Eyelesbarrow!’ The point of Lucy Eyelesbarrow was that once she came into a house, all worry, anxiety and hard work went out of it. Lucy Eyelesbarrow did everything, saw to everything, arranged everything. She was unbelievably competent in every conceivable sphere. She looked after elderly parents, accepted the care of young children, nursed the sickly, cooked divinely, got on well with any old crusted servants there might happen to be (there usually weren’t), was tactful with impossible people, soothed habitual drunkards, was wonderful with dogs. Best of all she never minded what she did. She scrubbed the kitchen floor, dug in the garden, cleaned up dog messes, and carried coals!
One of her rules was never to accept an engagement for any long length of time. A fortnight was her usual period—a month at most under exceptional circumstances. For that fortnight you had to pay the earth! But, during that fortnight, your life was heaven. You could relax completely, go abroad, stay at home, do as you pleased, secure that all was going well on the home front in Lucy Eyelesbarrow’s capable hands.
Naturally the demand for her services was enormous. She could have booked herself up if she chose for about three years ahead. She had been offered enormous sums to go as a permanency. But Lucy had no intention of being a permanency, nor would she book herself for more than six months ahead. And within that period, unknown to her clamouring clients, she always kept certain free periods which enabled her either to take a short luxurious holiday (since she spent nothing otherwise and was handsomely paid and kept) or to accept any position at short notice that happened to take her fancy, either by reason of its character, or because she ‘liked the people’. Since she was now at liberty to pick and choose amongst the vociferous claimants for her services, she went very largely by personal liking. Mere riches would not buy you the services of Lucy Eyelesbarrow. She could pick and choose and she did pick and choose. She enjoyed her life very much and found in it a continual source of entertainment.
Lucy Eyelesbarrow read and re-read the letter from Miss Marple. She had made Miss Marple’s acquaintance two years ago when her services had been retained by Raymond West, the novelist, to go and look after his old aunt who was recovering from pneumonia. Lucy had accepted the job and had gone down to St Mary Mead. She had liked Miss Marple very much. As for Miss Marple, once she had caught a glimpse out of her bedroom window of Lucy Eyelesbarrow really trenching for sweet peas in the proper way, she had leaned back on her pillows with a sigh of relief, eaten the tempting little meals that Lucy Eyelesbarrow brought to her, and listened, agreeably surprised, to the tales told by her elderly irascible maidservant of how ‘I taught that Miss Eyelesbarrow a crochet pattern what she’d never heard