At Bertram’s Hotel. Агата Кристи
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friend’s voice interrupted these meditations.
‘Well, I never. Is it—yes, it is—Bess Sedgwick over there! Of all the unlikely places—’
Miss Marple had been listening with only half an ear to Lady Selina’s comments on her surroundings. She and Miss Marple moved in entirely different circles, so that Miss Marple had been unable to exchange scandalous tit-bits about the various friends or acquaintances that Lady Selina recognized or thought she recognized.
But Bess Sedgwick was different. Bess Sedgwick was a name that almost everyone in England knew. For over thirty years now, Bess Sedgwick had been reported by the Press as doing this or that outrageous or extraordinary thing. For a good part of the war she had been a member of the French Resistance, and was said to have six notches on her gun representing dead Germans. She had flown solo across the Atlantic years ago, had ridden on horseback across Europe and fetched up at Lake Van. She had driven racing cars, had once saved two children from a burning house, had several marriages to her credit and discredit and was said to be the second best-dressed woman in Europe. It was also said that she had successfully smuggled herself aboard a nuclear submarine on its test voyage.
It was therefore with the most intense interest that Miss Marple sat up and indulged in a frankly avid stare.
Whatever she had expected of Bertram’s Hotel, it was not to find Bess Sedgwick there. An expensive night club, or a lorry drivers’ pull up—either of those would be quite in keeping with Bess Sedgwick’s wide range of interests. But this highly respectable and old world hostelry seemed strangely alien.
Still there she was—no doubt of it. Hardly a month passed without Bess Sedgwick’s face appearing in the fashion magazines or the popular press. Here she was in the flesh, smoking a cigarette in a quick impatient manner and looking in a surprised way at the large tea tray in front of her as though she had never seen one before. She had ordered—Miss Marple screwed up her eyes and peered—it was rather far away—yes, doughnuts. Very interesting.
As she watched, Bess Sedgwick stubbed out her cigarette in her saucer, lifted a doughnut and took an immense bite. Rich red real strawberry jam gushed out over her chin. Bess threw back her head and laughed, one of the loudest and gayest sounds to have been heard in the lounge of Bertram’s Hotel for some time.
Henry was immediately beside her, a small delicate napkin proffered. She took it, scrubbed her chin with the vigour of a schoolboy, exclaiming: ‘That’s what I call a real doughnut. Gorgeous.’
She dropped the napkin on the tray and stood up. As usual every eye was on her. She was used to that. Perhaps she liked it, perhaps she no longer noticed it. She was worth looking at—a striking woman rather than a beautiful one. The palest of platinum hair fell sleek and smooth to her shoulders. The bones of her head and face were exquisite. Her nose was faintly aquiline, her eyes deep set and a real grey in colour. She had the wide mouth of a natural comedian. Her dress was of such simplicity that it puzzled most men. It looked like the coarsest kind of sacking, had no ornamentation of any kind, and no apparent fastening or seams. But women knew better. Even the provincial old dears in Bertram’s knew, quite certainly, that it had cost the earth!
Striding across the lounge towards the lift, she passed quite close to Lady Selina and Miss Marple, and she nodded to the former.
‘Hello, Lady Selina. Haven’t seen you since Crufts. How are the Borzois?’
‘What on earth are you doing here, Bess?’
‘Just staying here. I’ve just driven up from Land’s End. Four hours and three quarters. Not bad.’
‘You’ll kill yourself one of these days. Or someone else.’
‘Oh I hope not.’
‘But why are you staying here?’
Bess Sedgwick threw a swift glance round. She seemed to see the point and acknowledge it with an ironic smile.
‘Someone told me I ought to try it. I think they’re right. I’ve just had the most marvellous doughnut.’
‘My dear, they have real muffins too.’
‘Muffins,’ said Lady Sedgwick thoughtfully. ‘Yes …’ She seemed to concede the point. ‘Muffins!’
She nodded and went on towards the lift.
‘Extraordinary girl,’ said Lady Selina. To her, like to Miss Marple, every woman under sixty was a girl. ‘Known her ever since she was a child. Nobody could do anything with her. Ran away with an Irish groom when she was sixteen. They managed to get her back in time—or perhaps not in time. Anyway they bought him off and got her safely married to old Coniston—thirty years older than she was, awful old rip, quite dotty about her. That didn’t last long. She went off with Johnnie Sedgwick. That might have stuck if he hadn’t broken his neck steeplechasing. After that she married Ridgway Becker, the American yacht owner. He divorced her three years ago and I hear she’s taken up with some Racing Motor Driver—a Pole or something. I don’t know whether she’s actually married or not. After the American divorce she went back to calling herself Sedgwick. She goes about with the most extraordinary people. They say she takes drugs … I don’t know, I’m sure.’
‘One wonders if she is happy,’ said Miss Marple.
Lady Selina, who had clearly never wondered anything of the kind, looked rather startled.
‘She’s got packets of money, I suppose,’ she said doubtfully. ‘Alimony and all that. Of course that isn’t everything …’
‘No, indeed.’
‘And she’s usually got a man—or several men—in tow.’
‘Yes?’
‘Of course when some women get to that age, that’s all they want … But somehow—’
She paused.
‘No,’ said Miss Marple. ‘I don’t think so either.’
There were people who would have smiled in gentle derision at this pronouncement on the part of an old-fashioned old lady who could hardly be expected to be an authority on nymphomania, and indeed it was not a word that Miss Marple would have used—her own phrase would have been ‘always too fond of men’. But Lady Selina accepted her opinion as a confirmation of her own.
‘There have been a lot of men in her life,’ she pointed out.
‘Oh yes, but I should say, wouldn’t you, that men were an adventure to her, not a need?’
And would any woman, Miss Marple wondered, come to Bertram’s Hotel for an assignation with a man? Bertram’s was very definitely not that sort of place. But possibly that could be, to someone of Bess Sedgwick’s disposition, the very reason for choosing it.
She sighed, looked up at the handsome grandfather clock decorously ticking in the corner, and rose with the careful effort of the rheumatic to her feet. She walked slowly towards the lift. Lady Selina cast a glance around her and pounced upon an elderly gentleman of military appearance who was reading the Spectator.
‘How nice to see you again. Er—it is General Arlington, isn’t it?’
But with great courtesy the old gentleman declined being General Arlington. Lady Selina apologized, but was not unduly discomposed. She combined short sight with optimism and since the thing she enjoyed most was meeting old friends and acquaintances, she was always making this kind of mistake. Many other people did the same, since the lights were pleasantly dim and heavily shaded. But nobody ever took offence—usually indeed it seemed to give them pleasure.
Miss Marple smiled to herself as she waited for the lift to come down. So like Selina! Always convinced that she knew everybody. She herself could not compete. Her solitary achievement in that line had been the handsome and well-gaitered Bishop of Westchester whom she had addressed affectionately as ‘dear Robbie’ and who had responded with equal