Complete Short Stories of Miss Marple – Agatha Christie
‘I know, dear,’ said Miss Marple, ‘that your books are very clever. But do you think that people are really so unpleasant as you make them out to be?’
‘My dear Aunt,’ said Raymond gently, ‘keep your beliefs. Heaven forbid that I should in any way shatter them.’
‘I mean,’ said Miss Marple, puckering her brow a little as she counted the stitches in her knitting, ‘that so many people seem to me not to be either bad or good, but simply, you know, very silly.’
Mr. Petherick gave his dry little cough. ‘Don’t you think, Raymond,’ he said, ‘that you attach too much weight to imagination? Imagination is a very dangerous thing, as we lawyers know only too well. To be able to sift evidence impartially, to take the facts and look at them as facts that seems to me the only logical method of arriving at the truth.’
‘Bah!’ cried Joyce, flinging back her black hair indignantly. ‘I bet I could beat you all at this game. I am not only a woman and say what you like, women have an intuition that is denied to men I am an artist as well. And as an artist I have knocked about among all sorts and conditions of people. I know life as darling Miss Marple here cannot possibly know it.’
‘I don’t know about that, dear,’ said Miss Marple. ‘Very painful and distressing things happen in villages sometimes.’
‘May I speak?’ said Dr. Pender smiling. ‘It is the fashion nowadays to decry the clergy, I know, but we hear things, we know a side of human character which is a sealed book to the outside world.’
‘Well,’ said Joyce, ‘it seems to me we are a pretty representative gathering. How would it be if we formed a Club? What is to-day? Tuesday? We will call it The Tuesday Night Club. It is to meet every week, and each member in turn has to propound a problem. Some mystery of which they have personal knowledge, and to which, of course, they know the answer. Let me see, how many are we? One, two, three, four, five. We ought really to be six.’
‘You have forgotten me, dear,’ said Miss Marple, smiling brightly.
Joyce was slightly taken aback, but she concealed the fact quickly.
‘That would be lovely, Miss Marple,’ she said. ‘I didn’t think you would care to play.’
‘I think it would be very interesting,’ said Miss Marple, ‘especially with so many clever gentlemen present. I am afraid I am not clever myself, but living all these years in St. Mary Mead does give one an insight into human nature.’
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