It's a nice book, not my favourite but it has many nice points. The way the Bertram Hotel is described, is one. She gives a very suggestive image of it, I could actually see it and feel its atmosphere. It doesn't often happen to me, because usually descriptions pass over me like raindrops, and I barely notice them, very rarely remember them.
Miss Marple finds herself there because her nephew Raymond West and his wife had decided to give her a gift, and she herself had chosen the Bertram hotel. Miss Marple is older here, Raymond is already married and she has pain in her bones, gets easily tired and can't walk for long.
She chooses that hotel in London after hearing from a friend that it was still open, the same hotel she had been to when she was a girl. This was the loveliest bit of the book, to hear her remember when she was just a young girl and was at that hotel with her mother. She remembers that she had fallen for a 'very unsuitable young man' but back then there had been her mother to promptly put an end to that story, and although now she appreciates her mother's wisdom, she also remembers that she had cried herself to sleep for at least a week! How lovely, dear old Miss Marple was once a passionate girl who cried for love..
The case was different from the usual, because the police was investigating a series of robberies, happening everywhere, banks, trains, every time successfully. Chief inspector Fred Davy, called father Davy by some of his older colleagues, thing that I did not like at all, I thought it was annoying and useless, anyway, he starts suspecting the Bertram Hotel, for some reason, and when inspector Campbell is brought there by a minor investigation, he goes along to take a look.
They ask about canon Pennyfather (this is the name in the Italian book I read, although it sounds a bit strange to me, Pennyfeather would have sound nicer somehow). The old clergyman has vanished, but nobody seems to be too much worried because he was always very forgetful and could have easily gone to the wrong place, and forgot to send note of where he was, whatever.
There are many characters in this book. Guests of the Bertram Hotel are Lady Bess Sedgwick, a very adventurous woman; Elvira Blake, the daughter she has not seen in years who has no idea that she's there too; Colonel Luscombe, a judge and also legal guardian of the girl; Miss Marple's acquaintance lady Selina Hazy among many others.
Other characters are Bridget, Elvira's best friend, always helping each other telling all kind of lies to get free to do what they want. Michael Gorman, working at the hotel's door, an old love of Bess.
Ladislaus Malinowski, a young man with a passion for fast cars, he was a world champion too, and now is a friend of Bess and Elvira's love interest. There are also all the people working at the hotel, from Rose to Henry, from Miss Gorringe to the director, and others.
Miss Marple sees Elvira with Ladislaus, and how she looks at him. It's clear to her that the girl is in love, and wishes someone would take better care of Elvira, like her own mother took care of her when she was young. Ladislaus is clearly not good company! I did not like him at all.
Canon Pennyfather is later found with no memory of what happened, knowing only what a couple had told him, that he had had an accident, while actually he had been knocked unconscious by someone in his hotel room.
The whole mystery was something like the hotel being the base for all the robberies, where actors would pose as notorious people to confuse potential witnesses, although this didn't seem to me a great plan.. why would they walk every day in the hotel making themselves look like someone else? It had sense only to mask themselves during the robberies..
Anyway, Miss Marple too starts suspecting something's wrong at the hotel, because she says it's too good to be true, and that one cannot stay anchored to the past, but must go on with the times, and that it all seemed faked after a while.
Chief Davy starts having great consideration of her opinion, and asks for her help. Miss Marple actually has a very little role, here, although important. It's Davy doing all the investigation and revealing at the end that it was Bess the head of the robberies. She was about to deny it, but then all of a sudden confessed everything, even the murder of Micky Gorman, and ran away to her car, driving at such speed to kill herself when she crashed. Both Davy and Miss Marple were witnesses to her confession, but both of them know that she was no killer. It was actually Elvira. The girl was madly in love with Ladislaus, but knew very well that he would not have married her had her been poor, and so when she found out that her mother Bess had been married to Gorman since she was young she was scared of losing her inheritance. Bess had not known about it, thinking it just a joke, and had gone on marrying three or four times , one of which was with Elvira's father. Now in a year's time Elvira was to inherit a lot of money, but what if that old marriage was to be made public? It would invalidate her mother's other marriages, including the one with her father. To prevent this, Elvira had killed Gorman herself.
The sadness of this.
Now Miss Marple asks Davy if he'll let her get away with it. Knowing that her mother had died after confessing, Elvira adds nothing to it, willing to accept her sacrifice to save herself, but Davy tells Miss Marple that no, he won't accept it, he won't permit it. The book ends with Miss Marple saying May God have mercy on her soul.
So what, will Davy be able to prove that Elvira did it? How? It doesn't seem easy at all. Honestly I didn't like this ending much.
Side note, there is mention of a mysterious Mr Robinson when Davy goes to him to have an information otherwise very hard to obtain. Mr Robinson however was able to tell him the answer in a matter of minutes.
Ita: Miss Marple al Bertram Hotel
Nessun commento:
Posta un commento