At Bertram's Hotel Read Free Page A

interesting,” he sometimes suspected that she had not read them. But then, of course, her eyes were failing.
    In this last he was wrong. Miss Marple had remarkable eyesight for her age, and was at this moment taking in everything that was going on round her with keen interest and pleasure.
    To Joan's proffer of a week or two at one of Bournemouth's best hotels, she had hesitated, murmured, “It's very, very kind of you, my dear, but I really don't think -”
    “But it's good for you, Aunt Jane. Good to get away from home sometimes. It gives you new ideas, and new things to think about.”
    “Oh yes, you are quite right there, and I would like a little visit somewhere for a change. Not, perhaps, Bournemouth.”
    Joan was slightly surprised. She had thought Bournemouth would have been Aunt Jane's Mecca.
    “Eastbourne? Or Torquay?”
    “What I would really like -” Miss Marple hesitated.
    “Yes?”
    “I dare say you will think it rather silly of me.”
    “No, I'm sure I shan't.” (Where did the old dear want to go?)
    “I would really like to go to Bertram's Hotel - in London.”
    “Bertram's Hotel?” The name was vaguely familiar. Words came from Miss Marple in a rush. “I stayed there once - when I was fourteen. With my uncle and aunt, Uncle Thomas, that was, he was Canon of Ely. And I've never forgotten it. If I could stay there - a week would be quite enough - two weeks might be too expensive.”
    “Oh, that's all right. Of course you shall go. I ought to have thought that you might want to go to London - the shops and everything. We'll fix it up - if Bertram's Hotel still exists. So many hotels have vanished, sometimes bombed in the war and sometimes just given up.”
    “No, I happen to know Bertram's Hotel is still going. I had a letter from there - from my American friend Amy McAllister of Boston. She and her husband were staying there.”
    “Good, then I'll go ahead and fix it up.” She added gently, “I'm afraid you may find it's changed a good deal from the days when you knew it. So don't be disappointed.”
    But Bertram's Hotel had not changed. It was just as it had always been. Quite miraculously so, in Miss Marple's opinion. In fact, she wondered.
    It really seemed too good to be true. She knew quite well, with her usual clear-eyed common sense, that what she wanted was simply to refurbish her memories of the past in their old original colours. Much of her life had, perforce, to be spent recalling past pleasures. If you could find someone to remember them with, that was indeed happiness. Nowadays that was not easy to do; she had outlived most of her contemporaries. But she still sat and remembered. In a queer way, it made her come to life again - Jane Marple, that pink and white eager young girl... Such a silly girl in many ways... now who was that very unsuitable young man whose name - oh dear, she couldn't even remember it now! How wise her mother had been to nip that friendship so firmly in the bud. She had come across him years later - and really he was quite dreadful! At the time she had cried herself to sleep for at least a week!
    Nowadays, of course - she considered nowadays... These poor young things. Some of them had mothers, but never mothers who seemed to be any good - mothers who were quite incapable of protecting their daughters from silly affairs, illegitimate babies, and early and unfortunate marriages. It was all very sad.
    Her 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 tidbits 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.