夜雨聆风account for his having spoken to her.”
“It must have been a great shock to her,” said Miss Marple, thoughtfully.
“She felt reasonably safe—and then—the almost impossible mischance ofsomebody turning up who had known her—not as one of the two MissBlacklocks—she was prepared for that—but definitely as Charlotte Black-lock, a patient who’d been operated on for goitre.
“But you wanted to go through it all from the beginning. Well, the begin-ning, I think—if Inspector Craddock agrees with me—was when CharlotteBlacklock, a pretty, lighthearted affectionate girl, developed that enlarge-ment of the thryoid gland that’s called a goitre. It ruined her life, becauseshe was a very sensitive girl. A girl, too, who had always set a lot of stresson her personal appearance. And girls just at that age in their teens areparticularly sensitive about themselves. If she’d had a mother, or a reas-onable father, I don’t think she would have got into the morbid state sheundoubtedly did get into. She had no one, you see, to take her out of her-self, and force her to see people and lead a normal life and not think toomuch about her infirmity. And, of course, in a different household, shemight have been sent for an operation many years earlier.
