The Bloodstained Pavement: A Short Story by Agatha Christie (1928)

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Joyce Lempriere was telling Raymond West, Miss Marple and few others about her experience that happened a few years ago while visiting a town called Rathole, a small fishing village in England. She is an artist and doing a sketch of the street she was staying on during her stay. One say she sees a gentleman and a woman get out of a car and go into an inn. Not to long after another car pulls up at the inn next to there's and another woman gets out. The gentleman makes a scene coming out of the inn claiming he had not seen her in years. After the woman came back out of their inn, they have a full conversation together. Joyce overhears some of it as she is a way's down the road. They have decided they want to go bathing together, in other words swimming near some cliffs that are nearby. They agree upon this and leave. Joyce makes the decision to go swimming as well since it is a warm day. After having lunch she returns back to sketching. She sees a bearded gentleman residing at one of the inns and makes a perfect person to sketch for her art piece. After a while the gentleman makes his way over and starts discussing with her of the stories of the town. Especially about how the landlord of one of the inns was killed by the sword of a Spanish Sea Captain and how his blood stained the pavement and it took hundreds of years for it to be removed. The man was quite detailed with story and more than Joyce wished to have heard. A while before the man spoke she had started painting over her sketch, and then she realized that she had painted the blood. She looked over to the inn and to her astonishment she saw blood on the pavement. The legend in the town was a death would occur within twenty four hours after someone say the blood return to that spot. Shortly later the gentleman from earlier returned asking if that woman had returned. The bearded man said that he had not seen her. The gentlemen went back to the inn to speak with his wife and ask her if she had seen her but she had not.

There is a vote from Raymond that result of seeing the blood was indigestion from her lunch meal that Joyce had and deemed her story to be over. But Joyce insisted that it was not the end her story. A few days later there was story in the paper of a woman with head trauma that had washed up on the shore a few miles up from the town.

Sir Henry, Mr. Petherick, and Dr. Pender all deemed that it was all a coincidence in Joyce's story and it was a possibility that she was being hysterical about the occurrence and her story was deemed more of ghost story.

Miss Marple assures her that she believes her story quite well and knows for a fact that she did in fact see real blood. It all boiled down to women and the bathing suites.

The men listening are completely confused and asked how Miss Marple has this figured out.

Joyce says that a year later she returned and saw the same gentleman with a different woman who was his wife and they happened to run into that old friend again. She says that she decided to go the police in hopes that they would not say that she was insane but in fact were quite relieved with her findings as they had been trying to figure out an open case an insurance company had brought to their attention about that gentleman.

Raymond remarks to his Aunt how she seems to figure these things out when she lives in such a quiet town. But Miss Marple reminds him of the mother with five kids whom buried all of them, people started to get weary of her when they found out that each had a lot of insurance money.

I found this to be nice little read from Christie. One thing I would like to point out is the event had already had passed and Miss Marple was able to figure it out just based on the clues that Joyce stated during her story. Its not a surprise to me that the men did not have this one figured out. The mind can do things to you when you hear things or imagine them, but when your doing art in Joyce's case, you will naturally draw what you see when your not paying attention. Obviously her mind was paying more attention than she was non intentionally but gave her sound evidence to give to the police. It is a shame what a human is capable of with or without of sound mind. Especially, murder. I cannot determine if it an illness of the brain or if it is of the soul. Surely there is a lot of thinking before it takes place. But it is a character and actions that do the deed. Perhaps as I read more of these books, I will be able to come to a conclusion on this.