"Someone told me I ought to try it. I think they're right. I've just had the most marvellous doughnut."

"My dear, they have real muffins too."

"Muffins," said Lady Sedgwick thoughtfully. "Yes… She seemed to concede the point. "Muffins!"

She nodded and went on towards the elevator. "Extraordinary girl," said Lady Selina. To her, like to Miss Marple, every woman under sixty was a girl. "Known her ever since she was a child. Nobody could do anything with her. Ran away with an Irish groom when she was sixteen. They managed to get her back in time-or perhaps not in time. Anyway they bought him off and got her safely married to old Coniston- thirty years older than she was, awful old rip, quite dotty about her. That didn't last long. She went off with Johnnie Sedgwick. That might have stuck if he hadn't broken his neck steeplechasing. After that she married Ridgway Becker, the American yacht owner. He divorced her three years ago and I hear she's taken up with some racing-car driver-a Pole or something. I don't know whether she's actually married him or not. After the American divorce she went back to calling herself Sedgwick. She goes about with the most extraordinary people. They say she takes drugs… I don't know, I'm sure."

"One wonders if she is happy," said Miss Marple. Lady Selina, who had clearly never wondered anything of the kind, looked rather startled.

"She's got packets of money, I suppose," she said doubtfully. "Alimony and all that. Of course that isn't everything..

"No, indeed."

"And she's usually got a man-or several men- in tow."

"Yes?"

"Of course when some women get to that age, that's all they want… But somehow-"

She paused.

"No," said Miss Marple. "I don't think so either."

There were people who would have smiled in gentle derision at this pronouncement on the part of an oldfashioned old lady who could hardly be expected to be an authority on nymphomania, and indeed it was not a word that Miss Marple would have used-her own phrase would have been "always too fond of men." But Lady Selina accepted her opinion as a confirmation of her own.