“It’s not as simple as it used to be,” said Dermot. “There’s a new social life springing up here. A housing estate, big building development. The Badcocks are fairly new and come from there.”
“I didn’t hear much about the locals, of course,” said Tiddler. “I concentrated on the sex life of film stars and such things.”
“You haven’t brought back very much,” grumbled Dermot. “What about Marina Gregg’s past, anything about that?”
“Done a bit of marrying in her time but not more than most. Her first husband didn’t like getting the chuck, so they said, but he was a very ordinary sort of bloke. He was a realtor or something like that. What is a realtor, by the way?”
“I think it means in the real estate business.”
“Oh well, anyway, he didn’t line up as very glamorous so she got rid of him and married a foreign count or prince. That lasted hardly anytime at all but there don’t seem to be any bones broken. She just shook him off and teamed up with number three. Film star Robert Truscott. That was said to be a passionate love match. His wife didn’t much like letting go of him, but she had to take it in the end. Big alimony. As far as I can make out everybody’s hard up because they’ve got to pay so much alimony to all their ex-wives.”
“But it went wrong?”
“Yes. She was the broken-hearted one, I gather. But another big romance came along a year or two later. Isidore Somebody—a playwright.”
“It’s an exotic life,” said Dermot. “Well, we’ll call it a day now. Tomorrow we’ve got to get down to a bit of hard work.”
“Such as?”
“Such as checking a list I’ve got here. Out of twenty-odd names we ought to be able to do some elimination and out of what’s left we’ll have to look for X.”
“Any idea who X is?”
“Not in the least. If it isn’t Jason Rudd, that is.” He added with a wry and ironic smile, “I shall have to go to Miss Marple and get briefed on local matters.”
Twelve
Miss Marple was pursuing her own methods of research.
“It’s very kind, Mrs. Jameson, very kind of you indeed. I can’t tell you how grateful I am.”
“Oh, don’t mention it, Miss Marple. I’m sure I’m glad to oblige you. I suppose you’ll want the latest ones?”
“No, no, not particularly,” said Miss Marple. “In fact I think I’d rather have some of the old numbers.”
“Well, here you are then,” said Mrs. Jameson, “there’s a nice armful and I can assure you we shan’t miss them. Keep them as long as you like. Now it’s too heavy for you to carry. Jenny, how’s your perm doing?”
“She’s all right, Mrs. Jameson. She’s had her rinse and now she’s having a good dry-out.”
“In that case, dear, you might just run along with Miss Marple here, and carry these magazines for her. No, really, Miss Marple, it’s no trouble at all. Always pleased to do anything we can for you.”
How kind people were, Miss Marple thought, especially when they’d known you practically all their lives. Mrs. Jameson, after long years of running a hairdressing parlour had steeled herself to going as far in the cause of progress as to repaint her sign and call herself
“DIANE. Hair Stylist.”
Otherwise the shop remained much as before and catered in much the same way to the needs of its clients. It turned you out with a nice firm perm: it accepted the task of shaping and cutting for the younger generation and the resultant mess was accepted without too much recrimination. But the bulk of Mrs. Jameson’s clientele was a bunch of solid, stick in the mud middle-aged ladies who found it extremely hard to get their hair done the way they wanted it anywhere else.
“Well, I never,” said Cherry the next morning, as she prepared to run a virulent Hoover round the lounge as she still called it in her mind. “What’s all this?”
“I am trying,” said Miss Marple, “to instruct myself a little in the moving picture world.”
She laid aside Movie News and picked up Amongst the Stars.
“It’s really very interesting. It reminds one so much of so many things.”
“Fantastic lives they must lead,” said Cherry.
“Specialized lives,” said Miss Marple. “Highly specialized. It reminds me very much of the things a friend of mine used to tell me. She was a hospital nurse. The same simplicity of outlook and all the gossip and the rumours. And good-looking doctors causing any amount of havoc.”
“Rather sudden, isn’t it, this interest of yours?” said Cherry.
“I’m finding it difficult to knit nowadays,” said Miss Marple. “Of course the print of these is rather small, but I can always use a magnifying glass.”
Cherry looked on curiously.
“You’re always surprising me,” she said. “The things you take an interest in.”
“I take an interest in everything,” said Miss Marple.
“I mean taking up new subjects at your age.”
Miss Marple shook her head.
“They aren’t really new subjects. It’s human nature I’m interested in, you know, and human nature is much the same whether it’s film stars or hospital nurses or people in St. Mary Mead or,” she added thoughtfully, “people who live in the Development.”
“Can’t see much likeness between me and a film star,” said Cherry laughing, “more’s the pity. I suppose it’s Marina Gregg and her husband coming to live at Gossington Hall that set you off on this.”
“That and the very sad event that occurred there,” said Miss Marple.
“Mrs. Badcock, you mean? It was bad luck that.”
“What do you think of it in the—” Miss Marple paused with the “D” hovering on her lips. “What do you and your friends think about it?” she amended the question.
“It’s a queer do,” said Cherry. “Looks as though it were murder, doesn’t it, though of course the police are too cagey to say so outright. Still, that’s what it looks like.”
“I don’t see what else it could be,” said Miss Marple.
“It couldn’t be suicide,” agreed Cherry, “not with Heather Badcock.”
“Did you know her well?”
“No, not really. Hardly at all. She was a bit of a nosy parker you know. Always wanting you to join this, join that, turn up for meetings at so-and-so. Too much energy. Her husband got a bit sick of it sometimes, I think.”
“She doesn’t seem to have had any real enemies.”
“People used to get a bit fed up with her sometimes. The point is, I don’t see who could have murdered her unless it was her husband. And he’s a very meek type. Still, the worm will turn, or so they say. I’ve always heard that Crippen was ever so nice a man and that man, Haigh, who pickled them all in acid—they say he couldn’t have been more charming! So one never knows, does one?”
“Poor Mr. Badcock,” said Miss Marple.
“And people say he was upset and nervy at the fête that day—before it happened, I mean—but people always say that kind of thing afterwards. If you ask me, he’s looking better now than he’s looked for years. Seems to have got a bit more spirit and go in him.”
“Indeed?” said Miss Marple.
“Nobody really thinks he did it,” said Cherry. “Only if he didn’t, who did? I can’t help thinking myself it must have been an accident of some kind. Accidents do happen. You think you know all about mushrooms and go out and pick some. One fungus gets in among them and there you are, rolling about in agony and lucky if the doctor gets to you in time.”
“Cocktails and glasses of sherry don’t seem to lend themselves to accident,” said Miss Marple.
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Cherry. “A bottle of something or other could have got in by mistake. Somebody I knew took a dose of concentrated DDT once. Horribly ill they were.”
“Accident,” said Miss Marple thoughtfully. “Yes, it certainly seems the best solution. I must say I can’t believe that in the case of Heather Badcock it could have been deliberate murder. I wo
n’t say it’s impossible. Nothing is impossible, but it doesn’t seem like it. No, I think the truth lies somewhere here.” She rustled her magazines and picked up another one.
“You mean you’re looking for some special story about someone?”
“No,” said Miss Marple. “I’m just looking for odd mentions of people and a way of life and something—some little something that might help.” She returned to her perusal of the magazines and Cherry removed her vacuum cleaner to the upper floor. Miss Marple’s face was pink and interested, and being slightly deaf now, she did not hear the footsteps that came along the garden path towards the drawing room window. It was only when a slight shadow fell on the page that she looked up. Dermot Craddock was standing smiling at her.
“Doing your homework, I see,” he remarked.
“Inspector Craddock, how very nice to see you. And how kind to spare time to come and see me. Would you like a cup of coffee, or possibly a glass of sherry?”
“A glass of sherry would be splendid,” said Dermot. “Don’t you move,” he added. “I’ll ask for it as I come in.”
He went round by the side door and presently joined Miss Marple.
“Well,” he said, “is that bumph giving you ideas?”
“Rather too many ideas,” said Miss Marple. “I’m not often shocked, you know, but this does shock me a little.”
“What, the private lives of film stars?”
“Oh no,” said Miss Marple, “not that! That all seems to be most natural, given the circumstances and the money involved and the opportunities for propinquity. Oh, no, that’s natural enough. I mean the way they’re written about. I’m rather old-fashioned, you know, and I feel that that really shouldn’t be allowed.”
“It’s news,” said Dermot Craddock, “and some pretty nasty things can be said in the way of fair comment.”
“I know,” said Miss Marple. “It makes me sometimes very angry. I expect you think it’s silly of me reading all these. But one does so badly want to be in things and of course sitting here in the house I can’t really know as much about things as I would like to.”
“That’s just what I thought,” said Dermot Craddock, “and that’s why I’ve come to tell you about them.”
“But, my dear boy, excuse me, would your superiors really approve of that?”
“I don’t see why not,” said Dermot. “Here,” he added, “I have a list. A list of people who were there on that landing during the short time of Heather Badcock’s arrival until her death. We’ve eliminated a lot of people, perhaps precipitately, but I don’t think so. We’ve eliminated the mayor and his wife and Alderman somebody and his wife and a great many of the locals, though we’ve kept in the husband. If I remember rightly you were always very suspicious of husbands.”
“They are often the obvious suspects,” said Miss Marple, apologetically, “and the obvious is so often right.”
“I couldn’t agree with you more,” said Craddock.
“But which husband, my dear boy, are you referring to?”
“Which one do you think?” asked Dermot. He eyed her sharply.
Miss Marple looked at him.
“Jason Rudd?” she asked.
“Ah!” said Craddock. “Your mind works just as mine does. I don’t think it was Arthur Badcock, because you see, I don’t think that Heather Badcock was meant to be killed. I think the intended victim was Marina Gregg.”
“That would seem almost certain, wouldn’t it?” said Miss Marple.
“And so,” said Craddock, “as we both agree on that, the field widens. To tell you who was there on that day, what they saw or said they saw, and where they were or said they were, is only a thing you could have observed for yourself if you’d been there. So my superiors, as you call them, couldn’t possibly object to my discussing that with you, could they?”
“That’s very nicely put, my dear boy,” said Miss Marple.
“I’ll give you a little précis of what I was told and then we’ll come to the list.”
He gave a brief résumé of what he had heard, and then he produced his list.
“It must be one of these,” he said. “My godfather, Sir Henry Clithering, told me that you once had a club here. You called it the Tuesday Night Club. You all dined with each other in turn and then someone would tell a story—a story of some real life happening which had ended in mystery. A mystery of which only the teller of the tale knew the answer. And every time, so my godfather told me, you guessed right. So I thought I’d come along and see if you’d do a bit of guessing for me this morning.”
“I think that is rather a frivolous way of putting it,” said Miss Marple, reproving, “but there is one question I should like to ask.”
“Yes?”
“What about the children?”
“The children? There’s only one. An imbecile child in a sanatorium in America. Is that what you mean?”
“No,” said Miss Marple, “that’s not what I mean. It’s very sad of course. One of those tragedies that seem to happen and there’s no one to blame for it. No, I meant the children that I’ve seen mentioned in some article here.” She tapped the papers in front of her. “Children that Marina Gregg adopted. Two boys, I think, and a girl. In one case a mother with a lot of children and very little money to bring them up in this country, wrote to her, and asked if she couldn’t take a child. There was a lot of very silly false sentiment written about that. About the mother’s unselfishness and the wonderful home and education and future the child was going to have. I can’t find out much about the other two. One I think was a foreign refugee and the other was some American child. Marina Gregg adopted them at different times. I’d like to know what’s happened to them.”
Dermot Craddock looked at her curiously. “It’s odd that you should think of that,” he said. “I did just vaguely wonder about those children myself. But how do you connect them up?”
“Well,” said Miss Marple, “as far as I can hear or find out, they’re not living with her now, are they?”
“I expect they were provided for,” said Craddock. “In fact, I think that the adoption laws would insist on that. There was probably money settled on them in trust.”
“So when she got—tired of them,” said Miss Marple with a very faint pause before the word “tired,” “they were dismissed! After being brought up in luxury with every advantage. Is that it?”
“Probably,” said Craddock. “I don’t know exactly.” He continued to look at her curiously.
“Children feel things, you know,” said Miss Marple, nodding her head. “They feel things more than the people around them ever imagine. The sense of hurt, of being rejected, of not belonging. It’s a thing that you don’t get over just because of advantages. Education is no substitute for it, or comfortable living, or an assured income, or a start in a profession. It’s the sort of thing that might rankle.”
“Yes. But all the same, isn’t it rather far-fetched to think that—well, what exactly do you think?”
“I haven’t got as far as that,” said Miss Marple. “I just wondered where they were now and how old they would be now? Grown-up, I should imagine, from what I’ve read here.”
“I could find out, I suppose,” said Dermot Craddock slowly.
“Oh, I don’t want to bother you in anyway, or even to suggest that my little idea’s worthwhile at all.”
“There’s no harm,” said Dermot Craddock, “in having that checked up on.” He made a note in his little book. “Now do you want to look at my little list?”
“I don’t really think I should be able to do anything useful about that. You see, I wouldn’t know who the people were.”
“Oh, I could give you a running commentary,” said Craddock. “Here we are. Jason Rudd, husband, (husbands always highly suspicious). Everyone says that Jason Rudd adores her. That is suspicious in itself, don’t you think?”
“Not necessarily,” said Miss Marple with dignity.
“He’s been very active in tr
ying to conceal the fact that his wife was the object of attack. He hasn’t hinted any suspicion of such a thing to the police. I don’t know why he thinks we’re such asses as not to think of it for ourselves. We’ve considered it from the first. But anyway, that’s his story. He was afraid that knowledge of that fact might get to his wife’s ears and that she’d go into a panic about it.”
“Is she the sort of woman who goes into panics?”
“Yes, she’s neurasthenic, throws temperaments, has nervous breakdowns, gets in states.”
“That might not mean any lack of courage,” Miss Marple objected.
“On the other hand,” said Craddock, “if she knows quite well that she was the object of attack, it’s also possible that she may know who did it.”
“You mean she knows who did it—but does not want to disclose the fact?”
“I just say it’s a possibility, and if so, one rather wonders why not? It looks as though the motive, the root of the matter, was something she didn’t want to come to her husband’s ear.”
“That is certainly an interesting thought,” said Miss Marple.
“Here are a few more names. The secretary, Ella Zielinsky. An extremely competent and efficient young woman.”
“In love with the husband, do you think?” asked Miss Marple.
“I should think definitely,” answered Craddock, “but why should you think so?”
“Well, it so often happens,” said Miss Marple. “And therefore not very fond of poor Marina Gregg, I expect?”
“Therefore possible motive for murder,” said Craddock.
“A lot of secretaries and employees are in love with their employers’ husbands,” said Miss Marple, “but very, very few of them try to poison them.”
“Well, we must allow for exceptions,” said Craddock. “Then there were two local and one London photographer, and two members of the Press. None of them seems likely but we will follow them up. There was the woman who was formerly married to Marina Gregg’s second or third husband. She didn’t like it when Marina Gregg took her husband away. Still, that’s about eleven or twelve years ago. It seems unlikely that she’d make a visit here at this juncture on purpose to poison Marina because of that. Then there’s a man called Ardwyck Fenn. He was once a very close friend of Marina Gregg’s. He hasn’t seen her for years. He was not known to be in this part of the world and it was a great surprise when he turned up on this occasion.”
The Complete Miss Marple Collection Page 151
