“When everybody about you is in a continual state of agitation,” said Ella dryly, “it develops in you a desire to go to the opposite extreme.”
“You learn to take a pride in not turning a hair when some shocking tragedy occurs?”
She considered. “It’s not a really nice trait, perhaps. But I think if you didn’t develop that sense you’d probably go round the bend yourself.”
“Was Miss Gregg—is Miss Gregg a difficult person to work for?”
It was something of a personal question but Dermot Craddock regarded it as a kind of test. If Ella Zielinsky raised her eyebrows and tacitly demanded what this had to do with the murder of Mrs. Badcock, he would be forced to admit that it had nothing to do with it. But he wondered if Ella Zielinsky might perhaps enjoy telling him what she thought of Marina Gregg.
“She’s a great artist. She’s got a personal magnetism that comes over on the screen in the most extraordinary way. Because of that one feels it’s rather a privilege to work with her. Taken purely personally, of course, she’s hell!”
“Ah,” said Dermot.
“She’s no kind of moderation, you see. She’s up in the air or down in the dumps and everything is always terrifically exaggerated, and she changes her mind and there are an enormous lot of things that one must never mention or allude to because they upset her.”
“Such as?”
“Well, naturally, mental breakdown, or sanatoriums for mental cases. I think it is quite to be understood that she should be sensitive about that. And anything to do with children.”
“Children? In what way?”
“Well, it upsets her to see children, or to hear of people being happy with children. If she hears someone is going to have a baby or has just had a baby, it throws her into a state of misery at once. She can never have another child herself, you see, and the only one she did have is batty. I don’t know if you knew that?”
“I had heard it, yes. It’s all very sad and unfortunate. But after a good many years you’d think she’d forget about it a little.”
“She doesn’t. It’s an obsession with her. She broods on it.”
“What does Mr. Rudd feel about it?”
“Oh, it wasn’t his child. It was her last husband’s, Isidore Wright’s.”
“Ah yes, her last husband. Where is he now?”
“He married again and lives in Florida,” said Ella Zielinsky promptly.
“Would you say that Marina Gregg had made many enemies in her life?”
“Not unduly so. Not more than most, that is to say. There are always rows over other women or other men or over contracts or jealousy—all of those things.”
“She wasn’t as far as you know afraid of anyone?”
“Marina? Afraid of anyone? I don’t think so. Why? Should she be?”
“I don’t know,” said Dermot. He picked up the list of names. “Thank you very much, Miss Zielinsky. If there’s anything else I want to know I’ll come back. May I?”
“Certainly. I’m only too anxious—we’re all only too anxious—to do anything we can to help.”
II
“Well, Tom, what have you got for me?”
Detective-Sergeant Tiddler grinned appreciatively. His name was not Tom, it was William, but the combination of Tom Tiddler had always been too much for his colleagues.
“What gold and silver have you picked up for me?” continued Dermot Craddock.
The two were staying at the Blue Boar and Tiddler had just come back from a day spent at the studios.
“The proportion of gold is very small,” said Tiddler. “Not much gossip. No startling rumours. One or two suggestions of suicide.”
“Why suicide?”
“They thought she might have had a row with her husband and be trying to make him sorry. That line of country. But that she didn’t really mean to go so far as doing herself in.”
“I can’t see that that’s a very helpful line,” said Dermot.
“No, of course it isn’t. They know nothing about it, you see. They don’t know anything except what they’re busy on. It’s all highly technical and there’s an atmosphere of ‘the show must go on,’ or as I suppose one ought to say the picture must go on, or the shooting must go on. I don’t know any of the right terms. All they’re concerned about is when Marina Gregg will get back to the set. She’s mucked up a picture once or twice before by staging a nervous breakdown.”
“Do they like her on the whole?”
“I should say they consider her the devil of a nuisance but for all that they can’t help being fascinated by her when she’s in the mood to fascinate them. Her husband’s besotted about her, by the way.”
“What do they think of him?”
“They think he’s the finest director or producer or whatever it is that there’s ever been.”
“No rumours of his being mixed-up with some other star or some woman of some kind?”
Tom Tiddler stared. “No,” he said, “no. Not a hint of such a thing. Why, do you think there might be?”
“I wondered,” said Dermot. “Marina Gregg is convinced that that lethal dose was meant for her.”
“Is she now? Is she right?”
“Almost certainly, I should say,” Dermot replied. “But that’s not the point. The point is that she hasn’t told her husband so, only her doctor.”
“Do you think she would have told him if—”
“I just wondered,” said Craddock, “whether she might have had at the back of her mind an idea that her husband had been responsible. The doctor’s manner was a little peculiar. I may have imagined it but I don’t think I did.”
“Well, there were no such rumours going about at the studios,” said Tom. “You hear that sort of thing soon enough.”
“She herself is not embroiled with any other man?”
“No, she seems to be devoted to Rudd.”
“No interesting snippets about her past?”
Tiddler grinned. “Nothing to what you can read in a film magazine any day of the week.”
“I think I’ll have to read a few,” said Dermot, “to get the atmosphere.”
“The things they say and hint!” said Tiddler.
“I wonder,” said Dermot thoughtfully, “if my Miss Marple reads film magazines.”
“Is that the old lady who lives in the house by the church?”
“That’s right.”
“They say she’s sharp,” said Tiddler. “They say there’s nothing goes on here that Miss Marple doesn’t hear about. She may not know much about the film people, but she ought to be able to give you the lowdown on the Badcocks all right.”
“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. B
ut 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 won’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?”
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