“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 trying 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.”
“She would be startled then when she saw him?”
“Presumably yes.”
“Startled—and possibly frightened.”
“‘The doom has come upon me,’” said Craddock. “That’s the idea. Then there was young Hailey Preston dodging about that day, doing his stuff. Talks a good deal but definitely heard nothing, saw nothing and knew nothing. Almost too anxious to say so. Does anything there ring a bell?”
“Not exactly,” said Miss Marple. “Plenty of interesting possibilities. But I’d still like to know a little more about the children.”
He looked at her curiously. “You’ve got quite a bee in your bonnet about that, haven’t you?” he said. “All right, I’ll find out.”
Thirteen
I
“I suppose it couldn’t possibly have been the mayor?” said Inspector Cornish wistfully.
He tapped the paper with the list of names on it with his pencil. Dermot Craddock grinned.
“Wishful thinking?” he asked.
“You could certainly call it that,” said Cornish. “Pompous, canting old hypocrite!” he went on. “Everybody’s got it in for him. Throws his weight about, ultra sanctimonious, and neck deep in graft for years past!”
“Can’t you ever bring it home to him?”
“No,” said Cornish. “He’s too slick for that. He’s always just on the right side of the law.”
r /> “It’s tempting, I agree,” said Dermot Craddock, “but I think you’ll have to banish that rosy picture from your mind, Frank.”
“I know, I know,” said Cornish. “He’s a possible, but a wildly improbable. Who else have we got?”
Both men studied the list again. There were still eight names on it.
“We’re pretty well agreed,” said Craddock, “that there’s nobody missed out from here?” There was a faint question in his voice. Cornish answered it.
“I think you can be pretty sure that’s the lot. After Mrs. Bantry came the vicar, and after that the Badcocks. There were then eight people on the stairs. The mayor and his wife, Joshua Grice and wife from Lower Farm. Donald McNeil of the Much Benham Herald & Argus. Ardwyck Fenn, USA, Miss Lola Brewster, USA, Moving Picture Star. There you are. In addition there was an arty photographer from London with a camera set up on the angle of the stairs. If, as you suggest, this Mrs. Bantry’s story of Marina Gregg having a ‘frozen look’ was occasioned by someone she saw on the stairs, you’ve got to take your pick among that lot. Mayor regretfully out. Grices out—never been away from St. Mary Mead I should say. That leaves four. Local journalist unlikely, photographer girl had been there for half an hour already, so why should Marina react so late in the day? What does that leave?”
“Sinister strangers from America,” said Craddock with a faint smile.
“You’ve said it.”
“They’re our best suspects by far, I agree,” said Craddock. “They turned up unexpectedly. Ardwyck Fenn was an old flame of Marina’s whom she had not seen for years. Lola Brewster was once married to Marina Gregg’s third husband, who got a divorce from her in order to marry Marina. It was not, I gather, a very amicable divorce.”
“I’d put her down as Suspect Number One,” said Cornish.
“Would you, Frank? After a lapse of about fifteen years or so, and having remarried twice herself since then?”
Cornish said that you never knew with women. Dermot accepted that as a general dictum, but remarked that it seemed odd to him to say the least of it.
“But you agree that it lies between them?”
“Possibly. But I don’t like it very much. What about the hired help who were serving the drinks?”
“Discounting the ‘frozen look’ we’ve heard so much about? Well, we’ve checked up in a general way. Local catering firm from Market Basing had the job—for the fête, I mean. Actually in the house, there was the butler, Giuseppe, in charge; and two local girls from the studios canteen. I know both of them. Not over bright, but harmless.”
“Pushing it back at me, are you? I’ll go and have a word with the reporter chap. He might have seen something helpful. Then to London. Ardwyck Fenn, Lola Brewster—and the photographer girl—what’s her name?—Margot Bence. She also might have seen something.”
Cornish nodded. “Lola Brewster is my best bet,” he said. He looked curiously at Craddock. “You don’t seem as sold on her as I am.”
“I’m thinking of the difficulties,” said Dermot slowly.
“Difficulties?”
“Of putting poison into Marina’s glass without anybody seeing her.”
“Well, that’s the same for everybody, isn’t it? It was a mad thing to do.”
“Agreed it was a mad thing to do, but it would be a madder thing for someone like Lola Brewster than for anybody else.”
“Why?” asked Cornish.
“Because she was a guest of importance. She’s a somebody, a big name. Everyone would be looking at her.”
“True enough,” Cornish admitted.
“The locals would nudge each other and whisper and stare, and after Marina Gregg and Jason Rudd greeted her she’d have been passed on for the secretaries to look after. It wouldn’t be easy, Frank. However adroit you were, you couldn’t be sure someone wouldn’t see you. That’s the snag there, and it’s a big snag.”
“As I say, isn’t that snag the same for everybody?”
“No,” said Craddock. “Oh no. Far from it. Take the butler now, Giuseppe. He’s busy with the drinks and glasses, with pouring things out, with handing them. He could put a pinch or a tablet or two of Calmo in a glass easily enough.”
“Giuseppe?” Frank Cornish reflected. “Do you think he did?”
“No reason to believe so,” said Craddock, “but we might find a reason. A nice solid bit of motive, that is to say. Yes, he could have done it. Or one of the catering staff could have done it—unfortunately they weren’t on the spot—a pity.”
“Someone might have managed to get himself or herself deliberately planted in the firm for the purpose.”
“You mean it might have been as premeditated as all that?”
“We don’t know anything about it yet,” said Craddock, vexedly. “We absolutely don’t know the first thing about it. Not until we can prise what we want to know out of Marina Gregg, or out of her husband. They must know or suspect—but they’re not telling. And we don’t know yet why they’re not telling. We’ve a long way to go.”
He paused and then resumed: “Discounting the ‘frozen look’ which may have been pure coincidence, there are other people who could have done it fairly easily. The secretary woman, Ella Zielinsky. She was also busy with glasses, with handing things to people. Nobody would be watching her with any particular interest. The same applies to that willow wand of a young man—I’ve forgotten his name. Hailey—Hailey Preston? That’s right. There would have been a good opportunity for either of them. In fact if either of them had wanted to do away with Marina Gregg it would have been far safer to do so on a public occasion.”
“Anyone else?”
“Well, there’s always the husband,” said Craddock.
“Back to the husbands again,” said Cornish, with a faint smile. “We thought it was that poor devil, Badcock, before we realised that Marina was the intended victim. Now we’ve transferred our suspicions to Jason Rudd. He seems devoted enough though, I must say.”
“He has the reputation of being so,” said Craddock, “but one never knows.”
“If he wanted to get rid of her, wouldn’t divorce be much easier?”
“It would be far more usual,” agreed Dermot, “but there may be a lot of ins and outs to this business that we don’t know yet.”
The telephone rang. Cornish took up the receiver.
“What? Yes? Put them through. Yes, he’s here.” He listened for a moment then put his hand over the receiver and looked at Dermot. “Miss Marina Gregg,” he said, “is feeling very much better. She is quite ready to be interviewed.”
“I’d better hurry along,” said Dermot Craddock, “before she changes her mind.”
II
At Gossington Hall Dermot Craddock was received by Ella Zielinsky. She was, as usual, brisk and efficient.
“Miss Gregg is waiting for you, Mr. Craddock,” she said.
Dermot looked at her with some interest. From the beginning he had found Ella Zielinsky an intriguing personality. He had said to himself, “A poker face if I ever saw one.” She had answered any questions he had asked with the utmost readiness. She had shown no signs of keeping anything back, but what she really thought or felt or even knew about the business, he still had no idea. There seemed to be no chink in the armour of her bright efficiency. She might know more than she said she did; she might know a good deal. The only thing he was sure of—and he had to admit to himself that he had no reasons to adduce for that surety—was that she was in love with Jason Rudd. It was, as he had said, an occupational disease of secretaries. It probably meant nothing. But the fact did at least suggest a motive and he was sure, quite sure, that she was concealing something. It might be love, it might be hate. It might, quite simply, be guilt. She might have taken her opportunity that afternoon, or she might have deliberately planned what she was going to do. He could see her in the part quite easily, as far as the execution of it went. Her swift but unhurried movements, moving here and there, looking after guests, handing
glasses to one or another, taking glasses away, her eyes marking the spot where Marina had put her glass down on the table. And then, perhaps at the very moment when Marina had been greeting the arrivals from the States, with surprise and joyous cries and everybody’s eyes turned towards their meeting, she could have quietly and unobtrusively dropped the fatal dose into that glass. It would require audacity, nerve, swiftness. She would have had all those. Whatever she had done, she would not have looked guilty whilst she was doing it. It would have been a simple, brilliant crime, a crime that could hardly fail to be successful. But chance had ruled otherwise. In the rather crowded floorspace someone had joggled Heather Badcock’s arm. Her drink had been spilt, and Marina, with her natural impulsive grace, had quickly proffered her own glass, standing there untouched. And so the wrong woman had died.
A lot of pure theory, and probably hooey at that, said Dermot Craddock to himself at the same time as he was making polite remarks to Ella Zielinsky.
“One thing I wanted to ask you, Miss Zielinsky. The catering was done by a Market Basing firm, I understand?”
“Yes.”
“Why was that particular firm chosen?”
“I really don’t know,” said Ella. “That doesn’t lie amongst my duties. I know Mr. Rudd thought it would be more tactful to employ somebody local rather than to employ a firm from London. The whole thing was really quite a small affair from our point of view.”
“Quite.” He watched her as she stood frowning a little and looking down. A good forehead, a determined chin, a figure which could look quite voluptuous if it was allowed to do so, a hard mouth, an acquisitive mouth. The eyes? He looked at them in surprise. The lids were reddened. He wondered. Had she been crying? It looked like it. And yet he could have sworn she was not the type of young woman to cry. She looked up at him, and as though she read his thoughts, she took out her handkerchief and blew her nose heartily.