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  'I can't tell you.'

  'Excuse me, Mr Rudd, do you mean by that you can't or that you won't?'

  Jason Rudd spoke quickly. 'Can't. Can't every time. It seems to me just as impossible as it would seem to her that anyone would dislike her enough – should have a suficient grudge against her – to do such a thing. On the other hand, on the sheer, downright evidence of the facts, that is exactly what must have occurred.'

  'Will you outline the facts to me as you see them?'

  'If you like. The circumstances are quite clear. I poured out two daiquiri cocktails from an already prepared jug. I took them to Marina and Mrs Badcock. What Mrs Badcock did I do not know. She moved on I presume, to speak to someone she knew. My wife had her drink in her hand. At that moment the mayor and his wife were approaching. She put down her glass, as yet untouched, and greeted them. Then there were more greetings. An old friend we'd not seen for years, some other locals and one or two people from the studios. During that time the glass containing the cocktail stood on the table which was situated at that time behind us since we had both moved forward a little to the top of the stairs. One or two photographs were taken of my wife talking to the mayor, which we hoped would please the local population, at the special request of the representatives of the local newspaper. While this was being done I brought some fresh drinks to a few of the last arrivals. During that time my wife's glass must have been poisoned. Don't ask me how it was done, it cannot have been easy to do. On the other hand, it is startling, if anyone has the nerve to do an action openly and unconcernedly, how little people are likely to notice it! You ask me if I have suspicions; all I can say is that at least one of about twenty people might have done it. People, you see, were moving about in little groups, talking, occasionally going off to have a look at the alterations which had been done to the house. There was movement, continual movement. I've thought and I've thought, I've racked my brains but there is nothing, absolutely nothing to direct my suspicions to any particular person.'

  He paused and gave an exasperated sigh.

  'I understand,' said Dermot. 'Go on, please.'

  'I dare say you've heard the next part before.'

  'I should like to hear it again from you.'

  'Well, I had come back towards the head of the stairs. My wife had turned towards the table and was just picking up her glass. There was a slight exclamation from Mrs Badcock. Somebody must have jogged her arm and the glass slipped out of her fingers and was broken on the floor. Marina did the natural hostess's act. Her own skirt had been slightly touched with the liquid. She insisted no harm was done, used her own handkerchief to wipe Mrs Badcock's skirt and insisted on her having her own drink. If I remember, she said "I've had far too much already." So that was that. But I can assure you of this. The fatal dose could not have been added after that for Mrs Badcock immediately began to drink from the glass. As you know, four or five minutes later she was dead. I wonder – how I wonder – what the poisoner must have felt when he realised how badly his scheme had failed…'

  'All this occurred to you at the time?'

  'Of course not. At the time I concluded, naturally enough, this woman had had some kind of a seizure. Perhaps heart, coronary thrombosis, something of that sort. It never occurred to me that poisoning was involved. Would it occur to you – would it occur to anybody?'

  'Probably not,' said Dermot. 'Well, your account is clear enough and you seem sure of your facts. You say you have suspicion of any particular person. I can't quite accept that, you know.'

  'I assure you it's the truth.'

  'Let us approach it from another angle. Who is there who could wish to harm your wife? It all sounds melodramatic if you put it this way, but what enemies had she got?' Jason Rudd made an expressive gesture.

  'Enemies? Enemies? It's so hard to define what one means by an enemy. There's plenty of envy and jealousy in the world my wife and I occupy. There are always people who say malicious things, who'll start a whispering campaign, who will do someone they are jealous of a bad turn if the opportunity occurs. But that doesn't mean that any of those people is a murderer, or indeed even a likely murderer. Don't you agree?'

  'Yes, I agree. There must be something beyond petty dislikes or envies. Is there anyone whom your wife has injured, say, in the past?'

  Jason Rudd did not rebut this easily. Instead he frowned.

  'Honestly, I don't think so,' he said at last, 'and I may say I've given a lot of thought to that point.'

  'Anything in the nature of a love affair, an association with some man?'

  'There have of course been affairs of that kind. It may be considered, I suppose, that Marina has occasionally treated some man badly. But there is nothing to cause any lasting ill-will. I'm sure of it.'

  'What about women? Any woman who has had a lasting grudge against Miss Gregg?'

  'Well,' said Jason Rudd, 'you can never tell with women. I can't think of any particular one offhand.'

  'Who'd benefit financially by your wife's death?'

  'Her will benefits various people but not to any large extent. I suppose the people who'd benefit, as you put it, financially, would be myself as her husband and, from another angle, possibly the star who might replace her in this film. Though, of course, the film might be abandoned altogether. These things are very uncertain.'

  'Well, we need not go into all that now,' said Dermot.

  'And I have your assurance that Marina will not be told that she is in possible danger?'

  'We shall have to go into that matter,' said Dermot. 'I want to impress upon you that you are taking quite a considerable risk there. However, the matter will not arise for some days since your wife is still under medical care. Now there is one more thing I would like you to do. I would like you to write down for me as accurately as you can every single person who was in that recess at the top of the stairs, or whom you saw coming up the stairs at the time of the murder.'

  'I'll do my best, but I'm rather doubtful. You'd do far better to consult my secretary, Ella Zielinsky. She has a most accurate memory and also lists of the local lads who were there. If you'd like to see her now -'

  'I would like to talk to Miss Ella Zielinsky very much,' said Dermot.

  Chapter 11

  I

  Surveying Dermot Craddock unemotionally through her large horn-rimmed spectacles, Ella Zielinsky seemed to him almost too good to be true. With quiet businesslike alacrity she whipped out of a drawer a typewritten sheet and passed it across to him.

  'I think I can be fairly sure that there are no omissions,' she said. 'But it is just possible that I may have included one or two names – local names they will be – who were not actually there. That is to say who may have left earlier or who may not have been found and brought up. Actually, I'm pretty sure that it is correct.'

  'A very efficient piece of work if I may say so,' said Dermot.

  'Thank you.'

  'I suppose – I am quite an ignoramus in such things – that you have to attain a high standard of efficiency in your job?'

  'One has to have things pretty well taped, yes.'

  'What else does your job comprise? Are you a kind of liaison officer, so to speak, between the studios and Gossington Hall?'

  'No. I've nothing to do with the studios, actually, though of course I naturally take messages from there on the telephone or send them. My job is to look after Miss Gregg's social life, her public and private engagements, and to supervise in some degree the running of the house.'

  'You like the job?'

  'It's extremely well paid and I find it reasonably interesting. I didn't however bargain for murder,' she added dryly.

  'Did it seem very incredible to you?'

  'So much so that I am going to ask you if you are really sure it is murder?'

  'Six times the dose of di-ethyl-mexine etc. etc., could hardly be anything else.'

  'It might have been an accident of some kind.'

  'And how would you suggest such an accident c
ould have occurred?'

  'More easily than you'd imagine, since you don't know the set-up. This house is simply full of drugs of all kinds. I don't mean dope when I say drugs. I mean properly prescribed remedies, but, like most of these things, what they call, I understand, the lethal dose is not very far removed from the therapeutic dose.'

  Dermot nodded.

  'These theatrical and picture people have the most curious lapses in their intelligence. Sometimes it seems to me that the more of an artistic genius you are, the less common sense you have in everday life.'

  'That may well be.'

  'What with all the bottles, cachets, powders, capsules, and little boxes that they carry about with them; what with popping in a tranquilliser here and a tonic there and a pep pill somewhere else, don't you think it would be easy enough that the whole thing might get mixed up?'

  'I don't see how it could apply in this case.'

  'Well, I think it could. Somebody, one of the guests, may have wanted a sedative, or a reviver, and whipped out his or her little container which they carry around and possibly because they hadn't remembered the dose because they hadn't had one for some time, might have put too much in a glass. Then their mind was distracted and they went off somewhere, and let's say this Mrs What's-her-name comes along, thinks it's her glass, picks it up and drinks it. That's surely a more feasible idea than anything else?'

  'You don't think that all those possibilities haven't been gone into, do you?'

  'No, I suppose not. But there were a lot of people there and a lot of glasses standing about with drinks in them. It happens often enough, you know, that you pick up the wrong glass and drink out of it.'

  'Then you don't think that Heather Badcock was deliberately poisoned? You think that she drank out of somebody else's glass?'

  'I can't imagine anything more likely to happen.'

  'In that case,' said Dermot speaking carefully, 'it would have had to be Marina Gregg's glass. You realise that? Marina handed her her own glass.'

  'Or what she thought was her own glass,' Ella Zielinsky corrected him. 'You haven't talked to Marina yet, have you? she's extremely vague. She'd pick up any glass that looked as though it were hers, and drink it. I've seen her do it again and again.'

  'She takes Calmo?'

  'Oh yes, we all do.'

  'You too, Miss Zielinsky?'

  'I'm driven to it sometimes,' said Ella Zielinsky. 'These things are rather imitative, you know.'

  'I shall be glad,' said Dermot, 'when I am able to talk to Miss Gregg. She – er – seems to be prostrated for a very long time.'

  'That's just throwing a temperament,' said Ella Zielinksy. 'She just dramatizes herself a good deal, you know. She'd never take murder in her stride.'

  'As you manage to do, Miss Zielinsky?'

  '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 contacts 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 turnouts 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 low-down 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 any time 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.'