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By Root 574 0

floor. It was comfortably but not luxuriously furnished. It was a room which had little personality and no indication of the private tastes or predilection of its user. Jason Rudd rose from the desk at which he was sitting, and came forward to meet Dermot. It was wholly unnecessary, Dermot thought, for the room to have a personality; the user of it had so much. Hailey Preston had been an efficient and voluble gasbag. Gilchrist had force and magnetism. But here was a man whom, as Dermot immediately admitted to himself, it would not be easy to read. In the course of his career, Craddock had met and summed up many people. By now he was fully adept in realizing the potentialities and very often reading the thoughts of most of the people with whom he came in contact. But he felt at once that one would be able to gauge only as much of Jason Rudd’s thoughts as Jason Rudd himself permitted. The eyes, deepset and thoughtful, perceived but would not easily reveal. The ugly, rugged head spoke of an excellent intellect. The clown’s face could repel you or attract you. Here, thought Dermot Craddock to himself, is where I sit and listen and take very careful notes.

‘Sorry, Chief-Inspector, if you’ve had to wait for me. I was held up by some small complication over at the Studios. Can I offer you a drink?’

‘Not just now, thank you, Mr Rudd.’

The clown’s face suddenly crinkled into a kind of ironic amusement.

‘Not the house to take a drink in, is that what you’re thinking?’

‘As a matter of fact it wasn’t what I was thinking.’

‘No, no I suppose not. Well, Chief-Inspector, what do you want to know? What can I tell you?’

‘Mr Preston has answered very adequately all the questions I have put to him.’

‘And that has been helpful to you?’

‘Not as helpful as I could wish.’

Jason Rudd looked inquiring.

‘I’ve also seen Dr Gilchrist. He informs me that your wife is not yet strong enough to be asked questions.’

‘Marina,’ said Jason Rudd, ‘is very sensitive. She’s subject, frankly, to nervous storms. And murder at such close quarters is, as you will admit, likely to produce a nerve storm.’

‘It is not a pleasant experience,’ Dermot Craddock agreed, dryly.

‘In any case I doubt if there is anything my wife could tell you that you could not learn equally well from me. I was standing beside her when the thing happened, and frankly I would say that I am a better observer than my wife.’

‘The first question I would like to ask,’ said Dermot, ‘(and it is a question that you have probably answered already but for all that I would like to ask again), had you or your wife any previous acquaintance with Heather Badcock?’

Jason Rudd shook his head.

‘None whatever. I certainly have never seen the woman before in my life. I had two letters from her on behalf of the St John Ambulance Association, but I had not met her personally until about five minutes before her death.’

‘But she claimed to have met your wife?’

Jason Rudd nodded.

‘Yes, some twelve or thirteen years ago, I gather. In Bermuda. Some big garden party in aid of ambulances, which Marina opened for them, I think, and Mrs Badcock, as soon as she was introduced, burst into some long rigmarole of how although she was in bed with ’flu, she had got up and had managed to come to this affair and had asked for and got my wife’s autograph.’

Again the ironical smile crinkled his face.

‘That, I may say, is a very common occurrence, Chief-Inspector. Large mobs of people are usually lined up to obtain my wife’s autograph and it is a moment that they treasure and remember. Quite understandably, it is an event in their lives. Equally naturally it is not likely that my wife would remember one out of a thousand or so autograph hunters. She had, quite frankly, no recollection of ever having seen Mrs Badcock before.’

‘That I can well understand,’ said Craddock. ‘Now I have been told, Mr Rudd, by an onlooker that your wife was slightly distraite during the few moments that Heather Badcock was speaking to her. Would you agree that such was the case?’

‘Very possibly,’ said Jason Rudd. ‘Marina is not particularly