The Mirror Crack'd - Agatha Christie [38]
‘Something had perhaps distracted her attention?’ said Dermot.
‘Possibly, but it may have been just a momentary lapse through fatigue.’
Dermot Craddock was silent for a few minutes. He looked out of the window where the view was the somewhat sombre one over the woods surrounding Gossington Hall. He looked at the pictures on the walls, and finally he looked at Jason Rudd. Jason Rudd’s face was attentive but nothing more. There was no guide to his feelings. He appeared courteous and completely at ease, but he might, Craddock thought, be actually nothing of the kind. This was a man of very high mental calibre. One would not, Dermot thought, get anything out of him that he was not prepared to say unless one put one’s cards on the table. Dermot took his decision. He would do just that.
‘Has it occurred to you, Mr Rudd, that the poisoning of Heather Badcock may have been entirely accidental? That the real intended victim was your wife?’
There was a silence. Jason Rudd’s face did not change its expression. Dermot waited. Finally Jason Rudd gave a deep sigh and appeared to relax.
‘Yes,’ he said quietly, ‘you’re quite right, Chief-Inspector. I have been sure of it all along.’
‘But you have said nothing to that effect, not to Inspector Cornish, not at the inquest?’
‘No.’
‘Why not, Mr Rudd?’
‘I could answer you very adequately by saying that it was merely a belief on my part unsupported by any kind of evidence. The facts that led me to deduce it, were facts equally accessible to the law which was probably better qualified to decide than I was. I knew nothing about Mrs Badcock personally. She might have enemies, someone might have decided to administer a fatal dose to her on this particular occasion, though it would seem a very curious and far-fetched decision. But it might have been chosen conceivably for the reason that at a public occasion of this kind the issues would be more confused, the number of strangers present would be considerable and just for that reason it would be more difficult to bring home to the person in question the commission of such a crime. All that is true, but I am going to be frank with you, Chief-Inspector. That was not my reason for keeping silent. I will tell you what the reason was. I didn’t want my wife to suspect for one moment that it was she who had narrowly escaped dying by poison.’
‘Thank you for your frankness,’ said Dermot. ‘Not that I quite understand your motive in keeping silent.’
‘No? Perhaps it is a little difficult to explain. You would have to know Marina to understand. She is a person who badly needs happiness and security. Her life has been highly successful in the material sense. She has won renown artistically but her personal life has been one of deep unhappiness. Again and again she has thought that she has found happiness and was wildly and unduly elated thereby, and has had her hopes dashed to the ground. She is incapable, Mr Craddock, of taking a rational, prudent view of life. In her previous marriages she has expected, like a child reading a fairy story, to live happy ever afterwards.’
Again the ironic smile changed the ugliness of the clown’s face into a strange, sudden sweetness.
‘But marriage is not like that, Chief-Inspector. There can be no rapture continued indefinitely. We are fortunate indeed if we can achieve a life of quiet content, affection, and serene and sober happiness.’ He added. ‘Perhaps you are married, Chief-Inspector?’
Dermot Craddock shook his head.
‘I have not so far that good, or bad fortune,’ he murmured.
‘In our world, the moving picture world, marriage is