The Mirror Crack'd - Agatha Christie [43]
‘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