The Mirror Crack'd - Agatha Christie [45]
‘Well, I never,’ said Cherry the next morning, as she prepared to run a virulent Hoover round the lounge as she still called it in her mind. ‘What’s all this?’
‘I am trying,’ said Miss Marple, ‘to instruct myself a little in the moving picture world.’
She laid aside Movie News and picked up Amongst the Stars.
‘It’s really very interesting. It reminds one so much of so many things.’
‘Fantastic lives they must lead,’ said Cherry.
‘Specialized lives,’ said Miss Marple. ‘Highly specialized. It reminds me very much of the things a friend of mine used to tell me. She was a hospital nurse. The same simplicity of outlook and all the gossip and the rumours. And good-looking doctors causing any amount of havoc.’
‘Rather sudden, isn’t it, this interest of yours?’ said Cherry.
‘I’m finding it difficult to knit nowadays,’ said Miss Marple. ‘Of course the print of these is rather small, but I can always use a magnifying glass.’
Cherry looked on curiously.
‘You’re always surprising me,’ she said. ‘The things you take an interest in.’
‘I take an interest in everything,’ said Miss Marple.
‘I mean taking up new subjects at your age.’
Miss Marple shook her head.
‘They aren’t really new subjects. It’s human nature I’m interested in, you know, and human nature is much the same whether it’s film stars or hospital nurses or people in St Mary Mead or,’ she added thoughtfully, ‘people who live in the Development.’
‘Can’t see much likeness between me and a film star,’ said Cherry laughing, ‘more’s the pity. I suppose it’s Marina Gregg and her husband coming to live at Gossington Hall that set you off on this.’
‘That and the very sad event that occurred there,’ said Miss Marple.
‘Mrs Badcock, you mean? It was bad luck that.’
‘What do you think of it in the —’ Miss Marple paused with the ‘D’ hovering on her lips. ‘What do you and your friends think about it?’ she amended the question.
‘It’s a queer do,’ said Cherry. ‘Looks as though it were murder, doesn’t it, though of course the police are too cagey to say so outright. Still, that’s what it looks like.’
‘I don’t see what else it could be,’ said Miss Marple.
‘It couldn’t be suicide,’ agreed Cherry, ‘not with Heather Badcock.’
‘Did you know her well?’
‘No, not really. Hardly at all. She was a bit of a nosy parker you know. Always wanting you to join this, join that, turn up for meetings at so-and-so. Too much energy. Her husband got a bit sick of it sometimes, I think.’
‘She doesn’t seem to have had any real enemies.’
‘People used to get a bit fed up with her sometimes. The point is, I don’t see who could have murdered her unless it was her husband. And he’s a very meek type. Still, the worm will turn, or so they say. I’ve always heard that Crippen was ever so nice a man and that man, Haigh, who pickled them all in acid — they say he couldn’t have been more charming! So one never knows, does one?’
‘Poor Mr Badcock,’ said Miss Marple.
‘And people say he was upset and nervy at the fête that day — before it happened, I mean — but people always say that kind of thing afterwards. If you ask me, he’s looking better now than he’s looked for years. Seems to have got a bit more spirit and go in him.’
‘Indeed?’ said Miss Marple.
‘Nobody really thinks he did it,’ said Cherry. ‘Only if he didn’t, who did? I can’t help thinking myself it must have been an accident of some kind. Accidents do happen. You think you know all about mushrooms and go out and pick some. One fungus gets in among them and there you are, rolling about in agony and lucky if the doctor gets to you in time.’
‘Cocktails and glasses of sherry don’t seem to lend themselves to accident,’ said Miss Marple.
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Cherry. ‘A bottle of something or other could have got in by mistake. Somebody I knew took a dose of concentrated DDT once. Horribly ill they were.’
‘Accident,’ said Miss Marple thoughtfully. ‘Yes, it certainly seems the best solution. I must say I can’t believe that in the case of Heather Badcock it could