The Mirror Crack'd - Agatha Christie [47]
‘I think that is rather a frivolous way of putting it,’ said Miss Marple, reproving, ‘but there is one question I should like to ask.’
‘Yes?’
‘What about the children?’
‘The children? There’s only one. An imbecile child in a sanatorium in America. Is that what you mean?’
‘No,’ said Miss Marple, ‘that’s not what I mean. It’s very sad of course. One of those tragedies that seem to happen and there’s no one to blame for it. No, I meant the children that I’ve seen mentioned in some article here.’ She tapped the papers in front of her. ‘Children that Marina Gregg adopted. Two boys, I think, and a girl. In one case a mother with a lot of children and very little money to bring them up in this country, wrote to her, and asked if she couldn’t take a child. There was a lot of very silly false sentiment written about that. About the mother’s unselfishness and the wonderful home and education and future the child was going to have. I can’t find out much about the other two. One I think was a foreign refugee and the other was some American child. Marina Gregg adopted them at different times. I’d like to know what’s happened to them.’
Dermot Craddock looked at her curiously. ‘It’s odd that you should think of that,’ he said. ‘I did just vaguely wonder about those children myself. But how do you connect them up?’
‘Well,’ said Miss Marple, ‘as far as I can hear or find out, they’re not living with her now, are they?’
‘I expect they were provided for,’ said Craddock. ‘In fact, I think that the adoption laws would insist on that. There was probably money settled on them in trust.’
‘So when she got — tired of them,’ said Miss Marple with a very faint pause before the word ‘tired’, ‘they were dismissed! After being brought up in luxury with every advantage. Is that it?’
‘Probably,’ said Craddock. ‘I don’t know exactly.’ He continued to look at her curiously.
‘Children feel things, you know,’ said Miss Marple, nodding her head. ‘They feel things more than the people around them ever imagine. The sense of hurt, of being rejected, of not belonging. It’s a thing that you don’t get over just because of advantages. Education is no substitute for it, or comfortable living, or an assured income, or a start in a profession. It’s the sort of thing that might rankle.’
‘Yes. But all the same, isn’t it rather far-fetched to think that — well, what exactly do you think?’
‘I haven’t got as far as that,’ said Miss Marple. ‘I just wondered where they were now and how old they would be now? Grown up, I should imagine, from what I’ve read here.’
‘I could find out, I suppose,’ said Dermot Craddock slowly.
‘Oh, I don’t want to bother you in any way, or even to suggest that my little idea’s worthwhile at all.’
‘There’s no harm,’ said Dermot Craddock, ‘in having that checked up on.’ He made a note in his little book. ‘Now do you want to look at my little list?’
‘I don’t really think I should be able to do anything useful about that. You see, I wouldn’t know who the people were.’
‘Oh, I could give you a running commentary,’ said Craddock. ‘Here we are. Jason Rudd, husband, (husbands always highly suspicious). Everyone says that Jason Rudd adores her. That is suspicious in itself, don’t you think?’
‘Not necessarily,’ said Miss Marple with dignity.
‘He’s been very active in trying to conceal the fact that his wife was the object of attack. He hasn’t hinted any suspicion of such a thing to the police. I don’t know why he thinks we’re such asses as not to think of it for ourselves. We’ve considered it from the first. But anyway, that’s his story. He was afraid that knowledge of that fact might get to his wife’s ears and that she’d go into a panic about it.’
‘Is she the sort of woman who goes into panics?’
‘Yes, she