The Mirror Crack'd - Agatha Christie [50]
‘Anyone else?’
‘Well, there’s always the husband,’ said Craddock.
‘Back to the husbands again,’ said Cornish, with a faint smile. ‘We thought it was that poor devil, Badcock, before we realised that Marina was the intended victim. Now we’ve transferred our suspicions to Jason Rudd. He seems devoted enough though, I must say.’
‘He has the reputation of being so,’ said Craddock, ‘but one never knows.’
‘If he wanted to get rid of her, wouldn’t divorce be much easier?’
‘It would be far more usual,’ agreed Dermot, ‘but there may be a lot of ins and outs to this business that we don’t know yet.’
The telephone rang. Cornish took up the receiver.
‘What? Yes? Put them through. Yes, he’s here.’ He listened for a moment then put his hand over the receiver and looked at Dermot. ‘Miss Marina Gregg,’ he said, ‘is feeling very much better. She is quite ready to be interviewed.’
‘I’d better hurry along,’ said Dermot Craddock, ‘before she changes her mind.’
II
At Gossington Hall Dermot Craddock was received by Ella Zielinsky. She was, as usual, brisk and efficient.
‘Miss Gregg is waiting for you, Mr Craddock,’ she said.
Dermot looked at her with some interest. From the beginning he had found Ella Zielinsky an intriguing personality. He had said to himself, ‘A poker face if I ever saw one.’ She had answered any questions he had asked with the utmost readiness. She had shown no signs of keeping anything back, but what she really thought or felt or even knew about the business, he still had no idea. There seemed to be no chink in the armour of her bright efficiency. She might know more than she said she did; she might know a good deal. The only thing he was sure of — and he had to admit to himself that he had no reasons to adduce for that surety — was that she was in love with Jason Rudd. It was, as he had said, an occupational disease of secretaries. It probably meant nothing. But the fact did at least suggest a motive and he was sure, quite sure, that she was concealing something. It might be love, it might be hate. It might, quite simply, be guilt. She might have taken her opportunity that afternoon, or she might have deliberately planned what she was going to do. He could see her in the part quite easily, as far as the execution of it went. Her swift but unhurried movements, moving here and there, looking after guests, handing glasses to one or another, taking glasses away, her eyes marking the spot where Marina had put her glass down on the table. And then, perhaps at the very moment when Marina had been greeting the arrivals from the States, with surprise and joyous cries and everybody’s eyes turned towards their meeting, she could have quietly and unobtrusively dropped the fatal dose into that glass. It would require audacity, nerve, swiftness. She would have had all those. Whatever she had done, she would not have looked guilty whilst she was doing it. It would have been a simple, brilliant crime, a crime that could hardly fail to be successful. But chance had ruled otherwise. In the rather crowded floorspace someone had joggled Heather Badcock’s arm. Her drink had been spilt, and Marina, with her natural impulsive grace, had quickly proffered her own glass, standing there untouched. And so the wrong woman had died.
A lot of pure theory, and probably hooey at that, said Dermot Craddock to himself at the same time as he was making polite remarks to Ella Zielinsky.
‘One thing I wanted to ask you, Miss Zielinsky. The catering was done by a Market Basing firm, I understand?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why was that particular firm chosen?’
‘I really don’t know,’ said Ella. ‘That doesn’t lie amongst