The Mirror Crack'd - Agatha Christie [51]
‘Quite.’ He watched her as she stood frowning a little and looking down. A good forehead, a determined chin, a figure which could look quite voluptuous if it was allowed to do so, a hard mouth, an acquisitive mouth. The eyes? He looked at them in surprise. The lids were reddened. He wondered. Had she been crying? It looked like it. And yet he could have sworn she was not the type of young woman to cry. She looked up at him, and as though she read his thoughts, she took out her handkerchief and blew her nose heartily.
‘You’ve got a cold,’ he said.
‘Not a cold. Hay-fever. It’s an allergy of some kind, really. I always get at it this time of year.’
There was a low buzz. There were two phones in the room, one on the table and one on another table in the corner. It was the latter one that was beginning to buzz. Ella Zielinsky went over to it and picked up the receiver.
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘he’s here. I’ll bring him up at once.’ She put the receiver down again. ‘Marina’s ready for you,’ she said.
III
Marina Gregg received Craddock in a room on the first floor, which was obviously her own private sitting-room opening out of her bedroom. After the accounts of her prostration and her nervous state, Dermot Craddock had expected to find a fluttering invalid. But although Marina was half reclining on a sofa her voice was vigorous and her eyes were bright. She had very little make-up on, but in spite of this she did not look her age, and he was struck very forcibly by the subdued radiance of her beauty. It was the exquisite line of cheek and jawbone, the way the hair fell loosely and naturally to frame her face. The long sea-green eyes, the pencilled eyebrows, owing something to art but more to nature, and the warmth and sweetness of her smile, all had a subtle magic. She said:
‘Chief-Inspector Craddock? I’ve been behaving disgracefully. I do apologize. I just let myself go to pieces after this awful thing. I could have snapped out of it but I didn’t. I’m ashamed of myself.’ The smile came, rueful, sweet, turning up the corners of the mouth. She extended a hand and he took it.
‘It was only natural,’ he said, ‘that you should feel upset.’
‘Well, everyone was upset,’ said Marina. ‘I’d no business to make out it was worse for me than anyone else.’
‘Hadn’t you?’
She looked at him for a minute and then nodded. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘you’re very perceptive. Yes, I had.’ She looked down and with one long forefinger gently stroked the arm of the sofa. It was a gesture he had noticed in one of her films. It was a meaningless gesture, yet it seemed fraught with significance. It had a kind of musing gentleness.
‘I’m a coward,’ she said, her eyes still cast down. ‘Somebody wanted to kill me and I didn’t want to die.’
‘Why do you think someone wanted to kill you?’
Her eyes opened wide. ‘Because it was my glass — my drink — that had been tampered with. It was just a mistake that that poor stupid woman got it. That’s what’s so horrible and so tragic. Besides —’
‘Yes, Miss Gregg?’
She seemed a little uncertain about saying more.
‘You had other reasons perhaps for believing that you were the intended victim?’
She nodded.
‘What reasons, Miss Gregg?’
She paused a minute longer before saying, ‘Jason says I must tell you all about it.’
‘You’ve confided in him then?’
‘Yes…I didn’t want to at first — but Dr Gilchrist put it to me that I must. And then I found that he thought so too. He’d thought it all along but — it’s rather funny really’ — rueful smile curled her lips again — ‘he didn’t want to alarm me by telling me. Really!’ Marina sat up with a sudden vigorous movement. ‘Darling Jinks! Does he think I’m a complete fool?’
‘You haven’t told me yet, Miss Gregg, why you should think anyone wanted to kill you.’
She was silent for a moment and then with a sudden brusque gesture, she stretched out for her handbag, opened it, took out a piece