The Mirror Crack'd - Agatha Christie [93]
‘It reminds me so much of that parlourmaid I was telling you about,’ she added to Dermot. ‘I only had the account, you see, of what Gladys Dixon said to Cherry which simply was that she was worried about the ruin of Heather Badcock’s dress with the cocktail spilt down it. What seemed so funny, she said, was that she did it on purpose. But the “she” that Gladys referred to was not Heather Badcock, it was Marina Gregg. As Gladys said: She did it on purpose! She jogged Heather’s arm. Not by accident but because she meant to do so. We do know that she must have been standing very close to Heather because we have heard that she mopped up both Heather’s dress and her own before pressing her cocktail on Heather. It was really,’ said Miss Marple meditatively, ‘a very perfect murder; because, you see, it was committed on the spur of the moment without pausing to think or reflect. She wanted Heather Badcock dead and a few minutes later Heather Badcock was dead. She didn’t realize, perhaps, the seriousness of what she’d done and certainly not the danger of it until afterwards. But she realized it then. She was afraid, horribly afraid. Afraid that someone had seen her dope her own glass, that someone had seen her deliberately jog Heather’s elbow, afraid that someone would accuse her of having poisoned Heather. She could see only one way out. To insist that the murder had been aimed at her, that she was the prospective victim. She tried that idea first on her doctor. She refused to let him tell her husband because I think she knew that her husband would not be deceived. She did fantastic things. She wrote notes to herself and arranged to find them in extraordinary places and at extraordinary moments. She doctored her own coffee at the studios one day. She did things that could really have been seen through fairly easily if one had happened to be thinking that way. They were seen through by one person.’
She looked at Jason Rudd.
‘This is only a theory of yours,’ said Jason Rudd.
‘You can put it that way, if you like,’ said Miss Marple, ‘but you know quite well, don’t you, Mr Rudd, that I’m speaking the truth. You know, because you knew from the first. You knew because you heard that mention of German measles. You knew and you were frantic to protect her. But you didn’t realize how much you would have to protect her from. You didn’t realize that it was not only a question of hushing up one death, the death of a woman whom you might say quite fairly had brought her death on herself. But there were other deaths — the death of Giuseppe, a blackmailer, it is true, but a human being. And the death of Ella Zielinsky of whom I expect you were fond. You were frantic to protect Marina and also to prevent her from doing more harm. All you wanted was to get her safely away somewhere. You tried to watch her all the time, to make sure that nothing more should happen.’
She paused, and then coming nearer to Jason Rudd, she laid a gentle hand on his arm.
‘I am very sorry for you,’ she said, ‘very sorry. I do realize the agony you’ve been through. You cared for her so much, didn’t you?’
Jason Rudd turned slightly away.
‘That,’ he said, ‘is, I believe, common knowledge.’
‘She was such a beautiful creature,’ said Miss Marple gently. ‘She had such a wonderful gift. She had a great power of love and hate but no stability. That’s what’s so sad for anyone, to be born with no stability. She couldn’t let the past go and she could never see the future as it really was, only as she imagined it to be. She was a great actress and a beautiful and very unhappy woman. What a wonderful Mary, Queen of Scots she was! I shall never forget her.’
Sergeant Tiddler appeared suddenly on the stairs.
‘Sir,’ he said, ‘can I speak to you a moment?’
Craddock turned.
‘I’ll be back,’ he said to Jason Rudd, then he went towards the stairs.
‘Remember,’ Miss Marple called after him, ‘poor Arthur Badcock had nothing to do with this. He came to the fête because he wanted to have a glimpse