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“When everybody about you is in a continual state of agitation,” said Ella dryly, “it develops in you a desire to go to the opposite extreme.”
“You learn to take a pride in not turning a hair when some shocking tragedy occurs?”
She considered. “It’s not a really nice trait, perhaps. But I think if you didn’t develop that sense you’d probably go round the bend yourself.”
“Was Miss Gregg—is Miss Gregg a difficult person to work for?”
It was something of a personal question but Dermot Craddock regarded it as a kind of test. If Ella Zielinsky raised her eyebrows and tacitly demanded what this had to do with the murder of Mrs. Badcock, he would be forced to admit that it had nothing to do with it. But he wondered if Ella Zielinsky might perhaps enjoy telling him what she thought of Marina Gregg.
“She’s a great artist. She’s got a personal magnetism that comes over on the screen in the most extraordinary way. Because of that one feels it’s rather a privilege to work with her. Taken purely personally, of course, she’s hell!”
“Ah,” said Dermot.
“She’s no kind of moderation, you see. She’s up in the air or down in the dumps and everything is always terrifically exaggerated, and she changes her mind and there are an enormous lot of things that one must never mention or allude to because they upset her.”
“Such as?”
“Well, naturally, mental breakdown, or sanatoriums for mental cases. I think it is quite to be understood that she should be sensitive about that. And anything to do with children.”
“Children? In what way?”
“Well, it upsets her to see children, or to hear of people being happy with children. If she hears someone is going to have a baby or has just had a baby, it throws her into a state of misery at once. She can never have another child herself, you see, and the only one she did have is batty. I don’t know if you knew that?”
“I had heard it, yes. It’s all very sad and unfortunate. But after a good many years you’d think she’d forget about it a little.”
“She doesn’t. It’s an obsession with her. She broods on it.”
“What does Mr. Rudd feel about it?”
“Oh, it wasn’t his child. It was her last husband’s, Isidore Wright’s.”
“Ah yes, her last husband. Where is he now?”
“He married again and lives in Florida,” said Ella Zielinsky promptly.
“Would you say that Marina Gregg had made many enemies in her life?”
“Not unduly so. Not more than most, that is to say. There are always rows over other women or other men or over contracts or jealousy—all of those things.”
“She wasn’t as far as you know afraid of anyone?”
“Marina? Afraid of anyone? I don’t think so. Why? Should she be?”
“I don’t know,” said Dermot. He picked up the list of names. “Thank you very much, Miss Zielinsky. If there’s anything else I want to know I’ll come back. May I?”
“Certainly. I’m only too anxious—we’re all only too anxious—to do anything we can to help.”
II
“Well, Tom, what have you got for me?”
Detective-Sergeant Tiddler grinned appreciatively. His name was not Tom, it was William, but the combination of Tom Tiddler had always been too much for his colleagues.
“What gold and silver have you picked up for me?” continued Dermot Craddock.
The two were staying at the Blue Boar and Tiddler had just come back from a day spent at the studios.
“The proportion of gold is very small,” said Tiddler. “Not much gossip. No startling rumours. One or two suggestions of suicide.”
“Why suicide?”
“They thought she might have had a row with her husband and be trying to make him sorry. That line of country. But that she didn’t really mean to go so far as doing herself in.”
“I can’t see that that’s a very helpful line,” said Dermot.
“No, of course it isn’t. They know nothing about it, you see. They don’t know anything except what they’re busy on. It’s all highly technical and there’s an atmosphere of ‘the show must go on,’ or as I suppose one ought to say the picture must go on, or the shooting must go on. I don’t know any of the right terms. All they’re concerned about is when Marina Gregg will get back to the set. She’s mucked up a picture once or twice before by staging a nervous breakdown.”
“Do they like her on the whole?”
“I should say they consider her the devil of a nuisance but for all that they can’t help being fascinated by her when she’s in the mood to fascinate them. Her husband’s besotted about her, by the way.”
“What do they think of him?”
“They think he’s the finest director or producer or whatever it is that there’s ever been.”
“No rumours of his being mixed-up with some other star or some woman of some kind?”
Tom Tiddler stared. “No,” he said, “no. Not a hint of such a thing. Why, do you think there might be?”
“I wondered,” said Dermot. “Marina Gregg is convinced that that lethal dose was meant for her.”
“Is she now? Is she right?”
“Almost certainly, I should say,” Dermot replied. “But that’s not the point. The point is that she hasn’t told her husband so, only her doctor.”
“Do you think she would have told him if—”
“I just wondered,” said Craddock, “whether she might have had at the back of her mind an idea that her husband had been responsible. The doctor’s manner was a little peculiar. I may have imagined it but I don’t think I did.”
“Well, there were no such rumours going about at the studios,” said Tom. “You hear that sort of thing soon enough.”
“She herself is not embroiled with any other man?”
“No, she seems to be devoted to Rudd.”
“No interesting snippets about her past?”
Tiddler grinned. “Nothing to what you can read in a film magazine any day of the week.”
“I think I’ll have to read a few,” said Dermot, “to get the atmosphere.”
“The things they say and hint!” said Tiddler.
“I wonder,” said Dermot thoughtfully, “if my Miss Marple reads film magazines.”
“Is that the old lady who lives in the house by the church?”
“That’s right.”
“They say she’s sharp,” said Tiddler. “They say there’s nothing goes on here that Miss Marple doesn’t hear about. She may not know much about the film people, but she ought to be able to give you the lowdown on the Badcocks all right.”
“It’s not as simple as it used to be,” said Dermot. “There’s a new social life springing up here. A housing estate, big building development. The Badcocks are fairly new and come from there.”
“I didn’t hear much about the locals, of course,” said Tiddler. “I concentrated on the sex life of film stars and such things.”
“You haven’t brought back very much,” grumbled Dermot. “What about Marina Gregg’s past, anything about that?”
“Done a bit of marrying in her time but not more than most. Her first husband didn’t like getting the chuck, so they said, but he was a very ordinary sort of bloke. He was a realtor or something like that. What is a realtor, by the way?”
“I think it means in the real estate business.”
“Oh well, anyway, he didn’t line up as very glamorous so she got rid of him and married a foreign count or prince. That lasted hardly anytime at all but there don’t seem to be any bones broken. She just shook him off and teamed up with number three. Film star Robert Truscott. That was said to be a passionate love match. His wife didn’t much like letting go of him, but she had to take it in the end. Big alimony. As far as I can make out everybody’s hard up because they’ve got to pay so much alimony to all their ex-wives.”
“But it went wrong?”
“Yes. She was the broken-hearted one, I gather. B
ut another big romance came along a year or two later. Isidore Somebody—a playwright.”
“It’s an exotic life,” said Dermot. “Well, we’ll call it a day now. Tomorrow we’ve got to get down to a bit of hard work.”
“Such as?”
“Such as checking a list I’ve got here. Out of twenty-odd names we ought to be able to do some elimination and out of what’s left we’ll have to look for X.”
“Any idea who X is?”
“Not in the least. If it isn’t Jason Rudd, that is.” He added with a wry and ironic smile, “I shall have to go to Miss Marple and get briefed on local matters.”
