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“I know, I know,” said Cornish. “He’s a possible, but a wildly improbable. Who else have we got?”
Both men studied the list again. There were still eight names on it.
“We’re pretty well agreed,” said Craddock, “that there’s nobody missed out from here?” There was a faint question in his voice. Cornish answered it.
“I think you can be pretty sure that’s the lot. After Mrs. Bantry came the vicar, and after that the Badcocks. There were then eight people on the stairs. The mayor and his wife, Joshua Grice and wife from Lower Farm. Donald McNeil of the Much Benham Herald & Argus. Ardwyck Fenn, USA, Miss Lola Brewster, USA, Moving Picture Star. There you are. In addition there was an arty photographer from London with a camera set up on the angle of the stairs. If, as you suggest, this Mrs. Bantry’s story of Marina Gregg having a ‘frozen look’ was occasioned by someone she saw on the stairs, you’ve got to take your pick among that lot. Mayor regretfully out. Grices out—never been away from St. Mary Mead I should say. That leaves four. Local journalist unlikely, photographer girl had been there for half an hour already, so why should Marina react so late in the day? What does that leave?”
“Sinister strangers from America,” said Craddock with a faint smile.
“You’ve said it.”
“They’re our best suspects by far, I agree,” said Craddock. “They turned up unexpectedly. Ardwyck Fenn was an old flame of Marina’s whom she had not seen for years. Lola Brewster was once married to Marina Gregg’s third husband, who got a divorce from her in order to marry Marina. It was not, I gather, a very amicable divorce.”
“I’d put her down as Suspect Number One,” said Cornish.
“Would you, Frank? After a lapse of about fifteen years or so, and having remarried twice herself since then?”
Cornish said that you never knew with women. Dermot accepted that as a general dictum, but remarked that it seemed odd to him to say the least of it.
“But you agree that it lies between them?”
“Possibly. But I don’t like it very much. What about the hired help who were serving the drinks?”
“Discounting the ‘frozen look’ we’ve heard so much about? Well, we’ve checked up in a general way. Local catering firm from Market Basing had the job—for the fête, I mean. Actually in the house, there was the butler, Giuseppe, in charge; and two local girls from the studios canteen. I know both of them. Not over bright, but harmless.”
“Pushing it back at me, are you? I’ll go and have a word with the reporter chap. He might have seen something helpful. Then to London. Ardwyck Fenn, Lola Brewster—and the photographer girl—what’s her name?—Margot Bence. She also might have seen something.”
Cornish nodded. “Lola Brewster is my best bet,” he said. He looked curiously at Craddock. “You don’t seem as sold on her as I am.”
“I’m thinking of the difficulties,” said Dermot slowly.
“Difficulties?”
“Of putting poison into Marina’s glass without anybody seeing her.”
“Well, that’s the same for everybody, isn’t it? It was a mad thing to do.”
“Agreed it was a mad thing to do, but it would be a madder thing for someone like Lola Brewster than for anybody else.”
“Why?” asked Cornish.
“Because she was a guest of importance. She’s a somebody, a big name. Everyone would be looking at her.”
“True enough,” Cornish admitted.
“The locals would nudge each other and whisper and stare, and after Marina Gregg and Jason Rudd greeted her she’d have been passed on for the secretaries to look after. It wouldn’t be easy, Frank. However adroit you were, you couldn’t be sure someone wouldn’t see you. That’s the snag there, and it’s a big snag.”
“As I say, isn’t that snag the same for everybody?”
“No,” said Craddock. “Oh no. Far from it. Take the butler now, Giuseppe. He’s busy with the drinks and glasses, with pouring things out, with handing them. He could put a pinch or a tablet or two of Calmo in a glass easily enough.”
“Giuseppe?” Frank Cornish reflected. “Do you think he did?”
“No reason to believe so,” said Craddock, “but we might find a reason. A nice solid bit of motive, that is to say. Yes, he could have done it. Or one of the catering staff could have done it—unfortunately they weren’t on the spot—a pity.”
“Someone might have managed to get himself or herself deliberately planted in the firm for the purpose.”
“You mean it might have been as premeditated as all that?”
“We don’t know anything about it yet,” said Craddock, vexedly. “We absolutely don’t know the first thing about it. Not until we can prise what we want to know out of Marina Gregg, or out of her husband. They must know or suspect—but they’re not telling. And we don’t know yet why they’re not telling. We’ve a long way to go.”
He paused and then resumed: “Discounting the ‘frozen look’ which may have been pure coincidence, there are other people who could have done it fairly easily. The secretary woman, Ella Zielinsky. She was also busy with glasses, with handing things to people. Nobody would be watching her with any particular interest. The same applies to that willow wand of a young man—I’ve forgotten his name. Hailey—Hailey Preston? That’s right. There would have been a good opportunity for either of them. In fact if either of them had wanted to do away with Marina Gregg it would have been far safer to do so on a public occasion.”
“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 my duties. I know Mr. Rudd thought it would be more tactful to employ somebody local rather than to employ a firm from London. The whole thing was really quite a small affair from our point of view.”
“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.
