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“What hell it is,” she said as she emerged again, “one never can find things when one wants them. I’ve got it now though.”
She came across to him and put a glossy print into his hand. He looked down at it. It was a very good photograph of Marina Gregg. Her hand was clasped in the hand of a woman standing in front of her, and therefore with her back to the camera. But Marina Gregg was not looking at the woman. Her eyes stared not quite into the camera but slightly obliquely to the left. The interesting thing to Dermot Craddock was that the face expressed nothing whatever. There was no fear on it, no pain. The woman portrayed there was staring at something, something she saw, and the emotion it aroused in her was so great that she was physically unable to express it by any kind of facial expression. Dermot Craddock had seen such a look once on a man’s face, a man who a second later had been shot dead….
“Satisfied?” asked Margot Bence.
Craddock gave a deep sigh. “Yes, thank you. It’s hard, you know, to make up one’s mind if witnesses are exaggerating, if they are imagining they see things. But that’s not so in this case. There was something to see and she saw it.” He asked, “Can I keep this picture?”
“Oh, yes you can have the print. I’ve got the negative.”
“You didn’t send it to the Press?”
Margot Bence shook her head.
“I rather wonder why you didn’t. After all, it’s rather a dramatic photograph. Some paper might have paid a good price for it.”
“I wouldn’t care to do that,” said Margot Bence. “If you look into somebody’s soul by accident, you feel a bit embarrassed about cashing in.”
“Did you know Marina Gregg at all?”
“No.”
“You come from the States, don’t you?”
“I was born in England. I was trained in America though. I came over here, oh, about three years ago.”
Dermot Craddock nodded. He had known the answers to his questions. They had been waiting for him among the other lists of information on his office table. The girl seemed straightforward enough. He asked:
“Where did you train?”
“Reingarden Studios. I was with Andrew Quilp for a time. He taught me a lot.”
“Reingarden Studios and Andrew Quilp.” Dermot Craddock was suddenly alert. The names struck a chord of remembrance.
“You lived in Seven Springs, didn’t you?”
She looked amused.
“You seem to know a lot about me. Have you been checking up?”
“You’re a very well-known photographer, Miss Bence. There have been articles written about you, you know. Why did you come to England?”
She shrugged her shoulders.
“Oh, I like a change. Besides, as I tell you, I was born in England although I went to the States as a child.”
“Quite a young child, I think.”
“Five years old if you’re interested.”
“I am interested. I think, Miss Bence, you could tell me a little more than you have done.”
Her face hardened. She stared at him.
“What do you mean by that?”
Dermot Craddock looked at her and risked it. It wasn’t much to go on. Reingarden Studios and Andrew Quilp and the name of one town. But he felt rather as if old Miss Marple were at his shoulder egging him on.
“I think you knew Marina Gregg better than you say.”
She laughed. “Prove it. You’re imagining things.”
“Am I? I don’t think I am. And it could be proved, you know, with a little time and care. Come now, Miss Bence, hadn’t you better admit the truth? Admit that Marina Gregg adopted you as a child and that you lived with her for four years.”
She drew her breath in sharply with a hiss.
“You nosy bastard!” she said.
It startled him a little, it was such a contrast to her former manner. She got up, shaking her black head of hair.
“All right, all right, it’s true enough! Yes Marina Gregg took me over to America with her. My mother had eight kids. She lived in a slum somewhere. She was one of hundreds of people, I suppose, who wrote to any film actress that they happen to see or hear about, spilling a hard-luck story, begging her to adopt the child a mother couldn’t give advantages to. Oh, it’s such a sickening business, all of it.”
“There were three of you,” said Dermot. “Three children adopted at different times from different places.”
“That’s right. Me and Rod and Angus. Angus was older than I was, Rod was practically a baby. We had a wonderful life. Oh, a wonderful life! All the advantages!” Her voice rose mockingly. “Clothes and cars and a wonderful house to live in and people to look after us, good schooling and teaching, and delicious food. Everything piled on! And she herself, our ‘Mom.’ ‘Mom’ in inverted commas, playing her part, crooning over us, being photographed with us! Ah, such a pretty sentimental picture.”
“But she really wanted children,” said Dermot Craddock. “That was real enough, wasn’t it? It wasn’t just a publicity stunt.”
“Oh, perhaps. Yes, I think that was true. She wanted children. But she didn’t want us! Not really. It was just a glorious bit of playacting. ‘My family.’ ‘So lovely to have a family of my own.’ And Izzy let her do it. He ought to have known better.”
“Izzy was Isidore Wright?”
“Yes, her third husband or her fourth, I forget which. He was a wonderful man really. He understood her, I think, and he was worried sometimes about us. He was kind to us, but he didn’t pretend to be a father. He didn’t feel like a father. He only cared really about his own writing. I’ve read some of his things since. They’re sordid and rather cruel, but they’re powerful. I think people will call him a great writer one day.”
“And this went on until when?”
Margot Bence’s smile curved suddenly. “Until she got sick of that particular bit of playacting. No, that’s not quite true… She found she was going to have a child of her own.”
She laughed with sudden bitterness. “Then we’d had it! We weren’t wanted anymore. We’d done very well as little stopgaps, but she didn’t care a damn about us really, not a damn. Oh, she pensioned us off very prettily. With a home and a foster-mother and money for our education and a nice little sum to start us off in the world. Nobody can say that she didn’t behave correctly and handsomely. But she’d never wanted us—all she wanted was a child of her own.”
“You can’t blame her for that,” said Dermot gently.
“I don’t blame her for wanting a child of her own, no! But what about us? She took us away from our own parents, from the place where we belonged. My mother sold me for a mess of pottage, if you like, but she didn’t sell me for advantage to herself. She sold me because she was a damn’ silly woman who thought I’d get ‘advantages’ and ‘education’ and have a wonderful life. She thought she was doing the best for me. Best for me? If she only knew.”
“You’re still very bitter, I see.”
“No, I’m not bitter now. I’ve got over that. I’m bitter because I’m remembering, because I’ve gone back to those days. We were all pretty bitter.”
“All of you?”
“Well, not Rod. Rod never cared about anything. Besides he was rather small. But Angus felt like I did, only I think he was more revengeful. He said that when he was grown-up he would go and kill that baby she was going to have.”
“You knew about the baby?”
“Oh, of course I knew. And everyone knows what happened. She went crazy with rapture about having it and then when it was born it was an idiot! Serve her right. Idiot or no idiot, she didn’t want us back again.”
“You hate her very much.”
“Why shouldn’t I hate her? She did the worst thing to me that anyone can do to anyone else. Let them believe that they’re loved and wanted and then show them that it’s all a sham.”
“What happened to your two—I’ll call them brothers, for the sake of convenience.”
“Oh, we all dri
fted apart later. Rod’s farming somewhere in the Middle West. He’s got a happy nature, and always had. Angus? I don’t know. I lost sight of him.”
“Did he continue to feel regretful?”
“I shouldn’t think so,” said Margot. “It’s not the sort of thing you can go on feeling. The last time I saw him, he said he was going on the stage. I don’t know whether he did.”
“You’ve remembered, though,” said Dermot.
“Yes. I’ve remembered,” said Margot Bence.
“Was Marina Gregg surprised to see you on that day or did she make the arrangements for your photography on purpose to please you?”
“She?” The girl smiled scornfully. “She knew nothing about the arrangements. I was curious to see her, so I did a bit of lobbying to get the job. As I say I’ve got some influence with studio people. I wanted to see what she looked like nowadays.” She stroked the surface of the table. “She didn’t even recognize me. What do you think of that? I was with her for four years. From five years old to nine and she didn’t recognize me.”
“Children change,” said Dermot Craddock, “they change so much that you’d hardly know them. I have a niece I met the other day and I assure you I’d have passed her in the street.”
“Are you saying that to make me feel better? I don’t care really. Oh, what the hell, let’s be honest. I do care. I did. She had a magic, you know. Marina! A wonderful calamitous magic that took hold of you. You can hate a person and still mind.”
“You didn’t tell her who you were?”
She shook her head. “No, I didn’t tell her. That’s the last thing I’d do.”
