Agatha Christie - The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side

'I'm not as young as all that,' said Dermot Craddock. 'Yes, I'll come and have tea with you one day. We'll have tea and gossip and talk about the village. Do you know any of the film stars, by the way, or any of the studio lot?'

'Not a thing,' said Miss Marple, 'except what I hear,' she added.

'Well, you usually hear a good deal,' said Dermot Craddock. 'Goodbye. It's been very nice to see you.'

'Oh, how do you do?' said Mrs Bantry, looking slightly taken aback when Dermot Craddock had introduced himself and explained who he was. 'How very exciting to see you. Don't you always have sergeants with you?'

'I've got a sergeant down here, yes,' said Craddock. 'But he's busy.'

'On routine enquiries?' asked Mrs Bantry, hopefully.

'Something of the kind,' said Dermot gravely.

'And Jane Marple sent you to me,' said Mrs Bantry, as she ushered him into her small sitting-room. 'I was just arranging some flowers,' she explained. 'It's one of those days when flowers won't do anything you want them to. They fall out, or stick up where they shouldn't stick up or won't lie down where you want them to lie down. So I'm thankful to have a distraction, and especially such an exciting one. So it really was murder, was it?'

'Did you think it was murder?'

'Well, it could have been an accident, I suppose,' said Mrs Bantry, 'Nobody's said anything definite, officially, that is. Just that rather silly piece about no evidence to show by whom or in what way the poison was administered. But, of course, we all talk about it as murder.'

'And about who did it?'

'That's the odd part of it,' said Mrs Bantry. 'We don't. Because I really don't see who can have done it.'

'You mean as a matter of definite physical fact you don't see who could have done it?'

'Well, no, not that. I suppose it would have been difficult but not impossible. No, I mean, I don't see who could have wanted to do it.'

'Nobody, you think, could have wanted to kill Heather Badcock?'

'Well, frankly,' said Mrs Bantry, 'I can't imagine anybody wanting to kill Heather Badcock. I've seen her quite a few times, on local things, you know. Girl guides and the St John Ambulance, and various parish things. I found her a rather trying sort of woman. Very enthusiastic about everything and a bit given to over-statement, and just a little bit of a gusher. But you don't want to murder people for that. She was the kind of woman who in the old days if you'd seen her approaching the front door, you'd have hurried out to say to your parlourmaid – which was an institution we had in those days, and very useful too – and told her to say "not at home" or "not at home to visitors," if she had conscientious scruples about the truth.'

'You mean that one might take pains to avoid Mrs Badcock, but one would have no urge to remove her permanently.'

'Very well put,' said Mrs Bantry, nodding approval.

'She had no money to speak of,' mused Dermot, 'so nobody stood to gain by her death. Nobody seems to have disliked her to the point of hatred. I don't suppose she was blackmailing anybody?'

'She wouldn't have dreamed of doing such a thing, I'm sure,' said Mrs Bantry. 'She was the conscientious and high-principled kind.'

'And her husband wasn't having an affair with someone else?'

'I shouldn't think so,' said Mrs Bantry, 'I only saw him at the party. He looked like a bit of chewed string. Nice but wet.'

'Doesn't leave much, does it?' said Dermot Craddock. 'One falls back on the assumption she knew something.'

'Knew something?'

'To the detriment of somebody else.'

Mrs Bantry shook her head again. 'I doubt it,' she said. 'I doubt it very much. She struck me as the kind of woman who if she had known anything about anyone, couldn't have helped talking about it.'

'Well, that washes that out,' said Dermot Craddock, 'so we'll come, if we may, to my reasons for coming to see you. Miss Marple, for whom I have the greatest admiration and respect, told me that I was to say to you the Lady of Shalott.'

'Oh, that!' said Mrs Bantry.

'Yes,' said Craddock. 'That! Whatever it is.'

'People don't read much Tennyson nowadays,' said Mrs Bantry.

'A few echoes come back to me,' said Dermot Craddock. 'She looked out to Camelot, didn't she?

Out flew the web and floated wide;

'Exactly. She did,' said Mrs Bantry.

'I beg your pardon. Who did? Did what?'

'Looked like that,' said Mrs Bantry.

'Who looked like what?'

'Marina Gregg.'

'Ah, Marina Gregg. When was this?'

'Didn't Jane Marple tell you?'

'She didn't tell me anything. She sent me to you.'

'That's tiresome of her,' said Mrs Bantry, 'because she can always tell things better than I can. My husband always used to say that I was so abrupt that he didn't know what I was talking about. Anyway, it may have been only my fancy. But when you see anyone looking like that you can't help remembering it.'

'Please tell me,' said Dermot Craddock.

'Well, it was at the party. I call it a party because what can one call things? But it was just a sort of reception up at the top of the stairs where they've made a kind of recess. Marina Gregg was there and her husband. They fetched some of us in. They fetched me, I suppose, because I once owned the house, and they fetched Heather Badcock and her husband because she'd done all the running of the fête, and the arrangements. And we happened to go up the stairs at about the same time, so I was standing there, you see, when I noticed it.'

'Quite. When you noticed what?'

'Well, Mrs Badcock went into a long spiel as people do when they meet celebrities. You know, how wonderful it was, and what a thrill and they'd always hoped to see them. And she went into a long story of how she'd once met her years ago and how exciting it had been. And I thought, in my own mind, you know, what a bore it must be for these poor celebrities to have to say all the right things. And then I noticed that Marina Gregg wasn't saying the right things. She was just staring.'

'Staring – at Mrs Badcock?'

'No – no, it looked as though she'd forgotten Mrs Badcock altogether. I mean, I don't believe she'd even heard what Mrs Badcock was saying. She was just staring with what I call this Lady of Shalott look, as though she'd seen something awful. Something frightening, something that she could hardly believe she saw and couldn't bear to see.'

'The curse has come upon me?' suggested Dermot Craddock.

'Yes, just that. That's why I call it the Lady of Shalott look.'

'But what was she looking at, Mrs Bantry?'

'Well, I wish I knew,' said Mrs Bantry.

'She was at the top of the stairs, you say?'

'She was looking over Mrs Badcock's head – no, more over one shoulder, I think.'

'Straight at the middle of the staircase?'

'It might have been a little to one side.'

'And there were people coming up the staircase?'

'Oh yes, I should think about five or six people.'

'Was she looking at one of these people in particular?'

'I can't possibly tell,' said Mrs Bantry. 'You see, I wasn't facing that way. I was looking at her. My back was to the stairs. I thought perhaps she was looking at one of the pictures.'

'But she must know the pictures quite well if she's living in the house.'

'Yes, yes, of course. No, I suppose she must have been looking at one of the people. I wonder which.'

'We have to try and find out,' said Dermot Craddock. 'Can you remember at all who the people were?'

'Well, I know the mayor was one of them with his wife. There was someone who I think was a reporter, with red hair, because I was introduced to him later, but I can't remember his name. I never hear names. Galbraith – something like that. Then there was a big black man. I don't mean a negro – I just mean very dark, forceful looking. And an actress with him. A bit overblonde and the minky kind. And old General Barnstaple from Much Benham. He's practically ga-ga now, poor old man. I don't think he could have been anybody's doom. Oh! and the Grices from the farm.'