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

'You thought it was Ella?' Jason sounded astonished. 'But why?

'Because she hated me – oh yes she did. Don't men ever see these things? She was madly in love with you. I don't believe you had the least idea of it. But it can't be Ella, because Ella's dead. Oh, Jinks, Jinks – do help me – get me away from here – let me go somewhere safe… safe…'

She sprang up and walked rapidly up and down, turning and twisting her hands.

The director in Jason was full of admiration for those passionate, tortured movements. I must remember them, he thought. For Hedda Gabler, perhaps? Then, with a shock, he remembered that it was his wife he was watching.

'It's all right, Marina – all right. I'll look after you.'

'We must go away from this hateful house – at once. I hate his house – hate it.'

'Listen, we can't go away immediately.'

'Why not? Why not?'

'Because,' said Rudd, 'deaths cause complications… and there's something else to consider. Will running away do any good?'

'Of course it will. We'll get away from this person who hates me.'

'If there's anyone who hates you that much, they could follow you easily enough.'

'You mean – you mean – I shall never get away? I shall never be safe again?'

'Darling – it will be all right. I'll look after you. I'll keep you safe.'

She clung to him.

'Will you, Jinks? Will you see that nothing happens to me?'

She sagged against him, and he laid her down gently on the chaise-longue.

'Oh, I'm a coward,' she murmured, 'a coward… if I knew who it was – and why?… Get me my pills – the yellow ones not the brown. I must have something to calm me.'

'Don't take too many, for God's sake, Marina.'

'All right – all right… Sometimes they don't have any effect any more…' She looked up in his face.

She smiled, a tender exquisite smile.

'You'll take care of me, Jinks? Swear you'll take care of me -'

'Always,' said Jason Rudd. 'To the bitter end.'

Her eyes opened wide.

'You looked so – so odd when you said that.'

'Did I? How did I look?'

'I can't explain. Like – like a clown laughing at something terribly sad, that no one else has seen…'

It was a tired and depressed Inspector Craddock who came to see Miss Marple the following day.

'Sit down and be comfortable,' she said. 'I can see you've had a very hard time.'

'I don't like to be defeated,' said Inspector Craddock. 'Two murders within twenty-four hours. Ah well, I'm poorer at my job than I thought I was. Give me a nice cup of tea, Aunt Jane, with some thin bread and butter and soothe me with your earliest remembrances of St Mary Mead.'

Miss Marple clicked with her tongue in a sympathetic manner.

'Now it's no good talking like that, my dear boy, and I don't think bread and butter is after all what you want. Gentlemen, when they've had a disappointment, want something stronger than tea.'

As usual, Miss Marple said the word 'gentlemen' in the way of someone describing a foreign species.

'I should advise a good stiff whisky and soda,' she said.

'Would you really, Aunt Jane? Well, I won't say no.'

'And I shall get it for you myself,' said Miss Marple, rising to her feet.

'Oh, no, don't do that. Let me. Or what about Miss What's-her-name?'

'We don't want Miss Knight fussing about in here,' said Miss Marple. 'She won't be bringing my tea for another twenty minutes so that gives us a little peace and quiet. Clever of you to come to the window and not through the front door. Now we can have a nice quiet little time by ourselves.'

She went to a corner cupboard, opened it and produced a bottle, a syphon of soda and a glass.

'You are full of surprises,' said Dermot Craddock. 'I'd no idea that's what you kept in your corner cupboard. Are you quite sure you're not a secret drinker, Aunt Jane?'

'Now, now,' Miss Marple admonished him. 'I have never been an advocate of teetotalism. A little strong drink is always advisable on the premises in case there is a shock or an accident. Invaluable at such times. Or, of course, if a gentleman should arrive suddenly. There!' said Miss Marple, handing him her remedy with an air of quiet triumph. 'And you don't need to joke any more. Just sit quietly there and relax.'

'Wonderful wives there must have been in your young days,' said Dermot Craddock.

'I'm sure, my dear boy, you would find the young lady of the type you refer to as a very inadequate helpmeet nowadays. Young ladies were not encouraged to be intellectual and very few of them had university degrees or any kind of academic distinction.'

'There are things that are preferable to academic distinctions,' said Dermot. 'One of them is knowing when a man wants whisky and soda and giving it to him.'

Miss Marple smiled at him affectionately.

'Come,' she said, 'tell me all about it. Or as much as you are allowed to tell me.'

'I think you probably know as much as I do. And very likely you have something up your sleeve. How about your dogsbody, your dear Miss Knight? What about her having committed the crime?'

'Now why should Miss Knight have done such a thing?' demanded Miss Marple surprised.

'Because she's the most unlikely person,' said Dermot. 'It so often seems to hold good when you produce your answer.'

'Not at all,' said Miss Marple with spirit. 'I have said over and over again, not only to you, my dear Dermot – if I may call you so – that it is always the obvious person who has done the crime. One thinks so often of the wife or the husband and so very often it is the wife or the husband.'

'Meaning Jason Rudd?' He shook his head. 'That man adores Marina Gregg.'

'I was speaking generally,' said Miss Marple, with dignity. 'First we had Mrs Badcock apparently murdered. One asked oneself who could have done such a thing and the first answer would naturally be the husband. So one had to examine that possibility. Then we decided that the real object of the crime was Marina Gregg and there again we have to look for the person most intimately connected with Marina Gregg, starting as I say with the husband. Because there is no doubt about that husbands do, very frequently, want to make away with their wives, though sometimes, of course, they only wish to make away with their wives and do not actually do so. But I agree with you, my dear boy, that Jason Rudd really cares with all his heart for Marina Gregg. It might be very clever acting, though I can hardly believe that. And one certainly cannot see a motive of any kind for his doing away with her. If he wanted to marry somebody else there could, I should say, be nothing more simple. Divorce, if I may say so, seems second nature to film stars. A practical advantage does not seem to arise either. He is not a poor man by any means. He has his own career, and is, I understand, most successful in it. So we must go farther afield. But it certainly is difficult. Yes, very difficult.'

'Yes,' said Craddock, 'it must hold particular difficulties for you because of course this film world is entirely new to you. You don't know the local scandals and all the rest of it.'

'I know a little more than you may think,' said Miss Marple. 'I have studied very closely various numbers of Confidential, Film Life, Film Talk and Film Topics.'

Dermot Craddock laughed. He couldn't help it.

'I must say,' he said, 'it tickles me to see you sitting there and telling me what your course of literature has been.'

'I found it very interesting,' said Miss Marple. 'They're not particularly well written, if I may say so. But it really is disappointing in a way that it is all so much the same as it used to be in my young days. Modern Society and Tit Bits and all the rest of them. A lot of gossip. A lot of scandal. A great preoccupation with who is in love with whom, and all the rest of it. Really, you know, practically exactly the same sort of thing goes on in St Mary Mead. And in the Development too. Human nature, I mean, is just the same everywhere. One comes back, I think, to the question of who could have been likely to want to kill Marina Gregg, to want to so much that having failed once they sent threatening letters and made repeated attempts to do so. Someone perhaps a little -' very gently she tapped her forehead.