IS urveying Dermot Craddock unemotionally through her large horn-rimmed spectacles, Ella Zielinsky seemed to himalmost too good to be true. With quiet businesslike alacrity1 she whipped out of a drawer a typewritten sheet andpassed it across to him.
“I think I can be fairly sure that there are no omissions,” she said. “But it is just possible that I may have includedone or two names—local names they will be—who were not actually there. That is to say who may have left earlier orwho may not have been found and brought up. Actually, I’m pretty sure that it is correct.”
“A very efficient piece of work if I may say so,” said Dermot.
“Thank you.”
“I suppose—I am quite an ignoramus in such things—that you have to attain2 a high standard of efficiency in yourjob?”
“One has to have things pretty well taped, yes.”
“What else does your job comprise? Are you a kind of liaison3 officer, so to speak, between the studios andGossington Hall?”
“No. I’ve nothing to do with the studios, actually, though of course I naturally take messages from there on thetelephone or send them. My job is to look after Miss Gregg’s social life, her public and private engagements, and tosupervise in some degree the running of the house.”
“You like the job?”
“It’s extremely well paid and I find it reasonably interesting. I didn’t however bargain for murder,” she addeddryly.
“Did it seem very incredible to you?”
“So much so that I am going to ask you if you are really sure it is murder?”
“Six times the close of di-ethyl-mexine etc. etc., could hardly be anything else.”
“It might have been an accident of some kind.”
“And how would you suggest such an accident could have occurred?”
“More easily than you’d imagine, since you don’t know the setup. This house is simply full of drugs of all kinds. Idon’t mean dope when I say drugs. I mean properly prescribed remedies, but, like most of these things, what they call,I understand, the lethal4 dose is not very far removed from the therapeutic5 dose.”
Dermot nodded.
“These theatrical6 and picture people have the most curious lapses7 in their intelligence. Sometimes it seems to methat the more of an artistic8 genius you are, the less common sense you have in everyday life.”
“That may well be.”
“What with all the bottles, cachets, powders, capsules, and little boxes that they carry about with them; what withpopping in a tranquillizer here and a tonic9 there and a pep pill somewhere else, don’t you think it would be easyenough that the whole thing might get mixed-up?”
“I don’t see how it could apply in this case.”
“Well, I think it could. Somebody, one of the guests, may have wanted a sedative10, or a reviver, and whipped out hisor her little container which they carry around and possibly because they hadn’t remembered the dose because theyhadn’t had one for some time, might have put too much in a glass. Then their mind was distracted and they went offsomewhere, and let’s say this Mrs. What’s-her-name comes along, thinks it’s her glass, picks it up and drinks it. That’ssurely a more feasible idea than anything else?”
“You don’t think that all those possibilities haven’t been gone into, do you?”
“No, I suppose not. But there were a lot of people there and a lot of glasses standing11 about with drinks in them. Ithappens often enough, you know, that you pick up the wrong glass and drink out of it.”
“Then you don’t think that Heather Badcock was deliberately12 poisoned? You think that she drank out of somebodyelse’s glass?”
“I can’t imagine anything more likely to happen.”
“In that case,” said Dermot speaking carefully, “it would have had to be Marina Gregg’s glass. You realise that?
Marina handed her her own glass.”
“Or what she thought was her own glass,” Ella Zielinsky corrected him. “You haven’t talked to Marina yet, haveyou? She’s extremely vague. She’d pick up any glass that looked as though it were hers, and drink it. I’ve seen her doit again and again.”
“She takes Calmo?”
“Oh yes, we all do.”
“You too, Miss Zielinsky?”
“I’m driven to it sometimes,” said Ella Zielinsky. “These things are rather imitative, you know.”
“I shall be glad,” said Dermot, “when I am able to talk to Miss Gregg. She—er—seems to be prostrated13 for a verylong time.”
“That’s just throwing a temperament,” said Ella Zielinsky. “She just dramatizes herself a good deal, you know.
She’d never take murder in her stride.”
“As you manage to do, Miss Zielinsky?”
“When everybody about you is in a continual state of agitation,” said Ella dryly, “it develops in you a desire to goto 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 goround 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 raisedher eyebrows14 and tacitly demanded what this had to do with the murder of Mrs. Badcock, he would be forced to admitthat it had nothing to do with it. But he wondered if Ella Zielinsky might perhaps enjoy telling him what she thoughtof Marina Gregg.
“She’s a great artist. She’s got a personal magnetism15 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 purely16 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 alwaysterrifically exaggerated, and she changes her mind and there are an enormous lot of things that one must never mentionor allude17 to because they upset her.”
“Such as?”
“Well, naturally, mental breakdown18, or sanatoriums for mental cases. I think it is quite to be understood that sheshould 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 tohave a baby or has just had a baby, it throws her into a state of misery19 at once. She can never have another childherself, 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 ita little.”
“She doesn’t. It’s an obsession20 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 promptly21.
“Would you say that Marina Gregg had made many enemies in her life?”
“Not unduly22 so. Not more than most, that is to say. There are always rows over other women or other men or overcontracts 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’sanything 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 ofTom 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 rumours23. One or twosuggestions 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 busyon. It’s all highly technical and there’s an atmosphere of ‘the show must go on,’ or as I suppose one ought to say thepicture must go on, or the shooting must go on. I don’t know any of the right terms. All they’re concerned about iswhen Marina Gregg will get back to the set. She’s mucked up a picture once or twice before by staging a nervousbreakdown.”
“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 whenshe’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 herhusband 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 husbandhad been responsible. The doctor’s manner was a little peculiar24. 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 soonenough.”
“She herself is not embroiled25 with any other man?”
“No, she seems to be devoted26 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 allright.”
“It’s not as simple as it used to be,” said Dermot. “There’s a new social life springing up here. A housing estate, bigbuilding 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 suchthings.”
“You haven’t brought back very much,” grumbled27 Dermot. “What about Marina Gregg’s past, anything aboutthat?”
“Done a bit of marrying in her time but not more than most. Her first husband didn’t like getting the chuck, so theysaid, 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 glamorous28 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 upwith number three. Film star Robert Truscott. That was said to be a passionate29 love match. His wife didn’t much likeletting 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 becausethey’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. But another big romance came along a year or two later. IsidoreSomebody—a playwright30.”
“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 hardwork.”
“Such as?”
“Such as checking a list I’ve got here. Out of twenty-odd names we ought to be able to do some elimination31 and outof 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 wry32 and ironic33 smile, “I shall have to go to MissMarple and get briefed on local matters.”
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alacrity
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attain
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| vt.达到，获得，完成 | |
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liaison
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lethal
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therapeutic
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| adj.治疗的，起治疗作用的；对身心健康有益的 | |
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theatrical
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lapses
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| n.失误，过失( lapse的名词复数 )；小毛病；行为失检；偏离正道v.退步( lapse的第三人称单数 )；陷入；倒退；丧失 | |
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artistic
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| adj.艺术(家)的，美术(家)的；善于艺术创作的 | |
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tonic
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| n./adj.滋补品，补药，强身的，健体的 | |
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sedative
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standing
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deliberately
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| adv.审慎地；蓄意地；故意地 | |
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prostrated
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| v.使俯伏，使拜倒( prostrate的过去式和过去分词 )；（指疾病、天气等）使某人无能为力 | |
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eyebrows
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magnetism
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purely
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allude
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breakdown
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| n.垮，衰竭；损坏，故障，倒塌 | |
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misery
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obsession
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promptly
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unduly
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rumours
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peculiar
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embroiled
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devoted
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grumbled
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glamorous
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| adj.富有魅力的；美丽动人的；令人向往的 | |
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passionate
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| adj.热情的，热烈的，激昂的，易动情的，易怒的，性情暴躁的 | |
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playwright
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elimination
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wry
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ironic
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