II
“Well, Tom, what have you got for me?”
Detective-
Sergeant1 Tiddler grinned appreciatively. His name was not
Tom, it was William, but the combination of Tom 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
rumours2. One or two suggestions of suicide.”
“Why suicide?”
“They thought she might have had a row with her husband and be try-
ing 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 busy on. It’s all highly technical and
there’s an atmosphere of ‘the show must go on,’ or as I suppose one ought
to say the picture must go on, or the shooting must go on. I don’t know any
of the right terms. All they’re concerned about is when Marina Gregg will
get back to the set. She’s mucked up a picture once or twice before by sta-
“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 when she’s in the mood to fascin-
ate 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 wo-
man 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
lethal4
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 her husband 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 husband had been responsible. The doc-
tor’s manner was a little
peculiar5. 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 soon enough.”
“She herself is not
embroiled6 with any other man?”
“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 all right.”
“It’s not as simple as it used to be,” said Dermot. “There’s a new social
life springing up here. A housing estate, big building development. The
Badcocks are fairly new and come from there.”
“I didn’t hear much about the locals, of course,” said Tiddler. “I concen-
trated on the sex life of film stars and such things.”
“You haven’t brought back very much,”
grumbled8 Dermot. “What about
Marina Gregg’s past, anything about that?”
“Done a bit of marrying in her time but not more than most. Her first
husband didn’t like getting the chuck, so they said, but he was a very or-
dinary sort of bloke. He was a realtor or something like that. What is a re-
altor, by the way?”
“I think it means in the real estate business.”
“Oh well, anyway, he didn’t line up as very
glamorous9 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 up with number three. Film star Robert Truscott. That was
said to be a
passionate10 love match. His wife didn’t much like letting 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 because they’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 ro-
mance came along a year or two later. Isidore Somebody—a
playwright11.”
“It’s an exotic life,” said Dermot. “Well, we’ll call it a day now. Tomor-
row we’ve got to get down to a bit of hard work.”
“Such as?”
“Such as checking a list I’ve got here. Out of twenty-odd names we ought
to be able to do some
elimination12 and out of 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
wry13 and
ironic14 smile, “I shall have to go to Miss Marple and get briefed on local
matters.”
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