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III
“Oh, how do you do?” said Mrs. Bantry, looking slightly taken aback when
Dermot Craddock had introduced himself and explained who he was.
you?”
“Something of the kind,” said Dermot gravely.
into her small sitting room. “I was just arranging some flowers,” she ex-
plained. “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 dis-
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 impos-
sible. 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
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 institu-
tion we had in those days, and very useful too—and told her to say ‘not at
the truth.”
“You mean that one might take pains to avoid Mrs. Badcock, but one
would have no urge to remove her permanently9.”
“Very well put,” said Mrs. Bantry, nodding approval.
gain by her death. Nobody seems to have disliked her to the point of
“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?”
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 any-
thing 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 admiration14 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;
The Mirror crack’d from side to side;
‘The curse has come upon me,’ cried
The Lady of Shalott.”
“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.”
things better than I can. My husband always used to say that I was so ab-
rupt 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 fetched some of us in. They fetched me, I suppose, because I once
owned the house, and they fetched Heather Badcock and her husband be-
cause she’d done all the running of the fête, and the arrangements. And
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
celebrities18. 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 remem-
ber 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 intro-
duced 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 over-blonde and the minky kind. And old General Barn-
the farm.”
“Those are all the people you can remember?”
“Well, there may have been others. But you see I wasn’t—well, I mean I
wasn’t noticing particularly. I know that the mayor and General Barn-
staple and the Americans did arrive about that time. And there were
people taking photographs. One I think was a local man, and there was a
girl from London, an arty-looking girl with long hair and a rather large
camera.”
“And you think it was one of those people who brought that look to Mar-
ina Gregg’s face?”
“I didn’t really think anything,” said Mrs. Bantry with complete frank-
ness. “I just wondered what on earth made her look like that and then I
didn’t think of it anymore. But afterwards one remembers about these
things. But of course,” added Mrs. Bantry with honesty, “I may have ima-
gined it. After all, she may have had a sudden toothache or a safety pin
run into her or a sudden violent colic. The sort of thing where you try to
go on as usual and not to show anything, but your face can’t help looking
awful.”
Dermot Craddock laughed. “I’m glad to see you’re a realist, Mrs. Bantry,”
he said. “As you say, it may have been something of that kind. But it’s cer-
tainly just one interesting little fact that might be a pointer.”
He shook his head and departed to present his official credentials21 in
Much Benham.
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