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Eleven
I
Surveying Dermot Craddock unemotionally through her large horn-
written sheet and passed 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 included one or two names—local names
they will be—who were not actually there. That is to say who may have
left earlier or who 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
“One has to have things pretty well taped, yes.”
to speak, between the studios and Gossington Hall?”
“No. I’ve nothing to do with the studios, actually, though of course I nat-
urally take messages from there on the telephone or send them. My job is
to look after Miss Gregg’s social life, her public and private engagements,
and to supervise 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 added dryly.
“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. I don’t mean dope when I say
drugs. I mean properly prescribed remedies, but, like most of these things,
the therapeutic6 dose.”
Dermot nodded.
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 with popping in a tranquillizer here
be easy enough 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
they carry around and possibly because they hadn’t remembered the dose
because they hadn’t had one for some time, might have put too much in a
glass. Then their mind was distracted and they went off somewhere, and
let’s say this Mrs. What’s-her-name comes along, thinks it’s her glass, picks
it up and drinks it. That’s surely 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
know, that you pick up the wrong glass and drink out of it.”
“Then you don’t think that Heather Badcock was deliberately13 poisoned?
You think that she drank out of somebody else’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, have you? She’s extremely vague. She’d
pick up any glass that looked as though it were hers, and drink it. I’ve seen
her do it 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 prostrated14 for a very long 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 go to 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 go round 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
ded what this had to do with the murder of Mrs. Badcock, he would be
forced to admit that it had nothing to do with it. But he wondered if Ella
Zielinsky might perhaps enjoy telling him what she thought of Marina
Gregg.
the screen in the most extraordinary way. Because of that one feels it’s
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 always terrifically exaggerated, and she changes
her mind and there are an enormous lot of things that one must never
“Such as?”
think it is quite to be understood that she should 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 to have a baby or has just had
other child herself, 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 it a little.”
“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?”
“Would you say that Marina Gregg had made many enemies in her life?”
rows over other women or other men or over contracts 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’s anything 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 any-
thing we can to help.”
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