The Mirror Crack'd: from Side to Side (10 page)

“If you want my opinion,” he said, “a human opinion, that is, not a medical one, anytime within the next forty-eight hours, and she'll be not only willing, but asking to see you! She'll be wanting to ask questions. She'll be wanting to answer your questions. They're like that!” He leaned forward. “I'd like to try and make you understand if I can, Chief-Inspector, a little bit what makes these people act the way they do. The motion picture life is a life of continuous strain, and the more successful you are, the greater the strain. You live always, all day, in the public eye. When you're on location, when you're working, it's hard monotonous work with long hours. You're there in the morning, you sit and you wait. You do your small bit, the bit that's being shot over and over again. If you're rehearsing on the stage you'd be rehearsing as likely as not a whole act, or at any rate a part of an act. The thing would be in sequence, it would be more or less human and credible. But when you're shooting a picture everything's taken out of sequence. It's a monotonous, grinding business. It's exhausting. You live in luxury, of course, you have soothing drugs, you have baths and creams and powders and medical attention, you have relaxations and parties and people, but you're always in the public eye. You can't enjoy yourself quietly. You can't really—
ever relax
.”

“I can understand that,” said Dermot. “Yes, I can understand.”

“And there's another thing,” went on Gilchrist. “If you adopt this
career, and especially if you're any good at it, you are a certain kind of person. You're a person—or so I've found in my experience—with a skin too few—a person who is plagued the whole time with diffidence. A terrible feeling of inadequacy, of apprehension that you can't do what's required of you. People say that actors and actresses are vain. That isn't true. They're not
conceited
about themselves; they're
obsessed
with themselves, yes, but they need reassurance the whole time. They
must
be continually reassured. Ask Jason Rudd. He'll tell you the same. You have to make them feel they can do it, to assure them they can do it, take them over and over again over the same thing encouraging them the whole time until you get the effect you want. But they are always doubtful of themselves. And that makes them, in an ordinary human, unprofessional word: nervy. Damned nervy! A mass of nerves. And the worse their nerves are the better they are at the job.”

“That's interesting,” said Craddock. “Very interesting.” He paused, adding: “Though I don't see quite why you—”

“I'm trying to make you understand Marina Gregg,” said Maurice Gilchrist. “You've seen her pictures, no doubt.”

“She's a wonderful actress,” said Dermot, “wonderful. She has a personality, a beauty, a sympathy.”

“Yes,” said Gilchrist, “she has all those, and she's had to work like the devil to produce the effects that she has produced. In the process her nerves get shot to pieces, and she's not actually a strong woman physically. Not as strong as you need to be. She's got one of those temperaments that swing to and fro between despair and rapture. She can't help it. She's made that way. She's suffered a great deal in her life. A large part of the suffering has been her own fault, but some of it hasn't. None of her marriages has been happy, except,
I'd say, this last one. She's married to a man now who loves her dearly and who's loved her for years. She's sheltering in that love and she's happy in it. At least, at the moment she's happy in it. One can't say how long all that will last. The trouble with her is that either she thinks that at last she's got to that spot or place or that moment in her life where everything's like a fairy tale come true, that nothing can go wrong, that she'll never be unhappy again; or else she's down in the dumps, a woman whose life is ruined, who's never known love and happiness and who never will again.” He added dryly, “If she could only stop halfway between the two it'd be wonderful for her; and the world would lose a fine actress.”

He paused, but Dermot Craddock did not speak. He was wondering why Maurice Gilchrist was saying what he did. Why this close detailed analysis of Marina Gregg? Gilchrist was looking at him. It was as though he was urging Dermot to ask one particular question. Dermot wondered very much what the question was that he ought to ask. He said at last slowly, with the air of one feeling his way:

“She's been very much upset by this tragedy happening here?”

“Yes,” said Gilchrist, “she has.”

“Almost unnaturally so?”

“That depends,” said Dr. Gilchrist.

“On what does it depend?”

“On her reason for being so upset.”

“I suppose,” said Dermot, feeling his way, “that it was a shock, a sudden death happening like that in the midst of a party.”

He saw very little response in the face opposite him “Or might it,” he said, “be something more than that?”

“You can't tell, of course,” said Dr. Gilchrist, “how people are
going to react. You can't tell however well you know them. They can always surprise you. Marina might have taken this in her stride. She's a soft-hearted creature. She might say, ‘Oh, poor, poor woman, how tragic. I wonder how it could have happened.' She could have been sympathetic without really caring. After all deaths do occasionally occur at studio parties. Or she might, if there wasn't anything very interesting going on, choose—choose unconsciously, mind you—to dramatize herself over it. She might decide to throw a scene. Or there might be some quite different reason.”

Dermot decided to take the bull by the horns. “I wish,” he said, “you would tell me what you really think?”

“I don't know,” said Dr. Gilchrist. “I can't be sure.” He paused and then said, “There's professional etiquette, you know. There's the relationship between doctor and patient.”

“She has told you something?”

“I don't think I could go as far as that.”

“Did Marina Gregg know this woman, Heather Badcock? Had she met her before?”

“I don't think she knew her from Adam,” said Dr. Gilchrist. “No. That's not the trouble. If you ask me it's nothing to do with Heather Badcock.”

Dermot said, “This stuff, this Calmo. Does Marina Gregg ever use it herself?”

“Lives on it, pretty well,” said Dr. Gilchrist. “So does everyone else around here,” he added. “Ella Zielinsky takes it, Hailey Preston takes it, half the boiling takes it—it's the fashion at this moment. They're all much the same, these things. People get tired of one and they try a new one that comes out and they think it's wonderful, and that it makes all the difference.”

“And does it make all the difference?”

“Well,” said Gilchrist, “it makes
a
difference. It does its work. It calms you or it peps you up, makes you feel you could do things which otherwise you might fancy that you couldn't. I don't prescribe them more than I can help, but they're not dangerous taken properly. They help people who can't help themselves.”

“I wish I knew,” said Dermot Craddock, “what it is that you are trying to tell me.”

“I'm trying to decide,” said Gilchrist, “what is my duty. There are two duties. There's the duty of a doctor to his patient. What his patient says to him is confidential and must be kept so. But there's another point of view. You can fancy that there is a danger to a patient. You have to take steps to avoid that danger.”

He stopped. Craddock looked at him and waited.

“Yes,” said Dr. Gilchrist. “I think I know what I must do. I must ask you, Chief-Inspector Craddock, to keep what I am telling you confidential. Not from your colleagues, of course. But as far as regards the outer world, particularly in the house here. Do you agree?”

“I can't bind myself,” said Craddock. “I don't know what will arise. In general terms, yes, I agree. That is to say, I imagine that any piece of information you gave me I should prefer to keep to myself and my colleagues.”

“Now listen,” said Gilchrist, “this mayn't mean anything at all. Women say anything when they're in the state of nerves Marina Gregg is now. I'm telling you something which she said to me. There may be nothing in it at all.”

“What did she say?” asked Craddock.

“She broke down after this thing happened. She sent for me. I gave her a sedative. I stayed there beside her, holding her hand, tell
ing her to calm down, telling her things were going to be all right. Then, just before she went off into unconsciousness she said, ‘It was meant for
me,
Doctor.'”

Craddock stared. “She said that, did she? And afterwards—the next day?”

“She never alluded to it again. I raised the point once. She evaded it. She said, ‘Oh, you must have made a mistake. I'm sure I never said anything like that. I expect I was half doped at the time.'”

“But you think she meant it?”

“She meant it all right,” said Gilchrist. “That's not to say that it is so,” he added warningly. “Whether someone meant to poison her or meant to poison Heather Badcock I don't know. You'd probably know better than I would. All I do say is that Marina Gregg definitely thought and believed that that dose was meant for her.”

Craddock was silent for some moments. Then he said, “Thank you, Doctor Gilchrist. I appreciate what you have told me and I realize your motive. If what Marina Gregg said to you was founded on fact it may mean, may it not, that there is still danger to her?”

“That's the point,” said Gilchrist. “That's the whole point.”

“Have you any reason to believe that that might be so?”

“No, I haven't.”

“No idea what her reason for thinking so was?”

“No.”

“Thank you.”

Craddock got up. “Just one thing more, Doctor. Do you know if she said the same thing to her husband?”

Slowly Gilchrist shook his head. “No,” he said, “I'm quite sure of that. She didn't tell her husband.”

His eyes met Dermot's for a few moments then he gave a brief nod of his head and said, “You don't want me anymore? All right. I'll go back and have a look at the patient. You shall talk to her as soon as it's possible.”

He left the room and Craddock remained, pursing his lips up and whistling very softly beneath his breath.

“J
ason's back now,” said Hailey Preston. “Will you come with me, Chief-Inspector, I'll take you to his room.”

The room which Jason Rudd used partly for office and partly for a sitting room, was on the first floor. It was comfortably but not luxuriously furnished. It was a room which had little personality and no indication of the private tastes or predilection of its user. Jason Rudd rose from the desk at which he was sitting, and came forward to meet Dermot. It was wholly unnecessary, Dermot thought, for the room to have a personality; the user of it had so much. Hailey Preston had been an efficient and voluble gasbag. Gilchrist had force and magnetism. But here was a man whom, as Dermot immediately admitted to himself, it would not be easy to read. In the course of his career, Craddock had met and summed up many people. By now he was fully adept in realizing the potentialities and very often reading the thoughts of most of the people with whom he came in contact. But he felt at once that one would be able to gauge only as much of Jason Rudd's thoughts as Jason Rudd himself permitted.
The eyes, deepset and thoughtful, perceived but would not easily reveal. The ugly, rugged head spoke of an excellent intellect. The clown's face could repel you or attract you. Here, thought Dermot Craddock to himself, is where I sit and listen and take very careful notes.

“Sorry, Chief-Inspector, if you've had to wait for me. I was held up by some small complication over at the Studios. Can I offer you a drink?”

“Not just now, thank you, Mr. Rudd.”

The clown's face suddenly crinkled into a kind of ironic amusement.

“Not the house to take a drink in, is that what you're thinking?”

“As a matter of fact it wasn't what I was thinking.”

“No, no I suppose not. Well, Chief-Inspector, what do you want to know? What can I tell you?”

“Mr. Preston has answered very adequately all the questions I have put to him.”

“And that has been helpful to you?”

“Not as helpful as I could wish.”

Jason Rudd looked inquiring.

“I've also seen Dr. Gilchrist. He informs me that your wife is not yet strong enough to be asked questions.”

“Marina,” said Jason Rudd, “is very sensitive. She's subject, frankly, to nervous storms. And murder at such close quarters is, as you will admit, likely to produce a nerve storm.”

“It is not a pleasant experience,” Dermot Craddock agreed, dryly.

“In any case I doubt if there is anything my wife could tell you that you could not learn equally well from me. I was standing beside
her when the thing happened, and frankly I would say that I am a better observer than my wife.”

“The first question I would like to ask,” said Dermot, “(and it is a question that you have probably answered already but for all that I would like to ask again), had you or your wife any previous acquaintance with Heather Badcock?”

Jason Rudd shook his head.

“None whatever. I certainly have never seen the woman before in my life. I had two letters from her on behalf of the St. John Ambulance Association, but I had not met her personally until about five minutes before her death.”

“But she claimed to have met your wife?”

Jason Rudd nodded.

“Yes, some twelve or thirteen years ago, I gather. In Bermuda. Some big garden party in aid of ambulances, which Marina opened for them, I think, and Mrs. Badcock, as soon as she was introduced, burst into some long rigmarole of how although she was in bed with flu, she had got up and had managed to come to this affair and had asked for and got my wife's autograph.”

Again the ironical smile crinkled his face.

“That, I may say, is a very common occurrence, Chief-Inspector. Large mobs of people are usually lined up to obtain my wife's autograph and it is a moment that they treasure and remember. Quite understandably, it is an event in their lives. Equally naturally it is not likely that my wife would remember one out of a thousand or so autograph hunters. She had, quite frankly, no recollection of ever having seen Mrs. Badcock before.”

“That I can well understand,” said Craddock. “Now I have been told, Mr. Rudd, by an onlooker that your wife was slightly
distraite
during the few moments that Heather Badcock was speaking to her. Would you agree that such was the case?”

“Very possibly,” said Jason Rudd. “Marina is not particularly strong. She was, of course, used to what I may describe as her public social work, and could carry out her duties in that line almost automatically. But towards the end of a long day she was inclined occasionally to flag. This may have been such a moment. I did not, I may say, observe anything of the kind myself. No, wait a minute, that is not quite true. I do remember that she was a little slow in making her reply to Mrs. Badcock. In fact I think I nudged her very gently in the ribs.”

“Something had perhaps distracted her attention?” said Dermot.

“Possibly, but it may have been just a momentary lapse through fatigue.”

Dermot Craddock was silent for a few minutes. He looked out of the window where the view was the somewhat sombre one over the woods surrounding Gossington Hall. He looked at the pictures on the walls, and finally he looked at Jason Rudd. Jason Rudd's face was attentive but nothing more. There was no guide to his feelings. He appeared courteous and completely at ease, but he might, Craddock thought, be actually nothing of the kind. This was a man of very high mental calibre. One would not, Dermot thought, get anything out of him that he was not prepared to say unless one put one's cards on the table. Dermot took his decision. He would do just that.

“Has it occurred to you, Mr. Rudd, that the poisoning of Heather Badcock may have been entirely accidental? That the real intended victim was your wife?”

There was a silence. Jason Rudd's face did not change its ex
pression. Dermot waited. Finally Jason Rudd gave a deep sigh and appeared to relax.

“Yes,” he said quietly, “you're quite right, Chief-Inspector. I have been sure of it all along.”

“But you have said nothing to that effect, not to Inspector Cornish, not at the inquest?”

“No.”

“Why not, Mr. Rudd?”

“I could answer you very adequately by saying that it was merely a belief on my part unsupported by any kind of evidence. The facts that led me to deduce it, were facts equally accessible to the law which was probably better qualified to decide than I was. I knew nothing about Mrs. Badcock personally. She might have enemies, someone might have decided to administer a fatal dose to her on this particular occasion, though it would seem a very curious and far-fetched decision. But it might have been chosen conceivably for the reason that at a public occasion of this kind the issues would be more confused, the number of strangers present would be considerable and just for that reason it would be more difficult to bring home to the person in question the commission of such a crime. All that is true, but I am going to be frank with you, Chief-Inspector. That was
not
my reason for keeping silent. I will tell you what the reason was. I didn't want my wife to suspect for one moment that it was she who had narrowly escaped dying by poison.”

“Thank you for your frankness,” said Dermot. “Not that I quite understand your motive in keeping silent.”

“No? Perhaps it is a little difficult to explain. You would have to know Marina to understand. She is a person who badly needs happiness and security. Her life has been highly successful in the
material sense. She has won renown artistically but her personal life has been one of deep unhappiness. Again and again she has thought that she has found happiness and was wildly and unduly elated thereby, and has had her hopes dashed to the ground. She is incapable, Mr. Craddock, of taking a rational, prudent view of life. In her previous marriages she has expected, like a child reading a fairy story, to live happy ever afterwards.”

Again the ironic smile changed the ugliness of the clown's face into a strange, sudden sweetness.

“But marriage is not like that, Chief-Inspector. There can be no rapture continued indefinitely. We are fortunate indeed if we can achieve a life of quiet content, affection, and serene and sober happiness.” He added. “Perhaps you are married, Chief-Inspector?”

Dermot Craddock shook his head.

“I have not so far that good, or bad fortune,” he murmured.

“In our world, the moving picture world, marriage is a fully occupational hazard. Film stars marry often. Sometimes happily, sometimes disastrously, but seldom permanently. In that respect I should not say that Marina has had any undue cause to complain, but to one of her temperament things of that kind matter very deeply. She imbued herself with the idea that she was unlucky, that nothing would ever go right for her. She has always been looking desperately for the same things, love, happiness, affection, security. She was wildly anxious to have children. According to some medical opinion, the very strength of that anxiety frustrated its object. One very celebrated physician advised the adoption of a child. He said it is often the case that when an intense desire for maternity is assuaged by having adopted a baby, a child is born naturally shortly afterwards. Marina adopted no less than three children. For a time
she got a certain amount of happiness and serenity, but it was not the real thing. You can imagine her delight when eleven years ago she found she was going to have a child. Her pleasure and delight were quite indescribable. She was in good health and the doctors assured her that there was every reason to believe that everything would go well. As you may or may not know, the result was tragedy. The child, a boy, was born mentally deficient, imbecile. The result was disastrous. Marina had a complete breakdown and was severely ill for years, confined to a sanatorium. Though her recovery was slow she did recover. Shortly after that we married and she began once more to take an interest in life and to feel that perhaps she could be happy. It was difficult at first for her to get a worthwhile contract for a picture. Everyone was inclined to doubt whether her health would stand the strain. I had to battle for that.” Jason Rudd's lips set firmly together. “Well, the battle was successful. We have started shooting the picture. In the meantime we bought this house and set about altering it. Only about a fortnight ago Marina was saying to me how happy she was, and how she felt at last she was going to be able to settle down to a happy home life, her troubles behind her. I was a little nervous because, as usual, her expectations were too optimistic. But there was no doubt that she was happy. Her nervous symptoms disappeared, there was a calmness and a quietness about her that I had never seen before. Everything was going well until—” He paused. His voice became suddenly bitter. “Until this happened! That woman had to die—
here!
That in itself was shock enough. I couldn't risk—I was determined not to risk—Marina's knowing that an attempt had been made on
her
life. That would have been a second, perhaps fatal, shock. It might have precipitated another mental collapse.”

He looked directly at Dermot.

“Do you understand—now?”

“I see your point of view,” said Craddock, “but forgive me, isn't there one aspect that you are neglecting? You give me your conviction that an attempt was made to poison your wife. Doesn't that danger still remain? If a poisoner does not succeed, isn't it likely that the attempt may be repeated?”

“Naturally I've considered that,” said Jason Rudd, “but I am confident that, being forewarned so to speak, I can take all reasonable precautions for my wife's safety. I shall watch over her and arrange that others shall watch over her. The great thing, I feel, is that she herself should not know that any danger threatened her.”

“And you think,” said Dermot cautiously, “that she does
not
know?”

“Of course not. She has no idea.”

“You're sure of that?”

“Certain. Such an idea would never occur to her.”

“But it occurred to you,” Dermot pointed out.

“That's very different,” said Jason Rudd. “Logically it was the only solution. But my wife isn't logical, and to begin with she could not possibly imagine that anyone would want to do away with her. Such a possibility would simply not occur to her mind.”

“You may be right,” said Dermot slowly, “but that leaves us now with several other questions. Again, let me put this bluntly. Whom do you suspect?”

“I can't tell you.”

“Excuse me, Mr. Rudd, do you mean by that you can't or that you won't?”

Jason Rudd spoke quickly. “Can't. Can't every time. It seems to
me just as impossible as it would seem to her that anyone would dislike her enough—should have a sufficient grudge against her—to do such a thing. On the other hand, on the sheer, downright evidence of the facts, that is exactly what must have occurred.”

“Will you outline the facts to me as you see them?”

“If you like. The circumstances are quite clear. I poured out two daiquiri cocktails from an already prepared jug. I took them to Marina and Mrs. Badcock. What Mrs. Badcock did I do not know. She moved on, I presume, to speak to someone she knew. My wife had her drink in her hand. At that moment the mayor and his wife were approaching. She put down her glass, as yet untouched, and greeted them. Then there were more greetings. An old friend we'd not seen for years, some other locals and one or two people from the studios. During that time the glass containing the cocktail stood on the table which was situated at that time behind us since we had both moved forward a little to the top of the stairs. One or two photographs were taken of my wife talking to the mayor, which we hoped would please the local population, at the special request of the representatives of the local newspaper. While this was being done I brought some fresh drinks to a few of the last arrivals. During that time my wife's glass must have been poisoned. Don't ask me
how
it was done, it cannot have been easy to do. On the other hand, it is startling, if anyone has the nerve to do an action openly and unconcernedly, how little people are likely to notice it! You ask me if I have suspicions; all I can say is that at least one of about twenty people
might
have done it. People, you see, were moving about in little groups, talking, occasionally going off to have a look at the alterations which had been done to the house. There was movement, continual movement. I've thought and I've thought, I've racked my
brains but there is nothing, absolutely
nothing
to direct my suspicions to any particular person.”