He left the room and Craddock remained, pursing his lips up and whistling very softly beneath his breath.
Chapter 10
'Jason'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 realising 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 ease 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 expression. 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 farfetched 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.
