would have been a good opportunity for either of them. In fact if either of them had wanted to do away with Marina Gregg it would have been far safer to do so on a public occasion.'
'Anyone else?'
'Well, there's always the husband,' said Craddock.
'Back to the husbands again,' said Cornish, with a faint smile. 'We thought it was that poor devil, Badcock, before we realised that Marina was the intended victim. Now we've transferred our suspicions to Jason Rudd. He seems devoted enough though, I must say.'
'He has the reputation of being so,' said Craddock, 'but one never knows.'
'If he wanted to get rid of her, wouldn't divorce be much easier?'
'It would be far more usual,' agreed Dermot, 'but there may be a lot of ins and outs to this business that we don't know yet.'
The telephone rang. Cornish took up the receiver.
'What? Yes? Put them through. Yes, he's here.' He listened for a moment then put his hand over the receiver and looked at Dermot. 'Miss Marina Gregg,' he said, 'is feeling very much better. She is quite ready to be interviewed.'
'I'd better hurry along,' said Dermot Craddock, 'before she changes her mind.'
II
At Gossington Hall Dermot Craddock was received by Ella Zielinsky. She was, as usual, brisk and efficient.
'Miss Gregg is waiting for you, Mr Craddock,' she said.
Dermot looked at her with some interest. From the beginning he had found Ella Zielinsky an intriguing personality. He had said to himself, 'A poker face if I ever saw one.' She had answered any questions he had asked with the utmost readiness. She had shown no signs of keeping anything back, but what she really thought or felt or even knew about the business, he still had no idea. There seemed to be no chink in the armour of her bright efficiency. She might know more than she said she did; she might know a good deal. The only thing he was sure of – and he had to admit to himself that he had no reasons to adduce for that surety – was that she was in love with Jason Rudd. It was, as he had said, an occupational disease of secretaries. It probably meant nothing. But the fact did at least suggest a motive and he was sure, quite sure, that she was concealing something. It might be love, it might be hate. It might, quite simply, be guilt. She might have taken her opportunity that afternoon, or she might have deliberately planned what she was going to do. He could see her in the part quite easily, as far as the execution of it went. Her swift but unhurried movements, moving here and there, looking after guests, handing glasses to one or another, taking glasses away, her eyes marking the spot where Marina had put her glass down on the table. And then, perhaps at the very moment when Marina had been greeting the arrivals from the States, with surprise and joyous cries and everybody's eyes turned towards their meeting, she could have quietly and unobtrusively dropped the fatal dose into that glass. It would require audacity, nerve, swiftness. She would have had all those. Whatever she had done, she would not have looked guilty whilst she was doing it. It would have been a simple, brilliant crime, a crime that could hardly fail to be successful. But chance had ruled otherwise. In the rather crowded floorspace someone had jogged Heather Badcock's arm. Her drink had been spilt, and Marina, with her natural impulsive grace, had quickly proffered her own glass, standing there untouched. And so the wrong woman had died.
A lot of pure theory, and probably hooey at that, said Dermot Craddock to himself at the same time as he was making polite remarks to Ella Zielinsky.
'One thing I wanted to ask you, Miss Zielinsky. The catering was done by a Market Basing firm, I understand?'
'Yes.'
'Why was that particular firm chosen?'
'I really don't know,' said Ella. 'That doesn't lie amongst my duties. I know Mr Rudd thought it would be more tactful to employ somebody local rather than to employ a firm from London. The whole thing was really quite a small affair from our point of view.'
'Quite.' He watched her as she stood frowning a little looking down. A good forehead, a determined chin, a figure which could look quite voluptuous if it was allowed to do so, a hard mouth, an acquisitive mouth. The eyes? He looked at them in surprise. The lids were reddened. He wondered. Had she been crying? It looked like it. And yet he could have sworn she was not the type of young woman to cry. She looked up at him, and as though she read his thoughts, she took out her handkerchief and blew her nose heartily.
'You've got a cold,' he said.
'Not a cold. Hay-fever. It's an allergy of some kind, really. I always get at it this time of year.'
There was a low buzz. There were two phones in the room, one on the table and one on another table in the corner. It was the latter one that was beginning to buzz. Ella Zielinsky went over to it and picked up the receiver.
'Yes,' she said, 'he's here. I'll bring him up at once.' She put the receiver down again. ' Marina 's ready for you,' she said.
III
Marina Gregg received Craddock in a room on the first floor, which was obviously her own private sitting- room opening out of her bedroom. After the accounts of her prostration and her nervous state, Dermot Craddock had expected to find a fluttering invalid. But although Marina was half reclining on a sofa her voice was vigorous and her eyes were bright. She had very little make-up on, but in spite of this she did not look her age, and he was struck very forcibly by the subdued radiance of her beauty. It was the exquisite line of cheek and jawbone, the way the hair fell loosely and naturally to frame her face. The long sea-green eyes, the pencilled eyebrows, owing something to art but more to nature, and the warmth and sweetness of her smile, all had a subtle magic. She said:
'Chief-Inspector Craddock? I've been behaving disgracefully. I do apologize. I just let myself go to pieces after this awful thing. I could have snapped out of it but I didn't. I'm ashamed of myself.' The smile came, rueful, sweet, turning up the corners of the mouth. She extended a hand and he took it.
'It was only natural,' he said, 'that you should feel upset.'
'Well, everyone was upset,' said Marina. 'I'd no business to make out it was worse for me than anyone else.'
'Hadn't you?'
She looked at him for a minute and then nodded. 'Yes,' she said, 'you're very perceptive. Yes, I had.' She looked down and with one long forefinger gently stroked the arm of the sofa. It was a gesture he had noticed in one of her films. It was a meaningless gesture, yet it seemed fraught with significance. It had a kind of musing gentleness.
'I'm a coward,' she said, her eyes still cast down. 'Somebody wanted to kill me and I didn't want to die.'
'Why do you think someone wanted to kill you?'
Her eyes opened wide. 'Because it was my glass – my drink – that had been tampered with. It was just a mistake that that poor stupid woman got it. That's what's so horrible and so tragic. Besides -'
'Yes, Miss Gregg?'
She seemed a little uncertain about saying more.
'You had other reasons perhaps for believing that you were the intended victim?'
She nodded.
'What reasons, Miss Gregg?'
She paused a minute longer before saying, 'Jason says I must tell you all about it.'
