Christie, Agatha - The Mirror Crack'd: from Side to Side by Christie Agatha

Author:Christie, Agatha [Christie, Agatha]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2011-11-22T23:00:00+00:00

Thirteen

I

“I suppose it couldn’t possibly have been the mayor?” said Inspector Cornish wistfully.

He tapped the paper with the list of names on it with his pencil. Dermot Craddock grinned.

“Wishful thinking?” he asked.

“You could certainly call it that,” said Cornish. “Pompous, canting old hypocrite!” he went on. “Everybody’s got it in for him. Throws his weight about, ultra sanctimonious, and neck deep in graft for years past!”

“Can’t you ever bring it home to him?”

“No,” said Cornish. “He’s too slick for that. He’s always just on the right side of the law.”

“It’s tempting, I agree,” said Dermot Craddock, “but I think you’ll have to banish that rosy picture from your mind, Frank.”

“I know, I know,” said Cornish. “He’s a possible, but a wildly improbable. Who else have we got?”

Both men studied the list again. There were still eight names on it.

“We’re pretty well agreed,” said Craddock, “that there’s nobody missed out from here?” There was a faint question in his voice. Cornish answered it.

“I think you can be pretty sure that’s the lot. After Mrs. Bantry came the vicar, and after that the Badcocks. There were then eight people on the stairs. The mayor and his wife, Joshua Grice and wife from Lower Farm. Donald McNeil of the Much Benham Herald & Argus. Ardwyck Fenn, USA, Miss Lola Brewster, USA, Moving Picture Star. There you are. In addition there was an arty photographer from London with a camera set up on the angle of the stairs. If, as you suggest, this Mrs. Bantry’s story of Marina Gregg having a ‘frozen look’ was occasioned by someone she saw on the stairs, you’ve got to take your pick among that lot. Mayor regretfully out. Grices out—never been away from St. Mary Mead I should say. That leaves four. Local journalist unlikely, photographer girl had been there for half an hour already, so why should Marina react so late in the day? What does that leave?”

“Sinister strangers from America,” said Craddock with a faint smile.

“You’ve said it.”

“They’re our best suspects by far, I agree,” said Craddock. “They turned up unexpectedly. Ardwyck Fenn was an old flame of Marina’s whom she had not seen for years. Lola Brewster was once married to Marina Gregg’s third husband, who got a divorce from her in order to marry Marina. It was not, I gather, a very amicable divorce.”

“I’d put her down as Suspect Number One,” said Cornish.

“Would you, Frank? After a lapse of about fifteen years or so, and having remarried twice herself since then?”

Cornish said that you never knew with women. Dermot accepted that as a general dictum, but remarked that it seemed odd to him to say the least of it.

“But you agree that it lies between them?”

“Possibly. But I don’t like it very much. What about the hired help who were serving the drinks?”

“Discounting the ‘frozen look’ we’ve heard so much about? Well, we’ve checked up in a general way. Local catering firm from Market Basing had the job—for the fête, I mean. Actually in the house, there was the butler, Giuseppe, in charge; and two local girls from the studios canteen.

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