Reality and Dreams by Muriel Spark

Author:Muriel Spark [Spark, Muriel]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2011-10-01T20:52:48+00:00

CHAPTER TEN

The answers that Marigold’s family and friends were able to give to the police about her habits, her possible movements, her whereabouts, only served to show how little anyone knew her. Tom’s indignant guilt sent the investigators on grotesquely false trails. He was not convinced she had been abducted and killed, as was certainly held by the police to be a strong possibility. Claire clung to the theory that Marigold had just wandered or walked off the scene, possibly to start a new life. It was impossible to know if she had taken money or precious objects, maybe jewellery, with her. Nobody knew about her money, her goods. It appeared just then that Marigold had been all her life exceedingly secretive.

Cora said: ‘I feel we should have taken more interest in Marigold.’

‘So do I,’ said Tom. ‘But how? How?’

Tom thought back on the times he had tried to make Marigold part of the family. Her manners were frightful. She was a positive embarrassment at any party that involved her parents’ friends. This was apparent before her fifteenth year, when she could be described as ‘difficult’. But as her adolescence wore off, she became ever more aggressive, ever more impossible to have around the house, ever less welcome in a house where some elements of domestic staff were necessary. Tom and Claire tended at first to blame themselves. But they were in no wise to blame. Marigold was simply a natural disaster.

Her marriage had been a touch and go affair. Her property — the house in Surrey and the flat in London — together with her very wealthy mother, made her into a material catch. But it could never have lasted.

Discussing her one day as they often did, Claire said to Tom, ‘Another thing I don’t understand about Marigold — she can be so common. Where does she get that vulgarity? From which of us, from what side, does the street-corner touch come?’

Nobody could answer that one.

Tom told the police investigators who enquired about her character, ‘I know very little about that. She resembles neither my wife nor me, except that, like me, she’s sexy.’

‘Do you mean she might have gone off with anybody?’

‘Yes, she might, if she fancied the man. Or the woman.’

‘Any idea what she might be doing for money?’

‘No, we don’t know anything about where she keeps her money. She had plenty from her mother. It might be deposited all over the place, just anywhere.’

The police investigator was in plain clothes. A grey suit, a grey tie. Tom would not have cast him as a policeman. He thought the face too soft, too much the face of a man who resembled his mother rather than his father. And yet, Tom reflected, perhaps, after all, this would be the ideal casting. Not at all the cliché of a police officer. Yes, he would be interesting in the part. (But what part?)

‘Have you faced the possibility that she might be dead?’ the policeman asked.

‘You mean murdered?’

‘Yes.’

‘I am not convinced about that.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.