“And her husband wasn’t having an affair with someone else?”
“I shouldn’t think so,” said Mrs. Bantry. “I only saw him at the party. He looked like a bit of chewed string. Nice but wet.”
“Doesn’t leave much, does it?” said Dermot Craddock. “One falls back on the assumption she knew something.”
“Knew something?”
“To the detriment of somebody else.”
Mrs. Bantry shook her head again. “I doubt it,” she said. “I doubt it very much. She struck me as the kind of woman who if she had known anything about anyone, couldn’t have helped talking about it.”
“Well, that washes that out,” said Dermot Craddock, “so we’ll come, if we may, to my reasons for coming to see you. Miss Marple, for whom I have the greatest admiration and respect, told me that I was to say to you the Lady of Shalott.”
“Oh, that!” said Mrs. Bantry.
“Yes,” said Craddock. “That! Whatever it is.”
“People don’t read much Tennyson nowadays,” said Mrs. Bantry.
“A few echoes come back to me,” said Dermot Craddock. “She looked out to Camelot, didn’t she?
Out flew the web and floated wide;
The Mirror crack’d from side to side;
‘The curse has come upon me,’ cried
The Lady of Shalott.”
“Exactly. She did,” said Mrs. Bantry.
“I beg your pardon. Who did? Did what?”
“Looked like that,” said Mrs. Bantry.
“Who looked like what?”
“Marina Gregg.”
“Ah, Marina Gregg. When was this?”
“Didn’t Jane Marple tell you?”
“She didn’t tell me anything. She sent me to you.”
“That’s tiresome of her,” said Mrs. Bantry, “because she can always tell things better than I can. My husband always used to say that I was so abrupt that he didn’t know what I was talking about. Anyway, it may have been only my fancy. But when you see anyone looking like that you can’t help remembering it.”
“Please tell me,” said Dermot Craddock.
“Well, it was at the party. I call it a party because what can one call things? But it was just a sort of reception up at the top of the stairs where they’ve made a kind of recess. Marina Gregg was there and her husband. They fetched some of us in. They fetched me, I suppose, because I once owned the house, and they fetched Heather Badcock and her husband because she’d done all the running of the fête, and the arrangements. And we happened to go up the stairs at about the same time, so I was standing there, you see, when I noticed it.”
“Quite. When you noticed what?”
“Well, Mrs. Badcock went into a long spiel as people do when they meet celebrities. You know, how wonderful it was, and what a thrill and they’d always hoped to see them. And she went into a long story of how she’d once met her years ago and how exciting it had been. And I thought, in my own mind, you know, what a bore it must be for these poor celebrities to have to say all the right things. And then I noticed that Marina Gregg wasn’t saying the right things. She was just staring.”
“Staring—at Mrs. Badcock?”
“No—no, it looked as though she’d forgotten Mrs. Badcock altogether. I mean, I don’t believe she’d even heard what Mrs. Badcock was saying. She was just staring with what I call this Lady of Shalott look, as though she’d seen something awful. Something frightening, something that she could hardly believe she saw and couldn’t bear to see.”
“The curse has come upon me?” suggested Dermot Craddock.
“Yes, just that. That’s why I call it the Lady of Shalott look.”
“But what was she looking at, Mrs. Bantry?”
“Well, I wish I knew,” said Mrs. Bantry.
“She was at the top of the stairs, you say?”
“She was looking over Mrs. Badcock’s head—no, more over one shoulder, I think.”
“Straight at the middle of the staircase?”
“It might have been a little to one side.”
“And there were people coming up the staircase?”
“Oh yes, I should think about five or six people.”
“Was she looking at one of these people in particular?”
“I can’t possibly tell,” said Mrs. Bantry. “You see, I wasn’t facing that way. I was looking at her. My back was to the stairs. I thought perhaps she was looking at one of the pictures.”
“But she must know the pictures quite well if she’s living in the house.”
“Yes, yes, of course. No, I suppose she must have been looking at one of the people. I wonder which.”
“We have to try and find out,” said Dermot Craddock. “Can you remember at all who the people were?”
“Well, I know the mayor was one of them with his wife. There was someone who I think was a reporter, with red hair, because I was introduced to him later, but I can’t remember his name. I never hear names. Galbraith—something like that. Then there was a big black man. I don’t mean a negro—I just mean very dark, forceful looking. And an actress with him. A bit over-blonde and the minky kind. And old General Barnstaple from Much Benham. He’s practically ga-ga now, poor old boy. I don’t think he could have been anybody’s doom. Oh! and the Grices from the farm.”
“Those are all the people you can remember?”
“Well, there may have been others. But you see I wasn’t—well, I mean I wasn’t noticing particularly. I know that the mayor and General Barnstaple and the Americans did arrive about that time. And there were people taking photographs. One I think was a local man, and there was a girl from London, an arty-looking girl with long hair and a rather large camera.”
“And you think it was one of those people who brought that look to Marina Gregg’s face?”
“I didn’t really think anything,” said Mrs. Bantry with complete frankness. “I just wondered what on earth made her look like that and then I didn’t think of it anymore. But afterwards one remembers about these things. But of course,” added Mrs. Bantry with honesty, “I may have imagined it. After all, she may have had a sudden toothache or a safety pin run into her or a sudden violent colic. The sort of thing where you try to go on as usual and not to show anything, but your face can’t help looking awful.”
Dermot Craddock laughed. “I’m glad to see you’re a realist, Mrs. Bantry,” he said. “As you say, it may have been something of that kind. But it’s certainly just one interesting little fact that might be a pointer.”
He shook his head and departed to present his official credentials in Much Benham.
Nine
I
“So locally you’ve drawn a blank?” said Craddock, offering his cigarette case to Frank Cornish.
“Completely,” said Cornish. “No enemies, no quarrels, on good terms with her husband.”
“No question of another woman or another man?”
The other shook his head. “Nothing of that kind. No hint of scandal anywhere. She wasn’t what you’d call the sexy kind. She was on a lot of committees and things like that and there were some small local rivalries, but nothing beyond that.”
“There wasn’t anyone else the husband wanted to marry? No one in the office where he worked?”
“He’s in Biddle & Russell, the estate agents and valuers. There’s Florrie West with adenoids, and Miss Grundle, who is at least fifty and as plain as a haystack—nothing much there to excite a man. Though for all that I shouldn’t be surprised if he did marry again soon.”
Craddock looked interested.
“A neighbour,” explained Cornish. “A widow. When I went back with him from the inquest she’d gone in and was making him tea and looking after him generally. He seemed surprised and grateful. If you ask me, she’s made up her mind to marry him, but he doesn’t know it yet, poor chap.”
“What sort of a woman is she?”
“Good looking,” admitted the other. “Not young but handsome in a gipsyish sort of w
ay. High colour. Dark eyes.”
“What’s her name?”
“Bain. Mrs. Mary Bain. Mary Bain. She’s a widow.”