“Mr. Badcock, I’m afraid I’ve given her a lot of trouble.”
“Oh, no trouble to Heather. Heather enjoys doing things for people.” He looked at her curiously. “Were you on your way anywhere in particular?”
“No, I was just taking a walk. I live in St. Mary Mead, the house beyond the Vicarage. My name is Marple.”
“Well, I never!” exclaimed Heather. “So you’re Miss Marple. I’ve heard about you. You’re the one who does all the murders.”
“Heather! What do you—”
“Oh, you know what I mean. Not actually do murders—find out about them. That’s right, isn’t it?”
Miss Marple murmured modestly that she had been mixed-up in murders once or twice.
“I heard there have been murders here, in this village. They were talking about it the other night at the Bingo Club. There was one at Gossington Hall. I wouldn’t buy a place where there’d been a murder. I’d be sure it was haunted.”
“The murder wasn’t committed in Gossington Hall. A dead body was brought there.”
“Found in the library on the hearthrug, that’s what they said?”
Miss Marple nodded.
“Did you ever? Perhaps they’re going to make a film of it. Perhaps that’s why Marina Gregg has bought Gossington Hall.”
“Marina Gregg?”
“Yes. She and her husband. I forget his name—he’s a producer, I think, or a director—Jason something. But Marina Gregg, she’s lovely, isn’t she? Of course she hasn’t been in so many pictures of late years—she was ill for a long time. But I still think there’s never anybody like her. Did you see her in Carmenella. And The Price of Love, and Mary of Scotland? She’s not so young anymore, but she’ll always be a wonderful actress. I’ve always been a terrific fan of hers. When I was a teenager I used to dream about her. The big thrill of my life was when there was a big show in aid of the St. John Ambulance in Bermuda, and Marina Gregg came to open it. I was mad with excitement, and then on the very day I went down with a temperature and the doctor said I couldn’t go. But I wasn’t going to be beaten. I didn’t actually feel too bad. So I got up and put a lot of makeup on my face and went along. I was introduced to her and she talked to me for quite three minutes and gave me her autograph. It was wonderful. I’ve never forgotten that day.”
Miss Marple stared at her. “I hope there were no—unfortunate aftereffects?” she said anxiously.
Heather Badcock laughed.
“None at all. Never felt better. What I say is, if you want a thing you’ve got to take risks. I always do.”
She laughed again, a happy strident laugh.
Arthur Badcock said admiringly. “There’s never any holding Heather. She always gets away with things.”
“Alison Wilde,” murmured Miss Marple, with a nod of satisfaction.
“Pardon?” said Mr. Badcock.
“Nothing. Just someone I used to know.”
Heather looked at her inquiringly.
“You reminded me of her, that is all.”
“Did I? I hope she was nice.”
“She was very nice indeed,” said Miss Marple slowly. “Kind, healthy, full of life.”
“But she had her faults, I suppose?” laughed Heather. “I have.”
“Well, Alison always saw her own point of view so clearly that she didn’t always see how things might appear to, or affect, other people.”
“Like the time you took in that evacuated family from a condemned cottage and they went off with all our teaspoons,” Arthur said.
“But Arthur!—I couldn’t have turned them away. It wouldn’t have been kind.”
“They were family spoons,” said Mr. Badcock sadly. “Georgian. Belonged to my mother’s grandmother.”
“Oh, do forget those old spoons, Arthur. You do harp so.”
“I’m not very good at forgetting, I’m afraid.”
Miss Marple looked at him thoughtfully.
“What’s your friend doing now?” asked Heather of Miss Marple with kindly interest.
Miss Marple paused a moment before answering.
“Alison Wilde? Oh—she died.”
Three
I
“I’m glad to be back,” said Mrs. Bantry. “Although, of course, I’ve had a wonderful time.”
Miss Marple nodded appreciatively, and accepted a cup of tea from her friend’s hand.
When her husband, Colonel Bantry, had died some years ago, Mrs. Bantry had sold Gossington Hall and the considerable amount of land attached to it, retaining for herself what had been the East Lodge, a charming porticoed little building replete with inconvenience, where even a gardener had refused to live. Mrs. Bantry had added to it the essentials of modern life, a built-on kitchen of the latest type, a new water supply from the main, electricity, and a bathroom. This had all cost her a great deal, but not nearly so much as an attempt to live at Gossington Hall would have done. She had also retained the essentials of privacy, about three quarters of an acre of garden nicely ringed with trees, so that, as she explained. “Whatever they do with Gossington I shan’t really see it or worry.”
For the last few years she had spent a good deal of the year travelling about, visiting children and grandchildren in various parts of the globe, and coming back from time to time to enjoy the privacies of her own home. Gossington Hall itself had changed hands once or twice. It had been run as a guest house, failed, and been bought by four people who had shared it as four roughly divided flats and subsequently quarrelled. Finally the Ministry of Health had bought it for some obscure purpose for which they eventually did not want it. The Ministry had now resold it—and it was this sale which the two friends were discussing.
“I have heard rumours, of course,” said Miss Marple.
“Naturally,” said Mrs. Bantry. “It was even said that Charlie Chaplin and all his children were coming to live here. That would have been wonderful fun; unfortunately there isn’t a word of truth in it. No, it’s definitely Marina Gregg.”
“How very lovely she was,” said Miss Marple with a sigh. “I always remember those early films of hers. Bird of Passage with that handsome Joel Roberts. And the Mary, Queen of Scots film. And of course it was very sentimental, but I did enjoy Comin’ thru the Rye. Oh dear, that was a long time ago.”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Bantry. “She must be—what do you think? Forty-five? Fifty?”
Miss Marple thought nearer fifty.
“Has she been in anything lately? Of course I don’t go very often to the cinema nowadays.”
“Only small parts, I think,” said Mrs. Bantry. “She hasn’t been a star for quite a long time. She had that bad nervous breakdown. After one of her divorces.”
“Such a lot of husbands they all have,” said Miss Marple. “It must r
eally be quite tiring.”
“It wouldn’t suit me,” said Mrs. Bantry. “After you’ve fallen in love with a man and married him and got used to his ways and settled down comfortably—to go and throw it all up and start again! It seems to me madness.”
“I can’t presume to speak,” said Miss Marple with a little spin-sterish cough, “never having married. But it seems, you know, a pity.”
“I suppose they can’t help it really,” said Mrs. Bantry vaguely. “With the kind of lives they have to live. So public, you know. I met her,” she added. “Marina Gregg, I mean, when I was in California.”
“What was she like?” Miss Marple asked with interest.
“Charming,” said Mrs. Bantry. “So natural and unspoiled.” She added thoughtfully, “It’s like a kind of livery really.”
“What is?”
“Being unspoiled and natural. You learn how to do it, and then you have to go on being it all the time. Just think of the hell of it—never to be able to chuck something, and say, ‘Oh, for the Lord’s sake stop bothering me.’ I dare say that in sheer self-defence you have to have drunken parties or orgies.”
“She’s had five husbands, hasn’t she?” Miss Marple asked.
“At least. An early one that didn’t count, and then a foreign Prince or Count, and then another film star, Robert Truscott, wasn’t it? That was built up as a great romance. But it only lasted four years. And then Isidore Wright, the playwright. That was rather serious and quiet, and she had a baby—apparently she’d always longed to have a child—she’s even half-adopted a few strays—anyway this was the real thing. Very much built up. Motherhood with a capital M. And then, I believe, it was an imbecile, or queer or something—and it was after that, that she had this breakdown and started to take drugs and all that, and threw up her parts.”