The Mirror Crack's From Side to Side by Agatha Christie

local notables, various people connected with the St John Ambulance Association, several friends of Marina Gregg herself, and a few people connected with the studios. All very peaceful, nice and happy. But, fantastically and improbably, Heather Badcock was poisoned there.'
    Dermot Craddock said thoughtfully, 'An odd place to choose.'
    'That's the chief constable's point of view. If anyone wanted to poison Heather Badcock, why choose that particular afternoon and circumstances? Hundreds of much simpler ways of doing it. A risky business anyway, you know, to slip a dose of deadly poison into a cocktail in the middle of twenty or thirty people milling about. Somebody ought to have seen something.'
    'It definitely was in the drink?'
    'Yes, it was definitely in the drink. We have the particulars here. One of those inexplicable names that doctors delight in, but actually a fairly common prescription in America.'
    'In America. I see.'
    'Oh, this country too. But these things are handed out much more freely on the other side of the Atlantic. Taken in small doses, beneficial.'
    'Supplied on prescription or can it be bought freely?'
    'No. You have to have a prescription.'
    'Yes, it's odd,' said Dermot. 'Did Heather Badcock have any connection with these film people?'
    'None whatever.'
    'Any member of her own family at this do?'
    'Her husband.'
    'Her husband,' said Dermot thoughtfully.
    'Yes, one always thinks that way,' agreed his superior officer, 'but the local man - Cornish, I think his name is - doesn't seem to think there's anything in that, although he does report that Badcock seemed ill at ease and nervous, but he agrees that respectable people often are like that when interviewed by the police. They appear to have been quite a devoted couple.'
    'In other words, the police there don't think it's their pigeon. Well, it ought to be interesting. I take it I'm going down there, sir?'
    'Yes. Better get there as soon as possible, Dermot. Who do you want with you?'
    Dermot considered for a moment or two.
    'Tiddler, I think,' he said thoughtfully. 'He's a good man and, what's more, he's a film fan. That might come in useful.'
    The assistant commissioner nodded. 'Good luck to you,' he said.

The Mirror Crack's From Side to Side
    II
    'Well!' exclaimed Miss Marple, going pink with pleasure and surprise. 'This is a surprise. How are you, my dear boy though you're hardly a boy now. What are you - a Chief Inspector or this new thing they call a Commander?'
    Dermot explained his present rank.
    'I suppose I need hardly ask what you are doing down here,' said Miss Marple. 'Our local murder is considered worthy of the attention of Scotland Yard.'
    'They handed it over to us,' said Dermot, 'and so, naturally, as soon as I got down here I came to headquarters.'
    'Do you mean -' Miss Marple fluttered a little.
    'Yes, Aunty,' said Dermot disrespectfully. 'I mean you.'
    'I'm afraid,' said Miss Marple regretfully, 'I'm very much out of things nowadays. I don't get out much.'
    'You get out enough to fall down and be picked up by a woman who's going to be murdered ten days later,' said Dermot Craddock.
    Miss Marple made the kind of noise that would once have been written down as 'tut-tut'.
    'I don't know where you hear these things,' she said.
    'You should know,' said Dermot Craddock. 'You told me yourself that in a village everybody knows everything.
    'And just off the record,' he added, 'did you think she was going to be murdered as soon as you looked at her?'
    'Of course not, of course not,' exclaimed Miss Marple. 'What an idea!'
    'You didn't see that look in her husband's eye that reminded you of Harry Simpson or David Jones or somebody you've known years ago, and subsequently pushed his wife off a precipice.'
    'No, I did not!' said Miss Marple. 'I'm sure Mr Badcock would never do a wicked thing of that kind. At least,' she added thoughtfully, 'I'm nearly sure.'
    'But human nature being what it is -' murmured Craddock, wickedly.
    'Exactly,' said Miss