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

physical fact you don't see who could have done it?'
    'Well, no, not that. I suppose it would have been difficult but not impossible. No, I mean, I don't see who could have wanted to do it.'
    'Nobody, you think, could have wanted to kill Heather Badcock?'
    'Well, frankly,' said Mrs Bantry, 'I can't imagine anybody wanting to kill Heather Badcock. I've seen her quite a few times, on local things, you know. Girl guides and the St John Ambulance, and various parish things. I found her a rather trying sort of woman. Very enthusiastic about everything and a bit given to over-statement, and just a little bit of a gusher. But you don't want to murder people for that. She was the kind of woman who in the old days if you'd seen her approaching the front door, you'd have hurried out to say to your parlourmaid - which was an institution we had in those days, and very useful too - and told her to say “not at home” or “not at home to visitors,” if she had conscientious scruples about the truth.'
    'You mean that one might take pains to avoid Mrs Badcock, but one would have no urge to remove her permanently.'
    'Very well put,' said Mrs Bantry, nodding approval.
    'She had no money to speak of,' mused Dermot, 'so nobody stood to gain by her death. Nobody seems to have disliked her to the point of hatred. I don't suppose she was blackmailing anybody?'
    'She wouldn't have dreamed of doing such a thing, I'm sure,' said Mrs Bantry. 'She was the conscientious and high-principled kind.'
    '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 fкte, 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