Free The Mirror Crack'd: from Side to Side by Agatha Christie Page A

looking.”
    â€œI see. And who was there?”
    â€œMarina Gregg, being natural and charming, looking lovely in a sort of willowy grey-green dress. And the husband, of course, and that woman Ella Zielinsky I told you about. She’s their social secretary. And there were about—oh, eight or ten people I should think. Some of them I knew, some of them I didn’t. Some I think were from the studios—the ones I didn’t know. There was the vicar and Doctor Sandford’s wife. He wasn’t there himself until later, and Colonel and Mrs. Clittering and the High Sheriff. And I think there was someone from the press there. And a young woman with a big camera taking photographs.”
    Miss Marple nodded.
    â€œGo on.”
    â€œHeather Badcock and her husband arrived just after me. Marina Gregg said nice things to me, then to somebody else, oh yes,—the vicar—and then Heather Badcock and her husband came. She’s the secretary, you know, of the St. John Ambulance. Somebody said something about that and how hard she worked and how valuable she was. And Marina Gregg said some pretty things. Then Mrs. Badcock, who struck me, I must say, Jane, as rather a tiresome sort of woman, began some long rigmarole of how years before she’d met Marina Gregg somewhere. She wasn’t awfully tactful about it since she urged exactly how long ago and the year it was and everything like that. I’m sure that actresses and film stars and people don’t really like being reminded of the exact age they are. Still, she wouldn’t think of that I suppose.”
    â€œNo,” said Miss Marple, “she wasn’t the kind of woman who would have thought of that. Well?”
    â€œWell, there was nothing particular in that except for the fact that Marina Gregg didn’t do her usual stuff.”
    â€œYou mean she was annoyed?”
    â€œNo, no, I don’t mean that. As a matter of fact I’m not at all sure that she heard a word of it. She was staring, you know, over Mrs. Badcock’s shoulder and when Mrs. Badcock had finished her rather silly story of how she got out of a bed of sickness and sneaked out of the house to go and meet Marina and get her autograph, there was a sort of odd silence. Then I saw her face.”
    â€œWhose face? Mrs. Badcock’s?”
    â€œNo. Marina Gregg’s. It was as though she hadn’t heard a word the Badcock woman was saying. She was staring over her shoulder right at the wall opposite. Staring with—I can’t explain it to you—”
    â€œBut do try, Dolly,” said Miss Marple, “because I think perhaps that this might be important.”
    â€œShe had a kind of frozen look,” said Mrs. Bantry, struggling with words, “as though she’d seen something that—oh dear me, how hard it is to describe things. Do you remember the Lady of Shalott? The mirror crack’d from side to side: ‘The doom has come upon me,’ cried the Lady of Shalott. Well, that’s what she looked like. People laugh at Tennyson nowadays, but the Lady of Shalott always thrilled me when I was young and it still does.”
    â€œShe had a frozen look,” repeated Miss Marple thoughtfully. “And she was looking over Mrs. Badcock’s shoulder at the wall. What was on the wall?”
    â€œOh! A picture of some kind, I think,” said Mrs. Bantry. “Youknow, Italian. I think it was a copy of a Bellini Madonna, but I’m not sure. A picture where the Virgin is holding up a laughing child.”
    Miss Marple frowned. “I can’t see that a picture could give her that expression.”
    â€œEspecially as she must see it every day,” agreed Mrs. Bantry.
    â€œThere were people coming up the stairs still, I suppose?”
    â€œOh yes, there were.”
    â€œWho were they, do you remember?”
    â€œYou mean she might have been looking at one of the people coming up the