Reality and Dreams by Muriel Spark Page B

as Cicero said.’
    ‘We’re
a long way from Cicero’s time. He probably didn’t give much thought about the
motiveless crime. I’m not up in Cicero,’ said the inspector.
    ‘The
gratuitous gesture? Do you think it’s that?’ Tom said.
    ‘Can’t
rule it out.’
    They
didn’t say, but they plainly suspected, Marigold.
    ‘Is
there no way you can make your daughter come out in the open? She needs help.
She’s probably dangerous.’
    ‘Perhaps
if I separated from Claire. If we put in for a divorce, she might come out of
hiding, if that’s where she is. But even if we did that, she wouldn’t be
convinced. You know, we’re neither of us at all sure but it could be Marigold
who hired that killer in the B.M.W.’
    ‘Have
the police been back to see you?’ Dave said on the phone to Tom.
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘What
did they say?’
    ‘Nothing.
They talk in circles.’
    ‘That’s
to trip you up,’ said Dave. ‘Second, third time round you’re almost bound to
contradict yourself.’ He wanted very much to go cruising with Tom again.
    ‘Let’s
wait awhile,’ said Tom. He hated to be afraid.
     
    Tom got out some
photographs of Marigold. Marigold at sixteen in her tennis clothes. Marigold at
a ball, frilled up in white. Marigold eating a frankfurter at a swimming-pool
in New York State.
    ‘She is
not so hideous,’ Tom said to Claire.
    ‘She
has a fairly good figure,’ said Claire, looking at the photos that Tom had
handed her. ‘It’s only the expression.’
    ‘In
fact,’ said Tom, ‘by modern standards she has quite an interesting face. Not a
beauty. But interesting; photogenic. She would do well in a harsh movie. Say,
Ibsen; say Ibsen, a film adaptation. Say Thomas Hardy. I wish I’d thought of
it.’
    ‘Has
she ever had a film test?’
    ‘Not
that I know of,’ said Tom. ‘Not by me, anyhow. Those little eyes …
    ‘They
make too much of the eyes in my opinion in modern films and T.V.,’ Claire said.
‘They can’t get a decent script so they make it up with huge watery shining
eyes brimming with feeling. Too much, too many —’
    ‘Well,
you could be right.’
    Jeanne’s
lawyer wrote. Tom, he said, had represented to Jeanne that her role in Unfinished
Business was to be a major one. He had actually put that in writing. ‘Of
major importance.’ Instead, she had occupied a minor part. And so on. ‘My
client deserves an explanation with adequate compensation for the professional
damages undergone.’
    The
lawyer was a well-known and expensive one, who would never have taken on such a
doubtful case without a good down-payment. Where did Jeanne get the money?
    ‘Probably
Marigold,’ said Claire. ‘It was a mistake on my part to ever settle money on
her. But as she’s my daughter…’
    In the
course of their enquiries with the shooting of Dave, an ex-boyfriend of
Marigold’s emerged. Now discarded, he was the same man as was concealed with
her in the trailer when Tom and Claire went to look for her in the Haute
Savoie. That was now four months ago. The youth recounted his experience with
Marigold but said they had parted shortly afterwards. He did not discount that
Marigold was perfectly capable of hiring a hit-man if the plan suited her. The
police eventually believed the boy, whose name for the present purpose is
irrelevant, and let him go. Where was Marigold? Nobody knew for sure.
    Cora
and Ivan had by now set up an efficient office in Paris fitted with more
sophisticated investigative equipment and information-receivers, where clues,
indications and probable sightings of Marigold were abundantly recorded. Ivan
no longer claimed she was still in Europe. She had been seen in Peru, in Cochin
and parts of Southern India, she had been seen in Georgetown, Washington and in
Pakistan.
    Cora’s
brief affair with Marigold’s brother-in-law Ralph was over. Claire had somehow
got him a managerial job, a better one than he had before. He had returned to
his wife, Ruth, who had no inkling of his