“You were called Magpie—behind your back. They are extraordinary birds, famous for other things besides their black and white plumage. They are crafty; they imitate human speech like parrots and—they have a trick of stealing and secreting anything that glitters, regardless of its value. Anything from a diamond ring to a scrap of tinfoil. They are almost the only animals who can be considered kleptomaniacs. When I saw your flushed face and shining eyes the day Adeane’s staples disappeared I was sure of it. Some nicknames are friendly. Others are derisive. Magpie is that sort.”
She took it calmly as if it were an old story to her. “Would you base such a serious charge on a pair of staples and a nickname?”
“I’m not making any charges. But there are one or two points that must be cleared up between you and me. No one else need know anything about it. Was this the cause of your quarrels with your husband? The thing that drove him to Wanda Morley?”
Margot’s detachment was almost inhuman as she answered calmly. “Yes. He didn’t mind my—taking things, but he said I was . . . cold and unfeeling. . . . You—a psychiatrist—don’t have to be told that people like me usually have a sort of emotional numbness.”
Basil nodded. He had had many such cases among patients of less wealth and influence than Margot. He had had disputes with many magistrates who refused to believe that a poor man or woman could steal for any motive other than want. Sometimes they were boys—more often girls for girls were apt to be brought up more strictly than boys. Always the kleptomania had been associated with extreme prudery or frigidity. The pathological thief always prided herself on her moral “purity” and insisted in self-defense that stealing was a far less serious offense than “sin.” Yet the pleasurable excitement she derived from uneconomic stealing was obviously erotic. Like the pyromaniac she simply transferred the orgiastic emotions from sex to something else that was also immoral but not in her opinion so “obscene” and “wicked.” It was another curious example of the way civilized society’s condemnation of nature tends to encourage perversion in myriad forms.
“It started at school, when I was about fourteen,” said Margot with the same inhuman calmness. “Things disappeared. There was a secret investigation, and I was caught. They didn’t expel me publicly. They just asked my parents not to send me back at the end of the term. I was taken to doctors and so forth, but it didn’t do any good.”
“Ingelow knew nothing about this when he married you?”
“No. We didn’t have the same circle of friends. We met at a horse show. I think it was my calmness and detachment that attracted him to me at first. My parents were delighted. They were old-fashioned, and they believed that marriage would cure any little aberrations of mine. Of course it didn’t. I just don’t have the sort of feelings about love and marriage and children that most women have. I can’t help it. I’m made that way. And yet, the funny part of it was that I did really love John as much as I could love anyone, only I just couldn’t show my feelings. Wanda didn’t love him at all. But she has strong sensual feelings for all men, and no false shame about exhibiting them. So—he thought she loved him. She’s the sort of woman who sees the unhappy marriage of another woman as her opportunity. The moment I took her home and introduced her to John she saw how things were with us and went after him.
“I’ve learned a lot in the last few months. I’ve learned that appearances are far more important than actuality. I’ve learned that to most people—certainly to most men—love is primarily a sensation and only secondarily a sentiment. But all this knowledge has come too late to me to do any good. I know these things intellectually, but emotionally I don’t know them at all.
III
When Margot had gone, Basil went down the aisle to Milhau’s office. The little room was crowded. Foyle sat at Milhau’s desk. Wanda, Rod, and Pauline were looking surprised and angry. Leonard seemed tired; Hutchins, worried; and Milhau himself embarrassed.
“I didn’t mean any harm,” Milhau was saying as Basil came in. “Glamour is part of a star’s stock in trade. She’s got to have some guy with her wherever she goes. She can’t pop into a restaurant by herself as if she were a nobody. And she’s got to have some fellow falling for her all the time. I didn’t know about Ingelow and Wanda because they were keeping it dark until he got his divorce. When he was off in Panama, Wanda started going around by herself. That was awful—bad publicity for her and for the show. I told her to get herself an escort if she had to hire one, but she just laughed at me. Something had to be done so I talked it over with my publicity boys and one of them cooked up this scheme. He got it out of Shakespeare.”
“What?” interrupted the Inspector incredulously.
