False Scent (10 page)

Dr. Harkness went out.

Fox quietly locked the door and went to the telephone. He dialled a number and asked for an extension.

“Mr. Alleyn?” he said. “Fox, here. It’s about this case in Pardoner’s Place. There are one or two little features…”

When Superintendent Alleyn had finished speaking to Inspector Fox, he went resignedly into action. He telephoned his wife with the routine information that he would not after all be home for dinner, summoned Detective Sergeants Bailey and Thompson with their impedimenta, rang the police surgeon, picked up his homicide bag and went whistling to the car. “A lady of the theatre,” he told his subordinates, “appears to have looked upon herself as a common or garden pest and sprayed herself out of this world. She was mistaken as far as her acting was concerned. Miss Mary Bellamy. A comedienne of the naughty darling school and not a beginner. It’s Mr. Fox’s considered opinion that somebody done her in.”

When they arrived at 2 Pardoner’s Place, the tidying-up process had considerably advanced. Fox had been shown the guest list with addresses. He had checked it, politely dismissed those who had stayed throughout in what he called the reception area and mildly retained the persons who had left it “prior,” to quote Mr. Fox, “to the unfortunate event.” These were Timon Gantry, Pinky Canvendish, and Bertie Saracen, who were closeted in Miss Bellamy’s boudoir on the ground floor. Hearing that Colonel Warrender was a relation, Mr. Fox suggested that he join Charles Templeton, who had now come down to his study. Showing every sign of reluctance but obedient to authority, Warrender did so. Dr.

Harkness had sent out for a corpse-reviver for himself and gloomily occupied a chair in the conservatory. Florence having been interviewed and Old Ninn briefly surveyed, they had retired to their sitting-room in the top story. Gracefteld, the maids and the hired men had gone a considerable way towards removing the debris.

Under a sheet from her own bed on the floor of her locked room, Miss Bellamy began to stiffen.

Alleyn approached the front door to the renewed activity of the camera men. One of them called out, “Give us a break, won’t you, Super?”

“All in good time,” he said.

“What d’you know, Mr. Alleyn?”

“Damn all,” Alleyn said and rang the bell.

He was admitted by Fox. “Sorry you’ve been troubled, sir,” Fox said.

“I daresay. What
is
all this?”

Fox told him in a few neatly worded sentences.

“All right,” Alleyn said. “Let’s have a look, shall we?”

They went upstairs to Miss Bellamy’s bedroom.

He knelt by the body. “Did she
bathe
in scent?” he wondered.

“Very strong, isn’t it, sir?”

“Revolting. The whole room stinks of it.” He uncovered the head and shoulders. “I see.”

“Not very nice,” Fox remarked.

“Not very.” Alleyn was silent for a moment or two. “I saw her a week ago,” he said, “on the last night of that play of Richard Dakers’s that’s been running so long. It was a flimsy, conventional comedy, but she filled it with her own kind of gaiety. And now — to this favour is she come.” He looked more closely. “Could the stuff have blown back in her face? But you tell me they say the windows were shut?”

“That’s right.”

“The face and chest are quite thickly spattered.”

“Exactly. I wondered,” Fox said, “if the spray-gun mechanism on the Slaypest affair was not working properly and she turned it towards her to see.”

“And it
did
work? Possible, I suppose. But she’d stop at once, and look at her. Just look, Fox. There’s a fine spray such as she’d get if she held the thing at arm’s length and didn’t use much pressure. And over that there are great blotches and runnels of the stuff, as if she’d held it close to her face and pumped it like mad.”

“People do these things.”

“They do. As a theory I don’t fancy it. Nobody’s handled the Slaypest tin? Since the event?”

“They say not,” Fox said.

“Bailey’ll have to go over it for dabs, of course. Damn this scent. You can’t get a whiff of anything else.”

Alleyn bent double and advanced his nose to the tin of Slaypest. “I know this stuff,” hesaid. “It’s about as highly concentrated as they come, and in my opinion shouldn’t be let loose on the public for all the warnings on the label. The basic ingredient seems to be hexaethyl-tetra-phosphate.”

“You don’t say,” Fox murmured.

“It’s a contact poison and very persistent.” He replaced the sheet, got up and examined the bank of growing plants in the bay window. “Here it is again. They’ve got thrips and red spider.” He stared absently at Fox. “So what does she do, Br’er Fox? She comes up here in the middle of her own party wearing her best red wisp of tulle and all her diamonds and sets about spraying her azaleas.”

“Peculiar,” Fox said. “What I thought.”

“Very rum indeed.”

He wandered to the dressing-table. The central drawer was pulled out. Among closely packed ranks of boxes and pots was an open powder bowl. A piece of cotton-wool coloured with powder lay on the top of the table near a lipstick that had been imperfectly shut. Nearby was a bunch of Parma violets, already wilting.

“She
did
have a fiddle with her face,” Alleyn pointed out. “She’s got a personal maid, you say. The woman that found her.”

“Florence.”

“All right. Well, Florence would have tidied up any earlier goes at the powder and paint. And she’d have done something about these violets. Where do
they
come in? So this poor thing walks in, pulls out the drawer, does her running repairs and I should say from the smell, has a lavish wack at her scent.” He sniffed the atomizer. “That’s it. Quarter full and stinks like a civet cat, and here’s the bottle it came from, empty. ‘Formidable.’ Expensive maker. ‘Abominable’ would be more like it. How women can use such muck passes my understanding.”

“I rather fancy it,” said Mr. Fox. “It’s intriguing.”

Alleyn gave him a look. “If we’re to accept what appears to be the current explanation, she drenches her azaleas with hexaethyl-tetra-phosphate and then turns the spray-gun full in her own face and kills herself. D’you believe that?”

“Not when you put it like that.”

“Nor I. Bailey and Thompson are down below and Dr. Curtis is on his way. Get them up here. We’ll want the complete treatment. Detailed pictures of the body and the room, tell Thompson. And Bailey’ll need to take her prints and search the spray-gun, the dressing-table and anything else that may produce dabs, latent or otherwise. We don’t know what we’re looking for, of course.” The bathroom door was open and he glanced in. “Even this place reeks of scent. What’s that on the floor? Broken picture.” He looked more closely. “Rather nice tinsel picture. Madame Vestris, I fancy. Corner of washbasin freshly chipped. Somebody’s tramped broken glass over the floor. Did she drop her pretty picture? And why in the bathroom? Washing the glass? Or what? We won’t disturb it.” He opened the bathroom cupboard. “The things they take!” he muttered. “The tablets. For insomnia. One with water on retiring. The unguents! The lotions! Here’s some muck like green clay. Lifting mask. ‘Apply with spatula and leave on for ten minutes. Do not move lips or facial muscles during treatment.’ Here
is
the spatula with some nice fresh dabs. Florence’s, no doubt. And in the clothes basket, a towel with greenish smears. She had the full treatment before the party. Sal volatile bottle by the handbasin. Did someone try to force sal volatile down her throat?”

“Not a chance, I should say, sir.”

“She must have taken it earlier in the day. Why? Very fancy too, tarted up with a quilted cover, good Lord! All right, Fox. Away we go. I’d better see the husband.”

“He’s still in his study with a Colonel Warrender, who seems to be a relative. Mr. Templeton had a heart-attack after the event. The doctor says he’s subject to them. Colonel Warrender and Mr. Gantry took him into his dressing-room there, and then the Colonel broke up and went downstairs. Mr. Templeton was still lying in there when I came up, but I suggested the Colonel should take him down to the study. They didn’t seem to fancy the move, but I wanted to clear the ground. It’s awkward,” Mr. Fox said, “having people next door to the body.”

Alleyn went into the dressing room, leaving the door open. “Change of atmosphere,” Fox heard him remark. “Very masculine. Very simple. Very good. Who gave him a hot bottle?”

“Florence. The doctor says the old nurse went in later, to take a look at him. By all accounts she’s a bossy old cup-of-tea and likes her drop of port wine.”

“This,” Alleyn said, “is the house of a damn rich man. And woman, I suppose.”

“He’s a big name in the City, isn’t he?”

“He is indeed. C. G. Templeton. He brought off that coup with Eastland Transport two years ago. Reputation of being an implacable chap to run foul of.”

“The servants seem to fancy him. The cook says he must have everything just so. One slip and you’re out. But well-liked. He’s taken this very hard. Very shaky when I saw him but easy to handle. The Colonel was tougher.”

“Either of them strike you as being the form for a woman-poisoner?”

“Not a bit like it,” Fox said cheerfully.

“They tell me you never know.”

“That’s right. So they say.”

They went out. Fox locked the door. “Not that it makes all that difference,” he sighed. “The keys on this floor are interchangeable. As usual. However,” he added, brightening, “I’ve taken the liberty of removing all the others.”

“You’ll get the sack one of these days. Come on.” They went downstairs.

“The remaining guests,” Fox said, “are in the second room on the right. They’re the lot who were with deceased up to the time she left the conservatory and the only ones who went outside the reception area before the speeches began. And, by the way, sir, up to the time the speeches started, there was a photographer and a moving camera unit blocking the foot of the stairs and for the whole period a kind of bar with a man mixing drinks right by the backstairs. I’ve talked to the man concerned and he says nobody but the nurse and Florence went up while he was on duty. This is deceased’s sitting-room. Or boudoir. The study is the first on the right.”

“Where’s the quack?”

“In the glasshouse with a hangover. Shall I stir him up?”

“Thank you.”

They separated. Alleyn tapped on the boudoir door and went in.

Pinky sat in an armchair with a magazine, Timon Gantry was finishing a conversation on the telephone, and Bertie, petulant and flushed, was reading a rare edition of ’
Tis Pity She’s a Whore
. When they saw Alleyn the two men got up and Pinky put down her magazine as if she was ashamed of it.

Alleyn introduced himself. “This is just to say I’m very sorry to keep you waiting about.”

Gantry said, “It’s damned awkward. I’ve had to tell people over the telephone.”

“There’s no performance involved, is there?”

“No. But there’s a new play going into rehearsal. Opening in three weeks. One has to cope.”

“Of course,” Alleyn said, “one does, indeed,” and went out.

“What a superb-looking man,” Bertie said listlessly, and returned to his play.

Warrender and Charles had the air of silence about them. It was not, Alleyn fancied, the kind of silence, that falls naturally between two cousins united in a common sorrow; they seemed at odds with each other. He could have sworn his arrival was a relief rather than an annoyance. He noticed that the study, like the dressing-room, had been furnished and decorated by a perfectionist with restraint, judgment and a very great deal of money. There was a kind of relationship between the reserve of these two men and the setting in which he found them. He thought that they had probably been sitting there for a long time without speech. A full decanter and two untouched glasses stood between them on a small and exquisite table.

Charles began to rise. Alleyn said, “Please, don’t move,” and he sank heavily back again. Warrender stood up. His eyes were red and his face patched with uneven color.

“Bad business, this,” he said. “What?”

“Yes,” Alleyn said. “Very bad.” He looked at Charles. “I’m sorry, sir, that at the moment we’re not doing anything to make matters easier.”

With an obvious effort Charles said, “Sit down, won’t you? Alleyn, isn’t it? I know your name, of course.”

Warrender pushed a chair forward.

“Will you have a drink?” Charles asked.

“No, thank you very much. I won’t trouble you longer than I can help. There’s a certain amount of unavoidable business to be got through. There will be an inquest and, I’m afraid, a post-mortem. In addition to that we’re obliged to check, as far as we’re able, the events leading to the accident. All this, I know, is very distressing and I’m sorry.”

Charles lifted a hand and let it fall.

Warrender said, “Better make myself scarce.”

“No,” Alleyn said. “I’d be glad if you waited a moment.”

Warrender was looking fixedly at Alleyn. He tapped himself above the heart and made a very slight gesture towards Charles. Alleyn nodded.

“If I may,” he said to Charles, “I’ll ask Colonel Warrender to give me an account of the period before your wife left the party and went up to her room. If, sir, you would like to amend or question or add to anything he says, please do so.”

Charles said, “Very well. Though God knows what difference it can make.”

Warrender straightened his back, touched his Brigade-of-Guards tie, and made his report, with the care and, one would have said, the precision of experience.

He had, he said, been near to Mary Bellamy from the time she left her post by the door and moved through her guests towards the conservatory. She had spoken to one group after another. He gave several names. She had then joined a small party in the conservatory.

Alleyn was taking notes. At this point there was a pause.

Warrender was staring straight in front of him. Charles had not moved.

“Yes?” Alleyn said.

“She stayed in there until the birthday cake was brought in,” Warrender said.

“And the other people in her group stayed there too?”