False Scent (13 page)

“Yes, of course,” Alleyn said and nodded to the constable at the door. “Before you go, though — was Mrs. Templeton your patient too?”

“She was,” Harkness agreed and looked wary.

“Would you have expected anything like this? Supposing it to be a case of suicide?”

“No. I wouldn’t.”

“Not subject to fits of depression? No morbid tendencies? Nothing like that?”

Harkness looked at his hands. “It wasn’t an equable disposition,” he said carefully. “Far from it. She had ‘nervous’ spells. The famous theatrical temperament, you know.”

“No more than that?” Alleyn persisted.

“Well — I don’t like discussing my patients and never do, of course, but…”

“I think you may say the circumstances warrant it.”

“I suppose so. As a matter of fact I have been a bit concerned. The temperaments had become pretty frequent and increasingly violent. Hysteria, really. Partly the time of life, but she was getting over that. There was some occasion for anxiety. One or two little danger signals. One was keeping an eye on her. But nothing suicidal. On the contrary. What’s more, you can take my word for it she was the last woman on earth to disfigure herself. The last.”

“Yes,” Alleyn said. “That’s a point, isn’t it? I’ll see you later.”

“I suppose you will,” Harkness said disconsolately, and Alleyn went upstairs. He found that Miss Bellamy’s room now had the familiar look of any area given over to police investigation: something between an improvised laboratory and a photographer’s studio with its focal point that unmistakable sheeted form on the floor.

Dr. Curtis, the police surgeon, had finished his examination of the body. Sergeant Bailey squatted on the bathroom floor employing the tools of his trade upon the tinsel picture, and as Alleyn came in, Sergeant Thompson, whistling between his teeth, uncovered Mary Bellamy’s terrible face and advanced his camera to within a few inches of it. The bulb flashed.

Fox was seated at the dressing-table completing his notes.

“Well, Dr. Curtis?” Alleyn asked.

“Well, now,” Curtis said. “It’s quite a little problem, you know. I can’t see a verdict of accident, Alleyn, unless the coroner accepts the idea of her presenting this spray-gun thing at her own face and pumping away like mad at it to see how it works. The face is pretty well covered with the stuff. It’s in the nostrils and mouth and all over the chest and dress.”

“Suicide?”

“I don’t see it. Have to be an uncommon determined effort. Any motive?”

“Not so far, unless you count a suspected bout of tantrums, but I don’t yet know about that. I don’t see it, either. Which leaves us with homicide. See here, Curtis. Suppose I picked up that tin of Slaypest, pointed it at you and fell to work on the spray-gun — what’d you do?”

“Dodge.”

“And if I chased you up?”

“Either collar you low or knock it out of your hands or bolt, yelling blue murder.”

“Exactly. But wouldn’t the immediate reaction, particularly in a woman, be to throw up her arms and hide her face?”

“I think it might, certainly. Yes.”

“Yes,” said Fox, glancing up from his notes.

“It wasn’t hers. There’s next to nothing on the hands and arms. And look,” Alleyn went on, “at the actual character of the spray. Some of it’s fine, as if delivered from a distance. Some, on the contrary, is so coarse that it’s run down in streaks. Where’s the answer to that one?”

“I don’t know,” said Dr. Curtis.

“How long would it take to kill her?”

“Depends on the strength. This stuff is highly concentrated. Hexa-ethyl-tetra-phosphate of which the deadly ingredient is TEPP: tetra-ethyl-pyro-phosphate. Broken down, I’d say, with some vehicle to reduce the viscosity. The nozzle’s a very fine job: designed for indoor use. In my opinion the stuff shouldn’t be let loose on the market. If she got some in the mouth, and it’s evident she did, it might only be a matter of minutes. Some recorded cases mention nausea and convulsions. In others, the subject has dropped down insensible and died a few seconds later.”

Fox said, “When the woman — Florence — found her, she was on the floor in what Florence describes as a sort of fit.”

“I’ll see Florence next,” Alleyn said.

“And when Dr. Harkness and Mr. Templeton arrived she was dead,” Fox concluded.

“Where
is
Harkness?” Dr. Curtis demanded. “He’s pretty damn casual, isn’t he? He ought to have shown up at once.”

“He was flat-out with a hangover among the exotics in the conservatory,” Alleyn said. “I stirred him up to look at Mr. Richard Dakers, who was in a great tizzy before he knew there was anything to have a tizzy about. When I talked to him he fainted.”

“What a mob!” Curtis commented in disgust.

“Curtis, if you’ve finished here I think you’ll find your colleague in reasonably working order downstairs.”

“He’d better be. Everything is fixed now. I’ll do the p.m. tonight.”

“Good. Fox, you and I had better press on. We’ve got an office. Third on the right from here.”

They found Gracefield outside the door looking scandalized.

“I’m very sorry, I’m sure, sir,” he said, “but the keys on this landing appear to have been removed. If you require to lock up…”

“ ’T, ’t!” Fox said and dived in his pocket. “Thoughtless of me! Try this one.”

Gracefield coldly accepted it. He showed Alleyn into a small pleasantly furnished study and left Fox to look after himself, which he did very comfortably.

“Will there be anything further, sir?” Gracefield asked Alleyn.

“Nothing. This will do admirably.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Here,” Fox said, “are the other keys. They’re interchangeable, which is why I took the liberty of removing them.”

Gracefield received them without comment and retired.

“I always seem to hit it off better,” Fox remarked, “with the female servants,”

“No doubt they respond more readily to your unbridled body-urge,” said Alleyn.

“That’s one way of putting it, Mr. Alleyn,” Fox primly conceded.

“And the other is that I tipped that antarctic monument. Never mind. You’ll have full play in a minute with Florence. Take a look at this room. It was Mr. Richard Dakers’s study. I suppose he now inhabits a bachelor flat somewhere, but he was adopted and brought up by the Templetons. Here you have his boyhood, adolescence and early maturity in microcosm. The usual school groups on one wall. Note the early dramatic interest. On the other three, his later progress. O.U.D.S. Signed photographs of lesser lights succeeded by signed photographs of greater ones. Sketches from unknown designers followed by the full treatment from famous designers and topped up by Saracen. The last is for a production that opened three years ago and closed last week. Programme of Command Performance. Several framed photographs of Miss Mary Bellamy, signed with vociferous devotion. One small photograph of Mr. Charles Templeton. A calender on the desk to support the theory that he left the house a year ago. Books from E. Nesbit to Samuel Beckett.
Who’s Who in the Theatre
and
Spotlight
and cast an eye at this one, will you?”

He pulled out a book and showed it to Fox. “
Handbook of Poisons by a Medical Practitioner
. Bookplate: ‘
Ex Libris
C. H. Templeton.’ Let’s see if the medical practitioner has anything to say about pest killers. Here we are. Poisons of Vegetable Origin. Tobacco. Alkaloid of.” He read for a moment or two. “Rather scanty. Only one case quoted. Gentleman who swallowed nicotine from a bottle and died quietly in thirty seconds after heaving a deep sigh. Warnings about agricultural use of. And here are the newer concoctions including HETP and TEPP. Exceedingly deadly and to be handled with the greatest care. Ah, well!”

He replaced the book.

“That’ll be the husband’s,” Fox said. “Judging by the bookplate.”

“The husband’s. Borrowed by the ward and accessible to all and sundry. For what it’s worth. Well, Foxkin, that about completes our tour of the room. Tabloid history of the tastes and career of Richard Dakers. Hullo! Look here, Fox.”

He was stooping over the writing desk and had opened the blotter.

“This looks fresh,” he said. “Green ink. Ink on desk dried up and anyway, blue.”

There was a small Georgian glass above the fireplace. Alleyn held the blotting-paper to it and they looked at the reflected image:

Alleyn copied this fragmentary message on a second sheet of paper, carried the blotter back to the desk and very carefully removed the sheet in question.

“We’ll put the experts on to this,” he said, “but I’m prepared to take a sporting chance on the result, Br’er Fox. Are you?”

“I’d give it a go, Mr. Alleyn.”

“See if you can find Florence, will you? I’ll take a flying jump while you’re at it.”

Fox went out. Alleyn put his copy of the message on the desk and looked at it.

The correct method of deciphering and completing a blotting-paper impression is by measurement, calculation and elimination but occasionally, for persons with a knack, the missing letters start up vividly in the mind and the scientific method is thus accurately anticipated. When he was on his game, Alleyn possessed this knack and he now made use of it. Without allowing himself any second thoughts, he wrote rapidly within the copy and stared with disfavour at the result. He then opened Richard Daker’s dispatch case and found it contained a typescript of a play,
Husbandry in Heaven
. He flipped the pages over and came across some alterations in green ink and in the same hand as the letter.

“Miss Florence Johnson,” said Fox, opening the door and standing aside with something of the air of a large sporting dog retrieving a bird. Florence, looking not unlike an apprehensive fowl, came in.

Alleyn saw an unshapely little woman, with a pallid, tear-stained face and hair so remorselessly dyed that it might have been a raven wig. She wore that particular air of disillusionment that is associated with the Cockney and she reeked of backstage.

“The Superintendent,” Fox told her, “just wants to hear the whole story like you told it to me. Nothing to worry about.”

“Of course not,” Alleyn said. “Come and sit down. We won’t keep you long.”

Florence looked as if she might prefer to stand, but compromised by sitting on the edge of the chair Fox had pushed forward.

“This has been a sad business for you,” Alleyn said.

“That’s right,” Florence said woodenly.

“And I’m sure you must want to have the whole thing cleared up as soon and as quietly as possible.”

“Clear enough, isn’t it? She’s dead. You can’t have it much clearer than that.”

“You can’t indeed. But you see it’s our job to find out why.”

“Short of seeing it happen you wouldn’t get much nearer, would you? If you can read, that is.”

“You mean the tin of Slaypest?”

“Well, it wasn’t perfume,” Florence said impertinently. “They put that in bottles.” She shot a glance at Alleyn and seemed to undergo a slight change of temper. Her lips trembled and she compressed them. “It wasn’t all that pleasant,” she said. “Seeing what I seen. Finding her like that. You’d think I might be let alone.”

“So you will be if you behave like a sensible girl. You’ve been with her a long time, haven’t you?”

“Thirty years, near enough.”

“You must have got along very well to have stayed together all that time.”

Florence didn’t answer and he waited. At last she said, “I knew her ways.”

“And you were fond of her?”

“She was all right. Others might have their own ideas. I knew ’er. Inside out. She’d talk to me like she wouldn’t to others. She was all right.”

It was, Alleyn thought, after its fashion, a tribute.

He said, “Florence, I’m going to be very frank indeed with you. Suppose it wasn’t an accident. You’d want to know, wouldn’t you?”

“It’s no good you thinking she did it deliberate. She never! Not she. Wouldn’t.”

“I didn’t mean suicide.”

Florence watched him for a moment. Her mouth, casually but emphatically painted, narrowed into a scarlet thread.

“If you mean murder,” she said flatly, “that’s different.”

“You’d want to know,” he repeated. “Wouldn’t you?”

The tip of her tongue showed for a moment in the corner of her mouth. “That’s right,” she said.

“So do we. Now, Inspector Fox has already asked you about this, but never mind, I’m asking you again. I want you to tell me in as much detail as you can remember just what happened from the time when Miss Bellamy dressed for her party up to the time you entered her room and found her — as you did find her. Let’s start with the preparations, shall we?”

She was a difficult subject. She seemed to be filled with some kind of resentment and everything had to be dragged out of her. After luncheon, it appeared, Miss Bellamy rested. At half-past four Florence went in to her. She seemed to be “much as usual.”

“She hadn’t been upset by anything during the day?”

“Nothing,” Florence muttered, after a further silence, “to matter.”

“I only ask,” Alleyn said, “because there’s a bottle of sal volatile left out in the bathroom. Did you give her sal volatile at any stage?”

“This morning.”

“What was the matter, this morning? Was she faint?”

Florence said, “Overexcited.”

“About what?”

“I couldn’t say,” Florence said, and shut her mouth like a trap.

“Very well,” he said patiently. “Let’s get on with the preparation for the party. Did you give her a facial treatment of some kind?”

She stared at him. “That’s correct,” she said. “A mask.”

“What did she talk about, Florence?”

“Nothing. You don’t with that stuff over your face. Can’t.”

“And then.”

“She make up and dressed. The two gentlemen came in and I went out.”

“That would be Mr. Templeton and — who?”

“The Colonel.”