False Scent

Chapter six On the Scent

When Anelida rang the bell at 2 Pardoner’s Place, it was answered, almost at once, by a policeman.

She said, “It’s Miss Lee. I’ve been talking to Superintendent Alleyn. He knows I’m here and I think is probably coming himself in a moment. I want to speak to Mr. Richard Dakers.”

The policeman said, “I see, Miss. Well, now, if you’ll wait a moment I’ll just find out whether that’ll be all right. Perhaps you’d take a chair.”

“No, thank you. I want to see him at once, please.”

“I’ll ascertain…” he had begun rather austerely when Alleyn himself arrived.

“Sir?”

“Yes, all right. Is Mr. Dakers still in the drawing-room? Good.” Alleyn looked at Anelida. “Come along,” he said. She lifted her chin and went to him.

She was in a state of mind she had never before experienced. It was as if her thoughts and desires and behaviour had been abruptly simplified and were governed by a single intention. She knew that somewhere within herself she must be afraid, but she also knew that fear, as things had turned out, was inadmissible.

She followed Alleyn across the hall. He said, “Here you are,” and opened a door. She went from the hall into the drawing-room.

Immediately inside the door was a tall leather screen. She walked round it and there, staring out of a window, was Richard. Anelida moved a little towards him and halted. This gave her time to realize how very much she liked the shape of his head and at once she felt an immense tenderness for him and even a kind of exultation. In a second, she would speak his name, she would put herself absolutely on his side.

“Richard,” she said.

He turned. She noticed that his face had bleached, not conventionally, over the cheekbone, but at the temples and down the jaw-line.

“Anelida?”

“I had to come. I’m trying to make up for my bad behaviour. Here, you see, I am.”

He came slowly to her and when he took her hands in his, did so doubtfully. “I can’t believe my luck,” he said. “I thought I’d lost you quite irrevocably. Cause enough, God knows.”

“On the contrary, I assure you.”

He broke into an uncertain smile. “The things you say! Such grand phrases!” His hands tightened on hers. “You know what’s happened, don’t you? About Mary?”

“Yes. Richard, I’m so terribly sorry. And what a hopeless phrase that is!”

“I shouldn’t let you stay. It’s not the place for you. This is a nightmare of a house.”

“Do you want me? Am I any good, being here?”

“I love you.” He lifted her hands to his face. “Ah no! Why did I tell you! This isn’t the time.”

“Are you all right now — to talk, I mean? To talk very seriously?”

“I’m all right. Come over here.”

They sat together on the sofa, Richard still holding her hands. “He told us you fainted,” said Anelida.

“Alleyn? Has he been worrying you?”

“Not really. But it’s because of what he did say that I’m here. And because — Richard, when I wouldn’t see you and you went away — did you come back here?”

“Yes,” he said. “I did.”

“Did you see her?”

He looked down at their clasped hands. “Yes.”

“Where?”

“In her room. Only for a few minutes. I — left her there.”

“Was anyone else with you?”

“Good God, no!” he cried out.

“And then? Then what?”

“I went away. I walked for heaven knows how long. When I came back — it was like this.”

There was a long silence. At last Richard said very calmly, “I know what you’re trying to tell me. They think Mary has been murdered and they wonder if I’m their man. Isn’t it?”

Anelida leant towards him and kissed him. “That’s it,” she said. “At least, I think so. We’ll get it tidied up and disposed of in no time. But I think that’s it.”

“It seems,” he said, “so fantastic. Too fantastic to be frightening. You mustn’t be frightened. You must go away, my darling heart, and leave me to — to do something about it.”

“I’ll go when I think it’ll make things easier for you. Not before.”

“I love you so much. I should be telling you how much, not putting this burden upon you.”

“They may not leave me with you for long. You must remember exactly what happened. Where you went. Who may have seen you. And Richard, you must tell them what she was doing when you left.”

He released her hands and pressed the palms of his own to his eyes. “She was laughing,” he said.

“Laughing? They’ll want to know why, won’t they? What you both said to make her laugh.”

“Never!” he said violently. “Never!”

“But — they’ll ask you.”

“They can ask and ask and ask again. Never!”

“You must!” she said desperately. “Think! It’s what one always reads — that innocent people hold out on the police and muddle everything up and put themselves in the wrong. Richard, think what they’ll find out anyway! That she spoke as she did to me, that you were angry, that you said you’d never forgive her. Everyone in the hall heard you. Colonel Warrender…”

“He!” Richard said bitterly. “He won’t talk. He daren’t.”

“What do you mean?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Oh!” she cried out. “You are frightening me! What’s going to happen when they ask you about it? What’ll they think when you won’t tell them!”

“They can think what they like.” He got up and began to walk about the room. “Too much has happened. I can’t get it into perspective. You don’t know what it’s like. I’ve no right to load it on to you.”

“Don’t talk like that,” Anelida said desperately. “I love you. It’s my right to share.”

“You’re so young.”

“I’ve got all the sense I’m ever likely to have.”

“Darling!”

“Never mind about me! You needn’t tell me anything you don’t want to. It’s what you’re going to say to them that matters.”

“I will tell you — soon — when I can.”

“If it clears you they won’t make any further to-do about it. That’s all they’ll worry about. Clearing it up. You must tell them what happened. Everything.”

“I can’t.”

“My God, why?”

“Have you any doubts about me? Have you!”

She went to him. “You must know I haven’t.”

“Yes,” he said. “I can see that.”

They stared at each other. He gave an inarticulate cry and suddenly she was in his arms.

Gracefield came through the folding doors from the dining-room.

“Supper is served, sir,” he said.

Alleyn rose from his comfortable seclusion behind the screen, slipped through the door into the hall, shut it soundlessly behind him and went up to their office.

“I’ve been talking,” Mr. Fox remarked, “to a press photographer and the servants.”

“And I,” Alleyn said sourly, “have been eavesdropping on a pair of lovers. How low can you get? Next stop, with Polonius behind the arras in a bedroom.”

“All for their good, I daresay,” Fox observed comfortably.

“There is that. Fox, that blasted playwright is holding out on us. And on his girl for a matter of that. But I’m damned if I like him as a suspect.”

“He seems,” Fox considered, “a very pleasant young fellow.”

“What the devil happened between him and Mary Bellamy when he came back? He won’t tell his girl. He merely says the interview ended in Miss Bellamy laughing. We’ve got the reports from those two intensely prejudiced women, who both agree he looked ghastly. All right. He goes out. There’s this crash Florence talked about. Florence goes down to the half-landing and Ninn hears a spray being used. Templeton comes out from the drawing-room to the foot of the stairs. He calls up to Florence to tell her mistress they’re waiting for her. Florence goes up to the room and finds her mistress in her death throes. Dakers returns two hours after the death, comes up to his room, writes a letter and tries to go away. End of information. Next step: confront him with the letter?”

“Your reconstruction of it?”

“Oh,” Alleyn said. “I fancy I can lay my hands on the original.”

Fox looked at him with placid approval and said nothing.

“What did you get from your press photographer? And which photographer?” Alleyn asked.

“He was hanging about in the street and said he’d something to tell me. Put-up job to get inside, of course, but I thought I’d see what it was. He took a picture of deceased with Mr. Dakers in the background at twenty to eight by the hall clock. He saw them go upstairs together. Gives us an approximate time for the demise, for what it’s worth.”

“About ten minutes later. What did you extract from the servants?”

“Not a great deal. It seems the deceased wasn’t all that popular with the staff, except Florence, who was hers, as the cook put it, body and soul. Gracefield held out on me for a bit, but he’s taken quite a liking to you, sir, and I built on that with good results.”

“What the hell have you been saying?”

“Well, Mr. Alleyn, you know as well as I do what snobs these high-class servants are.”

Alleyn didn’t pursue the subject.

“There was a dust-up,” Fox continued, “this morning with Miss Cavendish and Mr. Saracen. Gracefield happened to overhear it.” He repeated Gracefield’s account, which had been detailed and accurate.

“According to Anelida Lee this row was revived in the conservatory,” Alleyn muttered. “What were they doing here this morning?”

“Mr. Saracen had come to do the flowers, about which Gracefield spoke very sarcastically, and Miss Cavendish had brought the deceased that bottle of scent.”

“What!” Alleyn said. “Not the muck on her dressing-table? Not Formidable? This morning?”

“That’s right.”

Alleyn slapped his hand down on Richard’s desk and got up. “My God, what an ass I’ve been!” he said and then, sharply, “Who opened it?”

“She did. In the dining-room.”

“And used it? Then?”

“Had a bit of a dab, Gracefield said. He happened to be glancing through the serving-hatch at the time.”

“What became of it after that?”

“Florence took charge of it. I’m afraid,” Fox said, “I’m not with you, Mr. Alleyn, in respect of the scent.”

“My dear old boy, think! Think of the bottle.”

“Very big,” Fox said judiciously.

“Exactly. Very big. Well then…?”

“Yes. Ah, yes,” Fox said slowly and then, “Well, I’ll be staggered!”

“And so you jolly well should. This could blow the whole damn case wide open again.”

“Will I fetch them?”

“Do. And call on Florence, wherever she is. Get the whole story, Fox. Tactfully, as usual. Find out when the scent was decanted into the spray and when she used it. Watch the reactions, won’t you? And see if there’s anything in the Plumtree stories: about Richard Dakers’s parentage and Florence being threatened with the sack.”

Fox looked at his watch. “Ten o’clock,” he said. “She may have gone to bed.”

“That’ll be a treat for you. Leave me your notes. Away you go.”

While Fox was on this errand, Alleyn made a plot, according to information, of the whereabouts of Charles Templeton, the four guests, the servants and Richard Dakers up to the time when he himself arrived on the scene. Fox’s spadework had been exhaustive, as usual, and a pretty complicated pattern emerged. Alleyn lifted an eyebrow over the result. How many of them had told the whole truth? Which of them had told a cardinal lie? He put a query against one name and was shaking his head over it when Fox returned.

“Bailey’s finished with them,” Fox said and placed on Richard’s desk the scent-spray, the empty Formidable bottle and the tin of Slay pest.

“What’d he find in the way of dabs?”

“Plenty. All sorts, but none that you wouldn’t expect. He’s identified the deceased’s. Florence says she and Mr. Templeton and Colonel Warrender all handled the exhibit during the day. She says the deceased got the Colonel to operate the spray on her, just before the party. Florence filled it from the bottle.”

“And how much was left in the bottle?”

“She thinks it was about a quarter-full. She was in bed,” Fox added in a melancholy tone.

“That would tally,” Alleyn muttered. “No sign of the bottle being knocked over and spilling, is there?”

“None.”

Alleyn began to tap the Slaypest tin with his pencil. “About half-full. Anyone know when it was first used?”

“Florence reckons, a week ago. Mr. Templeton didn’t like her using it and tried to get Florence to make away with it.”

“Why didn’t she?”

“No chance according to her. She went into a great taking-on and asked me if I was accusing her of murder.”

“Did she get the sack, this morning?”

“When I asked her she went up like a rocket bomb, the story being that Mrs. Plumtree has taken against her and let out something that was told in confidence.”

Alleyn put his head in his hands. “Oh Lord!” he said.

“You meet that kind of thing,” Mr. Fox observed, “in middle-age ladies. Florence says that when Miss Bellamy or Mr. Templeton was out of humour, she would make out she was going to sack Florence, but there was nothing in it. She says she only told Mrs. Plumtree as a joke. I kind of nudged in a remark about Mr. Dakers’s parentage, but she wasn’t having any of that. She turned around and accused me of having a dirty mind and in the next breath had another go at Mrs. Plumtree. All the same,” Mr. Fox added primly, “I reckon there’s something in it. I reckon so from her manner. She appears to be very jealous of anybody who was near the deceased and that takes in Mr. Templeton, Mr. Dakers, Mrs. Plumtree and the Colonel.”

“Good old Florrie,” Alleyn said absent-mindedly.

“You know, sir,” Fox continued heavily, “I’ve been thinking about the order of events. Take the latter part of the afternoon. Say, from when the Colonel used the scent. What happened after that, now?”

“According to himself he went downstairs and had a quick one with Mrs. Templeton in the presence of the servants while Templeton and Dakers were closetcd in the study. All this up to the time when the first guests began to come in. It looks good enough, but it’s not cast iron.”

“Whereas,” Fox continued, “Florence and Mrs. Plumtree went upstairs. Either of them could have gone into Mrs. Templeton’s room, and got up to the odd bit of hanky-panky, couldn’t they, now?”

“The story is that they were together in their parlour until they went downstairs to the party. They’re at daggers-drawn. Do you think that if one of them had popped out of the parlour the other would feel disposed to keep mum about it?”

“Ah. There is that, of course. But it might have been forgotten.”

“Come off it, Foxkin.”

“The same goes for Mr. Templeton and Mr. Dakers. They’ve said, independently of each other, that they were together in the study. I don’t know how you feel about that one, Mr. Alleyn, but I’m inclined to accept it.”

“So am I. Entirely.”

“If we do accept all this, we’ve got to take it that the job was fixed after the guests began to arrive. Now, up to the row in the conservatory the three gentlemen were all in the reception rooms. The Colonel was in attendance on the deceased. Mr. Templeton was also with her receiving the guests and Mr. Dakers was on the lookout for his young lady.”

“What’s more, there was a press photographer near the foot of the stairs, a cinematographer half-way up, and a subsidiary bar at the foot of the backstairs with a caterer’s man on duty throughout. He saw Florence and Ninn and nobody else go up. What’s that leave us in the way of a roaring-hot suspect?”

“It means,” Fox said, “either that one of those two women fixed it then…”

“But when? You mean before they met on the landing and tried to listen in on the famous scene?”

“I suppose I do. Yes. While the photograph was being taken.”

“Yes?”

“Alternatively someone else went up before that.”

“Again, when? It would have to be after the cinema unit moved away and before Mrs. Templeton left the conservatory and came out into the hall where she was photographed with Dakers glowering in the background. And it would have to be before she took him upstairs.”

“Which restricts you to the entrance with the birthday cake and the speeches. I reckon someone could have slipped upstairs then.”

“The general attention being focused on the speakers and the stairs being clear? Yes. I agree with you. So far. But, see here, Fox; this expert didn’t do the trick as simply as that, I’m inclined to think there was one more visit at least, more likely that there were two more, one before and one after the death. Tidying up, you know. If I’m right, there was a certain amount of tidying up.”

“My God,” Fox began with unwonted heat, “what are you getting at, Mr. Alleyn? It’s tough enough as it is, d’you want to make it more difficult? What’s the idea?”

“If it’s any good it’s going to make it easier. Much easier.”

Alleyn stood up.

“You know, Br’er Fox,” he said, “I can see only one explanation that really fits. Take a look at what’s offering. Suicide? Leave her party, go up to her bedroom and spray herself to death? They all scout the notion and so do I. Accident? We’ve had it: the objection being the inappropriateness of the moment for her to horticult and the nature of the stains. Homicide? All right. What’s the jury asked to believe? That she stood stock-still while her murderer pumped a deluge of Slaypest into her face at long and then at short range? Defending counsel can’t keep a straight face over that one. But if, by any giddy chance, I’m on the right track, there’s an answer that still admits homicide. Now, listen, while I check over and see if you can spot a weakness.”

Mr. Fox listened placidly to a succinct argument, his gaze resting thoughtfully the while on the tin, the bottle, and the scent-spray.

“Yes,” he said when Alleyn had finished. “Yes. It adds up, Mr. Alleyn. It fits. The only catch that I can see rests in the little difficulty of our having next-to-nothing to substantiate the theory.”

Alleyn pointed a long finger at the exhibits. “We’ve got those,” he said, “and it’ll go damn hard if we don’t rake up something else in the next half hour.”

“Motive?”

“Motive unknown. It may declare itself. Opportunity’s our bird, Fox. Opportunity, my boy.”

“What’s the next step?”

“I rather fancy shock tactics. They’re all cooped up in the dining-room, aren’t they?”

“All except Mr. Templeton. He’s still in the study. When I looked in they were having supper. He’d ordered it for them. Cold partridge,” Mr. Fox said rather wistfully. “A bit of a waste, really, as they didn’t seem to have much appetite.”

“We’ll see if we can stimulate it,” Alleyn said grimly, “with these,” and waved his hand at the three exhibits.

Pinky Cavendish pushed her plate away and addressed herself firmly to her companions.

“I feel,” she said, “completely unreal. It’s not an agreeable sensation.” She looked round the table. “Is there any reason why we don’t say what’s in all our minds? Here we sit, pretending to eat: every man-jack of us pea-green with worry but cutting the whole thing dead. I can’t do with it. Not for another second. I’m a loquacious woman and I want to talk.”

“Pinky,” Timon Gantry said. “Your sense of timing! Never quite successfully co-ordinated, dear, is it?”

“But, actually,” Bertie Saracen plaintively objected, “I do so feel Pinky’s dead right. I mean we are all devastated and for my part, at least, terrified; but there’s no real future, is there, in maintaining a charnel-house decorum? It can’t improve anything, or can it? And it’s so excessively wearing. Dicky, dear, you won’t misunderstand me, will you? The hearts, I promise you, are utterly in their right place which, speaking for myself, is in the boots.”

Richard, who had been talking in an undertone to Anelida, looked up. “Why not talk,” he said, “if you can raise something that remotely resembles normal conversation.”

Warrender darted a glance at him. “Of course,” he said. “Entirely agree.” But Richard wouldn’t look at Warrender.

“Even abnormal conversation,” Pinky said, “would be preferable to strangulated silence.”

Bertie, with an air of relief, said, “Well then, everybody, let’s face it. We’re not being herded together in a”—he swallowed—“in a communual cell just out of constabular whimsy. Now are we?”

“No, Bertie,” Pinky said, “we are not.”

“Under hawklike supervision,” Bertie added, “if Sergeant Philpott doesn’t mind my mentioning it.”

P.C. Philpott, from his post at the far end of the room, said, “Not at all, sir,” and surreptitiously groped for his notebook.

“Thank you,” Bertie said warmly. Gracefield and a maid came in and cleared the table in a deathly silence. When they had gone Bertie broke out again. “My God,” he said. “Isn’t it as clear as daylight that every one of us, except Anelida, is under suspicion for something none of us likes to mention?”

“I do,” Pinky said. “I’m all for mentioning it, and indeed if I don’t mention it I believe I’ll go off like a geyser.”

“No, you won’t, dear,” Gantry firmly intervened. He was sitting next to Pinky and looked down upon her with a cranelike tilt of his head. “You’ll behave beautifully and not start any free-associating nonsense. This is not the time for it.”

“Timmy darling, I’m sorry as sorry but I’m moved to defy you,” Pinky announced with a great show of spirit. “In the theatre — never. Outside it and under threat of being accused of murder — yes. There!” she ejaculated. “I’ve said it! Murder. And aren’t you all relieved?”

Bertie Saracen said at once, “Bless you, darling. Immeasurably.”

Timon Gantry and Colonel Warrender simultaneously looked at the back of Philpott’s head and then exchanged glances: two men, Anelida felt, of authority at the mercy of an uncontrollable situation.

“Very well, then,” Pinky continued. “The police think Mary was murdered and presumably they think one of us murdered her. It sounds monstrous, but it appears to be true. The point is does anyone here agree with them?”

“I don’t,” Bertie said. He glanced at the serving-hatch and lowered his voice. “After all,” he said uncomfortably, “we’re not the only ones.”

“If you mean the servants…” Richard said angrily.

“I don’t mean anybody in particular,” Bertie protested in a great hurry.

“—It’s quite unthinkable.”

“To my mind,” Pinky said, “the whole thing’s out of this world. I don’t and can’t and won’t believe it of anybody in the house.”

“Heah, heah,” Warrender ejaculated, lending a preposterously hearty note to the conversation. “Ridiculous idea,” he continued loudly. “Alleyn’s behaving altogether too damn high-handedly.” He looked at Richard, hesitated and with an obvious effort said, “Don’t you agree?”

Without turning his head, Richard said, “He knows his own business, I imagine.” ”

There was a rather deadly little silence broken by Timon Gantry.

“For my part,” Gantry said, “I feel the whole handling of the situation is so atrociously hard on Charles Templeton.”

A guilty look came into their faces, Anelida noticed, as if they were ashamed of forgetting Charles. They made sympathetic noises and were embarrassed.

“What I resent,” Pinky said suddenly, “is being left in the dark. What happened? Why the mystery? Why not accident? All we’ve been told is that poor Mary died of a dose of pest-killer. It’s hideous and tragic and we’re all shocked beyond words, but if we’re being kept here under suspicion”—she brought her clenched fist down on the table—“we’ve a right to know why!”

She had raised her not inconsiderable voice to full projection point. None of them had heard the door from the hall open.

“Every right,” Alleyn said, coming forward. “And I’m sorry that the explanation has been so long delayed.”

The men had half-risen, but he lifted his hand and they sat back again. Anelida, for all her anxiety, had time to reflect that he was possessed of an effortless authority before which even Gantry, famous for this quality, became merely one of a controllable group. The attentive silence that descended upon them was of exactly the same kind as that which Gantry himself commanded at rehearsals. Even Colonel Warrender, though he raised his eyebrows, folded his arms and looked uncommonly portentous, found nothing to say.

“I think,” Alleyn said, “that we will make this “a round-the-table discussion.” He sat in the vacant chair at the end of the table. “It gives one,” he explained with a smile at Pinky Cavendish, “a spurious air of importance. We shall need five more chairs, Philpott.’”

P.C. Philpott placed them. Nobody spoke.

Fox came in from the hall bringing Florence and Old Ninn in his wake. Old Ninn was attired in a red flannel gown. Florence had evidently redressed herself rather sketchily and covered the deficiencies with an alpaca overall. Her hair was trapped in a tortuous system of tin curlers.

“Please sit down,” Alleyn said. “I’m sorry about dragging you in again. It won’t, I hope, be for long.”

Florence and Ninn, both looking angry and extremely reluctant and each cutting the other dead, sat on opposite sides of the table, leaving empty chairs between themselves and their nearest neighbours.

“Where’s Dr. Harkness, Fox?”

“Back in the conservatory, I believe, sir. We thought it better not to rouse him.”

“I’m afraid we must do so now.”

Curtains had been drawn across the conservatory wall. Fox disappeared behind them. Stertorous, unlovely and protesting noises were heard and presently he re-appeared with Dr. Harkness, now bloated with sleep and very tousled.

“Oh torment!” he said in a thick voice. “Oh hideous condition!”

“Would you,” Alleyn asked, “be very kind and see if you think Mr. Templeton is up to joining us? If there’s any doubt about it, we won’t disturb him. He’s in the study:”

“Very well,” said Dr. Harkness, trying to flatten his hair with both hands. “Never, never, never, any of you, chase up four whiskies with three glasses of champagne. Don’t do it!” he added furiously as if somebody had shown signs of taking this action. He went out.

“We’ll wait,” Alleyn said composedly, “for Mr. Templeton,” and arranged his papers.

Warrender cleared his throat. “Don’t like the look of that sawbones,” he said.

“Poor pet,” Bertie sighed. “And yet I almost wish I were in his boots. A pitiable but not unenviable condition.”

“Bad show!” Warrender said. “Fellar’s on duty.”

“Are you true?” Gantry asked suddenly, gazing at Warrender with a kind of devotion.

“I beg your pardon, sir?”

Gantry clasped his hands and said ecstatically, “One would never dare! Never! And yet people say one’s productions tend towards caricature! You shall give them the lie in their teeth, Colonel. In your own person you shall refute them.”

“I’m damned if I know what you’re talking about, Gantry, but if you’re trying to be abusive.…”

“ ‘No abuse,’ ” Alleyn quoted unexpectedly. He was reading his notes. “ ‘No abuse in the world: no, faith, boys, none’.”

They stared at him. Gantry, thrown off his stride, looked round the table as if calling attention to Alleyn’s eccentricity. Bertie leant towards him. “Formidable!” he murmured, indicating Alleyn.

“What!” Pinky ejaculated. “What did you say, dear?”

“Formidable!” Bertie repeated. “I said’formidable.’ Why? Oh God! Sorry!”

Warrender made some sort of exclamation.

“I was talking about Mr. Alleyn, dear,” Bertie explained. “I said he was formidable.”

“Oh!” Pinky said. “That! Sorry!”

“A misunderstanding,” Alleyn remarked to his notes. “But don’t let it put you off the scent. We’re coming to that in a minute.”

Pinky, greatly disconcerted, had opened her mouth to reply but was prevented by the appearance of Charles Templeton. He had come in with Dr. Harkness. He was a bad colour, seemed somehow to have shrunk and walked like the old man he actually was. But his manner was contained and he smiled faintly at them.

Alleyn got up and went to him. “He’s all right,” Dr. Harkness said. “He’ll do. Won’t you, Charles?”

“I’ll do,” Charles repeated. “Much better.”

“Would you rather sit in a more comfortable chair?’ Alleyn suggested. “As you see, we are making free with your dining-room table.”

“Of course. I hope you’ve got everything you want. I’ll join you.”

He took the nearest chair. Richard had got up and now, gripping Charles’s shoulders, leant over him. Charles turned his head and looked up at him. During that moment, Alleyn thought, he saw a resemblance.

Richard said, “Are you well enough for all this?”

“Yes, yes. Perfectly.”

Richard returned to his place, Dr. Harkness and Fox took the two remaining seats, and the table was full.

Alleyn clasped his hands over his papers, said, “Well, now,” and wishing, not for the first time, that he could find some other introductory formula, addressed himself to his uneasy audience.

Anelida thought, “Here we all sit like a committee meeting and the chairman thinks one of us is a murderer.” Richard, very straight in his chair, looked at the table. When she stirred a little he reached for her hand, gripped it and let it go.

Alleyn was talking.

“… I would like to emphasize that until the pathologist’s report comes in, there can be no certainty, but in the meantime I think we must try to arrive at a complete pattern of events. There are a number of points still to be settled and to that end I have kept you so long and asked you to come here. Fox?”

Fox had brought a small case with him. He now opened it, produced the empty scent bottle and laid it on the table.

“Formidable,” Alleyn said and turned to Pinky. “Your birthday present, wasn’t it, and the cause, I think, of your misunderstanding just now with Mr. Saracen.”

Pinky said angrily, “What have you done with the scent? Sorry,” she added. “It doesn’t matter, of course. It’s only that — well, it was full this morning.”

“When you gave it to Miss Bellamy? In this room?”

“That’s right.”

Alleyn turned to Florence. “Can you help us?”

“I filled her spray from it,” Florence said mulishly.

“That wouldn’t account for the lot, Florry,” Pinky pointed out.

“Was the spray empty?” Alleyn asked.

“Just about. She didn’t mind mixing them.”

“And how much was left in the bottle?” ”

“He asked me all this,” Florence said, jerking her head at Fox.

“And now I do.”

“About that much,” she muttered, holding her thumb and forefinger an inch apart.

“About a quarter. And the spray was full?”

She nodded.

Fox, with the expertise of a conjuror, produced the scent-spray and placed it by the bottle.

“And only about ‘that much,’ ” Alleyn pointed out, “is now in the spray. So we’ve got pretty well three-quarters of this large bottle of scent to account for, haven’t we?”

“I fail utterly,” Warrender began, “to see what you think you’re driving at.”

“Perhaps you can help. I understand, sir, that you actually used this thing earlier in the day.”

“Not on myself, God damn it!” Warrender said and then shot an uneasy glance at Charles Templeton.

Gantry gave a snort of delight.

“On Miss Bellamy?” Alleyn suggested.

“Naturally.”

“And did you happen to notice how much was left?”

“It was over three-quarters full. What!” Warrender demanded, appealing to Charles.

“I didn’t notice,” he said, and put his hand over his eyes.

“Do you mind telling me, sir, how you came to do this?”

“Not a bit. Why should I?” Warrender rejoined, and with every appearance of exquisite discomfort added, “She asked me to. Didn’t she, Charles?”

He nodded.

Alleyn pressed for more detail and got an awkward account of the scene with a grudging confirmation from Florence and a leaden one from Charles.

“Did you use a great deal of the scent?” he asked.

“Fair amount. She asked me to,” Warrender angrily repeated.

Charles shuddered and Alleyn said, “It’s very strong, isn’t it? Even the empty bottle seems to fill the room if one takes the stopper out.”

“Don’t!” Charles exclaimed. But Alleyn had already removed it. The smell, ponderable, sweet and improper, was disturbingly strong.

“Extraordinary!” Gantry said. “She only wore it for an afternoon and yet — the association.”

“Will you be quiet, sir!” Warrender shouted. “My God, what sort of a cad do you call yourself? Can’t you see…” He made a jerky, ineloquent gesture.

Alleyn replaced the stopper.

“Did you, do you think,” he asked Warrender, “use so much that the spray could then accommodate what was left in the bottle?”

“I wouldn’t have thought so.”

“No,” said Florence.

“And even if it was filled up again, the spray itself now only contains about that same amount. Which means, to insist on the point, that somehow or another three-quarters of the whole amount of scent has disappeared.”

“That’s impossible,” Pinky said bluntly. “Unless it was spilt.”

“No,” Florence said again. Alleyn turned to her.

“And the spray and bottle were on the dressing-table when you found Miss Bellamy?”

“Must of been. I didn’t stop,” Florence said bitterly, “to tidy up the dressing-table.”

“And the tin of Slaypest was on the floor?”

Fox placed the tin beside the other exhibits and they looked at it with horror.

“Yes?” Alleyn asked.

“Yes,” said Warrender, Harkness and Gantry together, and Charles suddenly beat with his hand on the table.

“Yes, yes, yes,” he said violently. “My God, must we have all this!”

“I’m very sorry, sir, but I’m afraid we must.”

“Look here,” Gantry demanded, “are you suggesting that — what the hell are you suggesting?”

“I suggest nothing,” Alleyn said. “I simply want to try and clear up a rather odd state of affairs. Can anybody offer an explanation?”

“She herself — Mary — must have done something about it. Knocked it over perhaps.”

“Which?” Alleyn asked politely. “The bottle or the spray?”

“I don’t know,” Gantry said irritably. “How should I? The spray, I suppose. And then filled it up.”

“There’s no sign of a spill, as Florence has pointed out.”

“I know!” Bertie Saracen began. “You think it was used as a sort of blind to — to…”

“To what, Mr Saracen?”

“Ah, no,” Bertie said in a hurry. “I — thought — no, I was muddling. I don’t know.”

“I think I do,” Pinky said and turned very white.

“Yes?” Alleyn said.

“I won’t go on. I can’t. It’s not clear enough. Please.”

She looked Alleyn straight in the eyes. “Mr. Alleyn,” Pinky said. “If you prod and insist, you’ll winkle out all sorts of odd bits of information about — about arguments and rows. Inside the theatre and out. Mostly inside. Like a good many other actresses, Mary did throw the odd temperament. She threw one,” Pinky went on against an almost palpable surge of consternation among her listeners, “for a matter of that, this morning.”

“Pinky!” Gantry warned her on a rising note.

“Timmy, why not? I daresay Mr. Alleyn already knows,” she said wearily.

“How very wise you are,” Alleyn exclaimed. “Thank you for it. Yes, we do know, in a piecemeal sort of way, as you’ve suggested, that there were ructions. We have winkled them out. We know, for instance, that there was a difference of opinion, on professional grounds, here in this room. This morning. We know it was resurrected with other controversial matters during the party. We know that you and Mr. Saracen were involved and when I say that, I’m quite sure you’re both much too sensible to suppose I’m suggesting anything more. Fox and I speak only of facts. We’ll be nothing but grateful if you can help us discard as many as possible of the awkward load of facts that we’ve managed to accumulate.”

“All this,” Gantry said, “sounds mighty fine. We’re on foreign ground, Pinky, and may well make fools of ourselves. You watch your step, my girl.”

“I don’t believe you,” she said, and still looking full at Alleyn, “What do you want to know?”

“First of all, what your particular row was about.”

She said, “All right with you, Bertie?”

“Oh Christmas!” he said. “I suppose so.”

“You’re a fool, Bertie,” Timon Gantry said angrily. “These things can’t be controlled. You don’t know where you’ll fetch up.”

“But then you see, Timmy dear, I never do,” Bertie rejoined with a sad little giggle.

Gantry rounded on Pinky Cavendish. “You might care to remember that other people are involved.”

“I don’t forget, Timmy, I promise you.” She turned to Alleyn. “This morning’s row,” she said, “was because I told Mary I was going to play the lead in a new play. She felt I was deserting her. Later on, during the party when we were all”—she indicated the conservatory—“in there, she brought it up again.”

“And was still very angry?”

Pinky looked unhappily at Charles. “It was pretty hot while it lasted. Those sorts of dusts-up always were, with Mary.”

“And you were involved, Mr. Saracen?”

“Not ’alf!” Bertie said and explained why.

“And you, Mr. Gantry?”

“Very well — yes. In so far as I am to produce the comedy.”

“But you copped it both ways, Timmy,” Bertie pointed out with some relish. “You were involved in the other one, too. About Dicky’s ‘different’ play and Anelida being asked to do the lead. She was angrier about that than anything. She was livid.”

“Mr. Alleyn knows,” Anelida said and they looked uneasily at her.

“Never mind, dear,” Gantry said rather bossily. “None of this need concern you. Don’t get involved.”

“She is involved,” Richard said, looking at her. “With me. Permanently, I hope.”

“Really?” Pinky cried out in her warmest voice and beamed at Anelida. “How lovely! Bertie! Timmy! Isn’t that lovely! Dicky, darling! Anelida!”

They made enthusiastic noises. It was impossible, Anelida found, not to be moved by their friendliness, but it struck her as quite extraordinary that they could switch so readily to this congratulatory vein. She caught a look of-what? Surprise? Resignation? in Alleyn’s eye and was astounded when he gave her the faintest shadow of a wink.

“Delightful though it is to refresh ourselves with this news,” he said, “I’m afraid I must bring you back to the matter in hand. How did the row in the conservatory arise?”

Pinky and Bertie gave him a look in which astonishment mingled with reproach.

Richard said quickly, “Mary came into the conservatory while we were discussing the casting of my play, Husbandry in Heaven. I should have told her — warned her. I didn’t and she felt I hadn’t been frank about it.”

“I’m sorry, but I shall have to ask you exactly what she said.”

He saw at once that Pinky, Saracen and Gantry were going to refuse. They looked quickly at one another and Gantry said rather off-handedly, “I imagine none of us remembers in any detail. When Mary threw a temperament she said all sorts of things that everybody knew she didn’t mean.”

“Did she, for instance, make threats of any sort?”

Gantry stood up. “For the last time,” he said, “I warn you all that you’re asking for every sort of trouble if you let yourselves be led into making ill-considered statements about matters that are entirely beside the point. For the last time I suggest that you consider your obligations to your profession and your careers. Keep your tongues behind your teeth or, by God, you’ll regret it.”

Bertie, looking frightened, said to Pinky, “He’s right, you know. Or isn’t he?”

“I suppose so,” she agreed unhappily. “There is a limit — I suppose. All the same…”

“If ever you’ve trusted yourselves to my direction,” Gantry said, “you do so now.”

“All right.” She looked at Alleyn. “Sorry.”

Alleyn said, “Then I must ask Colonel Warrender and Mr. Templeton. Did Miss Bellamy utter threats of any sort?”

Warrender said, “In my opinion, Charles, this may be a case for a solicitor. One doesn’t know what turn things may take. Meantime, wait and see, isn’t it?”

“Very well,” Charles said. “Very well.”

“Mr. Dakers?” Alleyn asked.

“I’m bound by the general decision,” Richard said, and Anelida, after a troubled look at him, added reluctantly:

“And I by yours.”

“In that case,” Alleyn said, “there’s only one thing to be done. We must appeal to the sole remaining witness.”

“Who the hell’s that!” Warrender barked out.

“Will you see if you can get him, Fox? Mr. Montague Marchant,” said Alleyn.

On Pinky and Bertie’s part little attempt was made to disguise their consternation. It was obvious that they desired, more than anything else, an opportunity to consult together. Gantry, however, merely folded his arms, lay back in his chair and looked at the ceiling. He might have been waiting to rise in protest at a conference of Actors’ Unity. Warrender, for his part, resembled a senior member at a club committee meeting. Charles fetched a heavy sigh and rested his head on his hand.

Fox went out of the room. As he opened the door into the hall a grandfather clock at the foot of the stairs was striking eleven. It provoked an involuntary exclamation from the persons Alleyn had brought together round the table. Several of them glanced in despair at their watches.

“In the meantime,” Alleyn said, “shall we try to clear up the position of Mr. Richard Dakers?”

Anelida’s heart suddenly thudded against her ribs as if drawing attention to its disregarded sovereignty. She had time to think: “I’m involved, almost without warning, in a monstrous situation. I’m committed, absolutely, to a man of whom I know next to nothing. It’s a kind of dedication and I’m not prepared for it.” She turned to look at Richard and, at once, knew that her allegiance, active or helpless, was irrevocable. “So this,” Anelida thought in astonishment, “is what it’s like to be in love.”

Alleyn, aware of the immediate reactions, saw Old Ninn’s hands move convulsively in her lap. He saw Florence look at her with a flash of something that might have been triumph and he saw the colour fade unevenly from Warrender’s heavy face.

He went over the ground again up to the time of Richard’s final return to the house.

“As you will see,” he said, “there are blank passages. We don’t know what passed between Mr. Dakers and Miss Bellamy in her room. We do know that, whatever it was, it seemed to distress him. We know he then went out and walked about Chelsea. We know he returned. We don’t know why.”

“I wanted,” Richard said, “to pick up a copy of my play.”

“Good. Why didn’t you say so before?”

“I clean forgot,” he said and looked astonished.

“Do you now remember what else you did?”

“I went up to my old study to get it.”

“And did you do anything else while you were there?”

There was no answer. Alleyn said, “You wrote a letter, didn’t you?”

Richard stared at him with a sort of horror. “How do you — why should you…?” He made a small desperate gesture and petered out.

“To whom?”

“It was private. I prefer not to say.”

“Where is it now? You’ve had no opportunity to post it.”

“I — haven’t got it.”

“What have you done with it?”

“I got rid of it.” Richard raised his voice. “I hope it’s destroyed. It had nothing whatever to do with all this. I’ve told you it was private.”

“If that’s true I can promise you it will remain so. Will you tell me — in private — what it was about?”

Richard looked at him, hesitated, and then said, “I’m sorry. I can’t.”

Alleyn drew a folded paper from his pocket. “Will you read this, if you please? Perhaps you would rather take it to the light.”

“I can… All right,” Richard said. He took the paper, left the table and moved over to a wall lamp. The paper rustled as he opened it. He glanced at it, crushed it in his hand, strode to the far end of the table and flung it down in front of Warrender.

“Did you have to do this?” he said. “My God, what sort of a man are you!” He went back to his place beside Anelida.

Warrender, opening and closing his hands, sheet-white and speaking in an unrecognizable voice, said, “I don’t understand. I’ve done nothing. What do you mean?”

His hand moved shakily towards the inside pocket of his coat. “No! It’s not… It can’t be.”

“Colonel Warrender,” Alleyn said to Richard, “has not shown me the letter. I came by its content in an entirely different way. The thing I have shown you is a transcription. The original, I imagine, is still in his pocket.”

Warrender and Richard wouldn’t look at each other. Warrender said, “Then how the hell…” and stopped.

“Evidently,” Alleyn said, “the transcription is near enough to the original. I don’t propose at the moment to make it generally known. I will only put it to you that when you, Mr. Dakers, returned the second time, you went to your study, wrote the original of this letter and subsequently, when you were lying on the sofa in the drawing-room, passed it to Colonel Warrender, saying, for my benefit, that you had forgotten to post it for him. Do you agree?”

“Yes.”

“I suggest that it refers to whatever passed between you and Mrs. Templeton when you were alone with her in her room a few minutes before she died and that you wished to make Colonel Warrender read it. I’m still ready to listen to any statement you may care to make to me in private.”

To Anelida the silence seemed interminable.

“Very well,” Alleyn said. “We shall have to leave it for the time being.”

None of them looked at Richard. Anelida suddenly and horribly remembered something she had once heard Alleyn tell her uncle. “You always know, in a capital charge, if the jury are going to bring in a verdict of guilty: they never look at the accused when they come back.” With a sense of doing something momentous she turned, looked Richard full in the face and found she could smile at him.

“It’ll be all right,” he said gently.

“All right!” Florence said bitterly. “It doesn’t strike me as being all right, and I wonder you’ve the nerve to say so!”

As if Florence had put a match to her, Old Ninn exploded into fury. “You’re a bad girl, Floy,” she said, trembling very much and leaning across the table. “Riddled through and through with wickedness and jealousy and always have been.”

“Thank you very much, I’m sure, Mrs. Plumtree,” Florence countered with a shrill outbreak of laughter. “Everyone knows where your favour lies, Mrs. Plumtree, especially when you’ve had a drop of port wine. You wouldn’t stop short of murder to back it up.”

“Ninn,” Richard said, before she could speak, “for the love of Mike, darling, shut up.”

She reached out her small knotted hands to Charles Templeton. “You speak for him, sir. Speak for him.”

Charles said gently, “You’re making too much of this, Ninn. There’s no need.”

“There shouldn’t be the need!” she cried. “And she knows it as well as I do.” She appealed to Alleyn. “I’ve told you. I’ve told you. After Mr. Richard came out I heard her. That wicked woman, there, knows as well as I do.” She pointed a gnarled finger at the spray-gun. “We heard her using that thing after everyone had warned her against it.”

“How do you know it was the spray-gun, Ninn?”

“What else could it have been?”

Alleyn said, “It might have been her scent, you know.”

“If it was! If it was, that makes no difference.”

“I’m afraid it would,” Alleyn said. “If the scent-spray had been filled up with Slaypest.”