by Ngaio Marsh
She shook her head again. ‘I didn’t think to – I got such a wicked shock – I didn’t think.…’
‘I opened them,’ Charles said.
‘First thing to be done,’ Warrender muttered.
Gantry, who from the time of his entry had stood motionless near the door, joined the others. ‘But what was it?’ he asked. ‘What happened?’
Warrender said unevenly: ‘Perfectly obvious. She used that bloody spray thing there. I said it was dangerous. Only this morning.’
‘What thing?’
Warrender stooped. The tin of Slaypest lay on its side close to the clenched right hand. A trickle of dark fluid stained the carpet. ‘This,’ he said.
‘Better leave it,’ Dr Harkness said sharply.
‘What?’
‘Better leave it where it is.’ He looked at Gantry. ‘It’s some damned insecticide. For plants. The tin’s smothered in warnings.’
‘We told her,’ Warrender said. ‘Look at it.’
‘I said don’t touch it.’
Warrender straightened up. The blood had run into his face. ‘Sorry,’ he said, and then: ‘Why not?’
‘You’re a bit too ready with your hands. I’m wet as hell and half-frozen.’
‘You were tight. Best cure, my experience.’
They eyed each other resentfully. Dr Harkness looked at Charles who sat, doubled up with his hands on his chest. He went to him. ‘Not too good?‘ he said. Timon Gantry put a hand on Charles’s shoulder.
‘I’m going to take you to your room, old boy. Next door, isn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ Dr Harkness said. ‘But not just yet. In a minute. Good idea.’ He turned to Florence. ‘Do you know where Mr Templeton keeps his tablets? Get them, will you? And you might bring some aspirin at the same time. Run along, now.’ Florence went into the dressing-room. He sat beside Charles on the bed and took his wrist. ‘Steady does it,’ he said, and looked at Gantry. ‘Brandy.’
‘I know where it is,’ Warrender said, and went out.
Gantry said: ‘What about the mob downstairs?’
‘They can wait.’ He held the wrist a little longer and then laid Charles’s hand on his knee keeping his own over it. ‘We’ll move you in a moment. You must let other people think for you. It’s been a bad thing.’
‘I can’t …’ Charles said. ‘I can’t …’ And fetched his breath in irregular, tearing sighs.
‘Don’t try to work things out. Not just yet. Ah, here’s Florence. Good. Now then: one of these.’
He gave Charles a tablet. Warrender came back with brandy. ‘This’ll help,’ Dr Harkness said. They waited in silence.
‘I’m all right,’ Charles said presently.
‘Fine. Now, an arm each and take it steady. His room’s next door. Lie down, Charles, won’t you?’
Charles nodded and Warrender moved towards him. ‘No,’ Charles said quite strongly, and turned to Gantry. ‘I’m all right,’ he repeated, and Gantry very efficiently supported him through the door into his dressing-room.
Warrender stood for a moment, irresolute, and then lifted his chin and followed them.
‘Get him a hot bottle,’ Harkness said to Florence.
When she’d gone he swallowed three aspirins, took up the bedside telephone and dialled a number.
‘This is Dr Frank Harkness. I’m speaking from Number 2, Pardoner’s Place. Mr Charles Templeton’s house. There’s been an accident. A fatality. Some sort of pest killer. Mrs Templeton. Yes. About fifty people – a party. Right. I’ll wait.’
As he replaced the receiver Gantry came back. He stopped short when he saw Harkness. ‘What now?’ he asked.
‘I’ve telephoned the police.’
‘The police!’
‘In cases like this,’ Harkness said, ‘one notifies the police.’
‘Anybody would think …’
‘Anybody will think anything,’ Dr Harkness grunted. He turned back the elaborate counterpane and the blankets under it. ‘I don’t want to call the servants,’ he said, ‘and that woman’s on the edge of hysteria. This sheet’ll do.’ He pulled it off, bundled it up and threw it to Gantry. ‘Cover her up, old boy, will you?’
Gantry turned white round the mouth. ‘I don’t like this sort of thing,’ he said. ‘ I’ve produced it often enough, but I’ve never faced the reality.’ And he added with sudden violence: ‘Cover her up yourself.’
‘All right. All right,’ sighed Dr Harkness. He took the sheet, crossed the room and busied himself with masking the body. The breeze from the open windows moved it as if, fantastically, it was stirred by what it covered.
‘May as well shut them, now,’ Dr Harkness said and did so. ‘Can you straighten the bed at least?’ he asked. Gantry did his best with the bed.
‘Right,’ said Dr Harkness, putting on his coat. ‘Does this door lock? Yes. Will you come?’
As they went out Gantry said: ‘Warrender’s crocked up. Charles didn’t seem to want him, so he flung a sort of poker-backed, stiff-lipped, blimp-type temperament and made his exit. I don’t know where he’s gone, but in his way,’ Gantry said, ‘he’s wonderful. Terrifyingly ham, but wonderful. He’s upset, though.’
‘Serve him bloody well right. It won’t be his fault if I escape pneumonia. My head!‘ Dr Harkness said, momentarily closing his eyes.
‘You were high.’
‘Not so high I couldn’t come down.’
Old Ninn was on the landing. Her face had bleached round its isolated patches of crimson. She confronted Dr Harkness.
‘What’s she done to herself?’ asked Old Ninn.
Dr Harkness once more summoned up his professional manner. He bent over her. ‘You’ve got to be very sensible and good, Nanny,’ he said, and told her briefly what had happened.
She looked fixedly into his face throughout the recital and at the end said: ‘Where’s Mr Templeton?’
Dr Harkness indicated the dressing-room.
‘Who’s looking after him?’
‘Florence was getting him a hot bottle.’
‘Her!’ Ninn said with a brief snort, and without another word stumped to the door. She gave it a smart rap and let herself in.
‘Wonderful character,’ Gantry murmured.
‘Remarkable.’
They turned towards the stairs. As they did so a figure moved out of the shadows at the end of the landing, but they did not notice her. It was Florence.
‘And now, I suppose,’ Dr Harkness said as they went downstairs, ‘for the mob.’
‘Get rid of them?’ Gantry asked.
‘Not yet. They’re meant to wait. Police orders.’
‘But …’
‘Matter of form.’
Gantry said: ‘At least we can boot the Press off, can’t we?’
‘Great grief, I’d forgotten that gang!’
‘Leave them to me.’
The Press was collected about the hall. A light flashed as Gantry and Harkness came down and a young man who had evidently just arrived, advanced hopefully. ‘Mr Timon Gantry? I wonder if you could –’
Gantry looking down from his great height, said: ‘I throw you one item. And one only. Miss Mary Bellamy was taken ill this evening and died some minutes ago.’
‘Doctor – er … Could you – ?’
‘The cause,’ Dr Harkness said, ‘is at present undetermined. She collapsed and did not recover consciousness.’
‘Is Mr Templeton – ?’
‘No,’ they said together. Gantry added: ‘And that is all, gentlemen. Good evening to you.’
Gracefield appeared from the back of the hall, opened the front door, and said: ‘Thank you, gentlemen. If you will step outside.’
They hung fire. A car drew up in the Place. From it emerged a heavily built man, wearing a bowler hat and a tidy overcoat. He walked into the house.
‘Inspector Fox,’ he said.
II
It has been said of Mr Fox that his arrival at any scene of disturbance has the effect of a l
arge and almost silent vacuum cleaner.
Under his influence the gentlemen of the Press were tidied out into Pardoner’s Place where they lingered restively for a long time. The guests, some of whom were attempting to leave, found themselves neatly mustered in the drawing-room. The servants waited quietly in the hall. Mr Fox and Dr Harkness went upstairs. A constable appeared and stood inside the front door.
‘I locked the door,’ Dr Harkness said, with the air of a schoolboy hoping for praise. He produced the key.
‘Very commendable, Doctor,’ said Fox comfortably.
‘Nothing’s been moved. The whole thing speaks for itself.’
‘Quite so. Very sad.’
Fox laid his bowler on the bed, knelt by the sheet and turned it back. ‘Strong perfume.’ he said. He drew out his spectacles, placed them and looked closely into the dreadful face.
‘You can see for yourself,’ Dr Harkness said. ‘Traces of the stuff all over her.’
‘Quite so,’ Fox repeated. ‘Very profuse.’
He contemplated the Slaypest, but did not touch it. He rose and made a little tour of the room. He had very bright eyes for a middle-aged person.
‘If it’s convenient, sir,’ he said, ‘I’ll have a word with Mr Templeton.’
‘He’s pretty well knocked out. His heart’s dicky. I made him lie down.’
‘Perhaps you’d just have a little chat with him yourself, Doctor. Would you be good enough to say I won’t keep him more than a minute? No need to disturb him: I’ll come to his room. Where would it be?’
‘Next door.’
‘Nice and convenient. I’ll give you a minute with him and then I’ll come in. Thank you, Doctor.’
Dr Harkness looked sharply at him, but he was restoring his spectacles to their case and had turned to contemplate the view from the window.
‘Pretty square, this,’ said Mr Fox.
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 …’
III
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 Cavendish, 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 joined 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 storey. Gracefield, the maids and the hired men had gone a considerable way towards removing the débris.
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 dare say. 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,’ he said. ‘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 hexa-ethyl-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 whack at her scent.’ He sniffed the atomiser. ‘That’s it. Quarter full and stinks like a civet cat, and here’s the bottle it came from, empty. “Unguarded.” 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 ac
cept what appears to be the current explanation, she drenches her azaleas with hexa-ethyl-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 the 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 don’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 hand-basin. 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 loo, 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.’