False Scent

by Ngaio Marsh

  ‘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 bitterly ejaculated. ‘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.’

  CHAPTER 7

  Re-entry of Mr Marchant

  The scent spray, the bottle and the Slaypest tin had assumed star quality. There they stood in a neat row, three inarticulate objects, thrust into the spotlight. They might have been so many stagehands, yanked out of their anonymity and required to give an account of themselves before an unresponsive audience. They met with a frozen reception.

  Timon Gantry was the first to speak. ‘Have you,’ he asked, ‘any argument to support your extraordinary assumption?’

  ‘I have,’ Alleyn rejoined, ‘but I don’t propose to advance it in detail. You might call it a reductio ad absurdum. Nothing else fits. One hopes,’ he added, ‘that a chemical analysis of the scent spray will do something to support it. The supposition is based on a notion that while Mrs Templeton had very little reason, after what seems to have been a stormy interview, to deluge her plants and herself with insecticide, she may more reasonably be pictured as taking up her scent spray, and using that.’

  ‘Not full on her face,’ Bertie said unexpectedly. ‘She’d never use it on her face. Not directly. Not after she was made up. Would she, Pinky? Pinky – would she?’

  But Pinky was not listening to him. She was watching Alleyn.

  ‘Well, anyway,’ Bertie said crossly. ‘She wouldn’t.’

  ‘Oh, yes, she would, Mr Saracen,’ Florence said tartly.

  ‘And did. Quite regular. Standing far enough off to get the fine spray only, which was what she done, as the colonel and Mr Templeton will bear me out, this afternoon.’

  ‘The point,’ Alleyn said, ‘is well taken, but it doesn’t, I think, affect the argument. Shall we leave it for the time being? I’m following, by the way, a very unorthodox line over this inquiry and I see no reason for not telling you why. Severally, I believe you will all go on withholding information that may be crucial. Together I have hopes that you may find these tactics impracticable.’ And while they still gaped at him he added: ‘I may be wrong about this, of course, but it does seem to me that each of you, with one exception, is most mistakenly concealing something. I say mistakenly because I don’t for a moment believe that there has been any collusion in this business. I believe that one of you, under pressure of an extraordinary emotional upheaval, has acted in a solitary and an extraordinary way. It’s my duty to find out who this person is. So let’s press on, shall we?’ He looked at Charles. ‘There’s a dictionary of poisons in Mr Dake
rs’s former study. I believe it belongs to you, sir.’

  Charles lifted a hand, saw that it trembled, and lowered it again. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I bought it a week ago. I wanted to look up plant sprays.’

  ‘Oh, my goodness me!’ Bertie ejaculated and stared at him. There was a general shocked silence.

  ‘This specific spray?’ Alleyn asked, pointing to the Slaypest.

  ‘Yes. It gives the formula. I wanted to look it up.’

  ‘For God’s sake, Charles,’ Warrender ejaculated, ‘why the devil can’t you make yourself understood?’ Charles said nothing and he waved his hands at Alleyn. ‘He was worried about the damned muck!’ he said. ‘Told Mary. Showed it …’

  ‘Yes?’ Alleyn said as he came to a halt. ‘Showed it to whom?’

  ‘To me, blast it! We’d been trying to persuade her not to use the stuff. Gave it to me to read.’

  ‘Did you read it?’

  ‘’Course I did. Lot of scientific mumbo-jumbo but it showed how dangerous it was.’

  ‘What did you do with the book?’

  ‘Do with it? I dunno. Yes, I do, though. I gave it to Florence. Asked her to get Mary to look at it. Didn’t I, Florence?’

  ‘I don’t,’ said Florence, ‘remember anything about it, sir. You might have.’

  ‘Please try to remember,’ Alleyn said. ‘Did you, in fact, show the book to Mrs Templeton?’

  ‘Not me. She wouldn’t have given me any thanks.’ She slewed round in her chair and looked at Old Ninn. ‘I remember now. I showed it to Mrs Plumtree. Gave it to her.’

  ‘Well, Ninn? What did you do with the book?’

  Old Ninn glared at him. ‘Put it by,’ she said. ‘It was unwholesome.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘I don’t recollect.’

  ‘In the upstairs study?’

  ‘Might have been. I don’t recollect.’

  ‘So much for the book,’ Alleyn said wryly, and turned to Warrender. ‘You, sir, tell us that you actually used the scent spray, lavishly, on Mrs Templeton before the party. There were no ill-effects. What did you do after that?’

  ‘Do? Nothing. I went out.’

  ‘Leaving Mr and Mrs Templeton alone together?’

  ‘Yes. At least …’ His eyes slewed round to look at her. ‘There was Florence.’

  ‘No, there wasn’t. If you’ll pardon my mentioning it, sir,’ Florence again intervened. ‘I left, just after you did, not being required any further.’

  ‘Do you agree?’ Alleyn asked Charles Templeton. He drew his hand across his eyes.

  ‘I? Oh, yes. I think so.’

  ‘Do you mind telling me what happened then? Between you and your wife?’

  ‘We talked for a moment or two. Not long.’

  ‘About?’

  ‘I asked her not to use the scent I’m afraid I was in a temper about it.’ He glanced at Pinky. ‘I’m sorry, Pinky, I just – didn’t like it. I expect my taste is hopelessly old fashioned.’

  ‘That’s all right, Charles. My God,’ Pinky added in a low voice, ‘I never want to smell it again, myself, as long as I live.’

  ‘Did Mrs Templeton agree not to use it again?’

  ‘No,’ he said at once. ‘She didn’t. She thought me unreasonable.’

  ‘Did you talk about anything else?’

  ‘About nothing that I care to recall.’

  ‘Is that final?’

  ‘Final,’ Charles said.

  ‘Did it concern, in some way, Mr Dakers and Colonel Warrender?’

  ‘Damn it!’ Warrender shouted. ‘He’s said he’s not going to tell you, isn’t it!’

  ‘It did not concern them,’ Charles said.

  ‘Where did you go when this conversation ended?’

  ‘I went downstairs to my study. Richard came in at about that time and was telephoning. We stayed there until the first guests arrived.’

  ‘And you, Colonel Warrender? Where were you at this time? What did you do when you left the bedroom?’

  ‘Ah – I was in the drawing-room. She – ah – Mary – came in. She wanted a rearrangement of the tables. Gracefield and the other fella did it and she and I had a drink.’

  ‘Did she seem quite herself, did you think?’

  ‘Rather nervy. Bit on edge.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Been a trying day, isn’t it?’

  ‘Anything in particular?’

  He glanced at Richard. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Nothing else.’

  Fox returned. ‘Mr Marchant will be here in about a quarter of an hour, sir,’ he said.

  There were signs of consternation from Pinky, Bertie and Timon Gantry.

  ‘Right,’ Alleyn got up, walked to the far end of the table and picked up the crumpled paper that still lay where Richard had thrown it down. ‘I must ask Colonel Warrender and Mr Dakers to give me a word or two in private. Perhaps we may use the study.’

  They both rose with the same abrupt movement and followed him from the room, stiffly erect.

  He ushered them into the study and turned to Fox who had come into the hall.

  ‘I’d better take this one solus, I think, Fox. Will you get the exhibits sent at once for analysis. Say it’s first priority and we’re looking for a trace of Slaypest in the scent spray. They needn’t expect to find more than a trace, I fancy. I want the result as soon as possible. Then go back to the party in there. See you later.’

  In Charles Templeton’s study, incongruously friendly and comfortable, Warrender and Richard Dakers faced Alleyn, still not looking at each other.

  Alleyn said: ‘I’ve asked you in here, without witnesses, to confirm or deny the conclusion I have drawn from the case-history, as far as it goes. Which is not by any means all the way. If I’m wrong, one or both of you can have a shot at knocking me down or hitting me across the face or performing any other of the conventional gestures. But I don’t advise you to try.’

  They stared at him apparently in horrified astonishment.

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘here goes. My idea, such as it is, is based on this business of the letter, which, since you seem to accept my pot shot at it, runs like this.’

  He smoothed out the crumpled sheet of paper. ‘It’s pieced together, by the way,’ he said, ‘from the impression left on the blotting-paper.’ He looked at Richard. ‘The original was written, I believe, by you to Mrs Templeton when you returned, finally, to the house. I’m going to read this transcription aloud. If it’s wrong anywhere, I hope you’ll correct me.’

  Warrender said: ‘There’s no need.’

  ‘Perhaps not. Would you prefer to show me the original?’

  With an air of diffidence that sat very ill on him, Warrender appealed to Richard. ‘Whatever you say,’ he muttered.

  Richard said: ‘Very well! Go on. Go on. Show him’

  Warrender put his hand inside his coat and drew out an envelope. He dropped it on Charles Templeton’s desk, crossed to the fireplace and stood there with his back turned to them.

  Alleyn picked up the envelope. The word ‘Mary’ was written on it in green ink. He took out the enclosure and laid his transcription beside it on the desk. As he read it through to himself the room seemed monstrously quiet. The fire settled in the grate. A car or two drove past and the clock in the hall told the half-hour.

  ‘I’ve come back,’ Alleyn read, ‘to say that it would be no use my pretending I haven’t been given a terrible shock and that I can’t get it sorted out but I’m sure it will be better if we don’t meet. I can’t think clearly now but at least I know I’ll never forgive your treatment of Anelida this afternoon. I should have been told everything from the beginning. R.’

  He folded the two papers and put them aside. ‘So they do correspond,’ he said. ‘And the handwriting is Mr Dakers’s.’

  Neither Richard nor Warrender moved nor spoke.

  ‘I think,’ Alleyn said, ‘that you came back for the last time, you went up to your study and wrote this letter with the intention of putting it und
er her door. When you were about to do so you heard voices in the room, since two of my men were working there. So you came downstairs and were prevented from going out by the constable on duty. It was then that you came into the room where I was interviewing the others. The letter was in your breast pocket. You wanted to get rid of it and you wanted Colonel Warrender to know what was in it. So you passed it to him when you were lying on the sofa in the drawing-room. Do you agree?’

  Richard nodded and turned away.

  ‘This evening,’ Alleyn went on, ‘after Mr Dakers left the Pegasus bookshop, you, Colonel Warrender, also paid a call on Octavius Browne. Dusk had fallen but you were standing in the window when Octavius came in and seeing you against it he mistook you for his earlier visitor, who he thought must have returned. He was unable to say why he made this mistake, but I think I can account for it. Your heads are very much the same shape. The relative angles and distances from hairline to the top of the nose, from there to the tip and from the tip to the chin are almost identical. Seen in silhouette with the other features obliterated, your profiles must be strikingly alike. In full-face the resemblance disappears. Colonel Warrender has far greater width and a heavier jawline.’

  They were facing him now. He looked from one to the other.

  ‘In these respects,’ he said, ‘Mr Dakers, I think, takes after his mother.’

  II

  ‘Well,’ Alleyn said at last, after a long silence, ‘I’m glad, at least, that it seems I am not going to be knocked down.’

  Warrender said: ‘I’ve nothing to say. Unless it’s to point out that, as things have come about, I’ve had no opportunity to speak to’ – he lifted his head – ‘to my son.’

  Richard said: ‘I don’t want to discuss it. I should have been told from the beginning.’

  ‘Whereas,’ Alleyn said, ‘you were told, weren’t you, by your mother this afternoon. You went upstairs with her when you returned from the Pegasus and she told you then.’

  ‘Why!’ Warrender cried out. ‘Why, why, why?’

  ‘She was angry,’ Richard said. ‘With me.’ He looked at Alleyn. ‘You’ve heard or guessed most of it, apparently. She thought I’d conspired against her.’