Ngaio Marsh - False Scent

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

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

“All in good time,” he said.

“What d’you know, Mr. Alleyn?”

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

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

“I daresay. What is all this?”

Fox told him in a few neatly worded sentences.

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

They went upstairs to Miss Bellamy’s bedroom.

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

“Very strong, isn’t it, sir?”

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

“Not very nice,” Fox remarked.

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

“That’s right.”

“The face and chest are quite thickly spattered.”

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

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

“People do these things.”

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

“They say not,” Fox said.

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

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

“You don’t say,” Fox murmured.

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

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

“Very rum indeed.”

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

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

“Florence.”

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

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

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

“Not when you put it like that.”

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

“Not a chance, I should say, sir.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“They tell me you never know.”

“That’s right. So they say.”

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