Ngaio Marsh - False Scent

“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.