He grasped Bertie with his left hand. He had actually drawn back his right and Alleyn had moved in, when a voice from the door said: “Will somebody be good enough to tell me what goes on in this house?”
Warrender lowered his hand and let Bertie go, Gantry uttered a short oath and Pinky, a stifled cry. Alleyn turned.
A young man with a white face and distracted air confronted him in the doorway.
“Thank God!” Bertie cried. “Dicky!”
Chapter five
Questions of Adherence
The most noticeable thing about Richard Dakers was his agitation. He was pale, his face was drawn and his hands were unsteady. During the complete silence that followed Bertie’s ejaculation, Richard stood where he was, his gaze fixed with extraordinary concentration upon Colonel Warrender. Warrender, in his turn, looked at him with, as far as his soldierly blueprint of a face could express anything, the same kind of startled attention. In a crazy sort of way, each might have been the reflection of the other.
Warrender said, “Can I have a word with you, old boy? Shall we…?”
“No!” Richard said quickly and then, “I’m sorry. I don’t understand. What’s that dammed bobby doing in the hall? What’s happened? Where’s everybody? Where’s Mary?”
Alleyn said, “One moment,” and went to him. “You’re Mr. Richard Dakers, aren’t you? I’m from Scotland — Yard — Alleyn …At the moment I’m in charge of a police inquiry here. Shall we find somewhere where I can tell you why?”
“I’ll tell him,” Warrender said.
“I think not,” Alleyn rejoined and opened the door. “Come along,” he said and looked at the others. “You will stay here, if you please.”
Richard put his hand to his head. “Yes. All right. But — why?” Perhaps out of force of habit he turned to Timon Gantry. “Timmy?” he said. “What is this?”
Gantry said, “We must accept authority, Dicky. Go with him.”
Richard stared at him in amazement and walked out of the room, followed by Alleyn and Fox.
“In here, shall we?” Alleyn suggested and led the way into the deserted drawing-room.
There, he told Richard, as briefly as possible and without emphasis, what had happened. Richard listened distractedly, making no interruption but once or twice wiping his hand over his face as if a cobweb lay across it. When Alleyn had finished he said haltingly, “Mary? It’s happened to Mary? How can I possibly believe it?”
“It is hard, isn’t it?”
“But—how? How did it happen? With the plant spray?”
“It seems so.”
“But she’s used it over and over again. For a long time. Why did it happen now?” He had the air, often observable in people who have suffered a shock, of picking over the surface of the matter and distractedly examining the first thing he came upon. “Why now?” he repeated and appeared scarcely to attend to the answer.
“That’s one of the things we’ve got to find out.”
“Of course,” Richard said, more, it seemed, to himself than to Alleyn, “it is dangerous. We were always telling her.” He shook his head impatiently. “But — I don’t see — she went to her room just after the speeches and…”
“Did she? How do you know?”
Richard said quickly, “Why because…” and then, if possible, turned whiter than he had been before. He looked desperately at Alleyn, seemed to hover on the edge of an outburst and then said, “She must have. You say she was found there.”
“Yes. She was found there.”
“But why? Why would she use the plant spray at that moment? It sounds so crazy.”
“I know. Very strange.”
Richard beat his hands together. “I’m sorry,” he said, “I can’t get hold of myself. I’m sorry.”
Looking at him, Alleyn knew that he was in that particular state of emotional unbalance when he would be most vulnerable to pressure. He was a nice-looking chap, Alleyn thought. It was a sensitive face and yet, obscurely, it reminded him of one much less sensitive. But whose?
He said, “You yourself have noticed two aspects of this tragic business that are difficult to explain. Because of them and because of normal police procedure I have to check as fully as possible the circumstances surrounding the event.”
“Do you?” Richard asked vaguely and then seemed to pull himself together. “Yes. Very well. What circumstances?”
“I’m told you left the house before the birthday speeches. Is that right?”
Unlike the others, Richard appeared to feel no resentment or suspicion. “I?” he said. “Oh, yes, I think I did. I don’t think they’d started. The cake had just been taken in.”
“Why did you leave, Mr. Dakers?”
“I wanted to talk to Anelida,” he said at once and then: “Sorry. You wouldn’t know. Anelida Lee. She lives next door and…” He stopped.
“I do know that Miss Lee left early with her uncle. But it must have been a very important discussion, mustn’t it? To take you away at that juncture?”
“Yes. It was. To me. It was private,” Richard added. “A private matter.”
“A long discussion?”
“It didn’t happen.”
“Not?”
“She wasn’t — available.” He produced a palpable understatement. “She wasn’t — feeling well.”
“You saw her uncle?”
“Yes.”
“Was it about her part in your play—Husbandry in Heaven, isn’t it? — that you wanted to talk to her?”
Richard stared at him and for the first time seemed to take alarm. “Who told you about that?” he demanded.
“Timon Gantry.”
“He did!” Richard exclaimed and then, as if nothing could compete with the one overriding shock, added perfunctorily, “How extraordinary.” But he was watching Alleyn now with a new awareness. “It was partly to do with that,” he muttered.
Alleyn decided to fire point-blank. “Was Miss Bellamy displeased with the plans for this new play?” he asked. Richard’s hands made a sharp involuntary movement which was at once checked. His voice shook.
“I told you this was a private matter,” he said. “It is entirely private.”
“I’m afraid there is very little room for privacy in a police inquiry.”
Richard surprised him by suddenly crying out, “You think she did it herself! She didn’t! I can’t believe it! Never!”
“Is there any reason why she should?”
“No! My God, no! No!”
Alleyn waited for a little, visited, as was not unusual with him, by a distaste for this particular aspect of his job.
He said, “What did you do when Miss Lee couldn’t receive you?”
Richard moved away from him, his hands thrust down in his pockets. “I went for a walk,” he said.
“Now, look here,” Alleyn said, “you must see that this is a very odd story. Your guardian, as I believe Miss Bellamy was, reaches the top moment of her birthday party. You leave her cold, first in pursuit of Miss Lee and then to go for a stroll round Chelsea. Are you telling me that you’ve been strolling ever since?”
Without turning, Richard nodded.
Alleyn walked round him and looked him full in the face.
“Mr. Dakers,” he said. “Is that the truth? It’s now five to nine. Do you give me your word that from about seven o’clock when you left this house you didn’t return to it until you came in, ten minutes ago?”
Richard, looking desperately troubled, waited for so long that to Alleyn the scene became quite unreal. The two of them were fixed in the hiatus-like figures in a suspended film sequence.