“Yes, of course,” Alleyn said and nodded to the constable at the door. “Before you go, though — was Mrs. Templeton your patient too?”
“She was,” Harkness agreed and looked wary.
“Would you have expected anything like this? Supposing it to be a case of suicide?”
“No. I wouldn’t.”
“Not subject to fits of depression? No morbid tendencies? Nothing like that?”
Harkness looked at his hands. “It wasn’t an equable disposition,” he said carefully. “Far from it. She had ‘nervous’ spells. The famous theatrical temperament, you know.”
“No more than that?” Alleyn persisted.
“Well — I don’t like discussing my patients and never do, of course, but…”
“I think you may say the circumstances warrant it.”
“I suppose so. As a matter of fact I have been a bit concerned. The temperaments had become pretty frequent and increasingly violent. Hysteria, really. Partly the time of life, but she was getting over that. There was some occasion for anxiety. One or two little danger signals. One was keeping an eye on her. But nothing suicidal. On the contrary. What’s more, you can take my word for it she was the last woman on earth to disfigure herself. The last.”
“Yes,” Alleyn said. “That’s a point, isn’t it? I’ll see you later.”
“I suppose you will,” Harkness said disconsolately, and Alleyn went upstairs. He found that Miss Bellamy’s room now had the familiar look of any area given over to police investigation: something between an improvised laboratory and a photographer’s studio with its focal point that unmistakable sheeted form on the floor.
Dr. Curtis, the police surgeon, had finished his examination of the body. Sergeant Bailey squatted on the bathroom floor employing the tools of his trade upon the tinsel picture, and as Alleyn came in, Sergeant Thompson, whistling between his teeth, uncovered Mary Bellamy’s terrible face and advanced his camera to within a few inches of it. The bulb flashed.
Fox was seated at the dressing-table completing his notes.
“Well, Dr. Curtis?” Alleyn asked.
“Well, now,” Curtis said. “It’s quite a little problem, you know. I can’t see a verdict of accident, Alleyn, unless the coroner accepts the idea of her presenting this spray-gun thing at her own face and pumping away like mad at it to see how it works. The face is pretty well covered with the stuff. It’s in the nostrils and mouth and all over the chest and dress.”
“Suicide?”
“I don’t see it. Have to be an uncommon determined effort. Any motive?”
“Not so far, unless you count a suspected bout of tantrums, but I don’t yet know about that. I don’t see it, either. Which leaves us with homicide. See here, Curtis. Suppose I picked up that tin of Slaypest, pointed it at you and fell to work on the spray-gun — what’d you do?”
“Dodge.”
“And if I chased you up?”
“Either collar you low or knock it out of your hands or bolt, yelling blue murder.”
“Exactly. But wouldn’t the immediate reaction, particularly in a woman, be to throw up her arms and hide her face?”
“I think it might, certainly. Yes.”
“Yes,” said Fox, glancing up from his notes.
“It wasn’t hers. There’s next to nothing on the hands and arms. And look,” Alleyn went on, “at the actual character of the spray. Some of it’s fine, as if delivered from a distance. Some, on the contrary, is so coarse that it’s run down in streaks. Where’s the answer to that one?”
“I don’t know,” said Dr. Curtis.
“How long would it take to kill her?”
“Depends on the strength. This stuff is highly concentrated. Hexa-ethyl-tetra-phosphate of which the deadly ingredient is TEPP: tetra-ethyl-pyro-phosphate. Broken down, I’d say, with some vehicle to reduce the viscosity. The nozzle’s a very fine job: designed for indoor use. In my opinion the stuff shouldn’t be let loose on the market. If she got some in the mouth, and it’s evident she did, it might only be a matter of minutes. Some recorded cases mention nausea and convulsions. In others, the subject has dropped down insensible and died a few seconds later.”
Fox said, “When the woman — Florence — found her, she was on the floor in what Florence describes as a sort of fit.”
“I’ll see Florence next,” Alleyn said.
“And when Dr. Harkness and Mr. Templeton arrived she was dead,” Fox concluded.
“Where is Harkness?” Dr. Curtis demanded. “He’s pretty damn casual, isn’t he? He ought to have shown up at once.”
“He was flat-out with a hangover among the exotics in the conservatory,” Alleyn said. “I stirred him up to look at Mr. Richard Dakers, who was in a great tizzy before he knew there was anything to have a tizzy about. When I talked to him he fainted.”
“What a mob!” Curtis commented in disgust.
“Curtis, if you’ve finished here I think you’ll find your colleague in reasonably working order downstairs.”
“He’d better be. Everything is fixed now. I’ll do the p.m. tonight.”
“Good. Fox, you and I had better press on. We’ve got an office. Third on the right from here.”
They found Gracefield outside the door looking scandalized.
“I’m very sorry, I’m sure, sir,” he said, “but the keys on this landing appear to have been removed. If you require to lock up…”
“ ’T, ’t!” Fox said and dived in his pocket. “Thoughtless of me! Try this one.”
Gracefield coldly accepted it. He showed Alleyn into a small pleasantly furnished study and left Fox to look after himself, which he did very comfortably.
“Will there be anything further, sir?” Gracefield asked Alleyn.
“Nothing. This will do admirably.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Here,” Fox said, “are the other keys. They’re interchangeable, which is why I took the liberty of removing them.”
Gracefield received them without comment and retired.
“I always seem to hit it off better,” Fox remarked, “with the female servants,”
“No doubt they respond more readily to your unbridled body-urge,” said Alleyn.
“That’s one way of putting it, Mr. Alleyn,” Fox primly conceded.
“And the other is that I tipped that antarctic monument. Never mind. You’ll have full play in a minute with Florence. Take a look at this room. It was Mr. Richard Dakers’s study. I suppose he now inhabits a bachelor flat somewhere, but he was adopted and brought up by the Templetons. Here you have his boyhood, adolescence and early maturity in microcosm. The usual school groups on one wall. Note the early dramatic interest. On the other three, his later progress. O.U.D.S. Signed photographs of lesser lights succeeded by signed photographs of greater ones. Sketches from unknown designers followed by the full treatment from famous designers and topped up by Saracen. The last is for a production that opened three years ago and closed last week. Programme of Command Performance. Several framed photographs of Miss Mary Bellamy, signed with vociferous devotion. One small photograph of Mr. Charles Templeton. A calender on the desk to support the theory that he left the house a year ago. Books from E. Nesbit to Samuel Beckett. Who’s Who in the Theatre and Spotlight and cast an eye at this one, will you?”
He pulled out a book and showed it to Fox. “Handbook of Poisons by a Medical Practitioner. Bookplate: ‘Ex Libris C. H. Templeton.’ Let’s see if the medical practitioner has anything to say about pest killers. Here we are. Poisons of Vegetable Origin. Tobacco. Alkaloid of.” He read for a moment or two. “Rather scanty. Only one case quoted. Gentleman who swallowed nicotine from a bottle and died quietly in thirty seconds after heaving a deep sigh. Warnings about agricultural use of. And here are the newer concoctions including HETP and TEPP. Exceedingly deadly and to be handled with the greatest care. Ah, well!”