Alleyn said, “That’s all perfectly clear so far. Then did Miss Bellamy and the nanny — Mrs. Plumtree, isn’t it? — go upstairs together?”
Florence, blankly staring, said, “No.”
“They didn’t? What happened exactly?”
Ninn, it appeared, had gone first.
“Why? What delayed Miss Bellamy?”
“A photographer come butting in.”
“He took a photograph of her, did he?”
“That’s right. By the front door.”
“Alone?”
“He came in. The chap wanted him in too.”
“Who?”
Her hands ground together in her lap. After waiting for a moment he asked, “Don’t you want to answer that one?”
“I want to know,” Florence burst out, “if it’s murder. If it’s murder I don’t care who it was, I want to see ’er righted. Never mind who! You can be mistaken in people, as I often told her. Them you think nearest and dearest are likely as not the ones that you didn’t ought to trust. What I told her. Often and often.”
How vindictive, Alleyn wondered, was Florence? Of what character, precisely, was her relationship with her mistress? She was looking at him now, guardedly but with a kind of arrogance. “What I want to know,” she repeated, “is it murder?”
He said, “I believe it may be.”
She muttered, “You ought to know: being trained to it. They tell you the coppers always know.”
From what background had Florence emerged nearly thirty years ago into Miss Bellamy’s dressing-room? She was speaking now like a Bermondsey girl. Fly and wary. Her voice, hitherto negative and respectable, had ripened into strong Cockney.
Alleyn decided to take a long shot. He said, “I expect you know Mr. Richard Dakers very well, don’t you?”
“Hardly help meself, could I?”
“No, indeed. He was more like a son than a ward to her, I daresay.”
Florence stared at him out of two eyes that closely resembled, and were about as eloquent as, boot-buttons.
“Acted like it,” she said. “If getting nothing but the best goes for anything. And taking it as if it was ’is right.”
“Well,” Alleyn said lightly, “he’s repaid her with two very successful plays, hasn’t he?”
“Them! What’d they have been without her? See another actress in the lead! Oh dear! What a change! She made them, he couldn’t have touched it on ’is own. She’d have breathed life into a corpse,” Florence said and then looked sick.
Alleyn said, “Mr. Dakers left the house before the speeches, I understand?”
“He did. What a way to behave!”
“But he came back, didn’t he?”
“He’s back now,” she said quickly. “You seen ’im, didn’t you?” Gracefield, evidently, had talked.
“I don’t mean now. I mean between the time he first left before the speeches and the time when he returned about half an hour ago. Wasn’t there another visit in between?”
“That’s right,” she said under her breath.
“Before the birthday speech?”
“That’s right.”
“Take the moment we’re discussing. Mrs. Plumtree had gone upstairs, Miss Bellamy was in the hall. You had come out to see if she needed you.” He waited for a moment and then took his gamble. “Did he walk in at the front door? At that moment?”
He thought she was going to say “No”; she seemed to be struggling with some kind of doubt. Then she nodded.
“Did he speak to Miss Bellamy?” She nodded again.
“What about, do you know?”
“I didn’t catch. I was at the other end of the hall.”
“What happened then?”
“They were photographed and then they went upstairs.”
“And you?”
“I went up. By the back stairs,” said Florence.
“Where to?”
“I went along to the landing.”
“And did you go in to her?”
“Mrs. Plumtree was on the landing,” Florence said abruptly. Alleyn waited. “They was talking inside — him and the Lady. So I didn’t disturb her.”
“And you could hear them talking?”
She said angrily, “What say we could? We weren’t snooping, if that’s what you mean. We didn’t hear a word. She laughed — once.”
“And then?”
“He came out and went downstairs.”
“And did you go in to Miss Bellamy?”
“No,” Florence said loudly.
“Why not?”
“I didn’t reckon she’d want me.”
“But why?”
“I didn’t reckon she would.”
“Had you,” he asked without emphasis, “had a row of some sort with Miss Bellamy?”
She went very white. “What are you getting at?” she demanded and then, “I told you. I understood her. Better than anyone.”
“And there’d been no trouble between you?”
“No!” she said loudly.
He decided not to press this point. “So what did you do?” he asked. “You and Mrs. Plumtree?”
“Stayed where we was. Until…”
“Yes?”
“Until we heard something.”
“What was that?”
“Inside her room. Something. Kind of a crash.”
“What was it, do you think?”
“I wouldn’t know. I was going in to see, whether or no, when I heard Mr. Templeton in the hall. Calling. I go down to the half-landing,” Florence continued, changing her tense for the narrative present. “He calls up, they’re waiting for her. So I go back to fetch her. And…” for the first time her voice trembled. “And I walk in.”
“Yes,” Alleyn said. “Before we go on, Florence, will you tell me this? Did Mr. Richard at this time seem at all upset?”
“That’s right,” she said, again with that air of defiance.
“When he arrived?” She nodded. “I see. And when he came out of Miss Bellamy’s room?”
And now there was no mistaking Florence’s tone. It was one of pure hatred.
“ ’Im? ’E looked ghasterly. ’E looked,” said Florence, “like death.”
As if, by this one outburst, she had bestowed upon herself some kind of emotional bloodletting, Florence returned to her earlier manner — cagey, grudging, implicitly resentful. Alleyn could get no more from her about Richard Dakers’s behaviour. When he suggested, obliquely, that perhaps Old Ninn might be more forthcoming, Florence let fall a solitary remark. “Her!” she said. “You won’t get her to talk. Not about him!” and refused to elaborate.
He had learned to recognize the point at which persistence defeats its own end. He took her on to the time where she entered the bedroom and discovered her mistress. Here, Florence exhibited a characteristic attitude towards scenes of violence. It was, he thought, as if she recognized in her own fashion their epic value and was determined to do justice to the current example.
When she went into the room, Mary Bellamy was on her knees, her hands to her throat and her eyes starting. She had tried to speak but had succeeded only in making a terrible retching noise. Florence had attempted to raise her, to ask her what had happened, but her mistress, threshing about on the floor, had been as unresponsive to these ministrations as an animal in torment. Florence had thought she heard the word “doctor.” Quite beside herself, she had rushed out of the room and downstairs. “Queer,” she said. That was what she had felt. “Queer.” It was “queer” that at such a moment she should concern herself with Miss Bellamy’s nonappearance at her party. It was “queer” that a hackneyed theatre phrase should occur to her in such a crisis but it had and she remembered using it, “Is there a doctor in the house?” though, of course, she knew, really that Dr. Harkness was one of the guests. On the subject of Dr. Harkness she was violent.