“Him! Nice lot of help he give, I don’t think! Silly with what he’d taken and knew it. Couldn’t make up his mind where he was or what he was wanted for till the Colonel shoved ice down his neck. Even then he was stupid-like and had to be pushed upstairs. For all we know,” Florence said, “ ’e might of saved ’er. For all we know! But when ’e got there it was over and in my opinion ’e’s got it on ’is conscience for the rest of ’is days. And that’s no error. Dr. Harkness!”
Alleyn asked her to describe, in detail, the state of the room when she first went into it. She remembered nothing but her mistress and when he pressed her to try, he thought she merely drew on what she saw after she returned.
He said, “We’ve almost finished, but there’s one question I must ask you. Do you know of anyone who had cause to wish for her death?”
She thought this over, warily. “There’s plenty,” she said, “that was jealous of her and there’s some that acted treacherous. Some that called themselves friends.”
“In the profession?” Alleyn ventured.
“Ah! Miss Kate Cavendish, who’d never have got further than Brighton Pier in the off-season without the Lady hadn’t looked after ’er! Mr. Albert Smith, pardon the slip, I should of said Saracen. But for her ’e’d of stuck behind ’is counter in the Manchester department. Look what she done for them and how do they pay ’er back? Only this morning!”
“What happened this morning?”
“Sauce and treachery was what happened.”
“That doesn’t really answer my question, does it?”
She stood up. “It’s all the answer you’ll get. You know your own business best, I suppose. But if she’s been murdered, there’s only one that had the chance. Why waste your time?”
“Only one?” Alleyn said. “Do you really think so?”
For the first time she looked frightened, but her answer was unexpected. “I don’t want what I’ve said to go no further,” she said with a look at Fox, who had been quietly taking notes. “I don’t fancy being quoted, particularly in some quarters. There’s some that’d turn very nasty if they knew what I said.”
“Old Ninn?” Alleyn suggested. “For one?”
“Smart,” Florence said with spirit, “aren’t you? All right. Her for one. She’s got her fancy like I had mine. Only mine,” Florence said, and her voice was desolate, “mine’s gone where it won’t come back, and that’s the difference.” A spasm of something that might have been hatred crossed her face and she cried out with violence, “I’ll never forgive her! Never. I’ll be even with her no matter what comes out of it, see if I’m not. Clara Plumtree!”
“But what did she do?”
He thought she was going to jib, but suddenly it all came out. It had happened, she said, after the tragedy. Charles Templeton had been taken to his dressing-room and Ninn had appeared on the landing while Florence was taking him a hot bottle. Florence herself had been too agitated to tell her what had happened in any detail. She had given Mr. Templeton the bottle and left him. He was terribly distressed and wanted to be left alone. She had returned to the landing and seen Dr. Harkness and Timon Gantry come out of the bedroom and speak to Mrs. Plumtree, who had then gone into the dressing-room. Florence herself had been consumed with a single overwhelming desire.
“I wanted to see after her. I wanted to look after my Lady. I knew what she’d have liked me to do for her. The way they’d left her! The way she looked! I wasn’t going to let them see her like that and take her away like that. I knew her better than anybody. She’d have wanted her old Floy to look after her.”
She gave a harsh sob but went on very doggedly. She had gone to the bedroom door and found it locked. This, Alleyn gathered, had roused a kind of fury in her. She had walked up and down the landing in an agony of frustration and had then remembered the communicating door between the bedroom and dressing-room. So she had stolen to the door from the landing into the dressing-room and had opened it very carefully, not wishing to disturb Mr. Templeton. She had found herself face to face with Mrs. Plumtree.
It must, Alleyn thought, have been an extraordinary scene. The two women had quarrelled in whispers. Florence had demanded to be allowed to go through into the bedroom. Mrs. Plumtree had refused. Then Florence had told her what she wanted to do.
“I told her! I told her I was the only one to lay my poor girl out and make her look more like herself. She said I couldn’t. She said she wasn’t to be touched by doctor’s orders. Doctor’s orders! I’d of pulled her away and gone through. I’d got me hands on ’er to do it, but it was too late.”
She turned to Fox. “He’d come in. He was coming upstairs. She said, ‘That’s the police. D’you want to get yourself locked up?’ I had to give over and I went to my room.”
“I’m afraid she was right, Florence.”
“Are you! That shows how much you know! I wasn’t to touch the body! Me! Me, that loved her. All right! So what was Clara Plumtree doing in the bedroom? Now!”
“What!” Fox ejaculated. “In the bedroom? Mrs. Plumtree?”
“Ah!” Florence cried out in a kind of triumph. “Her! She’d been in there herself and let her try and deny it!”
Alleyn said, “How do you know she’d been in the bedroom?”
“How? Because I heard the tank filling and the basin tap running in the bathroom beyond. She’d been in there doing what it was my right to do. Laying her hands on my poor girl.”
“But why do you suppose this? Why?”
Her lips trembled and she rubbed her hand across them. “Why! Why! I’ll tell you why. Because she smelt of that scent. Smelt of it, I tell you, so strong it would sicken you. So if you’re going to lock anybody up, you can start on Clara Plumtree.”
Her mouth twisted. Suddenly she burst into tears and blundered out of the room.
Fox shut the door after her and removed his spectacles. “A tartar,” he observed.
“Yes,” Alleyn agreed. “A faithful, treacherous, jealous, pig-headed tartar. You never know how they’ll cut up in a crisis. Never. And I fancy, for our pains, we’ve got a brace of them in this party.”
As if to confirm this opinion there was a heavy single bang on the door. It swung violently open and there, on the threshold, was Old Ninn Plumtree with P.C. Philpott, only less red-faced than herself, towering in close attendance.
“Lay a finger on me, young man,” Old Ninn was saying, “and I’ll make a public example of you.”
“I’m sure I’m very sorry, sir,” said Philpott. “The lady insists on seeing you and short of taking her in charge I don’t seem to be able to prevent it.”
“All right, Philpott,” Alleyn said. “Come in, Ninn. Come in.”
She did so. Fox resignedly shut the door. He put a chair behind Ninn, but she disregarded it. She faced Alleyn over her own folded arms. To look in his face she was obliged to tilt her own acutely backwards and in doing so gave out such an astonishingly potent effluvium that she might have been a miniature volcano smouldering with port and due to erupt. Her voice was sepulchral and her manner truculent.