“Would you like another?” Alleyn asked.
“I don’t think so. No. Well, a small one, then.”
The waiter was quick bringing it.
“Right. Now — how was the room? The bedside table? Did you notice the bottle of barbiturates?”
“I didn’t notice. I’ve said so. I just saw she was asleep and I went away.”
“Was the light on in the bathroom?”
This seemed to terrify her. She said: “Do you mean—? Was he there? Whoever it was? Hiding? Watching? No, the door was shut, I mean — I think it was shut.”
“Did you see anybody in the passage? Before you went into the room or when you left it?”
“No.”
“Sure?”
“Yes.”
“There’s that alcove, isn’t there? Where the brooms and vacuum cleaner are kept?”
She nodded. The amorous couple were leaving. The man helped the girl into her coat. They both looked at Alleyn and Sister Jackson. She fumbled in her bag and produced a packet of cigareetes.
Alleyn said: “I’m sorry. I’ve given up and forget to keep any on me. At least I can offer you a light.” He did so and she made a clumsy business of using it. The door swung to behind the couple. The card players had finished their game and decided, noisily, to move into the bar. When they had gone Alleyn said: “You realize, don’t you — well of course you do — that the concocter of this threat must have seen you?”
She stared at him. “Naturally,” she said, attempting, he thought, a sneer.
“Yes,” he said. “It’s a glimpse of the obvious, isn’t it? And you’ll remember that I showed you a lily head that Inspector Fox and I found in the alcove?”
“Of course.”
“And that there were similar lilies in the hand-basin in Mrs. Foster’s bathroom?”
“Naturally. I mean — yes, I saw them afterwards. When we used the stomach pump. We scrubbed up under the bath taps. It was quicker than clearing away the mess in the basin.”
“So it follows as the night the day that the person who dropped the lily head in the alcove was the person who put the flowers in the hand-basin. Does it also follow that this same person was your blackmailer?”
“I — yes. I suppose it might.”
“And does it also follow, do you think, that the blackmailer was the murderer of Mrs. Foster?”
“But you don’t know. You don’t know that she was—that.”
“We believe we do.”
She ought, he thought, to be romping about like a Rubens lady in an Arcadian setting: all sumptuous flesh, no brains and as happy as Larry, instead of quivering like an overdressed jelly in a bar-parlour.
“Sister Jackson,” he said. “Why didn’t you tell the coroner or the police or anyone at all that you went into Room Twenty at about nine o’clock that night and found Mrs. Foster asleep in her bed?”
She opened and shut her smudged lips two or three times, gaping like a fish.
“Nobody asked me,” she said. “Why should I?”
“Are you sure Mrs. Foster was asleep?”
Her lips formed the words but she had no voice. “Of course I am.”
“She wasn’t asleep, was she? She was dead.”
The swing door opened and Basil Schramm walked in. “I thought I’d find you,” he said. “Good evening.”
Chapter 8: Graveyard (II)
i
May i join you?” asked Dr. Schramm. The folds from his nostrils to the corners of his mouth lifted and intensified. It was almost a Mephistophelian grin.
“Do,” said Alleyn and turned to Sister Jackson. “If Sister Jackson approves,” he said.
She looked at nothing, said nothing and compressed her mouth.
“Silence,” Dr. Schramm joked, “gives consent, I hope.” And he sat down.
“What are you drinking?” he invited.
“Not another for me, thank you,” said Alleyn.
“On duty?”
“That’s my story.”
“Dot?”
Sister Jackson stood up. “I’m afraid I must go,” she said to Alleyn and with tolerable success achieved a social manner. “I hadn’t realized it was so late.”
“It isn’t late,” said Schramm. “Sit down.”
She sat down. “First round to the doctor,” thought Alleyn.
“The bell’s by you, Alleyn,” said Schramm. “Do you mind?”
Alleyn pressed the wall-bell above his head. Schramm had leant forward. Alleyn caught a great wave of whiskey and saw that his eyes were bloodshot and not quite in focus.
“I happened to be passing,” he chatted. He inclined his head toward Sister Jackson, “I noticed your car. And yours, Superintendent.”
“Sister Jackson has been kind enough to clear up a detail for us.”
“That’s what’s known as ‘helping the police in their investigation,’ isn’t it? With grim connotations as a rule.”
“You’ve been reading the popular press,” said Alleyn.
The waiter came in. Schramm ordered a large Scotch. “Sure?” he asked them and then, to the waiter. “Correction. Make that two large Scotches.”
Alleyn said: “Not for me. Really.”
“Two large Scotches,” Schramm repeated on a high note. The waiter glanced doubtfully at Alleyn.
“You heard what I said,” Schram insisted. “Two large Scotches.”
Alleyn thought: “This is the sort of situation where one could do with the odd drop of omnipotence. One wrong move from me and it’ll be a balls-up.”
Complete silence set in. The waiter came and went. Dr. Schramm downed one of the two double whiskeys very quickly. The bar-parlour clock ticked. He continued to smile and began on the second whiskey slowly with concentration: absorbing it and cradling the glass. Sister Jackson remained perfectly still.
“What’s she been telling you?” Schramm suddenly demanded. “She’s an inventive lady. You ought to realize that. To be quite, quite frank and honest she’s a liar of the first water. Aren’t you, sweetie?”
“You followed me.”
“It’s some considerable time since I left off doing that, darling.”
Alleyn had the passing thought that it would be nice to hit Dr. Schramm.
“I realy must insist,” Schramm said. “I’m sorry, but you have seen for yourself how things are, here. I realize, perf’ly well, that you will think I had a motive for this crime, if crime it was. Because I am a legatee I’m a suspect. So of course it’s no good my saying that I asked Sybil Foster to marry me. Not,” he said wagging his finger at Alleyn, “not because I’d got my sights set on her money but because I loved her. Which I did, and that,” he added, staring at Sister Jackson, “is precisely where the trouble lies.” His speech was now all over the place like an actor’s in a comic drunken scene. “You wouldn’t have minded if it had been like that. You wouldn’t have minded all that much if you believed I’d come back earlier and killed her for her money. You really are a bitch, aren’t you, Dotty? My God, you even threatened to take to her yourself. Didn’t you? Well, didn’t you? Where’s the bloody waiter?”
He got to his feet, lurched across the table and fetched up with the palms of his hands on the wall, the left supporting him and the right clamped down over the bell-push which could be heard distantly to operate. His face was within three inches of Alleyn’s. Sister Jackson shrank back in her chair.
“Disgusting!” she said.
Alleyn detached Dr. Schramm from the wall and replaced him in his chair. He then moved over to the door, anticipating the return of the waiter. When the man arrived Alleyn showed his credentials.
“The gentleman’s had as much as is good for him,” he said. “Let me handle it. There’s a side door, isn’t there?”