False Scent (21 page)

“Ah!” Charles sighed and closed his eyes. “Thank God for that.” He moved restlessly and his breath came short. “It’s all these allusions and hints and evasions…” he began excitedly. “Why can’t I be told things! Why not? Do you suspect
me
! Do you? Then for Christ’s sake let’s have it and be done with it.”

Harkness came over to the bed. “This won’t do at all,” he said and to Alleyn, “Out.”

“Yes, of course,” Alleyn said and went out. He heard Charles panting, “But I
want
to talk to him,” and Harkness trying to reassure him.

When Marchant went into the drawing-room Timon Gantry, Colonel Warrender, Pinky Cavendish and Bertie Saracen were sitting disconsolately in armchairs before a freshly tended fire. Richard and Anelida were together at some remove from the others and P.C. Philpott attended discreetly in the background. When Marchant came in, Pinky and Bertie made a little dash at him and Richard stood up. Marchant kissed Pinky with ritual solemnity, squeezed Bertie’s arm, nodded at Gantry, and advanced upon Richard with soft extended hand.

“Dear boy!” he said. “What can one say! Oh my
dear
Dicky!”

Richard appeared, to permit, rather than return, a long pressure of his hand. Marchant added a manly grip of his shoulder and moved on to acknowledge, more briefly, Anelida and Colonel Warrender. His prestige was unmistakable. He said any number of highly appropriate things. They listened to him dolefully and appeared to be relieved when at last Alleyn came in.

Alleyn said, “Before going any further, Mr. Marchant, I think I should make it quite clear that any questions I may put to you will be raised with the sole object of clearing innocent persons of suspicion and of helping towards the solution of an undoubted case of homicide. Mary Bellamy has been murdered; I believe by someone who is now in this house. You will understand that matters of personal consideration or professional reticence can’t be allowed to obstruct an investigation of this sort. Any attempt to withhold information may have disastrous results. On the other hand information that turns out to be irrelevant, as yours, of course, may, will be entirely wiped out. Is that understood?”

Gantry said, “In my opinion, Monty, we should take legal advice.”

Marchant looked thoughtfully at him.

“You are at liberty to do so,” Alleyn said. “You are also at liberty to refuse to answer to any or all questions until the arrival of your solicitor. Suppose you hear the questions and then decide.”

Marchant examined his hands, lifted his gaze to Alleyn’s face and said, “What are they?”

There was a restless movement among the others.

“First. What exactly was Mrs. Templeton’s, or perhaps in this connection I should say Miss Bellamy’s, position in the firm of Marchant & Company?”

Marchant raised his eyebrows. “A leading and distinguished artist who played exclusively for our management.”

“Any business connection other than that?”

“Certainly,” he said at once. “She had a controlling interest.”

“
Monty
!” Bertie cried out.

“Dear boy, an examination of our shareholders list would give it.”

“Has she held this position for some time?”

“Since 1956. Before that it was vested in her husband, but he transferred his holdings to her in that year.”

“I had no idea he had financial interests in the theatre world.”

“These were his only ones, I believe. After the war we were in considerable difficulties. Like many other managements we were threatened with a complete collapse. You may say that he saved us.”

“In taking this action was he influenced by his wife’s connections with the Management?”

“She brought the thing to his notice, but fundamentally I should say he believed in the prospect of our recovery and expansion. In the event he proved to be fully justified.”

“Why did he transfer his share to her, do you know?”

“I don’t know, but I can conjecture. His health is precarious. He’s — he was — a devoted husband. He may have been thinking of death duties.”

“Yes, I see.”

Marchant said, “It’s so warm in here,” and unbuttoned his overcoat. Fox helped him out of it. He sat down, very elegantly and crossed his legs. The others watched him anxiously.

The door opened and Dr. Harkness came in. He nodded at Alleyn and said, “Better, but he’s had as much as he can take.”

“Anyone with him?”

“The old nurse. He’ll settle down now. No more visits, mind.”

“Right.”

Dr. Harkness sat heavily on the sofa and Alleyn turned again to Marchant.

“Holding, as you say, a controlling interest,” he said, “she must have been a power to reckon with, as far as other employees of the Management were concerned.”

The lids drooped a little over Marchant’s very pale eyes. “I really don’t think I follow you,” he said.

“She was, everyone agrees, a temperamental woman. For instance, this afternoon, we are told, she cut up very rough indeed. In the conservatory.”

The heightened tension of his audience could scarcely have been more apparent if they’d begun to twang like bow-strings, but none of them spoke.

“She would throw a temperament,” Marchant said coolly, “if she felt the occasion for it.”

“And she felt the occasion in this instance?”

“Quite so.”

“Suppose, for the sake of argument, she had pressed for the severance of some long-standing connection with your management? Would she have carried her point?”

“I’m afraid I don’t follow that either.”

“I’ll put it brutally. If she’d demanded that you sign no more contracts with, say, Mr. Gantry or Mr. Saracen or Miss Cavendish, would you have had to toe the line?”

“I would have talked softly and expected her to calm down.”

“But if she’d stuck to it?” Alleyn waited for a moment and then took his risk. “Come,” he said. “She did issue an ultimatum this afternoon.”

Saracen scrambled to his feet. “There!” he shouted. “What did I tell you! Somebody’s blown the beastly gaff and now we’re to suffer for it. I
said
we should talk first, ourselves, and be frank and forthcoming and see how right I was!”

Gantry said, “For God’s sake hold your tongue, Bertie.”

“What do we get for holding our tongues’?” He pointed to Warrender. “We get an outsider giving the whole thing away with both hands. I bet you, Timmy. I bet you anything you like.”

“Utter balderdash!” Warrender exclaimed. “I don’t know what you think you’re talking about, Saracen.”

“Oh pooh! You’ve told the Inspector or Commander or Great Panjandrum or whatever he is. You’ve
told
him.”

“On the contrary,” Gantry said, “you’ve told him yourself. You
fool
, Bertie.”

Pinky Cavendish, in what seemed to be an agony of exasperation, cried out, “Oh
why
, for God’s sake, can’t we all admit we’re no good at this sort of hedging! I can! Freely
and
without prejudice to the rest of you, if that’s what you’re all afraid of. And what’s more, I’m going to. Look here, Mr. Alleyn, this is what happened to me in the conservatory. Mary accused me of conspiring against her and told Monty it was either her or me as far as the Management was concerned. Just that. And if it really came to the point I can assure you it’d be her and not me. You know, Monty, and we
all
know, that with her name and star-ranking, Mary was worth a damn sight more than me at the box-office
and
in the firm. All right! This very morning you’d handed me my first real opportunity with the Management. She was well able, if she felt like it, to cook my goose. But I’m no more capable of murdering her than I am of taking her place with her own particular public. And when you hear an actress admit that kind of thing,” Pinky added, turning to Alleyn, “you can bet your bottom dollar she’s talking turkey.”

Alleyn said, “Produce this sort of integrity on the stage, Miss Cavendish, and nobody will be able to cook your goose for you.” He looked round at Pinky’s deeply perturbed audience, “Has anybody got anything to add to this?” he added.

After a pause, Richard said, “Only that I’d like to endorse what Pinky said and to add that, as you and everybody else know, I was just as deeply involved as she. More so.”

“Dicky darling!” Pinky said warmly. “No! Where you are now! Offer a comedy on the open market and watch the managements bay like ravenous wolves.”

“Without Mary?” Marchant asked of nobody in particular.

“It’s quite true,” Richard said, “that I wrote specifically for Mary.”

“Not always. And no reason,” Gantry intervened, “why you shouldn’t write now for somebody else.” Once again he bestowed his most disarming smile on Anelida.

“Why not indeed!” Pinky cried warmly and laid her hand on Anelida’s.

“Ah!” Richard said, putting his arm about her. “That’s another story. Isn’t it, darling?”

Wave after wave of unconsidered gratitude flowed through Anelida. “These are my people,” she thought. “I’m in with them for the rest of my life.”

“The fact remains, however,” Gantry was saying to Alleyn, “that Bertie, Pinky, and Richard all stood to lose by Mary’s death. A point you might care to remember.”

“Oh lawks!” Bertie said. “
Aren’t
we all suddenly generous and noble-minded! Everybody loves everybody! Safety in numbers, or so they say. Or do they?”

“In this instance,” Alleyn said, “they well might.” He turned to Marchant. “Would you agree that, with the exception of her husband, yourself and Colonel Warrender, Miss Bellamy issued some kind of ultimatum against each member of the group in the conservatory?”

“Would I?” Marchant said easily. “Well, yes. I think I would.”

“To the effect that it was either they or she and you could take your choice?”

“More or less,” he murmured, looking at his fingernails.

Gantry rose to his enormous height and stood over Marchant.

“It would be becoming in you, Monty,” he said dangerously, “if you acknowledged that as far as I enter into the picture the question of occupational anxiety does not arise. I choose my managements; they do not choose me.”

Marchant glanced at him. “Nobody questions your prestige, I imagine, Timmy. I certainly don’t.”

“Or mine, I hope,” said Bertie, rallying. “The offers I’ve turned down for the Management! Well, I mean to say! Face it, Monty dear, if Mary
had
bullied you into breaking off with Dicky and Timmy and Pinky and me, you’d have been in a very pretty pickle yourself.”

“I am not,” Marchant said, “a propitious subject for bullying.”

“No.” Bertie agreed. “Evidently.” And there followed a deadly little pause. “I’d be obliged to everybody,” he added rather breathlessly, “if they wouldn’t set about reading horrors of any sort into what was an utterly unmeaningful little observation.”

“In common,” Warrender remarked, “with the rest of your conversation.”

“Oh but what a catty big Colonel we’ve got!” Bertie said.

Marchant opened his cigarette case. “It seems,” he observed, “incumbent on me to point out that, unlike the rest of you, I am ignorant of the circumstances. After Mary’s death, I left the house at the request of—” he put a cigarette between his lips and turned his head slightly to look at Fox —“yes, at the request of this gentleman, who merely informed me that there had been a fatal accident. Throughout the entire time that Mary was absent until Florence made her announcement, I was in full view of about forty guests and those of you who had not left the drawing-room. I imagine I do not qualify for the star role.” He lit his cigarette. “Or am I wrong?” he asked Alleyn.

“As it turns out, Monty,” Gantry intervened, “you’re dead wrong. It appears that the whole thing was laid on before Mary went to her room.”

Marchant waited for a moment, and then said, “You astonish me.”

“Fancy!” Bertie exclaimed and added in an exasperated voice, “I
do
wish, oh
how
I do wish, dearest Monty, that you would stop being a parody of your smooth little self and get down to tin-tacks (
why
tin-tacks, one wonders?) and admit that, like all the rest of us, you qualify for the homicide stakes.”

“And what,” Alleyn asked, “have you got to say to that, Mr. Marchant?”

An uneven flush mounted over Marchant’s cheekbones. “Simply,” he said, “that I think everybody has, most understandably, become overwrought by this tragedy and that, as a consequence, a great deal of nonsense is being bandied about on all hands. And, as an afterthought, that I agree with Timon Gantry. I prefer to take no further part in this discussion until I have consulted my solicitor.”

“By all means,” Alleyn said. “Will you ring him up? The telephone is over there in the corner.”

Marchant leant a little further back in his chair. “I’m afraid that’s quite out of the question,” he said. “He lives in Buckinghamshire. I can’t possibly call him up at this time of night.”

“In that case you will give me your own address, if you please, and I shan’t detain you any longer.”

“My address is in the telephone book and I can assure you that you are not detaining me now nor are you likely to do so in the future.” He half-closed his eyes. “I resent,” he said, “the tone of this interview, but I prefer to keep observation — if that is the accepted police jargon — upon its sequel. I’ll leave when it suits me to do so.”

“You can’t,” Colonel Warrender suddenly announced in a parade-ground voice, “take that tone with the police, sir.”

“Can’t I?” Marchant murmured. “I promise you, my dear Colonel, I can take whatever tone I bloody well choose with whoever I bloody well like.”

Into the dead silence that followed this announcement, there intruded a distant but reminiscent commotion. A door slammed and somebody came running up the hall.

“My
God
, what now!” Bertie Saracen cried out. With the exception of Marchant and Dr. Harkness they were all on their feet when Florence, grotesque in tin curling pins, burst into the room.

In an appalling parody of her fatal entrance she stood there, mouthing at them.

Alleyn strode over to her and took her by the wrist. “What is it?” he said. “Speak up.”