If ever he had recognized this element he did so now in Dr. Basil Schramm. It declared itself in the brief, perfectly correct but experienced glance that he gave his nurse. It was latent in the co-ordinated ease with which he rose to his feet and extended his hand, in the boldish glance of his widely separated eyes and in the folds that joined his nostrils to the corners of his mouth. Dr. Schramm was not unlike a better-looking version of King Charles II.
As a postscript to these observations Alleyn thought that Dr. Schramm looked like a heavy, if controlled, drinker.
The nurse left them.
“I’m so sorry to keep you waiting,” said Dr. Schramm. “Do sit down.” He glanced at Alleyn’s card and then at him. “Should I say Superintendent or Mr. or just plain Alleyn?”
“It couldn’t matter less,” said Alleyn. “This is Inspector Fox.”
“Sit, sit, sit, do.”
They sat.
“Well, now, what’s the trouble?” asked Dr. Schramm. “Don’t tell me its more about this unhappy business of Mrs. Foster?”
“I’m afraid I do tell you. It’s just that, as I’m sure you realize, we have to tidy up rather exhaustively.”
“Oh, yes. That — of course.”
“The local Force has asked us to come in on the case. I’m sorry but this does entail a tramp over ground that I daresay you feel has already been explored ad nauseam.”
“Well—” He raised his immaculately kept hands and let them fall. “Needs must,” he said and laughed.
“That’s about it,” Alleyn agreed. “I believe her room has been kept as it was at the time of her death? Locked up and sealed.”
“Certainly. Your local people asked for it. To be frank it’s inconvenient but never mind.”
“Won’t be long now,” said Alleyn cheerfully.
“I’m glad to hear it. I’ll take you up to her room.”
“If I could have a word before we go.”
“Oh? Yes, of course.”
“I really wanted to ask you if you were at all, however slightly, uneasy about Mrs. Foster’s general health and spirits?”
Schramm started to make an instantly controlled gesture. “I’ve stated repeatedly: to her solicitors, to the coroner and to the police that Mrs. Foster was in improved health and in good spirits when I last saw her before I went up to London.”
“And when you returned she was dead.”
“Precisely.”
“You didn’t know, did you, that she had Parkinson’s disease?”
“That is by no means certain.”
“Dr. Field-Innis thought so.”
“And is, of course, entitled to his opinion. In any case it is not a positive diagnosis. As I understand it, Dr. Field-Innis merely considers it a possibility.”
“So does Sir James Curtis.”
“Very possibly. As it happens I have no professional experience of Parkinson’s disease and am perfectly ready to bow to their opinion. Of course, if Mrs. Foster had been given any inkling—”
“Dr. Field-Innis is emphatic that she had not—”
“—there would certainly have been cause for anxiety, depression—”
“Did she strike you as being anxious or depressed?”
“No.”
“On the contrary?”
“On the contrary. Quite. She was—”
“Yes?”
“In particularly good form,” said Dr. Schramm.
“And yet you are persuaded it was suicide?”
An ornate little clock on Dr. Schramm’s desk ticked through some fifteen seconds before he spoke. He raised his clasped hands to his pursed lips and stared over them at Alleyn. Mr. Fox, disregarded, coughed slightly.
With a definitive gesture — abrupt and incisive, Dr. Schramm clapped his palms down on the desk and leant back in his chair.
“I had hoped,” he said, “that it wouldn’t come to this.”
Alleyn waited.
“I have already told you she was in particularly good form. That was an understatement. She gave me every reason to believe she was happier than she had been for many years.”
He got to his feet, looked fixedly at Alleyn and said loudly: “She had become engaged to be married.”
The lines from nostril to mouth tightened into a smile of sorts.
“I had gone up to London,” he said, “to buy the ring.”
iv
“I knew, of course, that it would probably have to come out,” said Dr. Schramm, “but I hoped to avoid that. She was so very anxious that we should keep our engagement secret for the time being. The thought of making a sort of — well, a posthumous announcement at the inquest — was indescribably distasteful. One knew how the press would set about it and the people in this place — I loathed the whole thought of it.”
He took one or two steps about the room. He moved with short strides, holding his shoulders rigid like a soldier. “I don’t offer this as an excuse. The thing has been a — an unspeakable shock to me. I can’t believe it was suicide. Not when I remember — Not unless something that I can’t even guess at happened between the time when I said goodbye to her and my return.”
“You checked with the staff, of course?”
“Of course. She had dinner in bed and watched television. She was perfectly well. No doubt you’ve seen the report of the inquest and know all this. The waiter collected her tray round about eight-thirty. She was in her bathroom and he heard her singing to herself. After that — nothing. Nothing, until I came back. And found her.”
“That must have been a terrible shock.”
Schramm made a brief sound that usually indicates a sort of contempt. “You may say so,” he said. And then, suddenly: “Why have you been called in? What’s it mean? Look here, do you people suspect foul play?”
“Hasn’t the idea occurred to you?” Alleyn asked.
“The idea has. Of course it has. Suicide being inconceivable, the idea occurred. But that’s inconceivable, too. The circumstances. The evidence. Everything. She had no enemies. Who would want to do it? It’s—” He broke off. A look of — what? Sulkiness? Derision? — appeared. It was as if he sneered at himself.
“It was meant to be a secret,” he said.
“Are you wondering if Mrs. Foster did after all confide in somebody about your engagement?”
He stared at Alleyn. “That’s right,” he said. “And then: there were visitors that afternoon, as of course you know.”
“Her daughter and the daughter’s fiancé and Miss Preston.”
“And the gardener.”
“Didn’t he leave his flowers with the receptionist and go away without seeing Mrs. Foster?” Alleyn asked.
“That’s what he says, certainly.”
“It’s what your receptionist says too, Dr. Schramm.”
“Yes. Very well, then. Nothing in that line of thinking. In any case the whole idea is unbelievable. Or ought to be.”
“I gather you don’t much fancy the gardener?”
“A complete humbug, in my opinion. I tried to warn her. Out to get all he could from her. And he has,” said Dr. Schramm.
“Including the right to stay on at Quintern?”
“By God, he wouldn’t have lasted there for long if things had gone differently. I’d have seen to that. And he knew it.”
“You think, then, that he knew about the engagement?”
“I think, poor darling, she’d said something that gave him the idea. As a matter of fact, I ran into him going up to her room one afternoon without asking at the desk. I tore a strip off him and he came back at me with a bloody impertinent sneer. To the effect that I wasn’t yet in a position to — to order her private affairs. I’m afraid I lost my temper and told him that when I was he’d be the first to know it.”