The room was dark, the closed window curtains admitting only a sliver or two of daylight. It smelt thickly of material, carpet, stale scent, dust and of something indefinable and extremely unpleasant. Sister Jackson gave out a short hiss of distaste. Fox switched on the lights. He and Alleyn moved into the centre of the room. Sister Jackson remained by the door.
The room had an air of suspended animation. The bed was unmade. Its occupant might have just left it to go into the bathroom. One of the pillows and the lower sheet were stained as if something had been spilt on them. Another pillow lay, face-down, at the foot of the bed. The bottle of Scotch, glass and tablets were all missing and were no doubt still in the custody of the local police, but an unwrapped parcel, obviously a book, together with a vanity box and the half-empty box of marzipan confections lay on the table alongside a lamp. Alleyn peered down the top of a rose-coloured shade and saw the glass slipper in place over the bulb. He took it off and examined it. There was no oil left but it retained a faint reek of sweet almonds. He put it aside.
The dressing-table carried, together with an array of bottles and pots, three framed photographs, all of which he had seen that morning on and in Sybil Foster’s desk at Quintern: her pretty daughter, her second husband; the regimental group with her handsome young first husband prominent among the officers. This was a less faded print and Alleyn looked closely at it, marvelling that such an Adonis could have sired the undelicious Claude. He peered at an enormous corporal in the back row who squinted amicably back at him. Alleyn managed to make out the man’s badge: antlers enclosed by something — what? — a heather wreath? Wasn’t there some nickname? “The Spikes”? That was it. “The Duke of Montrose’s” nicknamed “The Spikes.” Alleyn wondered how soon after this photograph was taken Maurice Carter had died. Claude would have been a child of three or four, he supposed, and remembered Verity Preston’s story of the lost Black Alexander stamp. What the hell is it, he thought, still contemplating the large corporal, that’s nagging on the edge of my memory.
He went into the bathroom. A large bunch of dead lilies lay in the hand-basin. A dirty greenish stain showed where water had drained away. A new and offensive smell rose from the basin. “ ‘Lilies that fester,’ ” he reminded himself, “ ‘smell far worse than weeds.’ ”
He returned to the bedroom and found Fox, placid in attendance, and Sister Jackson looking resentful.
“And this,” Alleyn said, “is how it was when you were called in?”
“The things on the table have been removed. And there’s no body,” she pointed out sourly.
“No more there is.”
“It’s disgusting,” said Sister Jackson. “Being left like this.”
“Horrid, isn’t it? Could you just give us a picture of how things were when you arrived on the scene?”
She did so, eyeing him closely and with a certain air of appraisal. It emerged that she had been in her room and thinking of retiring when Dr. Schramm telephoned her, asking her to come at once to Number 20. There she found him stooping over the bed on which lay Mrs. Foster, dead and cooling. Dr. Schramm had drawn her attention to the table and its contents and told her to go to the surgery and fetch the equipment needed to empty the stomach. She was to do this without saying anything to anyone she met.
“We knew it was far too late to be of any use,” she said, “but we did it. Dr. Schramm said the contents should be kept and they were. In a sealed jar. We had to move the table away from the bed but nothing else was disturbed. Dr. Schramm was very particular about that. Very.”
“And then?”
“We informed Mr. Delaware, the manager. He was upset, of course. They don’t like that sort of thing. Then we got Dr. Field-Innis to come over from Upper Quintern and he said the police should be informed. We couldn’t see why but he said he thought they ought to be. So they were.”
Alleyn noticed the increased usage of the first person plural in this narrative and wondered if he only imagined that it sounded possessive.
He thanked Sister Jackson warmly and handed her a glossy photograph of Mr. Fox’s Aunt Elsie which was kept for this purpose. Aunt Elsie had become a kind of code-person between Alleyn and Fox and was sometimes used as a warning signal when one of them wished to alert the other without being seen to do so. Sister Jackson failed to identify Aunt Elsie and was predictably intrigued. He returned the photograph to its envelope and said they needn’t trouble her any longer. Having dropped his handkerchief over his hand, he opened the door to her.
“Pay no attention,” he said. “We do these things, hoping they give us the right image. Goodbye, Sister.” In passing between him and Fox her hand brushed his. She rustled off down the passage, one hundred and fifty pounds of active femininity if she was an ounce.
“Cripes,” said Fox thoughtfully.
“Did she establish contact?”
“En passant,” he confessed in his careful French. “What about you, Mr. Alleyn?”
“En passant, moi aussi.”
“Do you reckon,” Mr. Fox mused, “she knew about the engagement?”
“Do you?”
“If she did, I’d say she didn’t much fancy it,” said Fox.
“We’d better push on. You might pack up that glass slipper, Fox. We’ll get Sir James to look at it.”
“In case somebody put prussic acid in it?”
“Something like that. After all there was and is a strong smell of almonds. Only ‘Oasis,’ you’ll tell me, and I’m afraid you’ll be right.”
On their way out the receptionist said she had made enquiries as to the electrical repairs man. Nobody knew anything about him except the girl who had given him Mrs. Foster’s flowers. He told her he had been sent to repair a lamp in Number 20 and the lady had asked him to collect her flowers when he went down to his car to get a new bulb for the bedside lamp. She couldn’t really describe him except that he was slight, short and well-spoken and didn’t wear overall but did wear spectacles.
“What d’you make of that?” said Alleyn when they got outside.
“Funny,” said Fox. “Sussy. Whatever way you look at it, not convincing.”
“There wasn’t a new bulb in the bedside lamp. Old bulb, murky on top. Ready to conk out.”
“Lilies in the basin, though.”
“True.”
“What now, then?”
Alleyn looked at his watch. “I’ve got a date with the coroner,” he said. “In one hour. At Upper Quintern. In the meantime Bailey and Thompson had better give these premises the full treatment. Every inch of them.”
“Looking for what?”
“All the usual stuff. Latent prints, including Sister J.’s on Aunt Elsie, of course. Schramm’s will be on the book wrapping and Prunella Foster’s and her mother’s on the vanity box. We’ve got to remember the room was done over in the morning by the housemaids so anything that crops up will have been established during the day. We haven’t finished with that sickening little room, Br’er Fox. Not by a long bloody chalk.”
Chapter 5: Greengages (II) Room 20
i
“—in view of which circumstances, members of the jury,” said the coroner, “you may consider that the appropriate decision would be again to adjourn these proceedings sine die.”
Not surprisingly the jury embraced this suggestion and out into the age-old quietude of Upper Quintern village walked the people who, in one way or another, were involved, or had been obliged to concern themselves in the death of Sybil Foster: her daughter, her solicitor, her oldest friend, her gardener, the doctor she had disregarded and the doctor who had become her fiancé. And her stepson, who by her death inherited the life interest left by her first husband. Her last and preposterous Will and Testament could not upset this entailment nor, according to Mr. Rattisbon, could this Will itself be upset. G. M. Johnson and Marleena Briggs, chambermaids on the second floor of the hotel, confessed with uneasy giggles that they had witnessed Mrs. Foster’s signature a week before she died.