“I locked the door,” Dr. Harkness said, with the air of a schoolboy hoping for praise. He produced the key.

“Very commendable, Doctor,” said Fox comfortably.

“Nothing’s been moved. The whole thing speaks for itself.”

“Quite so. Very sad.”

Fox laid his bowler on the bed, knelt by the sheet and turned it back. “Strong perfume,” he said. He drew out his spectacles, placed them and looked closely into the dreadful face.

“You can see for yourself,” Dr. Harkness said. “Traces of the stuff all over her.”

“Quite so,” Fox repeated. “Very profuse.”

He contemplated the Slaypest but did not touch it. He rose and made a little tour of the room. He had very bright eyes for a middle-aged person.

“If it’s convenient, sir,” he said, “I’ll have a word with Mr. Templeton.”

“He’s pretty well knocked out. His heart’s dicky. I made him lie down.”

“Perhaps you’d just have a little chat with him yourself, Doctor. Would you be good enough to say I won’t keep him more than a minute? No need to disturb him; I’ll come to his room. Where would it be?”

“Next door.”

“Nice and convenient. I’ll give you a minute with him and then I’ll come in. Thank you, Doctor.”

Dr. Harkness looked sharply at him, but he was restoring his spectacles to their case and had turned to contemplate the view from the window.

“Pretty square, this.” said Mr. Fox.

Dr. Harkness went out.

Fox quietly locked the door and went to the telephone. He dialled a number and asked for an extension.

“Mr. Alleyn?” he said. “Fox, here. It’s about this case in Pardoner’s Place. There are one or two little features…”

When Superintendent Alleyn had finished speaking to Inspector Fox, he went resignedly into action. He telephoned his wife with the routine information that he would not after all be home for dinner, summoned Detective Sergeants Bailey and Thompson with their impedimenta, rang the police surgeon, picked up his homicide bag and went whistling to the car. “A lady of the theatre,” he told his subordinates, “appears to have looked upon herself as a common or garden pest and sprayed herself out of this world. She was mistaken as far as her acting was concerned. Miss Mary Bellamy. A comedienne of the naughty darling school and not a beginner. It’s Mr. Fox’s considered opinion that somebody done her in.”

When they arrived at 2 Pardoner’s Place, the tidying-up process had considerably advanced. Fox had been shown the guest list with addresses. He had checked it, politely dismissed those who had stayed throughout in what he called the reception area and mildly retained the persons who had left it “prior,” to quote Mr. Fox, “to the unfortunate event.” These were Timon Gantry, Pinky Canvendish, and Bertie Saracen, who were closeted in Miss Bellamy’s boudoir on the ground floor. Hearing that Colonel Warrender was a relation, Mr. Fox suggested that he join Charles Templeton, who had now come down to his study. Showing every sign of reluctance but obedient to authority, Warrender did so. Dr.

Harkness had sent out for a corpse-reviver for himself and gloomily occupied a chair in the conservatory. Florence having been interviewed and Old Ninn briefly surveyed, they had retired to their sitting-room in the top story. Gracefteld, the maids and the hired men had gone a considerable way towards removing the debris.

Under a sheet from her own bed on the floor of her locked room, Miss Bellamy began to stiffen.

Alleyn approached the front door to the renewed activity of the camera men. One of them called out, “Give us a break, won’t you, Super?”

“All in good time,” he said.

“What d’you know, Mr. Alleyn?”

“Damn all,” Alleyn said and rang the bell.

He was admitted by Fox. “Sorry you’ve been troubled, sir,” Fox said.

“I daresay. What is all this?”

Fox told him in a few neatly worded sentences.

“All right,” Alleyn said. “Let’s have a look, shall we?”

They went upstairs to Miss Bellamy’s bedroom.

He knelt by the body. “Did she bathe in scent?” he wondered.

“Very strong, isn’t it, sir?”

“Revolting. The whole room stinks of it.” He uncovered the head and shoulders. “I see.”

“Not very nice,” Fox remarked.

“Not very.” Alleyn was silent for a moment or two. “I saw her a week ago,” he said, “on the last night of that play of Richard Dakers’s that’s been running so long. It was a flimsy, conventional comedy, but she filled it with her own kind of gaiety. And now — to this favour is she come.” He looked more closely. “Could the stuff have blown back in her face? But you tell me they say the windows were shut?”

“That’s right.”

“The face and chest are quite thickly spattered.”

“Exactly. I wondered,” Fox said, “if the spray-gun mechanism on the Slaypest affair was not working properly and she turned it towards her to see.”

“And it did work? Possible, I suppose. But she’d stop at once, and look at her. Just look, Fox. There’s a fine spray such as she’d get if she held the thing at arm’s length and didn’t use much pressure. And over that there are great blotches and runnels of the stuff, as if she’d held it close to her face and pumped it like mad.”

“People do these things.”

“They do. As a theory I don’t fancy it. Nobody’s handled the Slaypest tin? Since the event?”

“They say not,” Fox said.

“Bailey’ll have to go over it for dabs, of course. Damn this scent. You can’t get a whiff of anything else.”

Alleyn bent double and advanced his nose to the tin of Slaypest. “I know this stuff,” hesaid. “It’s about as highly concentrated as they come, and in my opinion shouldn’t be let loose on the public for all the warnings on the label. The basic ingredient seems to be hexaethyl-tetra-phosphate.”

“You don’t say,” Fox murmured.

“It’s a contact poison and very persistent.” He replaced the sheet, got up and examined the bank of growing plants in the bay window. “Here it is again. They’ve got thrips and red spider.” He stared absently at Fox. “So what does she do, Br’er Fox? She comes up here in the middle of her own party wearing her best red wisp of tulle and all her diamonds and sets about spraying her azaleas.”

“Peculiar,” Fox said. “What I thought.”

“Very rum indeed.”

He wandered to the dressing-table. The central drawer was pulled out. Among closely packed ranks of boxes and pots was an open powder bowl. A piece of cotton-wool coloured with powder lay on the top of the table near a lipstick that had been imperfectly shut. Nearby was a bunch of Parma violets, already wilting.

“She did have a fiddle with her face,” Alleyn pointed out. “She’s got a personal maid, you say. The woman that found her.”

“Florence.”

“All right. Well, Florence would have tidied up any earlier goes at the powder and paint. And she’d have done something about these violets. Where do they come in? So this poor thing walks in, pulls out the drawer, does her running repairs and I should say from the smell, has a lavish wack at her scent.” He sniffed the atomizer. “That’s it. Quarter full and stinks like a civet cat, and here’s the bottle it came from, empty. ‘Formidable.’ Expensive maker. ‘Abominable’ would be more like it. How women can use such muck passes my understanding.”

“I rather fancy it,” said Mr. Fox. “It’s intriguing.”

Alleyn gave him a look. “If we’re to accept what appears to be the current explanation, she drenches her azaleas with hexaethyl-tetra-phosphate and then turns the spray-gun full in her own face and kills herself. D’you believe that?”

“Not when you put it like that.”

“Nor I. Bailey and Thompson are down below and Dr. Curtis is on his way. Get them up here. We’ll want the complete treatment. Detailed pictures of the body and the room, tell Thompson. And Bailey’ll need to take her prints and search the spray-gun, the dressing-table and anything else that may produce dabs, latent or otherwise. We don’t know what we’re looking for, of course.” The bathroom door was open and he glanced in. “Even this place reeks of scent. What’s that on the floor? Broken picture.” He looked more closely. “Rather nice tinsel picture. Madame Vestris, I fancy. Corner of washbasin freshly chipped. Somebody’s tramped broken glass over the floor. Did she drop her pretty picture? And why in the bathroom? Washing the glass? Or what? We won’t disturb it.” He opened the bathroom cupboard. “The things they take!” he muttered. “The tablets. For insomnia. One with water on retiring. The unguents! The lotions! Here’s some muck like green clay. Lifting mask. ‘Apply with spatula and leave on for ten minutes. Do not move lips or facial muscles during treatment.’ Here is the spatula with some nice fresh dabs. Florence’s, no doubt. And in the clothes basket, a towel with greenish smears. She had the full treatment before the party. Sal volatile bottle by the handbasin. Did someone try to force sal volatile down her throat?”