Photo-Finish

by Ngaio Marsh

  He said, “You are really thinking more of the Lucianos and Costellos, aren’t you?’

  Alleyn thought: He’s rumbled that one pretty smartly, and he said: ‘Yes, in a way, I am. It’s the Italian background that put it into my head. The whole thing is so shockingly outlandish and – well – theatrical. I believe Madame Sommita was born a Pepitone: a Sicilian.’

  ‘You are very well-informed.’

  ‘Oh,’ Alleyn said, ‘when we got your letter, asking me to come out with Troy and take a look at the Strix business, the Yard did a bit of research. It did seem a remote possibility that Strix might be acting as an agent of sorts. I was going to ask you if such an idea, or something at all like it, had ever occurred to you.’

  With more animation than one might have supposed him to be capable of, Mr Reece gave a dismal little laugh and brought the palms of his hands down on the arms of his chair. He actually raised his voice.

  ‘Occurred to me!’ he exclaimed. ‘You’ve got, as they say, to be joking, Mr Alleyn. How could it not have occurred to me when she herself brought it to my notice day in, day out, ever since this wretched photographer came on the scene.’

  He paused and looked very hard at Alleyn who merely replied: ‘She did?’

  ‘She most certainly did. It was an obsession with her. Some family feud that had started generations ago in Sicily. She persuaded herself that it had cropped up again in Australia of all places. She really believed she was next in line for – elimination. It was no good telling her that this guy Strix was in it for the money. She would listen, say nothing, calm down and then when you thought you’d got somewhere simply say she knew. I made enquiries. I talked to the police in Australia and the USA. There was not a shred of evidence to support the idea. But she couldn’t be moved.’

  ‘Last night you said you were certain Strix was her murderer.’

  ‘Because of what you told me about – the photograph. That seemed to be – still seems to be – so much in character with the sort of thing she said these people do. It was as if the man had signed his work and wanted to make sure it was recognized. As if I had been wrong and she had been right – right to be terrified. That we should have had her fully guarded. That I am responsible. And this,’ said Mr Reece, ‘is a very, very dreadful thought, Mr Alleyn.’

  ‘It may turn out to be a mistaken thought. Tell me, how much do you know about Madame Sommita’s background – her early life? Her recent associates?’

  Mr Reece clasped his large well-kept hands and tapped them against his lower teeth. He frowned and seemed to be at a loss. At last he said: ‘That is difficult to answer. How much do I know? In some ways a lot, in others very little. Her mother died in childbirth. She was educated at convent schools in the USA, the last being in New York where her voice was first trained. I got the impression that she saw next to nothing of her father, who lived in Chicago and died when Bella was twelve years old. She was brought up by an aunt of sorts who accompanied her to Italy and is now deceased. There used to be confused allusions to this reputed feud but in a way they were reticent – generalizations, nothing specific. Only these – these expressions of fear. I am afraid I thought they were little more than fairytales. I knew how she exaggerated and dramatized everything.’

  ‘Did she ever mention the name Rossi?’

  ‘Rossi? It sounds familiar. Yes, I believe she may have but she didn’t, as a matter of fact, mention names – Italian names – when she talked about this threat. She would seem as if she was going to but if I asked her point blank to be specific in order that I could make enquiries, she merely crossed herself and wouldn’t utter. I’m afraid I found that exasperating. It confirmed me in the opinion that the whole thing was imaginary.’

  ‘Yes, I see.’ Alleyn put his hand in his overcoat pocket, drew out the book from the library and handed it to Mr Reece. ‘Have you ever seen this?’ he asked.

  He took it and turned it over distastefully.

  ‘Not that I remember,’ he said. He opened it and read the title, translating it. ‘The Mystery of Bianca Rossi. Oh, I see – Rossi. What is all this, Mr Alleyn?’

  ‘I don’t know. I hoped you might throw some light on it.’

  ‘Where did you find it? In her room?’ he asked.

  ‘In the library. Have you noticed the name on the flyleaf?’

  Mr Reece looked at it. ‘M. V. Rossi,’ he said. And then: ‘I can’t make any sense out of this. Do we assume it was hers?’

  ‘It will be fingerprinted, of course.’

  ‘Ah yes. Oh, I see. I shouldn’t have handled it, should I?’

  ‘I don’t think you’ve done any damage,’ Alleyn said, and took it from him.

  ‘If it was Bella’s she may have left it lying about somewhere and one of the servants put it in the library. We can ask.’

  ‘So we can. Leaving it for the moment: did you ever hear of her association with the Hoffman-Beilstein group?’

  It was curious to see how immediate was Mr Reece’s return to his own world of financial expertise. He at once became solemn, disapproving and grand.

  ‘I certainly did,’ he said shortly and shot an appraising glance at Alleyn. ‘Again,’ he said, ‘you seem to be well-informed.’

  ‘I thought I remembered,’ Alleyn improvised, ‘seeing press photographs of her in a group of guests aboard Hoffman’s yacht.’

  ‘I see. It was not a desirable association. I broke it off.’

  ‘He came to grief, didn’t he?’

  ‘Deservedly so,’ said Mr Reece, pursing his mouth rather in the manner of a disapproving governess. Perhaps he felt he could not quite leave it at that because he added, stuffily, as if he was humouring an inquisitive child: ‘Hoffman had approached me with a view to interesting me in an enterprise he hoped to float. Actually, he invited me to join the cruise you allude to. I did so and was confirmed in my opinion of his activities.’ Mr Reece waited for a moment. ‘As a matter of fact,’ he said, ‘it was then that I met one of his executives – young Ned Hanley. I considered he might well come to grief in that company and as I required a private secretary, offered him the position.’ He looked much more fixedly at Alleyn. ‘Has he been prattling?’ he asked and Alleyn thought: He’s formidable, all right.

  ‘No, no,’ he said. ‘Not indiscreetly, I promise you. I asked him how long he’d been in your employ and he simply arrived at the answer by recalling the date of the cruise.’

  ‘He talks too much,’ said Mr Reece, dismissing him, but with an air of – what? Indulgence? Tolerance? Proprietorship? He turned to Dr Carmichael. ‘I wanted to speak to you, Doctor,’ he said. ‘I want to hear from you exactly how my friend was killed. I do not wish, if it can be spared me, to see her again as she was last night and I presume still is. But I must know how it was done. I must know.’

  Dr Carmichael glanced at Alleyn who nodded very slightly.

  ‘Madame Sommita,’ said Dr Carmichael, ‘was almost certainly anaesthetized, probably asphyxiated, when she had become unconscious and, after death, stabbed. There will be an autopsy, of course, which will tell us more.’

  ‘Did she suffer?’

  ‘I think, most unlikely.’

  ‘Anaesthetized? With what? How?’

  ‘I suspect, chloroform.’

  ‘But – chloroform? Do you mean somebody came here prepared to commit this crime? Provided?’

  ‘It looks like it. Unless there was chloroform somewhere on the premises.’

  ‘Not to my knowledge. I can’t imagine it.’

  Alleyn suddenly remembered the gossip of Bert the chauffeur. ‘Did you by any chance have a vet come to the house?’ he asked.

  ‘Ah! Yes. Yes, we did. To see Isabella’s Afghan hound. She was very – distressed. The vet examined the dog under an anaesthetic and found it had a malignant growth. He advised that it be put down immediately and it was done.’

  ‘You wouldn’t of course know if by any chance the vet forgot to take the chloroform away with him?’

 
; ‘No. Ned might know. He superintended the whole thing.’

  ‘I’ll ask him,’ said Alleyn.

  ‘Or perhaps Marco,’ speculated Mr Reece. ‘I seem to remember he was involved.’

  ‘Ah yes. Marco,’ said Alleyn. ‘You have told me, haven’t you, that Marco is completely dependable.’

  ‘Certainly. I have no reason to suppose anything else.’

  ‘In the very nature of the circumstances and the development of events as we hear about them, we must all have been asking ourselves disturbing questions about each other, mustn’t we? Have you not asked yourself disturbing questions about Marco?’

  ‘Well, of course I have,’ Mr Reece said at once. ‘About him, and, as you say, about all of them. But there is no earthly reason, no conceivable motive for Marco to do anything – wrong.’

  ‘Not if Marco should happen to be Strix?’ Alleyn asked.

  CHAPTER 7

  Strix

  When Alleyn and Dr Carmichael joined Troy in the studio rifts had appeared in the rampart of clouds and at intervals, shafts of sunlight played fitfully across Lake Waihoe and struck up patches of livid green on mountain flanks that had begun to reappear through the mist.

  The landing stage was still under turbulent water. No one could have used it. There were now no signs of Les on the mainland.

  ‘You gave Mr Reece a bit of a shake-up,’ said Dr Carmichael. ‘Do you think he was right when he said the idea had never entered his head?’

  ‘What, that Marco was Strix? Who can tell? I imagine Marco has been conspicuously zealous in the anti-Strix cause. His reporting an intruder on the Island topped up with his production of the lens cap was highly convincing. Remember how you all plunged about in the undergrowth? I suppose you assisted in the search for nobody, didn’t you?’

  ‘Blast!’ said Dr Carmichael.

  ‘Incidentally the cap was a mistake, a fancy touch too many. It’s off a mass-produced camera, probably his own, as it were, official toy and not at all the sort of job that Strix must use to get his results. Perhaps he didn’t want to part with the Strix cap and hadn’t quite got the nerve to produce it or perhaps it hasn’t got a cap.’

  ‘Why,’ asked Troy, ‘did he embark on all that nonsense about an intruder?’

  ‘Well, darling, don’t you think because he intended to take a “Strix” photograph of the Sommita – his bonne bouche – and it seemed advisable to plant the idea that a visiting Strix was lurking in the underbrush. But the whole story of the intruder was fishy. The search party was a shocking-awful carry-on but by virtue of sheer numbers someone would have floundered into an intruder if he’d been there.’

  ‘And you are certain,’ said Dr Carmichael, ‘that he is not your man?’

  ‘He couldn’t be. He was waiting in the dining room and busy in the hall until the guests left and trotting to and from the launch with an umbrella while they were leaving.’

  ‘And incidentally in the porch, with me, watching the launch after they had gone. Yes. That’s right,’ agreed Dr Carmichael.

  ‘Is Mr Reece going to tackle him about Strix?’ Troy asked.

  ‘Not yet. He says he’s not fully persuaded. He prefers to leave it with me.’

  ‘And you?’

  ‘I’m trying to make up my mind. On the whole I think it may be best to settle Strix before the police get here.’

  ‘Now?’

  ‘Why not?’

  Troy said: ‘Of course he knows you’re on to it. After your breakfast-tray remarks.’

  ‘He’s got a pretty good idea of it, at least,’ said Alleyn and put his thumb on the bell.

  ‘Perhaps he won’t come.’

  ‘I think he will. What’s the alternative? Fling himself into the billowy wave and do a Leander for the mainland?’

  ‘Shall I disappear?’ offered Dr Carmichael.

  ‘And I?’ said Troy.

  ‘Not unless you’d rather. After all, I’m not going to arrest him.’

  ‘Oh? Not?’ they said.

  ‘Why would I do that? For being Strix? I’ve no authority. Or do you think we might borrow him for being a public nuisance or perhaps for false pretences? On my information he’s never actually conned anybody. He’s just dressed himself up funny-like and taken unflattering photographs. There’s the forged letter in The Watchman, of course. That might come within the meaning of some act: I’d have to look it up. Oh yes, and makes himself out to be a gentleman’s gent, with forged references, I dare say.’

  ‘Little beast,’ said Troy. ‘Cruel little pig, tormenting her like that. And everybody thinking it a jolly joke. And the shaming thing is, it was rather funny.’

  ‘That’s the worst of ill-doing, isn’t it? It so often has its funny side. Come to think of it, I don’t believe I could have stuck my job out if it wasn’t so. The earliest playwrights knew all about that: their devils more often than not were clowns and their clowns were always cruel. Here we go.’

  There had been a tap at the door. It opened and Marco came in.

  He was an unattractive shade of yellow but otherwise looked much as usual. He said: ‘You rang, sir?’

  ‘Yes,’ Alleyn agreed. ‘I rang. I’ve one or two questions to ask you. First, about the photograph you took yesterday afternoon through the window of the concert chamber. Did you put the print in the letter-bag?’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean, sir.’

  ‘Yes, you do. You are Strix. You got yourself into your present job with the intention of following up your activities with the camera. Stop me if I’m wrong. But on second thoughts you’re more likely to stop me if I’m right, aren’t you? Did you see the advertisement for a personal servant for Mr Reece in the paper? Did it occur to you that as a member of Mr Reece’s entourage you would be able to learn a lot more about Madame Sommita’s programmes for the day? On some occasion when she was accompanied by Mr Reece or when Mr Reece was not at home and you were not required, you would be able to pop out to a room you kept for the purpose, dress yourself up like a sore thumb, startle her and photograph her with her mouth open looking ridiculous. You would hand the result in to the press and notch up another win. It was an impudently bold decision and it worked. You gave satisfaction as a valet and came here with your employer.’

  Marco had assumed an air of casual insolence.

  ‘Isn’t it marvellous?’ he asked of nobody in particular and shrugged elaborately.

  ‘You took yesterday’s photograph with the intention of sending it back to The Watchman and through them to the chain of newspapers with whom you’ve syndicated your productions. I know you did this. Your footprints are underneath the window. I fancy this was to be your final impertinence and that having knocked it off you would have given in your notice, claimed your money, retired to some inconspicuous retreat and written your autobiography.’

  ‘No comment,’ said Marco.

  ‘I didn’t really suppose there would be. Do you know where that photograph is now? Do you, Marco?’

  ‘I don’t know anything about any—ing photograph,’ said Marco, whose Italian accent had become less conspicuous and his English a good deal more idiomatic.

  ‘It is skewered by a dagger to your victim’s dead body.’

  ‘My victim! She was not my victim. Not – ‘ He stopped.

  ‘Not in the sense of your having murdered her, were you going to say?’

  ‘Not in any sense. I don’t,’ said Marco, ‘know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘And I don’t expect there’ll be much trouble about finding your fingerprints on the glossy surface.’

  Marco’s hand went to his mouth.

  ‘Come,’ Alleyn said, ‘don’t you think you’re being unwise? What would you say if I told you your room will be searched?’

  ‘Nothing!’ said Marco loudly. ‘I would say nothing. You’re welcome to search my room.’

  ‘Do you carry the camera – is it a Strassman, by the way? – on you? How about searching you?’

  ‘You have
no authority.’

  ‘That is unfortunately correct. See here, Marco. Just take a look at yourself. I shall tell the police what I believe to be the facts: that you are Strix, that you took the photograph now transfixed over Madame Sommita’s heart, that it probably carries your fingerprints. If it does not, it is no great matter. Faced by police investigation, the newspapers that bought your photographs will identify you.’

  ‘They’ve never seen me,’ Marco said quickly and then looked as if he could have killed himself.

  ‘It was all done by correspondence, was it?’

  ‘They’ve never seen me because I’m not – I’ve never had anything to do with them. You’re putting words in my mouth.’

  ‘Your Strix activities have come to an end. The woman you tormented is dead, you’ve made a packet and will make more if you write a book. With illustrations. The only thing that is likely to bother you is the question of how the photograph got from your camera to the body. The best thing you can do if you’re not the murderer of Isabella Sommita is help us find out who is. If you refuse, you remain a prime suspect.’

  Marco looked from Troy to Dr Carmichael and back to Troy again. It was as if he asked for their advice. Troy turned away to the studio window.

  Dr Carmichael said: ‘You’d much better come across, you know. You’ll do yourself no good by holding back.’

  There was a long silence.

  ‘Well,’ said Marco at last and stopped.

  ‘Well?’ said Alleyn.

  ‘I’m not admitting anything.’

  ‘But suppose – ?’ Alleyn prompted.

  ‘Suppose, for the sake of argument, Strix took the shot you talk about. What would he do with it? He’d post if off to The Watchman at once, wouldn’t he? He’d put it in the mailbox to be taken away in the bag.’

  ‘Or,’ Alleyn suggested, ‘to avoid Mr Hanley noticing it when he cleared the box he might slip it directly into the mailbag while it was still unlocked and waiting in the study.’

  ‘He might do that.’

  ‘Is that what you’d say he did?’

  ‘I don’t say what he did. I don’t know what he did.’

  ‘Did you know the mailbag was forgotten last night and is still on the premises?’