Photo-Finish

by Ngaio Marsh

‘By the way, sir. That was a very bad line we spoke on. Temporary repairs after the storm. Excuse me, but did you ask me to bring a brace and bit?’

  ‘I did, yes.’

  ‘Yes. I thought it sounded like that.’

  ‘Did you bring a brace and bit, Inspector?’

  ‘Yes. I chanced it.’

  ‘Large-sized bit?’

  ‘Several bits. Different sizes.’

  ‘Splendid.’

  ‘Might I ask – ‘

  ‘Of course. Come along to the studio and I’ll explain. But first – take a look at the fancy woodwork on the wardrobe doors.’

  II

  The conference in the studio lasted for an hour and at its conclusion Dr Winslow discussed plans for the removal of the body. The lake was almost back to normal and Les had come over in the launch with the mail. ‘She’ll be sweet as a millpond by nightfall,’ he reported. The police helicopter was making a second trip bringing two uniform constables and would take Dr Winslow back to Rivermouth. He would arrange for a mortuary van to be sent out and the body would be taken across by launch to meet it. The autopsy would be performed as soon as the official pathologist was available: probably that night.

  ‘And now,’ said Hazelmere, ‘I reckon we lay on this – er – experiment, don’t we?’

  ‘Only if you’re quite sure you’ll risk it. Always remembering that if it flops you may be in for some very nasty moments.’

  ‘I appreciate that. Look, Mr Alleyn, if you’d been me would you have risked it?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Alleyn. ‘I would. I’d have told myself I was a bloody fool but I’d have risked it.’

  ‘That’s good enough for me,’ said Hazelmere. ‘Let’s go.’

  ‘Don’t you think that perhaps Mr Reece has been languishing rather a long time in the library?’

  ‘You’re dead right. Dear me, yes. I’d better go down.’

  But there was no need for Hazelmere to go down. The studio door opened and Mr Reece walked in.

  Alleyn thought he was probably very angry indeed.

  Not that his behaviour was in any way exceptionable. He did not scold and he did not shout. He stood stock-still in his own premises and waited for somebody else to perform. His mouth was tightly closed and the corners severely compressed.

  With his head metaphysically lowered to meet an icy breeze, Alleyn explained that they had thought it best first to make an official survey and for Inspector Hazelmere, whom he introduced and who was given a stony acknowledgement, to be informed of all the circumstances before troubling Mr Reece. Mr Reece slightly inclined his head. Alleyn then hurriedly introduced Dr Winslow who was awarded a perceptibly less glacial reception.

  ‘As you are now at liberty,’ Mr Reece pronounced, ‘perhaps you will be good enough to come down to the library where we will not be disturbed. I shall be glad to learn what steps you propose to take.’

  Hazelmere, to Alleyn’s satisfaction, produced his own line of imperturbability and said blandly that the library would no doubt be very convenient. Mr Reece then pointedly addressing himself to Alleyn, said that luncheon had been postponed until two o’clock and would be in the nature of a cold buffet to which the guests would help themselves when so inclined. It was now one-twenty.

  ‘In the meantime,’ Mr Reece magnificently continued, ‘I will take it as a favour if you will extend my already deep obligation to you by joining us in the library.’

  Alleyn thought there would be nothing Hazelmere would enjoy less than having him, Alleyn, on the sideline, a silent observer of his investigatory techniques.

  He said that he had promised to look in on Troy. He added (truthfully) that she suffered from occasional attacks of migraine and (less truthfully) that one had threatened this morning. Mr Reece expressed wooden regrets and hoped to see him as soon as it was convenient. Alleyn felt as if they were both repeating memorized bits of dialogue from some dreary play.

  Mr Reece said: ‘Shall we?’ to Hazelmere and led the way out of the studio. Hazelmere turned in the doorway and Alleyn rapidly indicated that he was returning to the bedroom. The Inspector stuck up his vast thumb and followed Mr Reece to the stairs.

  Alleyn shut the door and Dr Carmichael, who had continued his now familiar role of self-elimination, rose and asked if Hazelmere really meant to carry out The Plan.

  ‘Yes, he does and I hope to God he’ll do himself no harm by it.’

  ‘Not for the want of warning.’

  ‘No. But it was I who concocted it.’

  ‘What’s the first step?’

  ‘We’ve got to fix Maria asking for or being given unasked permission to lay out the body. Hazelmere had better set it up that she’ll be told when she may do it.’

  ‘Suppose she’s gone off the idea?’

  ‘That’s a sickening prospect, isn’t it? But we’re hoping the opportunity it offers will do the trick. I’m going along now to get those two chaps on to it.’

  Dr Carmichael said: ‘Alleyn, if you can spare a moment would you be very kind and go over the business about the keys. I know it, but I’d like to be reminded.’

  ‘All right. There are three keys to the bedroom. Maria had one which I took possession of when I first was in the bedroom, the Sommita another, and young Bartholomew the third. Mrs Bacon held the fourth. When Reece and the Sommita went upstairs after the concert they found Maria waiting. If the door had been locked she had let herself in with her own key. The Sommita threw a violent temperament, gave them what for, kicked them out and locked the door after them. They have both said individually that they distinctly heard the key turn in the lock. Twenty minutes later Maria returned with a hot drink, let herself in with her own key and found her mistress murdered. There was no sight anywhere on any surface or on the floor or on the body of the Sommita’s key. I found it subsequently in her evening bag neatly disposed and wrapped at the bottom of a drawer. Reece is sure she didn’t have the bag when they took her upstairs. The people who fussed round her in her dressingroom say she hadn’t got it with her and indeed in that rig it would have been an incongruous object for her to carry – even offstage. Equally it’s impossible to imagine her at the height of one of her towering rages getting the key from wherever it was, putting it in the lock in the fraction of time between Reece or Maria closing the door behind them and them both hearing the turn of the lock, and then meticulously getting out her evening bag, putting her key in it and placing it in the drawer. It even was enclosed in one of those soft cloth bags women use to prevent gold mesh from catching in the fabric of things like stockings. That’s the story of the keys.’

  ‘Yes. That’s right. That’s what I thought,’ said Dr Carmichael uneasily.

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘It’s just – rather an unpleasant thought.’

  ‘About the third key?’

  ‘Yes!’

  ‘Rupert Bartholomew had it. Maria came to his room very late in the night and said I’d sent her for it.’

  ‘Did she, by God!’

  ‘He gave it to her. Bert, asleep in the chairs across the doorway, woke up to find Maria trying to stretch across him and put the key in the lock.’

  ‘She must have been dotty. What did she think she’d do? Open the door and swarm over his sleeping body?’

  ‘Open the door, yes. It opens inwards. And chuck the key into the room? She was hell-bent on our finding it there. Close the door, which would remain unlocked: she couldn’t do anything about that. And when, as is probable, Bert wakes, throw a hysterical scene with all the pious drama about praying for the soul of the Sommita and laying her out.’

  ‘Actually what did happen?’

  ‘Bert woke up to find her generous personal equipment dangling over him. She panicked, dropped the key on him and bolted. He collected it and gave it to me. So she is still keyless.’

  ‘Could you ever prove all these theories?’

  ‘If the plan works.’

  ‘Maria, eh?’ said Dr Carmichael. ‘Well, o
f course, she does look – I mean to say – ‘

  ‘We’ve got to remember,’ Alleyn said, ‘that from the time Maria and Reece left the room and went downstairs and he joined his guests for dinner, Maria was in the staff sitting room preparing the hot drink. Mrs Bacon and Marco and others of the staff can be called to prove it.’

  Carmichael stared at him. ‘An alibi?’ he said. ‘For Maria? That’s awkward.’

  ‘In this game,’ Alleyn said, ‘one learns to be wary of assumptions.’

  ‘I suppose I’m making one now. Very reluctantly.’

  ‘The boy?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, of course, he’s the prime suspect. One can turn on all the clichés: “lust turned to hatred", “humiliation", “breaking point” – the lot. He was supposedly in his room at the crucial time but could have slipped out and he had his key to her room. He had motive and opportunity and he was in an extremely unstable condition.’

  ‘Do the rest of them think – ?’

  ‘Some of them do. Hanley does, or behaves and drops hints as if he does. Maria, and Marco I fancy, have been telling everyone he’s the prime suspect. As I dare say the rest of the domestic staff believe, being aware, no doubt, of the changed relationship between the boy and the diva. And of course most of them witnessed the curtain speech and the fainting fit.’

  ‘What about Lattienzo?’

  ‘Troy and I overheard the jocund maestro in the shrubbery or near it, and in far from merry pin, threatening an unseen person with an evidently damaging exposure if he or she continued to spread malicious gossip. He spoke in Italian and the chopper was approaching so I missed whole chunks of his discourse.’

  ‘Who was he talking to?’

  ‘Somebody perfectly inaudible.’

  ‘Maria?’

  ‘I think so. When we emerged she was handy. On the front steps watching the chopper. Lattienzo was not far off.’

  ‘I thought Lattienzo was not in his usual ebullient form when he came up here just now.’

  ‘You were right,’ said Alleyn and gave an account of the interview.

  ‘The Italian element with a vengeance,’ said the doctor thoughtfully.

  ‘I must go along and fix things up in that room and then hie me to the library and Mr Reece’s displeasure. Look in on Troy, like a good chap, would you, and tell her this studio’s free? Do you mind? She’s in our bedroom.’

  ‘I’m delighted,’ said the gallant doctor.

  And so Alleyn returned to the Sommita’s death chamber and found Sergeants Franks and Barker in dubious consultation. A brace and a selection of bits was laid out on a sheet of newspaper on the floor.

  ‘The boss said you’d put us wise, sir,’ said Franks.

  ‘Right,’ said Alleyn. He stood with his back to one of the exuberantly carved and painted wardrobe doors, felt behind him and bent his knees until his head was on a level with the stylized sunflower which framed it like a formalized halo. He made a funnel of his hand and looked through it at the covered body on the bed. Then he moved to the twin door and went through the same procedure.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘it’ll work. It’ll work all right.’

  He opened the doors.

  The walk-in wardrobe was occupied but not crowded with dresses. He divided them and slid them on their hangers to opposite ends of the interior. He examined the inside of the doors, came out and locked them.

  He inspected the bits.

  ‘This one will do,’ he said and gave it, with the brace, to Sergeant Franks. ‘Plumb in the middle,’ he said, putting his finger on the black centre of the sunflower. ‘And slide that newspaper under to catch the litter. Very careful, now. No splintering whatever you do. Which of you’s the joiner?’

  ‘Aw heck!’ said Franks to Barker, ‘what about you having a go, Merv.’

  ‘I’m not fussy, thanks,’ said Barker, backing off.

  They looked uncomfortably at Alleyn.

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I asked for it and it looks as if I’ve bought it. If I make a fool of myself I can’t blame anyone else, can I? Give it here, Franks. Oh God, it’s one of those push-me-pull-you brutes that shoot out at you when you least expect it.’ He thumbed a catch and the business end duly shot out. ‘What did I tell you? You guide it, Franks, and hold it steady. Dead centre. Anyone’d think we were defusing a bomb. Come on.’

  ‘She’s new, sir. Sharp as a needle and greased.’

  ‘Good.’

  He raised the brace and advanced it. Franks guided the point of the bit. ‘Dead centre, sir,’ he said.

  ‘Here goes, then,’ said Alleyn.

  He made a cautious preliminary pressure. ‘How’s that?’

  ‘Biting, sir.’

  ‘Straight as we go, then.’ Alleyn pumped the brace.

  A little cascade of wood dust trickled through the elaborate carving and fell on the newspaper.

  ‘Nearly there,’ he grunted presently and a few seconds later the resistance was gone and he disengaged the tool.

  At the black centre of the sunflower was a black hole as wide as the iris of an eye and very inconspicuous. Alleyn blew away the remnants of wood dust that were trapped in curlicues, twisted a finger in the hole and stood back. ‘Not too bad,’ he said.

  He opened the door. The hole was clean cut.

  ‘Now for the twin,’ he said and gave the companion door the same treatment.

  Then he went into the wardrobe and shut the doors. The interior smelt insufferably of La Sommita’s scent. He looked through one of the holes. He saw the body. Neatly framed. Underneath the black satin cover its arm, still raised in cadaveric spasm, seemed to point at him. He came out, shut and locked the wardrobe doors and put the key in his pocket.

  ‘It’ll do,’ he said. ‘Will you two clean up? Very thoroughly? Before you do that I think you should know why you’ve been called on to set this up and what we hope to achieve by it. Don’t you?’

  They intimated by sundry noises that they did think so and he then told them of the next steps that would be taken, the procedure to be followed and the hoped-for outcome. ‘And now I think perhaps one of you might relieve poor old Bert on the landing and I’d suggest the other reports for duty to Mr Hazelmere who will probably be in the library. It opens off the entrance hall. Third on the right from the front. I’m going down there now. Here’s the key to this room. OK?’

  ‘She’ll be right, sir,’ said Franks and Barker together.

  So Alleyn went down to the library.

  It came as no surprise to find the atmosphere in that utterly neutral apartment tepid, verging on glacial. Inspector Hazelmere had his notebook at the ready. Mr Reece sat at one of the neatly laden tables with the glaze of boredom veiling his pale regard. When Alleyn apologized for keeping him waiting he raised his hand and let it fall as if words now failed him.

  The Inspector, Alleyn thought, was not at the moment happy in his work though he put up a reasonable show of professional savoir-faire and said easily that he thought he had finished ‘bothering’ Mr Reece and believed he was now fully in the picture. Mr Reece said woodenly that he was glad to hear it. An awkward silence followed which he broke by addressing himself pointedly to Alleyn.

  ‘Would you,’ he said, ‘be good enough to show me where you found that book? I’ve been wondering about it.’

  Alleyn led the way to the remote corner of the library and the obscure end of a top shelf. ‘It was here,’ he said, pointing to the gap. ‘I could only just reach it.’

  ‘I would require the steps,’ said Mr Reece. He put on his massive spectacles and peered. ‘It’s very badly lit,’ he said. ‘The architect should have noticed that.’

  Alleyn switched on the lights.

  ‘Thank you. I would like to see the book when you have finished with it. I suppose it has something to do with this family feud or vendetta or whatever that she was so concerned about?’

  ‘I would think so, yes.’

  ‘It is strange that she never showed i
t to me. Perhaps that is because it is written in Italian. I would have expected her to show it to me,’ he said heavily. ‘I would have expected her to feel it would give validity to her theory. I wonder how she came by it? It is very shabby. Perhaps it was second-hand.’

  ‘Did you notice the name on the flyleaf? “M. V. Rossi"?’

  ‘Rossi? Rossi!’ he repeated, and stared at Alleyn. ‘But that was the name she did mention. On the rare occasions when she used a name. I recollect that she once said she wished my name did not resemble it. I thought this very far-fetched but she seemed to be quite serious about it. She generally referred simply to the nemico – meaning the enemy.’

  ‘Perhaps, after all, it was not her book.’

  ‘It was certainly not mine,’ he said flatly.

  ‘At some time – originally, I suppose – it has been the property of the “enemy". One wouldn’t have expected her to have acquired it.’

  ‘You certainly would not,’ Mr Reece said emphatically. ‘Up there, was it? What sort of company was it keeping?’

  Alleyn took down four of the neighbouring books. One, a biography called La Voce, was written in Italian and seemed from cover to cover to be an unmodified rave about the Sommita. It was photo-graphically illustrated beginning with a portrait of a fat-legged infant, much be-frilled, be-ringleted and be-ribboned, glowering on the lap according to the caption, of ‘La Zia Giulia’ and ending with La Sommita receiving a standing ovation at a royal performance of Faust.

  ‘Ah yes,’ said Mr Reece. ‘The biography. I always intended to read it. It went into three editions. What are the others?’

  One in English, one in Italian – both novels with a strong romantic interest. They were gifts to the Sommita, lavishly inscribed by admirers.

  ‘Is the autobiography there?’ asked Mr Reece. ‘That meant a helluva lot to me. Yes, sir. A helluva lot.’

  This piece of information was dealt out by Mr Reece in his customary manner: baldly as if he were citing a quotation from Wall Street. For the first time he sounded definitely American.

  ‘I’m sure it did,’ Alleyn said.

  ‘I never got round to reading it right through,’ Mr Reece confessed and then seemed to brighten up a little. ‘After all,’ he pointed out, ‘she didn’t write it herself. But it was the thought that counted.’