by Ngaio Marsh
“Thank you. Sunday?”
“I was at my article for The Pallette all day. Troy painted in the morning and came in here in the afternoon. The others were all back for dinner.”
“Did you hear the model say anything about her own movements during the week-end?”
“No. Don’t think so. I fancy she said she was going to London.”
“You engaged her for this term before Miss Troy returned, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“How did you get hold of her?”
“Through Graham Barnes. He gave me her address.”
“Have you got it?”
“Oh Lord, where was it? Somewhere in Battersea, I think. Battersea Bridge Gardens. That’s it. I’ve got it written down somewhere. I’ll try and find it for you.”
“I wish you would. It would save us one item in a loathsome itinerary of dull jobs. Now, about this business with the model and your picture. The trapeze-artiste subject, I mean. Did she pose for you again after the day when there was the trouble described by Miss Phillida Lee?”
Again that dull crimson stained the broad face. Katti’s thick eyebrows came together and her lips protruded in a sort of angry pout.
“That miserable little worm Lee! I told Troy she was a fool to take her, fees or no fees. The girl’s bogus. She went to the Slade and was no doubt made to feel entirely extraneous. She tries to talk ‘Slade’ when she remembers, but the original nice-girl gush oozes out all over the place. She sweats suburbia from every pore. She deliberately sneaked in and listened to what I had to say.”
“To the model?”
“Yes. Little drip!”
“It was true, then, that you did have a difference with Sonia?”
“If I did, that doesn’t mean I killed her.”
“Of course it doesn’t. But I should be glad of an answer, Miss Bostock.”
“She was playing up, and I ticked her off. She knew I wanted to finish the thing for the Group Show, and she deliberately set out to make work impossible. I scraped the head down four times, and now the canvas is unworkable— the tooth has gone completely. Troy is always too easy with the models. She spoils them. I gave the little brute hell because she needed it.”
“And did she pose again for you?”
“No. I’ve told you the thing was dead.”
“How did she misbehave? Just fidgeting?”
Katti leant forward, her square hands on her knees. Alleyn noticed that she was shaking a little, like an angry terrier.
“I’d got the head laid in broadly — I wanted to draw it together with a dry brush and then complete it. I wanted to keep it very simple and round, the drawing of the mouth was giving me trouble. I told her not to move — she had a damnable trick of biting her lip. Every time I looked at her she gave a sort of sneering smirk. As if she knew it wasn’t going well. I mixed a touch of cadmium red for the underlip. Just as I was going to lay it down she grimaced. I cursed her. She didn’t say anything. I pulled myself together to put the brush on the canvas and looked at her. She stuck her foul little tongue out.”
“And that tore it to shreds, I imagine?”
“It did. I said everything I’d been trying not to say for the past fortnight. I let go.”
“Not surprising. It must have been unspeakably maddening. Why, do you suppose, was she so set on making things impossible?”
“She deliberately baited me,” said Katti, under her breath.
“But why?”
“Why? Because I’d treated her as if she was a model. Because I expected to get some return for the excessive wages Troy was giving her. I engaged her, and I managed things till Troy came back. Sonia resented that. Always hinting that I wasn’t her boss and so on.”
“That was all?”
“Yes.”
“I see. You say her wages were excessively generous. What was she paid?”
“Four pounds a week and her keep. She’d spun Troy some tale about doctor’s bills, and Troy, as usual, believed the sad story and stumped up. She’s anybody’s mark for sponging. It’s so damned immoral to let people get away with that sort of thing. It’s no good talking to Troy. Street-beggars see her coming a mile away. She’s got two dead-heads here now.”
“Really? Which two?”
“Garcia, of course. She’s been shelling out money to Garcia for ages. And now there’s this Austrialian wildman Hatchett. She says she makes the others pay through the nose, but Lord knows if she ever gets the money. She’s hopeless,” said Katti, with an air of exasperated affection.
“Would you call this a good photograph of Mr. Garcia?” asked Alleyn suddenly. He held out the group. Katti took it and glowered at it.
“Yes, it’s very like him,” she said. “That thing was taken last year during the summer classes. Yes — that’s Garcia all right.”
“He was here as Miss Troy’s guest then, I suppose?”
“Oh Lord, yes. Garcia never pays for anything. He’s got no sort of decency where money is concerned. No conscience at all.”
“No aesthetic conscience?”
“Um!” said Katti. “I wouldn’t say that. No — his work’s the only thing he is honest about, and he’s passionately sincere there.”
“I wish you’d give me a clear idea of him, Miss Bostock. Will you?”
“Not much of a hand at that sort of thing,” growled Katti, “but I’ll have a shot. He’s a dark, dirty, weird-looking fellow. Very paintable head. Plenty of bone. You think he murdered the model, don’t you?”
“I don’t know who murdered the model.”
“Well, I think he did. It’s just the sort of thing he would do. He’s absolutely ruthless and as cold-blooded as a flat-fish. He asked Malmsley if he ever felt like murdering his mistress, didn’t he?”
“So Mr. Malmsley told us.”
“I’ll bet it’s true. If Sonia interfered with his work and put him off his stride, and he couldn’t get rid of her any other way, he’d get rid of her that way. She may have refused to give him any more money.”
“Did she give him money?”
“I think so. Ormerin says she was keeping him last year. He wouldn’t have the slightest qualms about taking it. Garcia just looks upon money as something you’ve got to have to keep you going. How you get it is of no importance. He could have got a well-paid job with a monumental firm. Troy got on to it for him. When he saw the tombstones with angels and open Bibles he said something indecent and walked out. He was practically starving that time,” said Katti, half to herself, and with a sort of reluctant admiration, “but he wouldn’t haul his flag down.”
“You think the model was really attached to him?”
Katti took another cigarette and Alleyn lit it for her.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I’m not up in the tender passion. I’ve got an idea that she’d switched over to Basil Pilgrim, but whether it was to try and make Garcia jealous or because she’d fallen for Pilgrim is another matter. She was obviously livid with Seacliff. But then Garcia had begun to hang round Seacliff.”
“Dear me,” said Alleyn, “what a labyrinth of untidy emotions.”
“You may say so,” agreed Katti. She hitched herself out of her chair. “Have you finished with me, Mr. Alleyn?”
“Yes, do you know, I think I have. We shall have a statement in longhand for you to look at and sign, if you will, later on.”
She glared at Fox. “Is that what he’s been up to?”
“Yes.”
“Pah!”
“It’s only to establish your movements. Of course, if you don’t want to sign it— ”
“Who said I didn’t? Let me wait till I see it.”
“That’s the idea, miss,” said Fox, looking benignly at her over the top of his spectacles.
“Will you show Miss Bostock out, please, Fox?”
“Thank you, I know my way about this house,” said Katti with a prickly laugh. She stumped off to the door. Fox closed it gently behind her.
“Rather a tricky
sort of lady, that,” he said.
“She is a bit. Never mind. She gave us some sidelights on Garcia.”
“She did that all right.”
There was a rap on the door and one of the local men looked in.
“Excuse me, sir, but there’s a gentlemen out here says he wants to see you very particular.”
“What’s his name?”
“He just said you’d be very glad indeed to see him, sir. He never gave a name.”
“Is he a journalist?” asked Alleyn sharply. “If he is, I shall be very glad indeed to kick him out. We’re too busy for the Press just now.”
“Well, sir, he didn’t say he was a reporter. He said — er— er — er— ”
“What?”
“His words was, sir, that you’d scream the place down with loud cries of gladness when you clapped eyes on him.”
“That’s no way to ask to see the chief,” said Fox. “You ought to know that.”
“Go and ask him to give his name,” said Alleyn.
The policeman retired.
Fox eyed Alleyn excitedly.
“By gum, sir, you don’t think it may be this Garcia? By all accounts he’s eccentric enough to send in a message like that.”
“No,” said Alleyn, as the door opened. “I rather fancy I recognize the style. I rather fancy, Fox, that an old and persistent friend of ours has got in first on the news.”
“Unerring as ever, Mr. Alleyn,” said a voice from the hall, and Nigel Bathgate walked into the room.
CHAPTER IX
Phillida Lee and Wait Hatchett
Where the devil did you spring from?” asked Alleyn. Nigel advanced with a shamless grin.
“ ‘Where did I come from, ’Specky dear?
The blue sky opened and I am here!’ ”
“Hullo, Fox!”
“Good evening, Mr. Bathgate,” said Fox.
“I suppose you’ve talked to my mamma on the telephone,” said Alleyn as they shook hands.
“There now,” returned Nigel, “aren’t you wonderful, Inspector? Yes, Lady Alleyn rang me up to say you’d been sooled on to the trail before your time, and she thought the odds were you’d forget to let us know you couldn’t come and stay with us.”
“So you instantly motored twenty miles in not much more than as many minutes in order to tell me how sorry you were?”
“That’s it,” said Nigel cheerfully. “You read me like a book. Angela sends her fondest love. She’d have come too only she’s not feeling quite up to long drives just now.”
He sat down in one of the largest chairs.
“Don’t let me interrupt,” he said. “You can give me the story later on. I’ve got enough to go on with from the local cop. I’ll ring up the office presently and give them the headlines. Your mother — divine woman — has asked me to stay.”
“Has my mother gone out of her mind?” asked Alleyn of nobody in particular.
“Come, come, Inspector,” reasoned Nigel, with a trace of nervousness in his eye, “you know you’re delighted to have me.”
“There’s not the smallest excuse for your bluffing your way in, you know. I’ve a damn’ good mind to have you chucked out.”
“Don’t do that. I’ll take everything down in shorthand and nobody will see me if I turn the chair round. Fox will then be able to fix the stammering witnesses with a basilisk glare. All will go like clock-work. All right?”
“All right. It’s quite irregular, but you occasionally have your uses. Go into the corner there.”
Nigel hurried into a shadowy corner, turned a high armchair with its back to the room and dived into it.
“ ‘I am invisible,’ ” he said. “ ‘And I shall overhear their conference,’ The Bard.”
“I’ll deal with you later,” said Alleyn grimly. “Tell them to send another of these people along, Fox.”
When Fox had gone Nigel asked hoarsely from the armchair if Alleyn had enjoyed himself in New Zealand.
“Yes,” said Alleyn.
“Funny you getting a case there,” ventured Nigel. “Rather a busman’s holiday, wasn’t it?”
“I enjoyed it. Nobody interfered and the reporters were very well-behaved.”
“Oh,” said Nigel.
There was a short silence broken by Nigel.
“Did you have a slap-and-tickle with the American lady on the boat deck?”
“I did not.”
“Oh! Funny coincidence about Agatha Troy. I mean she was in the same ship, wasn’t she? Lady Alleyn tells me the portrait is quite miraculously like you.”
“Don’t prattle,” said Alleyn. “Have you turned into a gossip hound?”
“No. I say!”
“What!”
“Angela’s started a baby.”
“So I gathered, and so no doubt Fox also gathered, from your opening remarks.”
“I’m so thrilled I could yell it in the teeth of the whole police force.”
Alleyn smiled to himself.
“Is she all right?” he asked.
“She’s not sick in the mornings any more. We want you to be a godfather. Will you, Alleyn?”
“I should be charmed.”
“Alleyn!”
“What?”
“You might tell me a bit about this case. Somebody’s murdered the model, haven’t they?”
“Quite possibly.”
“How?”
“Stuck a knife through the throne so that when she took the pose— ”
“She sat on it?”
“Don’t be an ass. She lay on it and was stabbed to the heart, poor little fool!”
“Who’s the prime suspect?”
“A bloke called Garcia, who has been her lover, was heard to threaten her, has possibly got tired of her, and has probably been living on her money.”
“Is he here?”
“No. He’s gone on a walking tour to Lord knows where, and is expected to turn up at an unknown warehouse in London in the vaguely near future, to execute a marble statue of ‘Comedy and Tragedy’ for a talkie house.”
“D’you think he’s bolted?”
“I don’t know. He seems to be one of those incredible and unpleasant people with strict aesthetic standards, and no moral ones. He appears to be a genius. Now shut up. Here comes another of his fellow-students.”
Fox came in with Phillida Lee.
Alleyn, who had only met her across the dining-room table was rather surprised to see how small she was. She wore a dull red dress covered in a hand-painted design. It was, he realised, deliberately unfashionable and very deliberately interesting. Miss Lee’s hair was parted down the centre and dragged back from her forehead with such passionate determination that the corners of her eyes had attempted to follow it. Her face, if left to itself, would have been round and eager, but the austerities of the Slade school had superimposed upon it a careful expression of detachment. When she spoke one heard a faint undercurrent of the Midlands. Alleyn asked her to sit down. She perched on the edge of a chair and stared fixedly at him.
“Well, Miss Lee,” Alleyn began in his best official manner, “we shan’t keep you very long. I just want to have an idea of your movements during the week-end.”
“How ghastly!” said Miss Lee.
“But why?”
“I don’t know. It’s all so terrible. I feel I’ll never be quite the same again. The shock. Of course, I ought to try and sublimate it, I suppose, but it’s so difficult.”
“I shouldn’t try to do anything but be common-sensical if I were you,” said Alleyn.
“But I thought they used psycho methods in the police!”
“At all events we don’t need to apply them to the matter in hand. You left Tatler’s End House on Friday afternoon by the three o’clock bus?”
“Yes.”
“With Mr. Ormerin and Mr. Watt Hatchett?”
“Yes,” agreed Miss Lee, looking self-conscious and maidenly.
“What did you do when you got to London?”
“And then?”
“Ormerin suggested we should go to an exhibition of poster-work at the Westminster. We did go, and met some people we knew.”
“Their names, please, Miss Lee.”
She gave him the names of half a dozen people and the addresses of two.
“When did you leave the Westminster Art School?”
“I don’t know. About six, I should think. Ormerin had a date somewhere. Hatchett and I had dinner together at a Lyons. He took me. Then we went to the show at the Vortex Theatre.”
“That’s in Maida Vale, isn’t it?”
“Yes. I’m a subscriber and I had tickets. They were doing a play by Michael Sasha. It’s called Angle of Incidence. It’s frightfully thrilling and absolutely new. All about three county council labourers in a sewer. Of course,” added Miss Lee, adopting a more mature manner, “the Vortex is purely experimental.”
“So it would seem. Did you speak to anyone while you were there?”
“Oh yes. We talked to Sasha himself, and to Lionel Shand who did the decor. I know both of them.”
“Can you give me their addresses?”
Miss Lee was vague on this point, but said that care of the Vortex would always find them. Patiently led by Alleyn she gave a full account of her week-end. She had stayed with an aunt in the Fulham Road, and had spent most of her time in this aunt’s company. She had also seen a great deal of Watt Hatchett, it seemed, and had gone to a picture with him on Saturday night.
“Only I do hope you won’t have to ask auntie anything, Inspector Alleyn, because you see she pays my fees with Miss Troy, and if she thought the police were after me she’d very likely turn sour, and then I wouldn’t be able to go on painting. And that,” added Miss Lee with every appearance of sincerity, “would be the most frightful tragedy.”
“It shall be averted if possible,” said Alleyn gravely, and got the name and address of the aunt.
“Now then, Miss Lee, about those two conversations, you overheard— ”
“I don’t want to be called as a witness,” began Miss Lee in a hurry.
“Possibly not. On the other hand you must realise that in a serious case — and this is a very serious case — personal objections of this sort cannot be allowed to stand in the way of police investigation.”
