by Ngaio Marsh
“But I didn’t mean you to think that because Bostock flew into a blind rage with Sonia she was capable of murdering her.”
“Nor do I think so. It appears that half the class flew into rages at different times, and for much the same reason.”
“I didn’t! I never had a row with her. Ask the others. I got on all right with her. I was sorry for her.”
“Why?”
“Because Garcia was so beastly to her. Oh, I do think he was foul! If you’d heard him that time!”
“I wish very much that I had.”
“When he said he’d shut her mouth for keeps — I mean it’s the sort of thing you might think he’d say without meaning it, but he sounded as if he did mean it. He spoke so softly in a kind of drawl. I thought he was going to do it then. I was terrified. Truly! That’s why I banged the door and walked in.”
“About the scrap of conversation you overheard — did you get the impression that they planned to meet on Friday night?”
“It sounded like that. Sonia said: ‘If it’s possible.’ I think that’s what she meant. I think she meant to come back and bed down with Garcia for the night while no one was here.”
“To what, Miss Lee?”
“Well — you know — to spend the night with him.”
“What did they do when you appeared?”
“Garcia just stared at me. He’s got a beastly sort of way of looking at you. As if you were an animal. I was awfully scared he’d guessed I’d overheard them, but I saw in a minute that he hadn’t. I said: ‘Hullo, you two, what are you up to? Having a woo or something?’ I don’t know how I managed it but I did. And he said: ‘No, just a little chat.’ He turned away and began working at his thing. Sonia just walked out. She looked ghastly, Mr. Alleyn, honestly. She always made up pretty heavily except when we were painting the head, but even under her make-up I could see she was absolutely bleached. Oh, Mr. Alleyn, I do believe he did it, I do, actually.”
“You tell me you were on quite good terms with the model. Did she ever say anything that had any bearing on her relationship with Mr. Garcia?”
Phillida Lee settled herself more comfortably in her chair. She was beginning to enjoy herself.
“Well, of course, ever since this morning, I’ve been thinking of everything I can remember. I didn’t talk much to her until I’d been here for a bit. As a matter of fact the others were so frightfully superior that I didn’t get a chance to talk to anybody at first.”
Her round face turned pink, and suddenly Alleyn felt a little sorry for her.
“It’s always a bit difficult, settling down among new people,” he said.
“Yes, I dare say it is, but if the new people just do their best to make you feel they don’t want you, it’s worse than that. That was why I left the Slade, really, Mr. Alleyn. The instructors just used to come round once in a blue moon and look at one’s things and sigh. And the students never even seemed to see one, and if they did they looked as if one smelt. And at first this place was just as bad, though of course Miss Troy’s marvellous. Malmsley was at the Slade, and he’s typical. Seacliff’s worse. Anyway, Seacliff never sees another female, much less speaks to her. And all the men just beetle round Seacliff and never give anyone else a thought. It was a bit better after she said she was engaged to Pilgrim. Sonia felt like I did about Seacliff, and we talked about her a bit — and — well, we sort of sympathised about her.” The thin voice with its faint echo of the Midlands went on and on.
Alleyn, listening, could see the two of them, Phillida Lee, sore and lonely, God knew how angry and miserable, taking comfort in mutual abuse of Valmai Seacliff.
“So you made friends?” he asked.
“Sort of. Yes, we did. I’m not one to look down my nose at a girl because she’s a model. I’m a communist, anyway. Sonia was furious about Seacliff. She called her awful names — all beginning with B, you know. She said somebody ought to tell Pilgrim what Seacliff was like. She — she — said— ”
Miss Lee stopped abruptly.
“Yes?”
“I don’t know whether I ought to — I mean — I like Pilgrim awfully and — well, I mean— ”
“Is it something that the model said about Miss Seacliff?” said Alleyn.
“About her! Ooo no! I wouldn’t mind what anybody said about her. But I don’t believe it was true about Pilgrim. I don’t think he was ever attracted to Sonia. I think she just made it up.”
“Made what up, Miss Lee? Did she suggest there had been anything like a romance between herself and Mr. Pilgrim?”
“Well, if you can call it romance. I mean she said — I mean, it was only once ages ago, after a party, and I mean I think men and women ought to be free to follow their sex-impulses anyway, and not repress them. But I mean I don’t think Pilgrim ever did because he doesn’t seem as if he would somehow, but anyway, I don’t see why not, because as Garcia once said, if you’re hungry—” Miss Lee, scarlet with determination, shut her eyes and added: “you eat.”
“Quite so,” said Alleyn, “but you needn’t guzzle, of course.”
“Oh well — no, I suppose you needn’t. But I mean I should think Pilgrim never did.”
“The model suggested there had been a definite intimacy between herself and Pilgrim?”
“Yes. She said she could tell Seacliff a thing or two about him, and if he didn’t look out she would.”
“I see.”
“But I don’t think there ever was. Truly. It was because she was so furious with Pilgrim for not taking any notice of her.”
“You returned in the bus yesterday evening with the model, didn’t you?”
“Yes. Watt — I mean Hatchett and me and Ormerin and Malmsley.”
“Did you notice anything out of the way about her?”
“No. She was doing a bit of a woo with Ormerin to begin with, but I think she was asleep for the last part of the trip.”
“Did she mention what she had done in London?”
“I think she said she’d gone to stay with a friend or something.”
“No idea where or with whom?”
“No, Mr. Alleyn.”
“Nothing about Mr. Garcia?”
“No.”
“Did she ever speak much of Garcia?”
“Not much. But she seemed as if — as if in a sort of way she was sure of Garcia. And yet he was tired of her. She’d lost her body-urge for him, if you ask me. But she seemed sure of him and yet furious with him. Of course, she wasn’t very well.”
“Wasn’t she?”
“No. I’m sure that was why she did that terrible thing to Troy’s portrait of Seacliff. She was ill. Only she asked me not to say anything about it, because she said it didn’t do a model any good for her to get a reputation of not being able to stand up to the work. I wouldn’t have known except that I found her one morning looking absolutely green, and I asked her if anything was the matter. She said the pose made her feel sick — it was the twist that did it, she said. She was honestly sick, and she felt sort of giddy.”
Alleyn looked at Miss Lee’s inquisitive, rather pretty, rather commonplace face and realised that her sophistication was more synthetic than even he had supposed. “Bless my soul,” he thought, “the creature’s a complete baby — an infant that has been taught half a dozen indecorous phrases by older children.”
“Well, Miss Lee,” he said, “I think that’s all we need worry about for the moment. I’ve got your aunt’s address— ”
“Yes, but you will remember, won’t you? I mean— ”
“I shall be the very soul of tact. I shall say we are looking for a missing heiress believed to be suffering from loss of memory, and last heard of near Bossicote, and she will think me very stupid, and I shall learn that you spent the entire week-end in her company.”
“Yes. And Watt — Hatchett, I mean.”
“He was there too, was he?”
Again Miss Lee looked self-conscious and maidenly.
“Well, I mean, not a
ll the time. I mean he didn’t stay with us, but he came to lunch and tea — and dinner on Saturday and lunch on Sunday. Of course he is rough, and he does speak badly, but I told auntie he can’t help that because everybody’s like that in Australia. Some of the others were pretty stinking to him too, you know. They made him feel dreadfully out of it. I was sorry for him, and I thought they were such snobs. And anyway, I think his work is frightfully exciting.”
“Where did he stay?”
“At a private hotel near us, in the Fulham Road. We went to the flicks on Saturday night. Oh, I told you that, didn’t I?”
“Yes, thank you. When you go back to the dining-room, will you ask Mr. Hatchett to come and see me in ten minutes’ time?”
“Yes, I will.”
She got up and gazed at Alleyn. He saw a sort of corpse-side expression come into her face.
“Oh, Mr. Alleyn,” she said, “Isn’t it all awful?”
“Quite frightful,” responded Alleyn cheerfully. “Good evening, Miss Lee.”
She walked away with an air of bereavement, and shut the door softly behind her.
“Oy!” said Nigel from the arm-chair.
“Hullo!”
“I’m moving over to the fire till the next one comes along. It’s cold in this corner.”
“All right.”
Fox, who had remained silently at the writing-desk throughout the interview with Miss Lee, joined Alleyn and Nigel at the fire.
“That was a quaint little piece of Staffordshire,” said Nigel.
“Little simpleton! All that pseudo-modern nonsense! See here, Bathgate, you’re one of the young intelligentsia, aren’t you?”
“What do you mean? I’m a pressman.”
“That doesn’t actually preclude you from the intelligentsia, does it?”
“Of course it doesn’t.”
“Very well then. Can you tell me how much of this owlishness is based on experience, and how much on handbooks and hearsay?”
“You mean their ideas on sex?”
“I do.”
“Have they been shocking you, Inspector?”
“I find their conversation bewildering, I must confess.”
“Come off it,” said Nigel.
“What do you think, Fox?” asked Alleyn.
“Well, sir, I must say I thought they spoke very free round the dining-room table. All this talk about mistresses and appetites and so forth. Very free. Not much difference between their ways and the sort of folk we used to deal with down in the black divisions if you’re to believe what you hear. Only the criminal classes are just promiscuous without being able to make it sound intellectual, if you know what I mean. Though I must say,” continued Fox thoughtfully, “I don’t fancy this crowd is as free-living as they’d like us to believe. This young lady, now. She seems like a nice little girl from a good home, making out she’s something fierce.”
“I know,” agreed Alleyn. “Little donkey.”
“And all the time she was talking about deceased and body-urges and so forth, she never seemed to realise what these sick, giddy turns might mean,” concluded Fox.
“Of course the girl was going to have a child,” said Nigel complacently.
“It doesn’t follow as the night the day,” murmured Alleyn. “She may have been liverish or run-down. Nevertheless, it’s odd that the little thought never entered Miss Lee’s head. You go back to your corner, Bathgate, here’s Mr. Watt Hatchett.”
Watt Hatchett came in with his hands thrust into his trousers’ pockets. Alleyn watched him curiously, thinking what a perfect type he was of the smart Sydney tough about to get on in the world. He was short, with the general appearance of a bad man in a South American movie. His hair resembled a patent-leather cap, his skin was swarthy, he walked with a sort of hard-boiled slouch, and his clothes fitted him rather too sleekly. A cigarette seemed to be perpetually gummed to his under-lip which projected. He had beautiful hands.
“Want me, Inspector?” he inquired. He never opened his lips more than was absolutely necessary, and he scarcely seemed to move his tongue, so that every vowel was strangled at birth, and for preference he spoke entirely through his nose. There was, however, something engaging about him; an aliveness, a raw virility.
“Sit down, Mr. Hatchett,” said Alleyn, “I shan’t keep you long.”
Hatchett slumped into an arm-chair. He moved with the slovenly grace of an underbred bounder, and this in its way was also attractive.
“Good-oh,” he said.
“I’m sure you realise yourself the importance of the information we have from you as regards the drape.”
“Too right. I reckon it shows that whoever did the dirty stuff with the knife did it after everyone except Garcia and Mr. Highbrow Malmsley had cleared off to London.”
“Exactly. You will therefore not think it extraordinary if I ask you to repeat the gist of this information.”
Hatchett wanted nothing better. He went over the whole story again. He went down to the studio on Friday afternoon — he remembered now that it was half-past two by the hall clock when he left the house — and noticed the drape lying crumpled on the throne, as Sonia had left it when she got up at noon. It was still undisturbed when he went away to catch the bus.
“And yesterdee evening it was stretched out tight. There you are.”
Alleyn said nothing about Troy’s discovery of this condition on Saturday afternoon. He asked Hatchett to account for his own movements during the week-end. Hatchett described his Friday evening’s entertainment with Phillida Lee and Ormerin.
“We had tea and then we went to a theatre they called the Vortex, and it was just about the lousiest show I’ve ever had to sit through. Gosh! it gave me a pain in the neck, dinkum it did. Three blokes in a sewer magging at each other for two bloody hours, and they called it a play. If that’s a play give me the talkies in Aussie. They’ll do me. We met the chap that runs the place. One of these die-away queens that likes to kid himself he amounts to something. You won’t get me inside a theatre again.”
“Have you never seen a flesh-and-blood show before?”
“Naow, and I never will again. The talkies’ll do me.”
“But I assure you the Vortex is no more like the genuine theatre than, shall we say, Mr. Malmsley’s drawings are like Miss Troy’s portraits.”
“Is that a fact?”
“Certainly. But we’re straying a little from the matter in hand. You spent Friday night at the Vortex and returned with Miss Lee to the Fulham Road?”
“Yeah, that’s right. I took her home and then I went to my own place close by.”
“Anyone see you come in?”
They plodded on. Hatchett could, if necessary, produce the sort of alibi that might hold together or might not. Alleyn gleaned enough material to enable him to verify the youth’s account of himself.
“To return to Garcia,” he said at last. “I want you to tell me if you have ever heard Garcia say anything about this warehouse he intends to use as a studio in London.”
“I never had much to do with that bloke. I reckon he’s queer. If you talk to him, half the time he never seems to listen. I did say once I’d like to have a look when he started in on the marble. I reckon that statue’ll be a corker. He’s clever all right. D’you know what he said? He said he’d take care nobody knew where it was because he didn’t want any of this crowd pushing in when he was working. He did let out that it belonged to a bloke that’s gone abroad somewhere. I heard him tell the girl Sonia that much.”
“I see. That’s no go, then. Now, on your bus trips to and from London, did you sit anywhere near Sonia Gluck?”
“Naow. After the way she mucked up Miss Troy’s picture, I didn’t want anything to do with her. It’s just too bad she’s got hers for keeps, but all the same I reckon she was a fair nark, that girl. Always slinging off about Aussie, she was. She’d been out there once with a Vordervill show, and I tipped it was a bum show because she was always shooting off her mouth abo
ut the way the Aussies don’t know a good thing when they see it. These pommies! She gave me the jitters. Just because I couldn’t talk big about my home and how swell my people were, and how we cut a lot of ice in Sydney, she treated me like dirt. I said to her one time, I said: ‘I reckon if Miss Troy thought I was good enough to come here, even if my old pot did keep a bottle store on Circular Quay, I reckon if she thought I was O.K. I’m good enough for you.’ I went very, very crook at her after she did that to the picture. Miss Troy’s been all right to me. She’s been swell. Did you know she paid my way in the ship?”
“Did she?”
“Too right she did. She saw me painting in Suva. I worked my way to Suva, yer know, from Aussie, and I got a job there. It was a swell job, too, while it payed. Travelling for Jackson’s Confectionary. I bought this suit and some paints with my first cheque, and then I had a row with the boss and walked out on him. I used to paint all the time then. She saw me working and she reckoned I had talent, so she brought me home to England. The girl Sonia seemed to think I was living on charity.”
“That was a very unpleasant interpretation to put upon a gracious action.”
“Eh? Yeah! Yeah, that’s what I told her.”
“Since you joined Miss Troy’s classes, have you become especially friendly with any one of the other students?”
“Well, the little girl Lee’s all right. She treats you as if you were human.”
“What about the men?”
“Malmsley makes me tired. He’s nothing but a big sissie. The French bloke doesn’t seem to know he’s born, and Garcia’s queer. They don’t like me,” said Hatchett, with extraordinary aggression, “and I don’t like them.”
“What about Mr. Pilgrim?”
“Aw, he’s different. He’s all right. I get on with him good-oh, even if his old pot is one of these lords. Him and me’s cobbers.”
“Was he on good terms with the model?”
Hatchett looked sulky and uncomfortable.
“I don’t know anything about that,” he muttered.
“You have never heard either of them mention the other?”
