by Ngaio Marsh
“Nonsense,” said Mr. Reece.
“ ’S all very fine, say ‘nonsense.’ ”
“They were carefully chosen guests of known distinction.”
“All ver’ well. But what say,” repeated Mr. Ruby, building to an unsteady climax, “one of your sodding guestserknown-stinction was not what he bloody seemed. Eh? What say he was Six.”
“Six?” Signor Lattienzo asked mildly. “Did you say six?”
“I said nothing of sort. I said,” shouted Mr. Ruby, “Strix.”
“Oh, no!” Hanley cried out, and to Mr. Reece: “I’m sorry but honestly! There was the guest list. I gave one to the launch person and he was to tick off all the names as they came aboard in case anybody had been left behind. In the loo or something. I thought you couldn’t be too careful in case of accidents. Well, you know, it was — I mean is — such a night.”
“Yes, yes,” Mr. Reece said wearily. “Give it a rest. You acted very properly.” He turned to Alleyn. “I really can’t see why it should be supposed that Strix, if he is on the premises, could have any motive for committing this crime. On the contrary, he had every reason for wishing Bella to remain alive. She was a fortune to him.”
“All ver’ well,” Mr. Ruby sulked. “If it wasn’t, then who was it? Thass the point. D’you think you know who it was? Beppo? Monty? Ned? Come on. No, you don’t. See what I mean?”
“Ben,” said Mr. Reece quite gently. “Don’t you think you’d better go to bed?”
“You may be right. I mean to say,” said Mr. Ruby, appealing to Alleyn, “I’ve got a hell of a lot to do. Cables. Letters. There’s the U.S. concert tour. She’s booked out twelve months ahead: booked solid. All those managements.”
“They’ll know about it soon enough,” said Mr. Reece bitterly. “Once this storm dies down and the police arrive it’ll be world news. Go to bed, boy. If you can use him, Ned will give you some time tomorrow.” He glanced at Hanley. “See to that,” he said.
“Yes, of course,” Hanley effused, smiling palely upon Mr. Ruby, who acknowledged the offer without enthusiasm. “Well, ta,” he said. “Won’t be necessary, I daresay. I can type.”
He seemed to pull himself together. He finished his brandy, rose, advanced successfully upon Mr. Reece, and took his hand. “Monty,” he said, “dear old boy. You know me? Anything I can do? Say the word.”
“Yes, Benny,” Mr. Reece said, shaking his hand. “I know. Thank you.”
“There’ve been good times, haven’t there?” Mr. Ruby said wistfully. “It wasn’t all fireworks, was it? And now—!”
For the first time Mr. Reece seemed to be on the edge of losing his composure. “And now,” he surprised Alleyn by saying, “she no longer casts a shadow.” He clapped Mr. Ruby on the shoulder and turned away. Mr. Ruby gazed mournfully at his back for a moment or two and then moved to the door.
“Good night, all,” he said. He blew his nose like a trumpet and left them.
He was heard to fall rather heavily on his way upstairs.
“He is fortunate,” said Signor Lattienzo, who was swinging his untouched cognac around in the glass. “Now, for my part, the only occasions on which I take no consolation from alcohol are those of disaster. This is my third libation. The cognac is superb. Yet I know it will leave me stone-cold sober. It is very provoking.”
Mr. Reece, without turning to face Alleyn, said: “Have you anything further to tell me, Mr. Alleyn?” and his voice was elderly and tired.
Alleyn told him about the Morse signals and Mr. Reece said dully that it was good news. “But I meant,” he said, “about the crime itself. You will appreciate, I’m sure, how — confused and shocked — to find her — like that. It was—” He made a singular and uncharacteristic gesture as if warding off some menace. “It was so dreadful,” he said.
“Of course it was. One can’t imagine anything worse. Forgive me,” Alleyn said, “but I don’t know exactly how you learned about it. Were you prepared in any way? Did Maria—?”
“You must have heard her. I was in the drawing room and came out and she was there on the stairs, screaming. I went straight up with her. I think I made out before we went into the room and without really taking it in, that Bella was dead. Was murdered. But not — how. Beppo, here, and Ned — arrived almost at the same moment. It may sound strange but the whole thing, at the time, seemed unreal: a nightmare, you might say. It still does.”
Alleyn said: “You’ve asked me to take over until the police come. I’m very sorry indeed to trouble you—”
“No. Please,” Mr. Reece interrupted with a shaky return to his customary formality. “Please, do as you would under any other circumstances.”
“You make it easy for me. First of all, you are sure, sir, are you, that after Madame Sommita ordered you and Maria to leave the bedroom you heard her turn the key in the lock?”
“Absolutely certain. May I ask why?”
“And Maria used her own key when she returned?”
“She must have done so, I presume. The door was not locked when Maria and I returned after she raised the alarm.”
“And there are — how many keys to the room?”
If atmosphere can be said to tighten without a word being uttered, it did so then in Mr. Reece’s study. The silence was absolute; nobody spoke, nobody moved.
“Four?” Alleyn at last suggested.
“If you know, why do you ask?” Hanley threw out.
Mr. Reece said: “That will do, Ned.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, cringing a little yet with a disreputable suggestion of blandishment. “Truly.”
“Who has the fourth key?” Alleyn asked.
“If there is one I don’t imagine it is used,” said Mr. Reece.
“I think the police will want to know.”
“In that case we must find out. Maria will probably know.”
“Yes,” Alleyn agreed. “1 expect she will.” He hesitated for a moment and then said, “Forgive me. The circumstances I know are almost unbelievably grotesque, but did you look closely? At what had been done? And how it had been done?”
“Oh, really, Alleyn—” Signor Lattienzo protested, but Mr. Reece held up his hand.
“No, Beppo,” he said and cracked a dismal joke, “as you yourself would say: I asked for it, and now I’m getting it.” And to Alleyn. “There’s something under the knife. I didn’t go — near. I couldn’t. What is it?”
“It is a photograph. Of Madame Sommita singing.”
Mr. Reece’s lips formed the word “photograph” but no sound came from them.
“This is a madman,” Signor Lattienzo broke out. “A homicidal maniac. It cannot be otherwise.”
Hanley said: “Oh yes, yes!” as if there was some sort of comfort in the thought. “A madman. Of course. A lunatic.”
Mr. Reece cried out so loudly that they were all startled, “No! What you tell me alters the whole picture. I have been wrong. From the beginning I have been wrong. The photograph proves it. If he had left a signed acknowledgment, it couldn’t be clearer.”
There was a long silence before Lattienzo said flatly: “I think you may be right.”
“Right! Of course I am right.”
“And if you are, Monty, my dear, this Strix was on the island yesterday and unless he managed to escape by the launch is still on this island tonight. And, in spite of all our zealous searching, may actually be in the house. In which case we shall indeed do wisely to lock our doors.” He turned to Alleyn. “And what does the professional say to all this?” he asked.
“I think you probably correct in every respect, Signor Lattienzo,” said Alleyn. “Or rather, in every respect but one.”
“And what may that be?” Lattienzo asked sharply.
“You are proposing, aren’t you, that Strix is the murderer? I’m inclined to mink you may be mistaken there.”
“And I would be interested to hear why.”
“Oh,” said Alleyn, “just one of those things, you know. I would find
it hard to say why. Call it a hunch.”
“But my dear sir — the photograph.”
“Ah yes,” said Alleyn. “Quite so. There is always the photograph, isn’t there?”
“You choose to be mysterious.”
“Do I? Not really. What I really came in for was to ask you all if you happened to notice that an Italian stiletto, if that is what it is, was missing from its bracket on the wall behind the nude sculpture. And if you did notice, when.”
They stared at him. After a long pause Mr. Reece said: “You will find this extraordinary, but nevertheless it is a fact. I had not realized that was the weapon.”
“Had you not?”
“I am, I think I may say, an observant man but I did not notice that the stiletto was missing and I did not recognize it”— he covered his eyes with his hands—“when I — saw it.”
Hanley said: “Oh, God! Oh, how terrible.”
And Lattienzo: “They were hers. You knew that of course, Monty, didn’t you? Family possessions, I always understood. I remember her showing them to me and saying she would like to use one of them in Tosca. I said it would be much too dangerous, however cleverly she faked it. And I may add that the Scarpia wouldn’t entertain the suggestion for a second. Remembering her temperament, poor darling, it was not surprising.”
Mr. Reece looked up at Alleyn. His face was deadly tired and he seemed an old man.
“If you don’t mind,” he said, “I think I must go to my room. Unless of course there is anything else.”
“Of course not.” Alleyn glanced at Dr. Carmichael, who went to Mr. Reece.
“You’ve had about as much as you can take,” he said. “Will you let me see you to your room?”
“You are very kind. No, thank you, doctor. I am perfectly all right. Only tired.”
He stood up, straightened himself and walked composedly out of the room.
When he had gone, Alleyn turned to the secretary.
“Mr. Hanley,” he said. “Did you notice one of the stilettos was missing?”
“I’d have said so, wouldn’t I, if I had?” Hanley pointed out in an aggrieved voice. “As a matter of fact, I simply loathe the things. I’m like that over knives. They make me feel sick. I expect Freud would have had something to say about it.”
“No doubt,” said Signor Lattienzo.
“It was her idea,” Hanley went on. “She had them hung on the wall. She thought they teamed up with that marvelous pregnant female. In a way, one could see why.”
“Could one?” said Signor Lattienzo and cast up his eyes.
“I would like again to ask you all,” said Alleyn, “if on consideration, you can think of anyone — but anyone, however unlikely — who might have had some cause, however outrageous, to wish for Madame Sommita’s death. Yes, Signor Lattienzo?”
“I feel impelled to say that my answer is no I can not think of anyone. I believe that this is a crime of passion and impulse and not a coldly calculated affair. The outrageous grotesquerie, the use of the photograph and of her own weapon — everything points to some — I feel inclined to say Strindbergian love-hatred of lunatic force. Strix or not, I believe you are looking for a madman, Mr. Alleyn.”
iv
After that the interview began to languish and Alleyn sensed the unlikelihood of anything to the point emerging from it. He suggested that they go to bed.
“I am going to the studio,” he said. “I shall be there for the next half-hour or so and if anything crops up, however slight, that seems to be of interest, I would be glad if you would report to me there. I do remind you all,” he said, “that what I am trying to do is a sort of caretaker’s job for the police: to see, if possible, that nothing is done inadvertently or with intention, to muddle the case for them before they arrive. Even if it were proper for me to attempt a routine police investigation, it wouldn’t be possible to do so singlehanded. Is that clear?”
They muttered weary assents and got to their feet.
“Good night,” said Dr. Carmichael. It was the second and last time he had spoken.
He followed Alleyn into the hall and up the stairs.
When they reached the first landing they found that Bert had put two chairs together face-to-face, hard against the door to the Sommita’s room, and was lying very comfortably on this improvised couch, gently snoring.
“I’m along there,” said Dr. Carmichael, pointing to the left-hand passage.
“Unless you’re asleep on your feet,” said Alleyn, “will you come into the studio, for a moment or two? No need, if you can’t bear the thought.”
“I’m well trained to eccentric hours.”
“Good.”
They crossed the landing and went into the studio. The great empty canvas still stood on its easel but Troy had put away her drawings. Alleyn’s dispatch case had been removed from their bedroom and placed conspicuously on the model’s throne with a flashlight on top of it. Good for Troy, he thought.
Yesterday, sometime after Troy had been settled in the studio, a supply of drinks had been brought in and stored in a wallside unit. Alleyn wondered if this was common practice at the Lodge wherever a room was inhabited.
He said: “I didn’t have a drink down there: could you do with another?”
“I believe I could. A small one, though.”
They had their drinks and lit their pipes. “I haven’t dared do this before,” said the doctor.
“Nor I,” said Alleyn. He performed what had now become a routine exercise and drew back the curtains. The voice of the wind, which he was always to remember as a kind of leitmotiv to the action, invaded their room. The windowpane was no longer masked with water but was a black nothing with vague suggestions of violence beyond. When he leaned forward his ghost-face, cadaverous with shadows, moved toward him. He closed the curtains.
“It’s not raining,” he said, “but blowing great guns.”
“What’s called ‘blowing itself out,’ perhaps?”
“Hope so. But that doesn’t mean the lake will automatically go calmer.”
“Unfortunately no. Everything else apart, it’s bloody inconvenient,” said the doctor. “I’ve got a medical conference opening in Auckland tomorrow. Eru Johnstone said he’d ring them up. I hope he remembers.”
“Why did you stay?”
“Not from choice. I’m a travel-sickness subject. Ten minutes in that launch topped up by mile after mile in a closed bus would have been absolute hell for me and everyone else. Reece was insistent that I should stay. He wanted me to take on the Great Lady as a patient. Some notion that she was heading for a nervous crisis, it seemed.”
“One would have thought it was a chronic condition,” said Alleyn. “All the same I got the impression that even when she peaked, temperamentally speaking, she never went completely over the top. I’d risk a guess that she always knew jolly well what she was up to. Perhaps with one exception.”
“That wretched boy?”
“Exactly.”
“You’d say she’d gone overboard for him?” asked the doctor.
“I certainly got that impression,” Alleyn said.
“So did I, I must say. In Sydney—”
“You’d met them before?” Alleyn exclaimed. “In Sydney?”
“Oh yes. I went over there for her season. Marvelous it was, too. I was asked to meet her at a dinner party and then to a supper Reece gave after the performance. He — they — were hospitable and kind to me for the rest of the season. Young Bartholomew was very much in evidence and she made no bones about it. I got the impression that she was — I feel inclined to say ‘savagely’ devoted.”
“And he?”
“Oh, besotted and completely out of his depth.”
“And Reece?”
“If he objected he didn’t show it. I think his might be a case of collector’s satisfaction. You know? He’d acquired the biggest star in the firmament.”
“And was satisfied with the fait accompli? So ‘that was that’?”
“No.”
“By the way, Alleyn, I suppose it’s occurred to you that I’m a candidate for your list of suspects.”
“In common with everyone else in the house. Oh, yes, but you don’t come very high on the list. Of course, I didn’t know you’d had a previous acquaintance with her,” Alleyn said coolly.
“Well, I must say!” Dr. Carmichael exclaimed.
“I felt I really needed somebody I could call upon. You and Bert seemed my safest bets. Having had, as I then supposed, no previous connection with her and no conceivable motive.”
Dr. Carmichael looked fixedly at him. Alleyn pulled a long face.
“I am a lowland Scot,” said the doctor, “and consequently a bit heavy-handed when it comes to jokes.”
“I’ll tell you when I mean to be funny.”
“Thank you.”
“Although, God knows, there’s not much joky material going in this business.”
“No, indeed.”
“I suppose,” said Dr. Carmichael after a companionable silence, “that you’ve noticed my tact? Another lowland Scottish characteristic is commonly thought to be curiosity.”
“So I’ve always understood. Yes. I noticed. You didn’t ask me if I know who dunnit.”
“Do you?”
“No.”
“Do you hae your suspeesions?”
“Yes. You’re allowed one more.”
“Am I? What shall I choose? Do you think the photographer — Strix — is on the Island?”
“Yes.”
“And took — that photograph?”
“You’ve exceeded your allowance. But, yes. Of course. Who else?” said Alleyn.
“And murdered Isabella Sommita?”
“No.”
And after that they wished each other good night. It was now thirteen minutes past one in the morning.
When Dr. Carmichael had gone Alleyn opened a note that lay on top of his dispatch case, took out an all too familiar file and settled down to read it for the seventh time.
Isabella Pepitone, known as Isabella Sommita. Born:?1944, reputedly in Palermo, Sicily. Family subsequently settled in U.S.A. Father: Alfredo Pepitone, successful businessman U.S.A., suspected of Mafia activities but never arrested. Suspect in Rossi homicide case 1965. Victim: Bianca Rossi, female. Pepitone subsequently killed in car accident. Homicide suspected. No arrest.
