by Ngaio Marsh
“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 it 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?”
Marco began to look very scared. “No,” he said. “Is it?”
“So if our speculation should turn out to be the truth: if you put the photograph, addressed to the Watchman, in the mailbag, the question is: who removed it? Who impaled it on the body? If, of course, you didn’t.”
“It is idiotic to persist in this lie. Why do you do it? Where for me is the motive? Suppose I were Strix? So. I kill the goose that lays the golden egg? Does it make sense? So: after all, the man who takes the photograph does not post it. He is the murderer and he leaves it on the body.”
“What is your surname?”
“Smith.”
“I see.”
“It is Smith,” Marco shouted. “Why do you look like that? Why should it not be Smith? Is there a law against Smith? My father was an American.”
“And your mother?”
“A Calabrian. Her name was Croce. I am Marco Croce Smith. Why?”
“Have you any Rossis in your family?”
“None. Again, why?”
“There is an enmity between the Rossis and Madame Sommita’s family.”
“I know nothing of it,” said Marco and then burst out, “How could I have done it? When was it done? I don’t even know when it was done, but all the time from when the opera is ended until Maria found her, I am on duty. You saw me. Everybody saw me. I wait at table. I attend in the hall. I go to and from the launch. I have alibis.”
“That may be true. But you may also have had a collaborator.”
“You are mad.”
“I am telling you how the police will think.”
“It is a trap. You try to trap me.”
“If you choose to put it like that. I want, if you didn’t do it, to satisfy myself that you didn’t. I want to get you out of the way. I believe you to be Strix, and as Strix I think your activities were despicable, but I do not accuse you of murder. I simply want you to tell me if you put the photograph in the postbag. In an envelope addressed to the Watchman.”
There followed a silence. The sun now shone in at the studio windows on the blank canvas and the empty model’s throne. Outside a tui sang: a deep lucid phrase, uncivilized as snow water and ending in a consequential clatter as if it cleared its throat. You darling, thought Troy, standing by the window, and knew that she could not endure to stay much longer inside this clever house with its arid perfections and its killed woman in the room on the landing.
Marco said: “I surmise it was in the postbag. I do not know. I do not say I put it there.”
“And the bag was in the study?”
“That is where it is kept.”
“When was the letter put in it? Immediately after the photograph was taken? Or perhaps only just before the postbox was emptied into it and it was locked.”
Marco shrugged.
“And finally — crucially — when was the photograph removed, and by whom, and stabbed onto the body?”
“Of that I know nothing. Nothing, I tell you,” said Marco and then with sudden venom, “but I can guess.”
“Yes?”
“It is simple. Who clears the postbox always? Always! Who? I have seen him. He puts his arms into the bag and rounds it with his hands to receive the box and then he opens the box and holds it inside the bag to empty itself. Who?”
“Mr. Hanley?”
“Ah. The secretary. Il favorito,” said Marco and achieved an angry smirk. He bowed in Troy’s direction. “Excuse me, madam,” he said. “It is not a suitable topic.”
“Did you actually see Mr. Hanley do this, last evening?”
“No, sir.”
“Very well,” said Alleyn. “You may go.”
He went out with a kind of mean flourish and did not quite bang the door.
“He’s a horrible little man,” said Troy, “but I don’t think he did it.”
“Nor I,” Dr. Carmichael agreed.
“His next move,” said Alleyn, “will be to hand in his notice and wait for the waters to subside.”
“Sling his hook?”
“Yes.”
“Will you let him?”
“I can’t stop him. The police may try to, or I suppose Reece could simply deny him transport.”
“Do you think Reece believes Marco is Strix?”
“If ever there was a clam, its middle name was Reece, but I think he does.”
“Are you any further on?” asked the doctor.
“A bit. I wish I’d found out whether Marco knows who took his bloody snapshot out of the bag. If ever it was in the bloody bag, which is conjectural. It’s so boring of him not to admit he put it in. If he did.”
“He almost admitted something, didn’t he?” said Troy.
“He’s trying to work it out whether it would do him more good or harm to come clean.”
“I suppose,” hazarded Dr. Carmichael, “that whoever it was, Hanley or anyone else, who removed the photograph, it doesn’t follow he was the killer.”
“Not as the night the day. No.”
Troy suddenly said: “Having offered to make beds, I suppose I’d better make them. Do you think Miss Dancy would be outraged if I asked her to bear a hand? I imagine the little Sylvia is otherwise engaged.”
“Determined to maintain the house party tone against all hazards, are you, darling?” said her husband.
“That’s right. The dinner-jacket-in-the-jungle spirit.”
Dr. Carmichael gazed at Troy in admiration and surprise. “I must say, Mrs. Alleyn, you set us all an example. How many beds do you plan to make?”
“I haven’t counted.”
“The round dozen or more,” teased Alleyn, “and God help all those who sleep in them.”
“He’s being beastly,” Troy remarked. “I’m not all that good at bed-making. I’ll just give Miss Dancy a call, I think.”
She consulted the list of room numbers by the telephone. Dr. Carmichael joined Alleyn at the windows. “It really is clearing,” he said. “The wind’s dropping. And I do believe the Lake’s settling.”
“Yes, it really is.”
“What do you suppose will happen first, the telephone be reconnected, or the la
unch engine be got going or the police appear on the far bank or the chopper turn up?”
“Lord knows.”
Troy said into the telephone, “Of course I understand. Don’t give it another thought. We’ll meet at lunchtime. Oh. Oh, I see. I’m so sorry. Yes, I think you’re very wise. No, no news. Awful, isn’t it?”
She hung up. “Miss Dancy has got a migraine,” she said. “She sounds very Wagnerian. Well, I’d better make the best I can of the beds.”
“You’re not going round on your own, Troy.”
“Aren’t I? But why?”
“It’s inadvisable.”
“But, Rory, I promised Mrs. Bacon.”
“To hell with Mrs. Bacon. I’ll tell her it’s not on. They can make their own bloody beds. I’ve made ours,” said Alleyn. “I’d go round with you but I don’t think that’d do, either.”
“I’ll make beds with you, Mrs. Alleyn,” offered Dr. Carmichael in a sprightly manner.
“That’s big of you, Carmichael,” said Alleyn. “I daresay all the rooms will be locked. Mrs. Bacon will have spare keys.”
“I’ll find out.”
Troy said: “You can pretend it’s a hospital. You’re the matron and I’m a hamfisted probationer. I’ll just go along to our palatial suite for a moment. Rejoin you here.”
When she had gone, Alleyn said: “She’s hating this. You can always tell if she goes all joky. I’ll be glad to get her out of it.”
“If I may say so, you’re a lucky man.”
“You may indeed say so.”
“Perhaps a brisk walk round the Island when we’ve done our chores.”
“A splendid idea. In a way,” Alleyn said, “this bed-making nonsense might turn out to be handy. I’ve no authority to search, of course, but you two might just keep your eyes skinned.”
“Anything in particular?”
“Not a thing. But you never know. The skinned eye and a few minor liberties.”
“I’ll see about the keys,” said Dr. Carmichael happily and bustled off.
ii
Alleyn wondered if he were about to take the most dangerous decision of his investigative career. If he took this decision and failed, not only would he make an egregious ass of himself before the New Zealand police but he would effectively queer the pitch for their subsequent investigations and probably muck up any chance of an arrest. Or would he? In the event of failure was there no chance of a new move, a strategy in reserve, a surprise attack? If there was, he was damned if he knew what it could be.
He went over the arguments again: The time factor. The riddle of the keys. The photograph. The conjectural motive. The appalling conclusion. He searched for possible alternatives to each of these and could find none.
He resurrected the dusty old bit of investigative folklore: “If all explanations except one fail, then that one, however outrageous, will be the answer.”
And, God knew, they were dealing with the outrageous.
So he made up his mind and, having done that, went downstairs and out into the watery sunshine for a breather.
All the guests had evidently been moved by the same impulse. They were abroad on the Island in pairs and singly. Whereas earlier in the morning Alleyn had likened those of them who had come out into the landscape to surrealistic details; now, while still wildly anachronistic, as was the house itself, in their primordial setting, they made him think of persons in a poem by Verlaine or perhaps by Edith Sitwell. Signor Lattienzo, in his Tyrolean cape and his gleaming eyeglass, stylishly strolled beside Mr. Ben Ruby, who smoked a cigar and was rigged out for the country in a brand new Harris tweed suit. Rupert Bartholomew, wan in corduroy, his hair romantically disordered, his shoulders hunched, stood by the tumbled shore and stared over the Lake. And was himself stared at, from a discreet distance, by the little Sylvia Parry with a scarlet handkerchief around her head. Even the stricken Miss Dancy had braved the elements. Wrapped up, scarfed, and felt-hatted, she paced alone up and down a gravel path in front of the house as if it were the deck of a cruiser.
To her from indoors came Mr. Reece in his custom-built outfit straight from pages headed “Rugged Elegance: For Him” in the glossiest of periodicals. He wore a peaked cap, which he raised ceremoniously to Miss Dancy, who immediately engaged him in conversation, clearly of an emotional kind. But he’s used to that, thought Alleyn, and noticed how Mr. Reece balanced Miss Dancy’s elbow in his pigskin grasp as he squired her on her promenade.
He had thought they completed the number of persons in the landscape until he caught sight, out of the corner of his eye, of some movement near one of the great trees near the Lake. Ned Hanley was standing there. He wore a dark green coat and sweater and merged with his background. He seemed to survey the other figures in the picture.
One thing they all had in common, and that was a tendency to halt and stare across the Lake or shade their eyes, tip back their heads, and look eastward into the fast-thinning clouds. He had been doing this himself.
Mr. Ben Ruby spied him, waved his cigar energetically, and made toward him. Alleyn advanced and at close quarters found Mr. Ruby looking the worse for wear and self-conscious.
“ ’Morning, old man,” said Mr. Ruby. “Glad to see you. Brightening up, isn’t it? Won’t be long now. We hope!”
“We do indeed.”
“You hope, anyway, I don’t mind betting. Don’t envy you your job. Responsibility without the proper backing, eh?”
“Something like that,” said Alleyn.
“I owe you an apology, old man. Last evening. I’d had one or two drinks. You know that?”
“Well—”
“What with one thing and another — the shock and that. I was all to pieces. Know what I mean?”
“Of course.”
“All the same — bad show. Very bad show.” said Mr. Ruby, shaking his head and then wincing.
“Don’t give it another thought.”
“Christ, I feel awful,” confided Mr. Ruby and threw away his cigar. “It was good brandy, too. The best. Special cognac. Wonder if this guy Marco could rustle up a corpse-reviver.”
“I daresay. Or Hanley might.”
Mr. Ruby made the sound that is usually written: “T’ss” and after a brief pause said in a deep voice and with enormous expression, “Bella! Bella Sommita! You can’t credit it, can you? The most beautiful woman with the most gorgeous voice God ever put breath into. Gone! And how! And what the hell we’re going to do about the funeral’s nobody’s business. I don’t know of any relatives. It’d be thoroughly in character if she’s left detailed instructions and bloody awkward ones at that. Pardon me, it slipped out. But it might mean cold storage to anywhere she fancied or ashes in the Adriatic.” He caught himself up and gave Alleyn a hard if bloodshot stare. “I suppose it’s out of order to ask if you’ve formed an idea?”
“It is, really. At this stage,” Alleyn said, “we must wait for the police.”
“Yeah? Well, here’s hoping they know their stuff.” He reverted to his elegiac mood. “Bella!” he apostrophized. “After all these years of taking the rough with the smooth, if you can understand me. Hell, it hurts!”
“How long an association has it been?”
“You don’t measure grief by months and years,” Mr. Ruby said reproachfully. “How long? Let me see? It was on her first tour of Aussie. That would be in ’72. Under the Bel Canto management in association with my firm — Ben Ruby Associates. There was a disagreement with Bel Canto and we took over.”
Here Mr. Ruby embarked on a long parenthesis explaining that he was a self-made man, a Sydneysider who had pulled himself up by his own boot-strings and was proud of it and how the Sommita had understood this and had herself evolved from peasant stock.
“And,” said Alleyn when an opportunity presented itself, “a close personal friendship had developed with the business association?”
“This is right, old man. I reckon I understood her as well as anybody ever could. There was the famous temperam
ent, mind, and it was a snorter while it lasted, but it never lasted long. She always sends — sent — for Maria to massage her shoulders, and that would do the trick. Back into the honied-kindness bit and everybody loving everybody.”
“Mr. Ruby — have you anything to tell me that might in however farfetched or remote a degree help to throw light on this tragedy?”
Mr. Ruby opened his arms wide and let them fall in the classic gesture of defeat.
“Nothing?” Alleyn said.
“This is what I’ve been asking myself ever since I woke up. When I got round, that is, to asking myself anything other than why the hell I had to down those cognacs.”
“And how do you answer yourself?”
Again the gesture. “I don’t,” Mr. Ruby confessed. “I can’t. Except—” He stopped, provokingly, and stared at Signor Lattienzo, who by now had arrived at the lakeside and contemplated the water rather, in his Tyrolean outfit, like some poet of the post-Romantic era.
“Except?” Alleyn prompted.
“Look!” Mr. Ruby invited. “Look at what’s been done and how it’s been done. Look at that. If you had to say — you, with your experience — what it reminded you of, what would it be? Come on.”
“Grand opera,” Alleyn said promptly.
Mr. Ruby let out a strangulated yelp and clapped him heavily on the back. “Good on you!” he cried. “Got it in one! Good on you, mate. And the Italian sort of grand opera, what’s more. That funny business with the dagger and the picture! Verdi would have loved it. Particularly the picture. Can you see any of us, supposing he was a murderer, doing it that way? That poor kid Rupert? Ned Hanley, never mind if he’s one of those? Monty? Me? You? Even if you’d draw the line at the props and the business. ‘No,’ you’d say; ‘no.’ Not that way. It’s not in character, it’s impossible, it’s not — it’s not—” and Mr. Ruby appeared to hunt excitedly for the mot juste of his argument. “It’s not British,” he finally pronounced and added: “Using the word in its widest sense. I’m a Commonwealth man myself.”
Alleyn had to give himself a moment or two before he was able to respond to this declaration.
“What you are saying,” he ventured, “in effect, is that the murderer must be one of the Italians on the premises. Is that right?”
