Photo-Finish

by Ngaio Marsh

  ‘How did she take the friendship with Mr Reece?’

  ‘Monty?’ A marked change came over Mr Ruby. He glanced quickly at Alleyn as if he wondered whether he was unenlightened in some respect. He hesitated and then said quietly: ‘That’s different again, isn’t it?’

  ‘Is it? How, “different"?’

  ‘Well – you know.’

  ‘But I don’t know.’

  ‘It’s platonic. Couldn’t be anything else.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Poor old Monty. Result of an illness. Cruel thing, really.’

  ‘Indeed? So Maria had no cause to resent him.’

  ‘This is right. She admires him. They do, you know. Italians. Especially his class. They admire success and prestige more than anything else. It was a very different story when young Rupert came along. Maria didn’t worry about letting everyone see what she felt about that lot. I’d take long odds she’ll be telling you the kid done – did – it. That vindictive, she is. Fair go – I wouldn’t put it past her. Now.’

  Alleyn considered for a moment or two. Signor Lattienzo had now joined Rupert Bartholomew on the lakeside and was talking energetically and clapping him on the shoulder. Mr Reece and Miss Dancy still paced their imaginary promenade deck and the little Sylvia Parry, perched dejectedly on a rustic seat, watched Rupert.

  Alleyn said: ‘Was Madame Sommita tolerant of these outbursts from Maria?’

  ‘I suppose she must have been in her own way. There were terrible scenes, of course. That was to be expected, wasn’t it? Bella’d threaten Maria with the sack and Maria’d throw a fit of hysterics and then they’d both go weepy on it and we’d be back to square one with Maria standing behind Bella massaging her shoulders and swearing eternal devotion. Italians! My oath! But it was different, totally different – with the kid. I’d never seen her as far gone over anyone else as she was with him. Crazy about him. In at the deep end, boots and all. That’s why she took it so badly when he saw the light about that little opera of his and wanted to opt out. He was dead right, of course, but Bella hadn’t got any real musical judgement. Not really. You ask Beppo.’

  ‘What about Mr Reece?’

  ‘Tone deaf,’ said Mr Ruby.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Fact. Doesn’t pretend to be anything else. He was annoyed with the boy for disappointing her, of course. As far as Monty was concerned the diva had said the opus was great, and what she said had got to be right. And then of course he didn’t like the idea of throwing a disaster of a party. In a way,’ said Mr Ruby, ‘it was the Citizen Kane situation with the boot on the other foot. Sort of.’ He waited for a moment and then said: ‘I feel bloody sorry for that kid.’

  ‘God knows, so do I,’ said Alleyn.

  ‘But he’s young. He’ll get over it. All the same, she’d a hell of a lot to answer for.’

  ‘Tell me. You knew her as well as anybody, didn’t you? Does the name “Rossi” ring a bell?’

  ‘Rossi,’ Mr Ruby mused. ‘Rossi, eh? Hang on. Wait a sec.’

  As if to prompt, or perhaps warn him, raucous hoots sounded from the jetty across the water, giving the intervals without the cadence of the familiar singing-off phrase ‘Dah dahdy dah-dah. Dah dah.’

  Les appeared on deck and could be seen to wave his scarlet cap.

  The response from the islanders was instant. They hurried into a group. Miss Dancy flourished her woollen scarf. Mr Reece raised his arm in a Roman salute. Signor Lattienzo lifted his Tyrolean hat high above his head. Sylvia ran to Rupert and took his arm. Hanley moved out of cover and Troy, Mrs Bacon and Dr Carmichael came out of the house and pointed Les out to each other from the steps. Mr Ruby bawled out, ‘He’s done it. Good on ‘im, ‘e’s done it.’

  Alleyn took a handkerchief from his breast pocket and a spare from his overcoat. He went down to the lake edge and semaphored: Nice Work. Les returned to the wheelhouse and sent a short toot of acknowledgement.

  The islanders chattered excitedly, telling each other that the signal must mean the launch was mobile again, that the lake was undoubtedly calmer and that when the police did arrive they would be able to cross. The hope that they themselves would all be able to leave remained unspoken.

  They trooped up to the house and were shepherded in by Mr Reece who said, with sombre playfulness, that ‘elevenses’ were now served in the library.

  Troy and Dr Carmichael joined Alleyn. They seemed to be in good spirits. ‘We’ve finished our chores,’ Troy said, ‘and we’ve got something to report. Let’s have a quick swallow, and join up in the studio.’

  ‘Don’t make it too obvious,’ said Alleyn, who was aware that he was now under close though furtive observation by most of the household. He fetched two blameless tomato juices for himself and Troy. They joined Rupert and Sylvia Parry who were standing a little apart from the others and were not looking at each other. Rupert was still white about the gills but, or so Alleyn thought, rather less distraught – indeed there was perhaps a hint of portentousness, of self-conscious gloom in his manner.

  She has provided him with an audience, thought Alleyn. Let’s hope she knows what she’s letting herself in for.

  Rupert said: ‘I’ve told Sylvia about – last night.’

  ‘So I supposed,’ said Alleyn.

  ‘She thinks I was right.’

  ‘Good.’

  Sylvia said: ‘I think it took wonderful courage and artistic integrity and I do think it was right.’

  ‘That’s a very proper conclusion.’

  ‘It won’t be long now, will it?’ Rupert asked. ‘Before the police come?’ He pitched his voice rather high and brittle with the sort of false airiness some actors employ when they hope to convey suppressed emotion.

  ‘Probably not,’ said Alleyn.

  ‘Of course, I’ll be the prime suspect,’ Rupert announced.

  ‘Rupert, no,’ Sylvia whispered.

  ‘My dear girl, it sticks out a mile. After my curtain performance. Motive. Opportunity. The lot. We might as well face it.’

  ‘We might as well not make public announcements about it,’ Troy observed.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Rupert grandly. ‘No doubt I’m being silly.’

  ‘Well,’ Alleyn cheerfully remarked, ‘you said it. We didn’t. Troy, hadn’t we better sort out those drawings of yours?’

  ‘OK. Let’s. I’d forgotten.’

  ‘She leaves them unfixed and tiles the floor with them,’ Alleyn explained. ‘Our cat sat on a preliminary sketch of the Prime Minister and turned it into a jungle flower. Come on, darling.’

  They found Dr Carmichael already in the studio. ‘I didn’t want Reece’s “elevenses",’ he said. And to Troy: ‘Have you told him?’

  ‘I waited for you,’ said Troy.

  They were, Alleyn thought, as pleased as Punch with themselves. ‘You tell him,’ they said simultaneously. ‘Ladies first,’ said the doctor.

  ‘Come on,’ said Alleyn.

  Troy inserted her thin hand in a gingerly fashion into a large pocket of her dress. Using only her first finger and her thumb she drew out something wrapped in one of Alleyn’s handkerchiefs. She was in the habit of using them as she preferred a large one and she had been known when intent on her work to confuse the handkerchief and her paint-rag, with regrettable results to the handkerchief and to her face.

  She carried her trophy to the paint-table and placed it there. Then, with a sidelong look at her husband, she produced two clean hog-hair brushes and, using them upside down in the manner of chopsticks, fiddled open the handkerchief and stood back.

  Alleyn walked over, put his arm across her shoulders and looked at what she had revealed.

  A large heavy envelope, creased and burnt but not so extensively that an airmail stamp and part of the address was not still in evidence. The address was typewritten.

  The Edit

  The Watchma

  PO Bo

  NSW 14C

  SY

  Australia

  �
��Of course,’ Troy said after a considerable pause, ‘it may be of no consequence at all, may it?’

  ‘Suppose we have the full story?’

  ‘Yes. All right. Here goes, then.’

  Their story was that they had gone some way with their housemaiding expedition when Troy decided to equip herself with a boxbroom and a duster. They went downstairs in search of them and ran into Mrs Bacon emerging from the study. She intimated that she was nearing the end of her tether. The staff, having gone through progressive stages of hysteria and suspicion, had settled for a sort of work-to-rule attitude and, with the exception of the chef who had agreed to provide a very basic luncheon and Marco who was, said Mrs Bacon, abnormally quiet but did his jobs, either sulked in their rooms or muttered together in the staff sitting room. As far as Mrs Bacon could make out, the New Zealand ex-hotel group suspected in turn Signor Lattienzo, Marco and Maria on the score of their being Italians and Mr Reece whom they cast in the role of de facto cuckold. Rupert Bartholomew was fancied as an outside chance on the score of his having turned against the Sommita. Maria had gone to earth, supposedly in her room. Chaos, Mrs Bacon said, prevailed.

  Mrs Bacon herself had rushed round the dining and drawing rooms while Marco set out the elevenses. She had then turned her attention to the study and found to her horror that the open fireplace had not been cleaned nor the fire relaid. To confirm this, she had drawn their attention to a steel ashpan she herself carried in her rubber-gloved hands.

  ‘And that’s when I saw it, Rory,’ Troy explained. ‘It was sticking up out of the ashes and I saw what’s left of the address.’

  ‘And she nudged me,’ said Dr Carmichael proudly, ‘and I saw it too.’

  ‘And he behaved perfectly,’ Troy intervened. ‘He said: “Do let me take that thing and tell me where to empty it.” And Mrs Bacon said, rather wildly: “In the bin. In the yard,” and made feeble protestations and at that moment we all heard the launch hooting and she became distracted. So Dr Carmichael got hold of the ashpan. And I – well – I – got hold of the envelope and put it in my pocket among your handkerchief which happened to be there.’

  ‘So it appears,’ Dr Carmichael summed up, ‘that somebody typed a communication of some sort to The Watchman and stamped the envelope which he or somebody else then chucked on the study fire and it dropped through the grate into the ashpan when it was only half-burnt. Or doesn’t it?’

  ‘Did you get a chance to have a good look at the ashes?’ asked Alleyn.

  ‘Pretty good. In the yard. They were faintly warm. I ran them carefully into a zinc rubbish bin already half-full. There were one or two very small fragments of heavily charred paper and some clinkers. Nothing else. I heard someone coming and cleared out. I put the ashpan back under the study grate.’

  Alleyn bent over the trophy. ‘It’s a Sommita envelope,’ said Troy. ‘Isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes. Bigger than the Reece envelope but the same paper: like the letter she wrote to the Yard.’

  ‘Why would she write to The Watchman?’

  ‘We don’t know that she did.’

  ‘Don’t we?’

  ‘Or if she did, whether her letter was in this envelope.’ He took one of Troy’s brushes and used it to flip the envelope over. ‘It may have been stuck up,’ he said, ‘and opened before the gum dried. There’s not enough left to be certain. It’s big enough to take the photograph.’

  Dr Carmichael blew out his cheeks and then expelled the air rather noisily. ‘That’s a long shot, isn’t it?’ he said.

  ‘Of course it is,’ agreed Alleyn. ‘Pure speculation.’

  ‘If she wrote it,’ Troy said carefully, ‘she dictated it. I’m sure she couldn’t type, aren’t you?’

  ‘I think it’s most unlikely. The first part of her letter to the Yard was impeccably typed and the massive postscript flamboyantly handwritten. Which suggested that she dictated the beginning or told young Rupert to concoct something she could sign, found it too moderate and added the rest herself.’

  ‘But why,’ Dr Carmichael mused, ‘was this thing in the study, on Reece’s desk? I know! She asked that secretary of his to type it because she’d fallen out with young Bartholomew. How’s that?’

  ‘Not too bad,’ said Alleyn. ‘Possible. And where, do you suggest, is the letter? It wasn’t in the envelope. And, by the way, the envelope was not visible on Reece’s desk when you and I, Carmichael, visited him last night.’

  ‘Really? How d’you know?’

  ‘Oh, my dear chap, the cop’s habit of using the beady eye, I suppose. It might have been there under some odds and ends in his “out” basket.’

  Troy said: ‘Rory, I think I know where you’re heading.’

  ‘Do you, my love? Where?’

  ‘Could Marco have slid into the study to put the photograph in the postbag before Hanley had emptied the mailbox into it and could he have seen the typed and addressed envelope on the desk and thought there was a marvellous opportunity to send the photograph to The Watchman, because nobody would question it. And so he took out her letter or whatever it was and chucked it on the fire and put the photograph in the envelope and – ‘

  Troy, who had been going great guns, brought up short. ‘Blast!’ she said.

  ‘Why didn’t he put it in the postbag?’ asked Alleyn.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Because,’ Dr Carmichael staunchly declared, ‘he was interrupted and had to get rid of it quick. I think that’s a damn good piece of reasoning, Mrs Alleyn.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Troy said, ‘her letter had been left out awaiting the writer’s signature and – no, that’s no good.’

  ‘It’s a lot of good,’ Alleyn said warmly. ‘You have turned up trumps, you two. Damn Marco. Why can’t he make up his dirty little mind that his best move is to cut his losses and come clean. I’ll have to try my luck with Hanley. Tricky.’

  He went out on the landing. Bert had resumed his guard duty and lounged back in the armchair reading a week-old sports tabloid. A homemade cigarette hung from his lower lip. He gave Alleyn the predictable sideways tip of his head.

  Alleyn said: ‘I really oughtn’t to impose on you any longer, Bert. After all, we’ve got the full complement of keys now and nobody’s going to force the lock with the amount of traffic flowing through this house.’

  ‘I’m not fussy,’ said Bert which Alleyn took to mean that he had no objections to continuing his vigil.

  ‘Well, if you’re sure,’ he said.

  ‘She’ll be right.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  The sound of voices indicated the emergence of the elevenses party. Miss Dancy, Sylvia Parry and Rupert Bartholomew came upstairs. Rupert, with an incredulous look at Bert and a scary one at Alleyn, made off in the direction of his room. The ladies crossed the landing quickly and ascended the next flight. Mr Reece, Ben Ruby and Signor Lattienzo made for the study. Alleyn ran quickly downstairs in time to catch Hanley emerging from the morning room.

  ‘Sorry to bother you,’ he said, ‘but I wonder if I might have a word. It won’t take a minute.’

  ‘But of course,’ said Hanley. ‘Where shall we go? Back into the library?’

  ‘Right.’

  When they were there Hanley winningly urged further refreshment. Upon Alleyn’s declining, he said: ‘Well, I will; just a teeny tiddler,’ and helped himself to a gin-and-tonic. ‘What can I do for you, Mr Alleyn?’ he said. ‘Is there any further development?’

  Alleyn said: ‘Did you type a letter to The Watchman some time before Madame Sommita’s death?’

  Hanley’s jaw dropped and the hand holding his drink stopped half-way to his mouth. For perhaps three seconds he maintained this position and then spoke.

  ‘Oh Christmas!’ he said. ‘I’d forgotten. You wouldn’t credit it, would you? I’d entirely forgotten.’

  He made no bones about explaining himself and did so very fluently and quite without hesitation. He had indeed typed a letter from the Sommita to The Watchman. She had b
een stirred up ‘like a hive of bees’, he said, by the episode of the supposed intruder on the Island and had decided that it was Strix who had been sent by The Watchman and had arrived after dark the previous night, probably by canoe, and had left unobserved by the same means, she didn’t explain when. The letter which she dictated was extremely abusive and threatened the editor with a libel action. She had made a great point of Mr Reece not being told of the letter.

  ‘Because of course he’d have stopped all the nonsense,’ said Hanley. ‘I was to type it and take it to her to sign and then put it in the bag, all unbeknownst. She asked me to do it because of the row with the Wonder Boy. She gave me some of her notepaper.’

  ‘And you did it?’

  ‘My dear! As much as my life was worth to refuse. I typed it out, calming it down the least morsel, which she didn’t notice. But when she’d signed it I bethought me that maybe when it had gone she’d tell the Boss-Man and he’d be cross with me for doing it. So I left the letter on his desk meaning to show it to him after the performance. I put it under some letters he had to sign.’

  ‘And the envelope?’

  ‘The envelope? Oh, on the desk. And then, I remember, Marco came in to say I was wanted on stage to refocus a light.’

  ‘When was this?’

  ‘When? I wouldn’t know. Well – late afternoon. After tea sometime, but well before the performance.’

  ‘Did Marco leave the study before you?’

  ‘Did he? I don’t know. Yes, I do. He said something about making up the fire and I left him to it.’

  ‘Did Mr Reece see the letter, then?’

  Hanley flapped his hands. ‘I’ve no notion. He’s said nothing to me, but then with the catastrophe –I mean, everything else goes out of one’s head, doesn’t it, except that nothing ever goes out of his head. You could ask him.’

  ‘So I could,’ said Alleyn. ‘And will.’