Artists in Crime

by Ngaio Marsh

  She took a stick of chalk from her overall pocket and ran it round the model wherever she touched the throne. The position of both legs, one flank, one hip, and one shoulder were thus traced on the boards. The blue drape was beneath the rest of the figure.

  ‘Now you can get up.’

  Sonia sat up with an ostentatious show of discomfort, reached out her hand for the kimono and shrugged herself into it. Troy pulled the drape out taut from the cushion to the floor.

  ‘It’ll have to go down each time with the figure,’ she told the class.

  ‘As it does in the little romance,’ drawled Malmsley.

  ‘Yes, it’s quite feasible,’ agreed Valmai Seacliff. ‘We could try it. There’s that Chinese knife in the lumber-room. May we get it, Miss Troy?’

  ‘If you like,’ said Troy.

  ‘It doesn’t really matter,’ said Malmsley languidly getting to his feet.

  ‘Where is it, Miss Seacliff?’ asked Hatchett eagerly.

  ‘On the top shelf in the lumber-room.’

  Hatchett went into an enormous cupboard by the window, and after a minute or two returned with a long, thin-bladed knife. He went up to Malmsley’s table and looked over his shoulder at the typescript. Malmsley moved away ostentatiously.

  ‘Aw yeah, I get it,’ said Hatchett. ‘What a corker! Swell way of murdering somebody, wouldn’t it be?’ He licked his thumb and turned the page.

  ‘I’ve taken a certain amount of trouble to keep those papers clean,’ remarked Malmsley to no one in particular.

  ‘Don’t be so damned precious, Malmsley,’ snapped Troy. ‘Here, give me the knife, Hatchett, and don’t touch other people’s tools in the studio. It’s not done.’

  ‘Good oh, Miss Troy.’

  Pilgrim, Ormerin, Hatchett and Valmai Seacliff began a discussion about the possibility of using the knife in the manner suggested by Malmsley’s illustration. Phillida Lee joined in.

  ‘Where would the knife enter the body?’ asked Seacliff.

  ‘Just here,’ said Pilgrim, putting his hand on her back and keeping it there. ‘Behind your heart. Valmai.’

  She turned her head and looked at him through half-closed eyes. Hatchett stared at her. Malmsley smiled curiously. Pilgrim had turned rather white.

  ‘Can you feel it beating?’ asked Seacliff softly.

  ‘If I move my hand—here.’

  ‘Oh, come off it,’ said the model violently. She walked over to Garcia. ‘I don’t believe you could kill anybody like that. Do you, Garcia?’

  Garcia grunted unintelligibly. He, too, was staring at Valmai Seacliff.

  ‘How would he know where to put the dagger?’ demanded Katti Bostock suddenly. She drew a streak of background colour across her canvas.

  ‘Can’t we try it out?’ asked Hatchett.

  ‘If you like,’ said Troy. ‘Mark the throne before you move it.’

  Basil Pilgrim chalked the position of the throne on the floor, and then he and Ormerin tipped it up. The rest of the class looked on with gathering interest. By following the chalked-out line on the throne they could see the spot where the heart would come, and after a little experiment found the plot of this spot on the underneath surface of the throne.

  ‘Now, you see,’ said Ormerin, ‘the jealous wife would drive the knife through from underneath.’

  ‘Incidentally taking the edge off,’ said Basil Pilgrim.

  ‘You could force it through the crack between the boards,’ said Garcia suddenly, from the window.

  ‘How? It’d fall out when she was shoved down.’

  ‘No, it wouldn’t. Look here.’

  ‘Don’t break the knife and don’t damage the throne,’ said Troy.

  ‘I get you,’ said Hatchett eagerly. ‘The dagger’s wider at the base. The boards would press on it. You’d have to hammer it through. Look, I’ll bet you it could be done. There you are, I’ll betcher.’

  ‘Not interested, I’m afraid,’ said Malmsley.

  ‘Let’s try,’ said Pilgrim. ‘May we, Troy?’

  ‘Oh, do let’s,’ cried Phillida Lee. She caught up her enthusiasm with an apologetic glance at Malmsley. ‘I adore bloodshed,’ she added with a painstaking nonchalance.

  ‘The underneath of the throne’s absolutely filthy,’ complained Malmsley.

  ‘Pity if you spoiled your nice green pinny,’ jeered Sonia.

  Valmai Seacliff laughed.

  ‘I don’t propose to do so,’ said Malmsley. ‘Garcia can if he likes.’

  ‘Go on,’ said Hatchett. ‘Give it a pop. I betcher five bob it’ll work. Fair dinkum.’

  ‘What does that mean?’ asked Seacliff. ‘You must teach me the language, Hatchett.’

  ‘Too right I will,’ said Hatchett with enthusiasm. ‘I’ll make a dinkum Aussie out of you.’

  ‘God forbid,’ said Malmsley. Sonia giggled.

  ‘Don’t you like Australians?’ Hatchett asked her aggressively.

  ‘Not particularly.’

  ‘Well, I’ll tell you one thing. Models at the school I went to in Sydney knew how to hold a pose for longer than ten minutes.’

  ‘You don’t seem to have taken advantage of it, judging by your drawing.’

  ‘And they didn’t get saucy with the students.’

  ‘Perhaps they weren’t all like you.’

  ‘Sonia,’ said Troy, ‘that will do. If you boys are going to make your experiment, you’d better hurry up. We start again in five minutes.’

  In the boards of the throne they found a crack that passed through the right spot. Hatchett slid the thin tip of the knife into it from underneath and shoved. By tapping the hilt of the dagger with an easel ledge, he forced the widening blade upwards through the crack. Then he let the throne back on to the floor. The blade projected wickedly through the blue chalk cross that marked the plot of Sonia’s heart on the throne. Basil Pilgrim took the drape, laid it across the cushion, pulled it in taut folds down to the throne, and pinned it there.

  ‘You see, the point of the knife is lower than the top of the cushion,’ he said. It doesn’t show under the drape.’

  ‘What did I tell you?’ said Hatchett.

  Garcia strolled over and joined the group.

  ‘Go into your pose, Sonia,’ he said with a grin.

  Sonia shuddered.

  ‘Don’t,’ she said.

  ‘I wonder if the tip should show under the left breast,’ murmuring Malmsley. ‘Rather amusing to have it in the drawing. With a cast shadow and a thin trickle of blood. Keep the whole thing black and white except for the little scarlet thread. After all, it is melodrama.’

  ‘Evidently,’ grunted Garcia.

  ‘The point of suspension for the drape would have to be higher,’ said Troy. ‘It must be higher than the tip of the blade. You could do it. If your story was a modern detective novel, Malmsley, you could do a drawing of the knife as it is now.’

  Malmsley smiled and began to sketch on the edge of his paper. Valmai Seacliff leant over him, her hands on his shoulders. Hatchett, Ormerin and Pilgrim stood round her, Pilgrim with his arm across her shoulder. Phillida Lee hovered on the outskirts of the little group. Troy, looking vaguely round the studio, said to herself that her worst forebodings were likely to be realized. Watt Hatchett was already at loggerheads with Malmsley and the model. Valmai was at her Cleopatra game, and there was Sonia in a corner with Garcia. Something in their faces caught Troy’s attention. What the devil were they up to? Garcia’s eyes were on the group round Malmsley. A curious smile lifted one corner of his mouth, and on Sonia’s face, turned to him, the smile was reflected.

  ‘You’ll have to get that thing out now, Hatchett,’ said Troy.

  It took a lot of working and tugging to do this, but at last the knife was pulled out, the throne put back, and Sonia, with many complaints, took the pose again.

  ‘Over more on the right shoulder,’ said Katti Bostock.

  Troy thrust the shoulder down. The drape fell into folds round the figure.
/>   ‘Ow!’ said Sonia.

  ‘That is when the dagger goes in,’ said Malmsley.

  ‘Don’t—you’ll make me sick,’ said Sonia.

  Garcia gave a little chuckle.

  ‘Right through the ribs and coming out under the left breast,’ murmured Malmsley.

  ‘Shut up!’

  ‘Spitted like a little chicken.’

  Sonia raised her head.

  ‘I wouldn’t be too damn funny, Mr Malmsley,’ she said. ‘Where do you get your ideas from, I wonder? Books? Or pictures?’

  Malmsley’s brush slipped from his fingers to the paper, leaving a trace of paint. He looked fixedly at Sonia, and then began to dab his drawing with a sponge. Sonia laughed.

  ‘For God’s sake,’ said Katti Bostock, ‘let’s get the pose.’

  ‘Quiet,’ said Troy, and was obeyed. She set the pose, referring to the canvases. ‘Now get down to it, all of you. The Phoenix Group Show opens on the 16th. I suppose most of us want to go up to London for it. Very well, I’ll give the servants a holiday that weekend, and we’ll start work again on the Monday.’

  ‘If this thing goes decently,’ said Katti, ‘I want to put it in for the Group. If it’s not done, it’ll do for B. House next year.’

  ‘I take it,’ said Troy, ‘you’ll all want to go up for the Group’s private view?’

  ‘I don’t,’ said Garcia. ‘I’ll be pushing off for my holiday about then.’

  ‘What about us?’ asked Valmai Seacliff of Basil Pilgrim.

  ‘What do you think, darling?’

  ‘“Us”?’ said Troy. ‘“Darling”? What’s all this?’

  ‘We may as well tell them, Basil,’ said Valmai sweetly. ‘Don’t faint, anybody. We got engaged last night.’

  CHAPTER 4

  Case for Mr Alleyn

  Lady Alleyn knelt back on her gardening-mat and looked up at her son.

  ‘I think we have done enough weeding for today, darling. You bustle off with that barrow-load and then we’ll go indoors and have a glass of sherry and a chat. We’ve earned it.’

  Chief Detective-Inspector Alleyn obediently trundled off down the path, tipped his barrow-load on the smudge fire, mopped his brow and went indoors for a bath. Half an hour later he joined his mother in the drawing-room.

  ‘Come up to the fire, darling. There’s the sherry. It’s a bottle of the very precious for our last evening.’

  ‘Ma’am,’ said Alleyn, ‘you are the perfect woman.’

  ‘No, only the perfect mamma. I flatter myself I am a very good parent. You look charming in a dinner jacket, Roderick. I wish your brother had some of your finish. George always looks a little too hearty.’

  ‘I like George,’ said Alleyn.

  ‘I quite like him, too,’ agreed his mother.

  ‘This is really a superlative wine. I wish it wasn’t our last night, though. Three days with the Bathgates, and then my desk, my telephone, the smell of the yard, and old Fox beaming from ear to ear, bless him. Ah well, I expect I shall quite enjoy it once I’m there.’

  ‘Roderick,’ said Lady Alleyn, ‘why wouldn’t you come to Tatler’s End House with me?’

  ‘For the very good reason, little mum, that I should not have been welcomed.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Miss Troy doesn’t like me.’

  ‘Nonsense! She’s a very intelligent young woman.’

  ‘Darling!’

  ‘The day I called I suggested she should dine with us while you were here. She accepted.’

  ‘And put us off when the time came.’

  ‘My dear man, she had a perfectly good excuse.’

  ‘Naturally,’ said Alleyn. ‘She is, as you say, a very intelligent young woman.’

  Lady Alleyn looked at the portrait head that hung over the mantelpiece.

  ‘She can’t dislike you very much, my dear. That picture gives the lie to your theory.’

  ‘Aesthetic appreciation of a paintable object has nothing to do with personal preferences.’

  ‘Bosh! Don’t talk pretentious nonsense about things you don’t understand.’

  Alleyn grinned.

  ‘I think you are being self-conscious and silly,’ continued Lady Alleyn grandly.

  ‘It’s the lady that you should be cross about, not me.’

  ‘I’m not cross, Roderick. Give yourself another glass of sherry. No, not for me.’

  ‘Anyway,’ said Alleyn, ‘I’m glad you like the portrait.’

  ‘Did you see much of her in Quebec?’

  ‘Very little, darling. We bowed to each other at mealtimes and had a series of stilted conversations in the lounge. On the last evening she was there I took her to the play.’

  ‘Was that a success?’

  ‘No. We were very polite to each other.’

  ‘Ha!’ said Lady Alleyn.

  ‘Mamma,’ said Alleyn, ‘you know I am a detective.’ He paused, smiling at her. ‘You look divine when you blush,’ he added.

  ‘Well, Roderick, I shan’t deny that I would like to see you married.’

  ‘She wouldn’t dream of having me, you know. Put the idea out of your head, little mum. I very much doubt if I shall ever have another stilted conversation with Miss Agatha Troy.’

  The head parlourmaid came in.

  ‘A telephone call from London for Mr Roderick, m’lady.’

  ‘From London?’ asked Alleyn. ‘Oh Lord, Clibborn, why didn’t you say I was dead?’

  Clibborn smiled the tolerant smile of a well-trained servant, and opened the door.

  ‘Excuse me, please, Mamma,’ said Alleyn, and went to the telephone.

  As he unhooked the receiver, Alleyn experienced the little prick of foreboding that so often accompanies an unexpected long-distance call. It was the smallest anticipatory thrill and was succeeded at once by the unhappy reflection that probably Scotland Yard was already on his track. He was not at all surprised when a familiar voice said:

  ‘Mr Alleyn?’

  ‘That’s me. Is it you, Watkins?’

  ‘Yes, sir. Very pleasant to hear your voice again. The Assistant

  Commissioner would like to speak to you, Mr Alleyn.’

  ‘Right!’

  ‘Hullo, Mr Alleyn?’ said a new voice.

  ‘Hullo, sir.’

  ‘You can go, Watkins.’ A pause, and then: ‘How are you, Rory?’

  ‘Very fit, thanks, sir.’

  ‘Ready for work?’

  ‘Yes. Oh, rather!’

  ‘Well now, look here. How do you feel about slipping into the sad dle three days before you’re due? There’s a case cropped up a few miles from where you are, and the local people have called us in. It would save time and help the department if you could take over for us.’

  ‘Certainly, sir,’ said Alleyn, with a sinking heart. ‘When?’

  ‘Now. It’s a homicide case. Take the details. Address, Tatler’s End House.’

  ‘What! I beg your pardon, sir. Yes?’

  ‘A woman’s been stabbed. Do you know the place, by any chance?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Thrrree minutes.’

  ‘Extend the call, please. Are you there, Rory?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Alleyn. He noticed suddenly that the receiver was clammy.

  ‘It belongs to the artist, Miss Agatha Troy.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘You’ll get the information from the local super—Blackman—who’s there now. The model has been killed, and it looks like murder.

  ‘I—can’t—hear.’

  ‘The victim is an artist’s model. I’ll send Fox down with the other people and your usual kit. Much obliged. Sorry to drag you back before Monday.’

  ‘That’s all right, sir.’

  ‘Splendid. I’ll expect your report. Nice to see you again. Goodbye.’

  ‘Goodbye, sir.’

  Alleyn went back to the drawing-room.

  ‘Well?’ began his mother. She looked up at him, and in a moment was at his
side. ‘What’s the matter, old man?’

  ‘Nothing, ma’am. It was the Yard. They want me to take a case near here. It’s at Tatler’s End House.’

  ‘But what is it?’

  ‘Murder, it seems.’

  ‘Roderick!’

  ‘No, no. I thought that, too, for a moment. It’s the model. I’ll have to go at once. May I have the car?’

  ‘Of course, darling.’ She pressed a bell-push, and when Clibborn came, said: ‘Mr Roderick’s overcoat at once, Clibborn, and tell French to bring the car round quickly.’ When Clibborn had gone she put her hand on Alleyn’s. ‘Please tell Miss Troy that if she would like to come to me—’

  ‘Yes, darling. Thank you. But I must see what it’s all about first. It’s a case.’

  ‘Well, you won’t include Agatha Troy among your suspects, I hope?’

  ‘If there’s a question of that,’ said Alleyn, ‘I’ll leave the service. Good night. Don’t sit up. I may be late.’

  Clibborn came in with his overcoat.

  ‘Finish your sherry,’ ordered his mother. He drank it obediently. ‘And, Roderick, look in at my room, however late it is.’

  He bowed, kissed her lightly, and went out to the car.

  It was a cold evening with a hint of frost on the air. Alleyn dismissed the chauffeur and drove himself at breakneck speed towards Tatler’s End House. On the way, three vivid little pictures appeared, one after another, in his mind. The wharf at Suva. Agatha Troy, in her old smock and grey bags, staring out over the sea while the wind whipped the short hair back from her face. Agatha Troy saying goodbye at night on the edge of the St Lawrence.

  The headlights shone on rhododendrons and tree-trunks, and then on a closed gate and the figure of a constable. A torch flashed on Alleyn’s face.

  ‘Excuse me, sir—’

  ‘All right. Chief Detective-Inspector Alleyn from the Yard.’

  The man saluted.

  ‘They’re expecting you, sir.’

  The gate swung open, and Alleyn slipped in his clutch. It was a long winding drive, and it seemed an age before he pulled up before a lighted door. A second constable met him and showed him into a pleasant hall where a large fire burned.

  ‘I’ll tell the superintendent you’ve arrived, sir,’ said the man, but as he spoke, a door on Alleyn’s left opened and a stout man with a scarlet face came out.