Artists in Crime

by Ngaio Marsh

  ‘I’ll try to be as inoffensive as possible,’ Alleyn told her.

  ‘Goodbye for the moment.’

  CHAPTER 5

  Routine

  When Alleyn returned to the hall he found it full of men. The Scotland Yard officials had arrived, and with their appearance the case, for the first time, seemed to take on a familiar complexion. The year he had spent away from England clicked back into the past at the sight of those familiar overcoated and bowler-hatted figures with their cases and photographic impedimenta. There, beaming at him, solid, large, the epitome of horse-sense, was old Fox.

  ‘Very nice indeed to have you with us again, sir.’

  ‘Fox, you old devil, how are you?’

  And there, looking three degrees less morose, was Detective-Sergeant Bailey, and behind him Detective-Sergeant Thompson. A gruff chorus began:

  ‘Very nice indeed—’

  A great shaking of hands, while Superintendent Blackman looked on amicably, and then a small, clean, bald man came forward. Blackman introduced him.

  ‘Inspector Alleyn, this is Dr Ampthill, our divisional surgeon.’

  ‘How d’you do, Mr Alleyn? Understand you want to see me. Sorry if I’ve kept you waiting.’

  ‘I’ve not long arrived,’ said Alleyn. ‘Let’s have a look at the scene of action, shall we?’

  Blackman led the way down the hall to a side passage at the end of which there was a door. Blackman unlocked it and ushered them through. They were in the garden. The smell of box borders came up from their feet. It was very dark.

  ‘Shall I lead the way?’ suggested Blackman.

  A long pencil of light from a torch picked up a section of flagged path. They tramped along in single file. Tree-trunks started up out of the darkness, leaves brushed Alleyn’s cheek. Presently a rectangle of deeper dark loomed up.

  Blackman said. ‘You there, Sligo?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said a voice close by.

  There was a jangle of keys, the sound of a door opening.

  ‘Wait till I find the light switch,’ said Blackman. ‘Here we are.’

  The lights went up. They walked round the wooden screen inside the door, and found themselves in the studio.

  Alleyn’s first impression was of a reek of paint and turpentine, and of a brilliant and localized glare. Troy had installed a highpowered lamp over the throne. This lamp was half shaded, so that it cast all its light on the throne, rather as the lamp above an operating-table is concentrated on the patient. Blackman had only turned on one switch, so the rest of the studio was in darkness. The effect at the moment could scarcely have been more theatrical. The blue drape, sprawled across the throne, was so brilliant that it hurt the eyes. The folds fell sharply from the cushion into a flattened mass. In the middle, stupidly irrelevant, was a spike. It cast a thin shadow irregularly across the folds of the drape. On the margin of this picture, disappearing abruptly into shadow, was a white mound.

  ‘The drapery and the knife haven’t been touched since the victim died,’ explained Blackman. ‘Of course, they disarranged the stuff a bit when they hauled her up.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Alleyn. He walked over to the throne and examined the blade of the knife. It was rather like an oversized packingneedle, sharp, three-edged, and greatly tapered towards the point. It was stained a rusty brown. At the base, where it pierced the drape, there was the same discoloration, and in one or two of the folds small puddles of blood had seeped through the material and dried. Alleyn glanced at Dr Ampthill.

  ‘I suppose there would be an effusion of blood when they pulled her off the knife?’

  ‘Oh yes, yes. The bleeding would probably continue until death. I understand that beyond lifting her away from the knife, they did not move her until she died. When I arrived the body was where it is now.’

  He turned to the sheeted mound that lay half inside the circle of light.

  ‘Shall I?’

  ‘Yes, please,’ said Alleyn.

  Dr Ampthill drew away the white sheet.

  Troy had folded Sonia’s hands over her naked breast. The shadow cut sharply across the wrists so that the lower half of the torso was lost. The shoulders, hands and head were violently lit. The lips were parted rigidly, showing the teeth. The eyes were only half closed. The plucked brows were raised as if in astonishment.

  ‘Rigor mortis is well established,’ said the doctor. ‘She was apparently a healthy woman, and this place was well heated. The gas fire was not turned off until some time after she died. She has been dead eleven hours.’

  ‘Have you examined the wound, Dr Ampthill?’

  ‘Superficially. The knife-blade was not absolutely vertical, evidently. It passed between the fourth and fifth ribs, and no doubt pierced the heart.’

  ‘Let us have a look at the wound.’

  Alleyn slid his long hands under the rigid body and turned it on its side. The patches of sunburn showed clearly on the back. About three inches to the left of the spine was a dark puncture. It looked very small and neat in spite of the traces of blood that surrounded it.

  ‘Ah, yes,’ said Alleyn. ‘As you say. We had better have a photograph of this. Bailey, you go over the body for prints. You’d better tackle the drape, and the knife, and the top surface of the throne. Not likely to prove very useful, I’m afraid, but do your best.’

  While Thompson set up his camera, Alleyn turned up the working-lamps and browsed about the studio. Fox joined him.

  ‘Funny sort of case, sir,’ said Fox. ‘Romantic.’

  ‘Good heavens, Fox, what a macabre idea of romance you’ve got.’

  ‘Well, sensational,’ amended Fox. ‘The papers will make a big thing of it. We’ll have them all down in hordes before the night’s over.’

  ‘That reminds me—I must send a wire to the Bathgates. I’m due there tomorrow. To business, Brer Fox. Here we have the studio as it was when the class assembled this morning. Paint set out on the palettes, you see. Canvases on all the easels. We’ve got seven versions of the pose.’

  ‘Very useful, I dare say,’ conceded Fox. ‘Or, at any rate, the ones that look like something human may come in handy. That affair over on your left looks more like a set of worms than a naked female. I suppose it is meant for the deceased, isn’t it?’

  ‘I think so,’ said Alleyn. ‘The artist is probably a surrealist or a vorticalist or something.’ He inspected the canvas and the painttable in front of it.

  ‘Here we are. The name’s on the paintbox. Phillida Lee. It is a rum bit of work, Fox, no doubt of it. This big thing next door is more in our line. Very solid and simple.’

  He pointed to Katti Bostock’s enormous canvas.

  ‘Bold,’ said Fox. He put on his spectacles and stared blankly at the picture.

  ‘You get the posture of the figure very well there,’ said Alleyn.

  They moved to Cedric Malmsley’s table.

  ‘This, I think, must be the illustrator,’ continued Alleyn. ‘Yes— here’s the drawing for the story.’

  ‘Good God!’ exclaimed Fox, greatly scandalized. ‘He’s made a picture of the girl after she was killed.’

  ‘No, no. That was the original idea for the pose. He’s merely added a dagger and the dead look. Here’s the portfolio with all the drawings. H’m, very volup. and Beardsley, with a slap of modern thrown in. Hullo!’ Alleyn had turned to a delicate watercolour in which three medieval figures mowed a charming field against a background of hayricks, pollard willows, and a turreted palace. ‘That’s rum!’ muttered Alleyn.

  ‘What’s up, Mr Alleyn?’

  ‘It looks oddly familiar. One half of the old brain functioning a fraction ahead of the other, perhaps. Or perhaps not. No matter. Look here, Brer Fox, I think before we go any further I’d better tell you as much as I know about the case.’ And Alleyn repeated the gist of Blackman’s report and of his conversations with Troy. ‘This, you see,’ he ended, ‘is the illustration for the story. It was to prove the possibility of murdering someone in
this manner that they made the experiment with the dagger, ten days ago.’

  ‘I see,’ said Fox. ‘Well, somebody’s proved it now all right, haven’t they?’

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Alleyn. ‘It is proved—literally, up to the hilt.’

  ‘Cuh!’ said Fox solemnly.

  ‘Malmsley has represented the dagger as protruding under the left breast, you see. I suppose he thought he’d add the extra touch of what you’d call romance, Brer Fox. The scarlet thread of gore is rather effective in a meretricious sort of way. Good Lord, this is a queer show and no mistake.’

  ‘Here’s what I call a pretty picture, now,’ said Fox approvingly. He had moved in front of Valmai Seacliff’s canvas. Exaggeratedly slender, the colour scheme a light sequence of blues and pinks.

  ‘Very elegant,’ said Fox.

  ‘A little too elegant,’ said Alleyn. ‘Hullo! Look at this.’

  Across Francis Ormerin’s watercolour drawing ran an ugly streak of dirty blue, ending in a blob that had run down the paper. The drawing was ruined.

  ‘Had an accident, seemingly.’

  ‘Perhaps. This student’s stool is overturned, you’ll notice, Fox. Some of the water in his paint-pot has slopped over and one of his brushes is on the floor.’

  Alleyn picked up the brush and dabbed it on the china palette. A half-dry smudge of dirty blue showed.

  ‘I see him or her preparing to flood a little of this colour on the drawing. He receives a shock, his hand jerks sideways and the brush streaks across the paper. He jumps up, overturning his stool and jolting the table. He drops the brush on the floor. Look, Fox. There are signs of the same sort of disturbance everywhere. Notice the handful of brushes on the table in front of the big canvas—I think that must be Katti Bostock’s —I remember her work. Those brushes have been put down suddenly on the palette. The handles are messed in paint. Look at this very orderly array of tubes and brushes over here. The student has dropped a tube of blue paint and then trodden on it. Here are traces leading to the throne. It’s a man’s shoe, don’t you think? He’s tramped about all over the place, leaving a blue painty trail. The modern lady—Miss Lee—has overturned a bottle of turpentine, and it’s run into her paintbox. There are even signs of disturbance on the illustrator’s table. He has put a wet brush down on the very clean typescript. The place is like a first lesson in detection.’

  ‘But beyond telling us they all got a start when the affair occurred, it doesn’t appear to lead us anywhere,’ said Fox. ‘Not on the face of it.’ He turned back to Seacliff’s canvas and examined it with placid approval.

  ‘You seem very taken with Miss Seacliff’s effort,’ said Alleyn.

  ‘Eh?’ Fox transferred his attention sharply to Alleyn. ‘Now then, sir, how do you make out the name of this artist?’

  ‘Rather prettily, Fox. This is the only outfit that is quite in order. Very neat everything is, you’ll notice. Tidy box, clean brushes laid down carefully by the palette, fresh paint-rag all ready to use. I make a long guess that it belongs to Valmai Seacliff, because Miss Seacliff was with the model when she got her quietus. There is no reason why Miss Seacliff’s paraphernalia should show signs of disturbance. In a sense, Miss Seacliff killed Sonia Gluck. She pressed her naked body down on the knife. Not a very pleasant reflection for Miss Seacliff now, unless she happens to be a murderess. Yes, I think this painting is hers.’

  ‘Very neat bit of reasoning, chief. Lor’, here’s a mess.’ Fox bent over Watt Hatchett’s open box. It overflowed with half-used tubes of oil-colour, many of them without caps. A glutinous mess, to which all sorts of odds and ends adhered, spread over the trays and brushes. Cigarette butts, matches, bits of charcoal, were mixed up with fragments of leaves and twigs and filthy scraps of rag.

  ‘This looks like chronic muck,’ said Fox.

  ‘It does indeed.’ From the sticky depths of a tin tray Alleyn picked out a fragment of a dried leaf and smelt it.

  ‘Blue gum,’ he said. ‘This will be the Australian, I suppose. Funny. He must have collected that leaf sketching in the bush, half the world away. I know this youth. He joined our ship with Miss Troy at Suva. Travelled second at her expense.’

  ‘Fancy that,’ said Fox placidly. ‘Then you know this Miss Troy, sir?’

  ‘Yes. Now you see, even he appears to have put his hand down on his palette. He’d hardly do that in normal moments.’

  ‘We’ve finished, sir,’ said the photographic expert.

  ‘Right.’

  Alleyn went over to the throne. The body lay as it was when he first saw it. He looked at it thoughtfully, remembering what Troy had said: ‘I’m always frightened of dead people.’

  ‘She was very lovely,’ said Alleyn gently. He covered the body again. ‘Carry her over to that couch. It’s a divan-bed, I fancy. She can be taken away now. You’ll do the post-mortem tomorrow, I suppose, Dr Ampthill?’

  ‘First thing,’ said the doctor briskly. ‘The mortuary car is outside in the lane now. This studio is built into the brick wall that divides the garden from the lane. I thought it would save a lot of trouble and difficulty if we opened that window, backed the car up to it, and lifted the stretcher through.’

  ‘Over there?’

  Alleyn walked over to the window in the south wall. He stooped and inspected the floor.

  ‘This is where the modelling fellow, Garcia, did his stuff. Bits of clay all over the place. His work must have stood on the tall stool here, well in the light. Wait a moment.’

  He flashed his pocket-torch along the sill. It was scored by several cross-scratches.

  ‘Someone else has had your idea, Dr Ampthill,’ said Alleyn. He pulled a pair of gloves from his overcoat pocket, put them on, and opened the window. The light from the studio shone on the whole body of a mortuary van drawn up in the lane outside. The air smelt cold and dank. Alleyn shone his torch on the ground under the window-sill. He could see clearly the print of car tyres in the soft ground under the window.

  ‘Look here, Mr Blackman.’

  Blackman joined him.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Someone’s backed a car across the lane under the window. Miss Troy says the carrier must have called for this Mr Garcia’s stuff on Saturday morning. The maids say nobody came to the house about it. Well now, suppose Garcia left instructions for them to come straight to this window? Eh? How about that? He’d help them put the stuff through the window on to the van and then push off himself to wherever he was going.’

  ‘On his walking tour,’ finished Alleyn. ‘You’re probably right. Look here, if you don’t mind, I think we’ll take the stretcher out through the door and along the path. Perhaps there’s a door in the wall somewhere. Is there?’

  ‘Well, the garage yard is not far off. We could take it through the yard into the lane, and the van could go along and meet them there.’

  ‘I think it would be better.’

  Blackman called through the window.

  ‘Hullo there! Drive along to the back entrance and send the stretcher in from there. Keep over on the far side of the lane.’

  ‘OK, super,’ said a cheerful voice.

  ‘Sligo, you go along and show the way.’

  The constable at the door disappeared, and in a minute or two returned with two men and a stretcher. They carried Sonia’s body out into the night.

  ‘Well, I’ll push off,’ said Dr Ampthill.

  ‘I’d like to get away, too, if you’ll let me off, Mr Alleyn,’ said Blackman. ‘I’m expecting a report at the station on this other case. Two of my chaps are down with flu and I’m rushed off my feet. I needn’t say we’ll do everything we can. Use the station whenever you want to.’

  ‘Thank you so much. I’ll worry you as little as possible. Good night.’

  The door slammed and the voices died away in the distance. Alleyn turned to Fox, Bailey and Thompson.

  ‘The old team.’

  ‘That’s right, sir,’ said Bailey. ‘Suits us all right.’

  ‘
Well,’ said Alleyn, ‘it’s always suited me. Let’s get on with it. You’ve got your photographs and prints. Now we’ll up-end the throne. Everything’s marked, so we can get it back. Let me take a final look at the drape. Yes. You see, Fox, it fell taut from the cushion to the floor, above the point of the knife. Nobody would dream of disturbing it, I imagine. As soon as Miss Seacliff pressed the model over, the drape went with her, pulling away the drawing-pin that held it to the boards. That’s all clear enough. Over with the throne.’

  They turned the dais on its side. The light shone through the cracks in the roughly built platform. From the widest of these cracks projected the hilt of the dagger. It was a solid-looking round handle, bound with tarnished wire and protected by a crossbar guard. One side of the guard actually dug into the platform. The other just cleared it. The triangular blade had bitten into the edge of the planks. The end of the hilt was shiny.

  ‘It’s been hammered home at a slight angle, so that the blade would be at right-angles to the inclined plane of the body. It’s an ingenious, dirty, deliberated bit of work, this. Prints, please, Bailey, and a photograph. Go over the whole of the under-surface. You won’t get anything, I’m afraid.’

  While Bailey and Thompson worked, Alleyn continued his tour of the room. He pulled back the cover of the divan and saw an unmade bed beneath it. ‘Bad mark for Mr Garcia.’ Numbers of stretched canvases stood with their faces to the wall. Alleyn began to inspect them. He thought he recognized a large picture of a trapeze artiste in pink tights and spangles as the work of Katti Bostock. That round, high-cheeked face was the one he had seen dead a few minutes ago. The head and shoulders had been scraped down with a knife. He turned another big canvas round and exclaimed softly.

  ‘What’s up, sir?’ asked Fox.

  ‘Look.’

  It was a portrait of a girl in a green velvet dress. She stood, very erect, against a white wall. The dress fell in austere folds about the feet. It was most simply done. The hands looked as though they had been put down with twelve direct touches. The form of the girl shone through the heavy dress, in great beauty. It was painted with a kind of quiet thoughtfulness.