Artists in Crime

by Ngaio Marsh

  ‘I fail to see,’ he said, ‘why I should have been forced to go through this disgusting performance.’

  ‘Bailey will give you something to clean up the ink,’ said Alleyn. ‘Good evening, Mr Malmsley.’

  ‘One more job for you, Bailey, I’m afraid,’ said Alleyn, when Malmsley had gone. ‘We’ll have to look through these rooms before we let them go to bed. Are they still boxed up in the dining-room, Fox?’

  ‘They are that,’ said Fox, ‘and if that young Australian talks much more, I fancy we’ll have a second corpse on our hands.’

  ‘I’ll start off on Mr Malmsley’s room, will I, sir?’ asked Bailey.

  ‘Yes. Then tackle the other men’s. We’ll be there in a jiffy. I don’t expect to find much, but you never know in our game.’

  ‘Very good, Mr Alleyn,’ said Bailey. He went off with a resigned look.

  ‘What do you make of this dope story, Mr Alleyn?’ said Fox. ‘We’ll have to have a go at tracing the source, won’t we?’

  ‘Oh Lord, yes. I suppose so. Malmsley will say he got it from the friend who gave him the pretty little pipe and etceteras, and I don’t suppose even Malmsley will give his dope merchant away. Not that I think he’s far gone. I imagine he spoke the truth when he said he’d only experimented—he doesn’t look like an advanced addict. I took a pot-shot on his eyes, his breath, and the colour of his beastly face. And I remembered Sadie noticing a smell. Luckily the shot went home.’

  ‘Smoking,’ ruminated Nigel. ‘That’s rather out of the usual in this country, isn’t it?’

  ‘Fortunately, yes,’ agreed Alleyn. ‘As a matter of fact it’s less deadly than the other methods. Much less pernicious than injecting, of course.’

  ‘Do you think Garcia may have done his stuff with the knife while he was still dopey?’ asked Nigel.

  ‘It would explain his careless ways,’ said Fox, ‘dropping clay about the place.’

  ‘That’s true, Brer Fox. I don’t know,’ said Alleyn, ‘if, when he woke at, say, seven-thirty, when Sadie banged on the screen, he’d feel like doing the job. We’ll have to have expert opinion on the carry-over from opium. I’m inclined to think he might wake feeling damned unpleasant and take a pull at his whisky botde. Had it been handled recently, Bailey?’

  ‘Yes, sir, I’d say it had. It’s very dusty in patches, but there’s some prints that were left after the dust had settled. Only a very light film over the prints. Not more than a couple of days’ deposit.’

  ‘That’s fairly conclusive,’ said Alleyn. ‘Taken with Sadie’s statement it looks as if Garcia’s Friday evening dinner was a jorum of whisky.’

  ‘What beats me,’ said Fox, ‘is when he got his stuff away.’

  ‘Some time on Friday night.’

  ‘Yes, but how? Not by a local carrier. They’ve all been asked.’

  ‘He must have got hold of a vehicle of some sort and driven himself,’ said Nigel.

  ‘Half doped and three-quarters tight, Mr Bathgate?’

  ‘He may not have been as tight as all that,’ said Alleyn. ‘On the other hand—’ ‘Well?’ asked Nigel impatiently.

  ‘On the other hand he may have,’ said Alleyn. ‘Come on, we’ll see how Bailey’s got on, and then we’ll go home.’

  CHAPTER 13

  Upstairs

  When Fox had gone upstairs and Nigel had been left to write a very guarded story for his paper on one of Troy’s scribbling-pads, Alleyn went down the hall and into the dining-room. He found the whole class in a state of extreme dejection. Phillida Lee, Ormerin and Watt Hatchett were seated at the table and had the look of people who have argued themselves to a standstill. Katti Bostock, hunched on the fender, stared into the fire. Malmsley was stretched out in the only armchair. Valmai Seacliff and Basil Pilgrim sat on the floor in a dark corner with their arms round each other. Curled up on a cushion against the wall was Troy—fast asleep. The local constable sat on an upright chair inside the door.

  Katti looked up at Alleyn and then across to Troy.

  ‘She’s completely done up,’ said Katti gruffly. ‘Can’t you let her go to bed?’

  ‘Very soon now,’ said Alleyn.

  He walked swiftly across the room and paused, his head bent down, his eyes on Troy.

  Her face looked thin. There were small shadows in the hollows of her temples and under her eyes. She frowned, her hands moved, and suddenly she was awake.

  I’m so sorry,’ said Alleyn.

  ‘Oh, it’s you,’ said Troy. ‘Do you want me?’

  ‘Please. Only for a moment, and then I shan’t bother you again tonight.’

  Troy sat up, her hands at her hair, pushing it off her face. She rose but lost her balance. Alleyn put his arm out quickly. For a moment he supported her.

  ‘My legs have gone to sleep,’ said Troy. ‘Damn!’

  Her hand was on his shoulder. He held her firmly by the arms and wondered if it was Troy or he who trembled.

  ‘I’m all right now,’ she said, after an hour or a second. ‘Thank you.’ He let her go and spoke to the others.

  ‘I am very sorry to keep you all up for so long. We have had a good deal to do. Before you go to your rooms we should like to have a glance at them. I hope nobody objects to this.’

  ‘Anything, if we can only go to bed,’ said Katti, and nobody contradicted her.

  ‘Very well, then. If you—’ he turned to Troy—‘wouldn’t mind coming with me—’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  When they were in the hall she said: ‘Do you want to search our rooms for something? Is that it?’

  ‘Not for anything specific. I feel we should just—’ He stopped short. ‘I detest my job,’ he said; ‘for the first time I despise and detest it.’

  ‘Come on,’ said Troy.

  They went up to a half-landing where the stairs separated into two short flights going up to their left and right.

  ‘Before I forget,’ said Alleyn, ‘do you know what has happened to the bottle of nitric acid that was on the top shelf in the junk-room?’

  Troy stared at him.

  ‘The acid? It’s there. It was filled up on Friday.’

  ‘Bailey must have missed it. Don’t worry—we saw the stains and felt we ought to account for them. What about these rooms?’

  ‘All the students’ rooms are up there,’ said Troy, and pointed to the upper landing on the right. ‘The bathrooms, and mine, are on the other side. Through here’—she pointed to a door on the halflanding—‘are the servant’s quarters, the back stairs and a little stair up to the attic-room where—where Sonia slept.’

  Alleyn saw that there were lights under two of the doors on the student’s landing.

  ‘Fox and Bailey are up there,’ he said. ‘If you don’t mind—’

  ‘You’d better do my room,’ said Troy. ‘Here it is.’

  They went into the second room on the left-hand landing. It was a large room, very spacious and well-proportioned. The walls, the carpet, and the narrow bed, were white. He saw only one picture and very few ornaments, but on the mantelpiece sparkled a little glass Christmas tree with fabulous glass flowers growing on it. Troy struck a match and lit the fire.

  ‘I’ll leave you to your job,’ she said.

  Alleyn did not answer.

  ‘Is there anything else?’ asked Troy.

  ‘Only that I should like to say that if it was possible for me to make an exception—’

  ‘Why should you make any exceptions?’ interrupted Troy. ‘There is no conceivable reason for such a suggestion.’

  ‘If you will simply think of me as a ship’s steward or—or some other sexless official—’

  ‘How else should I think of you, Mr Alleyn? I can assure you there is no need for these scruples—if they are scruples.’

  ‘They were attempts at an apology. I shall make a third and ask you to forgive me for my impertinence. I shan’t keep you long.’

  Troy turned at the door.

  ‘I didn’t meant
to be beastly,’ she said.

  ‘Nor were you. I see now that I made an insufferable assumption.’

  ‘—but you can hardly expect me to be genial when you are about to hunt through my under-garments for incriminating letters. The very fact that you suspect—’

  Alleyn strode to the door and looked down at her. ‘You little fool,’ he said, ‘haven’t you the common-or-garden gumption to see that I no more suspect you than the girl in the moon?’

  Troy stared at him as if he had taken leave of his senses. She opened her mouth to speak, said nothing, turned on her heel and left the room.

  ‘Blast!’ said Alleyn. ‘Oh, blast and hell and bloody stink!’

  He stood and looked at the door which Troy had only just not slammed. Then he turned to his job. There was a bow-fronted chest of drawers full of the sorts of garments that Alleyn often before had had to turn over. His thin fastidious hands touched them delicately, laid them in neat heaps on the bed and returned them carefully to their appointed places. There was a little drawer, rather untidy, where Troy kept her oddments. One or two letters. One that began ‘Troy darling’ and was signed ‘Your foolishly devoted, John’. ‘John,’ thought Alleyn, ‘John Bellasca?’ He glanced through the letters quickly, was about to return them to the drawer, but on second thoughts laid them in a row on the top of the chest. ‘An odious trade,’ he muttered to himself. ‘A filthy degrading job.’ Then there were the dresses in the wardrobe, the slim jackets, Troy’s smart evening dresses, and her shabby old slacks. All the pockets. Such odd things she kept in her pockets —bits of charcoal, india-rubbers, a handkerchief that had been disgracefully used as a paint-rag, and a sketchbook crammed into a pocket that was too small for it. There was a Harris tweed coat—blue. Suddenly he was back on the wharf at Quebec. The lights of Troy’s ship were reflected in the black mirror of the river. Silver-tongued bells rang out from all the grey churches. The tug, with its five globes of yellow light, moved outwards into the night tide of the St Lawrence, and there on the deck was Troy, her hand raised in farewell, wearing blue Harris tweed. ‘Goodbye. Thank you for my nice party. Goodbye.’ He slipped his hand into a pocket of the blue coat and pulled out Katti Bostock’s letter. He would have to read this.

  …You are a gump to collect these bloodsuckers…he’s a nasty little animal…that little devil Sonia Gluck…behaving abominably …funny this ‘It’ stuff…you’re different. They’d fall for you if you’d let them, only you’re so unprovocative…[Alleyn shook his head at Katti Bostock]. Your allusions to a detective are quite incomprehensible, but if he interrupted you in your work you had every right to bite his head off. What had you been up to anyway? Well, so long until the 3rd. Katti

  The envelope was addressed to Troy at the Chateau Frontenac.

  ‘Evidently,’ thought Alleyn, ‘I had begun to make a nuisance of myself on board. Interrupting her work. Oh Lord!’

  In a minute or two he had finished. It would have been absolutely all right if he had never asked about her room. No need for that little scene. He hung up the last garment, glanced round the room and looked for the fourth or fifth time at the photograph of a man that stood on the top of the bow-fronted chest. A good-looking man who had signed himself ‘John’. Alleyn, yielding to an unworthy impulse, made a hideous grimace at this photograph, turned to leave the room and saw Troy, amazed, in the doorway. He felt his face burning like a sky sign.

  ‘Have you finished, Mr Alleyn?’

  ‘Quite finished, thank you.’

  He knew she had seen him. There was a singular expression in her eyes.

  ‘I have just made a face at the photograph on your tallboy,’ said Alleyn.

  ‘So I observed.’

  ‘I have gone through your clothes, fished in your pockets and read all your letters. You may go to bed. The house will be watched, of course. Good night, Miss Troy.’

  ‘Good morning, Mr Alleyn.’

  Alleyn went to Katti Bostock’s room where he found nothing of note. It was a great deal untidier than Troy’s room, and took longer. He found several pairs of paint-stained slacks huddled together on the floor of the wardrobe, an evening dress in close proximity to a painting-smock, and a row of stubborn-looking shoes with no trees in them. There were odds and ends in all the pockets. He plodded through a mass of receipts, colour-men’s catalogues, drawings and books. The only personal letter he found was the one Troy had written and posted at Vancouver. This had to be read. Troy’s catalogue of the students was interesting. Then he came to the passages about himself. ‘…turned out to be intelligent, so I felt the fool…Lookslike a grandee…on the defensive about this sleuth…Took it like a gent and made me feel like a bounder.’ As he read, Alleyn’s left eyebrow climbed up his forehead. He folded the letter very carefully, smoothed it out and returned it to its place among a box of half-used oil-colours. He began to whistle under his breath, polished off Katti Bostock’s effects, and went in search of Fox and Bailey. They had finished the men’s bedrooms.

  Fox had found Malmsley’s opium-smoking impedimenta and had impounded them. The amount of opium was small. There were signs that the jar had at one time been full.

  ‘Which does not altogether agree with Mr Malmsley’s little story,’ grunted Alleyn. ‘Has Bailey tried the things for prints?’

  ‘Yes. Two sets, Garcia and Malmsley’s on the pipe, the lamp and the jar.’

  ‘The jar. That’s interesting. Well, let’s get on with it.’

  He sent Bailey into Phillida Lee’s room, while he and Fox tackled Valmai Seacliff’s. Miss Seacliff’s walls were chiefly adorned with pictures of herself. Malmsley and Ormerin had each painted her, and Pilgrim had drawn her once and painted her twice.

  ‘The successful nymphomaniac,’ thought Alleyn, remembering Katti’s letter.

  A very clever pencil drawing of Pilgrim, signed ‘Seacliff’, stood on the bedside table. The room was extremely tidy and much more obviously feminine than Troy’s or Katti’s. Seacliff had at least three times as many clothes, and quantities of hats and berets. Alleyn noticed that her slacks were made in Savile Row, and her dresses in Paris. He was amused to find that even the Seacliff painting-bags and smock smelt of Worth. Her weekend case had not been completely unpacked. In it he found three evening dresses, a nightdress and bath-gown, shoes, three pairs of coloured gloves, two day dresses, two berets, and an evening bag containing among other things a half-full bottle of aspirin.

  ‘Maybe Pilgrim’s,’ said Alleyn, and put them in his case. ‘Now for the correspondence.’

  They found more than enough of that. Two of her dressing-table drawers were filled with neatly tied-up packets of letters.

  ‘Help!’ said Alleyn. ‘We’ll have to glance at these, Fox. There might be something. Here, you take this lot. Very special. Red ribbon. Must be Pilgrim’s, I imagine. Yes, they are.’

  Fox put on his spectacles and began impassively to read Basil Pilgrim’s love-letters.

  ‘Very gentlemanly,’ he said, after the first three.

  ‘You’re out of luck. I’ve struck a most impassioned series from a young man, who compares her bitterly and obscurely to a mirage. Golly, here’s a sonnet.’

  For some time there was no sound but the faint crackle of notepaper. Bailey came in and said he had drawn a blank in Phillida Lee’s room. Alleyn threw a bundle of letters at him.

  ‘There’s something here you might like to see,’ said Fox. ‘The last one from the Honourable Mr Pilgrim.’

  ‘What’s he say?’

  Fox cleared his throat.

  ‘“Darling”,’ he began, ‘I’ve got the usual sort of feelings about not being anything like good enough for you. Your last letter telling me you first liked me because I seemed a bit different from other men has made me feel rather bogus. I suppose, without being an insufferable prig, I might agree that I can at any rate bear comparison with the gang we’ve got to know—the studio lot—like Garcia and Malmsley and Co. But that’s not a hell of a compliment to myself, is i
t? As a matter of fact, I simply loathe seeing you in that setting. Men like Garcia have no right to be in the same room as yourself, my lovely, terrifyingly remote Valmai. I know people scream with mirth at the sound of the word ‘pure’. It’s gone all déclassé like ‘genteel’. But there is a strange sort of purity about you, Valmai, truly. If I’ve understood you, you’ve seen something of—God, this sounds frightful—something of the same sort of quality in me. Oh, darling, don’t see too much of that in me. Just because I don’t get tight and talk bawdy, I’m not a blooming Galahad, you know. This letter’s going all the wrong way. Bless you a thousand, thousand—“ I think that’s the lot, sir,’ concluded Fox.

  ‘Yes. I see. Any letters in Pilgrim’s room?’

  ‘None. He may have taken them to Ankerton Manor, chief.’

  ‘So he may. I’d like to see the one where Miss Seacliff praised his purity. By the Lord, Fox, she has without a doubt got a wonderful technique. She’s got that not undesirable party, who’ll be a perfectly good peer before very long, if it’s true that old Pilgrim is failing; she’s got him all besotted and wondering if he’s good enough.’ Alleyn paused and rubbed his nose. ‘Men turn peculiar when they fall in love, Brer Fox. Sometimes they turn damned peculiar, and that’s a fact.’

  ‘These letters,’ said Fox, tapping them with a stubby forefinger, ‘were all written before they came down here. They’ve evidently been engaged in a manner of speaking for about a month.’

  ‘Very possibly.’

  ‘Well,’ said Fox, ‘there’s nothing in these letters of Mr Pilgrim’s to contradict any ideas we may have about Garcia, is there?’

  ‘Nothing. What about Pilgrim’s clothes?’

  ‘Nothing there. Two overcoats, five suits, two pairs of odd trousers and an odd jacket. Nothing much in the pockets. His weekend suitcase hasn’t been unpacked. He took a dinner suit, a tweed suit, pyjamas, dressing-gown, and toilet things.’

  ‘Any aspirin?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I fancy I found his bottle in one of Miss Seacliff’s pockets. Come on. Let’s get on with it.’