Artists in Crime (8 page)

“No.”

“Did you notice the drape?”

Troy leant forward, her cropped head between two clenched fists.

“That’s what I’ve been trying to remember ever since Hatchett said it was stretched out when he saw it on Sunday.

“Give me a moment. I went straight to my cupboard behind the door and got out my sketching gear. I had a look in the box and found there was no turpentine in the bottle, so I took it to the junk-room and filled it up. Then I came back to the studio and — yes, yes!”

“You’ve remembered it?”

“Yes. I–I must tell you I hadn’t screwed myself up to looking at the portrait of Seacliff again. Not since I first saw what Sonia had done to it. I just turned it face to the wall behind the throne. Well, I saw it when I came out of the junk-room, and I thought: ‘I can’t go on cutting it dead. It can’t stand there for ever, giving me queasy horrors whenever I catch sight of it.’ So I began to walk towards it, and I got as far as the edge of the throne, and I remember now quite clearly I walked carefully round the drape, so as not to disturb it, and I noticed, without noticing, don’t you know, that the silk was in position — stretched straight from the cushion and pinned to the floor of the throne. You may have noticed that it was caught with a safety-pin to the top of the cushion. That was to prevent it slipping off when she lay down on it. It was fixed lightly to the floor with a drawing-pin that flew out when the drape took her weight. The whole idea was to get the accidental swill of the silk round the figure. It was stretched out like that when I saw it.”

“I needn’t tell you the significance of this,” said Alleyn, slowly. “You are absolutely certain the drape was in position?”

“Yes. I’d swear to it.”

“And did you look at the portrait of Miss Seacliff?”

Troy turned her face away from him.

“No,” she said gruffly, “I funked it. Poor sort of business, wasn’t it?” She laughed shortly.

Alleyn made a quick movement, stopped himself, and said: “I don’t think so. Did either of you go down to the studio at any time during yesterday, do you know?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think so. I didn’t, and Katti had an article to do for
The Palette
and was writing in the library all day. She’s got a series of articles on the Italian primitives running in
The Palette
. You’d better ask her about yesterday.”

“I will. To return to your own movements. You went out to paint in the garden?”

“Yes. At eleven o’clock. The Bossicote church bell had just stopped. I worked till about two o’clock and came in for a late lunch. After lunch I cleaned up my brushes at the house. I hadn’t gone to the studio. Katti and I had a good glare at my sketch, and then she read over her article and began to type it. I sat in here, working out an idea for a decorative panel on odd bits of paper. Seacliff and Pilgrim arrived in his car for tea at five, and the others came by the six o’clock bus.”

“Sonia Gluck with them?”

“Yes.”

“Did you all spend the evening together?”

“The class has a sort of common-room at the back of the house. In my grandfather’s day it was really a kind of ballroom, but when my father lost most of his money, part of the house was shut up, including this place. I had a lot of odds and ends of furniture put into it and let them use it. It’s behind the dining-room, at the end of an odd little passage. They all went in there after dinner on Sunday — yesterday — evening. I looked in for a little while.”

“They were all there?”

“I think so. Pilgrim and Seacliff wandered out through the french window into the garden. I suppose they wanted to enjoy the amenities of betrothal.”

Alleyn laughed unexpectedly. He had a very pleasant laugh.

“What’s the matter?” asked Troy.

‘“The amenities of betrothal,’” quoted Alleyn.

“Well, what’s wrong with that?”

“Such a grand little phrase!”

For a moment there was no constraint between them. They looked at each other as if they were old friends.

“Well,” said Troy, “they came back looking very smug and complacent and self-conscious, and all the others were rather funny about it. Except Sonia, who looked like thunder. It’s quite true, what Seacliff says. Sonia, you see, was the main attraction last year, as far as the men-students were concerned. She used to hold a sort of court in the rest-times and fancied herself as a Bohemian siren, poor little idiot. Then Seacliff came and wiped her eye. She was beside herself with chagrin. You’ve seen what Seacliff is like. She doesn’t exactly disguise the fact that she is attractive to men, does she? Katti says she’s a successful nymphomaniac.”

“Pilgrim seems an honest-to-God sort of fellow.”

“He’s a nice fellow, Pilgrim.”

“Do you approve of the engagement?”

“No, I don’t. I think she’s after his title.”

“You don’t mean to say he’s a son of the Methodist peer?”

“Yes, he is. And the Methodist peer may leave us for crowns and harps any moment now. The old gentlemen’s failing.”

“I see.”

“As a matter of fact—” Troy hesitated.

“Yes?”

“I don’t know that it matters.”

“Please, tell me anything you can think of.”

“You may attach too much importance to it.”

“We are warned against that at the Yard, you know.”

“I beg your pardon,” said Troy stiffly. “I was merely going to say that I thought Basil Pilgrim had been worried about something since his engagement.”

“Have you any idea what it was?”

“I thought at first it might have been his father’s illness, but somehow I don’t think it was that.”

“Perhaps he has already regretted his choice. The trapped feeling.”

“I don’t think so,” said Troy still more stiffly. “I fancy it was something to do with Sonia.”

“With the model?”

“I simply meant that I thought he felt uncomfortable about Sonia. She was always uttering little jeers about engaged couples. I think they made Pilgrim feel uncomfortable.”

“Do you imagine there has ever been anything between Pilgrim and Sonia Gluck?”

“I have no idea,” said Troy.

There was a tap on the door, and Fox came in.

“I got through, sir. They’ll get busy at once. The men have finished in the studio.”

“Ask them to wait. I’ll see them in a minute.”

“Have you finished with me?” asked Troy, standing up.

“Yes, thank you, Miss Troy,” said Alleyn formally. “If you wouldn’t mind giving us the names and addresses of the people you met in London, I should be very grateful. You see, we are obliged to check all statements of this sort.”

“I quite understand,” answered Troy coldly.

She gave the names and addresses of her host and hostess, of the people she met in the club, and of the man who took her to lunch — John Bellasca, 44, Little Belgrave Street.

“The club porter may be useful,” she said, “his name’s Jackson. He may have noticed my goings out and comings in. I remember that I asked him the time, and got him to call taxis. The sort of things people do when they wish to establish alibis, I understand.”

“They occasionally do them at normal times, I believe,” said Alleyn. “Thank you, Miss Troy. I won’t bother you any more for the moment. Do you mind joining the others until we have finished this business?”

“Not at all,” answered Troy with extreme grandeur. “Please use this room as much as you like. Good evening, good evening.”

“Good evening, miss,” said Fox.

Troy made an impressive exit.

The lady seems a bit upset,” said Fox mildly, when Troy had gone.

“I irritate the lady,” answered Alleyn.

“
You
do, sir? I always think you’ve got a very pleasant way with female witnesses. Sort of informal and at the same time very polite.”

“Thank you, Fox,” said Alleyn wryly.

“Learn anything useful, sir?”

“She says the drape was in the second position on Saturday afternoon.”

“Stretched out straight?”

“Yes.”

“Well,” said Fox, “if she’s telling the truth, it looks as though the knife was fixed up between the time this Mr. Malmsley walked out on Friday afternoon and the time Miss Troy looked in on Saturday. That’s if Malmsley was telling the truth when he said the drape was crumpled and flat on Friday afternoon. It all points one way, chief, doesn’t it?”

“It does, Brer Fox, it does.”

“The Yard’s getting straight on to chasing up this Mr. Garcia. I’ve rung all the stations round this district and asked them to make inquiries. I got a pretty fair description of him from the cook, and Bailey found a couple of photographs of the whole crowd in the studio. Here’s one of them.”

He thrust a massive hand inside his pocket and produced a half-plate group of Troy and her class. It had been taken in the garden.

“There’s the model, Fox. Look!”

Fox gravely put on his spectacles and contemplated the photograph.

“Yes, that’s the girl,” he said. “She looks merry, doesn’t she, sir?”

“Yes,” said Alleyn slowly. “Very merry.”

“That’ll be this Garcia, then,” Fox continued. He pointed a stubby finger at a figure on the outside of the group. Alleyn took out a lens and held it over the photograph. Up leaped a thin, unshaven face, with an untidy lock of dark hair falling across the forehead. The eyes were set rather close and the brows met above the thin nose. The lips were unexpectedly full. Garcia had scowled straight into the camera. Alleyn gave Fox the lens.

“Yes,” said Fox, after a look through it, “we’ll have enlargements done at once. Bailey’s got the other. He says it will enlarge very nicely.”

“He looks a pretty good specimen of a wild man,” said Alleyn.

“If Malmsley and Miss Troy are telling the truth,” said Fox, who had a way of making sure of his remarks, “he’s a murderer. Of course, the motive’s not much of an affair as far as we’ve got.”

“Well, I don’t know, Brer Fox. It looks as though the girl was badgering him to marry her. It’s possible the P.M. may offer the usual explanation for that sort of thing.”

“In the family way? ” Fox took off his spectacles and stared blandly at his chief. “Yes. That’s so. What did you make of that statement of Mr. Malmsley’s about Garcia being ill in the garden after he saw the defaced likeness? That seems a queer sort of thing to me. It wasn’t as if he’d done the photo.”

“The painting, Fox,” corrected Alleyn. “One doesn’t call inspired works of art photographs, you know. Yes, that was rather a rum touch, wasn’t it? You heard Miss Seacliff’s theory. Garcia is infatuated with her and was all upheaved by the sight of her defaced loveliness.”

“Far-fetched,” said Fox.

“I’m inclined to agree with you. But it might be an explanation of his murdering Sonia Gluck when he realised she had done it. He might have thought to himself: ‘This looks like a more than usually hellish fury from the woman scorned — what am I in for?’ and decided to get rid of her. There’s a second possibility which will seem even more farfetched to you, I expect. To me it seems conceivable that Garcia’s aesthetic nerves were lacerated by the outrage on a lovely piece of painting. Miss Troy says the portrait of Valmai Seacliff was the best thing she has ever done.” Alleyn’s voice deepened and was not quite steady. “That means it was a really great work. I think, Fox, that if I had seen that painted head and known it for a superlatively beautiful thing, and then seen it again with that beastly defacement — I believe I might have sicked my immortal soul up into the nearest flower-bed. I also believe that I would have felt remarkably like murder.”

“Is that so, sir?” said Fox stolidly. “But you wouldn’t have done murder, though, however much you felt like it.”

“I’d have felt
damn
’ like it,” muttered Alleyn. He walked restlessly about the room. “The secret of Garcia’s reaction,” he said, “lies behind this.” He wagged the photograph at Fox. “Behind that very odd-looking head. I wish we knew more about Garcia. We’ll have to go hunting for his history, Brer Fox. Records of violence and so on. I wonder if there are any. Suppose he turns up quite innocently to do his ‘Comedy and Tragedy’ in his London warehouse?”

“That’ll look as if either Malmsley or Miss Troy was a liar, sir, won’t it? I must say I wouldn’t put Mr. Malmsley down as a very dependable sort of gentleman. A bit cheeky in an arty sort of fashion.”

Alleyn smiled.

“Fox, what a neat description of him! Admirable! No, unless Malmsley is lying, the knife was hammered through and the drape stretched out after they had all gone on Friday. And if Miss Troy found it stretched out on Saturday afternoon, then the thing was done before then.”

“If,” said Fox. And after a moment’s silence Alleyn replied:

“ ‘If’ — of course.”

“You might say Miss Troy had the strongest motive, sir, as far as the portrait is concerned.”

There was a longer pause.

“Do you think it at all likely that she is a murderess?” said Alleyn from the fireplace. “A very deliberate murderess, Fox. The outrage to the portrait was committed a week before the murder.”

“I must say I don’t think so, sir. Very unlikely indeed, I’d say. This Garcia seems the likeliest proposition on the face of it. What did you make of Miss Phillida Lee’s statement, now? The conversation she overheard. Looks as though Garcia and the deceased were making an assignation for Friday night, doesn’t it? Suppose she came back to the studio on Friday night in order that they should resume intimacy?”

“Yes, I know.”

“He seems to have actually threatened her, if the young lady can be depended upon.”

“Miss Seacliff didn’t contradict the account, and you must remember that extraordinary little party, Phillida Lee, confided the fruits of her nosy-parkering to Miss Seacliff long before the tragedy. I think we may take it that Garcia and Sonia Gluck had a pretty good dust-up on the lines indicated by the gushing Lee. You took notes in the dining-room, of course. Turn up her report of the quarrel, will you?”

Fox produced a very smug-looking note-book, put on his spectacles, and turned up a page.

“ ‘Garcia—’ ” he read slowly from his shorthand notes.

“ ‘All right. On Friday night then.’ Sonia Gluck: ‘Yes, if it’s possible.’ Then later Gluck said: ‘I won’t stand for any funny business with her, you know.’ Garcia said: ‘Who?’ and Gluck answered: ‘The Seacliff bitch, of course.’ Sonia Gluck said Garcia ought to marry her. He did not reply. She threatened to go to Miss Troy with the whole story if he let her down. He said: ‘If you don’t shut up and leave me to get on with my work, I’ll bloody well stop your mouth for keeps.’ That’s the conversation, sir.”

“Yes. We’ll have to get hold of something about Friday night. Damn it all, the studio is built into the wall, and the window opens on the lane. Surely to Heaven someone must have passed by that evening and heard voices if Garcia had the girl in the place with him.”

“And how did he get his stuff away on Friday night or Saturday morning? They’ve tried all the carriers for miles around.”

“I know, Brer Fox, I know. Well, on we go. We’ve got to get all these people’s time-tables from Friday noon till Sunday evening. What about Bailey? I’d better see him first, I suppose.”

Bailey came in with his usual air of mulish displeasure and reported that they had finished in the studio. They had gone over everything for prints, had photographed the scratched window-sill, measured and photographed the car’s prints and footprints in the lane, and taken casts of them. They had found the key of the studio hanging on a nail outside the door. It was smothered in prints. Under the pillow was an empty whisky bottle. On the window-sill one set of prints occurred many times, and seemed to be superimposed on most of the others. He had found traces of clay with these prints, and with those on the bottle.

“Those will be Garcia’s” said Alleyn. “He worked in the window.”

In the junk-room Bailey had found a mass of jars, brushes, bottles of turpentine and oil, costumes, lengths of materials, a spear, an old cutlass, and several shallow dishes that smelt of nitric acid. There was also what Bailey described as “as sort of mangle affair with a whale of a heavy chunk of metal and a couple of rollers.”

“An etching press,” said Alleyn.

“There’s a couple of stains on the floor of the junk-room,” continued Bailey, “Look like nitric-acid stains. They’re new. I can’t find any nitric acid anywhere, though. I’ve looked in all the bottles and jars.”

“Um!” said Alleyn, and made a note of it.

“There’s one other thing,” said Bailey. He opened a bag he had brought in with him, and out of it he took a small box which he handed to Alleyn.

“Hullo,” said Alleyn. “This is the
bon-bouche
, is it?”

He opened the little box and held it under the lamp. Inside was a flattened greenish-grey pellet.

“Clay,” said Alleyn. “Where was it?”

“In the folds of that silk stuff that was rigged on the platform,” said Bailey, staring morosely at his boots.

“I see,” said Alleyn softly. “Look here, Fox.”

Fox joined him. They could both see quite clearly that the flattened surface of the pellet was delicately scrolled by minute holes and swirling lines.

“A nice print,” said Fox, “only half there, but very sharp what there is.”

“If the prints on the sill are Garcia’s,” said Bailey, “that’s Garcia’s, too.”

There was a silence.

“Well,” said Alleyn at last, “that’s what you call a fat little treasure-trove, Bailey.”

“I reckon it must have dropped off his overall when he was stretching that stuff above the point of the knife, sir. That’s what I reckon.”

“Yes. It’s possible.”

“He must have used gloves for the job. There are one or two smudges about the show that look like glove-marks, and I think one of them’s got a trace of the clay. We’ve photographed the whole outfit.”

“You’ve done rather well, Bailey.”

“Anything more, sir?”

“Yes, I’m afraid there is. I want you to find the deceased’s room and go over it. I don’t think we should let that wait any longer. One of the maids will show you where it is. Come and get me if anything startling crops up.”

“Very good, Mr. Alleyn.”

“And when that’s done, you can push off if you want to. You’ve left a man on guard, I suppose?”

“Yes, sir. One of these local chaps. Getting a great kick out of it.”

“Guileless fellow. Away you go, Bailey. I’ll see you later on.”

“O.K., sir.”

“Nitric acid?” ruminated Fox, when Bailey had gone.

“I think it’s the acid they used for etching. I must ask Miss Troy about it.”

“Looks as if all we’ve got to do is to find Garcia, don’t it, sir?”

“It do, Fox. But for the love of Mike don’t let’s be too sure of ourselves.”

“That bit of clay, you know, sir — how could it have got there by rights? He’d no business up on the model’s throne now, had he?”

“No.”

“And according to Malmsley’s story, the drape must have been fixed when the rest of them had gone up to London.”

“Yes. We’ll have to trace ’em in London just the same. Have to get on to these others now. Go and take a dip in the dining-room, Fox, and see what the fairies will send us in the way of a witness.”

Fox went off sedately and returned with Katti Bostock. She came in looking very four-square and sensible. Her short and stocky person was clad in corduroy trousers, a red shirt and a brown jacket. Her straight black hair hung round her ears in a Cromwellian cut with a determined bang across her wide forehead. She was made up in a rather slapdash sort of manner. Her face was principally remarkable for its exceedingly heavy eyebrows.

Alleyn pushed forward a chair and she slumped herself down on it. Fox went quietly to the desk and prepeared to make a shorthand report. Alleyn sat opposite Katti.

“I’m sorry to bother you again, Miss Bostock,” he said. “We’ve got a good deal of tidying up to do, as you may imagine. First of all, is nitric acid used in the studio for anything?”

“Etching,” said Katti. “Why?”

“We’ve found stains in the junk-room that looked like it. Where is it kept?”

“In a bottle on the top shelf. It’s marked with a red cross.”

“We couldn’t find it.”

“It was filled up on Friday, and put on the top shelf. Must be there.”

“I see. Right. Now I just want to check everybody’s movements from lunch-time on Friday. In your case it would be a simple matter. I believe you spent most of your time in London with Miss Troy?” He opened his note-book and put it on the arms of his chair.

“Yes,” he said. “I see you both went to your club, changed and dined with Sir Arthur and Lady Jaynes at Eaton Square. From there you went to the private view of the Phoenix Group Show, and supped at the Hungaria. That right?”

“Yes. Quite correct.”

“You stayed at the club. What time did you get back from the Hungaria on Friday night?”

“Saturday morning,” corrected Katti. “I left with the Jayneses about twelve-thirty. They drove me to the club. Troy stayed on with John Bellasca and was swept out with the dust whenever they closed.”

“You met again at breakfast?”

“Yes. We separated during the morning and met again at the show. I lunched with some people I ran into there— Graham Barnes and his wife — he’s the water-colour bloke. Then Troy and I met at the club and came home. She lunched with John Bellasca.”

“Yes. That’s all very straightforward. I’ll have to ask Sir Arthur Jaynes or someone to confirm it. The usual game, you know.”

“That’s all right,” said Katti. “You want to find out whether either of us had time to sneak back here and set a death-trap for that little fool Sonia, don’t you?”