“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.
CHAPTER VIII
Sidelights on Garcia
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?”