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.”