“Quite possibly.”
“How?”
“Stuck a knife through the throne so that when she took the pose— ”
“She sat on it?”
“Don’t be an ass. She lay on it and was stabbed to the heart, poor little fool!”
“Who’s the prime suspect?”
“A bloke called Garcia, who has been her lover, was heard to threaten her, has possibly got tired of her, and has probably been living on her money.”
“Is he here?”
“No. He’s gone on a walking tour to Lord knows where, and is expected to turn up at an unknown warehouse in London in the vaguely near future, to execute a marble statue of ‘Comedy and Tragedy’ for a talkie house.”
“D’you think he’s bolted?”
“I don’t know. He seems to be one of those incredible and unpleasant people with strict aesthetic standards, and no moral ones. He appears to be a genius. Now shut up. Here comes another of his fellow-students.”
Fox came in with Phillida Lee.
Alleyn, who had only met her across the dining-room table was rather surprised to see how small she was. She wore a dull red dress covered in a hand-painted design. It was, he realised, deliberately unfashionable and very deliberately interesting. Miss Lee’s hair was parted down the centre and dragged back from her forehead with such passionate determination that the corners of her eyes had attempted to follow it. Her face, if left to itself, would have been round and eager, but the austerities of the Slade school had superimposed upon it a careful expression of detachment. When she spoke one heard a faint undercurrent of the Midlands. Alleyn asked her to sit down. She perched on the edge of a chair and stared fixedly at him.
“Well, Miss Lee,” Alleyn began in his best official manner, “we shan’t keep you very long. I just want to have an idea of your movements during the week-end.”
“How ghastly!” said Miss Lee.
“But why?”
“I don’t know. It’s all so terrible. I feel I’ll never be quite the same again. The shock. Of course, I ought to try and sublimate it, I suppose, but it’s so difficult.”
“I shouldn’t try to do anything but be common-sensical if I were you,” said Alleyn.
“But I thought they used psycho methods in the police!”
“At all events we don’t need to apply them to the matter in hand. You left Tatler’s End House on Friday afternoon by the three o’clock bus?”
“Yes.”
“With Mr. Ormerin and Mr. Watt Hatchett?”
“Yes,” agreed Miss Lee, looking self-conscious and maidenly.
“What did you do when you got to London?”
“We all had tea at The Flat Hat in Vincent Square.”
“And then?”
“Ormerin suggested we should go to an exhibition of poster-work at the Westminster. We did go, and met some people we knew.”
“Their names, please, Miss Lee.”
She gave him the names of half a dozen people and the addresses of two.
“When did you leave the Westminster Art School?”
“I don’t know. About six, I should think. Ormerin had a date somewhere. Hatchett and I had dinner together at a Lyons. He took me. Then we went to the show at the Vortex Theatre.”
“That’s in Maida Vale, isn’t it?”
“Yes. I’m a subscriber and I had tickets. They were doing a play by Michael Sasha. It’s called Angle of Incidence. It’s frightfully thrilling and absolutely new. All about three county council labourers in a sewer. Of course,” added Miss Lee, adopting a more mature manner, “the Vortex is purely experimental.”
“So it would seem. Did you speak to anyone while you were there?”
“Oh yes. We talked to Sasha himself, and to Lionel Shand who did the decor. I know both of them.”
“Can you give me their addresses?”
Miss Lee was vague on this point, but said that care of the Vortex would always find them. Patiently led by Alleyn she gave a full account of her week-end. She had stayed with an aunt in the Fulham Road, and had spent most of her time in this aunt’s company. She had also seen a great deal of Watt Hatchett, it seemed, and had gone to a picture with him on Saturday night.
“Only I do hope you won’t have to ask auntie anything, Inspector Alleyn, because you see she pays my fees with Miss Troy, and if she thought the police were after me she’d very likely turn sour, and then I wouldn’t be able to go on painting. And that,” added Miss Lee with every appearance of sincerity, “would be the most frightful tragedy.”
“It shall be averted if possible,” said Alleyn gravely, and got the name and address of the aunt.
“Now then, Miss Lee, about those two conversations, you overheard— ”
“I don’t want to be called as a witness,” began Miss Lee in a hurry.
“Possibly not. On the other hand you must realise that in a serious case — and this is a very serious case — personal objections of this sort cannot be allowed to stand in the way of police investigation.”
“But I didn’t mean you to think that because Bostock flew into a blind rage with Sonia she was capable of murdering her.”
“Nor do I think so. It appears that half the class flew into rages at different times, and for much the same reason.”
“I didn’t! I never had a row with her. Ask the others. I got on all right with her. I was sorry for her.”
“Why?”
“Because Garcia was so beastly to her. Oh, I do think he was foul! If you’d heard him that time!”
“I wish very much that I had.”
“When he said he’d shut her mouth for keeps — I mean it’s the sort of thing you might think he’d say without meaning it, but he sounded as if he did mean it. He spoke so softly in a kind of drawl. I thought he was going to do it then. I was terrified. Truly! That’s why I banged the door and walked in.”
“About the scrap of conversation you overheard — did you get the impression that they planned to meet on Friday night?”
“It sounded like that. Sonia said: ‘If it’s possible.’ I think that’s what she meant. I think she meant to come back and bed down with Garcia for the night while no one was here.”
“To what, Miss Lee?”
“Well — you know — to spend the night with him.”
“What did they do when you appeared?”
“Garcia just stared at me. He’s got a beastly sort of way of looking at you. As if you were an animal. I was awfully scared he’d guessed I’d overheard them, but I saw in a minute that he hadn’t. I said: ‘Hullo, you two, what are you up to? Having a woo or something?’ I don’t know how I managed it but I did. And he said: ‘No, just a little chat.’ He turned away and began working at his thing. Sonia just walked out. She looked ghastly, Mr. Alleyn, honestly. She always made up pretty heavily except when we were painting the head, but even under her make-up I could see she was absolutely bleached. Oh, Mr. Alleyn, I do believe he did it, I do, actually.”
“You tell me you were on quite good terms with the model. Did she ever say anything that had any bearing on her relationship with Mr. Garcia?”
Phillida Lee settled herself more comfortably in her chair. She was beginning to enjoy herself.
“Well, of course, ever since this morning, I’ve been thinking of everything I can remember. I didn’t talk much to her until I’d been here for a bit. As a matter of fact the others were so frightfully superior that I didn’t get a chance to talk to anybody at first.”
Her round face turned pink, and suddenly Alleyn felt a little sorry for her.
“It’s always a bit difficult, settling down among new people,” he said.