“Miss Sadie Welsh,” explained Fox, “was a bit uncomfortable about coming down, Mr. Alleyn. She’d gone to bed.”
“I’m so sorry to bring you out,” said Alleyn pleasantly. “We shan’t keep you here very long. Come over to the fire, won’t you?”
He threw a couple of logs on the fire and persuaded Miss Welsh to perch on the extreme edge of a chair with her feet on the fender. She was a girl of perhaps twenty-two, with large brown eyes, a button nose and a mouth that looked as though she constantly said: “Ooo.” She gazed at Alleyn as if he was a grand inquisitor.”
“You’re Miss Troy’s housemaid, aren’t you?” said Alleyn.
“Yes, sir.”
“Been with her long?”
“Ooo, yes, sir. I was a under-housemaid here when the old gentleman was alive; I was sixteen then, sir. And when Miss Troy was mistress I stayed on, sir. Of course, Miss Troy’s bin away a lot, sir, but when the house was opened up again this year, Miss Bostock asked me to come with Mr. and Mrs. Hipkin to be housemaid. I never was a real housemaid like before, sir, but Mr. Hipkin he’s training me now for parlourmaid. He says I’ll be called Welsh then, because Sadie isn’t a name for a parlourmaid, Mr. Hipkin says. So I’ll be ‘Welsh.’ ”
“Splendid. You like your job?”
“Well, sir,” said Sadie primly. “I like Miss Troy very much, sir.”
“Not so sure about the rest of the party?”
“No, I am not, sir, and that’s a fact. I was telling Mr. Fox, sir. Queer! Well, I mean to say! That Mr. Garcia, sir. Ooo! Well, I dare say Mr. Fox has told you. I complained to Miss Troy, sir. I asked Mrs. Hipkin what would I do and she said: ‘Go straight to Miss Troy,’ she said, ‘I would,’ she said. ‘I’d go straight to Miss Troy.’ Which I did. There was no trouble after that, sir, but I must say I didn’t fancy taking his dinner down on Friday.”
“As it turned out, you didn’t see Mr. Garcia then, did you?”
“No, sir. He calls out in a sort of drawly voice: ‘Is that you, Sadistic?’ which was what he had the nerve to call me, and Mr. Hipkin says he didn’t ought to have because Mr. Hipkin is very well educated, sir.”
“Astonishingly,” murmured Alleyn.
“And then I said: ‘Your dinner, Mr. Garcia,’ and he called out — excuse me, sir — he called out: ‘Oh Gawd, eat it yourself.’ I said: ‘Pardon?’ and he said ‘Put it down there and shove off.’ So I said: ‘Thank you,’ I said, ‘Mr. Garcia,’ I said. And I put down the tray and as I told Mrs. Hipkin, sir, I said: ‘There’s something peculiar going on down there,’ I said, when I got back to the hall.”
“What made you think that?”
“Well, sir, he seemed that anxious I wouldn’t go in, and what with the queer perfume and one thing and another— well!”
“You noticed an odd smell?”
“Yes, I did that, sir.”
“Ever smelt anything like it before?”
“Ooo well, sir, that’s funny you should think of that because I said to myself: ‘Well, if that isn’t what Mr. Marziz’s room smells like of a morning sometimes.’”
“Mr. Malmsley?”
“Yes, sir. It’s a kind of — well, a kind of a bitterish sort of smell, only sort of thick and sour.”
“Not like whisky, for instance?”
“Oh no, sir. I didn’t notice the perfume of whisky till I went down next morning.”
“Hullo!” said Fox genially, “you never told me it was whisky you smelt on Saturday morning, young lady.”
“Didn’t I, Mr. Fox? Well, I must of forgotten, because there was the other smell, too, mixed up with it. Anyway, Mr. Fox, it wasn’t the first time I’ve noticed whisky in the studio since Mr. Garcia’s been there.”
“But you’d never noticed the other smell before?”asked Alleyn.
“Not in the studio, sir. Only in Mr. Marziz’s room.”
“Did you make the bed on Saturday morning?”
Sadie turned pink.
“Well, no, I didn’t, sir. I opened the window to air the room, and thought I’d go back later. Mr. Garcia’s supposed to make his own bed. It looked fairly tidy so I left it.”
“And on Saturday morning Mr. Garcia’s clay model and all his things were gone?”
“That queer-looking mud thing like plasticine? Ooo yes, sir, it was gone on Saturday.”
“Right. I think that’s all.”
“May I go, sir?”
“Yes, off you go. I’ll ask you to sign your name to a statement later on. You’ll do that, won’t you? It will just be what you’ve told us here?”
“Very good, sir.”
“Good night, Welsh,” said Alleyn smiling. “Thank you.”
“Good night, sir. I’m sure I’m sorry to come in, such a fright. I don’t know what Mr. Hipkin would say. It doesn’t look very nice for ‘Welsh,’ the parlourmaid, does it, sir?”
“We think it was quite correct,” said Alleyn.
Fox, with a fatherly smile, shepherded Sadie to the door.
“Well, Fox,” said Alleyn, “we’d better get on with it. Let’s have Mr. Francis Ormerin. How’s the French, by the way?”
“I’ve mastered the radio course, and I’m on to Hugo’s Simplified now. I shouldn’t fancy an unsimplified, I must say. I can read it pretty steadily, Mr. Alleyn, and Bob Thompson, the super at number three, has lent me one or two novels he picked up in Paris, on the understanding I translate the bits that would appeal to him. You know Bob.” Fox opened his eyes wide and an expression of mild naughtiness stole over his healthy countenance. “I must say some of the passages are well up to expectation. Of course, you don’t find all those words in the dictionary, do you?”
“You naughty old scoundrel,” said Alleyn. “Go and get M. Ormerin.”
“Toot sweet,” said Fox. “There you are.”
“And you’d better inquire after the Seacliff. ” Fox went out. “This case seems to be strewn with upheavels,” said Alleyn. “Garcia was sick when he saw the defaced portrait. Sonia was sick in the mornings, and Miss Seacliff is heaving away merrily at this very moment, or I’m much mistaken.”
“I begin to get an idea of the case,” said Nigel, who had gone through his notes. “You’re pretty certain it’s Garcia, aren’t you?”
“Have I said so? All right, then, I do feel tolerably certain he laid the trap for this girl, but it’s purely conjectural. I may be quite wrong. If we are to accept the statements of Miss Troy and Watt Hatchett, the knife was pushed through the boards some time after three o’clock on Friday afternoon, and before Saturday afternoon. Personally I am inclined to believe both these statements. That leaves us with Garcia and Malmsley as the most likely fancies.”
“There’s— ”
“Well?”
“Of course if you accept her statement it doesn’t arise,” said Nigel nervously.
Alleyn did not answer immediately, and for some reason Nigel found that he could not look at him. Nigel ruffled the pages of his notes and heard Alleyn’s voice: “I only said I was inclined to believe Hatchett’s statement — and hers. I shall not regard them as inviolable.”
Fox returned with Francis Ormerin and once again they settled down to routine. Ormerin had attended the private view of the Phoenix Group Show on Friday night, and had spent the week-end with a French family at Hampstead. They had sat up till about two o’clock on both nights and had been together during the day-time.
“I understand that during the bus drive back from London yesterday, the model sat beside you?” said Alleyn.
“Yes. That is so. This poor girl, she must always have her flirt in attendance.”
“And you filled the role on this occasion?”
Ormerin pulled a significant grimace.
“Why not? She makes an invitation with every gesture. It is a long and tedious drive. She is not unattractive. After a time I fell asleep.”