Nigel returned while Alleyn was still chuckling over Miss O’Dawne’s letter.
“What’s up?” asked Nigel.
“Bailey has discovered a remarkably rich plum. Come and read it. I fancy it’s the sort of thing your paper calls a human document. A gem in its own way.” Nigel read over Fox’s shoulder.
“I like Dolores Duval and her spot of trouble,” he said.
“She got her pass from Leo Cohen for Sonia,” said Alleyn. “Sonia told Ormerin she’d seen the show. Fox, what do you make of the passage where she says Sonia might as well get it both ways if Garcia is willing? Then she goes on to say she supposes it’s all right to be married and he sounds a lovely boy.”
“The lovely boy seems to be the Hon. Pilgrim, judging by the next bit about her boy-friend that was a lord,” said Fox. “Do you think Sonia Gluck had an idea she’d get Mr. Pilgrim to marry her?”
“I hardly think so. No, I fancy blackmail was the idea there. Pilgrim confessed as much when he couldn’t get out of it. If Mr. Artistic Garcia was willing! Is she driving at the blackmail inspiration there, do you imagine? Her magnificent disregard for the convention that things that are thought of together should be spoken of together, is a bit baffling. I shall have to see Miss Bobbie O’Dawne. She may be the girl we all wait for. Anything else, Bailey?”
“Well,” said Bailey grudgingly, “I don’t know if there’s anything in it but I found this.” He took out of his case a shabby blue book and handed it to Alleyn. “It’s been printed, Mr. Alleyn. There’s several of deceased’s prints and a few of the broad one I got off the door. Same party had tried to get into the case where I found the book.”
“The Consolations of a Critic,” Alleyn muttered, turning the book over in his long hands. “By C. Lewis Hind, 1911. Yes, I see. Gently select. Edwardian manner. Seems to be a mildly ecstatic excursion into aesthetics. Nice reproductions. Hullo! Hullo! Why stap me and sink me, there it is!”
He had turned the pages until he came upon a black and white reproduction of a picture in which three medieval figures mowed a charming field against a background of hayricks, pollard willows and turreted palaces.
“By gum and gosh, Bailey, you’ve found Mr. Malmsley’s secret. I knew I’d met those three nice little men before. Of course I had. Good Lord, what a fool! Yes, here it is. From Les Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry, by Pol de Limbourge and his brothers. The book’s in the Musée Condé at Chantilly. I had to blandish for half an hour before the librarian would let me touch it. It’s the most exquisite thing. Well, I’ll be jiggered, and I can’t say fairer than that.”
“You can tell us what you’re talking about, however,” suggested Nigel acidly.
“Fox knows,” said Alleyn. “You remember, Fox, don’t you?”
“I get you now, Mr. Alleyn,” said Fox. “That’s what she meant when she sauced him on the day of the experiment.”
“Of course. This is the explanation of one of the more obscure passages in the O’Dawne’s document. ‘What a yell about Marmelade’s bit of dirt.’ What a yell indeed! Fetch him in, Fox — any nonsense from Master Cedric Malmsley and we have him on the hip.” He put the book on the floor beside his chair.
“You might tell me, Alleyn, why you are so maddeningly perky all of a sudden,” complained Nigel.
“Wait and see, my dear Bathgate. Bailey, you’ve done extremely well. Anything else for us in the room?”
“Not that I could make out, Mr. Alleyn. Everything’s put back as it was, but I thought there was nothing against taking these things.”
“Certainly not. Pack them into my case, please. I want you to wait until I’ve seen Mr. Malmsley. Here’s Fox.”
Malmsley drifted in ahead of Fox. Seen across the dining-room table he had looked sufficiently remarkable with his beard divided into two. This beard was fine and straight and had the damp pallor of an infant’s crest. Malmsley wore a crimson shirt, a black tie and a corduroy velvet jacket. Indeed he had the uncanny appearance of a person who had come round, full circle, to the Victorian idea of a Bohemian. He was almost an illustration for “Trilby.”
“Perhaps,” thought Alleyn, “there is nothing but that left for them to do.” He wore jade rings on his, unfortunately, broad fingers.
“Ah, Mr. Alleyn,” he said, “you are painfully industrious.”
Alleyn smiled vaguely and invited Malmsley to sit down. Nigel returned to the desk, Bailey walked over to the door, Fox stood in massive silence by the dying fire.
“I want your movements from Friday noon to yesterday evening, if you will be so obliging, Mr. Malmsley,” said Alleyn.
“I am afraid that I am not fortunate enough to have a very obliging nature, Mr. Alleyn. And as for my movements, I always move as infrequently as possible, and never in the right direction.”
“London was, from your point of view, in the right direction on Friday afternoon.”
“You mean that by going to London I avoided any question of complicity in this unpleasant affair.”
“Not necessarily,” said Alleyn. Malmsley lit a cigarette. “However,” continued Alleyn, “you have already told us that you went to London by the six o’clock bus, at the end of an afternoon spent with Mr. Garcia in the studio.”
“I am absurdly communicative. It must be because I find my own conversation less tedious, as a rule, than the conversation of other people.”
“In that,” said Alleyn, “you are singularly fortunate.”
Malmsley raised his eyebrows.
“What did Mr. Garcia tell you about Mr. Pilgrim during your conversation in the studio?” asked Alleyn.
“About Pilgrim? Oh, he said that he thought Valmai would find Pilgrim a very boring companion. He was rather ridiculous and said that she would soon grow tired of Pilgrim’s good looks. I told him that it was much more likely that she would tire of Pilgrim’s virtue. Women dislike virtue in a husband almost as much as they enjoy infidelity.”
“Good Lord!” thought Alleyn. “He is late Victorian. This is Wilde and Water.”
“And then?” he said aloud.
“And then he said that Basil Pilgrim was not as virtuous as I thought. I said that I had not thought about it at all. ‘The superficial observer,’ I told him, ‘is the only observer who ever lights upon a profound truth.’ Don’t you agree with me, Mr. Alleyn?”
“Being a policeman, I am afraid I don’t. Did you pursue this topic?”
“No. I did not find it sufficiently entertaining. Garcia then invited me to speculate upon the chances of Seacliff’s virtue saying that he could astonish me on that subject if he had a mind to. I assured him that I was unable to fall into a ecstasy of wonderment on the upshot of what was, as I believe racing enthusiasts would say, a fifty-fifty chance. I found Garcia quite, quite tedious and pedestrian on the subject of Seacliff. He is very much attracted by Seacliff, and men are always more amusing when they praise women they dislike than when they abuse the women to whom they are passionately attracted. I therefore changed the topic of conversation.”
“To Sonia Gluck?”
“That would be quite brilliant of you, Inspector, if I had not mentioned previously that we spoke of Sonia Gluck.”
“That is almost the only feature of our previous conversation that I do remember, Mr. Malmsley. You told us that Garcia asked you if—” Alleyn consulted his note-book— “if you had ever felt like murdering your mistress just for the horror of doing it. How did you reply?”
“I replied that I had never been long enough attached to a woman for her to claim the title of my mistress. There is something dreadfully permanent in the sound of those two sibilants. However, the theme was a pleasant one and we embroidered it at our leisure. Garcia strolled across to my table and looked at my drawing. ‘It wouldn’t be worth it,’ he said. I disagreed with him. One exquisite pang of horror! ‘One has not experienced the full gamut of nervous luxury,’ I said, ‘until one has taken a life.’ He began to laugh and returned to his work.”