“I was behind her,” said Mr. Ruby. “I couldn’t see anything. The first thing I knew was the flash and the rumpus. She was yelling out for somebody to stop the photographer. Somebody else was screaming, ‘Stop that woman’ and fighting to get through. And it turned out afterwards, the screamer was the woman herself, who was the photographer Strix, if you can follow me.”
“Just,” said Alleyn.
“He’s made monkeys out of the lot of us; all along the line he’s made us look like monkeys,” Mr. Ruby complained.
“What does he look like? Surely someone must have noticed something about him?”
But, no, it appeared. Nobody had come forward with a reliable description. He operated always in a crowd where everyone’s attention was focused on his victim and cameramen abounded. Or unexpectedly he would pop round a corner with his camera held in both hands before his face, or from a car that shot off before any action could be taken. There had been one or two uncertain impressions — he was bearded, he had a scarf pulled over his mouth, he was dark. Mr. Ruby had a theory that he never wore the same clothes twice and always went in for elaborate makeups, but there was nothing to support this idea.
“What action,” Mr. Reece asked Alleyn, “would you advise?”
‘To begin with: not an action for libel. Can she be persuaded against it, do you think?”
“She may be all against it in the morning. You never know,” said Hanley, and then with an uneasy appeal to his employer: “I beg your pardon, sir, but I mean to say you don’t, do you? Actually?”
Mr. Reece, with no change of expression in his face, merely looked at his secretary, who subsided nervously.
Alleyn had returned to the Watchman. He tilted the paper this way and that under the table lamp. “I think,” he said, “I’m not sure, but I think the original paper was probably glossy.”
“I’ll arrange for someone to deal with the Watchman end,” said Mr. Reece, and to Hanley: “Get through to Sir Simon Marks in Sydney,” he ordered. “Or wherever he is. Get him.”
Hanley retreated to a distant telephone and huddled over it in soundless communication.
Alleyn said: “If I were doing this as a conscientious copper, I would now ask you all if you have any further ideas about the perpetrator of these ugly tricks — assuming for the moment that the photographer and the concocter of the letter are one and the same person. Is there anybody you can think of who bears a grudge deep enough to inspire such persistent and malicious attacks? Has she an enemy, in fact?”
“Has she a hundred bloody enemies?” Mr. Ruby heatedly returned. “Of course she has. Like the home-grown baritone she insulted in Perth or the top hostess in Los Angeles who threw a high-quality party for her and asked visiting royalty to meet her.”
“What went wrong?”
“She didn’t go.”
“Oh dear!”
‘Took against it at the last moment because she’d heard the host’s money came from South Africa. We talked about a sudden attack of migraine, which might have answered if she hadn’t gone to supper at Angelo’s and the press hadn’t reported it with pictures the next morning.”
“Wasn’t ‘Strix’ already in action by then, though?”
“That’s true,” agreed Mr. Ruby gloomily. “You’ve got something there. But enemies! My oath!”
“In my view,” said Mr. Reece, “the matter of enmity doesn’t arise. This has been from first to last a profitable enterprise. I’ve ascertained that ‘Strix’ can ask what he likes for his photographs. It’s only a matter of time, one imagines, before they reappear in book form. He’s hit on a money spinner and unless we catch him in the act he’ll go on spinning as long as the public interest lasts. Simple as that.”
“If he concocted the letter,” Alleyn said, “it’s hard to see how he’d make money out of that. He could hardly admit to forgery.”
Rupert Bartholomew said: “I think the letter was written out of pure spite. She thinks so, too; you heard her. A sort of black practical joke.”
He made this announcement with an air of defiance, almost of proprietorship. Alleyn saw Mr. Reece look at him for several seconds with concentration as if his attention had been unexpectedly aroused. He thought: “That boy’s getting himself into deep water.”
Hanley had been speaking into the telephone. He stood up and said, “Sir Simon Marks, sir.”
Mr. Reece took the call inaudibly. The others fell into an unrestful silence, not wishing to seem as if they listened but unable to find anything to say to each other. Alleyn was conscious of Rupert Bartholomew’s regard, which as often as he caught it was hurriedly turned away. “He’s making some sort of appeal,” Alleyn thought and went over to him. They were not removed from the others.
“Do tell me about your opera,” he said. “I’ve only gathered the scantiest picture from our host of what is going to happen, but it all sounds most exciting.”
Rupert muttered something about not being too sure of that.
“But,” said Alleyn, “it must be an enormous thing for you, isn’t it? For the greatest soprano of our time to bring it all about? A wonderful piece of good fortune, I’d have thought.”
“Don’t,” Rupert muttered. “Don’t say that.”
“Hullo! What’s all this? First-night nerves?”
Rupert shook his head. God Lord, Alleyn thought, a bit more of this and he’ll be in tears. Rupert stared at him and seemed to be on the edge of speech when Mr. Reece put back the receiver and rejoined the others. “Marks will attend to the Watchman,” he said. “If the original is there he’ll see that we get it.”
“Can you be sure of that?” Ruby asked.
“Certainly. He owns the group and controls the policy.”
They began to talk in a desultory way, and for Alleyn their voices sounded a long way off and disembodied. The spectacular room became unsteady and its contents swelled, diminished, and faded. I’m going to sleep on my feet, he thought and pulled himself together.
He said to his host, “As I can’t be of use, I wonder if I may be excused? It’s been a long day and one didn’t get much sleep on the plane.”
Mr. Reece was all consideration. “How very thoughtless of us,” he said. “Of course. Of course.” He made appropriate hospitable remarks about hoping the Alleyns had everything they required, suggested that they breakfast late in their room and ring when they were ready for it. He sounded as if he were playing some sort of internal cassette of his own recording. He glanced at Hanley, who advanced, all eager to please.
“We’re in unbelievable bliss,” Alleyn assured them, scarcely knowing what he said. And to Hanley: “No, please don’t bother. I promise not to doze off on my way up. Goodnight, everyone.”
He crossed the hall, which was now dimly lit. The pregnant woman loomed up and stared at him through slitted eyes. Behind her the fire, dwindled to a glow, pulsated quietly.
As he passed the drawing room door he heard a scatter of desultory conversation: three voices at the most, he thought, and none of them belonged to Troy.
And, sure enough, when he reached their room he found her in bed and fast asleep. Before joining her he went to the heavy window curtains, parted them, and saw the lake in moonlight close beneath him, stretching away like a silver plain into the mountains. Incongruous, he thought, and impertinent, for this little knot of noisy, self-important people with their self-imposed luxury and seriocomic concerns to be set down at the heart of such an immense serenity.
He let the curtain fall and went to bed.