“As she came into the doorway and did her usual thing of being delighted and astonished at the size of the crowd, he aimed his camera and at the same time blew a piercingly loud whistle. Her jaw dropped and her eyes popped and in the resulting photograph she looked as if someone had thumped her between the shoulder blades.
“From then on the thing ripened into a sort of war of attrition. It caught the fancy of her enormous public, the photos became syndicated, and the man is said to be making enormous sums of money. Floods of angry letters from her fans to the papers concerned. Threats. Unkind jokes in the worst possible taste. Bets laid. Preposterous stories suggesting he’s a cast-off lover taking his revenge or a tenor who fell out with her. Rumors of a nervous breakdown. Bodyguards. The lot.”
“Isn’t it rather feeble of them not to spot him and manhandle him off?”
“You’d have thought so, but he’s too smart for them. He disguises himself — sometimes bearded and sometimes not. Sometimes in the nylon stocking mask. At one time turned out like a city agent, at another like a Skid Row dropout. He’s said to have a very, very sophisticated camera.”
“Yes, but when he’s done it, why hasn’t somebody grabbed him and jumped on the camera? And what about her celebrated temperament? You’d think she’d set about him herself.”
“You would, but so far she hasn’t done any better than yelling pen-and-ink.”
“Well,” Troy said, “I don’t see what you could be expected to do about it.”
“Accept with pleasure and tell my A.C. that I’m off to the antipodes with my witch-wife? Because,” Alleyn said, putting his hand on her head, “you are going, aren’t you?”
“I do madly want to have a go at her: a great, big flamboyant rather vulgar splotch of a thing. Her arms,” Troy said reminiscently, “are indecent. White and flowing. You can see the brush strokes. She’s so shockingly sumptuous. Oh, yes, Rory love, I’m afraid I must go.”
“We could try suggesting that she waits till she’s having a bash at Covent Garden. No,” said Alleyn, watching her, “I can see that’s no go, you don’t want to wait. You must fly to your commodious studio and in between sittings you must paint pretty peeps of snowy mountains reflected in the lucid waters of the lake. You might knock up a one-man show while you’re about it.”
“You shut up,” said Troy, taking his arm.
“I think you’d better write a rather formal answer giving your terms, as he so delicately suggests. I suppose I decline under separate cover.”
“It might have been fun if we’d dived together into the fleshpots.”
“The occasions when your art and my job have coincided haven’t been all that plain sailing, have they, my love?”
“Not,” she agreed, “so’s you’d notice. Rory, do you mind? My going?”
“I always mind but I try not to let on. I must say I don’t go much for the company you’ll be keeping.”
“Don’t you? High operatic with tantrums between sittings? Will that be the form, do you suppose?”
“Something like that, I daresay.”
“I shan’t let her look at the thing until it’s finished and if she cuts up rough, her dear one needn’t buy it. One thing I will not do,” said Troy calmly. “I will not oblige with asinine alterations. If she’s that sort.”
“I should think she well might be. So might he.”
‘Taking the view that if he’s paying he’s entitled to a return for his cash? What is he? English? New Zealand? American? Australian?”
“I’ve no idea. But I don’t much fancy you being his guest, darling, and that’s a fact.”
“I can hardly offer to pay my own way. Perhaps,” Troy suggested, “I should lower my price in consideration of board-and-lodging.”
“All right, smarty-pants.”
“If it turns out to be a pot-smoking party or worse, I can always beat a retreat to my pretty peepery and lock the door on all comers.”
“What put pot into your fairly pretty little head?”
“I don’t know. Here!” said Troy. “You’re not by any chance suggesting the diva is into the drug scene?”
“There have been vague rumors. Probably false.”
“He’d hardly invite you to stay if she was.”
“Oh,” Alleyn said lightly, “their effrontery knows no bounds. I’ll write my polite regrets before I go down to the Factory.”
The telephone rang and he answered it with the noncommittal voice Troy knew meant the Yard.
“I’ll be down in a quarter of an hour, sir,” he said and hung up. “The A.C.,” he said. “Up to something. I always know when he goes all casual on me.”
“Up to what, do you suppose?”
“Lord knows. Undelicious by the sound of it. He said it was of no particular moment but would I drop in: an ominous opening. I’d better be off.” He made for the door, looked at her, returned, and rounded her face between his hands. “Fairly pretty little head,” he repeated and kissed it.
Fifteen minutes later his Assistant Commissioner received him in the manner to which he had become accustomed: rather as if he was some sort of specimen produced in a bad light to be peered at, doubtfully. The A.C. was as well furnished with mannerisms as he was with brains, and that would be underestimating them.
“Hullo, Rory,” he said. “Morning to you. Morning. Troy well? Good.” (Alleyn had not had time to answer.) “Sit down. Sit down. Yes.”
Alleyn sat down. “You wanted to see me, sir?” he suggested.
“It’s nothing much, really. Read the morning papers?”
“The Post.”
“Seen last Friday’s Mercury?”
“No.”
“I just wondered. That silly stuff with the press photographer and the Italian singing woman. What’s-her-name?”
After a moment’s pause Alleyn said woodenly: “Isabella Sommita.”
“That’s the one,” agreed the A.C, one of whose foibles it was to pretend not to remember names. “Silly of me. Chap’s been at it again.”
“Very persistent.”
“Australia. Sydney or somewhere. Opera House, isn’t it?”
“There is one: yes.”
“On the steps at some sort of function. Here you are.”
He pushed over the newspaper, folded to expose the photograph. It had indeed been taken a week ago on the steps of the magnificent Sydney Opera House on a summer’s evening. La Sommita, gloved in what seemed to be cloth of gold topped by a tiara, stood among V.I.P.s of the highest caliber. Clearly she was not yet poised for the shot. The cameraman had jumped the gun. Again, her mouth was wide open, but on this occasion she appeared to be screaming at the Governor-General of Australia. Or perhaps shrieking with derisive laughter. There is a belief held by people of the theatre that nobody over the age of twenty-five should allow themselves to be photographed from below. Here, the camera had evidently been half-a-flight beneath the diva, who therefore appeared to be richly endowed with chins and more than slightly en bon point. The Governor-General, by some momentary accident, seemed to regard her with incredulity and loathing.