Artists in Crime

CHAPTER VI Sidelights on Sonia

And was that all?” inquired Alleyn, after a rather deadly little pause.

“Oh, yes,” said Cedric Malmsley, and lit a cigarette. “I just thought I’d better mention it.”

“Thank you. It was just as well. Did he say anything else that could possibly have a bearing on this affair?”

“I don’t think so. Oh, he did say Sonia wanted him to marry her. Then he began talking about Seacliff, you know.”

“Couple of snotty little bounders,” grunted Katti Bostock unexpectedly.

“Oh, I don’t think so,” said Malmsley, with an air of sweet reasonableness. “Seacliff likes being discussed, don’t you, my angel? She knows she’s simply lousy with It.”

“Don’t be offensive, please, Malmsley,” said Pilgrim dangerously.

“Good heavens! Why so sour? I thought you’d like to know we appreciated her.”

“That will do, Malmsley,” said Troy very quietly.

Alleyn said: “When did you leave the studio on Friday afternoon, Mr. Malmsley?”

“At five. I kept an eye on the time because I had to bathe and change and catch the six o’clock bus.”

“You left Mr. Garcia still working?”

“Yes. He said he wanted to pack up the clay miniature ready to send it up to London the next morning.”

“He didn’t begin to pack it while you were there?”

“Well, he got me to help him carry in a zinc-lined case from the junk-room. He said it would do quite well.”

“He would,” said Troy grimly. “I paid fifteen shillings for that case.”

“How would it be managed?” asked Alleyn. “Surely a clay model is a ticklish thing to transport?”

“He’d wrap masses of damp cloths round it,” explained Troy.

“How about lifting it? Wouldn’t it be very heavy?”

“Oh, he’d thought all that out,” said Malmsley, yawning horribly. “We put the case on a tall stool in the window with the open end sideways, beside the tall stool he worked on. The thing was on a platform with wheels. He just had to wheel it into the case and fill the case with packing.”

“How about getting it into the van?”

“Dear me. Isn’t this all rather tedious?”

“Extremely. A concise answer would enable us to move on to a more interesting narrative.”

Troy gave an odd little snort of laughter.

“Well, Mr. Malmsley?” said Alleyn.

“Garcia said the lorry would back into the window from the lane outside. The sill is only a bit higher than the stools. He said they’d be able to drag the case on to the sill and get it in the lorry.”

“Did he say anything about arranging for the lorry?”

“He asked me if there was a man in the village,” said Troy. “I told him Burridge would do it.”

The policeman at the door gave a deprecatory cough.

“Hullo!” said Alleyn, slewing round in his chair. “Thought of something?”

“The super asked Burridges’ if they done it, sir, and they says no.”

“Right. Thank you. Now, Mr. Malmsley, did you get any idea when Mr. Garcia proposed to put the case on board the lorry?”

“He said early next morning — Saturday.”

“I see. There was no other mention of Miss Gluck, the pose, or Mr. Garcia’s subsequent plans?”

“No.”

“He didn’t tell you where the clay model was to be delivered?”

“No. He just said he’d got the loan of a disused warehouse in London.”

“He told me he was going on a sketching-tramp for a week before he started work,” said Valmai Seacliff.

“To me also, he said this.” Francis Ormerin leant forward, glancing nervously at Alleyn. “He said he wished to paint landscape for a little before beginning this big work.”

“He painted?” asked Alleyn.

“Oh, yes,” said Troy. “Sculping was his long suit, but he painted and etched a bit as well.”

“Very interesting stuff,” said Katti Bostock.

“Drearily representational though, you must own,” murmured Malmsley.

“I don’t agree,” said Ormerin.

“Good God!” exclaimed Basil Pilgrim, “we’re not here to discuss aesthetics.”

“Does anyone here,” Alleyn cut in firmly, “know who lent this warehouse to Garcia, where it was, when he proposed to go there, or in what direction he has supposedly walked away?”

Silence.

“He is possibly the most uncommunicative young man in England,” said Troy suddenly.

“It would seem so, indeed,” agreed Alleyn.

“There’s this, though,” added Troy. “He told me the name of the man who commissioned the ‘Comedy and Tragedy.’ It’s Charleston, and I think he’s secretary to the board of the New Palace Theatre, Westminster. Is that any help?”

“It may be a lot of help.”

“Do you think Garcia murdered Sonia?” asked Malmsley vaguely. “I must say I don’t.”

“The next point is this,” said Alleyn, exactly as though Malmsley had not spoken. “I want to arrive at the order in which you all left the studio on Friday at midday. I believe Miss Troy and Miss Bostock came away together as soon as the model got down. Any objection to that?”

There were none apparently.

“Well, who came next?”

“I–I think I did,” said Phillida Lee, “and I think I ought to tell you about an extraordinary thing that I heard Garcia say to Sonia one day— ”

“Thank you so much, Miss Lee. I’ll come to that later, if I may. At the moment we’re talking about the order in which you left the studio on Friday at noon. You followed Miss Troy and Miss Bostock?”

“Yes,” said Miss Lee restlessly.

“Good. Are you sure of that, Miss Lee?”

“Yes. I mean I know I did because I was absolutely exhausted. It always takes it out of me most frightfully when I paint. It simply drains every ounce of my energy. I even forget to breathe.”

“That must be most uncomfortable,” said Alleyn gravely. “You came out to breathe, perhaps?”

“Yes. I mean I felt I must get away from it all. So I simply put down my brushes and walked out. Miss Troy and Bostock were just ahead of me.”

“You went straight to the house?”

“Yes, I think so. Yes, I did.”

“Yeah, that’s right,” said Watt Hatchett loudly. “You came straight up here because I was just after you, see? I saw you through the dining-room window. This window here, Mr. Alleyn. That’s right, Miss Lee. You went up to the sideboard and began eating something.”

“I–I don’t remember that,” said Miss Lee in a high voice. She darted an unfriendly glance at Hatchett.

“Well,” said Alleyn briskly, “that leaves Miss Seacliff, Messrs. Ormerin, Pilgrim, Malmsley and Garcia, and the model. Who came next?”

“We all did — except Garcia and Sonia,” said Valmai Seacliff. “Sonia hadn’t dressed. I remember I went into the junk-room and washed my brushes under the tap. Ormerin and Malmsley and Basil followed me there.”

She spoke with a slight hesitation, the merest shadow of a stutter, and with a markedly falling inflexion. She had a trick of uttering the last words of a phrase on an indrawn breath. Everything she looked and did, Alleyn felt, was the result of a carefully concealed deliberation. She managed now to convey the impression that men followed her inevitably, wherever she went.

“They were in the way,” she went on. “I told them to go. Then I finished washing my brushes and came up to the house.”

“Garcia was in the junk-room, too, I think,” said Ormerin.

“Oh, yes,” agreed Seacliff softly. “He came in, as soon as you’d gone. He would, you know. Sonia was glaring through the door — furious, of course.” Her voice died away and was caught up on that small gasp. She looked through her eyelashes at Alleyn. “I walked up to the house with the other three.”

“That is so,” agreed Ormerin.

“Leaving Mr. Garcia and the model in the studio?” asked Alleyn.

“I suppose so.”

“Yes,” said Pilgrim.

“You say the model was furious, Miss Seacliff,” said Alleyn. “Why was that?”

“Oh, because Garcia was making passes at me in the junk-room. Nothing much. He can’t help himself — Garcia.”

“I see,” said Alleyn politely. “Now, please. Did any of you revisit the studio before you went up to London?”

“I did,” said Ormerin.

“At what time?”

“Immediately after lunch. I wished to look again at my work. I was very troubled about my work. Everything was difficult. The model—” He stopped short.

“Yes?”

“Never for a second was she still. It was impossible. Impossible! I believe that she did it deliberately.”

“She’s dead now,” said Phillida Lee, on muted strings. “Poor little Sonia.”

“Spare us the nil nisi touch, for God’s sake,” begged Malmsley.

“Did you all notice the model’s restlessness?”

“You bet!” said Watt Hatchett. “She was saucy, that’s what she was. Seemed to have got hold of the idea she amounted to something. She gave me a pain in the neck, dinkum, always slinging off about Aussie.”

“ ‘Aussie,’ ” groaned Malmsley. “ ‘Ausie,’ ‘Tassie,’ ‘a goo-dee,’ ‘a badee.’ Pray spare me these bloody abbreviations.”

“Look, Mr. Malmsley, I’d sooner talk plain honest Australian than make a noise like I’d got a fish-bone stuck in me gullet. Aussie’ll do me. And one other thing, too. If you walked down Bondi beach with that half-chewed mouthful of hay sprouting out of your dial, they’d phone the Zoo something was missing.”

“Hatchett,” said Troy. “Pipe down.”

“Good oh, Miss Troy.”

“I gather,” said Alleyn mildly, “that you didn’t altogether like the model?”

“Who, me? Too right I didn’t. I’m sorry the poor kid’s coughed out. Gosh, I reckon it’s a fair cow, but just the same she gave me a pain in the neck. I asked her one day had she got fleas or something, the way she was twitching. And did she go crook!” Hatchett uttered a raucous yelp of laughter. Malmsley shuddered.

“Thank you, Mr. Hatchett,” said Alleyn firmly. “The next point I want to raise is this. Have there been any definite quarrels with the model? Any scenes, any rows between Miss Gluck and somebody else?”

He looked round the table. Everyone seemed disconcerted. There was a sudden feeling of tension. Alleyn waited. After a silence of perhaps a minute, Katti Bostock said slowly:

“I suppose you might say there were a good many scenes.”

“You had one with her yourself, Bostock,” said Malmsley.

“I did.”

“What was that about, Miss Bostock?”

“Same thing. Wriggling. I’m doing — I was doing a big thing. I wanted to finish it in time for the Group Show. It opened last Friday. She was to give me separate sittings — out of class, you know. She seemed to have the devil in her. Fidgeting, going out when I wanted her. Complaining. Drove me dotty. I didn’t get the thing finished, of course.”

“Was that the trapeze-artiste picture?” asked Alleyn.

Katti Bostock scowled.

“I dislike people looking at my things before they’re finished.”

“I’m sorry; it is beastly, I know,” said Alleyn. “But, you see, we’ve got to do our nosing round.”

“I suppose you have. Well”—she laughed shortly—“it’ll never be finished now.”

“It wouldn’t have been finished anyway, though, would it?” asked Phillida Lee. “I meant I heard you tell her you hated the sight of her, and she could go to the devil.”

“What d’you mean?” demanded Katti Bostock harshly. “You were not there when I was working.”

“I happened to come in on Thursday afternoon. I only got inside the door, and you were having such a frightful row I beetled off again.”

“You’d no business to hang about and eavesdrop,” said Miss Bostock. Her broad face was dull crimson; she leant forward, scowling.

“There’s no need to lose your temper with me,” squeaked Miss Lee. “I didn’t eavesdrop. I simply walked in. You couldn’t see me because of the screen inside the door, and anyway, you were in such a seething rage you wouldn’t have noticed the Angel Gabriel himself.”

“For Heaven’s sake let’s keep our sense of proportion,” said Troy. “The poor little wretch was infuriating, and we’ve all lost our tempers with her again and again.” She looked at Alleyn. “Really, you might say each of us has felt like murdering her at some time or another.”

“Yes, Miss Troy,” said Phillida Lee, still staring at Katti Bostock, “but we haven’t all said so, have we?”

“My God— ”

“Katti,” said Troy. “Please!”

“She’s practically suggesting that— ”

“No, no,” said Ormerin. “Let us, as Troy says, keep our sense of proportion. If exasperation could have stabbed this girl, any one of us might be a murderer. But whichever one of us did— ”

“I don’t see why it need be one of us,” objected Valmai Seacliff placidly.

“Nor I,” drawled Malmsley. “The cook may have taken a dislike to her and crawled down to the studio with murder in her heart.”

“Are we meant to laugh at that?” asked Hatchett.

“It is perfectly clearly to be seen,” Ormerin said loudly, “what is the view of the police. This gentleman, Mr. Alleyn, who is so quiet and so polite, who waits in silence for us to make fools of ourselves — he knows as each of us must know in his heart that the murderer of this girl was present in the studio on the morning we made the experiment with the dagger. That declares itself. There is no big motive that sticks out like a bundle in a haystack, so Mr. Alleyn sits and says nothing and hears much. And we — we talk.”

“Mr. Ormerin,” said Alleyn, “you draw up the blinds on my technique, and leave it blinking foolishly in the light of day. I see that I may be silent no longer.”

“Ah-ah-ah! It is as I have said.” Ormerin wagged his head sideways, shrugged up his shoulders and threw himself back in his chair. “But as for this murder — it is the crime passionnel, depend upon it. The girl was very highly sexed.”

“That doesn’t necessarily lead to homicide,” Alleyn pointed out, with a smile.

“She was jealous,” said Ormerin; “she was yellow with jealousy and chagrin. Every time Garcia looks at Seacliff she suffers as if she is ill. And when Pilgrim announces that he is affianced with Seacliff, again Sonia feels as if a knife is twisted inside her.”

“That’s absolute bosh,” said Basil Pilgrim violently. “You don’t know what you are talking about, Ormerin.”

“Do I not? She was avid for men, that little one.”

“Dear me,” murmured Malmsley, “this all sounds very Montmarte.”

“She certainly was a hot little dame,” said Hatchett.

“It was apparent,” added Ormerin. “And when a more compelling — a more troublante—woman arrived, she became quite frantic. Because Seacliff— ”

“Will you keep Valmai’s name out of this?” shouted Pilgrim.

“Basil, darling, how divinely county you are,” said Valmai Seacliff. “I know she was jealous of me. We all know she was. And she obviously was very attracted to you, my sweet.”

‘This conversation,“ said Troy, ”seems slightly demented. All this, if it was true, might mean that Sonia would feel like killing Valmai or Pilgrim or Garcia, but why should anybody kill her?”

“Closely reasoned,” murmured Alleyn. Troy threw a suspicious glance at him.

“It is true, is it not,” insisted Ormerin, “that you suspect one of us?”

“Or Garcia,” said Katti Bostock.

“Yes, there’s always the little tripe-hound,” agreed Seacliff.

“And the servants,” added Malmsley.

“Very well,” amended Ormerin, still talking to Alleyn. “You suspect one of this party, or Garcia, or — if you will — the servants.”

“An inside job,” said Hatchett, proud of the phrase.

“Oh, yes,” said Alleyn. “I do rather suspect one of you — or Mr. Garcia — or the servants. But it’s early days yet. I am capable of almost limitless suspicion. At Ae moment I am going to tighten up this round-table conference.” He looked at Hatchett. “How long have you been working without a tray on your easel?”

“Eh? What d’you mean?” Hatchett sounded startled.

“It’s not very difficult. How long is it since you had a ledge on your easel?”

“Haven’t I got one now?”

“No.”

“Oh yeah! That’s right. I took it off to hammer the dagger into the throne.”

“What!” screamed Phillida Lee. “Oh, I see.”

“On the day of the experiment?” asked Alleyn.

“That’s right.”

“And it’s been kicking about on the floor ever since?”

“I suppose so. Half a tick, though — has it? Naow — it hasn’t, either. I’ve had a ledge all right. I stuck my dipper on it. Look, I had a ledge on me easel Fridee after lunch.”

“After lunch,” said Alleyn.

“Yeah, I remember now. I ran down some time after lunch to have a look at the thing I’d been painting. I met you coming away, Ormerin, didn’t I?”

“Yes. I only looked at my work and felt sick and came away.”

“Yeah. Well, when I got there I thought I’d play round with the wet paint, see? Well, I’d just had a smack at it when I heard Ormerin singing out the old bus went past the corner on the main road in ten minutes. Well, I remember now; I jammed my brush into my dipper so’s it wouldn’t go hard, and then beat it. But the dipper was on the ledge all right.”

“And was the ledge there this morning?”

“You’re right. It wasn’t. And it wasn’t there Sundee night either.”

“Sunday night?” said Alleyn sharply.

“That’s right. After we got back, see? I ran down to the studio just after tea.”

“After tea? But I thought you didn’t come back until— ”

Alleyn looked at his notes. “Until six-thirty.”

“That’s correct, Mr. Alleyn. We finished tea at half-past eight, about.”

“The gentleman is talking of the evening meal, Inspector,” said Malmsley. “They dine at noon in the Antipodes, I understand.”

“Aw go and chase yourself,” invited Hatchett. “I went down to the studio at about eight-thirty, Inspector. ‘After dinnah’ if you’ve got enlarged tonsils. ‘After tea’ if you’re normal.”

“Did you get in?”

“Too right. She was locked, but the key’s left on a nail, and I opened her up and had a look-see at my picture. Gosh, it looked all right, too, Miss Troy, by artificial light. Have you seen it by lamplight, Miss Troy?”

“No,” said Troy. “Don’t wander.”

“Good oh, Miss Troy.”

“Well,” said Alleyn, “you went into the studio, and put the lights up, and looked at your work. Did you look at the throne?”

“Er — yes. Yes, I did. I was wondering if I’d paint a bit of the drape, and I had a look, and it was all straightened out. Like it always is before she gets down into the pose. Stretched tight from the cushion to the floor. If I had a pencil I could show you— ”

‘Thank you, I think I follow.”

“Good oh, then. Well, I wondered if I’d try and fix it like as if the model was laying on it. I’d an idea that I might get it right if I lay down myself in the pose. Cripes!” exclaimed Hatchett, turning paper-white. “If I’d a-done that would I have got a knife in me slats? Cripey, Mr. Alleyn, do you reckon that dagger was sticking up under the drape on Sundee evening?”

“Possibly.”

“What a cow!” whispered Hatchett.

“However, you didn’t arrange yourself on the drape. Why not?”

“Well, because Miss Troy won’t let anybody touch the throne without she says they can, and I thought she’d go crook if I did.”

“Correct?” asked Alleyn, with a smile at Troy.

“Certainly. It’s the rule of the studio. Otherwise the drapes would get bundled about, and the chalked positions rubbed off.”

“Yeah, but listen, Miss Troy. Mr. Alleyn, listen. I’ve just remembered something.”

“Come on, then,” said Alleyn.

“Gee, I reckon this is important,” continued Hatchett excitedly. “Look, when I went down to the studio just before we all went to catch the bus on Fridee, the drape was all squashed down, just as it had been when the model got up.”

“You’re sure of that?”

“I’m certain. I’ll swear to it.”

“Did you notice the drape on your brief visit to the studio after lunch, Mr. Ormerin?”

“Yes,” said Ormerin excitedly. “Now you ask I remember well. I looked at my work, and then automatically I looked at the throne as though the model was still there. And I got the small tiny shock one receives at the sight of that which one does not expect. Then I looked at my treatment of the drape and back to the drape itself. It was as Hatchett describes— crumpled and creased by the weight of her body, just as when she arose at midday.”

“Here!” exclaimed Hatchett. “See what that means? It means— ”

“It is pregnant with signification, I’m sure, Mr. Hatchett,” said Alleyn. Hatchett was silent. Alleyn looked at his notes and continued: “I understand that Miss Troy and Miss Bostock left by car. So did Miss Seacliff and Mr. Pilgrim. Then came the bus party at three o’clock. Miss Lee, Mr. Ormerin, Mr. Hatchett, and the model. It seems,” said Alleyn very deliberately, “that at a few minutes before three when Mr. Hatchett left to catch the bus, the drape was still flat and crushed on the floor.” He paused, contemplating Cedric Malmsley. “What did you do after the others had gone?”

Malmsley lit a cigarette and took his time over it.

“Oh,” he said at last, “I wandered down to the studio.”

“When?”

“Immediately after lunch.”

“Did you look at the drape on the throne?”

“I believe I did.”

“How was it then?”

“Quite well, I imagine. Just like a drape on a throne.”

“Mr. Malmsley,” said Alleyn, “I advise you not to be too amusing. I am investigating a murder. Was the drape still flat?”

“Yes.”

“How long did you stay in the studio?”

“I’ve told you. Until five.”

“Alone with Mr. Garcia?”

“I’ve told you. Alone with Garcia.”

“Did either of you leave the studio during the afternoon?”

“Yes.”

“Who?”

“Garcia.”

“Do you know why?”

“I imagine it was to pay a visit to the usual offices.”

“How long was he away?”

“Dear me, I don’t know. Perhaps eight or ten minutes.”

“When he worked, did he face the window?”

“I believe so.”

“With his back to the room?”

“Naturally.”

“Did you look at the drape before you left?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Did you touch the drape, Mr. Malmsley?”

“No.”

“Who scrawled that appalling defacement on Miss Troy’s painting of a girl in green?”

There was an uneasy silence, broken at last by Troy.

“You mean my portrait of Miss Seacliff. Sonia did that.”

“The model?” exclaimed Alleyn.

“I believe so. I said we have all felt like murdering her. That was my motive, Mr. Alleyn.”