Artists in Crime

CHAPTER VIII Sidelights on Garcia

The lady seems a bit upset,” said Fox mildly, when Troy had gone.

“I irritate the lady,” answered Alleyn.

“You do, sir? I always think you’ve got a very pleasant way with female witnesses. Sort of informal and at the same time very polite.”

“Thank you, Fox,” said Alleyn wryly.

“Learn anything useful, sir?”

“She says the drape was in the second position on Saturday afternoon.”

“Stretched out straight?”

“Yes.”

“Well,” said Fox, “if she’s telling the truth, it looks as though the knife was fixed up between the time this Mr. Malmsley walked out on Friday afternoon and the time Miss Troy looked in on Saturday. That’s if Malmsley was telling the truth when he said the drape was crumpled and flat on Friday afternoon. It all points one way, chief, doesn’t it?”

“It does, Brer Fox, it does.”

“The Yard’s getting straight on to chasing up this Mr. Garcia. I’ve rung all the stations round this district and asked them to make inquiries. I got a pretty fair description of him from the cook, and Bailey found a couple of photographs of the whole crowd in the studio. Here’s one of them.”

He thrust a massive hand inside his pocket and produced a half-plate group of Troy and her class. It had been taken in the garden.

“There’s the model, Fox. Look!”

Fox gravely put on his spectacles and contemplated the photograph.

“Yes, that’s the girl,” he said. “She looks merry, doesn’t she, sir?”

“Yes,” said Alleyn slowly. “Very merry.”

“That’ll be this Garcia, then,” Fox continued. He pointed a stubby finger at a figure on the outside of the group. Alleyn took out a lens and held it over the photograph. Up leaped a thin, unshaven face, with an untidy lock of dark hair falling across the forehead. The eyes were set rather close and the brows met above the thin nose. The lips were unexpectedly full. Garcia had scowled straight into the camera. Alleyn gave Fox the lens.

“Yes,” said Fox, after a look through it, “we’ll have enlargements done at once. Bailey’s got the other. He says it will enlarge very nicely.”

“He looks a pretty good specimen of a wild man,” said Alleyn.

“If Malmsley and Miss Troy are telling the truth,” said Fox, who had a way of making sure of his remarks, “he’s a murderer. Of course, the motive’s not much of an affair as far as we’ve got.”

“Well, I don’t know, Brer Fox. It looks as though the girl was badgering him to marry her. It’s possible the P.M. may offer the usual explanation for that sort of thing.”

“In the family way? ” Fox took off his spectacles and stared blandly at his chief. “Yes. That’s so. What did you make of that statement of Mr. Malmsley’s about Garcia being ill in the garden after he saw the defaced likeness? That seems a queer sort of thing to me. It wasn’t as if he’d done the photo.”

“The painting, Fox,” corrected Alleyn. “One doesn’t call inspired works of art photographs, you know. Yes, that was rather a rum touch, wasn’t it? You heard Miss Seacliff’s theory. Garcia is infatuated with her and was all upheaved by the sight of her defaced loveliness.”

“Far-fetched,” said Fox.

“I’m inclined to agree with you. But it might be an explanation of his murdering Sonia Gluck when he realised she had done it. He might have thought to himself: ‘This looks like a more than usually hellish fury from the woman scorned — what am I in for?’ and decided to get rid of her. There’s a second possibility which will seem even more farfetched to you, I expect. To me it seems conceivable that Garcia’s aesthetic nerves were lacerated by the outrage on a lovely piece of painting. Miss Troy says the portrait of Valmai Seacliff was the best thing she has ever done.” Alleyn’s voice deepened and was not quite steady. “That means it was a really great work. I think, Fox, that if I had seen that painted head and known it for a superlatively beautiful thing, and then seen it again with that beastly defacement — I believe I might have sicked my immortal soul up into the nearest flower-bed. I also believe that I would have felt remarkably like murder.”

“Is that so, sir?” said Fox stolidly. “But you wouldn’t have done murder, though, however much you felt like it.”

“I’d have felt damn’ like it,” muttered Alleyn. He walked restlessly about the room. “The secret of Garcia’s reaction,” he said, “lies behind this.” He wagged the photograph at Fox. “Behind that very odd-looking head. I wish we knew more about Garcia. We’ll have to go hunting for his history, Brer Fox. Records of violence and so on. I wonder if there are any. Suppose he turns up quite innocently to do his ‘Comedy and Tragedy’ in his London warehouse?”

“That’ll look as if either Malmsley or Miss Troy was a liar, sir, won’t it? I must say I wouldn’t put Mr. Malmsley down as a very dependable sort of gentleman. A bit cheeky in an arty sort of fashion.”

Alleyn smiled.

“Fox, what a neat description of him! Admirable! No, unless Malmsley is lying, the knife was hammered through and the drape stretched out after they had all gone on Friday. And if Miss Troy found it stretched out on Saturday afternoon, then the thing was done before then.”

“If,” said Fox. And after a moment’s silence Alleyn replied:

“ ‘If’ — of course.”

“You might say Miss Troy had the strongest motive, sir, as far as the portrait is concerned.”

There was a longer pause.

“Do you think it at all likely that she is a murderess?” said Alleyn from the fireplace. “A very deliberate murderess, Fox. The outrage to the portrait was committed a week before the murder.”

“I must say I don’t think so, sir. Very unlikely indeed, I’d say. This Garcia seems the likeliest proposition on the face of it. What did you make of Miss Phillida Lee’s statement, now? The conversation she overheard. Looks as though Garcia and the deceased were making an assignation for Friday night, doesn’t it? Suppose she came back to the studio on Friday night in order that they should resume intimacy?”

“Yes, I know.”

“He seems to have actually threatened her, if the young lady can be depended upon.”

“Miss Seacliff didn’t contradict the account, and you must remember that extraordinary little party, Phillida Lee, confided the fruits of her nosy-parkering to Miss Seacliff long before the tragedy. I think we may take it that Garcia and Sonia Gluck had a pretty good dust-up on the lines indicated by the gushing Lee. You took notes in the dining-room, of course. Turn up her report of the quarrel, will you?”

Fox produced a very smug-looking note-book, put on his spectacles, and turned up a page.

“ ‘Garcia—’ ” he read slowly from his shorthand notes.

“ ‘All right. On Friday night then.’ Sonia Gluck: ‘Yes, if it’s possible.’ Then later Gluck said: ‘I won’t stand for any funny business with her, you know.’ Garcia said: ‘Who?’ and Gluck answered: ‘The Seacliff bitch, of course.’ Sonia Gluck said Garcia ought to marry her. He did not reply. She threatened to go to Miss Troy with the whole story if he let her down. He said: ‘If you don’t shut up and leave me to get on with my work, I’ll bloody well stop your mouth for keeps.’ That’s the conversation, sir.”

“Yes. We’ll have to get hold of something about Friday night. Damn it all, the studio is built into the wall, and the window opens on the lane. Surely to Heaven someone must have passed by that evening and heard voices if Garcia had the girl in the place with him.”

“And how did he get his stuff away on Friday night or Saturday morning? They’ve tried all the carriers for miles around.”

“I know, Brer Fox, I know. Well, on we go. We’ve got to get all these people’s time-tables from Friday noon till Sunday evening. What about Bailey? I’d better see him first, I suppose.”

Bailey came in with his usual air of mulish displeasure and reported that they had finished in the studio. They had gone over everything for prints, had photographed the scratched window-sill, measured and photographed the car’s prints and footprints in the lane, and taken casts of them. They had found the key of the studio hanging on a nail outside the door. It was smothered in prints. Under the pillow was an empty whisky bottle. On the window-sill one set of prints occurred many times, and seemed to be superimposed on most of the others. He had found traces of clay with these prints, and with those on the bottle.

“Those will be Garcia’s” said Alleyn. “He worked in the window.”

In the junk-room Bailey had found a mass of jars, brushes, bottles of turpentine and oil, costumes, lengths of materials, a spear, an old cutlass, and several shallow dishes that smelt of nitric acid. There was also what Bailey described as “as sort of mangle affair with a whale of a heavy chunk of metal and a couple of rollers.”

“An etching press,” said Alleyn.

“There’s a couple of stains on the floor of the junk-room,” continued Bailey, “Look like nitric-acid stains. They’re new. I can’t find any nitric acid anywhere, though. I’ve looked in all the bottles and jars.”

“Um!” said Alleyn, and made a note of it.

“There’s one other thing,” said Bailey. He opened a bag he had brought in with him, and out of it he took a small box which he handed to Alleyn.

“Hullo,” said Alleyn. “This is the bon-bouche, is it?”

He opened the little box and held it under the lamp. Inside was a flattened greenish-grey pellet.

“Clay,” said Alleyn. “Where was it?”

“In the folds of that silk stuff that was rigged on the platform,” said Bailey, staring morosely at his boots.

“I see,” said Alleyn softly. “Look here, Fox.”

Fox joined him. They could both see quite clearly that the flattened surface of the pellet was delicately scrolled by minute holes and swirling lines.

“A nice print,” said Fox, “only half there, but very sharp what there is.”

“If the prints on the sill are Garcia’s,” said Bailey, “that’s Garcia’s, too.”

There was a silence.

“Well,” said Alleyn at last, “that’s what you call a fat little treasure-trove, Bailey.”

“I reckon it must have dropped off his overall when he was stretching that stuff above the point of the knife, sir. That’s what I reckon.”

“Yes. It’s possible.”

“He must have used gloves for the job. There are one or two smudges about the show that look like glove-marks, and I think one of them’s got a trace of the clay. We’ve photographed the whole outfit.”

“You’ve done rather well, Bailey.”

“Anything more, sir?”

“Yes, I’m afraid there is. I want you to find the deceased’s room and go over it. I don’t think we should let that wait any longer. One of the maids will show you where it is. Come and get me if anything startling crops up.”

“Very good, Mr. Alleyn.”

“And when that’s done, you can push off if you want to. You’ve left a man on guard, I suppose?”

“Yes, sir. One of these local chaps. Getting a great kick out of it.”

“Guileless fellow. Away you go, Bailey. I’ll see you later on.”

“O.K., sir.”

“Nitric acid?” ruminated Fox, when Bailey had gone.

“I think it’s the acid they used for etching. I must ask Miss Troy about it.”

“Looks as if all we’ve got to do is to find Garcia, don’t it, sir?”

“It do, Fox. But for the love of Mike don’t let’s be too sure of ourselves.”

“That bit of clay, you know, sir — how could it have got there by rights? He’d no business up on the model’s throne now, had he?”

“No.”

“And according to Malmsley’s story, the drape must have been fixed when the rest of them had gone up to London.”

“Yes. We’ll have to trace ’em in London just the same. Have to get on to these others now. Go and take a dip in the dining-room, Fox, and see what the fairies will send us in the way of a witness.”

Fox went off sedately and returned with Katti Bostock. She came in looking very four-square and sensible. Her short and stocky person was clad in corduroy trousers, a red shirt and a brown jacket. Her straight black hair hung round her ears in a Cromwellian cut with a determined bang across her wide forehead. She was made up in a rather slapdash sort of manner. Her face was principally remarkable for its exceedingly heavy eyebrows.

Alleyn pushed forward a chair and she slumped herself down on it. Fox went quietly to the desk and prepeared to make a shorthand report. Alleyn sat opposite Katti.

“I’m sorry to bother you again, Miss Bostock,” he said. “We’ve got a good deal of tidying up to do, as you may imagine. First of all, is nitric acid used in the studio for anything?”

“Etching,” said Katti. “Why?”

“We’ve found stains in the junk-room that looked like it. Where is it kept?”

“In a bottle on the top shelf. It’s marked with a red cross.”

“We couldn’t find it.”

“It was filled up on Friday, and put on the top shelf. Must be there.”

“I see. Right. Now I just want to check everybody’s movements from lunch-time on Friday. In your case it would be a simple matter. I believe you spent most of your time in London with Miss Troy?” He opened his note-book and put it on the arms of his chair.

“Yes,” he said. “I see you both went to your club, changed and dined with Sir Arthur and Lady Jaynes at Eaton Square. From there you went to the private view of the Phoenix Group Show, and supped at the Hungaria. That right?”

“Yes. Quite correct.”

“You stayed at the club. What time did you get back from the Hungaria on Friday night?”

“Saturday morning,” corrected Katti. “I left with the Jayneses about twelve-thirty. They drove me to the club. Troy stayed on with John Bellasca and was swept out with the dust whenever they closed.”

“You met again at breakfast?”

“Yes. We separated during the morning and met again at the show. I lunched with some people I ran into there— Graham Barnes and his wife — he’s the water-colour bloke. Then Troy and I met at the club and came home. She lunched with John Bellasca.”

“Yes. That’s all very straightforward. I’ll have to ask Sir Arthur Jaynes or someone to confirm it. The usual game, you know.”

“That’s all right,” said Katti. “You want to find out whether either of us had time to sneak back here and set a death-trap for that little fool Sonia, don’t you?”

“That’s the sort of idea,” agreed Alleyn with a smile. “I know Sir Arthur slightly. Would you like me to say you’ve lost a pearl necklace and want to trace it, or— ”

“Good Lord, no. Tell him the facts of the business. Do I look like pearls? And John will fix up Troy’s alibi for her. He’ll probably come down at ninety miles an hour to say he did it himself if you’re not careful.” Katti chuckled and lit a cigarette.

“I see.” said Alleyn. And into his thoughts came the picture of Troy as she had sat before the fire with her cropped head between her long hands. There had been no ring on those hands.

“When you got back to the club after you left the Hungaria, did anyone see you?”

“The night porter let me in. I don’t remember anyone else.”

“Was your room near Miss Troy’s?”

“Next door.”

“Did you hear her return?”

“No. She says she tapped on the door, but I must have been asleep. The maid came in at seven with my tea, but I’d have had time to go out, get Troy’s car and drive down here and back, between twelve-thirty and seven, you know.”

“True,” said Alleyn. “Did you?”

“No.”

“Well — we’ll have to do our best with night porters, garage attendants, and petrol consumption.”

“Wish you luck,” said Katti.

“Thank you, Miss Bostock. You got back here for lunch, I understand. How did you spend the afternoon?”

“Dishing up bilge for The Palette. I was in here.”

“Did you at any time go to the studio?”

“No.”

“Was Miss Troy with you on Saturday afternoon?”

“She was in and out. Let’s see. She spent a good time turning out that desk over there and burning old papers. Then she tidied her sketching-kit. We had tea in here. After tea we went out to look at a place across the fields where Troy thought of doing a sketch. We dined out with some people at Bossicote — the Haworths — and got home about eleven.”

“Thank you. Sunday?”

“I was at my article for The Pallette all day. Troy painted in the morning and came in here in the afternoon. The others were all back for dinner.”

“Did you hear the model say anything about her own movements during the week-end?”

“No. Don’t think so. I fancy she said she was going to London.”

“You engaged her for this term before Miss Troy returned, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“How did you get hold of her?”

“Through Graham Barnes. He gave me her address.”

“Have you got it?”

“Oh Lord, where was it? Somewhere in Battersea, I think. Battersea Bridge Gardens. That’s it. I’ve got it written down somewhere. I’ll try and find it for you.”

“I wish you would. It would save us one item in a loathsome itinerary of dull jobs. Now, about this business with the model and your picture. The trapeze-artiste subject, I mean. Did she pose for you again after the day when there was the trouble described by Miss Phillida Lee?”

Again that dull crimson stained the broad face. Katti’s thick eyebrows came together and her lips protruded in a sort of angry pout.

“That miserable little worm Lee! I told Troy she was a fool to take her, fees or no fees. The girl’s bogus. She went to the Slade and was no doubt made to feel entirely extraneous. She tries to talk ‘Slade’ when she remembers, but the original nice-girl gush oozes out all over the place. She sweats suburbia from every pore. She deliberately sneaked in and listened to what I had to say.”

“To the model?”

“Yes. Little drip!”

“It was true, then, that you did have a difference with Sonia?”

“If I did, that doesn’t mean I killed her.”

“Of course it doesn’t. But I should be glad of an answer, Miss Bostock.”

“She was playing up, and I ticked her off. She knew I wanted to finish the thing for the Group Show, and she deliberately set out to make work impossible. I scraped the head down four times, and now the canvas is unworkable— the tooth has gone completely. Troy is always too easy with the models. She spoils them. I gave the little brute hell because she needed it.”

“And did she pose again for you?”

“No. I’ve told you the thing was dead.”

“How did she misbehave? Just fidgeting?”

Katti leant forward, her square hands on her knees. Alleyn noticed that she was shaking a little, like an angry terrier.

“I’d got the head laid in broadly — I wanted to draw it together with a dry brush and then complete it. I wanted to keep it very simple and round, the drawing of the mouth was giving me trouble. I told her not to move — she had a damnable trick of biting her lip. Every time I looked at her she gave a sort of sneering smirk. As if she knew it wasn’t going well. I mixed a touch of cadmium red for the underlip. Just as I was going to lay it down she grimaced. I cursed her. She didn’t say anything. I pulled myself together to put the brush on the canvas and looked at her. She stuck her foul little tongue out.”

“And that tore it to shreds, I imagine?”

“It did. I said everything I’d been trying not to say for the past fortnight. I let go.”

“Not surprising. It must have been unspeakably maddening. Why, do you suppose, was she so set on making things impossible?”

“She deliberately baited me,” said Katti, under her breath.

“But why?”

“Why? Because I’d treated her as if she was a model. Because I expected to get some return for the excessive wages Troy was giving her. I engaged her, and I managed things till Troy came back. Sonia resented that. Always hinting that I wasn’t her boss and so on.”

“That was all?”

“Yes.”

“I see. You say her wages were excessively generous. What was she paid?”

“Four pounds a week and her keep. She’d spun Troy some tale about doctor’s bills, and Troy, as usual, believed the sad story and stumped up. She’s anybody’s mark for sponging. It’s so damned immoral to let people get away with that sort of thing. It’s no good talking to Troy. Street-beggars see her coming a mile away. She’s got two dead-heads here now.”

“Really? Which two?”

“Garcia, of course. She’s been shelling out money to Garcia for ages. And now there’s this Austrialian wildman Hatchett. She says she makes the others pay through the nose, but Lord knows if she ever gets the money. She’s hopeless,” said Katti, with an air of exasperated affection.

“Would you call this a good photograph of Mr. Garcia?” asked Alleyn suddenly. He held out the group. Katti took it and glowered at it.

“Yes, it’s very like him,” she said. “That thing was taken last year during the summer classes. Yes — that’s Garcia all right.”

“He was here as Miss Troy’s guest then, I suppose?”

“Oh Lord, yes. Garcia never pays for anything. He’s got no sort of decency where money is concerned. No conscience at all.”

“No aesthetic conscience?”

“Um!” said Katti. “I wouldn’t say that. No — his work’s the only thing he is honest about, and he’s passionately sincere there.”

“I wish you’d give me a clear idea of him, Miss Bostock. Will you?”

“Not much of a hand at that sort of thing,” growled Katti, “but I’ll have a shot. He’s a dark, dirty, weird-looking fellow. Very paintable head. Plenty of bone. You think he murdered the model, don’t you?”

“I don’t know who murdered the model.”

“Well, I think he did. It’s just the sort of thing he would do. He’s absolutely ruthless and as cold-blooded as a flat-fish. He asked Malmsley if he ever felt like murdering his mistress, didn’t he?”

“So Mr. Malmsley told us.”

“I’ll bet it’s true. If Sonia interfered with his work and put him off his stride, and he couldn’t get rid of her any other way, he’d get rid of her that way. She may have refused to give him any more money.”

“Did she give him money?”

“I think so. Ormerin says she was keeping him last year. He wouldn’t have the slightest qualms about taking it. Garcia just looks upon money as something you’ve got to have to keep you going. How you get it is of no importance. He could have got a well-paid job with a monumental firm. Troy got on to it for him. When he saw the tombstones with angels and open Bibles he said something indecent and walked out. He was practically starving that time,” said Katti, half to herself, and with a sort of reluctant admiration, “but he wouldn’t haul his flag down.”

“You think the model was really attached to him?”

Katti took another cigarette and Alleyn lit it for her.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I’m not up in the tender passion. I’ve got an idea that she’d switched over to Basil Pilgrim, but whether it was to try and make Garcia jealous or because she’d fallen for Pilgrim is another matter. She was obviously livid with Seacliff. But then Garcia had begun to hang round Seacliff.”

“Dear me,” said Alleyn, “what a labyrinth of untidy emotions.”

“You may say so,” agreed Katti. She hitched herself out of her chair. “Have you finished with me, Mr. Alleyn?”

“Yes, do you know, I think I have. We shall have a statement in longhand for you to look at and sign, if you will, later on.”

She glared at Fox. “Is that what he’s been up to?”

“Yes.”

“Pah!”

“It’s only to establish your movements. Of course, if you don’t want to sign it— ”

“Who said I didn’t? Let me wait till I see it.”

“That’s the idea, miss,” said Fox, looking benignly at her over the top of his spectacles.

“Will you show Miss Bostock out, please, Fox?”

“Thank you, I know my way about this house,” said Katti with a prickly laugh. She stumped off to the door. Fox closed it gently behind her.

“Rather a tricky sort of lady, that,” he said.

“She is a bit. Never mind. She gave us some sidelights on Garcia.”

“She did that all right.”

There was a rap on the door and one of the local men looked in.

“Excuse me, sir, but there’s a gentlemen out here says he wants to see you very particular.”

“What’s his name?”

“He just said you’d be very glad indeed to see him, sir. He never gave a name.”

“Is he a journalist?” asked Alleyn sharply. “If he is, I shall be very glad indeed to kick him out. We’re too busy for the Press just now.”

“Well, sir, he didn’t say he was a reporter. He said — er— er — er— ”

“What?”

“His words was, sir, that you’d scream the place down with loud cries of gladness when you clapped eyes on him.”

“That’s no way to ask to see the chief,” said Fox. “You ought to know that.”

“Go and ask him to give his name,” said Alleyn.

The policeman retired.

Fox eyed Alleyn excitedly.

“By gum, sir, you don’t think it may be this Garcia? By all accounts he’s eccentric enough to send in a message like that.”

“No,” said Alleyn, as the door opened. “I rather fancy I recognize the style. I rather fancy, Fox, that an old and persistent friend of ours has got in first on the news.”

“Unerring as ever, Mr. Alleyn,” said a voice from the hall, and Nigel Bathgate walked into the room.