Artists in Crime

CHAPTER XXI Epilogue in a Garden

Troy sat on a rug in the central grass plot of Lady Alleyn’s rose garden. Alleyn stood and looked down at her. “You see,” he said, “it was a very clumsy, messy, and ill-planned murder. It seemed the most awful muddle, but it boils down to a fairly simple narrative. We hadn’t much doubt after Monday night that Garcia had set the trap for Sonia. He left his prints on the opium jar and, as Malmsley had prepared the first pipe, Garcia evidently gave himself another. He must have been in a state of partial recovery with a sort of exalted carry-over, when he got the idea of jamming the knife through the floor of the throne. Motive — Sonia had been badgering him to marry her. She was going to have his child and wouldn’t let him alone. He had exhausted her charms and her possibilities as a blackmailing off-sider, and he was nauseated by her persistence. She came between him and his work. She probably threatened to sue him for maintenance, to make a full-sized scandal, to raise hell with a big stick in a bucket. The opium suggested a beautifully simple and macabre way out of it all. I saw Sonia’s friend in the chorus — Miss O’Dawne— again this morning from the arrest. I got a rather fuller account of the blackmailing game. Sonia and Garcia were both in it. Sonia had tackled Pilgrim and threatened to tell the Methodist peer that Basil was the father of her child. He wasn’t, but that made no odds. Basil stumped up and Sonia handed the cash to Garcia. We found a note from Garcia to Valmai Seacliff in which he coolly said he’d bought painting-materials at her shop and put them down to her. The wordings of the letter suggested that he had some sort of upper hand over her, and when I first saw Bobbie O’Dawne she obviously had information up her sleeve and admitted as much. She told Bathgate that Sonia had said Garcia would kill both of them if they babbled. When Sonia died Bobbie O’Dawne was certain Garcia had done it, and that she’d be the next victim if she didn’t keep quiet. Now he’s dead, and we’ve got Valmai Seacliff, Miss O’Dawne is all for a bit of front-page publicity, and told me this morning that Sonia had kept her au fait with the whole story. Garcia blackmailed Valmai Seacliff. He said he’d tell Basil Pilgrim that she’d been his — Garcia’s — mistress. He said he’d go to the Methodist peer with a story of studio parties that would throw the old boy into a righteous fury, and completely cook Seacliff’s goose. Garcia worked the whole thing out with Sonia. She was to tackle Pilgrim while he went for Valmai Seacliff. Garcia had started to work with Seacliff, who at first wouldn’t rise. But he’d done some drawings of Seacliff in the nude which he said he’d send to old Pilgrim with a suitable letter, and he told her that Sonia was also prepared to do her bit of blackmail as well. At last, Valmai Seacliff — terrified of losing Pilgrim — said she’d meet Garcia on Friday night in the studio, when they were all safely away, and discuss payment. All this Garcia told Sonia, and Sonia told Bobbie O’Dawne, swearing her to secrecy. O’Dawne was too frightened of Garcia to tell me the Seacliff side, and I also think she honestly felt she couldn’t break her word. She’s got a sort of code, that funny hard little baggage, and she’s stuck to it. But, of course, without her evidence we’d got no motive as far as Seacliff was concerned.”

“When did you suspect Valmai?”

“I wasn’t very certain until I saw that the person who murdered Garcia had held his head back by the hair, and that he had struggled so hard that — well, that he had struggled. I then remembered the cut on Seacliff’s hand, and how she had showed it to me only when she saw me looking at it, and how she had said it had been made by her horse’s reins, when it had obviously been made by something much finer. I remembered how, when I suggested it was not the reins, but the horse’s mane, she had agreed. But to go back a bit. From the moment we learned that it was Seacliff who posed the model I felt that we must watch her pretty closely.”

“I don’t understand that. You say Garcia set the trap with the knife.”

“Yes, but I believe Seacliff watched him through a hole in the studio window-blind.”

“Seacliff!”

“Yes. She had put three aspirins in Pilgrim’s coffee to ensure his sleeping soundly. When she realised he had noticed the coffee tasted odd — he made a face at her — she quickly raised an outcry about her own. She pretended to have a headache in order to get them all to bed early. She slipped out to the garage, wearing slacks and a sweater, put on Pilgrim’s old coat and gloves, and drove back to the studio, getting there about midnight, with the intention of arguing about blackmail with Garcia. This was the meeting Miss Phillida Lee overheard Sonia discussing with Garcia. Sonia told Miss Bobbie O’Dawne all about it, and Miss O’Dawne told me, this morning. But you should remember that until this morning Miss O’Dawne had only elaborated what we already knew — the Pilgrim-Sonia side. However, I give you the whole thing as completely as I can. Valmai Seacliff arrived at the studio in a desperate attempt to placate Garcia. She must have left the car somewhere in the lane and walked down, meaning to come in at the side gate. Your maid Ethel and her boy, returning from the flicks, saw the figure of a shortish man standing outside the studio window, apparently looking through the hole in the blind. He wore a mackintosh with the collar turned up. The ray of light caught his beret, which was pulled down on one side, hiding his face. Both Garcia and Pilgrim were too tall for the light to get them anywhere above the chest. So was Malmsley. Seacliff seemed to be the only one about the right height. When we saw Pilgrim’s old coat in his car we noticed whitish marks on the collar that suggested face- or neck-powder, and they smelt of Seacliff. It was so dirty it didn’t seem likely she would let him embrace her while he was wearing it. When we looked inside the left-hand glove we noticed a bloodstain that corresponded with the cut on her hand. That, of course, came into the picture after the Garcia affair. I believe that she actually watched Garcia set his trap for Sonia and decided to say nothing about it. I believe she went in, probably got him to drink a good deal more whisky, and offered to drive him up to London. You told me he did a little etching.”

“Yes. He’d prepared a plate a few days before he went.”

“Then perhaps he said he’d take the acid to bite it. Is that the right word? Anyway, she got out your caravan and backed it up to the window. There’s a slope down from the garage — enough to free-wheel into the lane and start on compression. The servants wouldn’t think anything odd if they heard a car in the lane. Malmsley had helped Garcia get everything ready. All she had to do was open the window, wheel the clay model over the sill into the caravan, get Garcia aboard and start off. The packing-case had already been addressed by Garcia. So she knew the address, even if he was incapable of directing her. I think myself that he had told her exactly where the warehouse was when he asked her to go there to see him, and she has admitted that he gave her a sketch-map. Probably his idea was that she should pay blackmail to him while he was there. She made another rather interesting slip over that. Do you remember how she said she was reminded of the warehouse address by a remark someone made at breakfast about Holloway? She told me — and, I think, you — that as soon as she heard the word Holloway she remembered that Garcia had said his warehouse was near the prison, and she had told him to be careful he didn’t get locked up. Holloway is a woman’s prison. Her very feeble joke would have been a little less feeble if he was blackmailing her, and the place of assignation was not Holloway, but Brixton. By giving us Holloway as the district, she was sending us off in exactly the opposite direction to the right one. We might have hunted round Holloway for weeks. I wondered if she had been the victim of a sort of word-association and I decided to go for Brixton. Luckily enough, as it turned out. As a matter of fact, she has twice fallen into the trap of substituting for the truth something that is linked with it in her mind. The first time was over the cut on her hand. It had been made when she was standing above Garcia with her hand wound in his hair. She saw me looking at the scar, decided to speak of it before I did, was, perhaps, reminded subsconciously of horses’ hair, a mane gripped in the hand, rejected the idea of hair altogether and substituted reins. Have you had enough of this, Troy?”

“No. I want to know about it.”

“There’s not much more. She drove Garcia to his warehouse. He’d got the keys. She murdered him there, because she was hell-bent on marrying Pilgrim, and becoming a very rich peeress, and because it was in Garcia’s power to stop her. She’s an egomaniac. She drove the caravan back to your garage and drove herself back to the Pascoes’ house in Pilgrim’s car. The distance to the warehouse is thirty miles. At that time of night she’d do it easily in an hour and a half. She must have been back at the studio by three and probably got to the Pascoes’ by half-past. Even supposing she lost her way — and I don’t think she would, because there’s a good map in the caravan — she’d a margin of two hours before there was a chance of the servants being about.”

“Why didn’t you think it was Pilgrim?”

“I wondered if it was Pilgrim, of course. After we had checked all the alibis, it seemed to me that Pilgrim and Valmai Seacliff were by far the most likely. I even wondered if Pilgrim had drugged Seacliff with aspirin instead of Seacliff drugging Pilgrim — until she lied about her cut hand, her horsemanship and the address of the warehouse. On top of that there was the glove and the smell of the raincoat. She said she had taken the aspirins Pilgrim gave her. We found that she hadn’t. We found that she had aspirins of her own in the evening bag she had taken to Boxover. Why should she pretend she had none? And why, after all, should Pilgrim kill Garcia? He had paid Sonia off, but as far as we know, Garcia had kept out of the picture where Pilgrim was concerned. Garcia was tackling Valmai Seacliff, not Pilgrim. No, the weight of evidence was against her. She lied where an innocent woman would not have lied. And — I’m finishing up where I began — I think that an innocent person would not have pressed Sonia down upon the point of that knife after she had cried out. She would not have disregarded that first convulsive start. She murdered Sonia, knowing the knife was there, as deliberately as she murdered Garcia.”

“Will they find her guilty?”

“I don’t know, Troy. Her behaviour when we arrested her was pretty damning. She turned on Pilgrim like a wild cat because he kept saying he’d swear she’d never worn the coat. If he’d said she had often worn it, half our case would have gone up in smoke.”

Alleyn was silent for a moment, and then knelt down on the rug beside Troy.

“Has this all made a great difference to you?” he said. “Is it going to take you a long time to put it behind you?”

“I don’t know. It’s been a bit of a shock for all of us.”

“For Pilgrim — yes. The others will be dining out on it in no time. Not you.”

“I think I’m sort of stunned. It’s not that I liked any of them much. It’s just the feeling of all the vindictiveness in the house. It’s so disquieting to remember what Seacliff’s thoughts must have been during the last week. I almost feel I ought to have a priest in with bell and book to purify the house. And now — the thought of the trial is unspeakably shocking. I don’t know where I am — I— ”

She turned helplessly towards Alleyn and in a moment she was in his arms.

“No, no,” said Troy. “I mustn’t. You mustn’t think— ”

“I know.” Alleyn held her strongly. He could feel her heart beating secretly against his own. Everything about him, the trees, the ground beneath him, and the clouds in the still autumn sky, rose like bright images in his mind and vanished on a wave of exultation. He was alone in the world with her. And with that moment of supremacy before him came the full assurance that he must not take it. He knew quite certainly that he must let his moment go by. He heard Troy’s voice and bent his head down.

“—you mustn’t think because I turn to you— ”

“It’s all right,” said Alleyn. “I love you, and I know. Don’t worry.”

They were both silent for a little while.

“Shall I tell you,” said Alleyn at last, “what I think? I think that if we had met again in a different way you might have loved me. But because of all that has happened your thoughts of me are spoiled. There’s an association of cold and rather horrible officiousness. Well, perhaps it’s not quite as bad as all that, but my job has come between us. You know, at first I thought you disliked me very much. You were so prickly. Then I began to hope a little. Don’t cry, dear Troy. It’s a great moment for me, this. Don’t think I misunderstand. You so nearly love me, don’t you?” For the first time his voice shook.

“So nearly.”

“Then,” said Alleyn, “I shall still allow myself to hope a little.”

The End