Photo Finish

Chapter nine Departure

i

The scene might have been devised by a film director who had placed his camera on the landing and pointed it downward to take in the stairs and the hall beneath where he had placed his actors, all with upturned faces. For sound he had used only the out-of-shot Maria’s screams, fading them as she was taken by the two detective sergeants to an unoccupied bedroom. This would be followed by total silence and immobility and then, Alleyn thought, the camera would probably pan from face to upturned face: from Mr. Reece halfway up the stairs, pallid and looking, if anything, scandalized, breathing hard, and to Ben Ruby, immensely perturbed and two steps lower down, to Signor Lattienzo with his eyeglass stick in a white mask. Ned Hanley, on the lowest step, held on to the banister as if in an earthquake. Below him Miss Dancy at ground level, appropriately distraught and wringing every ounce of star quality out of it. Farther away, Sylvia Parry clung to Rupert Bartholomew. And finally, in isolation Marco stood with his arms folded and wearing a faint, unpleasant smile.

Removed from all these stood Mrs. Bacon in command of her staff, who were clustered behind her. Near the door onto the porch, Les and Bert kept themselves to themselves in close proximity to the pregnant nude, whose smirk would no doubt be held in shot for a second or two, providing an enigmatic note. Finally, perhaps, the camera would dwell upon the remaining stiletto and the empty bracket where its opposite number had hung.

Alleyn supposed this company had been made aware of what was going on by Hanley and perhaps Mrs. Bacon and that the guests had been at their buffet luncheon and the staff assembled for theirs in their own region and that Maria’s screams had brought them out like a fire alarm.

Mr. Reece, as ever, was authoritative. He advanced up the stairs and Inspector Hazelmere met him at the top. He, too, in his professional manner was impressive and Alleyn thought: He’s going to handle this.

“Are we to know,” Mr. Reece asked, at large, “what has happened?”

“I was coming to see you, sir,” said Inspector Hazelmere. “If you’ll excuse me for a moment”—he addressed the company at large—“I’ll ask everybody at the back, there, if you please, to return to whatever you were doing before you were disturbed. For your information, we have been obliged to take Miss Maria Bennini into custody”—he hesitated for a moment—“you may say protective custody,” he added. “The situation is well in hand and we’ll be glad to make that clear to you as soon as possible. Thank you. Mrs. — er—”

“Bacon,” Alleyn murmured.

“Mrs. Bacon — if you would be kind enough—”

Mrs. Bacon was kind enough and the set was, as it were, cleared of supernumeraries.

For what, Alleyn thought, might well be the last time, Mr. Reece issued a colorless invitation to the study and was at some pains to include Alleyn. He also said that he was sure there would be no objection to Madame’s singing maestro, for whom she had a great affection, Signor Lattienzo, and their old friend and associate, Mr. Ben Ruby, being present.

“They have both been with me throughout this dreadful ordeal,” Mr. Reece said drearily and added that he also wished his secretary to be present and take notes.

The Inspector controlled any surprise he may have felt at this request. His glance, which was of the sharp and bright variety, rested for a moment on Hanley before he said there was no objection. In fact, he said, it had been his intention to ask for a general discussion. Alleyn thought that if there had been a slight juggling for the position of authority, the Inspector had politely come out on top. They all proceeded solemnly to the study and the soft leather chairs in front of the unlit fireplace. It was here, Alleyn reflected, that this case had taken on one of its more eccentric characteristics.

Inspector Hazelmere did not sit down. He took up his stance upon that widely accepted throne of authority, the hearthrug. He said:

“With your permission, sir, I am going to request Chief Superintendent Alleyn to set out the events leading up to this crime. By a very strange but fortunate coincidence he was here and I was not. Mr. Alleyn.”

He stepped aside and made a very slight gesture, handing over the hearthrug, as it were, to Alleyn, who accordingly took his place on it. Mr. Reece seated himself at his desk, which was an ultramodern affair, streamlined and enormous. It accommodated two people, facing each other across it. Mr. Reece signaled to Hanley, who hurried into the second and less opulent seat and produced his notebook. Alleyn got the impression that Mr. Reece highly approved of these formalities. As usual he seemed to compose himself to hear the minutes of the last meeting. He took a leather container of keys from his pocket, looked as if he were surprised to see it, and swiveled around in his chair with it dangling from his fingers.

Alleyn said: “This is a very unusual way to follow up an arrest on such a serious charge, but I think that, taking all the circumstances, which are themselves extraordinary, into consideration, it is a sensible decision. Inspector Hazelmere and I hope that in hearing this account of the case and the difficulties it presents you will help us by correcting anything I may say if you know it to be in the smallest degree mistaken. Also we do beg you, if you can add any information that will clear up a point, disprove or confirm it, you will stop me and let us all hear what it is. That is really the whole purpose of the exercise. We ask for your help.”

He paused.

For a moment or two nobody spoke and then Mr. Reece cleared his throat and said he was sure they all “appreciated the situation.” Signor Lattienzo, still unlike his usual ebullient self, muttered “Naturalmente” and waved a submissive hand.

“O.K., O.K.,” Ben Ruby said impatiently. “Anything to wrap it up and get shut of it all. Far as I’m concerned, I’ve always thought Maria was a bit touched. Right from the start I’ve had this intuition and now you tell me that’s the story. She did it.”

Alleyn said: “If you mean she killed her mistress single-handed, we don’t think she did any such thing.”

Mr. Reece drew back his feet as if he was about to rise but thought better of it. He continued to swing his keys.

Signor Lattienzo let out a strong Italian expletive and Ben Ruby’s jaw dropped and remained in that position without his uttering a word. Hanley said “What!” on a shrill note and immediately apologized.

“In that case,” Mr. Reece asked flatly, “why have you arrested her?”

The others made sounds of resentful agreement.

“For impaling the dead body with the stiletto thrust through the photograph,” said Alleyn.

“This is diabolical,” said Signor Lattienzo. “It is disgusting.”

“What possible proof can you have of it?” Mr. Reece asked. “Do you know, now positively, that Marco is Strix and took the photograph?”

“Yes. He has admitted it.”

“In that case how did she obtain it?”

“She came into this room when he was putting it into an envelope addressed to the Watchman in typescript, on Madame Sommita’s instructions, by Mr. Hanley.”

“That’s right—” Hanley said. “The envelope was meant for her letter to the Watchman when she’d signed it. I’ve told you—” And then, on a calmer note, “I see what you mean. Marco would have thought it would be posted without— anybody—me—thinking anything of it. Yes, I see.”

“Instead of which we believe Maria caught sight of Marco pushing the photograph into the envelope. Her curiosity was aroused. She waited until Marco had gone, and took it out. She kept it, and made the mistake of throwing the envelope into the fire. It fell, half burnt, through the bars of the grate into the ashpan, from where we recovered it.”

“If this is provable and not merely conjecture,” said Mr. Reece, swinging his keys, “do you argue that at this stage she anticipated the crime?”

“If the murder was the last in a long series of retributative crimes, it would appear so. In the original case an incriminating letter was transfixed to the body.”

There followed a long silence. “So she was right,” said Mr. Reece heavily. “She was right to be afraid. I shall never forgive myself.”

Ben Ruby said Mr. Reece didn’t want to start thinking that way. “We none of us thought there was anything in it,” he pleaded. “She used to dream up such funny ideas. You couldn’t credit them.”

Signor Lattienzo threw up his hands. “Wolf. Wolf,” he said.

“I’ve yet to be convinced,” Mr. Reece said. “I cannot believe it of Maria. I know they used to fall out occasionally, but there was nothing in that. Maria was devoted. Proof!” he said still contemplating his keys. “You have advanced no proof.”

“I see I must now give some account of the puzzle of the keys.”

“The keys? Whose keys?” asked Mr. Reece, swinging his own.

Alleyn suppressed a crazy impulse to reply, “The Queen’s keys,” in the age-old challenge of the Tower of London. He merely gave as clean an account as possible of the enigma of the Sommita’s key and the impossibility of her having had time to remove it from a bag in the bottom drawer of the dressing table and lock the bedroom door in the seconds that elapsed between her kicking out Mr. Reece and Maria and their hearing it click in the lock.

Mr. Reece chewed this over and then said: “One can only suppose that at this stage her bag was not in the drawer but close at hand.”

“Even so: ask yourself. She orders you out, you shut the door and immediately afterwards hear it locked: a matter of perhaps two seconds.”

“It may have already been in her hand.”

“Do you remember her hands during the interview?”

“They were clenched. She was angry.”

“Well — it could be argued, I suppose. Just. But there is a sequel,” Alleyn said. And he told them of Maria’s final performance and arrest.

“I’m afraid,” he ended, “that all the pious protestations, all her passionate demands to perform the last duties, were an act. She realized that she had blundered, that we would, on her own statement, expect to find her mistress’s key in the room, and that she must at all costs get into the room and push it under the body, where we would find it in due course.”

“What did she say when you arrested her?” Lattienzo asked.

“Nothing. She hasn’t spoken except—”

“Well? Except?”

“She accused Rupert Bartholomew of murder.”

Hanley let out an exclamation. Lattienzo stared at him. “You spoke, Mr. Hanley?” he said.

“No, no. Nothing. Sorry.”

Ben Ruby said: “All the same, you know — well, I mean you can’t ignore — I mean to say, there was that scene, wasn’t there? I mean she had put him through it, no kidding. And the curtain speech and the way he acted. I mean-to-say, he’s the only one of us who you could say had motive and opportunity— I mean—”

“My good Ben,” Lattienzo said wearily, “we all know in general terms, what you mean. But when you say ‘opportunity,’ what precisely do you mean? Opportunity to murder? But Mr. Alleyn tells us he does not as yet accuse the perpetrator of the dagger-and-photograph operation of the murder. And Mr. Alleyn convinces me, for what it’s worth, that he knows what he’s talking about. I would like to ask Mr. Alleyn if he links Maria, who has been arrested for the photograph abomination, with the murder and if so what that link is. Or are we to suppose that Maria, on reentering the room, hot drink in hand, discovered the dead body and was inspired to go downstairs, unobserved by the milling crowd, remove the dagger from the wall, collect the photograph from wherever she’d put it, return to the bedroom, perform her atrocity, and then raise the alarm? Is that, as dear Ben would put it, the story?” ”

“Not quite,” said Alleyn.

“Ah!” said Lattienzo. “So I supposed.”

“I didn’t say we don’t suspect her of murder: on the contrary, I merely said she was arrested on the charge of mutilating the body, not on a charge of murder.”

“But that may follow?”

Alleyn was silent.

“Which is as much as to say,” Ben Ruby said, “that you reckon it’s a case of conspiracy and that Maria is half of the conspiracy and that one of us — I mean of the people in this house — was the principal. Yeah?”

“Yes.”

“Charming!” said Mr. Ruby.

“Are we to hear any more?” Mr. Reece asked. “After all apart from the modus operandi in Maria’s case, we have learned nothing new, have we? As, for instance, whether you have been able to clear any of us of suspicion. Particularly the young man — Bartholomew.”

“Monty, my dear,” said Lattienzo, who had turned quite pale, “how right you are. And here I would like to say, with the greatest emphasis, that I resist vehemently any suggestion, open or covert, that this unfortunate boy is capable of such a crime. Mr. Alleyn, I beg you to consider! What does such a theory ask us to accept? Consider his behavior.”

“Yes,” Alleyn said, “consider it. He makes what amounts to a public announcement of his break with her. He puts himself into the worst possible light as a potential murderer. He even writes a threatening message on a scrap of his score. He is at particular pains to avoid laying on an alibi. He faints, is taken upstairs, recovers, and hurries along to the bedroom, where he chloroforms and asphyxiates his victim and returns to his own quarters.”

Lattienzo stared at Alleyn for a second or two. The color returned to his face, he made his little crowing sound and seized Alleyn’s hands. “Ah!” he cried. “You agree! You see! You see! It is impossible! It is ridiculous!”

“If I may just pipe up,” Hanley said, appealing to Mr. Reece. “I mean, all this virtuous indignation on behalf of the Boy Beautiful! Very touching and all that.” He shot a glance at his employer and another at Lattienzo. “One might be forgiven for drawing one’s own conclusions.”

“That will do,” said Mr. Reece.

“Well, all right, then, sir. Enough said. But I mean — after all, one would like to be officially in the clear. I mean: take me. From the time you escorted Madame upstairs and she turned you and Maria out until Maria returned and found her— dead — I was in the dining room and hall calming down guests and talking to Les and telling you about the Lake and making a list for Les to check the guests by. I really could not,” said Hanley on a rising note of hysteria, “have popped upstairs and murdered Madame and come back, as bright as a button, to speed the parting guests and tramp about with umbrellas. And anyway,” he added, “I hadn’t got a key.”

“As far as that goes,” said Ben Ruby, “she could have let you in and I don’t mean anything nasty. Just to set the record straight.”

“Thank you very much,” said Hanley bitterly.

“To return to the keys,” Mr. Reece said slowly, still swinging his own as if to illustrate his point. “About the third key, her key.” He appealed to Hazelmere and Alleyn. “There must be some explanation. Some quite simple explanation. Surely.”

Alleyn looked at Hazelmere, who nodded very slightly.

“There is,” said Alleyn, “a very simple explanation. The third key was in the bag in the bottom drawer, where it had lain unmolested throughout the proceedings.”

Into the silence that followed there intruded a distant pulsation: the chopper returning, thought Alleyn.

Mr. Reece said: “But when Maria and I left — we — heard the key turn in the lock. What key? You’ve accounted for the other two. She locked us out with her own key.”

“We think not.”

“But Maria heard it, too. She has said so. I don’t understand this,” said Mr. Reece. “Unless — But no. No, I don’t understand. Why did Maria do as you say she did? Come back and try to hide the key under—? It’s horrible. Why did she do that?”

“Because, as I’ve suggested, she realized we would expect to find it.”

“Ah. Yes. I take the point but all the same—”

“Monty,” Signor Lattienzo cried out, “for pity’s sake do something with those accursed keys. You are lacerating my nerves.”

Mr. Reece looked at him blankly. “Oh?” he said. “Am I? I’m sorry.” He hesitated, examined the key by which he had suspended the others and, turning to his desk, fitted it into one of the drawers. “Is that better?” he asked and unlocked the drawer.

Ben Ruby said in a voice that was pitched above its normal register “I don’t get any of this. All I know is we better look after ourselves. And as far as our lot goes — you, Monty, and Beppo and me — we were all sitting at the dinner table from the time you left Bella alive and throwing a temperament, until Maria raised the alarm.” He turned on Alleyn. “That’s right, isn’t it? That’s correct? Come on — isn’t it?”

“Not quite,” said Alleyn. “When Mr. Reece and Maria left Madame Sommita she was not throwing a temperament. She was dead.”

ii

In the bad old days of capital punishment it used to be said that you could tell when a verdict of guilty was about to be returned. The jury always avoided looking at the accused. Alleyn was reminded now, obliquely, of this dictum. Nobody moved. Nobody spoke. Everyone looked at him and only at him.

Inspector Hazelmere cleared his throat.

The helicopter landed. So loud, it might have been on the roof or outside on the gravel. The engine shut off and the inflowing silence was intolerable.

Mr. Reece said: “More police, I assume.”

Hazelmere said: “That is correct, sir.”

Somebody crossed the hall, and seconds later Sergeant Franks walked past the windows.

“I think, Chief Superintendent Alleyn,” said Mr. Reece, “you must be out of your mind.”

Alleyn took out his notebook. Hazelmere placed himself in front of Mr. Reece. “Montague Reece,” he said, “I arrest you for the murder of Isabella Sommita and I have to warn you that anything you say will be taken down in writing and may be used in evidence.”

“Hanley,” Mr. Reece said, “get through to my solicitors in Sydney.”

Hanley said in a shaking voice: “Certainly, sir.” He took up the receiver, rumbled, and dropped it on the desk. He said to Alleyn: “I suppose — is it all right? I mean—”

Hazelmere said: “It’s in order.”

“Do it,” Mr. Reece said. And then, loudly to Hazelmere, “The accusation is grotesque. You will do yourself a great deal of harm.”

Alleyn wrote this down.

Mr. Reece looked round the room as if he were seeing it for the first time. He swiveled his chair and faced his desk. Hanley, drawn back in his chair with the receiver at his ear, watched him. Alleyn took a step forward.

“Here are the police,” Mr. Reece observed loudly.

Hazelmere, Lattienzo, and Ruby turned to look.

Beyond the windows Sergeant Franks tramped past, followed by a uniform sergeant and a constable.

“No!” Hanley screamed. “Stop him! No!”

There was nothing but noise in the room.

Alleyn had not prevented Mr. Reece from opening the unlocked drawer and snatching out the automatic, but he had knocked up his arm. The bullet had gone through the top of a windowpane, and two succeeding shots had lodged in the ceiling. Dust fell from the overhead lampshades.

Two helmets and three deeply concerned faces appeared at the foot of the window, slightly distorted by pressure against glass. The owners rose and could be heard thundering round the house.

Alleyn, with Mr. Reece’s arms secured behind his back, said, a trifle breathlessly: “That was a very silly thing to do, Signor Rossi.”

iii

“… almost the only silly thing he did,” Alleyn said. “He showed extraordinary coolness and judgment throughout. His one serious slip was to say he heard the key turn in the lock. Maria set that one up, and he felt he had to fall in with it. He was good at avoiding conflicts and that’s the only time he told a direct lie.”

“What I can’t understand,” Troy said, “is his inviting you of all people to his party.”

“Only, I think, after the Sommita, or perhaps Hanley, told him about her letter to the Yard. It was dated a week before his invitations to us. Rather than un-pick her letter, he decided to confirm it. And I’m sure he really did want the portrait. Afterwards it could have been, for him, the equivalent of a scalp. And as for my presence in the house, I fancy it lent what the mafiosi call ‘elegance’ to the killing.”

“My God,” said Signor Lattienzo, “I believe you are right.”

“There was one remark he made that brought me up with a round turn,” Alleyn said. “He was speaking of her death to Ben Ruby and he said, ‘And now she no longer casts a shadow.’ ”

“But that’s — isn’t it — a phrase used by—?”

“The mafiosi? Yes. So I had discovered when I read the book in the library. It was not in Mr. Reece’s usual style, was it?”

Signor Lattienzo waited for a little and then said, “I assure you, my dear Alleyn, that I have sworn to myself that I will not pester you, but I immediately break my resolution to say that I die to know how you discovered his true identity. His name. ‘Rossi.’ ”

“Have you ever noticed that when people adopt pseudonyms they are so often impelled to retain some kind of link with their old name. Often, it is the initials, often there is some kind of assonance — Reece — Rossi. M. V. Rossi — Montague V. Reece. He actually had the nerve to tell me his Bella had confided that she wished his surname didn’t remind her of the ‘enemy.’ The M. V. Rossi signature in the book bears quite a strong resemblance to the Reece signature, spiky letters and all. He seems to have decided very early in life to opt out of the ‘family’ business. It may even have been at his father’s suggestion. Papa Rossi leaves a hefty swag of ill-gotten gains, which Monty Reece manipulates brilliantly and with the utmost propriety and cleanest of noses. I think it must have amused him to plant the book up there with the diva’s bi- and auto-biographies. The book has been instructive. The victim in the case it deals with was a Rossi girl — his sister. A paper was stabbed to her heart. She had a brother, Michele-Victor Rossi, who disappeared.”

“Our Mr. Reece?”

“It’s a good guess.”

“And Maria?”

“The widow Bennini? Who wouldn’t tell me her maiden name. I wouldn’t be surprised if it turns out to have been Rossi. He is said to have picked her up at the Italian Embassy. He may even have planted her there. Obviously they were in heavy cahoots. I imagine them enjoying a good gloat over the Strix ongoings.”

Signor Lattienzo said: “Was Strix in Monty’s pay?”

“So far there’s no proof of it. It would fit in very tidily, wouldn’t it? But all this is grossly speculative stuff. At best, merely Gilbertian ‘corroborative detail.’ The case rests on the bedrock fact that once you accept that the crime was committed at the earlier time, which the medical opinion confirms, everything falls into place and there are no difficulties. Nobody else could have done it, not even young Bartholomew, who was being tended in his room by you and Dr. Carmichael. The rest of us were at dinner. The doctors will testify that the stab was administered an appreciable time after death.”

“And — he — Monty, took Bella up to her room and— he—?”

“With Maria’s help, chloroformed and stifled her. I’ve been told that the diva, after cutting up rough always, without fail, required Maria to massage her shoulders. Maria actually told me she offered this service and was refused, but perhaps it was Maria, ready and waiting, who seized the opportunity to grind away at Madame’s shoulders and then use the chloroform while Mr. Reece, who — all inarticulate sympathy — had been holding the victim’s hands, now tightened his grip and when she was insensitive went in for the kill. He then joined us in the dining room, as you will remember, and told us she was not very well. Maria meanwhile prepared the hot drink and collected the dagger and photograph.”

“So that extra touch was all her own?”

“If it was, I feel sure he approved it. It was in the mafioso manner. It had, they would consider, style and elegance.”

“That,” observed Signor Lattienzo, “as Monty himself would say, figures.”

Bert came into the hall. He said they were ready and opened the front doors. There, outside, was the evening. Bell-birds chimed through the bush like rain distilled into sound. The trees, blurred in midst, were wet and smelt of honeydew. The lake was immaculate and perfectly still.

Troy said: “This landscape belongs to birds: not to men, not to animals: huge birds that have gone now, stalked about in it. Except for birds it’s empty.”

Bert shut the doors of the Lodge behind them.

He and Alleyn and Troy and Signor Lattienzo walked across the graveled front and down to the jetty where Les waited in the launch.

The End