Photo Finish

Chapter two The Lodge

i

Early on a fine morning in the antipodean spring the Alleyns were met at their New Zealand airport by a predictably rich car and were driven along roads that might have been ruled across the plains to vanishing points on the horizon. The Pacific was out of sight somewhere to their left and before them rose foothills. These were the outer ramparts of the Southern Alps.

“We’re in luck,” Alleyn said. “On a gray day when there are no hills to be seen, the plains can be deadly. Would you want to paint?”

“I don’t think so,” Troy said after considering it. “It’s all a bit inhuman, isn’t it? One would have to find an idiom. I get the feeling that the people only move across the surface. They haven’t evolved with it. They’re not included,” said Troy, “in the anatomy. What cheek,” she exclaimed, “to generalize when I’ve scarcely arrived in the country!”

The driver, who was called Bert, was friendly and anxious for his passengers to be impressed. He pointed out mountains that had been sheep-farmed by the first landholders.

“Where we’re going,” Troy asked, “to Waihoe Lodge, is that sheep country?”

“No way. We’re going into Westland, Mrs. Alleyn. The West Coast. It’s all timber and mining over there. Waihoe’s quite a lake. And the Lodge! You know what they reckon it’s cost him? Half a million. And more. That’s what they reckon. Nothing like it anywhere else in N’yerzillun. You’ll be surprised.”

“We’ve heard about it,” Alleyn said.

“Yeah? You’ll still be surprised.” He slewed his head toward Troy. “You’ll be the painting lady,” he said. “Mr. Reece reckoned you might get the fancy to take a picture up at the head of the pass. Where we have lunch.”

“I don’t think that’s likely,” Troy said.

“You’re going to paint the famous lady: is that right?”

His manner was sardonic. Troy said yes, she was.

“Rather you than me,” said the driver.

“Do you paint, then?”

“Me? Not likely. I wouldn’t have the patience.”

“It takes a bit more than patience,” Alleyn said mildly.

“Yeah? That might be right, too,” the driver conceded. There was a longish pause. “Would she have to keep still, then?” he asked.

“More or less.”

“I reckon it’ll be more ‘less’ than ’more,‘” said the driver. “They tell me she’s quite a celebrity,” he added.

“Worldwide,” said Alleyn.

“What they reckon. Yeah,” said the driver with a reflective chuckle, “they can keep it for mine. Temperamental! You can call it that if you like.” He whistled. “If it’s not one thing it’s another. Take the dog. She had one of these fancy hound things, white with droopy hair. The boss give it to her. Well, it goes crook and they get a vet and he reckons it’s hopeless and it ought to be put out of its misery. So she goes crook. Screechin’ and moanin’, something remarkable. In the finish the boss says get it over with, so me and the vet take it into the hangar and he chloroforms it and then gives it an injection and we bury it out of sight. Cripes!” said the driver. “When they told her, you’d of thought they’d committed a murder.” He sucked his teeth reminiscently.

“Maria,” he said presently, “that’s her personal help or maid or whatever it’s called — she was saying there’s been some sort of a schemozzle over in Aussie with the papers. But you’ll know about that, Mr. Alleyn. Maria reckons you’ve taken on this situation. Is that right?”

“I’m afraid not,” said Alleyn. Troy gave him a good nudge.

“What she reckons. You being a detective. ’Course Maria’s a foreigner. Italian,” said the driver. “You can’t depend on it with that mob. They get excited.”

“You’re quartered there, are you? At the Lodge?”

“This is right. For the duration. When they pack it in there’ll only be a caretaker and his family on the Island. Monty Reece has built a garage and boathouse on the lakeshore and his launch takes you over to the Lodge. He’s got his own chopper, mind. No trouble. Ring through when required.”

The conversation died. Troy wondered if the driver called his employer “Monty Reece” to his face and decided that quite possibly he did.

The road across the plains mounted imperceptibly for forty miles, and a look backward established their height. Presently they stared down into a wide riverbed laced with milky turquoise streaks.

At noon they reached the top, where they lunched from a hamper with wine in a chiller kit. Their escort had strong tea from a thermos flask. “Seeing I’m the driver,” he said, “and seeing there’s the Zig-Zag yet to come.” He was moved to entertain them with stories about fatal accidents in the Gorge.

The air up there was wonderfully fresh and smelled aromatically of manuka scrub patching warm, tussocky earth. They were closer now to perpetual snow.

“We better be moving,” said the driver. “You’ll notice a big difference when we go over the head of the Pass. Kind of sudden.”

There was a weathered notice at the top. “Cornishman’s Pass. 1000 metres.”

The road ran flat for a short distance and then dived into a new world. As the driver had said, it was sudden. So sudden, so new, and so dramatic that for long afterward Troy would feel there had been a consonance between this moment and the events that were to follow, as if, on crossing over the Pass, they entered a region that was prepared and waiting.

It was a world of very dark rain forest that followed, like velvet, the convolutions of the body it enfolded. Here and there waterfalls glinted. Presiding over the forests, snow-tops caught the sun but down below the sun never reached and there, threadlike in its gorge, a river thundered. “You can just hear ’er,” said the driver, who had stopped the car.

But all they heard at first was bird song — cool statements, incomparably wild. After a moment Troy said she thought she could hear the river. The driver suggested they go to the edge and look down. Troy suffered horridly from height vertigo but went, clinging to Alleyn’s arm. She looked down once as if from a gallery in a theatre on an audience of treetops, and saw the river.

The driver, ever informative, said that you could make out the roof of a car that six years ago went over from where they stood. Alleyn said, “So you can,” put his arm round his wife, and returned to the car.

They embarked upon the Zig-Zag.

The turns in this monstrous descent were so acute that vehicles traveling in the same direction would seem to approach each other and indeed did pass on different levels. They had caught up with such a one and crawled behind it. They met a car coming up from the Gorge. Their own driver pulled up on the lip of the road and the other sidled past on the inner running with half an inch to spare. The drivers wagged their heads at each other.

Alleyn’s arm was across Troy’s shoulders. He pulled her ear. “First prize for intrepidity, Mrs. A.,” he said. “You’re being splendid.”

“What did you expect me to do? Howl like a banshee?”

Presently the route flattened out and the driver changed into top gear. They reached the floor of the Gorge and drove beside the river, roaring in its courses, so that they could scarcely hear each other speak. It was cold down there.

“Now you’re in Westland,” shouted the driver.

Evening was well advanced when, after a two hours’ passage through the wet loam-scented forest that New Zealanders call bush, they came out into more open country and stopped at a tiny railway station called Kai-kai. Here they collected the private mailbag for the Lodge and then drove parallel with the railway for twenty miles, rounded the nose of a hill, and there lay a great floor of water: Lake Waihoe.

“There you are,” said the driver; “that’s the Lake for you. And the Island.”

“Stay me with flagons!” said Alleyn and rubbed his head.

The prospect was astonishing. At this hour the Lake was perfectly unruffled and held the blazing image of an outrageous sunset. Fingers of land reached out bearing elegant trees that reversed themselves in the water. Framed by these and far beyond them was the Island and on the Island Mr. Reece’s Lodge.

It was a house designed by a celebrated architect in the modern idiom but so ordered that one might have said it grew organically out of its primordial setting. Giants that carried their swathy foliage in clusters stood magnificently about a grassy frontage. There was a jetty in the foreground with a launch alongside. Grossly incongruous against the uproarious sunset, like some intrusive bug, a helicopter hovered. As they looked, it disappeared behind the house.

“I don’t believe in all this,” said Troy. “It’s out of somebody’s dream. It can’t be true.”

“You reckon?” asked the driver.

“I reckon,” said Troy.

They turned into a lane that ran between tree ferns and underbrush down to the lake edge, where there was a garage, a landing stage, a boat house, and a bell in a miniature belfry. They left the car and walked out into evening smells of wet earth, fern, and moss and the cold waters of the Lake.

The driver rang the bell, sending a single echoing note across the Lake. He then remarked that they’d been seen from the Island. Sure enough, the launch put out. So still was the evening they could hear the putt-putt of the engine. “Sound travels a long way over the water,” said the driver.

The sunset came to its preposterous climax. Everything that could be seen, near and far, was sharpened and gilded. Their faces reddened. The far-off windows of the Lodge turned to fire. In ten minutes it had all faded and the landscape was cold. Troy and Alleyn walked a little way along the water’s edge, and Troy looked at the house and wondered about the people inside it. Would Isabella Sommita feel that it was a proper showplace for her brilliance and what would she look like posing in the “commodious studio” against those high windows, herself flamboyant against another such sunset as the one that had gone by?

Troy said, “This really is an adventure.”

Alleyn said, “Do you know, in a cockeyed sort of way it reminds me of one of those Victorian romances by George Macdonald where the characters find a looking glass and walk out of this world into another one inhabited by strange beings and unaccountable ongoings.”

“Perhaps,” said Troy, “the entrance to that great house will turn out to be our own front door and we’ll be back in London.”

They talked about the house and the way in which it rose out of its setting in balanced towers. Presently the launch, leaving an arrowhead of rippled silk in its wake, drew in to the landing stage. It was a large, opulent craft. The helmsman came out of his wheelhouse and threw a mooring rope to the car driver.

“Meet Les Smith,” said the driver.

“Gidday,” said Les Smith. “How’s tricks, then, Bert? Good trip?”

“No trouble, Les.”

“Good as gold,” said the helmsman.

Alleyn helped them stow the luggage. Troy was handed on board and they puttered out on the Lake.

The driver went into the wheelhouse with Les Smith. Troy and Alleyn sat in the stern.

“Here we go,” he said. “Liking it?”

“It’s a lovely beginning,” said Troy. “It’s so lovely it hurts.”

“Keep your fingers crossed,” he said lightly.

ii

Perhaps because their day had been so long and had followed so hard on their flight from England, the first night at the Lodge went by rather like a dream for Troy.

They had been met by Mr. Reece’s secretary and a dark man dressed like a tarted-up ship’s steward, who carried their baggage. They were taken to their room to “freshen up.” The secretary, a straw-colored youngish man with a gushing manner, explained that Mr. Reece was on the telephone but would be there to meet them when they came down and that everyone was “changing” but they were not to bother as everybody would “quite understand.” Dinner was in a quarter of an hour. There was a drinks tray in the room, and he suggested that they should make use of it and said he knew they would be angelic and excuse him as Mr. Reece had need of his services. He then, as an apparent afterthought, was lavish in welcome, flashed smiles, and withdrew. Troy thought vaguely that he was insufferable.

“I don’t know about you,” she said, “but I refuse to be quite understood and I’m going to shift my clothes. I require a nice wash and a change. And a drink, by the way.”

She opened her suitcase, scuffled in it, and lugged out a jumpsuit, which was luckily made of uncrushable material. She then went into the bathroom, which was equipped like a plumber king’s palace. Alleyn effected a lightning change, at which exercise he was a past master, and mixed two drinks. They sat side-by-side on an enormous bed and contemplated their room.

“It’s all been done by some super American interior decorator, wouldn’t you say?” said Troy, gulping down her brandy-and-dry.

“You reckon?” said Alleyn, imitating the driver.

“I reckon,” said Troy. “You have to wade through the carpet, don’t you? Not walk on it.”

“It’s not a carpet; it’s about two hundred sheepskins sewn together. The local touch.”

“All jolly fine for us to snigger. It’s pretty smashing, really, let’s face it. Not human, though. If only there was something shabby and out of character somewhere.”

“Us,” Alleyn said. “We’re all of that. Drink up. We’d better not be late.”

On their way downstairs they took in the full effect of the hall with its colossal blazing fireplace, display on the walls of various lethal weapons and hangings woven in the Maori fashion, and a large semiabstract wood sculpture of a pregnant nude with a complacent smirk. From behind one of the doors there came sounds of conversation. An insistent male voice rose above the rest. There followed a burst of multiple laughter.

“Good lord,” said Alleyn, “it’s a house party.”

The dark man who had taken their baggage up was in the hall.

“In the drawing room, sir,” he said unnecessarily and opened the door.

About a dozen or so people, predominantly male, were grouped at the far end of a long room. The focal point seemed to be a personage with a gray imperial beard and hair en brosse, wearing a velvet jacket and flowing tie, an eyeglass, and a flower in his lapel. His manner was that of a practiced raconteur who, after delivering a mot is careful to preserve an expressionless face. His audience was barely recovered from its fits of merriment. The straw-colored secretary, indeed, with glass in hand, gently tapped his fingers against his left wrist by way of applause. In doing this he turned, saw the Alleyns, and bent over someone in a sofa with its back to the door.

A voice said, “Ah, yes,” and Mr. Reece rose and came to greet them.

He was shortish and dark and had run a little to what is sometimes called expense-account fat. His eyes were large, and his face closed: a face that it would be easy to forget since it seemed to say nothing.

He shook hands and said how glad he was to receive them; to Troy he added that it was an honor and a privilege to welcome her. There were, perhaps, American overtones in his speech, but on the whole his voice, like the rest of him, seemed neutral. He introduced the Alleyns formally to everybody. To the raconteur, who was Signor Beppo Lattienzo and who kissed Troy’s hand. To a rotund gentleman who looked like an operatic tenor and turned out to be one: the celebrated Roberto Rodolfo. To Mr. Ben Ruby, who was jocular and said they all knew Troy would do better than that: indicating a vast academic portrait of La Sommita’s gown topped up by her mask. Then came a young man of startling physical beauty who looked apprehensive — Rupert Bartholomew — a pretty girl whose name Troy, easily baffled by mass introductions, didn’t catch, and a largish lady on a sofa, who was called Miss Hilda Dancy and had a deep voice. Finally there loomed up a gentleman with an even deeper voice and a jolly brown face, who proclaimed himself a New Zealander and was called Mr. Eru Johnstone.

Having discharged his introductory duties, Mr. Reece retained his hold on Alleyn, supervised his drink, led him a little apart, and, as Troy could see by the sort of attentive shutter that came over her husband’s face, engaged him in serious conversation.

“You have had a very long day, Mrs. Alleyn,” said Signor Lattienzo, who spoke with a marked Italian accent. “Do you feel as if all your time signals had become”—he rotated plump hands rapidly round each other—“jumbled together?”

“Exactly like that,” said Troy. “Jet hangover, I think.”

“It will be nice to retire?”

“Gosh, yes!” she breathed, surprised into ardent agreement.

“Come and sit down,” he said and led her to a sofa removed from that occupied by Miss Dancy.

“You must not begin to paint before you are ready,” he said. “Do not permit them to bully you.”

“Oh, I’ll be ready, I hope, tomorrow.”

“I doubt it and I doubt even more if your subject will be available.”

“Why?” asked Troy quickly. “Is anything the matter? I mean—”

“The matter? That depends on one’s attitude.” He looked fixedly at her. He had very bright eyes. “You have not heard evidently of the great event,” he said. “No? Ah. Then I must tell you that the night after next we are to be audience at the first performance on any stage of a brand-new one-act opera. A world premiere, in fact,” said Signor Lattienzo, and his tone was exceedingly dry. “What do you think about that?”

“I’m flabbergasted,” said Troy.

“You will be even more so when you have heard it. You do not know who I am, of course.”

“I’m afraid I only know that your name is Lattienzo.”

“Ah-ha.”

“I expect I ought to have exclaimed. ‘No! Not the Lattienzo?’”

“Not at all. I am that obscure creature, a vocal pedagogue. I take the voice and teach it to know itself.”

“And — did you—?”

“Yes. I took to pieces the most remarkable vocal instrument of these times and put it together again and gave it back to its owner. I worked her like a horse for three years and I am probably the only living person to whom she pays the slightest professional attention. I am commanded here because she wishes me to fall into a rapture over this opera.”

“Have you seen it? Or should one say ‘read it’?”

He cast up his eyes and made a gesture of despair.

“Oh dear,” said Troy.

“Alas, alas,” agreed Signor Lattienzo. Troy wondered if he was habitually so unguarded with complete strangers.

“You have, of course,” he said, “noticed the fair young man with the appearance of a quattrocento angel and the expression of a soul in torment?”

“I have indeed. It’s a remarkable head.”

“What devil, one asks oneself, inserted into it the notion that it could concoct an opera. And yet,” said Signor Lattienzo, looking thoughtfully at Rupert Bartholomew, “I fancy the first-night horrors the poor child undoubtedly suffers are not of the usual kind.”

“No?”

“No. I fancy he has discovered his mistake and feels deadly sick.”

“But this is dreadful,” Troy said. “It’s the worst that can happen.”

“Can it happen to painters, then?”

“I think painters know while they are still at it, if the thing they are doing is no good. I know I do,” said Troy. “There isn’t perhaps the time lag that authors and, from what you tell me, musicians can go through before they come to the awful moment of truth. Is the opera really so bad?”

“Yes. It is bad. Nevertheless, here and there, perhaps three times, one hears little signs that make one regret he is being spoilt. Nothing is to be spared him. He is to conduct.”

“Have you spoken to him? About it being wrong?”

“Not yet. First I shall let him hear it.”

“Oh,” Troy protested, “but why! Why let him go through with it? Why not tell him and advise him to cancel the performance?”

“First of all, because she would pay no attention.”

“But if he refused?”

“She has devoured him, poor dear. He would not refuse. She has made him her secretary-accompanist-composer, but beyond all that and most destructively, she has taken him for her lover and gobbled him up. It is very sad,” said Signor Lattienzo, and his eyes were bright as coal nuggets. “But you see,” he added, “what I mean when I say that La Sommita will be too much engagée to pose for you until all is over. And then she may be too furious to sit still for thirty seconds. The first dress rehearsal was yesterday. Tomorrow will be occupied in alternately resting and making scenes and attending a second dress rehearsal. And the next night — the performance! Shall I tell you of their first meeting and how it has all come about?”

“Please.”

“But first I must fortify you with a drink.”

He did tell her, making a good story of it. “Imagine! Their first encounter. All the ingredients of the soap opera. A strange young man, pale as death, beautiful as Adonis, with burning eyes and water pouring off the end of his nose, gazes hungrily at his goddess at one a.m. during a deluge. She summons him to the window of her car. She is kind and before long she is even kinder. And again, kinder. He shows her his opera — it is called The Alien Corn, it is dedicated to her, and since the role of Ruth is virtually the entire score and has scarcely finished ravishing the audience with one coloratura embellishment before another sets in, she is favorably impressed. You know, of course, of her celebrated A above high C.”

“I’m afraid not!”

“No? It’s second only to the achievement recorded in the Guinness Book of Records. This besotted young man has been careful to provide for it in her aria. I must tell you by the way that while she sings like the Queen of Heaven, musically speaking this splendid creature is as stupid as an owl.”

“Oh, come!”

“Believe me. It is the truth. You see before you the assembled company engaged at vast cost for this charade. The basso: a New Zealander and a worthy successor to Inia te Wiata. He is the Boaz and, believe me, finds himself knee-deep in corn for which ‘alien’ is all too inadequate a description. The dear Hilda Dancy on the sofa is the Naomi, who escapes with a duet, a handful of recitatives, and the contralto part in an enfeebled pastiche of ‘Bella figlia dell’ amore.’ There she is joined by a mezzo-soprano (the little Sylvia Parry, now talking to the composer). She is, so to speak, Signora Boaz. Next comes the romantic element, in the person of Roberto Rodolfo, who is the head gleaner and adores the Ruth at first sight. She, I need not tell you, dominates the quartet. You find me unsympathetic, perhaps?” said Signor Lattienzo.

“I find you very funny,” said Troy.

“But spiteful? Yes?”

“Well — ruthless, perhaps.”

“Would we were all.”

“What?”

“‘Ruth’-less, my dear.”

“Oh, really!” said Troy and burst out laughing.

“I am very hungry. She is twenty minutes late as usual and our good Monty consults his watch. Ah! We are to be given the full performance — the Delayed Entrance. Listen.”

A musical whooping could at that moment be heard rapidly increasing in volume.

“The celestial fire engine,” said Signor Lattienzo, “approaches.” He said this loudly to Alleyn, who had joined them.

The door into the hall was flung wide, Isabella Sommita stood on the threshold, and Troy thought: “This is it. O, praise the Lord all ye Lands, this is it.”

The first thing to be noticed about the Sommita was her eyes. They were enormous, black, and baleful and set slantwise in her magnolia face. They were topped by two jetty arcs, thin as a camel-hair brush, but one knew that if left to themselves they would bristle and meet angrily above her nose. Her underlip was full, her teeth slightly protuberant with the little gap at the front which is said to denote an amorous disposition.

She wore green velvet and diamonds, and her celebrated bosom, sumptuously displayed, shone like marble.

Everyone who had been sitting rose. Alleyn thought: A bit more of this and the ladies would fall to the ground in curtseys.

He looked at Troy and recognized the quickened attention, the impersonal scrutiny that meant his wife was hooked.

“Dar-leengs!” sang La Sommita. “So late! Forgive, forgive.” She directed her remarkably searching gaze upon them all, and let it travel slowly, rather, Alleyn thought, in the manner of a lighthouse, until it rested upon him, and then upon Troy. An expression of astonishment and rapture dawned. She advanced upon them both with outstretched arms and cries of excitement, seized their hands, giving them firm little shakes as if she was congratulating them on their union and found her joy in doing so too great for words.

“But you have come!” she cried at last and appealed to everyone else. “Isn’t it wonderful!” she demanded. “They have come!” She displayed them, like trophies, to her politely responsive audience.

Alleyn said “Hell” inaudibly and as a way of releasing himself kissed the receptive hand.

There followed cascades of welcome. Troy was gripped by the shoulders and gazed at searchingly and asked if she (the Sommita) would “do” and told that already she knew they were en rapport and that she (the Sommita) always “knew.” Didn’t Troy always know? Alleyn was appealed to: “Didn’t she?”

“Oh,” Alleyn said, “she’s as cunning as a bagload of monkeys, Madame. You’ve no idea.”

Further melodious hoots, this time of laughter, greeted the far from brilliant sally. Alleyn was playfully chided.

They were checked by the entry at the far end of the room of another steward-like personage, who announced dinner. He carried a salver with what was no doubt the mail that had come with the Alleyns and took it to the straw-colored secretary, who said: “On my desk.” The man made some inaudible reply and seemed to indicate a newspaper on his salver. The secretary looked extremely perturbed and repeated, loudly enough for Alleyn to hear, “No, no. I’ll attend to it. In the drawer of my desk. Take it away.”

The man bowed slightly and returned to the doors.

The guests were already in motion and the scene now resembled the close of the first act of an Edwardian comedy, voices pitched rather high, movements studied, the sense, even, of some approach to a climax which would develop in the next act.

It developed, however, there and then. The bass, Mr. Era Johnstone, said in his enormous voice: “Do I see the evening paper? It will have the results of the Spring Cup, won’t it?”

“I should imagine so,” said Mr. Reece. “Why?”

“We had a sweep on Top Note. It seemed a clear indication,” and he boomed up the room. “Everybody! The Cup!”

The procession halted. They all chattered in great excitement but were, as actors say, “topped” by the Sommita, demanding to see the paper there and then. Alleyn saw the secretary, who looked agitated, trying to reach the servant, but the Sommita had already seized the newspaper and flapped it open.

The scene that followed bore for three or four seconds a farfetched resemblance to an abortive ruck in Rugby football. The guests, still talking eagerly, surged round the prima donna. And then, suddenly, fell silent, backed away, and left her isolated, speechless and crosseyed, holding out the open newspaper as if she intended to drop-kick it to eternity. Alleyn said afterward that he could have sworn she foamed at the mouth.

Across the front page of the paper a banner headline was splashed:

And underneath:

Boxed in a heavy outline, at the center of the page, were about nine lines of typescript and beneath them the enormous signature,

iii

Dinner had been catastrophic, a one-man show by the Sommita. To say she had run through the gamut of the passions would be a rank understatement: she began where the gamut left off and bursts of hysteria were as passages of rest in the performance. Occasionally she would come to an abrupt halt and wolf up great mouthfuls of the food that had been set before her, for she was a greedy lady. Her discomforted guests would seize the opportunity to join her, in a more conservative manner, in taking refreshment. The dinner was superb.

Her professional associates were less discomforted, the Alleyns afterward agreed, than a lay audience would have been and indeed seemed more or less to take her passion in their stride, occasionally contributing inflammatory remarks while Signor Rodolfo, who was on her left, made wide ineffable gestures and, when he managed to get hold of it, kissed her hand. Alleyn was on her right. He was frequently appealed to and came in for one or two excruciating prods in the ribs as she drove home her points. He was conscious that Troy had her eyes on him and, when he got the chance, made a lightning grimace of terror at her. He saw she was on the threshold of giggles.

Troy was on Mr. Reece’s right. He seemed to think that in the midst of this din he was under an obligation to make conversation and remarked upon the lack of journalistic probity in Australia. The offending newspaper, it seemed, was an Australian weekly with a wide circulation in New Zealand.

When the port had been put before him and his dear one had passed for the time being into a baleful silence, he suggested tonelessly that the ladies perhaps wished to withdraw.

The Sommita made no immediate response, and a tricky hiatus occurred during which she glowered at the table. Troy thought, Oh, to hell with all this, and stood up. Hilda Dancy followed with alacrity and so after a moment’s hesitation did wide-eyed Sylvia Parry. The men got to their feet.

The Sommita rose, assumed the posture of a Cassandra about to give tongue, appeared to change her mind, and said she was going to bed.

About twenty minutes later Alleyn found himself closeted in a room that looked like the setting for a science-fiction film but was Mr. Reece’s study. With him were Mr. Reece himself, Mr. Ben Ruby, Rupert Bartholomew, and the straw-colored secretary, whose name turned out to be Hanley.

The infamous sheet of newsprint was laid out on a table around which the men had gathered. They read the typewritten letter reproduced in the central box.

“And you tell me,” Alleyn said, “that the whole thing is a forgery?”

“You bet it’s a forgery,” said Ben Ruby. “Would she ever help herself to a plateful of poisonous publicity! My God, this is going to make her the big laugh of a lifetime over in Aussie. And it’ll spread overseas, you better believe it.”

“Have there in fact been any rumors, any gossip of this sort?”

“Not that we have knowledge of,” said Mr. Reece. “And if it had been at all widespread, we certainly would have heard. Wouldn’t we, Ben?”

“Well, face it, old boy, anyone that’s seen her would know it was silly. I meantersay, look at her cleavage? Speaks for itself.” Mr. Ruby turned to Alleyn. “You’ve seen. You couldn’t miss it. She’s got the best twin set you’re likely to meet in a lifetime. Beautiful! Here! Take a look at this picture.”

He turned to page 30 and flattened it out. The “picture” was a photograph of the Sommita in profile with her head thrown back, her hands behind her resting on a table and taking the weight. She was in character as Carmen, and an artificial rose was clenched between her teeth. She was powerfully décolletée and although at first glance there seemed to be no doubt of the authenticity of the poitrine, on closer examination there were certain curious little marks in that region suggestive of surgical scars. The legend beneath read, “Seeing’s believing!”

“She never liked that picture,” Mr. Ruby said moodily. “Never. But the press did, so we kept it in the handouts. Here!” he exclaimed, jamming a forefinger at it. “Here take a look at this, will you? This has been interfered with. This has been touched up. This has been tinkered with. Those scars are phony.”

Alleyn examined it. “I think you’re right,” he said and turned back to the front page.

“Mr. Hanley,” he said, “do you think that typewriter could have been one belonging to anybody in Madame Sommita’s immediate circle? Can you tell that?”

“Oh? Oh!” said the secretary and stooped over the paper.

“Well,” he said after a moment, “it wasn’t typed on my machine.” He laughed uncomfortably. “I can promise you that much,” he said. “I wouldn’t know about hers. How about it, Rupert?”

“Bartholomew,” explained Mr. Reece in his flattened way, “is Madame’s secretary.” He stood back and motioned Rupert to examine the page.

Rupert, who had a tendency to change color whenever Mr. Reece paid him any attention, did so now. He stooped over the paper.

“No,” he said, “it’s not our — I mean my — machine. The letter p is out of alignment in ours. And anyway it’s not the same type.”

“And the signature? That looks convincing enough, doesn’t it?” Alleyn asked his host.

“Oh, yes,” he said. “It’s Bella’s signature.”

“Can any of you think of any cause Madame Sommita may have had to put her signature at the foot of a blank sheet of letter paper?”

Nobody spoke.

“Can she type?”

“No,” they all said, and Ben Ruby added irritably, “Ah, for Chrissake, what’s the point of laboring at it? There’ve been no rumors about her bosom, pardon my candor, and, hell, she never wrote that bloody letter. It’s got to be a forgery and, by God, in my book it’s got to be that sodding photographer at the bottom of it.”

The two young men made sounds of profound agreement.

Mr. Reece raised his hand and they were silenced. “We are fortunate enough,” he announced, “to have Mr. Alleyn, or rather Chief Superintendent Alleyn, with us. I suggest that we accord him our full attention, gentlemen.”

He might have been addressing a board meeting. He turned to Alleyn and made a slight inclination. “Will you—?” he invited.

Alleyn said: “Of course, if you think I can be of use. But I expect I ought just to mention that if there’s any idea of calling in the police, it will have to be the New Zealand police. I’m sure you will understand that.”

“Oh, quite so, quite so,” said Mr. Reece. “Let us say we will value, immensely, your unofficial expertise.”

“Very well. But it won’t be at all startling.”

The men took chairs round the table, as if, Alleyn thought, they were resigning themselves to some damned lecture. The whole scene, he thought, was out of joint. They might have arranged between themselves how it should be played but were not quite sure of their lines.

He remembered his instructions from the A.C. He was to observe, act with extreme discretion, fall in with the terms of his invitation, and treat the riddle of the naughty photographer as he would any case to which he had been consigned in the ordinary course of his duties.

He said: “Here goes, then. First of all: if this was a police job, one of the first things to be done would be to make an exhaustive examination of the letter, which seems to be a reproduction print of an original document. We would get it blown up on a screen, search the result for any signs of fingerprints or indications of what sort of paper the original might be. Same treatment for the photograph, with particular attention to the rather clumsy faking of surgical scars.

“At the same time, someone would be sent to the offices of the Watchman to find out everything available about when the original letter was received and whether by post or pushed into the correspondence box at the entrance or wherever of the Watchman’s office. And also who dealt with it. The Watchman, almost certainly, would be extremely cagey about this and would, when asked to produce the original, say it had not been kept, which might or might not be true. Obviously,” Alleyn said, “they didn’t ask for any authorization of the letter or take any steps to assure themselves that it was genuine.”

“It’s not that sort of paper,” said Ben Ruby. “Well, look at it. If we sued for libel it’d be nothing new to the Watchman. The scoop would be worth it.”

“Didn’t I hear,” Alleyn asked, “that on one occasion the photographer—‘Strix’ isn’t it? — dressed as a woman, asked for her autograph, and then fired his camera at point-blank range and ducked out?”

Mr. Ruby slammed the table. “By God, you’re right,” he shouted, “and he got it. She signed. He got her signature.”

“It’s too much, I suppose, to ask if she remembers any particular book or whether she ever signed at the bottom of a blank page or how big the page was.”

“She remembers! Too right she remembers!” Mr. Ruby shouted. “That one was an outsize book. Looked like something special for famous names. She remembers it on account it was not the usual job. As for the signature she’s most likely to have made it extra big to fill out the whole space. She does that.”

“Were any of you with her? She was leaving the theatre, wasn’t she? At the time?”

“I was with her,” Mr. Reece offered. “So were you, Ben. We always escort her from the stage door to her car. I didn’t actually see the book. I was looking to make sure the car was in the usual place. There was a big crowd.”

“I was behind her,” said Mr. Ruby. “I couldn’t see anything. The first thing I knew was the flash and the rumpus. She was yelling out for somebody to stop the photographer. Somebody else was screaming, ‘Stop that woman’ and fighting to get through. And it turned out afterwards, the screamer was the woman herself, who was the photographer Strix, if you can follow me.”

“Just,” said Alleyn.

“He’s made monkeys out of the lot of us; all along the line he’s made us look like monkeys,” Mr. Ruby complained.

“What does he look like? Surely someone must have noticed something about him?”

But, no, it appeared. Nobody had come forward with a reliable description. He operated always in a crowd where everyone’s attention was focused on his victim and cameramen abounded. Or unexpectedly he would pop round a corner with his camera held in both hands before his face, or from a car that shot off before any action could be taken. There had been one or two uncertain impressions — he was bearded, he had a scarf pulled over his mouth, he was dark. Mr. Ruby had a theory that he never wore the same clothes twice and always went in for elaborate makeups, but there was nothing to support this idea.

“What action,” Mr. Reece asked Alleyn, “would you advise?”

‘To begin with: not an action for libel. Can she be persuaded against it, do you think?”

“She may be all against it in the morning. You never know,” said Hanley, and then with an uneasy appeal to his employer: “I beg your pardon, sir, but I mean to say you don’t, do you? Actually?”

Mr. Reece, with no change of expression in his face, merely looked at his secretary, who subsided nervously.

Alleyn had returned to the Watchman. He tilted the paper this way and that under the table lamp. “I think,” he said, “I’m not sure, but I think the original paper was probably glossy.”

“I’ll arrange for someone to deal with the Watchman end,” said Mr. Reece, and to Hanley: “Get through to Sir Simon Marks in Sydney,” he ordered. “Or wherever he is. Get him.”

Hanley retreated to a distant telephone and huddled over it in soundless communication.

Alleyn said: “If I were doing this as a conscientious copper, I would now ask you all if you have any further ideas about the perpetrator of these ugly tricks — assuming for the moment that the photographer and the concocter of the letter are one and the same person. Is there anybody you can think of who bears a grudge deep enough to inspire such persistent and malicious attacks? Has she an enemy, in fact?”

“Has she a hundred bloody enemies?” Mr. Ruby heatedly returned. “Of course she has. Like the home-grown baritone she insulted in Perth or the top hostess in Los Angeles who threw a high-quality party for her and asked visiting royalty to meet her.”

“What went wrong?”

“She didn’t go.”

“Oh dear!”

‘Took against it at the last moment because she’d heard the host’s money came from South Africa. We talked about a sudden attack of migraine, which might have answered if she hadn’t gone to supper at Angelo’s and the press hadn’t reported it with pictures the next morning.”

“Wasn’t ‘Strix’ already in action by then, though?”

“That’s true,” agreed Mr. Ruby gloomily. “You’ve got something there. But enemies! My oath!”

“In my view,” said Mr. Reece, “the matter of enmity doesn’t arise. This has been from first to last a profitable enterprise. I’ve ascertained that ‘Strix’ can ask what he likes for his photographs. It’s only a matter of time, one imagines, before they reappear in book form. He’s hit on a money spinner and unless we catch him in the act he’ll go on spinning as long as the public interest lasts. Simple as that.”

“If he concocted the letter,” Alleyn said, “it’s hard to see how he’d make money out of that. He could hardly admit to forgery.”

Rupert Bartholomew said: “I think the letter was written out of pure spite. She thinks so, too; you heard her. A sort of black practical joke.”

He made this announcement with an air of defiance, almost of proprietorship. Alleyn saw Mr. Reece look at him for several seconds with concentration as if his attention had been unexpectedly aroused. He thought: “That boy’s getting himself into deep water.”

Hanley had been speaking into the telephone. He stood up and said, “Sir Simon Marks, sir.”

Mr. Reece took the call inaudibly. The others fell into an unrestful silence, not wishing to seem as if they listened but unable to find anything to say to each other. Alleyn was conscious of Rupert Bartholomew’s regard, which as often as he caught it was hurriedly turned away. “He’s making some sort of appeal,” Alleyn thought and went over to him. They were not removed from the others.

“Do tell me about your opera,” he said. “I’ve only gathered the scantiest picture from our host of what is going to happen, but it all sounds most exciting.”

Rupert muttered something about not being too sure of that.

“But,” said Alleyn, “it must be an enormous thing for you, isn’t it? For the greatest soprano of our time to bring it all about? A wonderful piece of good fortune, I’d have thought.”

“Don’t,” Rupert muttered. “Don’t say that.”

“Hullo! What’s all this? First-night nerves?”

Rupert shook his head. God Lord, Alleyn thought, a bit more of this and he’ll be in tears. Rupert stared at him and seemed to be on the edge of speech when Mr. Reece put back the receiver and rejoined the others. “Marks will attend to the Watchman,” he said. “If the original is there he’ll see that we get it.”

“Can you be sure of that?” Ruby asked.

“Certainly. He owns the group and controls the policy.”

They began to talk in a desultory way, and for Alleyn their voices sounded a long way off and disembodied. The spectacular room became unsteady and its contents swelled, diminished, and faded. I’m going to sleep on my feet, he thought and pulled himself together.

He said to his host, “As I can’t be of use, I wonder if I may be excused? It’s been a long day and one didn’t get much sleep on the plane.”

Mr. Reece was all consideration. “How very thoughtless of us,” he said. “Of course. Of course.” He made appropriate hospitable remarks about hoping the Alleyns had everything they required, suggested that they breakfast late in their room and ring when they were ready for it. He sounded as if he were playing some sort of internal cassette of his own recording. He glanced at Hanley, who advanced, all eager to please.

“We’re in unbelievable bliss,” Alleyn assured them, scarcely knowing what he said. And to Hanley: “No, please don’t bother. I promise not to doze off on my way up. Goodnight, everyone.”

He crossed the hall, which was now dimly lit. The pregnant woman loomed up and stared at him through slitted eyes. Behind her the fire, dwindled to a glow, pulsated quietly.

As he passed the drawing room door he heard a scatter of desultory conversation: three voices at the most, he thought, and none of them belonged to Troy.

And, sure enough, when he reached their room he found her in bed and fast asleep. Before joining her he went to the heavy window curtains, parted them, and saw the lake in moonlight close beneath him, stretching away like a silver plain into the mountains. Incongruous, he thought, and impertinent, for this little knot of noisy, self-important people with their self-imposed luxury and seriocomic concerns to be set down at the heart of such an immense serenity.

He let the curtain fall and went to bed.

He and Troy were coming back to earth in Mr. Reece’s airplane. An endless road rushed toward them. Appallingly far below, the river thundered and water lapped at the side of their boat. He fell quietly into it and was immediately fathoms deep.