Photo Finish

Chapter three Rehearsal

i

Troy slept heavily and woke at nine o’clock to find Alleyn up and dressed and the room full of sunshine.

“I’ve never known you so unwakable,” he said. “Deep as the lake itself. I’ve asked for our breakfast.”

“Have you been up long?”

“About two hours. The bathroom’s tarted up to its eyebrows. Jets of water smack you up where you least expect it. I went downstairs. Not a soul about apart from the odd slave who looked at me as if I was dotty. So I went outside and had a bit of an explore. Troy, it really is quite extraordinarily beautiful, this place; so still; the lake clear, the trees motionless, everything new and fresh and yet, or so one feels, empty and belonging to primordial time. Dear me,” said Alleyn, rubbing his nose, “I’d better not try. Let’s tell each other about what went on after that atrocious dinner party.”

“I’ve nothing to tell. When we left you the diva merely said in a volcanic voice, ‘Excuse me, ladies,’ and swept upstairs. I gave her time to disappear and then followed suit. I can scarcely remember getting myself to bed. What about you?”

Alleyn told her.

“If you ask me,” Troy said, “it needs only another outrage like this and she’ll break down completely. She was literally shaking all over as if she had a rigor. She can’t go on like that. Don’t you agree?”

“Not really. Not necessarily. Have you ever watched two Italians having a discussion in the street? Furious gestures, shrieks, glaring eyes, faces close together. Any moment, you think, it’ll be a free-for-all, and then without warning they burst out laughing and hit each other’s shoulders in comradely accord. I’d say she was of the purest Italian — perhaps Sicilian— peasant stock and utterly uninhibited. Add to that the propensity of all public performers to cut up rough and throw temperaments right and left when they think they’ve been slighted, and you’ve got La Sommita. You’ll see.”

But beyond staring bemusedly out of the windows, Troy was not given much chance of seeing for herself. Instead, she and Alleyn were to be taken on a tour of the house by Mr. Reece, beginning with the “studio,” which turned out to be on the same level as their bedroom. Grand pianos being as chickenfeed to Mr. Reece, there was one in here, and Troy was given to understand that the Sommita practiced at it and that the multiple-gifted Rupert Bartholomew acted as her accompanist, having replaced an Australian lady in that capacity. She found, with astonishment, that an enormous easel of sophisticated design and a painter’s table and stool had been introduced into the room for her use. Mr. Reece was anxious, he said, to know if they suited. Troy, tempted to ask if they were on sale or return, said they did and was daunted by their newness. There was also a studio throne with a fine lacquer screen on it. Mr. Reece expressed a kind of drab displeasure that it was not large enough to accommodate the grand piano as well. Troy, who had already made up her mind what she wanted to do with her subject, said it was of no consequence. When, she asked, would she be able to start? Mr. Reece, she thought, was slightly evasive. He had not spoken this morning to Madame, he said, but he understood there would be rehearsals for the greater part of the day. The orchestra was to arrive. They had been rehearsing, with frequent visits from Bartholomew, and would arrive by bus. The remaining guests were expected tomorrow.

The studio window was of the enormous plate-glass kind. Through it they had a new view of lake and mountains. Immediately beneath them, adjoining the house, was a patio and close by an artificially enclosed swimming pool, around which and in which members of the house party were displayed. On the extreme right, separated from the pool and surrounded by native bush, was an open space and a hangar which, Mr. Reece said, accommodated the helicopter.

Mr. Reece was moved to talk about the view, which he did in a gray, factual manner, stating that the lake was so deep in many parts that it had never been sounded and that the region was famous for a storm, known locally as the Rosser, which rose unheralded in the mountains and whipped the lake into fury and had been responsible for many fatal accidents.

He also made one or two remarks on the potential for “development,” and Alleyn saw the look of horrified incredulity on his wife’s face. Fortunately, it appeared, pettifogging legislation about land tenure and restrictions on imported labor would prohibit what Mr. Reece called “worthwhile touristic planning” so that the prospect of marinas, high-rise hotels, speedboats, loud music, and floodlit bathing pools did not threaten those primordial shores. Sandflies by day and mosquitoes by night, Mr. Reece thought, could be dealt with, and Troy envisaged low-flying aircraft delivering millions of gallons of kerosene upon the immaculate face of the lake.

Without warning she was overcome by a return of fatigue and felt quite unable to face an extended pilgrimage of this unending mansion. Seeing her dilemma, Alleyn asked Mr. Reece if he might fetch her gear and unpack it. There was immediate talk of summoning “a man,” but they managed to avoid this. And then a “man” in fact did appear, the dark, Italianate-looking person who had brought their breakfast. He had a message for Mr. Reece. Madame Sommita wished to see him urgently.

“I think I had better attend to this,” he said. “We all meet on the patio at eleven for drinks. I hope you will both join us there.”

So they were left in peace. Alleyn fetched Troy’s painting gear and unpacked it. He opened up her old warrior of a paintbox, unstrapped her canvases and set out her sketchbook, and the collection of materials that were like signatures written across any place where Troy worked. She sat in a chair by the window and watched him and felt better.

Alleyn said: “This room will be desterilized when it smells of turpentine and there are splotches of flake white on the ledge of that easel and paint rags on the table.”

“At the moment it cannot be said to beckon one to work. They might as well have hung ‘Please Don’t Touch’ notices on everything.”

“You won’t mind once you get going.”

“You think? P’raps you’re right,” she said, cheering up. She looked down at the house party around the pool. “That’s quite something,” she said. “Very frisky color and do notice Signor Lattienzo’s stomach. Isn’t it superb!”

Signor Lattienzo was extended on an orange-colored chaise longue. He wore a green bathrobe, which had slid away from his generous torso, upon which a book with a scarlet cover was perched. He glistened.

Prompted, perhaps by that curious telepathy which informs people that they are being stared at, he threw back his head, saw Troy and Alleyn, and waved energetically. They responded. He made eloquent Italianate gestures, which he wound up by kissing both his hands at once to Troy.

“You’ve got off, darling,” said Alleyn.

“I like him, I think. But I’m afraid he’s rather malicious. I didn’t tell you. He thinks that poor beautiful young man’s opera is awful. Isn’t that sad?”

“Is that what’s the matter with the boy!” Alleyn exclaimed. “Does he know it’s no good?”

“Signor Lattienzo thinks he might.”

“And yet they’re going on with all this wildly extravagant business.”

“She insists, I imagine.”

“Ah.”

“Signor Lattienzo says she’s as stupid as an owl.”

“Musically?”

“Yes. But, I rather gathered, generally, as well.”

“The finer points of attitudes towards a hostess don’t seem to worry Signor Lattienzo.”

“Well, if we’re going to be accurate, I suppose she’s not his hostess. She’s his ex-pupil.”

“True.”

Troy said: “That boy’s out of his depth, altogether. She’s made a nonsense of him. She’s a monster and I can’t wait to get it on canvas. A monster,” Troy repeated with relish.

“He’s not down there with the rest of them,” Alleyn pointed out. “I suppose he’s concerned with the arrival of his orchestra.”

“I can’t bear to think of it. Imagine! All these musical V.I.P.s converging on him and he knowing, if he does know, that it’s going to be a fiasco. He’s going to conduct. Imagine!”

“Awful. Rubbing his nose in it.”

“We’ll have to be there.”

“I’m afraid so, darling.”

Troy had turned away from the window and now faced the door of the room. She was just in time to see it gently closing.

“What’s wrong?” Alleyn asked quickly.

Troy whispered: “The door. Someone’s just shut it.”

“Really?”

“Yes. Truly.”

He went to the door and opened it. Troy saw him look to his right.

“Hullo, Bartholomew,” he said. “Good morning to you. Looking for Troy, by any chance?”

There was a pause and then Rupert’s Australian voice, unevenly pitched, not fully audible: “Oh, good morning. I — yes— matter of fact — message—.”

“She’s here. Come in.”

He came in, white-faced and hesitant. Troy welcomed him with what she felt might be overdone cordiality and asked if his message was for her.

“Yes,” he said, “yes, it is. She — I mean Madame Sommita — asked me to say she’s very sorry but in case you might be expecting her she can’t — she’s afraid she won’t be able— to sit for you today because — because—.”

“Because of rehearsals and everything? Of course. I wasn’t expecting it and in fact I’d rather not start today.”

“Oh,” he said, “yes. I see. Good-oh, then. I’ll tell her.”

He made as if to go but seemed inclined to stay.

“Do sit down,” said Alleyn, “unless you’re in a hurry, of course. We’re hoping someone — you, if you’ve time — will tell us a little more about tomorrow night.”

He made a movement with both hands almost as if he wanted to cover his ears but checked it and asked if they minded if he smoked. He produced a cigarette case; gold with a jeweled motif.

“Will you?” he said to Troy and when she declined, turned to Alleyn. The open case slipped out of his uncertain grasp. He said: “Oh. Sorry,” and looked as if he’d been caught shoplifting. Alleyn picked it up. The inside of the lid was inscribed. There in all its flamboyance was the now familiar signature: “Isabella Sommita.”

Rupert was making a dreadfully clumsy business of shutting the case and lighting his cigarette. Alleyn, as if continuing a conversation, asked Troy where she would like him to put the easel. They improvised an argument about light and the possibility of the bathing pool as a subject. This enabled them both to look out of the window.

“Very tricky subject,” Troy muttered. “I don’t think I’m up to it.”

“Better maintain a masterly inactivity, you think?” Alleyn cheerfully rejoined. “You may be right.”

They turned back into the room and there was Rupert Bartholomew, sitting on the edge of the model’s throne and crying.

He possessed male physical beauty to such a remarkable degree that there was something unreal about his tears. They trickled over the perfect contours of his face and might have been drops of water on a Greek mask. They were distressing but they were also incongruous.

Alleyn said: “My dear chap, what’s the matter?” and Troy: “Would you like to talk about it? We’re very discreet.”

He talked. Disjointedly at first and with deprecating interruptions — they didn’t want to hear all this — he didn’t want them to think he was imposing — it could be of no interest to them. He wiped his eyes, blew his nose, drew hard on his cigarette, and became articulate.

At first it was simply a statement that The Alien Corn was no good, that the realization had come upon him out of the blue and with absolute conviction. “It was ghastly,” he said. “I was pouring out drinks and suddenly without warning, I knew. Nothing could alter it: the thing’s punk.”

“Was this performance already under consideration?” Alleyn asked him.

“She had it all planned. It was meant to be a — well — a huge surprise. And the ghastly thing is,” said Rupert, his startlingly blue eyes opened in horror, “I’d thought it all fantastic. Like one of those schmaltzy young-genius-makes-it films. I’d been in — well — in ecstasy.”

“Did you tell her, there and then?” asked Troy.

“Not then. Mr. Reece and Ben Ruby were there. I — well I was so — you know — shattered. Sort of. I waited,” said Rupert and blushed, “until that evening.”

“How did she take it?”

“She didn’t take it. I mean she simply wouldn’t listen. I mean she simply swept it aside. She said — my God, she said genius always had moments like these, moments of what she called divine despair. She said she did. Over her singing. And then, when I sort of tried to stick it out she — was — well, very angry. And you see — I means she had cause. All her plans and arrangements. She’d written to Beppo Lattienzo and Sir David Baumgartner and she’d fixed up with Roberto and Hilda and Sylvia and the others. And the press. The big names. All that. I did hang out for a bit but—”

He broke off, looked quickly at Alleyn and then at the floor. “There were other things. It’s more complicated than I’ve made it sound,” he muttered.

“Human relationships can be hellishly awkward, can’t they?” Alleyn said.

“You’re telling me,” Rupert fervently agreed. Then he burst out: “I think I must have been mad! Or ill, even. Like running a temperature and now it’s gone and — and — I’m cleaned out and left with tomorrow.”

“And you are sure?” Troy asked. “What about the company and the orchestra? Do you know what they think? And Signor Lattienzo?”

“She made me promise not to show it to him. I don’t know if she’s shown it. I think she has. He’ll have seen at once that it’s awful, of course. And the company: they know all right. Roberto Rodolfo very tactfully suggests alterations. I’ve seen them looking at each other. They stop talking when I turn up. Do you know what they call it? They think I haven’t heard but I’ve heard all right. They call it Corn. Very funny. Oh,” Rupert cried out, “she shouldn’t have done it! It hasn’t been a fair go: I hadn’t got a hope. Not a hope in hell. My God, she’s making me conduct. There I’ll stand, before those V.I.P.s waving my arms like a bloody puppet and they won’t know which way to look for embarrassment.”

There was a long silence, broken at last by Troy.

“Well,” she said vigorously, “refuse. Never mind about the celebrities and the fuss and the phony publicity. It’ll be very unpleasant and it’ll take a lot of guts, but at least it’ll be honest. To the devil with the lot of them. Refuse.”

He got to his feet. He had been bathing, and his short yellow robe had fallen open. He’s apricot-colored, Troy noted, not blackish tan and coarsened by exposure like most sun addicts. He’s really too much of a treat. No wonder she grabbed him. He’s a collector’s piece, poor chap.

“I don’t think,” Rupert said, “I’m any more chicken than the next guy. It’s not that. It’s her — Isabella. You saw last night what she can be like. And coming on top of this letter business — look, she’d either break down and make herself ill or — or go berserk and murder somebody. Me, for preference.”

“Oh, come on!” said Troy.

“No,” he said, “It’s not nonsense. Really. She’s a Sicilian.”

“Not all Sicilians are tigers,” Alleyn remarked.

“Her kind are.”

Troy said, “I’m going to leave you to Rory. I think this calls for male-chauvinist gossip.”

When she had gone, Rupert began apologizing again. What he asked, would Mrs. Alleyn think of him?

“Don’t start worrying about that,” Alleyn said. “She’s sorry, she’s not shocked and she’s certainly not bored. And I think she may be right. However unpleasant it may be, I think perhaps you should refuse. But I’m afraid it’s got to be your decision and nobody else’s.”

“Yes, but you see you don’t know the worst of it. I couldn’t bring it out with Mrs. Alleyn here. I–Isabella — we—”

“Good Lord, my dear chap—” Alleyn began and then pulled himself up. “You’re lovers, aren’t you?” he said.

“If you can call it that,” he muttered.

“And you think if you take this stand against her you’ll lose her? That it?”

“Not exactly — I mean, yes, of course, I suppose she’d kick me out.”

“Would that be such a very bad thing?”

“It’d be a bloody good thing,” he burst out.

“Well then—?”

“I can’t expect you to understand. I don’t understand myself. At first it was marvelous: magical. I felt equal to anything. Way up. Out of this world. To hear her sing, to stand at the back of the theatre and see two thousand people go mad about her and to know that for me it didn’t end with the curtain calls and flowers and ovations, but that for me the best was still to come. Talk about the crest of the wave — gosh, it was super.”

“I can imagine.”

“And then, after that — you know — that moment of truth about the opera, the whole picture changed. You could say that the same thing happened about her. I saw all at once, what she really is like and that she only approved of that bloody fiasco because she saw herself making a success in it and that she ought never, never to have given me the encouragement she did. And I knew she had no real musical judgment and that I was lost.”

“All the more reason,” Alleyn began and was shouted down.

“You can’t tell me anything I don’t know. But I was in it. Up to my eyes. Presents — like this thing, this cigarette case. Clothes, even. A fantastic salary. At first I was so far gone in, I suppose you could call it, rapture, that it didn’t seem degrading. And now, in spite of seeing it all as it really is, I can’t get out. I can’t.”

Alleyn waited. Rupert got to his feet. He squared his shoulders, pocketed his awful cigarette case, and actually produced a laugh of sorts.

“Silly, isn’t it?” he said, with an unhappy attempt at lightness. “Sorry to have bored you.”

Alleyn said: “Are you familiar with Shakespeare’s sonnets?”

“No. Why?”

“There’s a celebrated one that starts off by saying the expense of spirit in a waste of shame is lust in action. I suppose it’s the most devastating statement you can find of the sense of degradation that accompanies passion without love. ‘La Belle Dame Sans Merci’ is schmaltz alongside it. That’s your trouble, isn’t it? The gilt’s gone off the gingerbread, but the gingerbread is still compulsive eating. And that’s why you can’t make the break.”

Rupert twisted his hands together and bit his knuckles.

“You could put it like that,” he said.

The silence that followed was interrupted by an outbreak of voices on the patio down below: exclamations, sounds of arrival, and unmistakably the musical hoots that were the Sommita’s form of greeting.

“Those are the players,” said Rupert. “I must go down. We have to rehearse.”

ii

By midday Troy’s jet lag had begun to fade and with it the feeling of unreality in her surroundings. A familiar restlessness replaced it and this, as always, condensed into an itch to work. She and Alleyn walked round the Island and found that, apart from the landing ground for the helicopter and the lawnlike frontage with its sentinel trees, it was practically covered by house. The clever architect had allowed small areas of original bush to occur where they most could please. On the frontal approach from the Lake to the Lodge, this as well as the house itself served to conceal a pole from which power lines ran across the Lake to a spit of land with a dado of trees that reached out from the far side of the Island.

“For the moment,” said Troy, “don’t let’s think about what it all cost.”

They arrived at the bathing pool as eleven o’clock drinks were being served. Two or three guests had arrived at the same time as the quartet of players, who turned out to be members of a South Island regional orchestra. The musicians, three men and a lady, sticking tightly to each other and clearly overawed, were painstakingly introduced by Rupert. The Sommita, in white sharkskin with a tactful tunic, conversed with them very much de haut en bas and then engulfed the Alleyns, particularly Troy, whose arm and hand she secured, propelling her to a canopied double seat and retaining her hold after they had occupied it. Troy found all this intensely embarrassing but at least it gave her a good opportunity to notice the markedly asymmetric structure of the face, the distance between the corner of the heavy mouth and that of the burning eye being greater on the left side. And there was a faint darkness, the slightest change of color, on the upper lip. You couldn’t have a better face for Carmen, Troy thought.

The Sommita talked of the horrible letter and the touched-up photograph and what they had done to her and how shattering it was that the activities of the infamous photographer — for of course he was at the bottom of it — should have extended to New Zealand and even to the Island, when she had felt safe at last from persecution.

“It is only the paper, though,” Troy pointed out. “It’s not as though the man himself was here. Don’t you think it’s quite likely that now the tour of Australia is over he may very well have gone back to his country of origin, wherever that may be? Mightn’t the letter have just been his final effort? You had gone and he couldn’t take any more photographs, so he cooked up the letter?”

The Sommita stared at her for a long time and in a most uncomfortable manner, gave her hand a meaningful squeeze, and released it. Troy did not know what to make of this.

“But,” the Sommita was saying, “we must speak of your art, must we not? And of the portrait. We begin the day after tomorrow, yes? And I wear my crimson décolleté which you have not yet seen. It is by Saint Laurent and is dramatic. And for the pose — this.”

She sprang to her feet, curved her sumptuous right arm above her head, rested her left palm upon her thigh, threw back her head, and ogled Troy frowningly in the baleful, sexy manner of Spanish dancers. The posture provided generous exposure to her frontage and give the lie to any suggestions of plastic surgery.

“I think,” Troy said, “the pose might be a bit exacting to maintain. And if it’s possible I’d like to make some drawings as a sort of limbering up. Not posed drawings. Only slight notes. If I could just be inconspicuously on the premises and make scribbles with a stick of charcoal.”

“Yes? Ah! Good. This afternoon there will be rehearsal. It will be only a preparation for the dress rehearsal tonight. You may attend it. You must be very inconspicuous, you understand.”

“That will be ideal,” said Troy. “Nothing could suit me better.”

“My poor Rupert,” the Sommita suddenly proclaimed, again fixing Troy in that disquieting regard, “is nervous. He has the sensitivity of the true artist, the creative temperament. He is strung like a violin.”

She suspects something, Troy thought. She’s pumping. Damn.

She said: “I can well imagine.”

“I’m sure you can,” said the Sommita with what seemed to be all too meaningful an emphasis.

“Darling Rupert,” she called to him, “if your friends are ready, perhaps you should show them—?”

The players gulped down the rest of their drinks and professed themselves ready.

“Come!” invited the Sommita, suddenly all sparkle and gaiety. “I show you now our music room. Who knows? There may be inspiration for you, as for us. We bring also our great diviner, who is going to rescue me from my persecutors.”

She towed Troy up to Alleyn and unfolded this proposition. Her manner suggested the pleasurable likelihood of his offering to seduce her at the first opportunity. “So you come to the salon too,” she said, “to hear music?” And in her velvet tones the word music was fraught with much the same meaning as china in The Country Wife.

Troy hurried away to get her sketching block, charcoal, and conté crayon. Alleyn waited for her and together they went to the “music room.”

It was entered by double doors from the rear of the main hall. It was, as Mr. Ruby had once indicated, more like a concert chamber than a room. It were tedious to insist upon the grandiloquences of Waihoe Lodge: enough to say that the stage occupied one end of this enormous room, was approached from the auditorium by three wide steps up to a projecting apron and thence to the main acting area. Beautifully proportioned pillars were ranged across the back, flanking curtained doorways. The musicians were in a little huddle by a grand piano on the floor of the auditorium and in the angle of the apron. They were tuning their instruments, and Rupert, looking ill, was with them. The singers came in and sat together in the auditorium.

There was a change, now, in the Sommita: an air of being in her own professional climate and with no nonsense about it. She was deep in conversation with Rodolfo when the Alleyns came in. She saw them and pointed to chairs halfway down the auditorium. Then she folded her arms and stood facing the stage. Every now and then she shouted angry instructions. As if on some stage director’s orders, a shaft of sunlight from an open window found her. The effect was startling. Troy settled herself to make a drawing.

Now the little orchestra began to play: tentatively at first with stoppages when they consulted with Rupert. Then with one and another of the soloists, repeating passages, making adjustments. Finally the Sommita said, “We take the aria, darling,” and swept up to stage center.

Rupert’s back was turned to the audience and facing the musicians. He gave them the beat conservatively. They played and were stopped by the Sommita. “More authority,” she said. “We should come in like a lion. Again.”

Rupert waited for a moment. Troy saw that his left hand was clenched so hard that the knuckles shone white. He flung back his head, raised his right hand, and gave a strong beat. The short introduction was repeated with much more conviction, it reached a climax of sorts, and then the whole world was filled with one long sound: “Ah!” sang the Sommita. “A-a-a-h! and then, “What joy is here, what peace, what plen-titude!

At first it was impossible to question the glory, so astonishing was the sound, so absolute the command. Alleyn thought: Perhaps it hardly matters what she sings. Perhaps she could sing “A bee-eye-ee-eye-ee sat on the wall-eye-all-eye-all” and distill magic from it. But before the aria had come to its end he thought that even if he hadn’t been warned he would have known that musically it was no great shakes. He thought he could detect clichés and banalities. And the words! He supposed in opera they didn’t matter all that much, but the thought occurred that she might more appropriately have sung: “What joy is here, what peace, what platitude.”

Troy was sitting two seats in front of Alleyn, holding her breath and drawing in charcoal. He could see the lines that ran out like whiplashes under her hand, the thrown-back head, and the wide mouth. Not a bit, he thought remembering their joke, as if the Sommita were yawning: the drawing itself sang. Troy ripped the sketch off her pad and began again. Now her subject talked to the orchestra, who listened with a kind of avid respect, and Troy drew them in the graphic shorthand that was all her own.

Alleyn thought that if Rupert was correct in believing the players had rumbled the inadequacies of the music, the Sommita had ravished them into acceptance, and he wondered if, after all, she could work this magic throughout the performance and save poor Rupert’s face for him.

A hand was laid on Alleyn’s shoulder. He turned his head and found Mr. Reece’s impassive countenance close to his own. “Can you come out?” he said very quietly. “Something has happened.”

As they went out the Sommita and Roberto Rodolfo had begun to sing their duet.

The servant who had brought the Alleyns their breakfast was in the study looking uneasy and deprecating.

“This is Marco,” said Mr. Reece. “He has reported an incident that I think you should know about. Tell Chief Superintendent Alleyn exactly what you told me.”

Marco shied a little on hearing Alleyn’s rank, but he told his story quite coherently and seemed to gather assurance as he did so. He had the Italian habit of gesture but only a slight accent.

He said that he had been sent out to the helicopter hangar to fetch a case of wine that had been brought in the previous day. He went in by a side door and as he opened it heard a scuffle inside the hangar. The door dragged a little on the floor. There was, unmistakably, the sound of someone running. “I think I said something, sir, ‘Hullo’ or something, as I pushed the door open. I was just in time to catch sight of’a man in bathing costume, running out at the open end of the hangar. There’s not much room when the chopper’s there. I had to run back and round the tail, and by the time I got out he was gone.”

Alleyn said: “The hangar, of course, opens on to the cleared space for takeoff.”

“Yes, sir. And it’s surrounded by a kind of shubbery. The proper approach follows round the house to the front. I ran along it about sixty feet but there wasn’t a sign of him, so I returned and had a look at the bush, as they call it. It was very overgrown, and I saw at once he couldn’t have got through it without making a noise. But there wasn’t a sound. I peered about in case he was lying low, and then I remembered that on the far side of the clearing there’s another path through the bush going down to the lakeside. So I took this path. With the same result: nothing: Well, sir,” Marco amended and an air of complacency, if not of smugness, crept over his face, “I say ‘nothing.’ But that’s not quite right. There was something. Lying by the path. There was this.”

With an admirable sense of timing he thrust forward his open palm. On it lay a small round metal or plastic cap.

“It’s what they use to protect the lens, sir. It’s off a camera.”

iii

“I don’t think,” Alleyn said, “we should jump to alarming conclusions about this but certainly it should be followed up. I imagine,” he said dryly, “that anything to do with photography is a tricky subject at the Lodge.”

“With some cause,” said Mr. Reece.

“Indeed. Now then, Marco. You’ve given us a very clear account of what happened, and you’ll think I’m being unduly fussy if we go over it all again.”

Marco spread his hands as if offering him the earth.

“First of all, then: this man. Are you sure it wasn’t one of the guests or one of the staff?”

“No, no, no, no, no,” said Marco rapidly, shaking his finger sideways as if a wasp had stung it. “Not possible. No!”

“Not, for instance, the launch man?”

“No, sir. No! Not anyone of the household. I am certain. I would swear it.”

“Dark or fair?”

“Fair. Bareheaded. Fair. Certainly a blond.”

“And bare to the waist?”

“Of course. Certainly.”

“Not even a camera slung over his shoulder?”

Marco closed his eyes, bunched his fingers and laid the tips to his forehead. He remained like that for some seconds.

“Well? What about it?” Mr. Reece asked a trifle impatiently.

Marco opened his eyes and unbunched his fingers. “It could have been in his hands,” he said.

“This path,” Alleyn said. “The regular approach from the front of the house round to the hangar. As I recollect, it passes by the windows of the concert chamber?”

“Certainly,” Mr. Reece said and nodded very slightly at Alleyn. “And this afternoon, they were not curtained.”

“And open?”

“And open.”

“Marco,” Alleyn said, “did you at any point hear anything going on in the concert chamber?”

“But yes!” Marco cried, staring at him. “Madame, sir. It was Madame. She sang. With the voice of an angel.”

“Ah.”

“She was singing still, sir, when I returned to the clearing.”

“After you found this cap, did you go on to the lakeside?”

“Not quite to the lakeside, sir, but far enough out of the bush to see that he was not there. And then I thought I should not continue, but that I should report at once to Signor Reece. And that is what I did.”

“Very properly.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“And I,” said Mr. Reece, “have sent the house staff and guests to search the grounds.”

“If I remember correctly,” Alleyn said, “at the point where Marco emerged from the bush, it is only a comparatively short distance across from the Island to that narrow tree-clad spit that reaches out from the mainland towards the Island and is linked to it by your power lines?”

“You suggest he might have swum it?” Mr. Reece asked.

“No, sir,” Marco intervened. “Not possible. I would have seen him.” He stopped and then asked with a change of voice, “Or would I?”

“If he’s on the Island he will be found,” said Mr. Reece, coldly. And then to Alleyn: “You were right to say we should not make too much of this incident. It will probably turn out to be some young hoodlum or another with a camera. But it is a nuisance. Bella has been very much upset by this Strix and his activities. If she hears of it she might well begin to imagine all sorts of things. I suggest we say nothing of it to tonight’s guests and performers. You hear that, Marco?”

Marco was all acquiescence.

Alleyn thought that if what was no doubt a completely uncoordinated search was thundering about the premises, the chances of keeping the affair secret were extremely slender. But, he reminded himself, for the present the rehearsal should be engaging everybody’s attention.

Marco was dismissed with a less than gushing word of approval from his employer.

When he had gone, Mr. Reece, with a nearer approach to cosiness than Alleyn would have thought within his command, said: “What do you make of all that? Simply a loutish trespasser or — something else?”

“Impossible to say. Is it pretty widely known in New Zealand that Madame Sommita is your guest?”

“Oh yes. One tries to circumvent the press, but one never totally succeeds. It has come out. There have been articles about the Lodge itself and there are pressmen who try to bribe the launch man to bring them over. He is paid a grotesquely high wage and has the sense to refuse. I must say,” Mr. Reece confided, “it would be very much in character for one of these persons to skulk about the place, having, by whatever means, swimming perhaps, got himself on the Island. The hangar would be a likely spot, one might think, for him to hide.”

“He would hear the rehearsal from there.”

“Precisely. And await his chance to come out and take a photograph through an open window? It’s possible. As long,” Mr. Reece said and actually struck his right fist into his left palm, “as long as it isn’t that filthy Strix at it again. Anything rather than that.”

“Will you tell me something about your staff? You’ve asked me to do my constabulary stuff and this would be a routine question.”

“Ned Hanley is better qualified than I to answer it. He came over here from Australia and saw to it. An overambitious hotel had gone into liquidation. He engaged eight of the staff and a housekeeper for the time we shall be using the Lodge. Marco was not one of these, but we had excellent references, I understand. Ned would tell you.”

“An Italian, of course?”

“Oh, yes. But a naturalized Australian. He made a great thing, just now, of his story, but I would think it was substantially correct. I’m hoping the guests and performers will not, if they do get hold of the story, start jumping to hysterical conclusions. Perhaps we should let it be known quite casually that a boy had swum across and has been sent packing. What do you think?”

Before Alleyn could answer, the door opened and Signor Beppo Lattienzo entered. His immaculate white shorts and silken “matelot” were in disarray and he sweated copiously.

“My dears!” he said. “Drama! The hunt is up. The Hound of Heaven itself — or should I say Himself? — could not be more diligent.”

He dropped into a chair and fanned himself with an open palm. “ ‘Over hill, over dale, through bush, through briar,’ as the industrious fairy remarks and so do I. What fun to be known as ‘The Industrious Fairy,’ ” panted Signor Lattienzo, coyly.

“Any luck?” Alleyn asked.

“Not a morsel. The faithful Maria, my dear Monty, is indomitable. Into the underbrush with the best of us. She has left her hairnet as a votary offering on a thorny entanglement known, I am informed, as a Bush Lawyer.”

Signor Lattienzo smiled blandly at Mr. Reece and tipped Alleyn a lewdish wink. “This,” he remarked, “will not please our diva, no? And if we are to speak of hounds and of persistence, how about the intrepid Strix? What zeal! What devotion! Though she flee to the remotest antipodes, though she, as it were, go to earth (in, one must add, the greatest possible comfort) upon an enchanted island, there shall he nose her out. One can only applaud. Admit it, my dear Monty.”

Mr. Reece said: “Beppo, there is no reason to suppose that the man Strix has had any part in this incident. The idea is ridiculous and I am most anxious that Bella should not entertain it. It is a trivial matter involving some local lout and must not be blown up into a ridiculous drama. You know very well, none better, how she can overreact and after last night’s shock — I really must ask you to use the greatest discretion.”

Signor Lattienzo wiped the sweat away from the area round his left eye. He breathed upon his eyeglass, polished it, and with its aid contemplated his host. “But, of course, my dear Monty,” he said quietly, “I understand. Perfectly. I dismiss the photographer. Poof! He is gone. And now—”

The door burst open and. Ben Ruby strode in. He also showed signs of wear and tear.

“Here! Monty!” he shouted. “What the hell’s the idea? These servants of yours are all saying bloody Strix is back and you ought to call in the police. What about it?”

iv

Mr. Reece, white with annoyance, summoned his entire staff, including the driver and the launch man, into the study. Alleyn, who was asked to remain, admired the manner in which the scene was handled and the absolute authority which Mr. Reece seemed to command. He repeated the explanation that had been agreed upon. The theory of the intrusive lout was laid before them and the idea of Strix’s recrudescence soundly rubbished. “You will forget this idiotic notion, if you please,” said Mr. Reece, and his voice was frigid. He looked pointedly at Maria. “You understand,” he said, “you are not to speak of it to Madame.” He added something in Italian — not one of Alleyn’s strongest languages, but he thought it was a threat of the instant sack if Maria disobeyed orders.

Maria, who had shut her mouth like a trap, glared back at Mr. Reece and muttered incomprehensibly. The household was then dismissed.

“I don’t like your chances,” said Ben Ruby. “They’ll talk.”

“They will behave themselves. With the possible exception of the woman.”

“She certainly didn’t sound cooperative.”

“Jealous.”

“Ah!” said Signor Lattienzo. “The classic situation: mistress and abigail. No doubt Bella confides extensively.”

“No doubt.”

“Well, she can’t do so for the moment. The recitazione is still in full swing.”

Ben Ruby opened the door. From beyond the back of the hall and the wall of the concert chamber but seeming to come from nowhere in particular, there was singing: disembodied as if heard through the wrong end of some auditory telescope. Above three unremarkable voices there soared an incomparable fourth.

“Yes,” said Signor Lattienzo. “It is the recitazione and they are only at the quartet: a third of the way through. They will break for luncheon at one-thirty and it is now twenty minutes past noon. For the time being we are safe.”

“I wouldn’t bet on that one, either,” said Ben Ruby. “She likes to have Maria on tap at rehearsals.”

“If you don’t mind,” Alleyn said, “I think I’ll just take a look at the terrain.”

The three men stared at him and for a moment said nothing. And then Mr. Reece stood up. “You surely cannot for a moment believe—” he said.

“Oh, no, no. But it strikes me that one might find something that would confirm the theory of the naughty boy.”

“Ah.”

“What, for instance?” asked Ben Ruby.

“This or that,” Alleyn said airily. “You never know. The unexpected has a way of turning up. Sometimes. Like you, I wouldn’t bet on it.”

And before any of them had thought of anything else to say, he let himself out and gently closed the door.

He went out of the house by the main entrance, turned left and walked along the graveled front until he came to a path that skirted the western facade. He followed it and as he did so the sound of music and of singing, broken by discussion and the repetition of short passages, grew louder. Presently he came to the windows of the concert chamber and saw that one of them, the first, was still open. It was at the end farthest removed from the stage, which was screened from it by a curtain that operated on a hinged bracket.

He drew nearer. There, quite close, was the spot in the auditorium where the Sommita had stood with her arms folded, directing the singers.

And there, still in her same chair, still crouched over her sketching block, with her short hair tousled and her shoulders hunched, was his wife. She was still hard at work. Her subject was out of sight haranguing the orchestra, but her image leaped up under Troy’s grubby hand. She was using a conté crayon, and the lines she made, sometimes broadly emphatic, sometimes floating into extreme delicacy, made one think of the bowing of an accomplished fiddler.

She put the drawing on the floor, pushed it away with her foot, and stared at it, sucking her knuckles and scowling. Then she looked up and saw her husband. He pulled a face at her, laid a finger across his lips, and ducked out of sight.

He had been careful not to tread on the narrow strip of earth that separated the path from the wall and now, squatting, was able to examine it. It had been recently trampled by a number of persons. To hell with the search party, thought Alleyn.

He moved farther along the path, passing a garden seat and keeping as far away as was possible from the windows. The thicket of fern and underbrush on his right was broken here and there by forays, he supposed, of the hunt, successfully ruining any signs there might have been of an intruder taking cover. Presently the path branched away from the house into the bush to emerge, finally, at the hangar.

Inside the hangar there was ample evidence of Marco’s proceedings. The earthy shortcut he had taken had evidently been damp, and Alleyn could trace his progress on the asphalt floor exactly as he had described it.

Alleyn crossed the landing ground, scorching under the noonday sun. Sounds from the concert chamber had faded. There was no bird song. He found the path through the bush to the lakeside and followed it: dark green closed about him and the now familiar conservatory smell of wet earth and moss.

It was only a short distance to the lake, and soon the bush began to thin out, admitting shafts of sunlight. It must have been about here that Marco said he had spotted the protective cap from the camera. Alleyn came out into the open and there, as he remembered them from his morning walk, were the lake and overhead power lines reaching away to the far shore.

Alleyn stood for a time out there by the lakeside. The sun that beat down on his head spread a kind of blankness over the landscape, draining it of color. He absentmindedly reached into his pocket for his pipe and touched a small hard object. It was the lens cap, wrapped in his handkerchief. He took it out and uncovered it, being careful not to touch the surface: a futile precaution, he thought, after Marco’s handling of the thing.

It was from a well-known make of camera, which produced self-developing instant results. The trade name was stamped on the top.

He folded it up and returned it to his pocket. In a general way he did not go much for “inspiration” in detective work, but if ever he had been visited by such a bonus, it was at that moment down by the lake.