Inspector Alleyn 3-Book Collection 11: Photo-Finish, Light Thickens, Black Beech and Honeydew. Ngaio Marsh

Maria and with the intention of making another delayed entrance. We may expect her at any moment, no doubt. In the meantime the grilled trout was delicious and here comes the coq-au-vin.’

      But the Sommita did not appear. Instead, Mr Reece arrived to say that she had been greatly upset by poor Rupert Bartholomew’s collapse which had no doubt been due to nervous exhaustion, but would rejoin them a little later. He then said that he was sorry indeed to have to tell them that he had been advised by the launchman that the local storm, known as The Rosser, had blown up and would increase in force, probably reaching its peak in about an hour when it would then become inadvisable to make the crossing to the mainland. Loath as he was to break up the party, he felt perhaps … He spread his hands.

      The response was immediate. The guests, having finished their marrons glacés, professed themselves, with many regrets, ready to leave. There was a general exodus for them to prepare themselves for the journey, Sir David Baumgartner, who had been expected to stay, among them. He had an important appointment looming up, he explained, and dare not risk missing it.

      There would be room enough for all the guests and the performers in the bus and cars that waited across the lake. Anyone so inclined could spend the tag end of the night at the Cornishman’s Pass pub on the east side of the Pass and journey down-country by train the next day. The rest would continue through the night, descending to the plains and across them to their ultimate destinations.

      The Alleyns agreed that the scene in the hall bore a resemblance to rush hour on the Underground. There was a sense of urgency and scarcely concealed impatience. The travellers were to leave in two batches of twenty which was the maximum accommodation in the launch. The house-staff fussed about with raincoats and umbrellas. Mr Reece stood near the door repeating valedictory remarks of scant originality and shaking hands. Some of the guests, as their anxiety mounted, became perfunctory in their acknowledgements, a few actually neglected him altogether being intent upon manoeuvring themselves into the top twenty. Sir David Baumgartner, in awful isolation and a caped mackintosh, sat in a porter’s chair looking very cross indeed.

      The entrance doors opened admitting wind, rain and cold all together. The first twenty guests were gone: swallowed up and shut out as if, Troy thought – and disliked herself for so thinking – they were condemned.

      Mr Reece explained to the remainder that it would be at least half an hour before the launch returned and advised them to wait in the drawing room. The servants would keep watch and would report as soon as they sighted the lights of the returning launch.

      A few followed this suggestion but most remained in the hall, sitting round the enormous fireplace or in scattered chairs, wandering about, getting themselves behind the window curtains and coming out, scared by their inability to see anything beyond streaming panes.

      Eru Johnstone was speaking to the tenor, Rodolfo Romano, and the little band of musicians who listened to him in a huddle of apprehension. Alleyn and Troy joined them. Eru Johnstone was saying: ‘It’s something one doesn’t try to explain. I come from the far north of the North Island and have only heard about the Island indirectly from some of our people down here on the Coast. I had forgotten. When we were engaged for this performance, I didn’t connect the two things.’

      ‘But it’s tapu?’ asked the pianist. ‘Is that it?’

      ‘In very early times an important person was buried here,’ he said, as it seemed unwillingly. ‘Ages afterwards, when the pakehas came, a man named Ross, a prospector, rowed out to the island. The story is that the local storm blew up and he was drowned. I had forgotten,’ Eru Johnstone repeated in his deep voice. ‘I suggest you do, too. There have been many visitors since those times and many storms –’

      ‘Hence “Rosser”?’ Alleyn asked.

      ‘So it seems.’

      ‘How long does it usually last?’

      ‘About twenty-four hours, I’m told. No doubt it varies.’

      Alleyn said: ‘On my first visit to New Zealand I met one of your people who told me about Maoritanga. We became friends and I learnt a lot from him – Dr Te Pokiha!’

      ‘Rangi Te Pokiha?’ Johnstone exclaimed. ‘You know him? He is one of our most prominent elders.’

      And he settled down to talk at great length of his people. Alleyn led the conversation back to the Island. ‘After what you have told me,’ he said, ‘do you mind my asking if you believe it to be tapu?’

      After a long pause Eru Johnstone said: ‘Yes.’

      ‘Would you have come,’ Troy asked, ‘if you had known?’

      ‘No,’ said Eru Johnstone.

      ‘Are you staying here?’ asked Signor Lattienzo, appearing at Troy’s elbow, ‘or shall we fall back upon our creature comforts in the drawing room? One can’t go on saying goodbye to people who scarcely listen.’

      ‘I’ve got a letter I want to get off,’ said Alleyn. ‘I think I’ll just scribble it and ask one of these people if they’d mind putting it in the post. What about you, Troy?’

      ‘I rather thought – the studio. I ought to “fix” those drawings.’

      ‘I’ll join you there,’ he said.

      ‘Yes, darling, do.’

      Troy watched him run upstairs.

      ‘Surely you are not going to start painting after all this!’ Signor Lattienzo exclaimed.

      ‘Not I!’ Troy said. ‘It’s just that I’m restless and can’t settle. It’s been a bit of a day, hasn’t it? Who’s in the drawing room?’

      ‘Hilda Dancy and the little Parry who are staying on. Also the Dr Carmichael who suffers excruciatingly from seasickness. It is not very gay in the drawing room although the lissom Hanley weaves in and out. Is it true that you have made drawings this afternoon?’

      ‘One or two preliminary canters.’

      ‘Of Bella?’

      ‘Mostly of her, yes.’

      Signor Lattienzo put his head on one side and contrived to look wistful. In spite of herself Troy laughed. ‘Would you like to see them?’ she said.

      ‘Naturally I would like to see them. May I see them?’

      ‘Come on, then,’ said Troy.

      They went upstairs to the studio. Troy propped her drawings, one by one, on the easel, blew fixative through a diffuser over each and laid them side by side on the throne to dry: Signor Lattienzo screwed in his eyeglass, folded his plump hands over his ample stomach and contemplated them.

      After a long pause during which vague sounds of activity down in the hall drifted up and somewhere a door slammed, Signor Lattienzo said: ‘If you had not made that last one, the one on the right, I would have said you were a merciless lady, Madame Troy.’

      It was the slightest of the drawings. The orchestra was merely indicated playing like mad in the background. In the foreground La Sommita, having turned away from them, stared at vacancy and in everything that Troy had set down with such economy there was desolation.

      ‘Look what you’ve done with her,’ Signor Lattienzo said. ‘Did she remain for long like that? Did she, for once, face reality? I have never seen her look so and now I feel I have never seen her at all.’

      ‘It only lasted for seconds.’

      ‘Yes? Shall you paint her like that?’

      Troy said slowly: ‘No, I don’t think so.’ She pointed to the drawing of La Sommita in full cry, mouth wide open, triumphant. ‘I rather thought this –’

      ‘This is the portrait of a Voice.’

      ‘I would have liked to call it “A in alt” because that sounds so nice.