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

Dr Carmichael had gone Alleyn opened a note that lay on top of his dispatch case – took out an all-too-familiar file and settled down to read it for the seventh time.

      Isabella Pepitone known as Isabella Sommita. Born 1940, reputedly in Palermo, Sicily. Family subsequently settled in USA.

      Father Alfredo Pepitone, successful businessman USA, suspected of Mafia activities but never arrested. Suspect in Rossi homicide case 1965. Victim: Bianca Rossi, female. Pepitone subsequently killed in car accident. Homicide suspected. No arrest.

      Alleyn had brought his library book upstairs. There it lay near to hand – Il Mistero di Bianca Rossi.

      Subject trained as singer. First in New York and later for three years under Beppo Lattienzo in Milan. Subject’s debut 1968 La Scala. Became celebrated. 1970–79: Associated socially with Hoffman-Beilstein group.

      1977 May 10th: Self-styled ‘Baron’ Hoffman-Beilstein, since believed to be Mr Big behind large-scale heroin chain, cruised his yacht Black Star round the Bermudas. Subject was one of his guests. Visited Miami via Fort Lauderdale. First meeting with Montague V. Reece, fellow passenger.

      1977 May 11th: Subject and Hoffman-Beilstein lunched at Palm Beach with Earl J. Ogden now known to be background figure in heroin trade. He dined aboard yacht same night. Subsequently a marked increase in street sales and socially high-class markets Florida and, later, New York. FBI suspects heroin brought ashore from Black Star at Fort Lauderdale. Interpol interested.

      1977: Relations with Hoffman-Beilstein became less frequent.

      1978: Relations H-B apparently terminated. Close relationship developed with Reece. Subject’s circle now consists of top impeccable socialites and musical celebrities.

      Written underneath these notes in the spiky, irritable hand of Alleyn’s Assistant Commissioner:

      For Ch. Sup. Alleyn’s attn. Not much joy. Any items however insignificant will be appreciated.

      Alleyn locked the file back in the case. He began to walk about the room as if he kept an obligatory watch. It would be so easy, he thought, to concoct a theory based on the meagre document. How would it go?

      The Sommita, born Bella Pepitone which he thought he’d heard or read somewhere, was a common Sicilian name, but was reared in the United States. He remembered the unresolved Rossi case quite well. It was of the sort that turns up in books about actual crimes. The feud was said to be generations deep: a hangover from some initial murder in Sicily. It offered good material for ‘true crimes’ collections being particularly bloody and having a peculiar twist: in the long succession of murders the victims had always been women and the style of their putting-off grisly.

      The original crime which took place in 1910 in Sicily and triggered off the feud, was said to have been the killing of a Pepitone woman in circumstances of extreme cruelty. Ever since, hideous idiocies had been perpetrated on both sides at irregular intervals in the name of this vendetta.

      The macabre nature of the Sommita’s demise and her family connections would certainly qualify her as a likely candidate and it must be supposed would notch up several points on the Rossi score.

      Accepting, for the moment, this outrageous proposition, what, he speculated, about the MO? How was it all laid on? Could Strix be slotted into the pattern? Very readily, if you let your imagination off the chain. Suppose Strix was in the Rossi interest and had been hired, no doubt at an exorbitant price, to torment the victim, but not necessarily to dispatch her? Perhaps Strix was himself a member of the Rossi Family? In this mixed stew of concoctions there was one outstanding ingredient: the identity of Strix. For Alleyn it was hardly in doubt but if he was right it followed that Strix was not the assassin. (And how readily that melodramatic word surfaced in this preposterous case.) From the conclusion of the opera until Alleyn went upstairs to write his letter this ‘Strix’ had been much in evidence downstairs. He had played the ubiquitous busybody. He had been present all through dinner and in the hall when the guests were milling about waiting to embark.

      He had made repeated trips from house to jetty full of consoling chat, sheltering departing guests under a gigantic umbrella. He had been here, there and everywhere but he certainly had not had time to push his way through the crowd, go upstairs, knock on the Sommita’s door, be admitted, administer chloroform, asphyxiate her, wait twenty minutes and then implant the stiletto and the photograph. And return to his duties, unruffled, in his natty evening get-up.

      For, in Alleyn’s mind, at this juncture there were no two ways about the identity of Strix.

      * Whare – small dwelling

       CHAPTER 6

       Storm Continued

      Alleyn wrote up his notes. He sat at the brand-new paint-table Troy would never use and worked for an hour, taking great pains to be comprehensive, detailed, succinct and lucid, bearing in mind that the notes were destined for the New Zealand police. And the sooner he handed them over and he and Troy packed their bags, the better he would like it.

      The small hours came and went and with them that drained sensation accompanied by the wakefulness that replaces an unsatisfied desire for sleep. The room, the passage outside, the landing and the silent house beyond seemed to change their character and lead a stealthy night life of their own.

      It was raining again. Giant handfuls of rice seemed to be thrown across the windowpanes. The Lodge, new as it was, jolted under the onslaught. Alleyn thought of the bathing pool below the studio windows, and almost fancied he could hear its risen waters slapping at the house.

      At a few minutes short of two o’clock he was visited by an experience Troy, ever since the early days of their marriage when he had first confided in her, called his ‘Familiar’, though truly a more accurate name might be ‘Unfamiliar’ or perhaps ‘Alter Ego’. He understood that people interested in such matters were well acquainted with this state of being and that it was not at all unusual. Perhaps the ESP buffs had it taped. He had never cared to ask.

      The nearest he could get to it was to say that without warning he would feel as if he had moved away from his own identity and looked at himself as if at a complete stranger. He felt that if he held on outside himself something new and very remarkable would come out of it. But he never did hang on and as suddenly as normality had gone it would return. The slightest disturbance clicked it back and he was within himself again.

      As now, when he caught a faint movement that had not been there before – the sense rather than the sound – of someone in the passage outside the room.

      He went to the door and opened it and was face to face with the ubiquitous and serviceable Hanley.

      ‘Oh,’ said Hanley, ‘so sorry. I was just going to knock. One saw the light under your door and wondered if – you know – one might be of use.’

      ‘You’re up late. Come in.’

      He came in, embellishing his entrance with thanks and apologies. He wore a dressing gown of Noël Coward vintage and Moroccan slippers. His hair was fluffed up into a little crest like a baby’s. In the uncompromising lights of the studio it could be seen that he was not very young.

      ‘I think,’ he said, ‘it’s absolutely fantastic of you to take on all this beastliness. Honestly!’

      ‘Oh,’ Alleyn said, ‘I’m only treading water, you know, until the proper authorities arrive.’

      ‘A prospect that doesn’t exactly fill one with rapture.’

      ‘Why are you abroad so late, Mr Hanley?’

      ‘Couldn’t you settle for “Ned”? Mr Hanley makes one feel like an undergraduate