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

stamped his feet and threw up his hands. ‘Why! Why! Because she wanted me to pity her. It was when I first told her that thing was no good and I couldn’t go on with the performance: She – I think she saw that I’d changed. Seen her for what she was. It was awful. I was trapped. From then on I – well, you know, don’t you, what it was like. She could still whip up –’

      ‘Yes. All right.’

      ‘Tonight – last night – it all came to a head. I hated her for singing my opera so beautifully. Can you understand that? It was a kind of insult. As if she deliberately showed how worthless it was. She was a vulgar woman, you know. That was why she degraded me. That was what I felt after the curtain fell – degraded – and it was then I knew I hated her.’

      ‘And this was written on the spur of the moment?’

      ‘Of course. I suppose you could say I was sort of beside myself. I can’t tell you what it did to me. Standing there. Conducting, for Christ’s sake. It was indecent exposure.’

      Alleyn said carefully: ‘You will realize that I must keep the paper for the time being, at least. I will write you a receipt for it.’

      ‘Do you believe what I’ve said?’

      ‘That’s the sort of question we’re not supposed to answer. By and large – yes.’

      ‘Have you finished with me?’

      ‘I think so. For the present.’

      ‘It’s an extraordinary thing,’ said Rupert. ‘And there’s no sense in it but I feel better. Horribly tired but – yes – better.’

      ‘You’ll sleep now,’ Alleyn said.

      ‘I still want to get rid of that abortion.’

      Alleyn thought wearily that he supposed he ought to prevent this but said he would look at the score. They switched off the backstage lights and went to the front-of-house. Alleyn sat on the apron steps and turned through the score, forcing himself to look closely at each page. All those busy little black marks that had seemed so eloquent, he supposed, until the moment of truth came to Rupert and all the strangely unreal dialogue that librettists put in the mouths of their singers. Remarks like: ‘What a comedy!’ and ‘Do I dream?’ and ‘If she were mine.’

      He came to the last page and found that, sure enough, the corner had been torn off. He looked at Rupert and found he was sound asleep in one of the VIP chairs.

      Alleyn gathered the score and separate parts together, put them beside Rupert and touched his shoulder. He woke with a start as if tweaked by a puppeteer.

      ‘If you are still of the same mind,’ Alleyn said, ‘it’s all yours.’

      So Rupert went to the fireplace in the hall where the embers glowed. Papers bound solidly together are slow to burn. The Alien Corn merely smouldered, blackened and curled. Rupert used an oversized pair of bellows and flames crawled round the edges. He threw on loose sheets from the individual parts and these burst at once into flame and flew up the chimney. There was a basket of kindling by the hearth. He began to heap it on the fire in haphazard industry as if to put his opera out of its misery. Soon firelight and shadows leapt about the hall. The pregnant woman looked like a smirking candidate for martyrdom. At one moment the solitary dagger on the wall flashed red. At another the doors into the concert chamber appeared momentarily and once the stairs were caught by an erratic flare.

      It was then that Alleyn caught sight of a figure on the landing. It stood with its hands on the balustrade and its head bent, looking down into the hall. Its appearance was as brief as a thought, a fraction of a fraction of a second. The flare expired and when it fitfully reappeared whoever it was up there had gone.

      Bert? Alleyn didn’t think so. It had, he felt sure, worn a dressing gown or overcoat but beyond that there had been no impression of an individual among the seven men, any one of whom might have been abroad in the night.

      At its end The Alien Corn achieved dramatic value. The wind howled in the chimney, blazing logs fell apart and what was left of the score flew up and away. The last they saw of it was a floating ghost of black thread-paper with ‘dedicated to Isabella Sommita’ in white showing for a fraction of a second before it too disintegrated and was gone up the chimney.

      Without a word Rupert turned away and walked quickly upstairs. Alleyn put a fireguard across the hearth. When he turned away he noticed, on a table inside the front entrance, a heavy canvas bag with a padlock and chain: the mailbag. Evidently it should have gone off with the launch and in the confusion had been overlooked.

      Alleyn followed Rupert upstairs. The house was now very quiet. He fancied there were longer intervals between the buffets of the storm.

      When he reached the landing he was surprised to find Rupert still there and staring at the sleeping Bert.

      Alleyn murmured: ‘You’ve got a key to that door, haven’t you?’

      ‘Didn’t you get it?’ Rupert whispered.

      ‘I? Get it? What do you mean?’

      ‘She said you wanted it.’

      ‘Who did?’

      ‘Maria.’

      ‘When?’

      ‘After you and the doctor left my room. After I’d gone to bed. She came and asked for the key.’

      ‘Did you give it to her?’

      ‘Yes, of course. For you.’ Alleyn drew in his breath. ‘I didn’t want it,’ Rupert whispered. ‘My God! Go into that room! See her! Like that.’

      Alleyn waited for several seconds before he asked: ‘Like what?’

      ‘Are you mad?’ Rupert asked. ‘You’ve seen her. A nightmare.’

      ‘So you’ve seen her too?’

      And then Rupert realized what he had said. He broke into a jumble of whispered expostulations and denials. Of course he hadn’t seen her. Maria had told him what it was like. Maria had described it. Maria had said Alleyn had sent her for the key.

      He ran out of words, made a violent gesture of dismissal and bolted. Alleyn heard his door slam.

      And at last Alleyn himself went to bed. The clock on the landing struck four as he walked down the passage to their room. When he parted the window curtains there was a faint greyness in the world outside. Troy was fast asleep.

      III

      Marco brought their breakfast at eight o’clock. Troy had been awake for an hour. She had woken when Alleyn came to bed and had lain quiet and waited to see if he wanted to talk but he had touched her head lightly and in a matter of seconds was dead to the world.

      It was not his habit to use a halfway interval between sleep and wake. He woke like a cat, fully and instantly, and gave Marco good morning. Marco drew the curtains and the room was flooded with pallid light. There was no rain on the window-panes and no sound of wind.

      ‘Clearing is it?’ Alleyn asked.

      ‘Yes, sir. Slowly. The lake is still very rough.’

      ‘Too rough for the launch?’

      ‘Too much rough, sir, certainly.’

      He placed elaborate trays across them both and brought them extra pillows. His dark rather handsome head came close to theirs.

      ‘It must be quite a sight – the lake and the mountains?’ Alleyn said lightly.

      ‘Very impressive, sir.’

      ‘Your mysterious photographer should be there again with his camera.’

      A little muscle jumped under Marco’s olive cheek.