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

for the sake of argument, Strix took the shot you talk about. What would he do with it? He’d post if off to The Watchman at once, wouldn’t he? He’d put it in the mailbox to be taken away in the bag.’

      ‘Or,’ Alleyn suggested, ‘to avoid Mr Hanley noticing it when he cleared the box he might slip it directly into the mailbag while it was still unlocked and waiting in the study.’

      ‘He might do that.’

      ‘Is that what you’d say he did?’

      ‘I don’t say what he did. I don’t know what he did.’

      ‘Did you know the mailbag was forgotten last night and is still on the premises?’

      Marco began to look very scary. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Is it?’

      ‘So if our speculation should turn out to be the truth: if you put the photograph, addressed to The Watchman, in the mailbag, the question is: who removed it? Who impaled it on the body? If, of course, you didn’t.’

      ‘It is idiotic to persist in this lie. Why do you do it? Where for me is the motive? Suppose I were Strix? So: I kill the goose that lays the golden egg? Does it make sense? So: after all, the man who takes the photograph does not post it. He is the murderer and he leaves it on the body.’

      ‘What is your surname?’

      ‘Smith.’

      ‘I see.’

      ‘It is Smith,’ Marco shouted. ‘Why do you look like that? Why should it not be Smith? Is there a law against Smith? My father was an American.’

      ‘And your mother?’

      ‘A Calabrian. Her name was Croce. I am Marco Croce Smith. Why?’

      ‘Have you any Rossis in your family?’

      ‘None. Again, why?’

      ‘There is an enmity between the Rossis and Madame Sommita’s family.’

      ‘I know nothing of it,’ said Marco and then burst out, ‘How could I have done it? When was it done? I don’t even know when it was done but all the time from when the opera is ended until Maria found her I am on duty. You saw me. Everybody saw me. I wait at table. I attend in the hall. I go to and from the launch. I have alibis.’

      ‘That may be true. But you may also have had a collaborator.’

      ‘You are mad.’

      ‘I am telling you how the police will think.’

      ‘It is a trap. You try to trap me.’

      ‘If you choose to put it like that. I want, if you didn’t do it, to satisfy myself that you didn’t. I want to get you out of the way. I believe you to be Strix and as Strix I think your activities were despicable but I do not accuse you of murder. I simply want you to tell me if you put the photograph in the postbag. In an envelope addressed to The Watchman.’

      There followed a silence. The sun now shone in at the studio windows on the blank canvas and the empty model’s throne. Outside a tui sang: a deep lucid phrase, uncivilized as snow-water and ending in a consequential clatter as if it cleared its throat. You darling, thought Troy, standing by the window, and knew that she could not endure to stay much longer inside this clever house with its arid perfections and its killed woman in the room on the landing.

      Marco said: ‘I surmise it was in the postbag. I do not know. I do not say I put it there.’

      ‘And the bag was in the study?’

      ‘That is where it is kept.’

      ‘When was the letter put in it? Immediately after the photograph was taken? Or perhaps only just before the postbox was emptied into it and it was locked.’

      Marco shrugged.

      ‘And finally – crucially – when was the photograph removed, and by whom, and stabbed on to the body?’

      ‘Of that I know nothing. Nothing, I tell you,’ said Marco, and then with sudden venom, ‘But I can guess.’

      ‘Yes?’

      ‘It is simple. Who clears the postbox always? Always! Who? I have seen him. He puts his arms into the bag and rounds it with his hands to receive the box and then he opens the box and holds it inside the bag to empty itself. Who?’

      ‘Mr Hanley?’

      ‘Ah. The secretary. Il favorito,’ said Marco and achieved an angry smirk. He bowed in Troy’s direction. ‘Excuse me, madam,’ he said. ‘It is not a suitable topic.’

      ‘Did you actually see Mr Hanley do this, last evening?’

      ‘No, sir.’

      ‘Very well,’ said Alleyn. ‘You may go.’

      He went out with a kind of mean flourish and did not quite bang the door.

      ‘He’s a horrible little man,’ said Troy, ‘but I don’t think he did it.’

      ‘Nor I,’ Dr Carmichael agreed.

      ‘His next move,’ said Alleyn, ‘will be to hand in his notice and wait for the waters to subside.’

      ‘Sling his hook?’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘Will you let him?’

      ‘I can’t stop him. The police may try to or I suppose Reece could simply deny him transport.’

      ‘Do you think Reece believes Marco is Strix?’

      ‘If ever there was a clam its middle name was Reece but I think he does.’

      ‘Are you any further on?’ asked the doctor.

      ‘A bit. I wish I’d found out whether Marco knows who took his bloody snapshot out of the bag. If ever it was in the bloody bag, which is conjectural. It’s so boring of him not to admit he put it in. If he did.’

      ‘He almost admitted something, didn’t he?’ said Troy.

      ‘He’s trying to work it out whether it would do him more good or harm to come clean.’

      ‘I suppose,’ hazarded Dr Carmichael, ‘that whoever it was, Hanley or anyone else, who removed the photograph, it doesn’t follow he was the killer.’

      ‘Not as the night the day. No.’

      Troy suddenly said: ‘Having offered to make beds, I suppose I’d better make them. Do you think Miss Dancy would be outraged if I asked her to bear a hand? I imagine the little Sylvia is otherwise engaged.’

      ‘Determined to maintain the house-party tone against all hazards, are you, darling?’ said her husband.

      ‘That’s right. The dinner-jacket-in-the-jungle spirit.’

      Dr Carmichael gazed at Troy in admiration and surprise. ‘I must say, Mrs Alleyn, you set us all an example. How many beds do you plan to make?’

      ‘I haven’t counted.’

      ‘The round dozen or more,’ teased Alleyn, ‘and God help all those who sleep in them.’

      ‘He’s being beastly,’ Troy remarked. ‘I’m not all that good at bedmaking. I’ll just give Miss Dancy a call, I think.’

      She consulted the list of room numbers by the telephone. Dr Carmichael joined Alleyn at the windows. ‘It really is clearing,’ he said. ‘The wind’s dropping. And I do believe the lake’s settling.’

      ‘Yes, it really is.’

      ‘What do you suppose will happen first: the telephone be reconnected, or the launch engine be got going, or the police