Ngaio Marsh - Photo Finish

“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.

i

Early in the morning of the following day there came a change in the weather. A wind came up from the northwest, not a strong wind and not steady, but rather it was a matter of occasional brushes of cooler air on the face and a vague stirring among the trees around the house. The sky was invaded by oncoming masses of cloud, turrets and castles that mounted and changed and multiplied. The Lake was no longer glassy but wrinkled. Tiny wavelets slapped gently at the shore.

At intervals throughout the morning new guests would arrive: some by chartered plane to the nearest airport and thence by helicopter to the island, others by train and car and a contingent of indigenous musical intelligentsia by bus. The launch would be very active.

A piano tuner arrived and could be heard dabbing away at single notes and, to the unmusical ear, effecting no change in their pitch.

Sir David Baumgartner, the distinguished musicologist and critic, was to stay overnight at the Lodge, together with a Dr. Carmichael, a celebrated consultant who was also president of the New Zealand Philharmonic Society. The remainder faced many dark hours in launch, bus and cars and in midmorning would be returned wan and bemused to their homes in Canterbury.

The general idea, as far as the Sommita had concerned herself with their reaction to these formidable exertions, was that the guests would be so enraptured by their entertainment as to be perfectly oblivious of all physical discomfort. In the meantime she issued a command that the entire house party was to assemble outside the house for Mr. Ben Ruby to take a mass photograph. They did so in chilly discomfort under a lowering sky.

“Eyes and teeth to the camera, everybody,” begged Mr. Ruby.

The Sommita did not reappear at luncheon and was said to be resting. It was, on the whole, a quiet meal. Even Signor Lattienzo did little to enliven it. Rupert Bartholomew, looking anguished, ate nothing, muttered something to the effect that he was needed in the concert chamber, and excused himself. Mr. Reece made ponderous small talk with Troy while Alleyn, finding himself next to Miss Hilda Dancy, did his best. He asked her if she found opening nights trying and she replied in vibrant contralto, “When they are important,” clearly indicating that this one was not. After Rupert had left them she said, “It’s a crying shame.”

“A crying shame?” he ventured. “How?”

“You’ll see,” she prophesied. “Cannibal!” she added and, apart from giving him a dark look which he was unable to interpret, though he thought he could make a fairly good guess, she was disinclined for any further conversation.

After luncheon the Alleyns went up to the studio, where he related the story of the interloper and the camera cap. When he had finished and Troy had taken time to think it over, she said: “Rory, do you think he’s still on the Island? The photographer?”

“The photographer? Yes,” he said, and something in his voice made her stare at him. “I think the photographer’s here. I’ll tell you why.” And he did.

For the rest of the afternoon Troy brooded over her drawings and made some more. Sounds of arrival were heard from time to time. Beyond the great window the prospect steadily darkened and the forest on the far shore moved as if brushed by an invisible hand. “The arrivals by launch will have a rough trip,” said Alleyn. The helicopter flapped down to its landing place and discharged an imposing personage in a black overcoat and hat. “Sir David Baumgartner, no less,” said Alleyn and then, “Troy, you saw me outside that window, didn’t you? Do you think you would have been bound to notice a photographer if one had operated through that same window?”

“Oh, no,” she said, “not bound to at all. I was working.”