Ngaio Marsh - Photo Finish

He turned to Mrs. Bacon. “Perhaps we might just have a word?” he suggested.

“Certainly,” she said. “In my office.”

“Good.” He looked around the assembled staff.

“I want you all to remain here,” he said. “We won’t keep you long. I’ll leave Dr. Carmichael in charge.”

Mrs. Bacon conducted Alleyn and Hanley to her office, which turned out to be a sitting room with a large desk in it.

She said: “I don’t know whether you gentlemen would care for a drink, but I do know I would,” and went to a cupboard, from which she produced a bottle of whiskey and three glasses. Alleyn didn’t want a drink but thought it politic to accept. Hanley said: “Oh, yes. Oh yes. Please .”

Alleyn said: “I see no point in pretending that I think the perpetrator of this crime has contrived to leave the island, nor do I think he is somewhere out there in the storm or skulking in the hangar. Mrs. Bacon, is the entire staff collected in there? Nobody missing?”

“No. I made sure of that.”

“Good. I think it will be best for you two, if you will, to apportion the various areas so that all are covered without overlapping. I’m not familiar enough with the topography of the Lodge to do this. I’ll cruise. But the guests will know their way about, presumably, after yesterday’s abortive search.”

Mrs. Bacon had watched him very steadily. He thought that this had probably been her manner in her hotel days when listening to complaints.

She said: “Am I wrong in understanding that you don’t believe the murderer was on the island yesterday? That the trespasser was not the murderer, in fact?”

Alleyn hesitated and then said: “I don’t think the murderer was a trespasser, no.”

Hanley said loudly: “Oh no ! But you can’t — I mean — that would mean — I mean — oh no .”

“It would mean,” said Mrs. Bacon, still looking at Alleyn, “that Mr. Alleyn thinks Madame Sommita was murdered either by a guest or by a member of the household. That’s correct, Mr. Alleyn, isn’t it? By — if I can put it that way — one of us?”

“That is perfectly correct, Mrs. Bacon,” said Alleyn.

i

The hunt turned out, as Alleyn had expected it would, to be a perfectly useless exercise. The couples were carefully assorted. Marco was paired with Mrs. Bacon, Ben Ruby with Dr. Carmichael, and Hanley with the chef, for whom he seemed to have an affinity. Alleyn dodged from one pair to another, turning up where he was least expected, sometimes checking a room that had already been searched, sometimes watching the reluctant activities of the investigators, always registering in detail their reactions to the exercise.

These did not vary much. Hanley was all eyes and teeth and inclined to get up little intimate arguments with the chef. Ben Ruby, smoking a cigar, instructed his partner, Dr. Carmichael, where to search, but did nothing in particular himself. Alleyn thought he seemed to be preoccupied as if confronted by a difficult crossword puzzle. Signor Lattienzo looked as if he thought the exercise was futile.

When the search was over they all returned to the staff sitting room where, on Alleyn’s request, Hilda Dancy and Sylvia Parry joined them. Nobody had anything to report. The New Zealanders, Alleyn noticed, collected in a huddle. Mrs. Bacon and the ex-hotel staff showed a joint tendency to eye the Italians. Marco attached himself to Signor Lattienzo. Maria entered weeping but in a subdued manner, having been chastened, Alleyn fancied, by Mrs. Bacon. Hanley detached himself from his chef and joined Ben Ruby.

When they were all assembled, the door opened and Mr. Reece walked in. He might have arrived to take the chair at a shareholders’ meeting. Hanley was assiduous with offers of a seat and was disregarded.

Mr. Reece said to Alleyn: “Please don’t let me interrupt. Do carry on.”

“Thank you,” Alleyn said. He told Mr. Reece of the search and its non-result and was listened to with stony attention. He then addressed the company. He said he was grateful to them for having carried out a disagreeable job and asked that if any one of them, on afterthought, should remember something that, however remotely, could be of significance, he would at once speak of it. There was no response. He then asked how many of them possessed cameras.

The question was received with concern. Glances were exchanged. There was a general shuffling of feet.

“Come on,” Alleyn said. “There’s no need to show the whites of your eyes over a harmless inquiry. I’ll give you a lead.” He raised his hand, “I’ve got a camera and I don’t mind betting most of you have. Hands up.” Mr. Reece, in the manner of seconding the motion, raised his. Seven more followed suit, one after another, until only six had not responded: three New Zealand housemen with Maria, Marco, and Hilda Dancy.

“Good,” Alleyn said. “Now. I’m going to ask those of you who do possess a camera to tell me what the make is and if you’ve used it at any time during the last week and if so, what you took. Mrs. Bacon?”

The response was predictable. A cross-section of cameras, from a wildly expensive type of self-developing instrument, the property of Mr. Reece, down to low-priced popular items at the falling-off-a-log level of simplicity, belonging to Sylvia Parry and two of the maids.

Mr. Ruby’s camera was another highly sophisticated and expensive version of instantaneous self-development. He had used it that very morning when he had lined up the entire houseparty with the Lodge for a background. He actually had the “picture,” as he consistently called the photograph, on him and showed it to Alleyn. There was Troy between Mr. Reece, who, as usual, conveyed nothing, and Signor Lattienzo, who playfully ogled her. And there, at the center, of course, the Sommita with her arm laid in tigerish possession across the shoulders of a haunted Rupert, while Silvia Parry, on his other side, looked straight ahead. A closer examination showed that she had taken his hand.

Alleyn himself, head and shoulders taller than his neighbors, was, he now saw with stoic distaste, being winsomely contemplated by the ubiquitous Hanley, three places removed in the back row.

Signor Lattienzo was a problem. He waved his hands and cast up his eyes. “Oh, my dear Mr. Alleyn!” he said. “Yes, I have a camera. It was presented to me by — forgive my conscious looks and mantling cheeks — a grateful pupil. Isabella, in fact. I cannot remember the name and have been unable to master its ridiculously complicated mechanism. I carry it about with me, in order to show keen.”

“And you haven’t used it?”

“Well,” said Signor Lattienzo. “In a sense I have used it. Yesterday. It upsets me to remember. Isabella proposed that I take photographs of her at the bathing pool. Rather than confess my incompetence, I aimed it at her and pressed a little protuberance. It gave no persuasive click. I repeated the performance several times but nothing emerged. As to any latent result, one has grave misgivings. If there are any, they rest in some prenatal state in the womb of the camera. You shall play the midwife,” offered Signor Lattienzo.

“Thank you. Perhaps if I could see the camera—?”

“But of course. Of course. Shall I fetch it?”

“Please do.”

Signor Lattienzo bustled away, but after a considerable period, during which Alleyn finished the general camera check, he returned looking flustered.

“Alas!” he proclaimed and spread his arms.

“Have you lost your camera?” Alleyn said.

“Not to say lost , my dear fellow. Mislaid . I suspect by the swimming pool. By now, one fears, drowned.”