Ngaio Marsh - Photo Finish

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 getup.

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

i

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 E.S.P. 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 Noel 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 arrived.”

“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 getting gated. I’m abroad in the night because I can’t sleep. I can’t help seeing— everything — her. Whenever I close my eyes— there it is. If I do doze — it’s there. Like those crummy old horror films. An awful face suddenly rushing at one. It might as well be one of Dracula’s ladies after the full treatment.” He gave a miserable giggle and then looked appalled. “I shouldn’t be like this,” he said. “Even though as a matter of fact, it’s no more than the truth. But I mustn’t bore you with my woes.”

“Where is your room?”

“One flight up. Why? Oh, I see. You’re wondering what brought me down here, aren’t you? You’ll think it very peculiar and it’s not easy to explain, but actually it was that thing about being drawn towards something that gives one the horrors like edges of precipices and spiders. You know? After trying to sleep and getting nightmares, I began to think I had to make myself come down to this floor and cross the landing outside— that room. When I went up to bed I actually used the staff stairs to avoid doing that very thing and here I was under this beastly compulsion. So I did it. I hated it and I did it. And in the event there was our rather good-looking chauffeur, Bert, snoring on chairs. He must have very acute hearing, because when I crossed the landing he opened his eyes and stared at me. It was disconcerting because he didn’t utter. I lost my head and said: ‘Oh, hullo, Bert, it’s perfectly all right. Don’t get up,’ and made a bolt of it into this passage and saw the light under your door. I seem to be cold. Would you think it too bold if I asked you if I might have a brandy? I didn’t downstairs because I make it a rule never to unless the Boss Man offers and anyway I don’t really like the stuff. But I think — tonight—”

“Yes, of course. Help yourself.”

“Terrific,” Hanley said. Alleyn saw him half-fill a small tumbler, take a pull at it, shudder violently, and close his eyes.

“Would you mind awfully if I turned on that radiator?” he asked. “Our central heating goes off between twelve and seven.”

Alleyn turned it on. Hanley sat close to it on the edge of the throne and nursed his brandy. “That’s better,” he said. “I feel much better. Sweet of you to understand.”

Alleyn, as far as he knew, had given no sign of having understood anything. He had been thinking that Hanley was the second distraught visitor to the studio over the past forty-eight hours and that in a way he was a sort of unconvincing parody of Rupert Bartholomew. It struck him that Hanley was making the most of his distress, almost relishing it.

“As you’re feeling better,” he suggested, “perhaps you won’t mind putting me straight on one or two domestic matters — especally concerning the servants.”

“If I can,” Hanley said, readily enough.

“I hope you can. You’ve been with Mr. Reece for some years, haven’t you?”

“Since January 1976. I was a senior secretary with the Hoffman-Beilstein Group in New York. Transferred from their Sydney offices. The Boss Man was chums with them in those days and I saw quite a lot of him. And he of me. His secretary had died and in the upshot,” said Hanley, a little too casually, “I got the job.” He finished his brandy. “It was all quite amicable and took place during a cruise of the Caribbean in the Hoffman yacht. I was on duty. The Boss Man was a guest. I think it was then that he found out about the Hoffman-Beilstein organization being naughty. He’s absolutely Caesar’s Wife himself. Well, you know what I mean. Pure as the driven snow. Incidentally, that was when he first encountered the Lady,” said Hanley, and his mouth tightened. “But without any noticeable reaction. He wasn’t really a lady’s man.”

“No?”

“Oh, no. She made all the running. And, face it, she was a collector’s piece. It was like pulling off a big deal. As a matter of fact, in my opinion, it was — well — far from being a grande passion . Oh dear, there I go again. But it was, as you might say, a very aseptic relationship.”

This chimed, Alleyn thought, with Dr. Carmichael’s speculation.