Ngaio Marsh - Black As He Is Painted

The studio was a separate room at the back of the house and had been built for a Victorian Academician of preposterous fame. It had an absurd entrance approached by a flight of steps with a canopy supported by a brace of self-conscious plaster caryatids that Troy had thought too funny to remove. Between these, in stunning incongruity, stood the enormous mlinzi , only slightly less impressive in a dark suit than he had been in his lion-skin and bracelets. He had his right forearm inside his jacket. He completely filled the entrance.

Alleyn said: “Good evening.”

“Good day. Sir,” said the mlinzi .

“I-am-going-in,” said Alleyn very distinctly. When no move was made, he repeated this announcement, tapping his chest and pointing to the door.

The mlinzi rolled his eyes, turned smartly, knocked on the door and entered. His huge voice was answered by another, even more resonant, and by a matter-of-fact comment from Troy: “Oh, here’s Rory,” Troy said.

The mlinzi stood aside and Alleyn, uncertain about the degree of his own exasperation, walked in.

The model’s throne was at the far end of the studio. Hung over a screen Troy used for backgrounds was a lion’s skin. In front of it, in full ceremonials, ablaze with decorations, gold lace and accoutrements, legs apart and arms akimbo, stood the Boomer.

Troy, behind a four-foot canvas, was setting her palette. On the floor lay two of her rapid exploratory charcoal drawings. A brush was clenched between her teeth. She turned her head and nodded vigorously at her husband, several times.

“Ho-ho!” shouted the Boomer. “Excuse me, my dear Rory, that I don’t descend. As you see, we are busy. Go away!” he shouted at the mlinzi and added something curt in their native tongue. The man went away.

“I apologize for him!” the Boomer said magnificently. “Since last night he is nervous of my well-being. I allowed him to come.”

“He seems to be favouring his left arm.”

“Yes. It turns out that his collar-bone was fractured.”

“Last night?”

“By an assailant, whoever he was.”

“Has he seen a doctor?”

“Oh, yes. The man who looks after the Embassy. A Dr. Gomba. He’s quite a good man. Trained at St. Luke’s.”

“Did he elaborate at all on the injury?”

“A blow, probably with the edge of the hand, since there is no indication of a weapon. It’s not a break — only a crack.”

“What does the mlinzi himself say about it?”

“He has elaborated little on his rather sparse account of last night: that someone struck him on the base of the neck and seized his spear. He has no idea of his assailant’s identity. I must apologize,” said the Boomer affably, “for my unheralded appearance, my dear old man. My stay in London has been curtailed. I am determined that no painter but your wife shall do the portrait and I am impatient to have it. Therefore I cut through the codswallop, as we used to say at Davidson’s, and here, as you see, I am.”

Troy removed the brush from between her teeth. “Stay if you like, darling,” she said, and gave her husband one of the infrequent smiles that still afforded him such deep pleasure.

“If I’m not in the way,” he said, and contrived not to sound sardonic. Troy shook her head.

“No, no, no,” said the Boomer graciously. “We are pleased to have your company. It is permitted to converse. Provided,” he added with a bawling laugh, “that one expects no reply. That is the situation. Am I right, maestro ?” he asked Troy, who did not reply. “I do not know the feminine of maestro ,” he confessed. “One must not say maestress . That would be in bad taste.”

Troy made a snuffling noise.

Alleyn sat down in a veteran armchair. “Since I am here, and as long as it doesn’t disrupt the proceedings—” he began.

“Nothing,” the Boomer interposed, “disrupts me .”

“Good. I wonder then if Your Excellency can tell me anything about two of your last night’s guests.”

“My Excellency can try. He is so ridiculous,” the Boomer parenthesized to Troy, “with his ‘Excellencies.’ ” And to Alleyn: “I have been telling your wife about our times at Davidson’s.”

“The couple I mean are a brother and sister called Sanskrit.”

The Boomer had been smiling, but his lips now closed over his dazzling teeth. “I think perhaps I have moved a little.” he said.

“No,” Troy said. “You are splendidly still.” She began to make dark, sweeping gestures on her canvas.

“Sanskrit,” Alleyn repeated. “They are enormously fat.”

“Ah! Yes. I know the couple you mean.”

“Is there a link with Ng’ombwana?”

“A commercial one. Yes. They were importers of fancy goods.”

“Were?”

“Were,” said the Boomer without batting an eyelid. “They sold out.”

“Do you know them personally?”

“They have been presented,” he said.

“Did they want to leave?”

“Presumably not, since they are coming back.”

“What?”

“I believe they are coming back. Some alteration in plans. I understand they intend to return immediately. They are persons of little importance.”

“Boomer,” said Alleyn, “have they any cause to bear you a grudge?”

“None whatever. Why?”

“It’s simply a check-up. After all, it seems somebody tried to murder you at your party.”

“Well, you won’t have any luck with them. If anything they ought to feel grateful.”

“Why?”

“It is under my regime that they return. They had been rather abruptly treated by the previous government.”

“When was the decision taken? To reinstate them?”

“Let me see — a month ago, I should say. More perhaps.”

“But when I visited you three weeks ago I actually happened to see Sanskrit on the steps outside his erstwhile premises. The name had just been painted out.”

“You’re wrong there, my dear Rory. It was, I expect, in process of being painted in again.”

“I see,” said Alleyn, and was silent for some seconds. “Do you like them?” he said. “The Sanskrits?”

“No,” said the Boomer. “I find them disgusting.”

“Well, then—?”

“The man had been mistakenly expelled. He made out his case,” the Boomer said with a curious air of restraint. “He has every reason to feel an obligation and none to feel animosity. You may dismiss him from your mind.”

“Before I do, had he any reason to entertain personal animosity against the Ambassador?”

An even longer pause. “Reason? He? None,” said the Boomer. “None whatever.” And then: “I don’t know what is in your mind, Rory, but I’m sure that if you think this person could have committed the murder you are — you are — what is the phrase — you will get no joy from such a theory. But,” he added with a return to his jovial manner, “we should not discuss these beastly affairs before Mrs. Alleyn.”

“She hasn’t heard us,” said Alleyn simply. From where he sat he could see Troy at work. It was as if her response to her subject was distilled into some sort of essence that flowed down arm, hand and brush to take possession of the canvas. He had never seen her work so urgently. She was making that slight breathy noise that he used to say was her inspiration asking to be let out. And what she did was splendid: a mystery was in the making. “She hasn’t heard us,” he repeated.

“Has she not?” said the Boomer, and added: “That, I understand. I understand it perfectly.”

And Alleyn experienced a swift upsurge of an emotion that he would have been hard put to it to define. “Do you, Boomer?” he said. “I believe you do.”