Ngaio Marsh - Artists in Crime

“Have you never seen a flesh-and-blood show before?”

“Naow, and I never will again. The talkies’ll do me.”

“But I assure you the Vortex is no more like the genuine theatre than, shall we say, Mr. Malmsley’s drawings are like Miss Troy’s portraits.”

“Is that a fact?”

“Certainly. But we’re straying a little from the matter in hand. You spent Friday night at the Vortex and returned with Miss Lee to the Fulham Road?”

“Yeah, that’s right. I took her home and then I went to my own place close by.”

“Anyone see you come in?”

They plodded on. Hatchett could, if necessary, produce the sort of alibi that might hold together or might not. Alleyn gleaned enough material to enable him to verify the youth’s account of himself.

“To return to Garcia,” he said at last. “I want you to tell me if you have ever heard Garcia say anything about this warehouse he intends to use as a studio in London.”

“I never had much to do with that bloke. I reckon he’s queer. If you talk to him, half the time he never seems to listen. I did say once I’d like to have a look when he started in on the marble. I reckon that statue’ll be a corker. He’s clever all right. D’you know what he said? He said he’d take care nobody knew where it was because he didn’t want any of this crowd pushing in when he was working. He did let out that it belonged to a bloke that’s gone abroad somewhere. I heard him tell the girl Sonia that much.”

“I see. That’s no go, then. Now, on your bus trips to and from London, did you sit anywhere near Sonia Gluck?”

“Naow. After the way she mucked up Miss Troy’s picture, I didn’t want anything to do with her. It’s just too bad she’s got hers for keeps, but all the same I reckon she was a fair nark, that girl. Always slinging off about Aussie, she was. She’d been out there once with a Vordervill show, and I tipped it was a bum show because she was always shooting off her mouth about the way the Aussies don’t know a good thing when they see it. These pommies! She gave me the jitters. Just because I couldn’t talk big about my home and how swell my people were, and how we cut a lot of ice in Sydney, she treated me like dirt. I said to her one time, I said: ‘I reckon if Miss Troy thought I was good enough to come here, even if my old pot did keep a bottle store on Circular Quay, I reckon if she thought I was O.K. I’m good enough for you.’ I went very, very crook at her after she did that to the picture. Miss Troy’s been all right to me. She’s been swell. Did you know she paid my way in the ship?”

“Did she?”

“Too right she did. She saw me painting in Suva. I worked my way to Suva, yer know, from Aussie, and I got a job there. It was a swell job, too, while it payed. Travelling for Jackson’s Confectionary. I bought this suit and some paints with my first cheque, and then I had a row with the boss and walked out on him. I used to paint all the time then. She saw me working and she reckoned I had talent, so she brought me home to England. The girl Sonia seemed to think I was living on charity.”

“That was a very unpleasant interpretation to put upon a gracious action.”

“Eh? Yeah! Yeah, that’s what I told her.”

“Since you joined Miss Troy’s classes, have you become especially friendly with any one of the other students?”

“Well, the little girl Lee’s all right. She treats you as if you were human.”

“What about the men?”

“Malmsley makes me tired. He’s nothing but a big sissie. The French bloke doesn’t seem to know he’s born, and Garcia’s queer. They don’t like me,” said Hatchett, with extraordinary aggression, “and I don’t like them.”

“What about Mr. Pilgrim?”

“Aw, he’s different. He’s all right. I get on with him good-oh, even if his old pot is one of these lords. Him and me’s cobbers.”

“Was he on good terms with the model?”

Hatchett looked sulky and uncomfortable.

“I don’t know anything about that,” he muttered.

“You have never heard either of them mention the other?”

“Naow.”

“Nor noticed them speaking to each other?”

“Naow.”

“So you can tell us nothing about the model except that you disliked her intensely?”

Hatchett’s grey eyes narrowed in an extremely insolent smile.

“That doesn’t exactly make me out a murderer though, does it?”

“Not precisely.”

“I’d be one big boob to go talking about how I couldn’t stick her if I’d had anything to do with it, wouldn’t I?”

“Oh, I don’t know. You might be sharp enough to suppose that you would convey just that impression.”

The olive face turned a little paler.

“Here! You got no call to talk that way to me. What d’you want to pick on me for? I’ve been straight enough with you. I’ve given you a square deal right enough, haven’t I?”

“I sincerely hope so.”

“I reckon this country’s crook. You’ve all got a down on the new chum. It’s a blooming nark. Just because I said the girl Sonia made me tired, you got to get leery and make me out a liar. I reckon the wonderful London police don’t know they’re alive yet. You’ve as good as called me a murderer.”

“My dear Mr. Hatchett, may I suggest that if you go through life looking for insults, you may be comfortably assured of finding them. At no time during our conversation have I called you a murderer.”

“I gave you a square deal,” repeated Hatchett.

“I’m not absolutely assured of that. I think that a moment ago you deliberately withheld something. I mean, when I asked you if you could tell me anything about the model’s relationship with Mr. Pilgrim.”

Hatchett was silent. He moved his head slightly from side to side, and ostentatiously inhaled cigarette smoke.

“Very well,” said Alleyn. “That will do, I think.” But Hatchett did not get up.

“I don’t know where you get that idea,” he said.

“Don’t you? I need keep you no longer, Mr. Hatchett. We shall probably check your alibi, and I shall ask you to sign a written account of our conversation. That is all at the moment.”

Hatchett rose, hunched his shoulders and lit a fresh cigarette from the butt of the old one. He was still rather pale.

“I got nothing in for Pilgrim,” he said. “I got no call to talk to dicks about my cobbers.”

“You prefer to surround them with a dubious atmosphere of uncertainty, and leave us to draw our own conclusions? You are doing Mr. Pilgrim no service by these rather transparent evasions.”

“Aw, talk English, can’t you!”

“Certainly. Good evening.”

“Pilgrim’s a straight sort of a bloke. Him do anything like that! It’s laughable.”

“Look here,” said Alleyn wearily. “Are you going to tell me what you know, or are you going away, or am I going to remove you? Upon my word, if we have many more dark allusions to Mr. Pilgrim’s purity, I shall feel like clapping both of you in jug.”

“By cripey!” cried Hatchett violently. “Aren’t I telling you it was nothing at all! And to show you it was nothing at all, I’ll bloody well tell you what it was. Now then.”

“Good!” said Alleyn. “Speak up!”

“It’s only that the girl Sonia was going to have a kid, and Pilgrim’s the father. So now what?”

In the silence that followed Watt Hatchett’s announcement Fox was heard to cough discreetly. Alleyn glanced quickly at him, and then contemplated Hatchett. Hatchett glared defiantly round the room rather as if he expected an instant arrest.

“How do you know this, Mr. Hatchett?” asked Alleyn.

“I’ve seen it in writing.”