The Ngaio Marsh Collection

Photo-Finish
Ngaio Marsh

For Fredaneve with love

Table of Contents

Title Page

Dedication

Cast of Characters

CHAPTER 1 The Sommita

CHAPTER 2 The Lodge

CHAPTER 3 Rehearsal

CHAPTER 4 Performance

CHAPTER 5 Nocturne

CHAPTER 6 Storm Continued

CHAPTER 7 Strix

CHAPTER 8 The Police

CHAPTER 9 Departure

By the Same Author

Copyright

About the Publisher

Cast of Characters

Isabella Sommita (née Pepitone)
Ben Ruby | Her manager
Montague V. Reece | Her friend
Rupert Bartholomew | Her protégé
Maria | Her maid
Chief Superintendent Roderick Alleyn CID |
Troy Alleyn RA | His wife
His Assistant Commissioner, Scotland Yard
Bert | A chauffeur
Les | A launchman
Marco | A manservant
Ned Hanley | Mr Reece’s secretary
Signor Beppo Lattienzo | The Sommita’s Master of Singing
Hilda Dancy | A contralto
Eru Johnstone | A bass
Sylvia Parry | A mezzo-soprano
Rodolfo Romano | A tenor
Sir David Baumgartner | A critic
Mrs Bacon | Housekeeper
Dr John Carmichael, MD | A guest
Inspector Hazelmere | Rivermouth Constabulary
Detective-Sergeant Franks | Rivermouth Constabulary
Detective-Sergeant Barker | Rivermouth Constabulary
Dr Winslow |

CHAPTER 1 The Sommita

One of the many marvels of Isabella Sommita’s technique was her breathing: it was totally unobservable. Even in the most exacting passages, even in the most staggering flights of coloratura, there was never the slightest disturbance of the corsage.

‘You could drop an ice cube down her cleavage,’ boasted her manager, Ben Ruby, ‘and not a heave would you get for your trouble.’

He had made this observation when sitting in a box immediately above the diva at the Royal Festival Hall and had spoken no more than the truth. Offstage, when moved by one of her not infrequent rages, La Sommita’s bosom would heave with the best of them.

It did so now, in her private suite at the Château Australasia in Sydney. She was en negligé and it was sumptuously evident that she was displeased and that the cause of her displeasure lay on the table at her elbow: a newspaper folded to expose a half-page photograph with a banner headline, CROSS-PATCH? and underneath, LA SOMMITA IS NOT AMUSED!

It had been taken yesterday in Double Bay, Sydney. The photographer, wearing a floppy white hat, a white scarf over his mouth and dark spectacles had stepped out from an alleyway and gone snap. She had not been quick enough to turn her back but her jaw had dropped and her left eye had slewed; its habit when rage overtook her. The general effect was that of a gargoyle at the dentist’s: an elderly and infuriated gargoyle. The photograph was signed Strix.

She beat on the paper with her largish white fist and her rings cut into it. She panted lavishly.

‘Wants horsewhipping,’ Montague Reece mumbled. He was generally accepted as the Sommita’s established lover and he filled this role in the manner commonly held to be appropriate, being large, rich, muted, pale, dyspeptic and negative. He was said to wield a great deal of power in his own world.

‘Of course he needs horsewhipping,’ shouted his dear one. ‘But where’s the friend who will go out and do it?’ She laughed and executed a wide contemptuous gesture that included all present. The newspaper fluttered to the carpet.

‘Personally,’ Ben Ruby offered, ‘I wouldn’t know one end of a horsewhip from the other.’ She dealt him a glacial stare. ‘I didn’t mean to be funny,’ he said.

‘Nor were you.’

‘No.’

A young man of romantic appearance in a distant chair behind the diva clasped a portfolio of music to his midriff and said in a slightly Australian voice: ‘Can’t something be done? Can’t they be sued?’

‘What for?’ asked Mr Ruby.

‘Well – libel. Look at it, for God’s sake!’ the young man brought out. ‘Well, I mean to say, look!’

The other two men glanced at him, but the Sommita without turning her head said: ‘Thank you, darling,’ and extended her arm. The intention was unmistakable: an invitation, nay, a command. The young man’s beautiful face crimsoned, he rose and, maintaining a precarious hold on his portfolio, advanced crouchingly to imprint a kiss upon the fingers. He lost control of his portfolio. Its contents shot out of their confine and littered the carpet: sheet upon sheet of music in manuscript.

He fell on his knees and scrabbled about the floor. ‘I’m so sorry,’ he gabbled. ‘Oh hell, I’m so bloody sorry.’

The Sommita had launched a full-scale attack upon the Australian press. Rupert, she said, indicating the young man, was absolutely right. The press should be sued. The police should be called in. The photographer should be kicked out of the country. Was he to be suffered to wreck her life, her career, her sanity, to make her the laughing stock of both hemispheres? (She was in the habit of instancing geographical data.) Had she not, she demanded, consented to the Australian appearances solely as a means of escape from his infamy?

‘You are sure, I suppose,’ said Mr Reece in his pallid manner, ‘that it’s the same man? Strix?’

This produced a tirade. ‘Sure! Sure!’ Had not the detested Strix bounced out of cover in all the capitals of Europe as well as in New York and San Francisco? Had he not shot her at close quarters and in atrocious disarray? Sure! She drew a tempestuous breath. Well, she shouted, what were they going to do about it? Was she to be protected or was she to have a breakdown, lose her voice and spend the rest of her days in a straitjacket? She only asked to be informed.

The two men exchanged deadpan glances.

‘We can arrange for another bodyguard,’ Montague Reece offered without enthusiasm.

‘She didn’t much fancy the one in New York,’ Mr Ruby pointed out.

‘Assuredly I did not,’ she agreed, noisily distending her nostrils. ‘It is not amusing to be closely followed by an imbecile in unspeakable attire who did nothing, but nothing, to prevent the outrage on Fifth Avenue. He merely goggled. As, by the way, did you all.’

‘Sweetheart, what else could we do? The fellow was a passenger in an open car. It was off like a bullet as soon as he’d taken his picture.’

‘Thank you, Benny. I remember the circumstances.’

‘But why?’ asked the young man called Rupert, still on his knees assembling his music. ‘What’s got into him? I mean to say, it doesn’t make sense and it must cost a lot of money to follow you all over the globe. He must be bonkers.’

He recognized his mistake as soon as it escaped his lips and began to gabble. Perhaps because he was on his knees and literally at her feet the Sommita who had looked explosive leant forward and tousled his blond hair. ‘My poorest!’ she said. ‘You are quite, quite ridiculous and I adore you. I haven’t introduced you,’ she added as an afterthought. ‘I’ve forgotten your surname.’

‘Bartholomew.’

‘Really? Very well, Rupert Bartholomew,’ she proclaimed, with an introductory wave of her hand.

‘…d’you do,’ he muttered. The others nodded.

‘Why does he do it? He does it,’ Montague Reece said impatiently, reverting to the photographer, ‘for money. No doubt the idea arose from the Jacqueline Kennedy affair. He’s carried it much further and he’s been successful. Enormously so.’

‘That’s right,’ Ruby agreed. ‘And the more he does it the more – ‘ he hesitated – ‘outrageous the results become.’

‘He re-touches,’ the Sommita intervened. ‘He distorts. I know it.’

They all hurriedly agreed with her.

‘I’m going,’ she said unexpectedly, ‘to dress. Now. And when I return I wish to be given an intelligent solution. I throw out, for what they are worth, my suggestions. The police. Prosecution. The Press. Who owns this – ‘ she kicked the offending newspaper and had some difficulty in disengaging her foot – ‘this garbage? Who is the proprietor? Attack him.’ She strode to the bedroom door. ‘And I warn you, Monty. I warn you, Benny. This is my final word. Unless I am satisfied that there is an end to my persecution I shall not sing in Sydney. They can,’ said the Sommita, reverting to her supposed origins, ‘stuff their Sydney Opera House.’

She made her exit and did not neglect to slam the door.

‘Oh dear,’ said Benjamin Ruby quietly.

‘Quite,’ said Montague Reece.

The young man called Rupert Bartholomew, having reinstated his portfolio, got to his feet.

‘I reckon I’d better – ?’

‘Yes?’ said Mr Reece.

‘Take myself off. I mean to say, it’s a bit awkward.’

‘What’s awkward?’

‘Well, you see, Madame – Madame Sommita asked me – I mean to say, she said I was to bring this – ‘ he indicated, precariously, his portfolio.

‘Look out,’ said Ben Ruby. ‘You’ll scatter it again.’ He did not try to suppress a note of resignation. ‘Is it something you’ve written?’ he said. It was more a statement than an enquiry.

‘This is right. She said I could bring it.’

‘When,’ Reece asked, ‘did she say it?’

‘Last night. Well – this morning. About one o’clock. You were leaving that party at the Italian Embassy. You had gone back to fetch something: her gloves, I think, and she was in the car. She saw me.’

‘It was raining.’

‘Heavily,’ said the young man proudly. ‘I was the only one.’

‘You spoke to her?’

‘She beckoned me. She put the window down. She asked me how long I’d been there. I said three hours. She asked my name and what I did. I told her. I play the piano in a small orchestra and give lessons. And I type. And then I told her I had all her recordings and – well, she was so wonderful. I mean to me, there in the rain. I just found myself telling her I’ve written an opera – short – a one-acter – sort of dedicated to her, for her. Not, you know, not because I dreamt she would ever hear of it. Good God no!’

‘And so,’ Benjamin Ruby suggested, ‘she said you could show it to her.’

‘This is right. This morning. I think she was sorry I was so wet.’

‘And have you shown it to her?’ asked Mr Reece. ‘Apart from throwing it all over the carpet?’

‘No. I was just going to when the waiter came up with this morning’s papers and – she saw that thing. And then you came. I suppose I’d better go.’

‘It’s hardly the moment perhaps – ‘ Mr Reece began when the bedroom door opened and an elderly woman with ferociously black hair came into the room. She held up a finger at Rupert, rather in the manner of summoning a waiter.

‘She wanta you,’ said the woman. ‘Also the music.’

‘All right, Maria,’ said Mr Ruby, and to the young man, ‘Maria is Madame’s dresser. You’d better go.’

So Rupert, whose surname was Bartholomew, clutching his opera, walked into La Sommita’s bedroom as a fly, if he’d only known it, into a one-way web.

‘She’ll eat that kid,’ Mr Ruby said dispassionately, ‘in one meal.’

‘Half way down her throat already,’ her protector agreed.

II

‘I’ve wanted to paint that woman,’ said Troy Alleyn, ‘for five years. And now look!’

She pushed the letter across the breakfast table. Her husband read it and raised an eyebrow. ‘Remarkable,’ he said.

‘I know. Especially the bit about you. What does it say, exactly? I was too excited to take it all in. Who’s the letter from, actually? Not from her, you’ll notice?’

‘It’s from Montague Reece, no less.’

‘Why, “no less". Who’s Montague Reece?’

‘I wish,’ said Alleyn, ‘he could hear you ask.’

‘Why?’ Troy repeated. ‘Oh, I know! Isn’t he very well off?’

‘You may say so. In the stinking-of-it department. Mr Onassis Colossus, in fact.’

‘I remember now. Isn’t he her lover?’

‘That’s it.’

‘All is made clear to me. I think. Do read it, darling. Aloud.’

‘All of it?’

‘Please.’

‘Here goes,’ said Alleyn and read:

‘Dear Mrs Alleyn,

‘I hope that is the correct way to address you. Should I perhaps have used your most celebrated soubriquet?

‘I write to ask if from November 1st you and your husband will be my guests at Waihoe Lodge, an island retreat I have built on a lake in New Zealand. It is recently completed and I dare to hope it will appeal to you. The situation is striking and I think I may say that my guests will be comfortable. You would have, as your studio, a commodious room, well-lit, overlooking the lake, with a view of distant mountains and, of course, complete freedom as to time and privacy.’

‘He sounds like a land-and-estate agent – all mod cons and the usual offices. Pray continue,’ said Troy.

‘I must confess that this invitation is the prelude to another and that is for you to paint a portrait of Madame Isabella Sommita who will be staying with us at the time proposed. I have long hoped for this. In my opinion, and I am permitted to say in hers also, none of her portraits hitherto has given us the true “Sommita".

‘We are sure that a “Troy” would do so quite marvellously!

‘Please say you approve the proposal. We will arrange transport, as my guest, of course, by air, and will settle details as soon as we hear, as I so greatly hope, that you will come. I shall be glad if you will be kind enough to inform me of your terms.

‘I shall write, under separate cover, to your husband whom we shall be delighted to welcome with you to the Lodge.

‘I am, believe me, dear Mrs Alleyn,

‘Yours most sincerely,

‘Montague Reece.’

After a longish pause Troy said: ‘Would it be going too far to paint her singing? You know, mouth wide open for a top note.’

‘Mightn’t she look as if she were yawning?’

‘I don’t think so,’ Troy brooded, and then with a sidelong grin at her husband, ‘I could always put a balloon coming out of her mouth with “A in alt” written in it.’

‘That would settle any doubts, of course. Except that I fancy it refers to male singers.’

‘You haven’t looked at your letter. Do look.’

Alleyn looked. ‘Here it is,’ he said. ‘Over-posh and posted in Sydney.’ He opened it.

‘What’s he say?’

‘The preamble’s much the same as yours and so’s the follow-up: the bit about him having to confess to an ulterior motive.’

‘Does he want you to paint his portrait, my poor Rory?’

‘He wants me to give them “my valued opinion” as to the possibility of obtaining police protection “in the matter of the persecution of Madame Sommita by a photographer of which I am no doubt aware.” Well, of all the damn cheek!’ said Alleyn. ‘Travel thirteen thousand miles to sit on an island in the middle of a lake and tell him whether or not to include a copper in his house party.’

‘Oh! Yes. The penny’s dropped. All that stuff in the papers. I didn’t really read it.’

‘You must be the only English-speaking human being who didn’t.’

‘Well, I did, really. Sort of. But the photographs were so hideous they put me off. Fill me, as I expect they say in Mr Reece’s circles, in.’

‘You remember how Mrs Jacqueline Kennedy, as she was then, was pestered by a photographer?’

‘Yes.’

‘It’s the same situation but much exaggerated. The Kennedy rumpus may have put the idea into this chap’s head. He signs himself “Strix". He’s actually followed the Sommita all over the world. Wherever she has appeared in opera or on the concert stage: Milan, Paris, Covent Garden, New York, Sydney. At first the photographs were the usual kind of thing with the diva flashing gracious smiles at the camera, but gradually differences crept in. They became more and more unflattering and he became more and more intrusive. He hid behind bushes. He trespassed on private ground and cropped up when and where he was least expected. On one occasion he joined the crowd round the stage door with the rest of the press, and contrived to get right up to the front.

‘As she came into the doorway and did her usual thing of being delighted and astonished at the size of the crowd he aimed his camera and at the same time blew a piercingly loud whistle. Her jaw dropped and her eyes popped and in the resulting photograph she looked as if someone had thumped her between the shoulder blades.

‘From then on the thing ripened into a sort of war of attrition. It caught the fancy of her enormous public, the photos became syndicated and the man is said to be making enormous sums of money. Floods of angry letters from her fans to the papers concerned. Threats. Unkind jokes in the worst possible taste. Bets laid. Preposterous stories suggesting he’s a cast-off lover taking his revenge or a tenor who fell out with her. Rumours of a nervous breakdown. Bodyguards. The lot.’

‘Isn’t it rather feeble of them not to spot him and manhandle him off?’

‘You’d have thought so, but he’s too smart for them. He disguises himself – sometimes bearded and sometimes not. Sometimes in the nylon stocking mask. At one time turned out like a City gent, at another like a Skid Row drop-out. He’s said to have a very, very sophisticated camera.’

‘Yes, but when he’s done it, why hasn’t somebody grabbed him and jumped on the camera? And what about her celebrated temperament? You’d think she’d set about him herself.’

‘You would, but so far she hasn’t done any better than yelling pen-and-ink.’

‘Well,’ Troy said, ‘I don’t see what you could be expected to do about it.’

‘Accept with pleasure and tell my AC that I’m off to the antipodes with my witch-wife? Because,’ Alleyn said, putting his hand on her head, ‘you are going, aren’t you?’

‘I do madly want to have a go at her: a great big flamboyant rather vulgar splotch of a thing. Her arms,’ Troy said reminiscently, ‘are indecent. White and flowing. You can see the brush strokes. She’s so shockingly sumptuous. Oh yes, Rory love, I’m afraid I must go.’

‘We could try suggesting that she waits till she’s having a bash at Covent Garden. No,’ said Alleyn, watching her, ‘I can see that’s no go, you don’t want to wait. You must fly to your commodious studio and in between sittings you must paint pretty peeps of snowy mountains reflected in the lucid waters of the lake. You might knock up a one-man show while you’re about it.’

‘You shut up,’ said Troy, taking his arm.

‘I think you’d better write a rather formal answer giving your terms, as he so delicately suggests. I suppose I decline under separate cover.’

‘It might have been fun if we’d dived together into the flesh pots.’

‘The occasions when your art and my job have coincided haven’t been all that plain sailing, have they, my love?’

‘Not,’ she agreed, ‘so’s you’d notice. Rory, do you mind? My going?’

‘I always mind but I try not to let on. I must say I don’t go much for the company you’ll be keeping.’

‘Don’t you? High operatic with tantrums between sittings? Will that be the form, do you suppose?’

‘Something like that, I dare say.’

‘I shan’t let her look at the thing until it’s finished and if she cuts up rough, her dear one needn’t buy it. One thing I will not do,’ said Troy calmly. ‘I will not oblige with asinine alterations. If she’s that sort.’

‘I should think she well might be. So might he.’

‘Taking the view that if he’s paying he’s entitled to a return for his cash? What is he? English? New Zealand? American? Australian?’

‘I’ve no idea. But I don’t much fancy you being his guest, darling, and that’s a fact.’

‘I can hardly offer to pay my own way. Perhaps,’ Troy suggested, ‘I should lower my price in consideration of board and lodging.’

‘All right, smarty-pants.’

‘If it turns out to be a pot-smoking party or worse, I can always beat a retreat to my pretty peepery and lock the door on all comers.’

‘What put pot into your fairly pretty little head?’

‘I don’t know. Here!’ said Troy. ‘You’re not by any chance suggesting the diva is into the drug scene?’

‘There have been vague rumours. Probably false.’

‘He’d hardly invite you to stay if she was.’

‘Oh,’ Alleyn said lightly, ‘their effrontery knows no bounds. I’ll write my polite regrets before I go down to the Factory.’

The telephone rang and he answered it with the noncommittal voice Troy knew meant the Yard.

‘I’ll be down in a quarter of an hour, sir,’ he said and hung up. ‘The AC,’ he explained. ‘Up to something. I always know when he goes all casual on me.’

‘Up to what, do you suppose?’

‘Lord knows. Undelicious by the sound of it. He said it was of no particular moment but would I drop in: an ominous opening. I’d better be off.’ He made for the door, looked at her, returned and rounded her face between his hands. ‘Fairly pretty little head,’ he repeated and kissed it.

Fifteen minutes later his Assistant Commissioner received him in the manner to which he had become accustomed: rather as if he was some sort of specimen produced in a bad light to be peered at, doubtfully. The AC was as well furnished with mannerisms as he was with brains and that would be underestimating them.

‘Hullo, Rory,’ he said. ‘Morning to you. Morning. Troy well? Good.’ (Alleyn had not had time to answer.) ‘Sit down. Sit down. Yes.’

Alleyn sat down. ‘You wanted to see me, sir?’ he suggested.

‘It’s nothing much, really. Read the morning papers?’

‘The Times.’

‘Seen last Friday’s Mercury?’

‘No.’

‘I just wondered. That silly stuff with the press photographer and the Italian singing woman. What’s-her-name?’

After a moment’s pause Alleyn said woodenly: ‘Isabella Sommita.’

‘That’s the one,’ agreed the AC, one of whose foibles it was to pretend not to remember names. ‘Silly of me. Chap’s been at it again.’

‘Very persistent.’

‘Australia. Sydney or somewhere. Opera House, isn’t it?’

‘There is one: yes.’

‘On the steps at some sort of function. Here you are.’

He pushed over the newspaper folded to expose the photograph. It had indeed been taken a week ago on the steps of the magnificent Sydney Opera House on a summer’s evening. La Sommita, gloved in what seemed to be cloth of gold topped by a tiara, stood among VIPs of the highest calibre. Clearly she was not yet poised for the shot. The cameraman had jumped the gun. Again, her mouth was wide open but on this occasion she appeared to be screaming at the Governor General of Australia. Or perhaps shrieking with derisive laughter. There is a belief held by people of the theatre that nobody over the age of twenty-five should allow themselves to be photographed from below. Here, the camera had evidently been half a flight beneath the diva who therefore appeared to be richly endowed with chins and more than slight embonpoint. The Governor General, by some momentary accident, seemed to regard her with incredulity and loathing.

A banner headline read: WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE!

The photograph, as usual, was signed ‘Strix’ and was reproduced, by arrangement, from a Sydney newspaper.

‘That, I imagine,’ said Alleyn, ‘will have torn it!’

‘So it seems. Look at this.’

It was a letter addressed to ‘The Head of Scotland Yard, London’ and written a week before the invitations to the Alleyns on heavy paper endorsed with an elaborate monogram: I.S. lavishly entwined with herbage. The envelope was bigger than the ones received by the Alleyns but of the same make and paper. The letter itself occupied two and a half pages, with a gigantic signature. It had been typed, Alleyn noticed, on a different machine. The address was Château Australasia, Sydney.

‘The Commissioner sent it down,’ said the AC. ‘You’d better read it.’

Alleyn did so. The typed section merely informed the recipient that the writer hoped to meet one of his staff, Mr Alleyn, at Waihoe Lodge, New Zealand, where Mr Alleyn’s wife was commissioned to paint the writer’s portrait. The writer gave the dates proposed. The recipient was of course aware of the outrageous persecution – ‘and so on along the already familiar lines. Her object in writing to him, she concluded, was because she hoped Mr Alleyn would be accorded full authority by the Yard to investigate this outrageous affair and she remained – ‘

‘Good God,’ said Alleyn quietly.

‘You’ve still got a postscript,’ the AC observed.

It was handwritten and all that might be expected. Points of exclamation proliferated. Underscorings doubled and trebled to an extent that would have made Queen Victoria’s correspondence appear by contrast a model of stony reticence. The subject matter lurched into incoherence but the general idea was to the effect that if the ‘Head of Scotland Yard’ didn’t do something pretty smartly he would have only himself to blame when the writer’s career came to a catastrophic halt. On her knees she remained distractedly and again in enormous calligraphy, sincerely, Isabella Sommita.

‘Expound,’ the AC invited with his head on one side. He was being whimsical. ‘Comment. Explain in your own words.’

‘I can only guess that the letter was typed by a secretary who advised moderation. The postscript seems to be all her own and written in a frenzy.’

‘Is Troy going to paint the lady? And do you propose to be absent without leave in the antipodes?’

Alleyn said: ‘We got our invitations this morning. I was about to decline, sir, when you rang up. Troy’s accepting.’

‘Is she?’ said the AC thoughtfully. ‘Is she, now? A good subject, um? To paint? What?’

‘Very,’ Alleyn said warily. What is he on about? he wondered.

‘Yes. Ah well,’ said the AC, freshening his voice with a suggestion of dismissal. Alleyn started to get up. ‘Hold on,’ said the AC. ‘Know anything about this man she lives with? Reece, isn’t it?’

‘No more than everyone knows.’

‘Strange coincidence, really,’ mused the AC.

‘Coincidence?’

‘Yes. The invitations. Troy going out there and all this.’ He flipped his finger at the papers on his desk. ‘All coming together as it were.’

‘Hardly a coincidence, sir, would you say? I mean, these dotty letters were all written with the same motive.’

‘Oh, I don’t mean them,’ said the AC contemptuously. ‘Or only in so far as they turn up at the same time as the other business.’

‘What other business?’ said Alleyn, and managed to keep the weary note out of his voice.

‘Didn’t I tell you? Stupid of me. Yes. There’s a bit of a flap going on in the international Drug Scene: the USA in particular. Interpol picked up a lead somewhere and passed it on to the French who talked to the FBI who’ve been talking to our lot. It seems there’s been some suggestion that the diva might be a big, big girl in the remotest background. Very nebulous it sounded to me but our Great White Chief is slightly excited.’ This was the AC’s habitual manner of alluding to the Commissioner. ‘He’s been talking to the Special Squad. And, by the way, to MI6.’

‘How do they come into it?’

‘Somewhere along the line. Cagey, as usual, I gather,’ said the AC. ‘But they did divulge that there was a leak from an anonymous source to the effect that the Sommita is thought to have operated in the past.’

‘What about Reece?’

‘Clean as a whistle, as far as is known.’

‘Montague Reece,’ Alleyn mused. ‘Almost too good to be true. Like something out of Trilby. Astrakhan coat-collar and glistening beard. Anything about his origin, sir?’

‘Thought to be American-Sicilian.’

During the pause that followed the AC hummed, uncertainly, the habañera from Carmen. ‘Ever heard her in that?’ he said. ‘Startling. Got the range – soprano, mezzo, you name it, got the looks, got the sex. Stick you like a pig for tuppence and make you like it.’ He shot one of his disconcerting glances at Alleyn. ‘Troy’ll have her hands full,’ he said. ‘What?’

‘Yes,’ Alleyn agreed, and with a strong foreboding of what was in store, added: ‘I don’t much fancy her going.’

‘Quite. Going to put your foot down, are you, Rory?’

Alleyn said: ‘As far as Troy’s concerned I haven’t got feet.’

‘Tell that to the Fraud Squad,’ said the AC and gave a slight whinny.

‘Not where her work’s concerned. It’s a must. For both of us.’

‘Ah,’ said the AC. ‘Mustn’t keep you,’ he said, and shifted without further notice into the tone that meant business. ‘It just occurs to me that in the circumstances you might, after all, take this trip. And by the way you know New Zealand, don’t you? Yes?’ And when Alleyn didn’t answer: ‘What I meant when I said “coincidence". The invitation and all that. Drops like a plum into our lap. We’re asked to keep a spot of very inconspicuous observation on this article and here’s the article’s boyfriend asking you to be his guest and Bob, so to speak, is your uncle. Incidentally, you’ll be keeping an eye on Troy and her termagant subject, won’t you? Well?’

Alleyn said: ‘Am I to take it, sir, that this is an order?’

‘I must say,’ dodged the AC, ‘I thought you would be delighted.’

‘I expect I ought to be.’

‘Very well, then,’ said the AC testily. ‘Why the hell aren’t you?’

‘Well, sir, you talked about coincidences. It so happens that by a preposterous series of them Troy has been mixed up to a greater and lesser degree in four of my cases. And – ‘

‘And by all accounts behaved quite splendidly. Hul-lo!’ said the AC. ‘That’s it, is it? You don’t like her getting involved?’

‘On general principles, no, I don’t.’

‘But, my dear man, you’re not going out to the antipodes to involve yourself in an investigation. You’re on observation. There won’t,’ said the AC, ‘as likely as not, be anything to observe. Except, of course, your most attractive wife. You’re not going to catch a murderer. You’re not going to catch anyone. What?’

‘I didn’t say anything.’

‘All right. It’s an order. You’d better ring your wife and tell her. Morning to you.’

III

In Melbourne all was well. The Sydney season had been a fantastic success artistically, financially and, as far as Isabella Sommita was concerned, personally. ‘Nothing to equal it had been experienced,’ as the press raved, ‘within living memory.’ One reporter laboriously joked that if cars were motivated by real instead of statistical horsepower the quadrupeds would undoubtedly have been unhitched and the diva drawn in triumph and by human propulsion through the seething multitudes.

There had been no further offensive photography.

Young Rupert Bartholomew had found himself pitchforked into a milieu that he neither understood nor criticized but in which he floundered in a state of complicated bliss and bewilderment. Isabella Sommita had caused him to play his one-act opera. She had listened with an approval that ripened quickly with the realization that the soprano role was, to put it coarsely, so large that the rest of the cast existed only as trimmings. The opera was about Ruth and the title was The Alien Corn. (’Corn,’ muttered Ben Ruby to Monty Reece, but not in the Sommita’s hearing, ‘is dead right.’) There were moments when the pink clouds amid which Rupert floated thinned and a small, ice-cold pellet ran down his spine and he wondered if his opera was any good. He told himself that to doubt it was to doubt the greatest soprano of the age and the pink clouds quickly reformed. But the shadow of unease did not absolutely leave him.

Mr Reece was not musical. Mr Ruby, in his own untutored way, was. Both accepted the advisability of consulting an expert and such was the pitch of the Sommita’s mounting determination to stage this piece that they treated the matter as one of top urgency. Mr Ruby, under pretence of wanting to study the work, borrowed it from the Sommita. He approached the doyen of Australian music critics, and begged him, for old times’ sake, to give his strictly private opinion on the opera. He did so and said that it stank.

‘Menotti-and-water,’ he said. ‘Don’t let her touch it.’

‘Will you tell her so?’ Mr Ruby pleaded.

‘Not on your Nelly,’ said the great man, and as an afterthought, ‘What’s the matter with her? Has she fallen in love with the composer?’

‘Boy,’ said Mr Ruby deeply, ‘you said it.’

It was true. After her somewhat tigerish fashion the Sommita was in love. Rupert’s Byronic appearance, his melting glance, and his undiluted adoration had combined to do the trick. At this point she had a flaring row with her Australian secretary who stood up to her and when she sacked him said she had taken the words out of his mouth. She then asked Rupert if he could type and when he said yes promptly offered him the job. He accepted, cancelled all pending appointments, and found himself booked in at the same astronomically expensive hotel as his employer. He not only dealt with her correspondence. He was one of her escorts to the theatre and was permitted to accompany her at her practices. He supped with her after the show and stayed longer than any of the other guests. He was in Heaven.

On a night when this routine had been observed and Mr Reece had retired early, in digestive discomfort, the Sommita asked Rupert to stay while she changed into something comfortable. This turned out to be a ruby silken negligée which may indeed have been comfortable for the wearer but which caused the beholder to shudder in an agony of excitement.

He hadn’t a hope. She had scarcely embarked upon the preliminary phases of her formidable techniques when she was in his arms, or more strictly, he in hers.

An hour later he floated down the long passage to his room, insanely inclined to sing at the top of his voice.

‘My first!’ he exulted. ‘My very first. And, incredibly – Isabella Sommita.’

He was, poor boy, as pleased as Punch with himself.

IV

As far as his nearest associates could discover Mr Reece was not profoundly disturbed by his mistress’s goings-on. Indeed he appeared to ignore them but, really, it was impossible to tell, he was so remarkably uncommunicative. Much of his time, most of it, in fact, was spent with a secretary, manipulating, it was widely conjectured, the Stock Markets and receiving long-distance telephone calls. His manner towards Rupert Bartholomew was precisely the same as his manner towards the rest of the Sommita’s following: so neutral that it could scarcely be called a manner at all. Occasionally when Rupert thought of Mr Reece he was troubled by stabs of uncomfortable speculation, but he was too far gone in incredulous rapture to be greatly concerned.

It was at this juncture that Mr Reece flew to New Zealand to inspect his island lodge, now completed.

On his return, three days later, to Melbourne, he found the Alleyns’ letters of acceptance and the Sommita in a high state of excitement.

‘Dar-leeng,’ she said, ‘you will show me everything. You have photographs, of course? Am I going to be pleased? Because I must tell you I have great plans. But such plans!’ cried the Sommita and made mysterious gestures. ‘You will never guess.’

‘What are they?’ he asked in his flat-voiced way.

‘Ah-ah!’ she teased. ‘You must be patient. First the pictures which Rupert, too, must see. Quick, quick, the pictures.’

She opened the bedroom door into the sitting room and in two glorious notes sang, ‘Rupert!’

Rupert had been coping with her fan mail. When he came in he found that Mr Reece had laid out a number of glossy coloured photographs on the bed. They were all of the island lodge.

The Sommita was enchanted. She exclaimed, purred, exulted. Several times she burst into laughter. Ben Ruby arrived and the photographs were re-exhibited. She embraced all three men severally and more or less together.

And then with a sudden drop into the practical she said, ‘The music room. Let me see it again. Yes. How big is it?’

‘From memory,’ said Mr Reece, ‘sixty feet long and forty wide.’ Mr Ruby whistled. ‘That’s quite a size,’ he remarked. ‘That’s more like a bijou theatre than a room. You settling to give concerts, honey?’

‘Better than that!’ she cried. ‘Didn’t I tell you, Monty my darleeng, that we have made plans. Ah, we have cooked up such plans, Rupert and I. Haven’t we, caro? Yes?’

‘Yes,’ Rupert said with an uncertain glance at Mr Reece. ‘I mean – Marvellous.’

Mr Reece had an extremely passive face but Rupert thought he detected a shade of resignation pass over it. Mr Ruby, however, wore an expression of the deepest apprehension.

The Sommita flung her right arm magnificently across Rupert’s shoulders. ‘This dear child,’ she said and if she had made it: ‘this adorable lover’ she could have scarcely been more explicit, ‘has genius. I tell you – I who know. Genius.’ They said nothing and she continued. ‘I have lived with his opera. I have studied his opera. I have studied the leading role. The “Ruth". The arias, the solos, the duets – there are two – and the ensembles. All, but all, have the unmistakable stigmata of genius. I do not,’ she amended, ‘use the word “stigmata” in the sense of martyrdom. Better, perhaps, to say “they bear the banner of genius". Genius!’ she shouted.

To look at Rupert at this moment one might have thought that ‘martyrdom’ was, after all, the more appropriate word. His face was dark red and he shifted in her embrace. She shook him, none too gently. ‘Clever, clever one,’ she said and kissed him noisily.

‘Are we to hear your plan?’ Mr Reece asked.

The hour being seven o’clock she hustled them into the sitting room and told Rupert to produce cocktails. He was glad to secrete himself in the chilly cabinet provided for drinks, ice and glasses. A few desultory and inaudible remarks came from the other three. Mr Ruby cleared his throat once or twice. Then, so unexpectedly that Rupert spilt Mr Reece’s whisky and soda over his hands, the piano in the sitting room sketched the opening statement of what he had hoped would be the big aria from his opera: and the superb voice, in heart-rending pianissimo, sang: ‘Alone, alone amidst the alien corn.’

It was at that moment with no warning at all that Rupert was visited by a catastrophic certainty. He had been mistaken in his opera. Not even the most glorious voice in all the world could ever make it anything but what it was – third rate.

It’s no good, he thought. It is ridiculously commonplace. And then: She has no judgement. She is not a musical woman.

He was shattered.

CHAPTER 2 The Lodge

Early on a fine morning in the antipodean spring the Alleyns were met at their New Zealand airport by a predictably rich car and were driven along roads that might have been ruled across the plains to vanishing points on the horizon. The Pacific was out of sight somewhere to their left and before them rose foothills. These were the outer ramparts of the Southern Alps.

‘We’re in luck,’ Alleyn said. ‘On a grey day when there are no hills to be seen, the plains can be deadly. Would you want to paint?’

‘I don’t think so,’ Troy said after considering it. ‘It’s all a bit inhuman, isn’t it? One would have to find an idiom. I get the feeling that the people only move across the surface. They haven’t evolved with it. They’re not included,’ said Troy, ‘in the anatomy. What cheek!’ she exclaimed, ‘to generalize when I’ve scarcely arrived in the country.’

The driver, who was called Bert, was friendly and anxious for his passengers to be impressed. He pointed out mountains that had been sheep-farmed by the first landholders.

‘Where we’re going,’ Troy asked, ‘to Waihoe Lodge – is that sheep country?’

‘No way. We’re going into Westland, Mrs Alleyn. The West Coast. It’s all timber and mining over there. Waihoe’s quite a lake. And the Lodge! You know what they reckon it’s cost him? Half a million. And more. That’s what they reckon. Nothing like it anywhere else in N’yerzillun. You’ll be surprised.’

‘We’ve heard about it,’ Alleyn said.

‘Yeah? You’ll still be surprised.’ He slewed his head towards Troy. ‘You’ll be the painting lady,’ he said. ‘Mr Reece reckoned you might get the fancy to take a picture up at the head of the Pass. Where we have lunch.’

‘I don’t think that’s likely,’ Troy said.

‘You’re going to paint the famous lady: is that right?’

His manner was sardonic. Troy said yes, she was.

‘Rather you than me,’ said the driver.

‘Do you paint, then?’

‘Me? Not likely. I wouldn’t have the patience.’

‘It takes a bit more than patience,’ Alleyn said mildly.

‘Yeah? That might be right, too,’ the driver conceded. There was a longish pause. ‘Would she have to keep still, then?’ he asked.

‘More or less.’

‘I reckon it’ll be more “less” than “more",’ said the driver. ‘They tell me she’s quite a celebrity,’ he added.

‘Worldwide,’ said Alleyn.

‘What they reckon. Yeah,’ said the driver with a reflective chuckle, ‘they can keep it for mine. Temperamental! You can call it that if you like.’ He whistled. ‘If it’s not one thing it’s another. Take the dog. She had one of these fancy hound things, white with droopy hair. The boss give it to her. Well, it goes crook and they get a vet and he reckons it’s hopeless and it ought to be put out of its misery. So she goes crook. Screechin’ and moanin’, something remarkable. In the finish the boss says get it over with, so me and the vet take it into the hangar and he chloroforms it and then gives it an injection and we bury it out of sight. Cripes!’ said the driver. ‘When they told her you’d of thought they’d committed a murder.’ He sucked his teeth reminiscently.

‘Maria,’ he said presently, ‘that’s her personal help or maid or whatever it’s called – she was saying there’s been some sort of a schemozzle over in Aussie with the papers. But you’ll know about that, Mr Alleyn. Maria reckons you’ve taken on this situation. Is that right?’

‘I’m afraid not,’ said Alleyn. Troy gave him a good nudge.

‘What she reckons. You being a detective. ‘Course Maria’s a foreigner. Italian,’ said the driver. ‘You can’t depend on it with that mob. They get excited.’

‘You’re quartered there, are you? At the Lodge?’

‘This is right. For the duration. When they pack it in there’ll only be a caretaker and his family on the island. Monty Reece has built a garage and boathouse on the lake shore and his launch takes you over to the Lodge. He’s got his own chopper, mind. No trouble. Ring through when required.’

The conversation died. Troy wondered if the driver called his employer ‘Monty Reece’ to his face and decided that quite possibly he did.

The road across the plains mounted imperceptibly for forty miles and a look backward established their height. Presently they stared down into a wide riverbed laced with milky-turquoise streaks.

At noon they reached the top where they lunched from a hamper with wine in a chiller-kit. Their escort had strong tea from a Thermos flask. ‘Seeing I’m the driver,’ he said, ‘and seeing there’s the Zig-Zag yet to come.’ He was moved to entertain them with stories about fatal accidents in the gorge.

The air up here was wonderfully fresh and smelt aromatically of manuka scrub patching warm tussocky earth. They were closer now to perpetual snow.

‘We better be moving,’ said the driver. ‘You’ll notice a big difference when we go over the head of the Pass. Kind of sudden.’

There was a weathered notice at the top: CORNISHMAN’S PASS. 1000 METRES.

The road ran flat for a short distance and then dived into a new world. As the driver had said: it was sudden. So sudden, so new and so dramatic that for long afterwards Troy would feel there had been a consonance between this moment and the events that were to follow, as if, on crossing over the Pass, they entered a region that was prepared and waiting.

It was a world of very dark rain forest that followed, like velvet, the convolutions of the body it enfolded. Here and there waterfalls glinted. Presiding over the forests, snow-tops caught the sun, but down below the sun never reached and there, thread-like in its gorge, a river thundered. ‘You can just hear ‘er,’ said the driver who had stopped the car.

But all they heard at first was birdsong – cool statements, incomparably wild. After a moment Troy said she thought she could hear the river. The driver suggested they go to the edge and look down. Troy suffered horridly from height-vertigo but went, clinging to Alleyn’s arm. She looked down once as if from a gallery in a theatre on an audience of treetops, and saw the river.

The driver, ever-informative, said that you could make out the roof of a car that six years ago went over from where they stood. Alleyn said, ‘So you can,’ put his arm round his wife and returned her to the car.

They embarked upon the Zig-Zag.

The turns in this monstrous descent were so acute that vehicles travelling in the same direction would seem to approach each other and indeed did pass on different levels. They had caught up with such a one and crawled behind it. They met a car coming up from the gorge. Their own driver pulled up on the lip of the road and the other sidled past on the inner running with half an inch to spare. The drivers wagged their heads at each other.

Alleyn’s arm was across Troy’s shoulders. He pulled her ear. ‘First prize for intrepidity, Mrs A.,’ he said. ‘You’re being splendid.’

‘What did you expect me to do? Howl like a banshee?’

Presently the route flattened out and the driver changed into top gear. They reached the floor of the gorge and drove beside the river, roaring in its courses, so that they could scarcely hear each other speak. It was cold down there.

‘Now you’re in Westland,’ shouted the driver.

Evening was well advanced when, after a two-hour passage through the wet loam-scented forest that New Zealanders call ‘bush’ they came out into more open country and stopped at a tiny railway station called Kai-kai. Here they collected the private mailbag for the Lodge and then drove parallel with the railway for twenty miles, rounded the nose of a hill and there lay a great floor of water: Lake Waihoe.

‘There you are,’ said the driver, ‘That’s the Lake for you. And the Island.’

‘Stay me with flagons!’ said Alleyn and rubbed his head.

The prospect was astonishing. At this hour the Lake was perfectly unruffled and held the blazing image of an outrageous sunset. Fingers of land reached out bearing elegant trees that reversed themselves in the water. Framed by these and far beyond them was the Island and on the Island Mr Reece’s Lodge.

It was a house designed by a celebrated architect in the modern idiom but so ordered that one might have said it grew organically out of its primordial setting. Giants that carried their swathy foliage in clusters stood magnificently about a grassy frontage. There was a jetty in the foreground with a launch alongside. Grossly incongruous against the uproarious sunset, like some intrusive bug, a helicopter hovered. As they looked it disappeared behind the house.

‘I don’t believe in all this,’ said Troy. ‘It’s out of somebody’s dream. It can’t be true.’

‘You reckon?’ asked the driver.

‘I reckon,’ said Troy.

They turned into a lane that ran between tree ferns and underbrush down to the lake edge where there was a garage, a landing stage, a boathouse and a bell in a miniature belfry. They left the car and walked out into evening smells of wet earth, fern and moss and the cold waters of the lake.

The driver rang the bell, sending a single echoing note across the lake. He then remarked that they’d been seen from the Island. Sure enough the launch put out. So still was the evening they could hear the putt-putt of the engine. ‘Sound travels a long way over the water,’ said the driver.

The sunset came to its preposterous climax. Everything that could be seen, near and far, was sharpened and gilded. Their faces reddened. The far-off windows of the Lodge turned to fire. In ten minutes it had all faded and the landscape was cold. Troy and Alleyn walked a little way along the water’s edge and Troy looked at the house and wondered about the people inside it. Would Isabella Sommita feel that it was a proper showplace for her brilliance and what would she look like posing in the ‘commodious studio’ against those high windows, herself flamboyant against another such sunset as the one that had gone by?

Troy said: ‘This really is an adventure.’

Alleyn said: ‘Do you know, in a cockeyed sort of way it reminds me of one of those Victorian romances by George Macdonald where the characters find a looking glass and walk out of this world into another one inhabited by strange beings and unaccountable ongoings.’

‘Perhaps,’ said Troy, ‘the entrance to that great house will turn out to be our own front door and we’ll be back in London.’

They talked about the house and the way in which it rose out of its setting in balanced towers. Presently the launch, leaving an arrowhead of rippled silk in its wake, drew in to the landing stage. It was a large, opulent craft. The helmsman came out of his wheelhouse and threw a mooring rope to the car driver.

‘Meet Les Smith,’ said the driver.

‘Gidday,’ said Les Smith. ‘How’s tricks, then, Bert? Good trip?’

‘No trouble, Les.’

‘Good as gold,’ said the helmsman.

Alleyn helped them stow the luggage. Troy was handed on board and they puttered out on the lake.

The driver went into the wheelhouse with Les Smith. Troy and Alleyn sat in the stern.

‘Here we go,’ he said. ‘Liking it?’

‘It’s a lovely beginning,’ said Troy. ‘It’s so lovely it hurts.’

‘Keep your fingers crossed,’ he said lightly.

II

Perhaps because their day had been so long and had followed so hard on their flight from England, the first night at the Lodge went by rather like a dream for Troy.

They had been met by Mr Reece’s secretary and a dark man dressed like a tarted-up ship’s steward who carried their baggage. They were taken to their room to ‘freshen up’. The secretary, a straw-coloured youngish man with a gushing manner, explained that Mr Reece was on the telephone but would be there to meet them when they came down and that everyone was ‘changing’ but they were not to bother as everybody would ‘quite understand’. Dinner was in a quarter of an hour. There was a drinks tray in the room and he suggested that they should make use of it and said he knew they would be angelic and excuse him as Mr Reece had need of his services. He then, as an apparent afterthought, was lavish in welcome, flashed smiles and withdrew. Troy thought vaguely that he was insufferable.

‘I don’t know about you,’ she said, ‘but I refuse to be quite understood and I’m going to shift my clothes. I require a nice wash and a change. And a drink, by the way.’

She opened her suitcase, scuffled in it and lugged out a jump suit which was luckily made of uncrushable material. She then went into the bathroom which was equipped like a plumber-king’s palace. Alleyn effected a lightning change at which exercise he was a past master and mixed two drinks. They sat side by side on an enormous bed and contemplated their room.

‘It’s all been done by some super American interior decorator, wouldn’t you say?’ said Troy, gulping down her brandy-and-dry.

‘You reckon?’ said Alleyn, imitating the driver.

‘I reckon,’ said Troy. ‘You have to wade through the carpet, don’t you? Not walk on it.’

‘It’s not a carpet: it’s about two hundred sheepskins sewn together. The local touch.’

‘All jolly fine for us to snigger. It’s pretty smashing, really, let’s face it. Not human, though. If only there was something shabby and out of character somewhere.’

‘Us,’ Alleyn said. ‘We’re all of that. Drink up. We’d better not be late.’

On their way downstairs they took in the full effect of the hall with its colossal blazing fireplace, display on the walls of various lethal weapons and hangings woven in the Maori fashion, and a large semi-abstract wood sculpture of a pregnant nude with a complacent smirk. From behind one of the doors there came sounds of conversation. An insistent male voice rose above the rest. There followed a burst of multiple laughter.

‘Good Lord,’ said Alleyn, ‘it’s a house party.’

The dark man who had taken their baggage up was in the hall.

‘In the drawing room, sir,’ he said unnecessarily and opened the door.

About a dozen or so people, predominantly male, were grouped at the far end of a long room. The focal point seemed to be a personage with a grey imperial beard and hair en brosse, wearing a velvet jacket and flowing tie, an eyeglass and a flower in his lapel. His manner was that of a practised raconteur who, after delivering a mot, is careful to preserve an expressionless face. His audience was barely recovered from its fits of merriment. The straw-coloured secretary, indeed, with glass in hand, gently tapped his fingers against his left wrist by way of applause. In doing this he turned, saw the Alleyns and bent over someone in a sofa with its back to the door.

A voice said: ‘Ah yes,’ and Mr Reece rose and came to greet them.

He was shortish and dark and had run a little to what is sometimes called expense-account fat. His eyes were large, and his face closed: a face that it would be easy to forget since it seemed to say nothing.

He shook hands and said how glad he was to receive them: to Troy he added that it was an honour and a privilege to welcome her. There were, perhaps, American overtones in his speech but on the whole his voice, like the rest of him, seemed neutral. He introduced the Alleyns formally to everybody. To the raconteur who was Signor Beppo Lattienzo and who kissed Troy’s hand. To a rotund gentleman who looked like an operatic tenor and turned out to be one: the celebrated Rodolfo Romano. To Mr Ben Ruby who was jocular and said they all knew Troy would do better than that: indicating a vast academic portrait of La Sommita’s gown topped up by her mask. Then came a young man of startling physical beauty who looked apprehensive – Rupert Bartholomew; a pretty girl whose name Troy, easily baffled by mass introductions, didn’t catch, and a largish lady on a sofa who was called Miss Hilda Dancy and had a deep voice, and finally there loomed up a gentleman with an even deeper voice and a jolly brown face who proclaimed himself a New Zealander and was called Mr Eru Johnstone.

Having discharged his introductory duties Mr Reece retained his hold on Alleyn, supervised his drink, led him a little apart and, as Troy could see by the sort of attentive shutter that came over her husband’s face, engaged him in serious conversation.

‘You have had a very long day, Mrs Alleyn,’ said Signor Lattienzo who spoke with a marked Italian accent. ‘Do you feel as if all your time signals had become – ‘ he rotated plump hands rapidly round each other – ‘jumbled together?’

‘Exactly like that,’ said Troy. ‘Jet hangover, I think.’

‘It will be nice to retire?’

‘Gosh, yes!’ she breathed, surprised into ardent agreement.

‘Come and sit down,’ he said, and led her to a sofa removed from that occupied by Miss Dancy.

‘You must not begin to paint before you are ready,’ he said. ‘Do not permit them to bully you.’

‘Oh, I’ll be ready, I hope, tomorrow.’

‘I doubt it and I doubt even more if your subject will be available.’

‘Why?’ asked Troy quickly. ‘Is anything the matter? I mean – ‘

‘The matter? That depends on one’s attitude.’ He looked fixedly at her. He had very bright eyes. ‘You have not heard evidently of the great event,’ he said. ‘No? Ah. Then I must tell you that the night after next we are to be audience at the first performance on any stage of a brand-new one-act opera. A world premiére, in fact,’ said Signor Lattienzo and his tone was exceedingly dry. ‘What do you think about that?’

‘I’m flabbergasted,’ said Troy.

‘You will be even more so when you have heard it. You do not know who I am, of course.’

‘I’m afraid I only know that your name is Lattienzo.’

‘Ah-ha.’

‘I expect I ought to have exclaimed, “No! Not the Lattienzo?"’

‘Not at all. I am that obscure creature a vocal pedagogue. I take the voice and teach it to know itself.’

‘And did you – ?’

‘Yes. I took to pieces the most remarkable vocal instrument of these times and put it together again and gave it back to its owner. I worked her like a horse for three years and I am probably the only living person to whom she pays the slightest professional attention. I am commanded here because she wishes me to fall into a rapture over this opera.’

‘Have you seen it? Or should one say “read it"?’

He cast up his eyes and made a gesture of despair.

‘Oh dear,’ said Troy.

‘Alas, alas,’ agreed Signor Lattienzo. Troy wondered if he was habitually so unguarded with complete strangers.

‘You have, of course,’ he said, ‘noticed the fair young man with the appearance of a quattrocento angel and the expression of a soul in torment?’

‘I have indeed. It’s a remarkable head.’

‘What devil, one asks oneself, inserted into it the notion that it could concoct an opera. And yet,’ said Signor Lattienzo, looking thoughtfully at Rupert Bartholomew, ‘I fancy the first-night horrors the poor child undoubtedly suffers are not of the usual kind.’

‘No?’

‘No. I fancy he has discovered his mistake and feels deadly sick.’

‘But this is dreadful,’ Troy said. ‘It’s the worst that can happen.’

‘Can it happen to painters, then?’

‘I think painters know while they are still at it, if the thing they are doing is no good. I know I do,’ said Troy. ‘There isn’t perhaps the time-lag that authors and, from what you tell me, musicians can go through before they come to the awful moment of truth. Is the opera really so bad?’

‘Yes. It is bad. Nevertheless, here and there, perhaps three times, one hears little signs that make one regret he is being spoilt. Nothing is to be spared him. He is to conduct.’

‘Have you spoken to him? About it being wrong?’

‘Not yet. First I shall let him hear it.’

‘Oh,’ Troy protested, ‘but why! Why let him go through with it. Why not tell him and advise him to cancel the performance.’

‘First of all, because she would pay no attention.’

‘But if he refused?’

‘She has devoured him, poor dear. He would not refuse. She has made him her secretary-accompanist-composer, but beyond all that and most destructively, she has taken him for her lover and gobbled him up. It is very sad,’ said Signor Lattienzo and his eyes were bright as coal nuggets. ‘But you see,’ he added, ‘what I mean when I say that La Sommita will be too much engagée to pose for you until all is over. And then she may be too furious to sit still for thirty seconds. The first dress rehearsal was yesterday. Tomorrow will be occupied in alternately resting and making scenes and attending a second dress rehearsal. And the next night – the performance! Shall I tell you of their first meeting and how it has all come about?’

‘Please.’

‘But first I must fortify you with a drink.’

He did tell her, making a good story of it. ‘Imagine! Their first encounter. All the ingredients of the soap opera. A strange young man, pale as death, beautiful as Adonis, with burning eyes and water pouring off the end of his nose, gazes hungrily at his goddess at one a.m. during a deluge. She summons him to the window of her car. She is kind and before long she is even kinder. And again, kinder. He shows her his opera – it is called The Alien Corn, it is dedicated to her and since the role of Ruth is virtually the entire score and has scarcely finished ravishing the audience with one coloratura embellishment before another sets in, she is favourably impressed. You know, of course, of her celebrated A above high C.’

‘I’m afraid not!’

‘No? It’s second only to the achievement recorded in the Guinness Book of Records. This besotted young man has been careful to provide for it in her aria. I must tell you by the way that while she sings like the Queen of Heaven, musically speaking this splendid creature is as stupid as an owl.’

‘Oh, come!’

‘Believe me. It is the truth. You see before you the assembled company engaged at vast cost for this charade. The basso: a New Zealander and a worthy successor to Inia te Wiata. He is the Boaz and, believe me, finds himself knee deep in corn for which “alien” is all too inadequate a description. The dear Hilda Dancy on the sofa is the Naomi who escapes with a duet, a handful of recitatives and the contralto part in an enfeebled pastiche of “Bella figlia del amore". There she is joined by a mezzo-soprano – (the little Sylvia Parry now talking to the composer). She is, so to speak, Signora Boaz. Next comes the romantic element in the person of Rodolfo Romano who is the head gleaner and adores the Ruth at first sight. She, I need not tell you, dominates the quartet. You find me unsympathetic, perhaps?’ said Signor Lattienzo.

‘I find you very funny,’ said Troy.

‘But spiteful? Yes?’

‘Well – ruthless, perhaps.’

‘Would we were all.’

‘What?’

‘"Ruth"-less, my dear.’

‘Oh, really!’ said Troy and burst out laughing.

‘I am very hungry. She is twenty minutes late as usual and our good Monty consults his watch. Ah! we are to be given the full performance – the Delayed Entrance. Listen.’

A musical whooping could at that moment be heard rapidly increasing in volume.

‘The celestial fire engine,’ said Signor Lattienzo, ‘approaches.’ He said this loudly to Alleyn who had joined them.

The door into the hall was flung wide, Isabella Sommita stood on the threshold and Troy thought: This is it. O, praise the Lord all ye lands, this is it.

The first thing to be noticed about the Sommita was her eyes. They were enormous, black and baleful, and set slantwise in her magnolia face. They were topped by two jetty arcs, thin as a camel-hair brush but one knew that if left to themselves they would bristle and meet angrily above her nose. Her underlip was full, her teeth slightly protuberant with the little gap at the front which is said to denote an amorous disposition.

She wore green velvet and diamonds and her celebrated bosom, sumptuously displayed, shone like marble.

Everyone who had been sitting rose. Alleyn thought: A bit more of this and the ladies would fall to the ground in curtseys. He looked at Troy and recognized the quickened attention, the impersonal scrutiny that meant his wife was hooked.

‘Dar-leengs!’ sang La Sommita. ‘So late! Forgive, forgive.’ She directed her remarkably searching gaze upon them all, and let it travel slowly, rather, Alleyn thought, in the manner of a lighthouse, until it rested upon him, and then upon Troy. An expression of astonishment and rapture dawned. She advanced upon them both with outstretched arms and cries of excitement, seized their hands, giving them firm little shakes as if she was congratulating them on their union and found her joy in doing so too great for words.

‘But you have COME!’ she cried at last and appealed to everyone else. ‘Isn’t it wonderful!’ she demanded. ‘They have COME!’She displayed them, like trophies, to her politely responsive audience.

Alleyn said ‘Hell’ inaudibly and as a way of releasing himself kissed the receptive hand.

There followed cascades of welcome. Troy was gripped by the shoulders and gazed at searchingly and asked if she (the Sommita) would ‘do’ and told that already she knew they were en rapport and that she (the Sommita) always ‘knew’. Didn’t Troy always know? Alleyn was appealed to: ‘Didn’t she?’

‘Oh,’ Alleyn said, ‘she’s as cunning as a bagload of monkeys, Madame. You’ve no idea.’

Further melodious hoots, this time of laughter, greeted the far from brilliant sally. Alleyn was playfully chided.

They were checked by the entry at the far end of the room of another steward-like personage who announced dinner. He carried a salver with what was no doubt the mail that had come with the Alleyns and took it to the straw-coloured secretary who said: ‘On my desk.’ The man made some inaudible reply and seemed to indicate a newspaper on his salver. The secretary looked extremely perturbed and repeated, loudly enough for Alleyn to hear. ‘No, no. I’ll attend to it. In the drawer of my desk. Take it away.’

The man bowed slightly and returned to the doors.

The guests were already in motion and the scene now resembled the close of the first act of an Edwardian comedy, voices pitched rather high, movements studied, the sense, even, of some approach to a climax which would develop in the next act.

It developed, however, there and then. The bass, Mr Eru Johnstone, said in his enormous voice: ‘Do I see the evening paper? It will have the results of the Spring Cup, won’t it?’

‘I should imagine so,’ said Mr Reece. ‘Why?’

‘We had a sweep on Top Note. It seemed a clear indication,’ and he boomed up the room. ‘Everybody! The Cup!’

The procession halted. They all chattered in great excitement but were, as actors say, ‘topped’ by the Sommita demanding to see the paper there and then. Alleyn saw the secretary, who looked agitated, trying to reach the servant but the Sommita had already seized the newspaper and flapped it open.

The scene that followed bore for three or four seconds a far-fetched resemblance to an abortive ruck in rugby football. The guests, still talking eagerly, surged round the prima donna. And then, suddenly, fell silent, backed away and left her isolated, speechless and cross-eyed, holding out the open newspaper as if she intended to drop-kick it to eternity. Alleyn said afterwards that he could have sworn she foamed at the mouth.

Across the front page of the paper a banner headline was splashed.

SOMMITA SAYS NO FALSIES

And underneath:

SIGNED STATEMENT: BY FAMOUS PRIMA DONNA. HER CURVES ARE ALL HER OWN. BUT ARE THEY????

Boxed in a heavy outline, at the centre of the page, were about nine lines of typescript and beneath them the enormous signature – Isabella Sommita

III

Dinner had been catastrophic, a one-man show by the Sommita. To say she had run through the gamut of the passions would be a rank understatement: she began where the gamut left off and bursts of hysteria were as passages-of-rest in the performance. Occasionally she would come to an abrupt halt and wolf up great mouthfuls of the food that had been set before her, for she was a greedy lady. Her discomforted guests would seize the opportunity to join her, in a more conservative manner, in taking refreshment. The dinner was superb.

Her professional associates were less discomforted, the Alleyns afterwards agreed, than a lay audience would have been and indeed seemed more or less to take her passion in their stride, occasionally contributing inflammatory remarks while Signor Romano who was on her left made wide ineffable gestures and when he managed to get hold of it, kissed her hand. Alleyn was on her right. He was frequently appealed to and came in for one or two excruciating prods in the ribs as she drove home her points. He was conscious that Troy had her eyes on him and when he got the chance, made a lightning grimace of terror at her. He saw she was on the threshold of giggles.

Troy was on Mr Reece’s right. He seemed to think that in the midst of this din he was under an obligation to make conversation and remarked upon the lack of journalistic probity in Australia. The offending newspaper, it seemed, was an Australian weekly with a wide circulation in New Zealand.

When the port had been put before him and his dear one had passed for the time being into a baleful silence, he suggested tonelessly that the ladies perhaps wished to withdraw.

The Sommita made no immediate response and a tricky hiatus occurred during which she glowered at the table. Troy thought: Oh, to hell with all this, and stood up. Hilda Dancy followed with alacrity and so after a moment’s hesitation did wide-eyed Sylvia Parry. The men got to their feet.

The Sommita rose, assumed the posture of a Cassandra about to give tongue, appeared to change her mind and said she was going to bed.

About twenty minutes later Alleyn found himself closeted in a room that looked like the setting for a science-fiction film but was Mr Reece’s study. With him were Mr Reece himself, Mr Ben Ruby, Rupert Bartholomew and the straw-coloured secretary whose name turned out to be Hanley.

The infamous sheet of newsprint was laid out on a table round which the men had gathered. They read the typewritten letter reproduced in the central box.

To The Editor The Watchman

Sir: I wish, through your column, to repudiate utterly an outrageous calumny which is circulating in this country. I wish to state, categorically, that I have no need of, and therefore have never resorted to, cosmetic surgery or to artificial embellishment of any kind whatsoever. I am, and I present myself to my public, as God made me. Thank you.

Isabella Sommita.

‘And you tell me,’ Alleyn said, ‘that the whole thing is a forgery?’

‘You bet it’s a forgery,’ said Ben Ruby. ‘Would she ever help herself to a plateful of poisonous publicity! My God, this is going to make her the big laugh of a lifetime over in Aussie. And it’ll spread overseas, you better believe it.’

‘Have there in fact been any rumours, any gossip of this sort?’

‘Not that we have knowledge of,’ said Mr Reece. ‘And if it had been at all widespread, we certainly would have heard. Wouldn’t we, Ben?’

‘Well, face it, old boy, anyone that’s seen her would know it was silly. I meantersay, look at her cleavage! Speaks for itself.’ Mr Ruby turned to Alleyn. ‘You’ve seen. You couldn’t miss it. She’s got the best twinset you’re likely to meet in a lifetime. Beautiful! Here! Take a look at this picture.’

He turned to page 30 and flattened it out. The ‘picture’ was a photograph of the Sommita in profile with her head thrown back, her hands behind her resting on a table and taking the weight. She was in character as Carmen and an artificial rose was clenched between her teeth. She was powerfully décolletée and although at first glance there seemed to be no doubt of the authenticity of the poitrine, on closer examination there were certain curious little marks in that region suggestive of surgical scars. The legend beneath read ‘Seeing’s believing!’

‘She never liked that picture,’ Mr Ruby said moodily. ‘Never. But the press did, so we kept it in the handouts. Here!’ he exclaimed jamming a forefinger at it. ‘Here, take a look at this, will you? This has been interfered with. This has been touched up. This has been tinkered with. Those scars are phoney.’

Alleyn examined it. ‘I think you’re right,’ he said and turned back to the front page.

‘Mr Hanley,’ he said, ‘do you think that typewriter could have been one belonging to anybody in Madame Sommita’s immediate circle? Can you tell that?’

‘Oh? Oh!’ said the secretary and stooped over the paper. ‘Well,’ he said after a moment, ‘it wasn’t typed on my machine.’ He laughed uncomfortably. ‘I can promise you that much,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t know about hers. How about it, Rupert?’

‘Bartholomew,’ explained Mr Reece in his flattened way, ‘is Madame’s secretary.’ He stood back and motioned Rupert to examine the page.

Rupert who had a tendency to change colour whenever Mr Reece paid him any attention, did so now. He stooped over the paper.

‘No,’ he said, ‘it’s not our – I mean my – machine. The letter p is out of alignment in ours. And anyway it’s not the same type.’

‘And the signature? That looks convincing enough, doesn’t it?’ Alleyn asked his host.

‘Oh yes,’ he said. ‘It’s Bella’s signature.’

‘Can any of you think of any cause Madame Sommita may have had to put her signature at the foot of a blank sheet of letter paper?’

Nobody spoke.

‘Can she type?’

‘No,’ they all said and Ben Ruby added irritably, ‘Ah, for Chrissake, what’s the point of labouring at it? There’ve been no rumours about her bosom, pardon my candour, and, hell, she never wrote that bloody letter. It’s got to be a forgery and, by God, in my book it’s got to be that sodding photographer at the bottom of it.’

The two young men made sounds of profound agreement.

Mr Reece raised his hand and they were silenced. ‘We are fortunate enough,’ he announced, ‘to have Mr Alleyn, or rather Chief Superintendent Alleyn, with us. I suggest that we accord him our full attention, gentlemen.’

He might have been addressing a board meeting. He turned to Alleyn and made a slight inclination. ‘Will you – ?’ he invited.

Alleyn said: ‘Of course, if you think I can be of use. But I expect I ought just to mention that if there’s any idea of calling in the police it will have to be the New Zealand police. I’m sure you will understand that.’

‘Oh, quite so, quite so,’ said Mr Reece. ‘Let us say we will value, immensely, your unofficial expertise.’

‘Very well. But it won’t be at all startling.’

The men took chairs round the table, as if, Alleyn thought, they were resigning themselves to some damned lecture. The whole scene, he thought, was out of joint. They might have arranged between themselves how it should be played but were not quite sure of their lines.

He remembered his instructions from the AC. He was to observe, act with extreme discretion, fall in with the terms of his invitation and treat the riddle of the naughty photographer as he would any case to which he had been consigned in the ordinary course of his duties.

He said: ‘Here goes then. First of all: if this was a police job one of the first things to be done would be to make an exhaustive examination of the letter which seems to be a reproduction in print of an original document. We would get it blown up on a screen, search the result for any signs of fingerprints or indications of what sort of paper the original might be. Same treatment for the photograph with particular attention to the rather clumsy faking of surgical scars.

‘At the same time someone would be sent to the offices of The Watchman to find out everything available about when the original letter was received and whether by post or pushed into the correspondence box at the entrance or wherever of The Watchman’s office. And also who dealt with it. The Watchman, almost certainly, would be extremely cagey about this and would, when asked to produce the original, say it had not been kept, which might or might not be true. Obviously,’ Alleyn said, ‘they didn’t ask for any authorization of the letter or take any steps to assure themselves that it was genuine.’

‘It’s not that sort of paper,’ said Ben Ruby. ‘Well, look at it. If we sued for libel it’d be nothing new to The Watchman. The scoop would be worth it.’

‘Didn’t I hear,’ Alleyn asked, ‘that on one occasion the photographer – “Strix” isn’t it? – dressed as a woman, asked for her autograph and then fired his camera at point-blank range and ducked out?’

Mr Ruby slammed the table. ‘By God, you’re right,’ he shouted, ‘and he got it. She signed. He got her signature.’

‘It’s too much, I suppose, to ask if she remembers any particular book or whether she ever signed at the bottom of a blank page or how big the page was.’

‘She remembers! Too right she remembers!’ Mr Ruby shouted. ‘That one was an outsize book. Looked like something special for famous names. She remembers it on account it was not the usual job. As for the signature she’s most likely to have made it extra big to fill out the whole space. She does that.’

‘Were any of you with her? She was leaving the theatre, wasn’t she? At the time?’

‘I was with her,’ Mr Reece offered. ‘So were you, Ben. We always escort her from the stage door to her car. I didn’t actually see the book. I was looking to make sure the car was in the usual place. There was a big crowd.’

‘I was behind her,’ said Mr Ruby. ‘I couldn’t see anything. The first thing I knew was the flash and the rumpus. She was yelling out for somebody to stop the photographer. Somebody else was screaming “Stop that woman!” and fighting to get through. And it turned out afterwards, the screamer was the woman herself who was the photographer Strix if you can follow me.’

‘Just,’ said Alleyn.

‘He’s made monkeys out of the lot of us; all along the line he’s made us look like monkeys,’ Mr Ruby complained.

‘What does he look like? Surely someone must have noticed something about him?’

But, no, it appeared. Nobody had come forward with a reliable description. He operated always in a crowd where everyone’s attention was focused on his victim and cameramen abounded. Or unexpectedly he would pop round a corner with his camera held in both hands before his face, or from a car that shot off before any action could be taken. There had been one or two uncertain impressions – he was bearded, he had a scarf pulled over his mouth, he was dark. Mr Ruby had a theory that he never wore the same clothes twice and always went in for elaborate make-ups but there was nothing to support this idea.

‘What action,’ Mr Reece asked Alleyn, ‘would you advise?’

‘To begin with: not an action for libel. Can she be persuaded against it, do you think?’

‘She may be all against it in the morning. You never know,’ said Hanley, and then with an uneasy appeal to his employer: ‘I beg your pardon, sir, but I mean to say you don’t, do you? Actually?’

Mr Reece, with no change of expression in his face, merely looked at his secretary who subsided nervously.

Alleyn had returned to The Watchman. He tilted the paper this way and that under the table lamp. ‘I think,’ he said, ‘I’m not sure but I think the original paper was probably glossy.’

‘I’ll arrange for someone to deal with The Watchman end,’ said Mr Reece, and to Hanley: ‘Get through to Sir Simon Marks in Sydney,’ he ordered. ‘Or wherever he is. Get him.’

Hanley retreated to a distant telephone and huddled over it in soundless communication.

Alleyn said: ‘If I were doing this as a conscientious copper I would now ask you all if you have any further ideas about the perpetrator of these ugly tricks – assuming for the moment that the photographer and the concoctor of the letter are one and the same person. Is there anybody you can think of who bears a grudge deep enough to inspire such persistent and malicious attacks? Has she an enemy, in fact?’

‘Has she a hundred bloody enemies?’ Mr Ruby heatedly returned. ‘Of course she has. Like the homegrown baritone she insulted in Perth or the top hostess in Los Angeles who threw a high-quality party for her and asked visiting royalty to meet her.’

‘What went wrong?’

‘She didn’t go.’

‘Oh dear!’

‘Took against it at the last moment because she’d heard the host’s money came from South Africa. We talked about a sudden attack of migraine, which might have answered if she hadn’t gone to supper at Angelo’s and the press hadn’t reported it with pictures the next morning.’

‘Wasn’t “Strix” already in action by then, though?’

‘That’s true,’ agreed Mr Ruby gloomily. ‘You’ve got something there. But enemies! My oath!’

‘In my view,’ said Mr Reece, ‘the matter of enmity doesn’t arise. This has been from first to last a profitable enterprise. I’ve ascertained that “Strix” can ask what he likes for his photographs. It’s only a matter of time, one imagines, before they reappear in bookform. He’s hit on a money-spinner and unless we can catch him in the act he’ll go on spinning as long as the public interest lasts. Simple as that.’

‘If he concocted the letter,’ Alleyn said, ‘it’s hard to see how he’d make money out of that. He could hardly admit to forgery.’

Rupert Bartholomew said: ‘I think the letter was written out of pure spite. She thinks so, too: you heard her. A sort of black practical joke.’

He made this announcement with an air of defiance, almost of proprietorship. Alleyn saw Mr Reece look at him for several seconds with concentration as if his attention had been unexpectedly aroused. He thought: That boy’s getting himself into deep water.

Hanley had been speaking into the telephone. He stood up and said, ‘Sir Simon Marks, sir.’

Mr Reece took the call inaudibly. The others fell into an unrestful silence, not wishing to seem as if they listened but unable to find anything to say to each other. Alleyn was conscious of Rupert Bartholomew’s regard which as often as he caught it was hurriedly turned away. He’s making some sort of appeal, Alleyn thought and went over to him. They were now removed from the others.

‘Do tell me about your opera,’ he said. ‘I’ve only gathered the scantiest picture from our host of what is going to happen but it all sounds most exciting.’

Rupert muttered something about not being too sure of that.

‘But,’ said Alleyn, ‘it must be an enormous thing for you, isn’t it? For the greatest soprano of our time to bring it all about? A wonderful piece of good fortune, I’d have thought.’

‘Don’t,’ Rupert muttered. ‘Don’t say that.’

‘Hullo! What’s all this? First night nerves?’

Rupert shook his head. Good Lord, Alleyn thought, a bit more of this and he’ll be in tears. Rupert stared at him and seemed to be on the edge of speech when Mr Reece put back the receiver and rejoined the others. ‘Marks will attend to The Watchman,’ he said. ‘If the original is there he’ll see that we get it.’

‘Can you be sure of that?’ Ruby asked.

‘Certainly. He owns the group and controls the policy.’

They began to talk in a desultory way and for Alleyn their voices sounded a long way off and disembodied. The spectacular room became unsteady and its contents swelled, diminished and faded. I’m going to sleep on my feet, he thought and pulled himself together.

He said to his host, ‘As I can’t be of use, I wonder if I may be excused? It’s been a long day and one didn’t get much sleep on the plane.’

Mr Reece was all consideration. ‘How very thoughtless of us,’ he said. ‘Of course. Of course.’ He made appropriate hospitable remarks about hoping the Alleyns had everything they required, suggested that they breakfasted late in their room and ring when they were ready for it. He sounded as if he was playing some sort of internal cassette of his own recording. He glanced at Hanley who advanced, all eager to please.

‘We’re in unbelievable bliss,’ Alleyn assured them, scarcely knowing what he said. And to Hanley: ‘No, please don’t bother. I promise not to doze off on my way up. Good night, everyone.’

He crossed the hall which was now dimly lit. The pregnant woman loomed up and stared at him through slitted eyes. Behind her the fire, dwindled to a glow, pulsated quietly.

As he passed the drawing-room door he heard a scatter of desultory conversation: three voices at the most, he thought, and none of them belonging to Troy.

And, sure enough, when he reached their room he found her in bed and fast asleep. Before joining her he went to the heavy window curtains, parted them and saw the lake in moonlight close beneath him, stretching away like a silver plain into the mountains. Incongruous, he thought, and impertinent, for this little knot of noisy, self-important people with their self-imposed luxury and serio-comic concerns to be set down at the heart of such an immense serenity.

He let the curtain fall and went to bed.

He and Troy were coming back to earth in Mr Reece’s aeroplane. An endless road rushed towards them. Appallingly far below, the river thundered and water lapped at the side of their boat. He fell quietly into it and was immediately fathoms deep.

CHAPTER 3 Rehearsal

Troy slept heavily and woke at ten o’clock to find Alleyn up and dressed and the room full of sunshine.

‘I’ve never known you so unwakeable,’ he said. ‘Deep as the lake itself. I’ve asked for our breakfast.’

‘Have you been up long?’

‘About two hours. The bathroom’s tarted up to its eyebrows. Jets of water smack you up where you least expect it. I went downstairs. Not a soul about apart from the odd slave who looked at me as if I was dotty. So I went outside and had a bit of an explore. Troy, it really is quite extraordinarily beautiful, this place; so still; the lake clear, the trees motionless, everything new and fresh and yet, or so one feels, empty and belonging to primordial time. Dear me,’ said Alleyn, rubbing his nose, ‘I’d better not try. Let’s tell each other about what went on after that atrocious dinner party.’

‘I’ve nothing to tell. When we left you the diva merely said in a volcanic voice: ‘Excuse me, ladies,’ and swept upstairs. I gave her time to disappear and then followed suit. I can scarcely remember getting myself to bed. What about you?’

Alleyn told her.

‘If you ask me,’ Troy said, ‘it needs only another outrage like this and she’ll break down completely. She was literally shaking all over as if she had a rigor. She can’t go on like that. Don’t you agree?’

‘Not really. Not necessarily. Have you ever watched two Italians having a discussion in the street? Furious gestures, shrieks, glaring eyes, faces close together. Any moment, you think, it’ll be a free-for-all and then without warning they burst out laughing and hit each other’s shoulders in comradely accord. I’d say she was of the purest Italian – perhaps Sicilian – peasant stock and utterly uninhibited. Add to that the propensity of all public performers to cut up rough and throw temperaments right and left when they think they’ve been slighted and you’ve got La Sommita. You’ll see.’

But beyond staring bemusedly out of the windows, Troy was not given much chance of seeing for herself. Instead, she and Alleyn were to be taken on a tour of the house by Mr Reece, beginning with the ‘studio’ which turned out to be on the same level as their bedroom. Grand pianos being as chicken feed to Mr Reece, there was one in here and Troy was given to understand that the Sommita practised at it and that the multiple-gifted Rupert Bartholomew acted as her accompanist, having replaced an Australian lady in that capacity. She found, with astonishment, that an enormous easel of sophisticated design and a painter’s table and stool had been introduced into the room for her use. Mr Reece was anxious, he said, to know if they suited. Troy, tempted to ask if they were on sale or return, said they did and was daunted by their newness. There was also a studio throne with a fine lacquer screen on it. Mr Reece expressed a kind of drab displeasure that it was not large enough to accommodate the grand piano as well. Troy, who had already made up her mind what she wanted to do with her subject, said it was of no consequence. When, she asked, would she be able to start? Mr Reece, she thought, was slightly evasive. He had not spoken this morning to Madame, he said, but he understood there would be rehearsals for the greater part of the day. The orchestra was to arrive. They had been rehearsing, with frequent visits from Bartholomew, and would arrive by bus. The remaining guests were expected tomorrow.

The studio window was of the enormous plate-glass kind. Through it they had a new view of lake and mountains. Immediately beneath them, adjoining the house, was a patio and close by an artificially enclosed swimming pool, round which and in which members of the house party were displayed. On the extreme right, separated from the pool and surrounded by native bush, was an open space and a hangar which, Mr Reece said, accommodated the helicopter.

Mr Reece was moved to talk about the view which he did in a grey, factual manner, stating that the lake was so deep in many parts that it had never been sounded and that the region was famous for a storm, known locally as The Rosser, which rose unheralded in the mountains and whipped the lake into fury and had been responsible for many fatal accidents.

He also made one or two remarks on the potential for ‘development’ and Alleyn saw the look of horrified incredulity on his wife’s face. Fortunately, it appeared, pettifogging legislation about landtenure and restrictions on imported labour would prohibit what Mr Reece called ‘worthwhile touristic planning’ so that the prospect of marinas, high-rise hotels, speedboats, loud music and floodlit bathing pools did not threaten those primordial shores. Sandflies by day and mosquitoes by night, Mr Reece thought, could be dealt with and Troy envisaged low-flying aircraft delivering millions of gallons of kerosene upon the immaculate face of the lake.

Without warning she was overcome by a return of fatigue and felt quite unable to face an extended pilgrimage of this unending mansion. Seeing her dilemma, Alleyn asked Mr Reece if he might fetch her gear and unpack it. There was immediate talk of summoning a ‘man’ but they managed to avoid this. And then a ‘man’ in fact did appear, the dark, Italianate-looking person who had brought their breakfast. He had a message for Mr Reece. Madame Sommita wished to see him urgently.

‘I think I had better attend to this,’ he said. ‘We all meet on the patio at eleven for drinks. I hope you will both join us there.’

So they were left in peace. Alleyn fetched Troy’s painting gear and unpacked it. He opened up her old warrior of a paintbox, unstrapped her canvases and set out her sketchbook, and the collection of materials that were like signatures written across any place where Troy worked. She sat in a chair by the window and watched him and felt better.

Alleyn said: ‘This room will be de-sterilized when it smells of turpentine and there are splotches of flake white on the ledge of that easel and paint rags on the table.’

‘At the moment it can not be said to beckon one to work. They might as well have hung Please Don’t Touch notices on everything.’

‘You won’t mind once you get going.’

‘You think? P’raps you’re right,’ she said, cheering up. She looked down at the house party round the pool. ‘That’s quite something,’ she said. ‘Very frisky colour and do notice Signor Lattienzo’s stomach. Isn’t it superb!’

Signor Lattienzo was extended on an orange-coloured chaise longue. He wore a green bathrobe which had slid away from his generous torso upon which a book with a scarlet cover was perched. He glistened.

Prompted, perhaps by that curious telepathy which informs people that they are being stared at, he threw back his head, saw Troy and Alleyn and waved energetically. They responded. He made eloquent Italianate gestures which he wound up by kissing both his hands at once to Troy.

‘You’ve got off, darling,’ said Alleyn.

‘I like him, I think. But I’m afraid he’s rather malicious. I didn’t tell you. He thinks that poor beautiful young man’s opera is awful. Isn’t that sad?’

‘Is that what’s the matter with the boy!’ Alleyn exclaimed. ‘Does he know it’s no good?’

‘Signor Lattienzo thinks he might.’

‘And yet they’re going on with all this wildly extravagant business.’

‘She insists, I imagine.’

‘Ah.’

‘Signor Lattienzo says she’s as stupid as an owl.’

‘Musically?’

‘Yes. But I rather gathered generally, as well.’

‘The finer points of attitudes towards a hostess don’t seem to worry Signor Lattienzo.’

‘Well, if we’re going to be accurate, I suppose she’s not his hostess. She’s his ex-pupil.’

‘True.’

Troy said: ‘That boy’s out of his depth altogether. She’s made a nonsense of him. She’s a monster and I can’t wait to get it on canvas. A monster,’ Troy repeated with relish.

‘He’s not down there with the rest of them,’ Alleyn pointed out. ‘I suppose he’s concerned with the arrival of his orchestra.’

‘I can’t bear to think of it. Imagine! All these musical VIPs converging on him and he knowing, if he does know, that it’s going to be a fiasco. He’s going to conduct. Imagine!’

‘Awful. Rubbing his nose in it.’

‘We’ll have to be there.’

‘I’m afraid so, darling.’

Troy had turned away from the window and now faced the door of the room. She was just in time to see it gently closing.

‘What’s wrong?’ Alleyn asked quickly.

Troy whispered: ‘The door. Someone’s just shut it.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes. Truly.’

He went to the door and opened it. Troy saw him look to his right.

‘Hullo, Bartholomew,’ he said. ‘Good morning to you. Looking for Troy, by any chance?’

There was a pause and then Rupert’s Australian voice, unevenly pitched, not fully audible: ‘Oh, good morning. I – yes – matter of fact – message – ‘

‘She’s here. Come in.’

He came in, white-faced and hesitant. Troy welcomed him with what she felt might be overdone cordiality and asked if his message was for her.

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘yes, it is. She – I mean Madame Sommita – asked me to say she’s very sorry but in case you might be expecting her she can’t – she’s afraid she won’t be able – to sit for you today because – because – ‘

‘Because of rehearsals and everything? Of course. I wasn’t expecting it and in fact I’d rather not start today.’

‘Oh,’ he said, ‘yes. I see. Good-oh, then. I’ll tell her.’

He made as if to go but seemed inclined to stay.

‘Do sit down,’ said Alleyn, ‘unless you’re in a hurry, of course. We’re hoping someone – you, if you’ve time – will tell us a little more about tomorrow night.’

He made a movement with both hands almost as if he wanted to cover his ears but checked it and asked if they minded if he smoked. He produced a cigarette case; gold with a jewelled motif.

‘Will you?’ he said to Troy and when she declined, turned to Alleyn. The open case slipped out of his uncertain grasp. He said: ‘Oh. Sorry,’ and looked as if he’d been caught shoplifting. Alleyn picked it up. The inside of the lid was inscribed. There in all its flamboyance was the now familiar signature: Isabella Sommita.

Rupert was making a dreadfully clumsy business of shutting the case and lighting his cigarette. Alleyn, as if continuing a conversation, asked Troy where she would like him to put the easel. They improvised an argument about light and the possibility of the bathing pool as a subject. This enabled them both to look out of the window.

‘Very tricky subject,’ Troy said. ‘I don’t think I’m up to it!’

‘Better maintain a masterly inactivity, you think?’ Alleyn cheerfully rejoined. ‘You may be right.’

They turned back into the room and there was Rupert Bartholomew, sitting on the edge of the model’s throne and crying.

He possessed male physical beauty to such a remarkable degree that there was something unreal about his tears. They trickled over the perfect contours of his face and might have been drops of water on a Greek mask. They were distressing but they were also incongruous.

Alleyn said: ‘My dear chap, what’s the matter?’ and Troy: ‘Would you like to talk about it? We’re very discreet.’

He talked. Disjointedly at first and with deprecating interruptions – they didn’t want to hear all this – he didn’t want them to think he was imposing – it could be of no interest to them. He wiped his eyes, blew his nose, drew hard on his cigarette and became articulate.

At first it was simply a statement that The Alien Corn was no good, that the realization had come upon him out of the blue and with absolute conviction. ‘It was ghastly,’ he said. ‘I was pouring out drinks and suddenly, without warning, I knew. Nothing could alter it: the thing’s punk.’

‘Was this performance already under consideration?’ Alleyn asked him.

‘She had it all planned. It was meant to be a – well – a huge surprise. And the ghastly thing is,’ said Rupert, his startlingly blue eyes opened in horror, ‘I’d thought it all fantastic. Like one of those schmaltzy young-genius-makes-it films. I’d been in – well – in ecstasy.’

‘Did you tell her, there and then?’ asked Troy.

‘Not then. Mr Reece and Ben Ruby were there. I – well, I was so – you know – shattered. Sort of. I waited,’ said Rupert, and blushed, ‘until that evening.’

‘How did she take it?’

‘She didn’t take it. I mean she simply wouldn’t listen. I mean she simply swept it aside. She said – my God, she said genius always had moments like these, moments of what she called divine despair. She said she did. Over her singing. And then, when I sort of tried to stick it out, she – was – well, very angry. And you see – I mean she had cause. All her plans and arrangements. She’d written to Beppo Lattienzo and Sir David Baumgartner and she’d fixed up with Rodolfo and Hilda and Sylvia and the others. And the press. The big names. All that. I did hang out for a bit but – ‘

He broke off, looked quickly at Alleyn and then at the floor. ‘There were other things. It’s more complicated than I’ve made it sound,’ he muttered.

‘Human relationships can be hellishly awkward, can’t they?’ Alleyn said.

‘You’re telling me,’ Rupert fervently agreed. Then he burst out: ‘I think I must have been mad! Or ill, even. Like running a temperature and now it’s gone and – and – I’m cleaned out and left with tomorrow.’

‘And you are sure?’ Troy asked. ‘What about the company and the orchestra? Do you know what they think? And Signor Lattienzo?’

‘She made me promise not to show it to him. I don’t know if she’s shown it. I think she has. He’ll have seen at once that it’s awful, of course. And the company: they know all right. Rodolfo Romano very tactfully suggests alterations. I’ve seen them looking at each other. They stop talking when I turn up. Do you know what they call it? They think I haven’t heard but I’ve heard all right. They call it Corn. Very funny. Oh,’ Rupert cried out, ‘she shouldn’t have done it! It hasn’t been a fair go: I hadn’t got a hope. Not a hope in hell. My God, she’s making me conduct. There I’ll stand, before those VIPs, waving my arms like a bloody puppet and they won’t know which way to look for embarrassment.’

There was a long silence, broken at last by Troy.

‘Well,’ she said vigorously, ‘refuse. Never mind about the celebrities and the fuss and the phoney publicity. It’ll be very unpleasant and it’ll take a lot of guts but at least it’ll be honest. To the devil with the lot of them. Refuse.’

He got to his feet. He had been bathing and his short yellow robe had fallen open. He’s apricot-coloured, Troy noted, not blackish tan and coarsened by exposure like most sun addicts. He’s really too much of a treat. No wonder she grabbed him. He’s a collector’s piece, poor chap.

‘I don’t think,’ Rupert said, ‘I’m any more chicken than the next guy. It’s not that. It’s her – Isabella. You saw last night what she can be like. And coming on top of this letter business – look, she’d either break down and make herself ill or – or go berserk and murder somebody. Me, for preference.’

‘Oh, come on!’ said Troy.

‘No,’ he said, ‘it’s not nonsense. Really. She’s a Sicilian.’

‘Not all Sicilians are tigers,’ Alleyn remarked.

‘Her kind are.’

Troy said, ‘I’m going to leave you to Rory. I think this calls for male-chauvinist gossip.’

When she had gone, Rupert began apologizing again. What, he asked, would Mrs Alleyn think of him?

‘Don’t start worrying about that,’ Alleyn said. ‘She’s sorry, she’s not shocked and she’s certainly not bored. And I think she may be right. However unpleasant it may be, I think perhaps you should refuse. But I’m afraid it’s got to be your decision and nobody else’s.’

‘Yes, but you see you don’t know the worst of it. I couldn’t bring it out with Mrs Alleyn here. I – Isabella – we – ‘

‘Good Lord, my dear chap – ‘ Alleyn began and then pulled himself up. ‘You’re lovers, aren’t you?’ he said.

‘If you can call it that,’ he muttered.

‘And you think if you take this stand against her you’ll lose her? That it?’

‘Not exactly –I mean, yes, of course, I suppose she’d kick me out.’

‘Would that be such a very bad thing?’

‘It’d be a bloody good thing,’ he burst out.

‘Well, then – ‘

‘I can’t expect you to understand. I don’t understand myself. At first it was marvellous: magical. I felt equal to anything. Way up. Out of this world. To hear her sing, to stand at the back of the theatre and see two thousand people go mad about her and to know that for me it didn’t end with the curtain calls and flowers and ovations but that for me the best was still to come. Talk about the crest of the wave – gosh, it was super.’

‘I can imagine.’

‘And then, after that – you know – that moment of truth about the opera, the whole picture changed. You could say that the same thing happened about her. I saw all at once what she really is like and that she only approved of that bloody fiasco because she saw herself making a success in it and that she ought never, never to have given me the encouragement she did. And I knew she had no real musical judgement and that I was lost.’

‘All the more reason – ‘ Alleyn began and was shouted down.

‘You can’t tell me anything I don’t know. But I was in it. Up to my eyes. Presents – like this thing, this cigarette case. Clothes, even. A fantastic salary. At first I was so far gone in –I suppose you could call it – rapture, that it didn’t seem degrading. And now, in spite of seeing it all as it really is, I can’t get out. I can’t.’

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