Photo Finish

A hand was laid on Alleyn’s shoulder. He turned his head and found Mr. Reece’s impassive countenance close to his own. “Can you come out?” he said very quietly. “Something has happened.”

As they went out the Sommita and Roberto Rodolfo had begun to sing their duet.

The servant who had brought the Alleyns their breakfast was in the study looking uneasy and deprecating.

“This is Marco,” said Mr. Reece. “He has reported an incident that I think you should know about. Tell Chief Superintendent Alleyn exactly what you told me.”

Marco shied a little on hearing Alleyn’s rank, but he told his story quite coherently and seemed to gather assurance as he did so. He had the Italian habit of gesture but only a slight accent.

He said that he had been sent out to the helicopter hangar to fetch a case of wine that had been brought in the previous day. He went in by a side door and as he opened it heard a scuffle inside the hangar. The door dragged a little on the floor. There was, unmistakably, the sound of someone ru

Alleyn said: “The hangar, of course, opens on to the cleared space for takeoff.”

“Yes, sir. And it’s surrounded by a kind of shubbery. The proper approach follows round the house to the front. I ran along it about sixty feet but there wasn’t a sign of him, so I returned and had a look at the bush, as they call it. It was very overgrown, and I saw at once he couldn’t have got through it without making a noise. But there wasn’t a sound. I peered about in case he was lying low, and then I remembered that on the far side of the clearing there’s another path through the bush going down to the lakeside. So I took this path. With the same result: nothing: Well, sir,” Marco amended and an air of complacency, if not of smugness, crept over his face, “I say ‘nothing.’ But that’s not quite right. There was something. Lying by the path. There was this.”

With an admirable sense of timing he thrust forward his open palm. On it lay a small round metal or plastic cap.

“It’s what they use to protect the lens, sir. It’s off a camera.”

iii

“I don’t think,” Alleyn said, “we should jump to alarming conclusions about this but certainly it should be followed up. I imagine,” he said dryly, “that anything to do with photography is a tricky subject at the Lodge.”

“With some cause,” said Mr. Reece.

“Indeed. Now then, Marco. You’ve given us a very clear account of what happened, and you’ll think I’m being unduly fussy if we go over it all again.”

Marco spread his hands as if offering him the earth.

“First of all, then: this man. Are you sure it wasn’t one of the guests or one of the staff?”

“No, no, no, no, no,” said Marco rapidly, shaking his finger sideways as if a wasp had stung it. “Not possible. No!”

“Not, for instance, the launch man?”

“No, sir. No! Not anyone of the household. I am certain. I would swear it.”

“Dark or fair?”

“Fair. Bareheaded. Fair. Certainly a blond.”

“And bare to the waist?”

“Of course. Certainly.”

“Not even a camera slung over his shoulder?”

Marco closed his eyes, bunched his fingers and laid the tips to his forehead. He remained like that for some seconds.

“Well? What about it?” Mr. Reece asked a trifle impatiently.

Marco opened his eyes and unbunched his fingers. “It could have been in his hands,” he said.

“This path,” Alleyn said. “The regular approach from the front of the house round to the hangar. As I recollect, it passes by the windows of the concert chamber?”

“Certainly,” Mr. Reece said and nodded very slightly at Alleyn. “And this afternoon, they were not curtained.”

“And open?”

“And open.”

“Marco,” Alleyn said, “did you at any point hear anything going on in the concert chamber?”

“But yes!” Marco cried, staring at him. “Madame, sir. It was Madame. She sang. With the voice of an angel.”

“Ah.”

“She was singing still, sir, when I returned to the clearing.”

“After you found this cap, did you go on to the lakeside?”

“Not quite to the lakeside, sir, but far enough out of the bush to see that he was not there. And then I thought I should not continue, but that I should report at once to Signor Reece. And that is what I did.”

“Very properly.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“And I,” said Mr. Reece, “have sent the house staff and guests to search the grounds.”

“If I remember correctly,” Alleyn said, “at the point where Marco emerged from the bush, it is only a comparatively short distance across from the Island to that narrow tree-clad spit that reaches out from the mainland towards the Island and is linked to it by your power lines?”

“You suggest he might have swum it?” Mr. Reece asked.

“No, sir,” Marco intervened. “Not possible. I would have seen him.” He stopped and then asked with a change of voice, “Or would I?”

“If he’s on the Island he will be found,” said Mr. Reece, coldly. And then to Alleyn: “You were right to say we should not make too much of this incident. It will probably turn out to be some young hoodlum or another with a camera. But it is a nuisance. Bella has been very much upset by this Strix and his activities. If she hears of it she might well begin to imagine all sorts of things. I suggest we say nothing of it to tonight’s guests and performers. You hear that, Marco?”

Marco was all acquiescence.

Alleyn thought that if what was no doubt a completely uncoordinated search was thundering about the premises, the chances of keeping the affair secret were extremely slender. But, he reminded himself, for the present the rehearsal should be engaging everybody’s attention.

Marco was dismissed with a less than gushing word of approval from his employer.

When he had gone, Mr. Reece, with a nearer approach to cosiness than Alleyn would have thought within his command, said: “What do you make of all that? Simply a loutish trespasser or — something else?”

“Impossible to say. Is it pretty widely known in New Zealand that Madame Sommita is your guest?”

“Oh yes. One tries to circumvent the press, but one never totally succeeds. It has come out. There have been articles about the Lodge itself and there are pressmen who try to bribe the launch man to bring them over. He is paid a grotesquely high wage and has the sense to refuse. I must say,” Mr. Reece confided, “it would be very much in character for one of these persons to skulk about the place, having, by whatever means, swimming perhaps, got himself on the Island. The hangar would be a likely spot, one might think, for him to hide.”

“He would hear the rehearsal from there.”

“Precisely. And await his chance to come out and take a photograph through an open window? It’s possible. As long,” Mr. Reece said and actually struck his right fist into his left palm, “as long as it isn’t that filthy Strix at it again. Anything rather than that.”

“Will you tell me something about your staff? You’ve asked me to do my constabulary stuff and this would be a routine question.”

“Ned Hanley is better qualified than I to answer it. He came over here from Australia and saw to it. An overambitious hotel had gone into liquidation. He engaged eight of the staff and a housekeeper for the time we shall be using the Lodge. Marco was not one of these, but we had excellent references, I understand. Ned would tell you.”

“An Italian, of course?”

“Oh, yes. But a naturalized Australian. He made a great thing, just now, of his story, but I would think it was substantially correct. I’m hoping the guests and performers will not, if they do get hold of the story, start jumping to hysterical conclusions. Perhaps we should let it be known quite casually that a boy had swum across and has been sent packing. What do you think?”