Photo Finish

And there, abruptly, was Rupert, holding out the envelope. Alleyn took it. It was addressed tidily to the Sommita in what looked to be a feminine hand, and Alleyn thought had probably enclosed one of the greeting cards. It was unsealed. He drew out the enclosure: a crumpled corner, torn from a sheet of music.

He opened it. The message had been scrawled in pencil and the writing was irregular as if the paper had rested on an uneven surface.

Soon it will all be over. If I were a Rossi I would make a better job of it. R.

Alleyn looked at the message for much longer than it took to read it. Then he returned it to the envelope and put it in his pocket.

“When did you write this?” he asked.

“After the curtain came down. I tore the paper off the score.”

“And wrote it here, in her room?”

“Yes.”

“Did she find you in here when she came for you?”

“I was in the doorway. I’d finished— that.”

“And you allowed yourself to be dragged on?”

“Yes. I’d made up my mind what I’d say. She asked for it,” said Rupert through his teeth, “and she got it.”

“ ‘Soon it will all be over,’ ” Alleyn quoted. “What would be over?”

“Everything. The opera. Us. What I was going to do. You heard me, for God’s sake. I told them the truth.” Rupert caught his breath back and then said, “I was not pla

“I didn’t think that even you would have informed her in writing, however ambiguously, of your intention. Would you care to elaborate on the Rossi bit?”

“I wrote that to frighten her. She’d told me about it. One of those Italian family feuds. Mafia sort of stuff. Series of murders and the victim always a woman. She said she was in the direct line to be murdered. She really believed that. She even thought the Strix man might be one of them — the Rossis. She said she’d never spoken about it to anyone else. Something about silence.”

“Omertà?”

“Yes. That was it.”

“Why did she tell you then?”

Rupert stamped his feet and threw up his hands. “Why! Why! Because she wanted me to pity her. It was when I first told her that thing was no good and I couldn’t go on with the performance. She — I think she saw that I’d changed. Seen her for what she was. It was awful. I was trapped. From then on I — well, you know, don’t you, what it was like. She could still whip up—”

“Yes. All right.”

“Tonight — last night — it all came to a head. I hated her for singing my opera so beautifully. Can you understand that? It was a kind of insult. As if she deliberately showed how worthless it was. She was a vulgar woman, you know. That was why she degraded me. That was what I felt after the curtain fell— degraded — and it was then I knew I hated her.”

“And this was written on the spur of the moment?”

“Of course. I suppose you could say I was sort of beside myself. I can’t tell you what it did to me. Standing there. Conducting, for Christ’s sake. It was indecent exposure.”

Alleyn said carefully: “You will realize that I must keep the paper for the time being, at least. I will write you a receipt for it.”

“Do you believe what I’ve said?”

“That’s the sort of question we’re not supposed to answer. By and large — yes.”

“Have you finished with me?”

“I think so. For the present.”

“It’s an extraordinary thing,” said Rupert. “And there’s no sense in it, but I feel better. Horribly tired but — yes — better.”

“You’ll sleep now,” Alleyn said.

“I still want to get rid of that abortion.”

Alleyn thought wearily that he supposed he ought to prevent this, but said he would look at the score. They switched off the backstage lights and went to the front-of-house. Alleyn sat on the apron steps and turned through the score, forcing himself to look closely at each page. All those busy little black marks that had seemed so eloquent, he supposed, until the moment of truth came to Rupert and all the strangely unreal dialogue that librettists put in the mouths of their singers. Remarks like: “What a comedy!” and “Do I dream?” and “If she were mine.”

He came to the last page and found that, sure enough, the corner had been torn off. He looked at Rupert and found he was sound asleep in one of the V.I.P. chairs.

Alleyn gathered the score and separate parts together, put them beside Rupert, and touched his shoulder. He woke with a start as if tweaked by a puppeteer.

“If you are still of the same mind,” Alleyn said, “it’s all yours.”

So Rupert went to the fireplace in the hall where the embers glowed. Papers bound solidly together are slow to burn. The Alien Corn merely smoldered, blackened, and curled. Rupert used an oversized pair of bellows and flames crawled round the edges. He threw on loose sheets from the individual parts and these burst at once into flame and flew up the chimney. There was a basket of kindling by the hearth. He began to heap it on the fire in haphazard industry as if to put his opera out of its misery. Soon firelight and shadows leapt about the hall. The pregnant woman looked like a smirking candidate for martyrdom. At one moment the solitary dagger on the wall flashed red. At another the doors into the concert chamber appeared momentarily, and were caught by an erratic flare.

It was then that Alleyn saw a figure on the landing. It stood with its hands on the balustrade and its head bent, looking down into the hall. Its appearance was as brief as a thought, a fraction of a fraction of a second. The flare expired and when it fitfully reappeared, whoever it was up there had gone.

Bert? Alleyn didn’t think so. It had, he felt sure, worn a dressing gown or overcoat, but beyond that there had been no impression of an individual among the seven men, any one of whom might have been abroad in the night.

At its end The Alien Corn achieved dramatic value. The wind howled in the chimney, blazing logs fell apart, and what was left of the score flew up and away. The last they saw of it was a floating ghost of black thread-paper with “Dedicated to Isabella Sommita” in white showing for a fraction of a second before it too disintegrated and was gone up the chimney.

Without a word Rupert turned away and walked quickly upstairs. Alleyn put a fireguard across the hearth. When he turned away he noticed, on a table, inside the front entrance, a heavy canvas bag with a padlock and chain: the mailbag. Evidently it should have gone off with the launch and in the confusion had been overlooked.

Alleyn followed Rupert upstairs. The house was now very quiet. He fancied there were longer intervals between the buffets of the storm.

When he reached the landing he was surprised to find Rupert still there and staring at the sleeping Bert.

Alleyn murmured: “You’ve got a key to that door, haven’t you?”

“Didn’t you get it?” Rupert whispered.

“I? Get it? What do you mean?”

“She said you wanted it.”

“Who did?”

“Maria.”

“When?”

“After you and the doctor left my room. After I’d gone to bed. She came and asked for the key.”

“Did you give it to her?”

“Yes, of course. For you.” Alleyn drew in his breath. “I didn’t want it,” Rupert whispered. “My God! Go into that room! See her! Like that.”

Alleyn waited for several seconds before he asked: “Like what?”

“Are you mad?” Rupert asked. “You’ve seen her. A nightmare.”

“So you’ve seen her too?”

And then Rupert realized what he had said. He broke into a jumble of whispered expostulations and denials. Of course he hadn’t seen her. Maria had told him what it was like. Maria had described it. Maria had said Alleyn had sent her for the key.

He ran out of words, made a violent gesture of dismissal, and bolted. Alleyn heard his door slam.