Photo Finish

“Did she ever mention the name Rossi?”

“Rossi? It sounds familiar. Yes, I believe she may have, but she didn’t, as a matter of fact, mention names — Italian names — when she talked about this threat. She would seem as if she was going to, but if I asked her point-blank to be specific in order that I could make inquiries, she merely crossed herself and wouldn’t utter. I’m afraid I found that exasperating. It confirmed me in the opinion that the whole thing was imaginary.”

“Yes, I see.” Alleyn put his hand in his overcoat pocket, drew out the book from the library, and handed it to Mr. Reece. “Have you ever seen this?” he asked.

He took it and turned it over distastefully.

“Not that I remember,” he said. He opened it and read the title, translating it. “ ‘The Mystery of Bianca Rossi.’ Oh, I see — Rossi. What is all this, Mr. Alleyn?”

“I don’t know. I hoped you might throw some light on it.”

“Where did you find it? In her room?” he asked.

“In the library. Have you noticed the name on the flyleaf?”

Mr. Reece looked at it. “M. V. Rossi,” he said. And then: “I can’t make any sense out of this. Do we assume it was hers?”

“It will be fingerprinted, of course.”

“Ah, yes, Oh, I see. I shouldn’t have handled it, should I?”

“I don’t think you’ve done any damage,” Alleyn said and took it from him.

“If it was Bella’s she may have left it lying about somewhere and one of the servants put it in the library. We can ask.”

“So we can. Leaving it for the moment: did you ever hear of her association with the Hoffman-Beilstein Group?”

It was curious to see how immediate was Mr. Reece’s return to his own world of financial expertise. He at once became solemn, disapproving, and grand.

“I certainly did,” he said shortly and shot an appraising glance at Alleyn. “Again,” he said, “you seem to be well informed.”

“I thought I remembered,” Alleyn improvised, “seeing press photographs of her in a group of guests abroad Hoffman’s yacht.”

“I see. It was not a desirable association. I broke it off.”

“He came to grief, didn’t he?”

“Deservedly so,” said Mr. Reece, pursing his mouth rather in the ma

“No, no,” he said. “Not indiscreetly, I promise you. I asked him how long he’d been in your employ, and he simply arrived at the answer by recalling the date of the cruise.”

“He talks too much,” said Mr. Reece, dismissing him, but with an air of — what? Indulgence? Tolerance? Proprietorship? He turned to Dr. Carmichael. “I wanted to speak to you, doctor,” he said. “I want to hear from you exactly how my friend was killed. I do not wish, if it can be spared me, to see her again as she was last night and I presume still is. But I must know how it was done. I must know.”

Dr. Carmichael glanced at Alleyn, who nodded very slightly.

“Madame Sommita,” said Dr. Carmichael, “was almost certainly anesthetized, probably asphyxiated when she had become unconscious, and, after death, stabbed. There will be an autopsy, of course, which will tell us more.”

“Did she suffer?”

“I think, most unlikely.”

“Anesthetized? With what? How?”

“I suspect, chloroform.”

“But — chloroform? Do you mean somebody came here prepared to commit this crime? Provided?”

“It looks like it. Unless there was chloroform somewhere on the premises.”

“Not to my knowledge. I can’t imagine it.”

Alleyn suddenly remembered the gossip of Bert the chauffeur. “Did you by any chance have a vet come to the house?” he asked.

“Ah! Yes. Yes, we did. To see Isabella’s afghan hound. She was very — distressed. The vet examined the dog under an anesthetic and found it had a malignant growth. He advised that it be put down immediately, and it was done.”

“You wouldn’t, of course, know if by any chance the vet forgot to take the chloroform away with him?”

“No. Ned might know. He superintended the whole thing.”

“I’ll ask him,” said Alleyn.

“Or, perhaps, Marco,” speculated Mr. Reece. “I seem to remember he was involved.”

“Ah, yes. Marco,” said Alleyn. “You have told me, haven’t you, that Marco is completely dependable?”

“Certainly. I have no reason to suppose anything else.”

“In the very nature of the circumstances and the development of events as we hear about them, we must all have been asking ourselves disturbing questions about each other, mustn’t we? Have you not asked yourself disturbing questions about Marco?”

“Well, of course I have,” Mr. Reece said at once. “About him, and, as you say, about all of them. But there is no earthly reason, no conceivable motive for Marco to do anything— wrong.”

“Not if Marco should happen to be Strix?” Alleyn asked.

Chapter seven

Strix

i

When Alleyn and Dr. Carmichael joined Troy in the studio, rifts had appeared in the rampart of clouds and, at intervals, shafts of sunlight played fitfully across Lake Waihoe and struck up patches of livid green on mountain flanks that had begun to reappear through the mist.

The landing stage was still under turbulent water. No one could have used it. There were now no signs of Les on the mainland.

“You gave Mr. Reece a bit of a shakeup,” said Dr. Carmichael. “Do you think he was right when he said the idea had never entered his head?”

“What, that Marco was Strix? Who can tell? I imagine Marco has been conspicuously zealous in the anti-Strix cause. His reporting an intruder on the Island topped up with his production of the lens cap was highly convincing. Remember how you all plunged about in the undergrowth? I suppose you assisted in the search for nobody, didn’t you?”

“Blast!” said Dr. Carmichael.

“Incidentally, the cap was a mistake, a fancy touch too many. It’s off a mass-produced camera, probably his own, as it were, official toy and not at all the sort of job that Strix must use to get his results. Perhaps he didn’t want to part with the Strix cap and hadn’t quite got the nerve to produce it, or perhaps it hasn’t got a cap.”

“Why,” asked Troy, “did he embark on all that nonsense about an intruder?”

“Well, darling, don’t you think because he intended to take a ‘Strix’ photograph of the Sommita — his bo