Photo Finish

“Right,” said Alleyn. He stood with his back to one of the exuberantly carved and painted wardrobe doors, felt behind him and bent his knees until his head was on a level with the stylized sunflower which framed it like a formalized halo. He made a fu

“Yes,” he said, “it’ll work. It’ll work all right.”

He opened the doors.

The walk-in wardrobe was occupied but not crowded with dresses. He divided them and slid them on their hangers to opposite ends of the interior. He examined the inside of the doors, came out, and locked them.

He inspected the bits.

“This one will do,” he said and gave it, with the brace, to Sergeant Franks. “Plumb in the middle,” he said, putting his finger on the black center of the sunflower. “And slide that newspaper under to catch the litter. Very careful, now. No splintering, whatever you do. Which of you’s the joiner?”

“Aw heck!” said Franks to Barker, “what about you having a go, Merv.”

“I’m not fussy, thanks,” said Barker, backing off.

They looked uncomfortably at Alleyn.

“Well,” he said, “I asked for it and it looks as if I’ve bought it. If I make a fool of myself I can’t blame anyone else, can I? Give it here, Franks. Oh, God, it’s one of those push-me-pull-you brutes that shoot out at you when you least expect it.” He thumbed a catch and the business end duly shot out. “What did I tell you? You guide it, Franks, and hold it steady. Dead center. Anyone’d think we were defusing a bomb. Come on.”

“She’s new, sir. Sharp as a needle and greased.”

“Good.”

He raised the brace and advanced it. Franks guided the point of the bit. “Dead center, sir,” he said.

“Here goes, then,” said Alleyn.

He made a cautious preliminary pressure. “How’s that?”

“Biting, sir.”

“Straight as we go, then.” Alleyn pumped the brace.

A little cascade of wood dust trickled through the elaborate carving and fell on the newspaper.

“Nearly there,” he grunted presently, and a few seconds later the resistance was gone and he disengaged the tool.

At the black center of the sunflower was a black hole as wide as the iris of an eye and very inconspicuous. Alleyn blew away the remnants of wood dust that were trapped in curlicues, twisted a finger in the hole, and stood back. “Not too bad,” he said.

He opened the door. The hole was clean-cut.

“Now for the twin,” he said and gave the companion door the same treatment.

Then he went into the wardrobe and shut the doors. The interior smelt insufferably of La Sommita’s scent. He looked through one of the holes. He saw the body. Neatly framed. Underneath the black satin cover its arm, still raised in cadaveric spasm, seemed to point at him. He came out, shut and locked the wardrobe doors, and put the key in his pocket.

“It’ll do,” he said. “Will you two clean up? Very thoroughly? Before you do that, I think you should know why you’ve been called on to set this up and what we hope to achieve by it. Don’t you?”

They intimated by sundry noises that they did think so and he then told them of the next steps that would be taken, the procedure to be followed, and the hoped-for outcome. “And now I think perhaps one of you might relieve poor old Bert on the landing, and I’d suggest the other reports for duty to Mr. Hazelmere, who will probably be in the library. It opens off the entrance hall. Third on the right from the front. I’m going down there now. Here’s the key to this room. O.K.?”

“She’ll be right, sir,” said Franks and Barker together.

So Alleyn went down to the library.

It came as no surprise to find the atmosphere in that utterly neutral apartment tepid, verging on glacial. Inspector Hazelmere had his notebook at the ready. Mr. Reece sat at one of the neatly laden tables with the glaze of boredom veiling his pale regard. When Alleyn apologized for keeping him waiting, he raised his hand and let it fall as if words now failed him.

The Inspector, Alleyn thought, was not at the moment happy in his work though he put up a reasonable show of professional savoir-faire and said easily that he thought he had finished “bothering” Mr. Reece and believed he was now fully in the picture. Mr. Reece said woodenly that he was glad to hear it. An awkward silence followed, which he broke by addressing himself pointedly to Alleyn.

“Would you,” he said, “be good enough to show me where you found that book? I’ve been wondering about it.”

Alleyn led the way to the remote corner of the library and the obscure end of a top shelf. “It was here,” he said, pointing to the gap. “I could only just reach it.”

“I would require the steps,” said Mr. Reece. He put on his massive spectacles and peered. “It’s very badly lit,” he said. “The architect should have noticed that.”

Alleyn switched on the light.

“Thank you. I would like to see the book when you have finished with it. I suppose it has something to do with this family feud or vendetta or whatever, that she was so concerned about?”

“I would think so, yes.”

“It is strange that she never showed it to me. Perhaps that is because it is written in Italian. I would have expected her to show it to me,” he said heavily. “I would have expected her to feel it would give validity to her theory. I wonder how she came by it. It is very shabby. Perhaps it was secondhand.”

“Did you notice the name on the flyleaf? ‘M. V. Rossi’?”

“Rossi? Rossi!” he repeated, and stared at Alleyn. “But that was the name she did mention. On the rare occasions when she used a name. I recollect that she once said she wished my name did not resemble it. I thought this very farfetched but she seemed to be quite serious about it. She generally referred simply to the ‘nemico’ — meaning the enemy.”

“Perhaps, after all, it was not her book.”

“It was certainly not mine,” he said flatly.

“At some time — originally, I suppose — it has been the property of the ‘enemy.’ One wouldn’t have expected her to have acquired it.”

“You certainly would not,” Mr. Reece said emphatically. “Up there, was it? What sort of company was it keeping?”

Alleyn took down four of the neighboring books. One, a biography called La Voce, was written in Italian and seemed from cover to cover to be an unmodified rave about the Sommita. It was photographically illustrated, begi

“Ah, yes,” said Mr. Reece. “The biography. I always intended to read it. It went into three editions. What are the others?”

One in English, one in Italian — both novels with a strong romantic interest. They were gifts to the Sommita, lavishly inscribed by admirers.

“Is the autobiography there?” asked Mr. Reece. “That meant a helluva lot to me. Yes sir. A helluva lot.” This piece of information was dealt out by Mr. Reece in his customary ma

“I’m sure it did,” Alleyn said.

“I never got round to reading it right through,” Mr. Reece confessed and then seemed to brighten up a little. “After all,” he pointed out, “she didn’t write it herself. But it was the thought that counted.”

“Quite. This seems, doesn’t it, to be a corner reserved for her own books?”

“I believe I remember, now I come to think of it, her saying something about wanting someplace for her own books. She didn’t appreciate the way they looked in her bedroom. Out of place.”

“Do you think she would have put them up there herself?”