Photo Finish

Lattienzo stared at Alleyn for a second or two. The color returned to his face, he made his little crowing sound and seized Alleyn’s hands. “Ah!” he cried. “You agree! You see! You see! It is impossible! It is ridiculous!”

“If I may just pipe up,” Hanley said, appealing to Mr. Reece. “I mean, all this virtuous indignation on behalf of the Boy Beautiful! Very touching and all that.” He shot a glance at his employer and another at Lattienzo. “One might be forgiven for drawing one’s own conclusions.”

“That will do,” said Mr. Reece.

“Well, all right, then, sir. Enough said. But I mean — after all, one would like to be officially in the clear. I mean: take me. From the time you escorted Madame upstairs and she turned you and Maria out until Maria returned and found her— dead — I was in the dining room and hall calming down guests and talking to Les and telling you about the Lake and making a list for Les to check the guests by. I really could not,” said Hanley on a rising note of hysteria, “have popped upstairs and murdered Madame and come back, as bright as a button, to speed the parting guests and tramp about with umbrellas. And anyway,” he added, “I hadn’t got a key.”

“As far as that goes,” said Ben Ruby, “she could have let you in and I don’t mean anything nasty. Just to set the record straight.”

“Thank you very much,” said Hanley bitterly.

“To return to the keys,” Mr. Reece said slowly, still swinging his own as if to illustrate his point. “About the third key, her key.” He appealed to Hazelmere and Alleyn. “There must be some explanation. Some quite simple explanation. Surely.”

Alleyn looked at Hazelmere, who nodded very slightly.

“There is,” said Alleyn, “a very simple explanation. The third key was in the bag in the bottom drawer, where it had lain unmolested throughout the proceedings.”

Into the silence that followed there intruded a distant pulsation: the chopper returning, thought Alleyn.

Mr. Reece said: “But when Maria and I left — we — heard the key turn in the lock. What key? You’ve accounted for the other two. She locked us out with her own key.”

“We think not.”

“But Maria heard it, too. She has said so. I don’t understand this,” said Mr. Reece. “Unless — But no. No, I don’t understand. Why did Maria do as you say she did? Come back and try to hide the key under—? It’s horrible. Why did she do that?”

“Because, as I’ve suggested, she realized we would expect to find it.”

“Ah. Yes. I take the point but all the same—”

“Monty,” Signor Lattienzo cried out, “for pity’s sake do something with those accursed keys. You are lacerating my nerves.”

Mr. Reece looked at him blankly. “Oh?” he said. “Am I? I’m sorry.” He hesitated, examined the key by which he had suspended the others and, turning to his desk, fitted it into one of the drawers. “Is that better?” he asked and unlocked the drawer.

Ben Ruby said in a voice that was pitched above its normal register “I don’t get any of this. All I know is we better look after ourselves. And as far as our lot goes — you, Monty, and Beppo and me — we were all sitting at the di

“Not quite,” said Alleyn. “When Mr. Reece and Maria left Madame Sommita she was not throwing a temperament. She was dead.”

ii

In the bad old days of capital punishment it used to be said that you could tell when a verdict of guilty was about to be returned. The jury always avoided looking at the accused. Alleyn was reminded now, obliquely, of this dictum. Nobody moved. Nobody spoke. Everyone looked at him and only at him.

Inspector Hazelmere cleared his throat.

The helicopter landed. So loud, it might have been on the roof or outside on the gravel. The engine shut off and the inflowing silence was intolerable.

Mr. Reece said: “More police, I assume.”

Hazelmere said: “That is correct, sir.”

Somebody crossed the hall, and seconds later Sergeant Franks walked past the windows.

“I think, Chief Superintendent Alleyn,” said Mr. Reece, “you must be out of your mind.”

Alleyn took out his notebook. Hazelmere placed himself in front of Mr. Reece. “Montague Reece,” he said, “I arrest you for the murder of Isabella Sommita and I have to warn you that anything you say will be taken down in writing and may be used in evidence.”

“Hanley,” Mr. Reece said, “get through to my solicitors in Sydney.”

Hanley said in a shaking voice: “Certainly, sir.” He took up the receiver, rumbled, and dropped it on the desk. He said to Alleyn: “I suppose — is it all right? I mean—”

Hazelmere said: “It’s in order.”

“Do it,” Mr. Reece said. And then, loudly to Hazelmere, “The accusation is grotesque. You will do yourself a great deal of harm.”

Alleyn wrote this down.

Mr. Reece looked round the room as if he were seeing it for the first time. He swiveled his chair and faced his desk. Hanley, drawn back in his chair with the receiver at his ear, watched him. Alleyn took a step forward.

“Here are the police,” Mr. Reece observed loudly.

Hazelmere, Lattienzo, and Ruby turned to look.

Beyond the windows Sergeant Franks tramped past, followed by a uniform sergeant and a constable.

“No!” Hanley screamed. “Stop him! No!”

There was nothing but noise in the room.

Alleyn had not prevented Mr. Reece from opening the unlocked drawer and snatching out the automatic, but he had knocked up his arm. The bullet had gone through the top of a windowpane, and two succeeding shots had lodged in the ceiling. Dust fell from the overhead lampshades.

Two helmets and three deeply concerned faces appeared at the foot of the window, slightly distorted by pressure against glass. The owners rose and could be heard thundering round the house.

Alleyn, with Mr. Reece’s arms secured behind his back, said, a trifle breathlessly: “That was a very silly thing to do, Signor Rossi.”

iii

“… almost the only silly thing he did,” Alleyn said. “He showed extraordinary coolness and judgment throughout. His one serious slip was to say he heard the key turn in the lock. Maria set that one up, and he felt he had to fall in with it. He was good at avoiding conflicts and that’s the only time he told a direct lie.”

“What I can’t understand,” Troy said, “is his inviting you of all people to his party.”

“Only, I think, after the Sommita, or perhaps Hanley, told him about her letter to the Yard. It was dated a week before his invitations to us. Rather than un-pick her letter, he decided to confirm it. And I’m sure he really did want the portrait. Afterwards it could have been, for him, the equivalent of a scalp. And as for my presence in the house, I fancy it lent what the mafiosi call ‘elegance’ to the killing.”

“My God,” said Signor Lattienzo, “I believe you are right.”

“There was one remark he made that brought me up with a round turn,” Alleyn said. “He was speaking of her death to Ben Ruby and he said, ‘And now she no longer casts a shadow.’ ”

“But that’s — isn’t it — a phrase used by—?”

“The mafiosi? Yes. So I had discovered when I read the book in the library. It was not in Mr. Reece’s usual style, was it?”

Signor Lattienzo waited for a little and then said, “I assure you, my dear Alleyn, that I have sworn to myself that I will not pester you, but I immediately break my resolution to say that I die to know how you discovered his true identity. His name. ‘Rossi.’ ”

“Have you ever noticed that when people adopt pseudonyms they are so often impelled to retain some kind of link with their old name. Often, it is the initials, often there is some kind of assonance — Reece — Rossi. M. V. Rossi — Montague V. Reece. He actually had the nerve to tell me his Bella had confided that she wished his surname didn’t remind her of the ‘enemy.’ The M. V. Rossi signature in the book bears quite a strong resemblance to the Reece signature, spiky letters and all. He seems to have decided very early in life to opt out of the ‘family’ business. It may even have been at his father’s suggestion. Papa Rossi leaves a hefty swag of ill-gotten gains, which Monty Reece manipulates brilliantly and with the utmost propriety and cleanest of noses. I think it must have amused him to plant the book up there with the diva’s bi- and auto-biographies. The book has been instructive. The victim in the case it deals with was a Rossi girl — his sister. A paper was stabbed to her heart. She had a brother, Michele-Victor Rossi, who disappeared.”