Photo-Finish

‘I can hardly offer to pay my own way. Perhaps,’ Troy suggested, ‘I should lower my price in consideration of board and lodging.’

‘All right, smarty-pants.’

‘If it turns out to be a pot-smoking party or worse, I can always beat a retreat to my pretty peepery and lock the door on all comers.’

‘What put pot into your fairly pretty little head?’

‘I don’t know. Here!’ said Troy. ‘You’re not by any chance suggesting the diva is into the drug scene?’

‘There have been vague rumours. Probably false.’

‘He’d hardly invite you to stay if she was.’

‘Oh,’ Alleyn said lightly, ‘their effrontery knows no bounds. I’ll write my polite regrets before I go down to the Factory.’

The telephone rang and he answered it with the noncommittal voice Troy knew meant the Yard.

‘I’ll be down in a quarter of an hour, sir,’ he said and hung up. ‘The AC,’ he explained. ‘Up to something. I always know when he goes all casual on me.’

‘Up to what, do you suppose?’

‘Lord knows. Undelicious by the sound of it. He said it was of no particular moment but would I drop in: an ominous opening. I’d better be off.’ He made for the door, looked at her, returned and rounded her face between his hands. ‘Fairly pretty little head,’ he repeated and kissed it.

Fifteen minutes later his Assistant Commissioner received him in the manner to which he had become accustomed: rather as if he was some sort of specimen produced in a bad light to be peered at, doubtfully. The AC was as well furnished with mannerisms as he was with brains and that would be underestimating them.

‘Hullo, Rory,’ he said. ‘Morning to you. Morning. Troy well? Good.’ (Alleyn had not had time to answer.) ‘Sit down. Sit down. Yes.’

Alleyn sat down. ‘You wanted to see me, sir?’ he suggested.

‘It’s nothing much, really. Read the morning papers?’

‘The Times.’

‘Seen last Friday’s Mercury?’

‘No.’

‘I just wondered. That silly stuff with the press photographer and the Italian singing woman. What’s-her-name?’

After a moment’s pause Alleyn said woodenly: ‘Isabella Sommita.’

‘That’s the one,’ agreed the AC, one of whose foibles it was to pretend not to remember names. ‘Silly of me. Chap’s been at it again.’

‘Very persistent.’

‘Australia. Sydney or somewhere. Opera House, isn’t it?’

‘There is one: yes.’

‘On the steps at some sort of function. Here you are.’

He pushed over the newspaper folded to expose the photograph. It had indeed been taken a week ago on the steps of the magnificent Sydney Opera House on a summer’s evening. La Sommita, gloved in what seemed to be cloth of gold topped by a tiara, stood among VIPs of the highest calibre. Clearly she was not yet poised for the shot. The cameraman had jumped the gun. Again, her mouth was wide open but on this occasion she appeared to be screaming at the Governor General of Australia. Or perhaps shrieking with derisive laughter. There is a belief held by people of the theatre that nobody over the age of twenty-five should allow themselves to be photographed from below. Here, the camera had evidently been half a flight beneath the diva who therefore appeared to be richly endowed with chins and more than slight embonpoint. The Governor General, by some momentary accident, seemed to regard her with incredulity and loathing.

A banner headline read: WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE!

The photograph, as usual, was signed ‘Strix’ and was reproduced, by arrangement, from a Sydney newspaper.

‘That, I imagine,’ said Alleyn, ‘will have torn it!’

‘So it seems. Look at this.’

It was a letter addressed to ‘The Head of Scotland Yard, London’ and written a week before the invitations to the Alleyns on heavy paper endorsed with an elaborate monogram: I.S. lavishly entwined with herbage. The envelope was bigger than the ones received by the Alleyns but of the same make and paper. The letter itself occupied two and a half pages, with a gigantic signature. It had been typed, Alleyn noticed, on a different machine. The address was Château Australasia, Sydney.

‘The Commissioner sent it down,’ said the AC. ‘You’d better read it.’

Alleyn did so. The typed section merely informed the recipient that the writer hoped to meet one of his staff, Mr Alleyn, at Waihoe Lodge, New Zealand, where Mr Alleyn’s wife was commissioned to paint the writer’s portrait. The writer gave the dates proposed. The recipient was of course aware of the outrageous persecution – ‘and so on along the already familiar lines. Her object in writing to him, she concluded, was because she hoped Mr Alleyn would be accorded full authority by the Yard to investigate this outrageous affair and she remained – ‘

‘Good God,’ said Alleyn quietly.

‘You’ve still got a postscript,’ the AC observed.

It was handwritten and all that might be expected. Points of exclamation proliferated. Underscorings doubled and trebled to an extent that would have made Queen Victoria’s correspondence appear by contrast a model of stony reticence. The subject matter lurched into incoherence but the general idea was to the effect that if the ‘Head of Scotland Yard’ didn’t do something pretty smartly he would have only himself to blame when the writer’s career came to a catastrophic halt. On her knees she remained distractedly and again in enormous calligraphy, sincerely, Isabella Sommita.

‘Expound,’ the AC invited with his head on one side. He was being whimsical. ‘Comment. Explain in your own words.’

‘I can only guess that the letter was typed by a secretary who advised moderation. The postscript seems to be all her own and written in a frenzy.’

‘Is Troy going to paint the lady? And do you propose to be absent without leave in the antipodes?’

Alleyn said: ‘We got our invitations this morning. I was about to decline, sir, when you rang up. Troy’s accepting.’

‘Is she?’ said the AC thoughtfully. ‘Is she, now? A good subject, um? To paint? What?’

‘Very,’ Alleyn said warily. What is he on about? he wondered.

‘Yes. Ah well,’ said the AC, freshening his voice with a suggestion of dismissal. Alleyn started to get up. ‘Hold on,’ said the AC. ‘Know anything about this man she lives with? Reece, isn’t it?’

‘No more than everyone knows.’

‘Strange coincidence, really,’ mused the AC.

‘Coincidence?’

‘Yes. The invitations. Troy going out there and all this.’ He flipped his finger at the papers on his desk. ‘All coming together as it were.’

‘Hardly a coincidence, sir, would you say? I mean, these dotty letters were all written with the same motive.’

‘Oh, I don’t mean them,’ said the AC contemptuously. ‘Or only in so far as they turn up at the same time as the other business.’