Artists in Crime

Yours ever,

Roderick Alleyn

Chief Detective-Inspector Alleyn to Lady Alleyn, Danes Lodge, Bossicote, Bucks:

C.P.R. August 15th.

My Dearest Mamma,

Your letter found me at Vancouver. Yes, please—I should like to come straight to you. We arrive at Liverpool on the 7th, and I’ll make for Bucks as fast as may be. The garden sounds very attractive, but don’t go doing too much yourself, bless you. No, darling, I did not lose my heart in the Antipodes. Would you have been delighted to welcome a strapping black Fijian lady? I might have got one to regard me with favour at Suva, perhaps, but they smell of coconut oil, which you would not have found particularly delicious. I expect if I ever do get it in the neck, she’ll think me no end of a dull dog and turn icy. Talking of Suva, which I was not, do you know of a place called Tatler’s End House, somewhere near Bossicote? Agatha Troy, who painted that picture we both liked so much, lives there. She joined this ship at Suva, and did a lovely thing of the wharf. Look here, Mamma, if ever a Virginia Van Maes writes and asks you to receive her, you must be away, or suffering from smallpox. She’s an American beauty who looks people up in Kelly’s and collects scalps. She looked me up and—Heaven knows why—she seemed inclined to collect ours. It’s the title, I suppose. Talking of titles, how’s the blasted Baronet? She was on to him like a shot. ‘Gee, Mr Alleyn, I never knew your detective force was recruited from your aristocracy. I’m crazy to know if this Sir George Alleyn is your only brother.’ You see? She threatens to come to England and has already said she’s sure you must be the cutest old-world mother. She’s quite capable of muscling in on the strength of being my dearest girlfriend. So you look out, darling, I’ve told her you’re a horrid woman, but I don’t think she cares. You’ll be 65 on or about the day this arrives. In 30 years I shall be nearly 10 years older than you are now, and you’ll still be trying to bully me. Do you remember how I found out your real age on your thirty-fifth birthday? My first really good bit of investigation, nasty little trick that I was. Well, little mum, don’t flirt with the vicar, and be sure to have the red carpet out on the 7th.

Your dutiful and devoted son,

Roderick

PS.—Miss Troy has done a sketch of your son which he will purchase for your birthday if it’s not too expensive.

From Lady Alleyn, Danes Lodge, Bossicote, to Chief Detective-Inspector Alleyn, Château Frontenac, Quebec:

Dear Roderick,

Your ingenuous little letter reached me on my birthday, and I was delighted to receive it. Thank you, my dear. It will be a great joy to have you for nearly a fortnight, greedily to myself. I trust I am not one of those avaricious mammas—clutch, clutch, clutch—which, after all, is only a form of cluck, cluck, cluck. It will be delightful to have a Troy version of you, and I hope it was not too expensive—if it was, perhaps you would let me join you, my dear. I should like to do that, but have no doubt you will ruin yourself and lie to your mother about the price. I shall call on Miss Troy, not only because you obviously wish me to do so, but because I have always liked her work, and should be pleased to meet her, as your Van Maes would say. George is with his family in Scotland. He talks of standing for Parliament, but I am afraid he will only make a fool of himself, poor dear. It’s a pity he hasn’t got your brains. I have brought a hand-loom and am also breeding Alsatians. I hope the bitch— Tunbridge Tessa—does not take a dislike to you. She is very sweet really. I always feel, darling, that you should not have left the Foreign Office, but at the same time, I am a great believer in everybody doing what he wants, and I do enjoy hearing about your cases.

Until the 7th, my dearest son.

Your loving Mother

PS.—I have just discovered the whereabouts of Miss Troy’s house, Tatler’s End. It is only two miles out of Bossicote, and a nice old place. Apparently she takes students there. My spies tell me a Miss Bostock has been living in it during Miss Troy’s absence. She returns on the 3rd. How old is she?

CHAPTER 3 Class Assembles (#ulink_eeabadf4-daca-5842-bb6a-89ef82bd3e1b)

On the 10th of September at ten o’clock in the morning, Agatha Troy opened the door in the eastward wall of her house and stepped out into the garden. It was a sunny morning with a tang of autumn about it, a bland, mellow morning. Somewhere in the garden a fire had been lit, and an aromatic trace of smouldering brushwood threaded the air. There was not a breath of wind.

‘Autumn!’ muttered Troy. ‘And back to work again. Damn! I’m getting older.’ She paused for a moment to light a cigarette, and then she set off towards the studio, down on the old tennis court. Troy had built this studio when she inherited Tatler’s End House from her father. It was a solid square of decent stone with top lighting, and a single window facing south on a narrow lane. It stood rather lower than the house, and about a minute’s walk away from it. It was screened pleasantly with oaks and lilac bushes. Troy strode down the twisty path between the lilac bushes and pushed open the studio door. From beyond the heavy wooden screen inside the entrance she heard the voices of her class. She was out of patience with her class. ‘I’ve been too long away,’ she thought. She knew so exactly how each of them would look, how their work would take shape, how the studio would smell of oil colour, turpentine, and fixative, how Sonia, the model, would complain of the heat, the draught, the pose, the cold, and the heat again. Katti would stump backwards and forwards before her easel, probably with one shoe squeaking. Ormerin would sigh, Valmai Seacliff would attitudinize, and Garcia, wrestling with clay by the south window, would whistle between his teeth.

‘Oh, well,’ said Troy, and marched round the screen.

Yes, there it all was, just as she expected, the throne shoved against the left-hand wall, the easels with fresh white canvases, the roaring gas heater, and the class. They had all come down to the studio after breakfast and, with the exception of Garcia and Malmsley, waited for her to pose the model. Malmsley was already at work: the drawings were spread out on a table. He wore, she noticed with displeasure, a sea-green overall. ‘To go with the beard, I suppose,’ thought Troy. Garcia was in the south window, glooming at the clay sketch of Comedy and Tragedy. Sonia, the model wrapped in a white kimono, stood beside him. Katti Bostock, planted squarely in the centre of the room before a large black canvas, set her enormous palette. The rest of the class, Ormerin, Phillida Lee, Watt Hatchett, and Basil Pilgrim, were grouped round Valmai Seacliff.

Troy walked over to Malmsley’s table and looked over his shoulder at the drawings.

‘What’s that?’

‘That’s the thing I was talking about,’ explained Malmsley. His voice was high-pitched and rather querulous. It’s the third tale in the series. The female has been murdered by her lover’s wife. She’s lying on a wooden bench, impaled on a dagger. The wife jammed the dagger through the bench from underneath, and when the lover pressed her down—you see? The knife is hidden by the drape. It seems a little far-fetched, I must say. Surely it would show. The wretched publisher man insists on having this one.’

‘It needn’t show if the drape is suspended a little,’ said Troy. ‘From the back of the bench, for instance. Then as she falls down she would carry the drape with her. Anyway, the probabilities are none of your business. You’re not doing a “before and after”, like a strip advertisement, are you?’

‘I can’t get the pose,’ said Malmsley languidly. ‘I want to treat it rather elaborately. Deliberately mannered.’

‘Well, you can’t go in for the fancy touches until you’ve got the flesh and blood to work from. That pose will do us as well as another, I dare say. I’ll try it. You’d better make a separate drawing as a study.’

‘Yes, I suppose I had,’ drawled Malmsley. ‘Thanks most frightfully.’

‘Of course,’ Valmai Seacliff was saying, ‘I went down rather well in Italy. The Italians go mad when they see a good blonde. They used to murmur when I passed them in the streets. “Bella” and “Bellissima”. It was rather fun.’

‘Is that Italian?’ asked Katti morosely, of her flake-white.

‘It means beautiful, darling,’ answered Miss Seacliff.

‘Oh hell!’ said Sonia, the model.

‘Well,’ said Troy loudly. ‘I’ll set the pose.’

They all turned to watch her. She stepped on the throne, which was the usual dais on wheels, and began to arrange a seat for the model. She threw a cerise cushion down, and then from a chest by the wall she got a long blue length of silk. One end of this drape she threw across the cushion and pinned, the other she gathered carefully in her hands, drew round to one side, and then pinned the folds to the floor of the dais.

‘Now, Sonia,’ she said. ‘Something like this.’

Keeping away from the drape, Troy knelt and then slid sideways into a twisted recumbent pose on the floor. The right hip was raised, the left took the weight of the pose. The torso was turned upwards from the waist so that both shoulders touched the boards. Sonia, noticing that twist, grimaced disagreeably.

‘Get into it,’ said Troy, and stood up. ‘Only you lie across the drape with your head on the cushions. Lie on your left side, first.’

Sonia slid out of the white kimono. She was a most beautiful little creature, long-legged, delicately formed and sharp-breasted. Her black hair was drawn tightly back from the suave forehead. The bony structure of her face was sharply defined, and suggested a Slavonic mask.

‘You little devil, you’ve been sunbathing,’ said Troy. ‘Look at those patches.’

‘Well they don’t like nudism, at Bournemouth,’ said Sonia.

She lay across the drape on her left side, her head on the cerise cushion. Troy pushed her right shoulder over until it touched the floor. The drape was pressed down by the shoulders and broke into uneven blue folds about the body.

‘That’s your pose, Malmsley,’ said Troy. ‘Try it from where you are.’

She walked round the studio, eyeing the model.

‘It’s pretty good from everywhere,’ she said. ‘Right! Get going, everybody.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘You can hold that for forty minutes, Sonia.’

‘It’s a terrible pose, Miss Troy,’ grumbled Sonia. ‘All twisted like this.’

‘Nonsense,’ said Troy briskly.

The class began to settle itself.

Since each member of Troy’s little community played a part in the tragedy that followed ten days later, it may be well to look a little more closely at them.

Katti Bostock’s work is known to everyone who is at all interested in modern painting. At the time of which I am writing she was painting very solidly and smoothly, using a heavy outline and a simplified method of dealing with form. She painted large figure compositions, usually with artisans as subjects. Her ‘Foreman Fitter’ had been the picture of the year at the Royal Academy, and had set all the diehards by the ears. Katti herself was a short, stocky, darkhaired individual with an air of having no nonsense about her. She was devoted to Troy in a grumbling sort of way, lived at Tatler’s End House most of the year, but was not actually a member of the class.

Valmai Seacliff was thin, blonde, and very, very pretty. She was the type that certain modern novelists write about with an enthusiasm which they attempt to disguise as satirical detachment. Her parents were well-to-do and her work was clever. You have heard Katti describe Valmai as a nymphomaniac and will be able to draw your own conclusions about the justness of this criticism.

Phillida Lee was 18, plump, and naturally gushing. Two years of Slade austerity had not altogether damped her enthusiasms, but when she remembered to shudder, she shuddered.