Photo-Finish

A musical whooping could at that moment be heard rapidly increasing in volume.

‘The celestial fire engine,’ said Signor Lattienzo, ‘approaches.’ He said this loudly to Alleyn who had joined them.

The door into the hall was flung wide, Isabella Sommita stood on the threshold and Troy thought: This is it. O, praise the Lord all ye lands, this is it.

The first thing to be noticed about the Sommita was her eyes. They were enormous, black and baleful, and set slantwise in her magnolia face. They were topped by two jetty arcs, thin as a camel-hair brush but one knew that if left to themselves they would bristle and meet angrily above her nose. Her underlip was full, her teeth slightly protuberant with the little gap at the front which is said to denote an amorous disposition.

She wore green velvet and diamonds and her celebrated bosom, sumptuously displayed, shone like marble.

Everyone who had been sitting rose. Alleyn thought: A bit more of this and the ladies would fall to the ground in curtseys. He looked at Troy and recognized the quickened attention, the impersonal scrutiny that meant his wife was hooked.

‘Dar-leengs!’ sang La Sommita. ‘So late! Forgive, forgive.’ She directed her remarkably searching gaze upon them all, and let it travel slowly, rather, Alleyn thought, in the manner of a lighthouse, until it rested upon him, and then upon Troy. An expression of astonishment and rapture dawned. She advanced upon them both with outstretched arms and cries of excitement, seized their hands, giving them firm little shakes as if she was congratulating them on their union and found her joy in doing so too great for words.

‘But you have COME!’ she cried at last and appealed to everyone else. ‘Isn’t it wonderful!’ she demanded. ‘They have COME!’She displayed them, like trophies, to her politely responsive audience.

Alleyn said ‘Hell’ inaudibly and as a way of releasing himself kissed the receptive hand.

There followed cascades of welcome. Troy was gripped by the shoulders and gazed at searchingly and asked if she (the Sommita) would ‘do’ and told that already she knew they were en rapport and that she (the Sommita) always ‘knew’. Didn’t Troy always know? Alleyn was appealed to: ‘Didn’t she?’

‘Oh,’ Alleyn said, ‘she’s as cunning as a bagload of monkeys, Madame. You’ve no idea.’

Further melodious hoots, this time of laughter, greeted the far from brilliant sally. Alleyn was playfully chided.

They were checked by the entry at the far end of the room of another steward-like personage who announced dinner. He carried a salver with what was no doubt the mail that had come with the Alleyns and took it to the straw-coloured secretary who said: ‘On my desk.’ The man made some inaudible reply and seemed to indicate a newspaper on his salver. The secretary looked extremely perturbed and repeated, loudly enough for Alleyn to hear. ‘No, no. I’ll attend to it. In the drawer of my desk. Take it away.’

The man bowed slightly and returned to the doors.

The guests were already in motion and the scene now resembled the close of the first act of an Edwardian comedy, voices pitched rather high, movements studied, the sense, even, of some approach to a climax which would develop in the next act.

It developed, however, there and then. The bass, Mr Eru Johnstone, said in his enormous voice: ‘Do I see the evening paper? It will have the results of the Spring Cup, won’t it?’

‘I should imagine so,’ said Mr Reece. ‘Why?’

‘We had a sweep on Top Note. It seemed a clear indication,’ and he boomed up the room. ‘Everybody! The Cup!’

The procession halted. They all chattered in great excitement but were, as actors say, ‘topped’ by the Sommita demanding to see the paper there and then. Alleyn saw the secretary, who looked agitated, trying to reach the servant but the Sommita had already seized the newspaper and flapped it open.

The scene that followed bore for three or four seconds a far-fetched resemblance to an abortive ruck in rugby football. The guests, still talking eagerly, surged round the prima donna. And then, suddenly, fell silent, backed away and left her isolated, speechless and cross-eyed, holding out the open newspaper as if she intended to drop-kick it to eternity. Alleyn said afterwards that he could have sworn she foamed at the mouth.

Across the front page of the paper a banner headline was splashed.

SOMMITA SAYS NO FALSIES

And underneath:

SIGNED STATEMENT: BY FAMOUS PRIMA DONNA. HER CURVES ARE ALL HER OWN. BUT ARE THEY????

Boxed in a heavy outline, at the centre of the page, were about nine lines of typescript and beneath them the enormous signature – Isabella Sommita

III

Dinner had been catastrophic, a one-man show by the Sommita. To say she had run through the gamut of the passions would be a rank understatement: she began where the gamut left off and bursts of hysteria were as passages-of-rest in the performance. Occasionally she would come to an abrupt halt and wolf up great mouthfuls of the food that had been set before her, for she was a greedy lady. Her discomforted guests would seize the opportunity to join her, in a more conservative manner, in taking refreshment. The dinner was superb.

Her professional associates were less discomforted, the Alleyns afterwards agreed, than a lay audience would have been and indeed seemed more or less to take her passion in their stride, occasionally contributing inflammatory remarks while Signor Romano who was on her left made wide ineffable gestures and when he managed to get hold of it, kissed her hand. Alleyn was on her right. He was frequently appealed to and came in for one or two excruciating prods in the ribs as she drove home her points. He was conscious that Troy had her eyes on him and when he got the chance, made a lightning grimace of terror at her. He saw she was on the threshold of giggles.

Troy was on Mr Reece’s right. He seemed to think that in the midst of this din he was under an obligation to make conversation and remarked upon the lack of journalistic probity in Australia. The offending newspaper, it seemed, was an Australian weekly with a wide circulation in New Zealand.

When the port had been put before him and his dear one had passed for the time being into a baleful silence, he suggested tonelessly that the ladies perhaps wished to withdraw.

The Sommita made no immediate response and a tricky hiatus occurred during which she glowered at the table. Troy thought: Oh, to hell with all this, and stood up. Hilda Dancy followed with alacrity and so after a moment’s hesitation did wide-eyed Sylvia Parry. The men got to their feet.

The Sommita rose, assumed the posture of a Cassandra about to give tongue, appeared to change her mind and said she was going to bed.

About twenty minutes later Alleyn found himself closeted in a room that looked like the setting for a science-fiction film but was Mr Reece’s study. With him were Mr Reece himself, Mr Ben Ruby, Rupert Bartholomew and the straw-coloured secretary whose name turned out to be Hanley.

The infamous sheet of newsprint was laid out on a table round which the men had gathered. They read the typewritten letter reproduced in the central box.

To The Editor The Watchman

Sir: I wish, through your column, to repudiate utterly an outrageous calumny which is circulating in this country. I wish to state, categorically, that I have no need of, and therefore have never resorted to, cosmetic surgery or to artificial embellishment of any kind whatsoever. I am, and I present myself to my public, as God made me. Thank you.

Isabella Sommita.

‘And you tell me,’ Alleyn said, ‘that the whole thing is a forgery?’

‘You bet it’s a forgery,’ said Ben Ruby. ‘Would she ever help herself to a plateful of poisonous publicity! My God, this is going to make her the big laugh of a lifetime over in Aussie. And it’ll spread overseas, you better believe it.’

‘Have there in fact been any rumours, any gossip of this sort?’

‘Not that we have knowledge of,’ said Mr Reece. ‘And if it had been at all widespread, we certainly would have heard. Wouldn’t we, Ben?’

‘Well, face it, old boy, anyone that’s seen her would know it was silly. I meantersay, look at her cleavage! Speaks for itself.’ Mr Ruby turned to Alleyn. ‘You’ve seen. You couldn’t miss it. She’s got the best twinset you’re likely to meet in a lifetime. Beautiful! Here! Take a look at this picture.’

He turned to page 30 and flattened it out. The ‘picture’ was a photograph of the Sommita in profile with her head thrown back, her hands behind her resting on a table and taking the weight. She was in character as Carmen and an artificial rose was clenched between her teeth. She was powerfully décolletée and although at first glance there seemed to be no doubt of the authenticity of the poitrine, on closer examination there were certain curious little marks in that region suggestive of surgical scars. The legend beneath read ‘Seeing’s believing!’

‘She never liked that picture,’ Mr Ruby said moodily. ‘Never. But the press did, so we kept it in the handouts. Here!’ he exclaimed jamming a forefinger at it. ‘Here, take a look at this, will you? This has been interfered with. This has been touched up. This has been tinkered with. Those scars are phoney.’

Alleyn examined it. ‘I think you’re right,’ he said and turned back to the front page.

‘Mr Hanley,’ he said, ‘do you think that typewriter could have been one belonging to anybody in Madame Sommita’s immediate circle? Can you tell that?’

‘Oh? Oh!’ said the secretary and stooped over the paper. ‘Well,’ he said after a moment, ‘it wasn’t typed on my machine.’ He laughed uncomfortably. ‘I can promise you that much,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t know about hers. How about it, Rupert?’

‘Bartholomew,’ explained Mr Reece in his flattened way, ‘is Madame’s secretary.’ He stood back and motioned Rupert to examine the page.

Rupert who had a tendency to change colour whenever Mr Reece paid him any attention, did so now. He stooped over the paper.

‘No,’ he said, ‘it’s not our – I mean my – machine. The letter p is out of alignment in ours. And anyway it’s not the same type.’