скачать книгу бесплатно
‘Here goes,’ said Alleyn and read:
‘Dear Mrs Alleyn,
‘I hope that is the correct way to address you. Should I perhaps have used your most celebrated soubriquet?
‘I write to ask if from November 1st you and your husband will be my guests at Waihoe Lodge, an island retreat I have built on a lake in New Zealand. It is recently completed and I dare to hope it will appeal to you. The situation is striking and I think I may say that my guests will be comfortable. You would have, as your studio, a commodious room, well-lit, overlooking the lake, with a view of distant mountains and, of course, complete freedom as to time and privacy.’
‘He sounds like a land-and-estate agent – all mod cons and the usual offices. Pray continue,’ said Troy.
‘I must confess that this invitation is the prelude to another and that is for you to paint a portrait of Madame Isabella Sommita who will be staying with us at the time proposed. I have long hoped for this. In my opinion, and I am permitted to say in hers also, none of her portraits hitherto has given us the true “Sommita".
‘We are sure that a “Troy” would do so quite marvellously!
‘Please say you approve the proposal. We will arrange transport, as my guest, of course, by air, and will settle details as soon as we hear, as I so greatly hope, that you will come. I shall be glad if you will be kind enough to inform me of your terms.
‘I shall write, under separate cover, to your husband whom we shall be delighted to welcome with you to the Lodge.
‘I am, believe me, dear Mrs Alleyn,
‘Yours most sincerely,
‘Montague Reece.’
After a longish pause Troy said: ‘Would it be going too far to paint her singing? You know, mouth wide open for a top note.’
‘Mightn’t she look as if she were yawning?’
‘I don’t think so,’ Troy brooded, and then with a sidelong grin at her husband, ‘I could always put a balloon coming out of her mouth with “A in alt” written in it.’
‘That would settle any doubts, of course. Except that I fancy it refers to male singers.’
‘You haven’t looked at your letter. Do look.’
Alleyn looked. ‘Here it is,’ he said. ‘Over-posh and posted in Sydney.’ He opened it.
‘What’s he say?’
‘The preamble’s much the same as yours and so’s the follow-up: the bit about him having to confess to an ulterior motive.’
‘Does he want you to paint his portrait, my poor Rory?’
‘He wants me to give them “my valued opinion” as to the possibility of obtaining police protection “in the matter of the persecution of Madame Sommita by a photographer of which I am no doubt aware.” Well, of all the damn cheek!’ said Alleyn. ‘Travel thirteen thousand miles to sit on an island in the middle of a lake and tell him whether or not to include a copper in his house party.’
‘Oh! Yes. The penny’s dropped. All that stuff in the papers. I didn’t really read it.’
‘You must be the only English-speaking human being who didn’t.’
‘Well, I did, really. Sort of. But the photographs were so hideous they put me off. Fill me, as I expect they say in Mr Reece’s circles, in.’
‘You remember how Mrs Jacqueline Kennedy, as she was then, was pestered by a photographer?’
‘Yes.’
‘It’s the same situation but much exaggerated. The Kennedy rumpus may have put the idea into this chap’s head. He signs himself “Strix". He’s actually followed the Sommita all over the world. Wherever she has appeared in opera or on the concert stage: Milan, Paris, Covent Garden, New York, Sydney. At first the photographs were the usual kind of thing with the diva flashing gracious smiles at the camera, but gradually differences crept in. They became more and more unflattering and he became more and more intrusive. He hid behind bushes. He trespassed on private ground and cropped up when and where he was least expected. On one occasion he joined the crowd round the stage door with the rest of the press, and contrived to get right up to the front.
‘As she came into the doorway and did her usual thing of being delighted and astonished at the size of the crowd he aimed his camera and at the same time blew a piercingly loud whistle. Her jaw dropped and her eyes popped and in the resulting photograph she looked as if someone had thumped her between the shoulder blades.
‘From then on the thing ripened into a sort of war of attrition. It caught the fancy of her enormous public, the photos became syndicated and the man is said to be making enormous sums of money. Floods of angry letters from her fans to the papers concerned. Threats. Unkind jokes in the worst possible taste. Bets laid. Preposterous stories suggesting he’s a cast-off lover taking his revenge or a tenor who fell out with her. Rumours of a nervous breakdown. Bodyguards. The lot.’
‘Isn’t it rather feeble of them not to spot him and manhandle him off?’
‘You’d have thought so, but he’s too smart for them. He disguises himself – sometimes bearded and sometimes not. Sometimes in the nylon stocking mask. At one time turned out like a City gent, at another like a Skid Row drop-out. He’s said to have a very, very sophisticated camera.’
‘Yes, but when he’s done it, why hasn’t somebody grabbed him and jumped on the camera? And what about her celebrated temperament? You’d think she’d set about him herself.’
‘You would, but so far she hasn’t done any better than yelling pen-and-ink.’
‘Well,’ Troy said, ‘I don’t see what you could be expected to do about it.’
‘Accept with pleasure and tell my AC that I’m off to the antipodes with my witch-wife? Because,’ Alleyn said, putting his hand on her head, ‘you are going, aren’t you?’
‘I do madly want to have a go at her: a great big flamboyant rather vulgar splotch of a thing. Her arms,’ Troy said reminiscently, ‘are indecent. White and flowing. You can see the brush strokes. She’s so shockingly sumptuous. Oh yes, Rory love, I’m afraid I must go.’
‘We could try suggesting that she waits till she’s having a bash at Covent Garden. No,’ said Alleyn, watching her, ‘I can see that’s no go, you don’t want to wait. You must fly to your commodious studio and in between sittings you must paint pretty peeps of snowy mountains reflected in the lucid waters of the lake. You might knock up a one-man show while you’re about it.’
‘You shut up,’ said Troy, taking his arm.
‘I think you’d better write a rather formal answer giving your terms, as he so delicately suggests. I suppose I decline under separate cover.’
‘It might have been fun if we’d dived together into the flesh pots.’
‘The occasions when your art and my job have coincided haven’t been all that plain sailing, have they, my love?’
‘Not,’ she agreed, ‘so’s you’d notice. Rory, do you mind? My going?’
‘I always mind but I try not to let on. I must say I don’t go much for the company you’ll be keeping.’
‘Don’t you? High operatic with tantrums between sittings? Will that be the form, do you suppose?’
‘Something like that, I dare say.’
‘I shan’t let her look at the thing until it’s finished and if she cuts up rough, her dear one needn’t buy it. One thing I will not do,’ said Troy calmly. ‘I will not oblige with asinine alterations. If she’s that sort.’
‘I should think she well might be. So might he.’
‘Taking the view that if he’s paying he’s entitled to a return for his cash? What is he? English? New Zealand? American? Australian?’
‘I’ve no idea. But I don’t much fancy you being his guest, darling, and that’s a fact.’
‘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.’
