Last Ditch. Ngaio Marsh
‘As far as I can see,’ Alleyn said, ‘he’s landing us with a sort of monster.’
‘He thinks it might amuse us to meet him after all we’ve heard.’
‘It had better,’ Alleyn said mildly.
‘It’s only for a minute or two.’
‘When do you expect him?’
‘Some time in the morning, I imagine.’
‘What’s the betting he stays for luncheon?’
Troy stood before her husband in the attitude that he particularly enjoyed, with her back straight, her hands in the pockets of her painting smock and her chin down rather like a chidden little boy.
‘And what’s the betting,’ he went on, ‘my own true love, that before you can say Flake White, he’s showing you a little something he’s done himself.’
‘That,’ said Troy grandly, ‘would be altogether another pair of boots and I should know how to deal with them. And anyway he told Rick he thinks I’ve painted myself out.’
‘He grows more attractive every second.’
‘It was funny about the way he behaved when Rick trod on his vermilion.’
Alleyn didn’t answer at once. ‘It was, rather,’ he said at last. ‘Considering he gets the stuff free.’
‘Trembling with rage, Rick said, and his beard twitching.’
‘Delicious.’
‘Oh well,’ said Troy, suddenly brisk. ‘We can but see.’
‘That’s the stuff. I must be off.’ He kissed her. ‘Don’t let this Jones fellow make a nuisance of himself,’ he said. ‘As usual, my patient Penny-lope, there’s no telling when I’ll be home. Perhaps for lunch or perhaps I’ll be in Paris. It’s that narcotics case. I’ll get them to telephone. Bless you.’
‘And you,’ said Troy cheerfully.
She was painting a tree in their garden from within the studio. At the heart of her picture was an exquisite little silver birch just starting to burgeon and treated with delicate and detailed realism. But this tree was at the core of its own diffusion a larger and much more stylized version of itself and that, in turn, melted into an abstract of the two trees it enclosed. Alleyn said it was like the unwinding of a difficult case with the abstractions on the outside and the implacable ‘thing itself’ at the hard centre. He had begged her to stop before she went too far.
She hadn’t gone any distance at all when Mr Sydney Jones presented himself.
There was nothing very remarkable, Troy thought, about his appearance. He had a beard, close-cropped, revealing a full, vaguely sensual but indeterminate mouth. His hair was of a medium length and looked clean. He wore a sweater over jeans. Indeed, all that remained of the Syd Jones Ricky had described was his huge silly-sinister pair of black spectacles. He carried a suitcase and a newspaper parcel.
‘Hullo,’ Troy said, offering her hand. ‘You’re Sydney Jones, aren’t you? Ricky rang up and told us you were coming. Do sit down, won’t you?’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ he mumbled, and sniffed loudly. He was sweating.
Troy sat on the arm of a chair. ‘Do you smoke?’ she said. ‘I’m sorry I haven’t got any cigarettes but do if you’d like to.’
He put his suitcase and the newspaper parcel down and lit a cigarette. He then picked up his parcel.
‘I gather it’s about Jerome et Cie’s paints, isn’t it?’ Troy suggested. ‘I’d better say that I wouldn’t want to change to them and I can’t honestly give you a blurb. Anyway I don’t do that sort of thing. Sorry.’ She waited for a response but he said nothing. ‘Rick tells us,’ she said, ‘that you paint.’
With a gesture so abrupt that it made her jump, he thrust his parcel at her. The newspaper fell away and three canvases tied together with string were exposed.
‘Is that,’ Troy said, ‘some of your work?’
He nodded.
‘Do you want me to look at it?’
He muttered.
Made cross by having been startled, Troy said: ‘My dear boy, do for pity’s sake speak out. You make me feel as if I were giving an imitation of a woman talking to herself. Stick them up there where I can see them.’
With unsteady hands he put them up, one by one, changing them when she nodded. The first was the large painting Ricky had decided was an abstraction of Leda and the Swan. The second was a kaleidoscopic arrangement of shapes in hot browns and raucous blues. The third was a landscape, more nearly representational than the others. Rows of perceptible houses with black, staring windows stood above dark water. There was some suggestion of tactile awareness but no real respect, Troy thought, for the medium.
She said: ‘I think I know where we are with this one. Is it St Pierre-des-Roches on the coast of Normandy?’
‘Yar,’ he said.
‘It’s the nearest French port to your island, isn’t it? Do you often go across?’
‘Aw – yar,’ he said, fidgeting. ‘It turns me on. Or did. I’ve worked that vein out, as a matter of fact.’
‘Really,’ said Troy. There was a longish pause. ‘Do you mind putting up the first one again. The Leda.’
He did so. Another silence. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘do you want me to say what I think? Or not?’
‘I don’t mind,’ he mumbled, and yawned extensively.
‘Here goes, then. I find it impossible to say whether I think you’ll develop into a good painter or not. These three things are all derivative. That doesn’t matter while you’re young: if you’ve got something of your own, with great pain and infinite determination you will finally prove it. I don’t think you’ve done that so far. I do get something from the Leda thing – a suggestion that you’ve got a strong sense of rhythm, but it is no more than a suggestion. I don’t think you’re very self-critical.’ She looked hard at him. ‘You don’t fool about with drugs, do you?’ asked Troy.
There was a very long pause before he answered quite loudly, ‘No.’
‘Good. I only asked because your hands are unsteady and your behaviour erratic, and –’ She broke off. ‘Look here,’ she said, ‘you’re not well, are you? Sit down. No, don’t be silly, sit down.’
He did sit down. He was shaking, sweat had started out under the line of his hair and he was the colour of a peeled banana. He gaped and ran a dreadful tongue round his mouth. She fetched him a glass of water. The dark glasses were askew. He put up his trembling hand to them and they fell off, disclosing a pair of pale ineffectual eyes. Gone was the mysterious Mr Jones.
‘I’m all right,’ he said.
‘I don’t think you are.’
‘Party. Last night.’
‘What sort of party?’
‘Aw. A fun thing.’
‘I see.’
‘I’ll be OK.’
Troy made some black coffee and left him to drink it while she returned to her work. The spirit trees began to enclose their absolute inner tree more firmly.
When, at a quarter past one, Alleyn walked into the studio, it was to find his