He paused. Alleyn thought that it would be appropriate if he said: “You interest me strangely. Pray continue your most absorbing narrative.” However, he said nothing, and Signor Lattienzo continued.

“The origin,” he repeated. “The event that set the whole absurdly wicked feud going. I have always thought there must have been Corsican blood somewhere in that family. The whole story smacks more of the vendetta than the mafioso element. My dear Alleyn, I am about to break a confidence with my brother, and one does not break confidences of this sort.”

“I think I may assure that whatever you may tell me, I won’t reveal the source.”

“It may, after all, not seem as striking to you as it does to me. It is this. The event that gave rise to the feud so many, many years ago, was the murder of a Pepitone girl by her Rossi bridegroom. He had discovered a passionate and explicit letter from a lover. He stabbed her to the heart on their wedding night.”

He stopped. He seemed to balk at some conversational hurdle.

“I see,” said Alleyn.

“That is not all,” said Signor Lattienzo. “That is by no means all. Pinned to the body by the stiletto that killed her was the letter. That is what I came to tell you and now I shall go.”

Chapter eight

The Police

i

“From now on,” Alleyn said to Dr. Carmichael, “it would be nice to maintain a masterly inactivity. I shall complete my file and hand it over, with an anxious smirk, to Inspector Hazelmere in, please God, the course of a couple of hours or less.”

“Don’t you feel you’d like to polish it off yourself? Having gone so far?”

“Yes, Rory,” said Troy. “Don’t you?”

“If Fox and Bailey and Thompson could walk in, yes, I suppose I do. That would be, as Noel Coward put it, ‘an autre paire de souliers.’ But this hamstrung solo, poking about without authority, has been damned frustrating.”

“What do you suppose the chap that’s coming will do first?”

“Inspect the body and the immediate environment. He can’t look at my improvised dabs-and-photographs, because they are still in what Lattienzo calls the womb of the camera. He’ll take more of his own.”

“And then?”

“Possibly set up a search of some if not all of their rooms. I suggested he bring a warrant. And by that same token did your bed-making exercise prove fruitful? Before or after the envelope-and-ashes episode?”

“A blank,” said Dr. Carmichael. “Hanley has a collection of bedside books with Wilde and Gide at the top and backstreet Marseilles at the bottom, but all with the same leitmotiv.”

“And Ben Ruby,” said Troy, “has an enormous scrapbook of newspaper cuttings all beautifully arranged and dated and noted and with all the rave bits in the reviews underlined. For quotation in advance publicity, I suppose. It’s got the Strix photographs and captions and newspaper correspondence, indignant and supportive. Do you know there are only seven European Strix photographs, two American, and four Australian, including the retouched one in the Watchman? Somehow one had imagined, or I had, a hoard of them. Signor Lattienzo’s got a neat little pile of letters in Italian on his desk. Mr. Reece has an enormous colored photograph framed in silver of the diva in full operatic kit — I wouldn’t know which opera, except that it’s not Butterfly. And there are framed photographs of those rather self-conscious slightly smug walking youths in the Athens Museum. He’s also got a marvelous equestrian drawing in sanguine of a nude man on a stallion which I could swear is a da Vinci original. Can he be as rich as all that? I really do swear it’s not a reproduction.”

“I think he probably can,” said Alleyn.

“What a shut-up sort of man he is,” Troy mused. “I mean who would have expected it? Does he really appreciate it or has he just acquired it because it cost so much? Like the diva, one might say.”

“Perhaps not quite like that,” said Alleyn.

“Do you attach a lot of weight to Signor Lattienzo’s observations?” asked the doctor suddenly. “I don’t know what they were, of course.”

“They were confidential. They cast a strongly Italian flavor over the scene. Beyond that,” said Alleyn, “my lips are sealed.”

“Rory,” Troy asked, “are you going to see Maria again? Before the police arrive?”

“I’ve not quite decided. I think perhaps I might. Very briefly.”

“We mustn’t ask why, of course,” said Carmichael.

“Oh yes, you may. By all means. If I do see her, it will be to tell her that I shall inform the police of her request to— attend to her mistress and shall ask them to accede to it. When they’ve finished their examination of the room, of course.”

“You will?”

“That’s the general idea.”

“Well, then — Are you going to explain why?”

“Certainly,” said Alleyn. And did.

When he had finished Troy covered her face with her hands. It was an uncharacteristic gesture. She turned away to the windows. Dr. Carmichael looked from her to Alleyn and left the studio.

“I wouldn’t have had this happen,” Alleyn said, “for all the world.”

“Don’t give it another thought,” she mumbled into his sweater and helped herself to his handkerchief. “It’s nothing. It’s just the fact of that room along there. Off the landing. You know — behind the locked door. Like a Bluebeard’s chamber. I can’t stop thinking about it. It’s kind of got me down a bit.”

“I know.”

“And now — Maria. Going in there. Damn!” said Troy and stamped. “I’d got myself all arranged not to be a burden and now look at me.”

“Could it be that you’ve done a morsel too much self-arranging and I’ve done a morsel too much male chauvinism, although, I must say,” Alleyn confessed, “I’m never quite sure what the ladies mean by the phrase. Have a good blow,” he added as Troy was making gingerly use of his handkerchief. She obeyed noisily and said she was feeling better.

“What would Br’er Fox say to me?” she asked and answered herself. Alleyn joined in.

“ ‘We’ll have to get you in the Force, Mrs. Alleyn,’ ” they quoted in unison.

“And wouldn’t I make a pretty hash of it if you did,” said Troy.

“You’ve done jolly well with the half-burnt envelope. Classic stuff that and very useful. It forced Marco to come tolerably clean.”

“Well, come, that’s something.”

“It’s half an hour to lunch time. How about putting a bit of slap on your pink nose and coming for a brisk walk.”

“Lunch!” said Troy, “and Mr. Reece’s massive small talk. And food! More food!”

“Perhaps the cook will have cut it down to clear soup and a slice of ham. Anyway, come on.”

“All right,” said Troy.

So they went out of doors, where the sun shone, the dark wet trees glittered, the Lake was spangled, and the mountains were fresh, as if, it seemed, from creation’s hand. The morning was alive with bird song, sounds that might have been the voice of the bush itself, its hidden waters, its coolness, its primordial detachment.

They walked round the house to the empty hangar and thence, across the landing ground, to the path through the bush and arrived at the lakeside.

“Wet earth and greenery again,” said Troy. “The best smell there is.”

“The Maori people had a god-hero called Maui. He went fishing, and hauled up the South Island.”

“Quite recently, by the feel of it.”

“Geologically it was, in fact, thrust up from the ocean bed by volcanic action. I’ve no idea,” said Alleyn, “whether it was a slow process or a sudden commotion. It’s exciting to imagine it heaving up all of a sudden with the waters pouring down the flanks of its mountains, sweeping across its plains and foaming back into the sea. But I daresay it was a matter of eons rather than minutes.”

“And you say there are now lots and lots of painters, busy as bees, having a go at”—Troy waved an arm at the prospect— “all that.”