Mr. Reece took off his spectacles and looked at Alleyn as if he had taken leave of his senses. “Bella?” he said. “Up there? On the steps?”

“Well, no. Silly of me. I’m sorry.”

“She would probably have told Maria to do it.”

“Ah, apropos! I don’t know,” Alleyn said, “whether Mr. Hazelmere had told you?” He looked at the Inspector, who slightly shook his head. “Perhaps we should—?”

“That’s so, sir,” said Hazelmere. “We certainly should.” He addressed himself to Mr. Reece. “I understand, sir, that Miss Maria Bennini has expressed the wish to perform the last duties and Mr. Alleyn pointed out that until the premises had been thoroughly investigated, the stattus” (so Mr. Hazelmere pronounced it) “quow must be maintained. That is now the case. So, if it’s acceptable to yourself, we will inform Miss Bennini and in due course—”

“Yes, yes. Tell her,” Mr. Reece said. His voice was actually unsteady. He looked at Alleyn almost as if appealing to him. “And what then?” he asked.

Alleyn explained about the arrangements for the removal of the body. “It will probably be at dusk or even after dark when they arrive at the lakeside,” he said. “The launch will be waiting.”

“I wish to be informed.”

Alleyn and Hazelmere said together: “Certainly, sir.”

“I will—” he hunted for the phrase. “I will see her off. It is the least I can do. If I had not brought her to this house—” He turned aside, and looked at the books without seeing them. Alleyn put them back on their shelf. “I’m not conversant with police procedure in New Zealand,” Mr. Reece said. “I understand it follows the British rather than the American practice. It may be quite out of order, at this juncture, to ask whether you expect to make an arrest in the foreseeable future.”

Hazelmere again glanced at Alleyn, who remained silent. “Well, sir,” Hazelmere said, “it’s not our practice to open up wide, like, until we are very, very sure of ourselves. I think I’m in order if I say that we hope quite soon to be in a position to take positive action.”

“Is that your view, too, Chief Superintendent?”

“Yes,” Alleyn said. “That’s my view.”

“I am very glad to hear it. You wish to see Maria, do you not? Shall I send for her?”

“If it’s not putting you out, sir, we’d be much obliged,” said Inspector Hazelmere, who seemed to suffer from a compulsion to keep the interview at an impossibly high-toned level.

Mr. Reece used the telephone. “Find Maria,” he said, “and ask her to come to the library. Yes, at once. Very well, then, find her. Ask Mrs. Bacon to deal with it.”

He replaced the receiver. “Staff coordination has gone to pieces,” he said. “I asked for service and am told the person in question is sulking in her room.”

A long silence followed. Mr. Reece made no effort to break it. He went to the window and looked out at the Lake. Hazelmere inspected his notes, made two alterations, and under a pretense of consulting Alleyn about them, said in a slurred undertone: “Awkward if she won’t.”

“Hellishly,” Alleyn agreed.

Voices were raised in the hall, Hanley’s sounding agitated, Mrs. Bacon’s masterful. A door banged. Another voice shouted something that might have been an insult and followed it up with a raucous laugh. Marco, Alleyn thought. Hanley, all eyes and teeth, made an abrupt entrance.

“I’m terribly sorry, sir,” he said. “There’s been a little difficulty. Just coming.”

Mr. Reece glanced at him with contempt. He gave a nervous titter and withdrew only to reappear and stand, door in hand, to admit Maria in the grip of Mrs. Bacon.

“I’m extremely sorry, Mr. Reece,” said Mrs. Bacon in a high voice. “Maria has been difficult.”

She released her hold as if she expected her catch would bolt and when she did not, left the arena. Hanley followed her, shutting the door but not before an indignant contralto was heard in the hall: “No, this is too much. I can take no more of this,” said Miss Dancy.

“You handle this one, eh?” Hazelmere murmured to Alleyn.

But Mr. Reece was already in charge.

He said: “Come here.” Maria walked up to him at once and waited with her arms folded, looking at the floor.

“You are making scenes, Maria,” said Mr. Reece, “and that is foolish of you: you must behave yourself. Your request is to be granted; see to it that you carry out your duty decently and with respect.”

Maria intimated rapidly and in Italian that she would be a model of decorum, or words to that effect, and that she was now satisfied and grateful and might the good God bless Signor Reece.

“Very well,” said Mr. Reece. “Listen to the Chief Superintendent and do as he tells you.”

He nodded to Alleyn and walked out of the room.

Alleyn told Maria that she was to provide herself with whatever she needed and wait in the staff sitting room. She would not be disturbed.

“You found her. You have seen what it is like,” he said. “You are sure you want to do this?”

Maria crossed herself and said vehemently that she was sure.

“Very well. Do as I have said.”

There was a tap on the door and Sergeant Franks came in.

Hazelmere said: “You’ll look after Miss Bennini, Franks, won’t you? Anything she may require.”

“Sir,” said Sergeant Franks.

Maria looked as if she thought she could do without Sergeant Franks and intimated that she wished to be alone with her mistress.

“If that’s what you want,” said Hazelmere.

“To pray. There should be a priest.”

“All that will be attended to,” Hazelmere assured her. “Later on.”

“When?”

“At the interment,” he said flatly.

She glared at him and marched out of the room.

“All right,” Hazelmere said to Franks. “Later on. Keep with it. You know what you’ve got to do.”

“Sir,” said Sergeant Franks and followed her.

“Up we go,” said Alleyn.

He and Hazelmere moved into the hall and finding it empty, ran upstairs to the Sommita’s bedroom.

iii

It was stuffy in the wardrobe now they had locked themselves in. The smell was compounded of metallic cloth, sequins, fur, powder, scent, and of the body when it was still alive and wore the clothes and left itself on them. It was as if the Sommita had locked herself in with her apparel.

“Cripes, it’s close in here,” said Inspector Hazelmere.

“Put your mouth to the hole,” Alleyn suggested.

“That’s an idea, too,” Hazelmere said and began noisily to suck air through his peephole. Alleyn followed his own advice. Thus they obliterated the two pencils of light that had given some shape to the darkness as their eyes became adjusted to it.

“Makes you think of those funny things jokers on the telly get up to,” Hazelmere said. “You know. Crime serials.” And after a pause. “They’re taking their time, aren’t they?”

Alleyn grunted. He applied his eye to his peephole. Again, suddenly confronting him, was the black satin shape on the bed: so very explicit, so eloquent of the body inside. The shrouded limb, still rigid as a yardarm, pointing under its funeral sheet — at him.

He thought: But shouldn’t the rigidity be going off now? And tried to remember the rules about cadaveric spasm as opposed to rigor mortis.

“I told Franks to give us the office,” said Hazelmere. “You know. Unlock the door and open it a crack and say something loud.”

“Good.”

“What say we open these doors, then? Just for a second or two? Sort of fan them to change the air? I suffer from hay fever,” Hazelmere confessed.

“All right. But we’d better be quick about it, hadn’t we? Ready?”

Their keys clicked.

“Right.”

They opened the doors wide and flung them to and fro, exchanging the wardrobe air for the colder and more ominously suspect air of the room. Something fell on Alleyn’s left foot.

“Bloody hell!” said Hazelmere. “I’ve dropped the bloody key.”