“He looks a pretty good specimen of a wild man,” said Alleyn.

“If Malmsley and Miss Troy are telling the truth,” said Fox, who had a way of making sure of his remarks, “he’s a murderer. Of course, the motive’s not much of an affair as far as we’ve got.”

“Well, I don’t know, Brer Fox. It looks as though the girl was badgering him to marry her. It’s possible the P.M. may offer the usual explanation for that sort of thing.”

“In the family way? ” Fox took off his spectacles and stared blandly at his chief. “Yes. That’s so. What did you make of that statement of Mr. Malmsley’s about Garcia being ill in the garden after he saw the defaced likeness? That seems a queer sort of thing to me. It wasn’t as if he’d done the photo.”

“The painting, Fox,” corrected Alleyn. “One doesn’t call inspired works of art photographs, you know. Yes, that was rather a rum touch, wasn’t it? You heard Miss Seacliff’s theory. Garcia is infatuated with her and was all upheaved by the sight of her defaced loveliness.”

“Far-fetched,” said Fox.

“I’m inclined to agree with you. But it might be an explanation of his murdering Sonia Gluck when he realised she had done it. He might have thought to himself: ‘This looks like a more than usually hellish fury from the woman scorned — what am I in for?’ and decided to get rid of her. There’s a second possibility which will seem even more farfetched to you, I expect. To me it seems conceivable that Garcia’s aesthetic nerves were lacerated by the outrage on a lovely piece of painting. Miss Troy says the portrait of Valmai Seacliff was the best thing she has ever done.” Alleyn’s voice deepened and was not quite steady. “That means it was a really great work. I think, Fox, that if I had seen that painted head and known it for a superlatively beautiful thing, and then seen it again with that beastly defacement — I believe I might have sicked my immortal soul up into the nearest flower-bed. I also believe that I would have felt remarkably like murder.”

“Is that so, sir?” said Fox stolidly. “But you wouldn’t have done murder, though, however much you felt like it.”

“I’d have felt damn’ like it,” muttered Alleyn. He walked restlessly about the room. “The secret of Garcia’s reaction,” he said, “lies behind this.” He wagged the photograph at Fox. “Behind that very odd-looking head. I wish we knew more about Garcia. We’ll have to go hunting for his history, Brer Fox. Records of violence and so on. I wonder if there are any. Suppose he turns up quite innocently to do his ‘Comedy and Tragedy’ in his London warehouse?”

“That’ll look as if either Malmsley or Miss Troy was a liar, sir, won’t it? I must say I wouldn’t put Mr. Malmsley down as a very dependable sort of gentleman. A bit cheeky in an arty sort of fashion.”

Alleyn smiled.

“Fox, what a neat description of him! Admirable! No, unless Malmsley is lying, the knife was hammered through and the drape stretched out after they had all gone on Friday. And if Miss Troy found it stretched out on Saturday afternoon, then the thing was done before then.”

“If,” said Fox. And after a moment’s silence Alleyn replied:

“ ‘If’ — of course.”

“You might say Miss Troy had the strongest motive, sir, as far as the portrait is concerned.”

There was a longer pause.

“Do you think it at all likely that she is a murderess?” said Alleyn from the fireplace. “A very deliberate murderess, Fox. The outrage to the portrait was committed a week before the murder.”

“I must say I don’t think so, sir. Very unlikely indeed, I’d say. This Garcia seems the likeliest proposition on the face of it. What did you make of Miss Phillida Lee’s statement, now? The conversation she overheard. Looks as though Garcia and the deceased were making an assignation for Friday night, doesn’t it? Suppose she came back to the studio on Friday night in order that they should resume intimacy?”

“Yes, I know.”

“He seems to have actually threatened her, if the young lady can be depended upon.”

“Miss Seacliff didn’t contradict the account, and you must remember that extraordinary little party, Phillida Lee, confided the fruits of her nosy-parkering to Miss Seacliff long before the tragedy. I think we may take it that Garcia and Sonia Gluck had a pretty good dust-up on the lines indicated by the gushing Lee. You took notes in the dining-room, of course. Turn up her report of the quarrel, will you?”

Fox produced a very smug-looking note-book, put on his spectacles, and turned up a page.

“ ‘Garcia—’ ” he read slowly from his shorthand notes.

“ ‘All right. On Friday night then.’ Sonia Gluck: ‘Yes, if it’s possible.’ Then later Gluck said: ‘I won’t stand for any funny business with her, you know.’ Garcia said: ‘Who?’ and Gluck answered: ‘The Seacliff bitch, of course.’ Sonia Gluck said Garcia ought to marry her. He did not reply. She threatened to go to Miss Troy with the whole story if he let her down. He said: ‘If you don’t shut up and leave me to get on with my work, I’ll bloody well stop your mouth for keeps.’ That’s the conversation, sir.”

“Yes. We’ll have to get hold of something about Friday night. Damn it all, the studio is built into the wall, and the window opens on the lane. Surely to Heaven someone must have passed by that evening and heard voices if Garcia had the girl in the place with him.”

“And how did he get his stuff away on Friday night or Saturday morning? They’ve tried all the carriers for miles around.”

“I know, Brer Fox, I know. Well, on we go. We’ve got to get all these people’s time-tables from Friday noon till Sunday evening. What about Bailey? I’d better see him first, I suppose.”

Bailey came in with his usual air of mulish displeasure and reported that they had finished in the studio. They had gone over everything for prints, had photographed the scratched window-sill, measured and photographed the car’s prints and footprints in the lane, and taken casts of them. They had found the key of the studio hanging on a nail outside the door. It was smothered in prints. Under the pillow was an empty whisky bottle. On the window-sill one set of prints occurred many times, and seemed to be superimposed on most of the others. He had found traces of clay with these prints, and with those on the bottle.

“Those will be Garcia’s” said Alleyn. “He worked in the window.”

In the junk-room Bailey had found a mass of jars, brushes, bottles of turpentine and oil, costumes, lengths of materials, a spear, an old cutlass, and several shallow dishes that smelt of nitric acid. There was also what Bailey described as “as sort of mangle affair with a whale of a heavy chunk of metal and a couple of rollers.”

“An etching press,” said Alleyn.

“There’s a couple of stains on the floor of the junk-room,” continued Bailey, “Look like nitric-acid stains. They’re new. I can’t find any nitric acid anywhere, though. I’ve looked in all the bottles and jars.”

“Um!” said Alleyn, and made a note of it.

“There’s one other thing,” said Bailey. He opened a bag he had brought in with him, and out of it he took a small box which he handed to Alleyn.

“Hullo,” said Alleyn. “This is the bon-bouche, is it?”

He opened the little box and held it under the lamp. Inside was a flattened greenish-grey pellet.

“Clay,” said Alleyn. “Where was it?”

“In the folds of that silk stuff that was rigged on the platform,” said Bailey, staring morosely at his boots.

“I see,” said Alleyn softly. “Look here, Fox.”

Fox joined him. They could both see quite clearly that the flattened surface of the pellet was delicately scrolled by minute holes and swirling lines.

“A nice print,” said Fox, “only half there, but very sharp what there is.”

“If the prints on the sill are Garcia’s,” said Bailey, “that’s Garcia’s, too.”

There was a silence.

“Well,” said Alleyn at last, “that’s what you call a fat little treasure-trove, Bailey.”