Artists in Crime by Ngaio Marsh Page A

told you. Alone with Garcia.”
    “Did either of you leave the studio during the afternoon?”
    “Yes.”
    “Who?”
    “Garcia.”
    “Do you know why?”
    “I imagine it was to pay a visit to the usual offices.”
    “How long was he away?”
    “Dear me, I don’t know. Perhaps eight or ten minutes.”
    “When he worked, did he face the window?”
    “I believe so.”
    “With his back to the room?”
    “Naturally.”
    “Did you look at the drape before you left?”
    “I don’t think so.”
    “Did you touch the drape, Mr. Malmsley?”
    “No.”
    “Who scrawled that appalling defacement on Miss Troy’s painting of a girl in green?”
    There was an uneasy silence, broken at last by Troy.
    “You mean my portrait of Miss Seacliff. Sonia did that.”
    “The model?” exclaimed Alleyn.
    “I believe so. I said we have all felt like murdering her. That was my motive, Mr. Alleyn.”

CHAPTER VII
Alibi for Troy
    Alleyn lifted a hand as if in protest. He checked himself and, after a moment’s pause, went on with his customary air of polite diffidence.
    “The model defaced your painting. Why did she do this?”
    “Because she was livid with
me
,” said Valmai Seacliff. “You see, it was rather a marvelous painting. Troy was going to exhibit it. Sonia hated that. Besides, Basil wanted to buy it.”
    “When did she commit this — outrage?” asked Alleyn.
    “A week ago,” said Troy. “Miss Seacliff gave me the final sitting last Monday morning. The class came down to the studio to see the thing. Sonia came too. She’d been in a pretty foul frame of mind for some days. It’s perfectly true what they all say. She was an extraordinary little animal and, as Ormerin has told you, extremely jealous. They all talked about the portrait. She was left outside the circle. Then Pilgrim asked me if he might buy it before it went away. Perhaps I should tell you that I have also done a portrait of Sonia which has been been sold. Sonia took that as a sort of personal slight on her beauty. It’s hard to believe, but she did. She seemed to think I’d painted Miss Seacliff because I was dissatisfied with her own charms as a model. Then, when they all came down and looked at the thing and liked it, and Pilgrim said he wanted it, I suppose that upset her still more. Several of these people said in front of her, they thought the thing of Miss Seacliff was the best portrait I have done.”
    “It was all worms and gallwood to her,” said Ormerin.
    “Well,” Troy went on, “we came away, and I suppose she stayed behind. When I went down to the studio later on that day, I found—” she caught her breath. “I found — what you saw.”
    “Did you tackle her?”
    “Not at first. I — felt sick. You see, once in a painter’s lifetime he, or she, does something that’s extra.”
    “I know.”
    “Something that they look at afterwards and say to themselves: ‘How did the stumbling ninny that is me, do this?’ It happened with the head in Valmai’s portrait. So when I saw — I just felt sick.”
    “Bloody little swine,” said Miss Bostock.
    “Oh, well,” said Troy, “I did tackle her that evening. She admitted she’d done it. She said all sorts of things about Valmai and Pilgrim, and indeed everybody in the class. She stormed and howled.”
    “You didn’t sack her?” asked Alleyn.
    “I felt like it, of course. But I couldn’t quite do that. You see, they’d all got going on these other things, and there was Katti’s big thing, too. I think she was honestly sorry she’d done it. She really rather liked me. She simply went through life doing the first thing that came into her head. This business had been done in a blind fury with Valmai. She only thought of me afterwards. She fetched up by having hysterics and offering to pose for nothing for the rest of her life.” Troy smiled crookedly. “The stable-door idea,” she said.
    “Basil and I were frightfully upset,” said Valmai Seacliff. “Weren’t we,