“Who by?”
Alleyn didn’t reply at once. He restored the photographs to the dressing-case and after another long look at the picture, rolled it carefully and tied it up. “We’ll take possession of this,” he said, “and thus justify the Hewsons’ worst forebodings. I’ll write a receipt. Everything in order here? We’ll move on, Br’er Fox, to the other locked cabin: I simply can’t wait to call, in his absence, on Mr Pollock.”
-4-
Thompson and Bailey had arrived. They went quietly round the cabins collecting prints from tooth glasses and were then to move to the sites of the motor-bicycle traces. Tillottson was in his station in Tollardwark hoping for news of the cyclists and, optimistically, for reports from America and Australia to come through London. Meanwhile the appropriate department was setting up an exhaustive check on the deceased and on the two passengers, Natouche and Caley Bard, who lived in England. Caley had given a London address and his occupation as: “Crammer of ill-digested raw-material into the maws of unwilling adolescents.” In other words, he was a free-lance coach to a tutorial firm of considerable repute.
Troy was in bed and asleep at the Percy Arms in Norminster and Alleyn and Fox had completed their search of the cabins.
“A poor, thin time we’ve had of it,” Alleyn said. “Except for that one small thing.”
“The Pollock exhibit?”
“That’s right.”
In Mr Pollock’s cabin they had found in the breast pocket of his deplorable suit a plastic wallet containing a print of the Hewson photograph of Ramsdyke Lock and several envelopes displaying trial sketches for the words with which he had subsequently embellished Troy’s picture. He had evidently taken a lot of trouble over them, interrupting himself from time to time to doodle. It was his doodling that Alleyn had found interesting.
“Very neat, very detailed, very meticulous,” he had muttered. “Not the doodles of a non-draughtsman. No. I wonder what the psychiatric experts have to say under this heading. Someone ought to write a monograph: ‘Doodling and the Unconscious’ or: ‘How to—’.” And he had broken off in the middle of the sentence to stare at the last of Mr Pollock’s trial efforts. He held it out to Fox to examine.
“The Crab is Followed—” Mr Pollock had printed and then repeated, with slight changes, several of the letters. But down one side of the envelope he had made a really elaborate doodle.
It was a drawing of a tree, for all the world twin to the elm that overhung the village pond in Miss Hewson’s oil painting.
“Very careless,” Alleyn had said as he put it in his pocket. “I’m surprised at him.”
When they returned to the saloon they found the Hewsons, and Mr Pollock and Mr Lazenby, still up and still playing Scrabble. Caley Bard and Dr Natouche were reading. Mrs Tretheway had gone to bed.
Bailey and Thompson passed through, carrying their gear. The passengers watched them in silence.
When they had gone Alleyn said: “We’ve done our stuff down there and the cabins are all yours. I’m very sorry if we’ve kept you up too late. Here are the keys.” He laid them on the table. ”And here,” he said, holding up the rolled canvas, “is your picture, Miss Hewson. We would like to take charge of it for a short time, if you please. I’ll give you this receipt. I assure you the canvas will come to no harm.”
Miss Hewson had turned, as Fox liked to say, as white as a turnip and really her skin did have something of the aspect of that unlovely root. She looked from Alleyn to her brother and then wildly round the group of passengers as if appealing against some terrible decision. She rose to her feet, pulled at her underlip with uncertain fingers and had actually made a curious little whining sound when her brother said: “Take it easy, Sis. You don’t have to act this way. It’s O.K.: take it easy.”
Mr Hewson had very large, pale hands. Alleyn saw his left hand clench and his right hand close round his sister’s forearm. She gave a short cry of pain, sank back in her chair and shot what seemed to be a look of terror at her brother.
“My sister’s a super-sensitive girl, Superintendent,” Mr Hewson said. “She gets nervous very, very easy.”
“I hope there is no occasion for her to do so now,” Alleyn said. “I understand this is not your first visit to this district, Mr Hewson. You were here in the spring, weren’t you?”
Dr Natouche lowered his book and for the first time seemed to listen to what was being said; Caley Bard gave an exclamation of surprise. Miss Hewson mouthed inaudibly and fingered her arm and Mr Lazenby said, “Really? Is that so? Your second visit to The River? I didn’t realise,” as if they were all making polite conversation.
“That is so,” Mr Hewson said. “A flying visit. We were captivated and settled to return.”
“When did you book your passages in the Zodiac?” Alleyn asked.
A silence, broken at last by Mr Hewson.
“Pardon me, I should have put that a little differently, I guess. We made our reservations before we left the States. I should have said we were enchanted to learn when we got here that the Zodiac cruise would cover this same territory.”
“On your previous visit, did you take many photographs?”
“Some. Yes, sir: quite some.”
“Including several shots here at Ramsdyke, of exactly the same subject as the one in this picture?”
Mr Hewson said: “Maybe. I wouldn’t remember off hand. We certainly do get around to taking plenty of pictures.”
“Have you seen this particular photograph, Mr Pollock?”
Mr Pollock lounged back in his seat, put his hands in his trouser pockets and assumed a look of cagey impertinence with which Alleyn was very familiar.
“Couldn’t say, I’m sure,” he said.
“Surely you’d remember. The photograph that is taken from the same place as the painting?”
“Haven’t the vaguest.”
“You mean you haven’t seen it?”
“Know what?” Mr Pollock said. “I don’t get all this stuff about photos. It doesn’t mean a thing to me. It’s silly.”
Mr Pollock’s tree doodle and the Hewsons’ photograph of Ramsdyke Lock dropped on the table in front of him.
“These were in the pocket of your suit.”
“What of it?”
“The drawing is a replica of a tree in the painting.”
“Fancy that.”
“When did you make this drawing?”
For the first time he hesitated but said at last. “After I seen the picture. It’s kind of recollection. I was doodling.”
“While you practised your lettering?”
“That’s right. No!” he said quickly. “After.”
“It would have to be after, wouldn’t it? Because you’d done the lettering on the Zodiac drawing before you saw the picture. A day or more before. Hadn’t you?”
“That’s your idea: I didn’t say so.”
“Mr Pollock: I suggest that your first answer is the true one. I suggest that you did in fact ‘doodle’ this very accurate drawing when you were practising your lettering a couple of days ago and that you did it, subconsciously or not, out of your knowledge of the picture. Your very vivid and accurate recollection of the picture with which you were already as familiar as if—” Alleyn paused. Mr Pollock had gone very still. “—as if you yourself had painted it,” said Alleyn.
Dr Natouche rose, murmured, “Excuse me, please,” and went up on deck.
“You don’t have to insult me,” Pollock said, “in front of that nigger.”
Caley Bard walked over and looked at him as if he was something nasty he’d caught in his butterfly net.