‘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 not 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, Basil?’

Alleyn looked to see how Pilgrim would take this remark. He thought that for a moment he saw a look of reluctant surprise.