‘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 defeated 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 realized 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 far-fetched 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-look-ing 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?’