Harsh light now bathed the room. I saw that it was barely furnished. There was a long unpolished wooden table on which painting equipment still stood. Beside it a captain’s chair, in which presumably Reynold Bryce died. At the far end a blue velvet drape was hung as a backdrop, cascading like a waterfall over steps of various height. And beside this was the painting he must have been working on when he died. I stopped short, staring in surprise. This was no landscape. The painting was of a young girl with huge dark eyes, staring out with a half-frightened, half-curious expression. She was naked with the neat little breasts of an adolescent. The painting was by no means finished with a large area below the breasts only vaguely sketched in.

As I stood there examining it I realized that I had seen her before. She was the same girl from Gus’s painting—the one painted by Sid’s cousin Maxim Noah. What’s more the paint on the canvas wasn’t even completely dry where he had daubed it on thickly. There were blobs of paint on his palette and brushes standing in turpentine or lying on the table. One was now hard and stiff with paint. He hadn’t cleaned his brush. That must mean that he had been in the middle of painting when he was killed.

Why had nobody mentioned the model? Had the police now questioned her? Surely she must have been here, in this room, when his assailant came in. I looked around. There was a narrow space behind the velvet hangings. Had she hidden herself there when there was a ring of the doorbell… and… I took this one stage further.… Had she witnessed the whole thing from behind this drape? Or, the other possibility… had she been the one who had stabbed the painter?

I was examining the room, inch by inch, when I heard a sound. It was the clatter of something being dropped nearby. In an instant I crossed the room and flicked down the light switch, leaving me blundering in darkness. I opened the door an inch or two and listened. Somebody was definitely moving about the apartment. I knew I should make for the window as quickly as possible, but curiosity made me hesitate. I eased the door open and started to tiptoe across the dining room. There was another clunk, this time sounding dangerously close, probably inside the kitchen. The kitchen door was now closed and I didn’t dare to open it.