I pushed the blind aside, closed the window after me, and stepped into the darkened room. With all the blinds closed it was like stepping into the depths of the ocean. The room had that closed-up, musty smell, tinged with the odors of oil paint, linseed oil, and turpentine, with which I had now become familiar. I moved cautiously to the door, which was closed, opened it and listened. Complete silence. I ventured forth and moved through a dining room, a library, a parlor before I found myself in the front foyer where I had spoken with Inspector Henri. I was about to open one of the doors leading from the foyer when I realized that I had failed the most basic test of breaking and entering—I was not wearing gloves. Hastily I felt for a pocket handkerchief, but I realized that these were not my clothes and thus I had no handkerchief with me. So I used the fabric of my shirt to hold the door handle. This door led to a hallway with two bedrooms leading from it. I looked around them, opened a top drawer, and extracted a handkerchief monogrammed RB and used it to wipe the drawer pull clean. I didn’t think anyone would have counted the handkerchiefs at this point and Reynold Bryce no longer needed it.
Thus armed with the handkerchief to prevent fingerprints, I now looked around the room. It was a typical man’s room—silver-backed brushes on the dresser, various jars of pomade and even hair dye, showing that he was more than a little vain, but no other adornments. No photographs, no letters; nothing to give a clue as to who lived there, or what kind of person he was—except there were good paintings on the walls. After going through a few rooms I realized that Reynold Bryce had a fine collection of Impressionist art. Worth a pretty penny, I decided. Enough to make his wife decide to kill him off? Had the police checked whether she might be in France herself? Then I decided that she would not have stabbed her husband if she’d come over to kill him. Stabbing is always too risky. Unless you strike at exactly the right spot the victim may well live. The knife could hit against one of the ribs and not penetrate far enough. Or a strong person could wrestle the knife away before one has time to deliver the blow. It takes skill or luck to kill with a knife. Which did Bryce’s murderer have?
I prowled the other rooms, even pulled out drawers in his desk, but I didn’t know what I was looking for. Surely important papers would have been removed? Last of all I located the kitchen, now looking neat but forlorn with its bare scrubbed pine table and pans hanging above the stove. An unpleasant smell of stuffiness and rotting vegetables lingered in the air. It appeared that the housekeeper had only taken the good stuff yesterday. I opened a door that led to a pantry with well-stocked shelves, and beyond it a dark square of hallway leading to a pitifully small room that must have been occupied by the housekeeper. All that remained now was an unmade bed, a thin upright chest, and a wardrobe with the door hanging open to reveal no clothes inside. She had definitely taken all her things yesterday. I wondered whether the police would mind. Then I made my way back through the dining room to the room into which I had entered, Reynold Bryce’s studio. I didn’t want to betray my presence by pulling up any of the blinds so I groped about on the wall until I discovered an electric light switch. Thank heavens he was a modern man and I didn’t need to light the gas.
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?