Death on the Air Read Free Page A

snow-clad mountains of that country. We have cruised along English canals and walked through the streets and monuments of Rome. His duties have taken us to an island off the coast of Normandy and to the backstage regions of several theatres. He has sailed with a psychopathic homicide from Tilbury to Cape Town and has made arrests in at least three country houses, one hospital, a church, a canal boat and a pub. Small wonder, perhaps, that we have both broadened our outlook under the pressure of these undertakings, none of which was anticipated on that wet afternoon in London.
    At his first appearance he was a bachelor and, although responsive to the opposite sex, did not bounce in and out of irresponsible beds when going about his job. Or, if he did, I knew nothing about it. He was, to all intents and purposes, fancy-free and would remain so until, sailing out of Suva in Fiji, he came across Agatha Troy, painting in oils, on the boat deck of a liner. And that was still some half-dozen books in the future.
    There would be consternation shown by editors and publishers when, after another couple of jobs, the lady accepted him. The acceptance would be a
fait accompli
, and from then on I would be dealing with a married investigator, his celebrated wife, and later on, their son.
    By a series of coincidences and much against his inclination, it would come about that these two would occasionally get themselves embroiled in his professional duties, but generally speaking he would keep his job out of his family life. He would set about his cases with his regular associate, who is one of his closest friends; Inspector Fox, massive, calm, and plain-thinking, would tramp sedately in. They have been working together for a considerable time, and still allow me to accompany them.
    But ‘on the afternoon in question,’ all this, as lady crime novelists used to say, ‘lay in the future.’ The fire had burnt clear and sent leaping patterns up the walls of my London flat when I turned on the light, opened an exercise book, sharpened my pencil, and began to write. There he was, waiting quietly in the background ready to make his entrance at Chapter IV, page 58, in the first edition.
    I had company. It became necessary to give my visitor a name.
    Earlier in that week I had visited Dulwich College. This is an English public school, which in any other country would mean a private school. It was founded and very richly endowed by a famous actor in the days of the first Elizabeth. It possesses a splendid picture gallery and a fabulous collection of relics from the Shakespearean-Marlovian theatre: enthralling to me who has a passion for that scene.
    My father was an old boy of Dulwich College – an ‘old Alleynian’, as it is called, the name of the Elizabethan actor being Alleyn.
    Detective-Inspector Alleyn, CID? Yes.
    His first name was in doubt for some time, but another visit, this time to friends in the Highlands of Scotland, hadfamiliarized me with some resoundingly-named characters, among them one Roderick (or Rory) MacDonald.
    Roderick Alleyn, Detective-Inspector, CID?
    Yes.
    The name, by the way, is pronounced ‘Allen’.

PORTRAIT OF TROY

    T roy made her entrance with the sixth of the books about Alleyn. In those days, I still painted quite a lot and quite seriously, and was inclined to look upon everything I saw in terms of possible subject matter.
    On a voyage out to New Zealand from England, we called at Suva. The day was overcast, still and sultry. The kind of day when sounds have an uncanny clarity, and colour an added sharpness and intensity. The wharf at Suva, as seen from the boat-deck of the
Niagara
, was remarkable in these respects: the acid green of a bale of bananas packed in their own leaves; the tall Fijian with a mop of hair dyed screaming magenta, this colour repeated in the sari of an Indian woman; the slap of bare feet on wet boards and the deep voices that sounded as if they were