I am, believe me, dear Mrs. Alleyn,

Yours most sincerely,

[in spiky writing] Montague Reece.

After a longish pause Troy said: “Would it be going too far to paint her singing? You know, mouth wide open for a top note.”

“Mightn’t she look as if she were yawning?”

“I don’t think so,” Troy brooded and then with a sidelong grin at her husband, “I could always put a balloon coming out of her mouth with ‘A in alt’ written in it.”

“That would settle any doubts, of course. Except that I fancy it refers to male singers.”

“You haven’t looked at your letter. Do look.”

Alleyn looked. “Here it is,” he said. “Overposh and posted in Sydney.” He opened it.”

“What’s he say?”

“The preamble’s much the same as yours and so’s the follow-up: the bit about him having to confess to an ulterior motive.”

“Does he want you to paint his portrait, my poor Rory?”

“He wants me to give them ‘my valued opinion as to the possibility of obtaining police protection in the matter of the persecution of Madame Sommita by a photographer, of which I am no doubt aware.’ Well, of all the damn cheek!” said Alleyn. ‘Travel thirteen thousand miles to sit on an island in the middle of a lake and tell him whether or not to include a copper in his house party.”

“Oh! Yes. The penny’s dropped. All that stuff in the papers. I didn’t really read it.”

“You must be the only English-speaking human being who didn’t.”

“Well, I did, really. Sort of. But the photographs were so hideous they put me off. Fill me, as I expect they say in Mr. Reece’s circles, in.”

“You remember how Mrs. Jacqueline Kennedy, as she was then, was pestered by a photographer?”

“Yes.”

“It’s the same situation but much exaggerated. The Kennedy rumpus may have put the idea into this chap’s head.