Adams?’
‘Not at present and perhaps not at all. And now, to play havoc with the ballad of Sir Patrick Spens, where shall I find a skeely sculptor to model this head of mine?’
‘Yours?’
‘No. The head of the man found in the river. The police photographed it full-face and in profile. It will be hard if we cannot find somebody to model him, taking, we’ll say, three years off his age and restoring his appearance to what it was before he was attacked so brutally.’
‘So you
‘Dear me, no, but from a bow drawn at a venture the arrow sometimes finds a rare and valuable quarry.’
14
Full Marks For Artistic Impression
« ^ »
Signor Tussordiano,’ said Laura, looking up from her crossword puzzle that evening after they had spoken with Susan.
‘I beg your pardon?’ said Dame Beatrice.
‘That waxworks man who used to travel the fairs with all those heads of murderers. The police arrested him because they thought he had killed his wife, but you proved it was a drunken lion-tamer with whom she was having an affair.’
‘Dear me, yes, but how do you know? You were not with me then.’
‘No, I was teaching a class of forty wary-skulled young ladies who were only killing time until they were old enough to leave school, poor perishers. I wonder why headmistresses always give the rottenest class to the newest recruit? Anyway, old Tusso would model that head for you and be glad to do it. I’ll put matters in train to track him down, shall I? Gavin will know who keeps the tabs on these people. What’s the good of having a husband at Scotland Yard if one can’t make use of him? Anyway, to answer your question, after you left Cartaret College, which was alleged to train teachers and failed signally, so far as I was concerned, to carry out its function, I followed your career with avid interest. If it isn’t a rude answer, why did you pick me for your dogsbody when the other one left to get married?’
Dame Beatrice considered the question and then said that she did not know. She returned to the point at issue. ‘Signor Tussordiano?’ she said. ‘But what an excellent idea!’
‘We like to earn our salary. OK, then, I’ll get busy. One thing about Tusso, he won’t ask any questions you don’t want to answer.’
The exhibitor of waxwork heads was a white-haired old gentleman with the innocent eyes which Dame Beatrice associated with jewel thieves and the sellers of shares in bogus oil wells and copper mines. However, Signor Tussordiano was almost as innocent as he looked. His real name was Pugh and he was apt to talk nostalgically of what he referred to as ‘the valley’, although actually he had been born in Deptford and had never been further west than St Giles’s Fair in Oxford, and that was in his early boyhood when his uncle had first taken him on the road.
Laura had been right, on the whole, when she had stated that he would ask no awkward questions. He did put one query to Dame Beatrice when she told him what she hoped he could do for her.
‘Murderer?’ he asked eagerly, when she showed him the photographs. ‘One for my collection?’
‘Murdered, we think, not a murderer,’ she replied. ‘I hope, with your expert help, to get him identified, and that, perhaps, will lead us to the killer.’
‘Nice big pictures,’ he said, spreading out the newspaper. ‘You can make out the underlying bone structure and that’s what matters. These photos would be about a quarter natural size, I reckon. Call back in a week and I’ll have summat for you. I’ll have to charge you for the materials, but, seeing what you done for me in the past, I’ll do the work free. I s’pose I couldn’t ’ave the ’ead when you’ve done with it? Then when you’ve cotched the murderer I can model his head as well and set ’em up side by side.’
‘Certainly you may have it.’ So the bargain was struck. Dame Beatrice advanced the money the old man said he would need and she and Laura returned to the Stone House. It had been agreed that the modeller would telephone when the head was ready. Dame Beatrice had been to Crozier Lodge to obtain details of the dead man’s colouring with regard to hair and eyes, and she had checked with the police to make certain that Susan’s memory was not at fault. Inspector Burfield, who had been the officer responsible for having the body removed from the river, had confirmed Susan’s description, but added that, as the man’s head had been more or less submerged when he was found, his hair was probably not so dark as Susan had described it. ‘More mid-brown than nearly black’ was the inspector’s emendation of her description.
‘So you’ve given the old chap an idea, ’ said Laura. ‘I like the thought of setting a murderer’s head side by side with that of his victim. His collection doesn’t go further back than Crippen and his dissected wife with the operation scar, but he can do Emily Kaye to pair up with Patrick Mahon and one of those unfortunate females to team with Neill Cream.’
‘You show a regrettable and ghoulish relish for your theme. I shall be interested to see what Signor Tussordiano produces for us.’
When she was shown the modelled head, Dame Beatrice was doubtful whether her plan would work. She was presented with the bust of a young man which appeared to have no connection whatever with the photographs she had supplied to Tussordiano. The dead man’s eyes had been staring and wide open. Those of the model were open in the normal way and one had a slight cast in it. The mouth in the photograph was also open, as though the man had been in the act of saying something — to the bitch Sekhmet, most likely — when he was struck down. The side of his face that had been shattered had been completely reconstructed in the model; the lips were slightly parted and the modeller had given the immature face a leering expression which, together with the cast in the left eye, gave the viewer anything but a pleasing impression of the subject’s character.
‘In fact,’ said Laura, ‘if you were told that this was the murderer instead of the murderee, you could well believe it.’
