Spinsters in Jeopardy

by Ngaio Marsh

  ‘And beforehand?’

  ‘Well – it’s different from ordinary nights. There’s no dinner. We go to our rooms until the Rites begin at eleven. We’re meant not to speak to each other or anything.’

  ‘Do you not eat or drink?’

  ‘Oh, there are drinks. And so on.’

  ‘What does “so on” mean?’ Robin was silent. ‘Do you take drugs? Reefers? Snow?’

  ‘What makes you think that?’

  ‘Come on. Which is it?’

  Reefers mostly. There’s food when we smoke. There has to be. I don’t know if they are the usual kind. Oberon doesn’t smoke. I don’t think Baradi does.’

  ‘Are they traffickers?’

  ‘I don’t know much about them.’

  ‘Do you know that much?’

  ‘I should think they might be.’

  ‘Have they asked you to take a hand?’

  ‘Look,’ Robin said, ‘I’m sorry, but I’ve got to say it. I don’t know much about you either, sir. I mean, I don’t know that you won’t –’ He had turned his head and Alleyn knew he was peering at him.

  ‘Inform the police?’ Alleyn suggested.

  ‘Well – you might.’

  ‘Come: you don’t, as you say, know me. Yet you’ve elected to ask me to rescue this wretched child from the clutches of your friends. You can’t have it both ways.’

  ‘You don’t know,’ Robin said. ‘You don’t know how tricky it all is. If they thought I’d talked to you!’

  ‘What would they do?’

  ‘Nothing!’ Robin cried in a hurry. ‘Nothing! Only I’ve accepted, as one says, their hospitality.’

  ‘You have got your values muddled, haven’t you?’

  ‘Have I? I daresay I have.’

  ‘Tell me this. Has anything happened recently – I mean within the last twenty-four hours – to precipitate the situation?’

  Robin said: ‘Who are you?’

  ‘My dear chap, I don’t need to be a thought-reader to see there’s a certain urgency behind all this preamble.’

  ‘I suppose not. I’m sorry. I’m afraid I can’t answer any more questions. Only – only, for God’s sake, sir, will you do something about Ginny?’

  ‘I’ll make a bargain with you. I gather that you want to remove the child without giving a previous warning to the house-party.’

  ‘That’s it, sir. Yes.’

  ‘All right. Can you persuade her, in fact, to drive into Roqueville at six o’clock?’

  ‘I don’t know. I was gambling on it. If he’s not about. I might. She – I think she is quite fond of me,’ Robin said humbly, ‘when he’s not there to bitch it all up.’

  ‘Failing a drive, could you get her to walk down to the car park?’

  ‘I might do that. She wants to buy one of old Marie’s silver goats.’

  ‘Would it help to tell her we had rung up and asked if she would choose a set of the figures for Ricky? Aren’t there groups of them for Christmas? Cribs?’

  ‘That might work. She’d like to do that.’

  ‘All right. Have your car waiting and get her to walk on to the park. Suggest you drive down to our hotel with the figures.’

  ‘You know, sir, I believe that’d do it.’

  ‘Good. Having got her in the car it’s up to you to keep her away from the château. Take her to see Troy by all means. But I doubt if you’ll get her to stay to dinner. You may have to stage a breakdown on a lonely road. I don’t know. Use your initiative. Block up the air vent in your petrol cap. One thing more. Baradi, or someone, said something about a uniform of sorts that you all wear on occasion.’

  ‘That’s right. It’s called the mantle of the sun. We wear them about the house and – and always on Thursday nights.’

  ‘It it the white thing Oberon had on this morning?’

  ‘Yes. A sort of glorified monk’s affair with a hood.’

  ‘Could you bring two of them with you?’

  Robin turned his head and peered at Alleyn in astonishment. ‘I suppose I could.’

  ‘Put them in your car during the day.’

  ‘I don’t see –’

  ‘I’m sure you don’t. Two of your own will do, if you have two. You needn’t worry about bringing Miss Taylor’s gown specifically.’

  ‘Hers!’ Robin cried out. ‘Bring hers! But that’s the whole thing! Tomorrow night they’ll make Ginny wear the Black Robe.’

  ‘Then you must bring a black robe,’ Alleyn said.

  II

  On Thursday evening the Côte d’Azur, inclined always to the theatrical, became melodramatic and, true to the weather report, staged a thunderstorm.

  ‘It’s going to rain,’ a voice croaked from the balustrade of the Chèvre d’Argent. ‘Listen! Thunder!’

  Far to southward the heavens muttered an affirmative.

  Carbury Glande looked at the brilliantly-clad figure perched, knees to chin, on the balustrade. It mingled with a hanging swag of bougainvillaea. ‘One sees a voice rather than a person. You look like some fabulous bird, dear Sati,’ he said. ‘If I didn’t feel so ghastly I’d like to paint you.’

  ‘Rumble, mumble, jumble and clatter,’ said the other, absorbed in delighted anticipation. ‘And then the rains. That’s the way it goes.’ She pursed her lips out and, drawing in air with the smoke, took a long puff at an attenuated cigarette.

  Baradi walked over to her and removed the cigarette. ‘Against the rules,’ he said. ‘Everything in its appointed time. You’re over-excited.’ He threw the cigarette away and returned to his chair.

  A whiteness flickered above the horizon and was followed after a pause by a tinny rattle.

  ‘We do this sort of thing much better at the Comédie Française,’ Annabella Wells paraphrased, twisting her mouth in self-contempt.

  Baradi leant forward until his nose was placed in surrealistic association with her ear. Beneath the nose his moustache shifted as if it had a life of its own and beneath the moustache his lips pouted and writhed in almost soundless articulation. Annabella Wells’s expression did not change. She nodded slightly. His face hung for a moment above her neck and then he leant back in his chair.

  Above the blacked Mediterranean the sky splintered with forked lightning.

  ‘One. Two. Three. Four,’ the hoarse voice counted to an accompaniment of clapping hands. The other guests ejaculated under a canopy of thunder.

  ‘You always have to count,’ the voice explained when it could be heard again.

  ‘The thing I really hate,’ Ginny Taylor said rapidly, ‘is not the thunder or lightning but the pauses between bouts. Like this one.’

  ‘Come indoors,’ Robin Herrington said. ‘You don’t have to stay out here.’

  ‘It’s a kind of dare I have with myself.’

  ‘Learning to be brave?’ Annabella Wells asked with a curious inflexion in her voice.

  ‘Ginny will have the courage of a lioness,’ said Baradi, ‘and the fire of a phoenix.’

  Annabella got up with an abrupt expert movement and walked over to the balustrade. Baradi followed her. Ginny pushed her hair back from her forehead and looked quickly at Robin and away again. He moved nearer to her. She turned away to the far end of the roof-garden. Robin hovered uncertainly. The other four guests had drawn closer together. Carbury Glande half-closed his eyes and peered at the cloud-blocked sky and dismal sea. ‘Gloriously ominous,’ he said, ‘and quite unpaintable. Which is such a good thing.’

  The pause was not really one of silence. It was dramatized by minor noises, themselves uncannily portentous. Mr Oberon’s canary, for instance, hopped scratchily from cage floor to perch and back again. A cicada had forgotten to stop chirruping in the motionless cactus slopes that Mr Oberon called his jardin exotique. Down in the servants’ quarters a woman laughed and many kilometres away towards Douceville a train shrieked effeminately. Still, beside the threat of thunder, these desultory sounds added up to silence.

  Glande, with an eye on Ginny, muttered: ‘I
damned well think we need something. After all –’ He swallowed. ‘After everything. It’s nervy work waiting.’ His voice shot up into falsetto. ‘I don’t pretend to be phlegmatic. I’m a bloody artist, I am.’

  Baradi said: ‘Keep your voice down. You certainly have a flair for the appropriate adjective,’ and laughed softly.

  Glande fingered his lips and stared at Baradi. ‘How you can!’ he whispered.

  Annabella, looking out to sea, said: ‘Keep your hand to the plough, Carbury dear. You’ve put it there. No looking back.’

  ‘I’m on your side,’ announced the voice from the balustrade. ‘Look what I am doing for you all.’

  From her remote station Ginny said: ‘I can’t stand this.’

  ‘Well, don’t,’ Robin said quietly. ‘Old Marie asked me to tell you there’s only one of the big silver goats left. Why not dodge down before the rain and get it? In the passage you won’t see if there’s lightning. Come on.’

  Ginny looked at Baradi. He caught her glance and walked across to her. ‘What is it?’ he said.

  ‘I thought I might go to old Marie’s shop,’ Ginny said. ‘It’s away from the storm.’

  ‘Why not?’ he said. ‘What a good idea.’

  ‘I thought I might,’ Ginny repeated doubtfully.

  For a split second lightning wrote itself across the sky in livid calligraphy. The voice on the balustrade had counted two when the heavens crashed together in a monstrous report. Ginny’s mouth was wide open. She ran into the tower and Robin followed her.

  The initial clap was succeeded by a prolonged rattle and an ambiguous omnipotent muttering. Above this rumpus Glande could be heard saying: ‘What I mean to say: do we know we can trust them? After all, they’re comparative strangers and I must say I don’t like the boy’s manner.’

  Baradi, who was watching Annabella Wells, said: ‘There’s no need to disturb yourself on their account. Robin is much too heavily involved and as for Ginny, can we not leave her safely to Ra? In any case, she knows nothing.’

  ‘The boy does. He might blurt out something to those other two – Troy and her bloody high-hat husband.’

  ‘If Mr and MrsAllen should arrive there need be no meeting.’

  ‘How do you know they don’t suspect something already?’

  ‘I have told you. The girl Teresa reports that having recovered the boy, they have retired to their hotel in high glee.’

  ‘There was a bungle over the kid. There might be another bungle. Suppose Allen hangs about like he did last time asking damn’-fool esoteric questions?’

  ‘They were not as silly as you may think, my dear Carbury. The man is an intelligent man. He behaved intelligently during the operation. He would make a good anaesthetist.’

  ‘Well – there you are!’

  ‘Please don’t panic. He is both intelligent and inquisitive. That is why we thought it better to remove him, if possible, to St Celeste until the Truebody has been disposed of.’ Baradi’s teeth gleamed under his moustache.

  ‘I can see no cause for amusement.’

  ‘Can you not? You must cultivate a taste for irony. Annabella,’ Baradi continued, looking at her motionless figure against the steel-dark sky. ‘Annabella tells us that Mr Allen, as far as she knows, is the person he appears to be: a dilettante with a taste for mysticism, curious literature and big-game hunting. The latter, I may add, in the generally accepted sense of the expression.’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake!’ Glande cried out. The voice from the balustrade broke into undisciplined laughter. ‘Shut up!’ he shouted. ‘Shut up, Sati! You of all people to laugh. It’s so damned undignified. Remember who you are!’

  ‘Yes, Grizel dear,’ Annabella Wells said, ‘pray do remember that.’

  It had grown so dark that the lightning darted white on their faces. They saw one another momentarily as if by a flash-lamp, each wearing a look of fixity. The thunderclap followed at once. One might have imagined the heavens had burst outward like a gas-filled cylinder.

  Mr Oberon, wearing his hooded gown, stepped out of the tower door and contemplated his followers.

  ‘Cher maître,’ shouted Baradi, waving his hand, ‘you come most carefully upon your hour. What an entrance! Superb!’

  The volley rolled away into silence. Mr Oberon moved forward and, really as if he had induced it, rain struck down in an abrupt deluge.

  ‘You will get wet, dear Sati,’ said Mr Oberon.

  Glande said: ‘What’s happened?’

  They all drew near to Mr Oberon. The rain made a frightful din, pelting like bullets on water and earth and stone and on the canvas awning above their heads. Landscape and seascape were alive with its noise. The four guests, with the anxious air of people who are hard of hearing, inclined their heads towards their host.

  ‘What’s happened?’ Glande repeated but with a subdued and more deferential manner.

  ‘All is well. It is arranged for tomorrow afternoon. An Anglican ceremony,’ said Oberon, smiling slightly. ‘I have spoken to the – should I call him priest? I was obliged to call on him. The telephone is still out of order. He is a dull man but very obliging. A private funeral, of course.’

  ‘But the other business – the permit or whatever it is?’

  ‘I’ve already explained,’ Baradi cut in irritably, ‘that my authority as a medical man is perfectly adequate. The appropriate official will be happy to receive me tomorrow when the necessary formalities will be completed.’

  ‘Poor old Truebody,’ said Annabella Wells.

  ‘The name is, by the way, to be Halebory. Pronounced Harber. So English.’

  ‘They’ll want to see the passport,’ Glande said instantly.

  ‘They shall see it. It has received expert attention.’

  ‘Sati,’ said Oberon gently, ‘you have been smoking, I think.’

  ‘Dearest Ra, only the least puff.’

  ‘Yet, there is our rule. Not until tonight.’

  ‘I was upset. It’s so difficult. Please forgive me. Please.’

  Mr Oberon looked blankly at her. ‘You will go to your room and make an exercise. The exercise of the Name. You will light your candle and looking at the flame without blinking you will repeat one hundred times: “I am Sati who am Grizel Locke!” Then you will remain without moving until it is time for the Rites. So.’

  She touched her forehead and lips and chest with a jerky movement of her hand and went at once.

  ‘Where is Ginny?’ Mr Oberon asked.

  ‘She was nervous,’ said Baradi. ‘The storm upset her. She went down to the shop where one buys those rather vulgar figurines.’

  ‘And Robin?’

  ‘He went with her,’ said Annabella loudly.

  Mr Oberon’s mouth parted to show his teeth. ‘She must rest,’ he said. ‘You are, of course, all very careful to say nothing of an agitating nature in front of her. She knows the lady has died as the result of a perforated appendix. Unfortunately it was unavoidable that she should be told so much. There must be no further disturbance. When she returns send her to her room. It is the time of meditation. She is to remain in her room until it is time for the Rites. There she will find the gift of enlightenment.’

  He moved to the tower door. The rain drummed on the awning above their heads but they heard him repeat: ‘She must rest,’ before he went indoors.

  III

  Old Marie’s shop was a cave sunk in the face of the hill and protected at its open end by the Chévre d’Argent which at this point straddled the passage. Ginny and Robin were thus hidden from the lightning and even the thunder sounded less formidable in there. The walls of the cave had been hewn out in shelves and on those stood Marie’s figurines. She herself sat at a table over an oil lamp and wheezed out praises for her wares.

  ‘She’s got lots of goats,’ Ginny pointed out, speaking English.

  ‘Cunning old cup-of-tea,’ Robin said. ‘Thought you needed gingering up, I suppose. By the way,’ he added, ‘Miss Troy or Mrs Allen or whatever s
he should be called, wanted a set of nativity figures – don’t you call it a crib? – for the little boy. Marie wasn’t here when I left yesterday. I promised I’d get one and take it down this afternoon. How awful! I entirely forgot.’

  ‘Robin! How could you! And they’ll want it more than ever after losing him like that.’

  ‘She thought perhaps you wouldn’t mind choosing one.’

  ‘Of course I will,’ Ginny said and began to inspect the groups of naïve little figures. Old Marie shouted: ‘Look, Mademoiselle, the Holy Child illuminates himself. And the beasts! One would say the she-ass almost burst herself with good milk. And the lamb is infinitely touching. And the ridiculous price! I cannot bring myself to charge more. It is an act of piety on my part.’

  Robin bought a large silver goat and Ginny bought the grandest of the cribs. ‘Let’s take it down now,’ he said. ‘The storm’s nearly over, I’m sure, and the car’s out. It’d save my conscience. Do come, Ginny.’

  She raised her troubled face and looked at him. ‘I don’t know,’ she said, ‘I suppose – I don’t know.’

  ‘We shan’t be half an hour. Come on.’

  He took her by the arm and hurried her into the passageway. They ran into a world of rain, Ginny protesting and Robin shouting encouragement. With the help of his stick be broke into quite a lively sort of canter. ‘Do be careful!’ Ginny cried. ‘Your dot-and-go-one leg!’

  ‘Dot-and-go-run, you mean. Come on.’

  Their faces streamed with cool water and they laughed without cause.

  ‘It’s better out here,’ Robin said. ‘Isn’t it, Ginny?’

  The car stood out on the platform like a rock in a waterfall. He bundled her into it. ‘You look like – you look as you’re meant to look,’ he said. ‘It’s better outside. Say it’s better, Ginny.’

  ‘I don’t know what’s come over you,’ Ginny said, pressing her hands to her rain-blinded face.

  ‘I’ve got out. We’ve both got out.’ He scrambled in beside her and peered into the trough behind the driver’s seat. ‘What are you doing?’ Ginny asked hysterically. ‘What’s happened? We’ve gone mad. What are you looking for?’