Ngaio Marsh - Spinsters in Jeopardy

“O.K.,” he agreed, still fully occupied with disregarding the children. He was like a dog who, when addressed by his master, wags his tail but does not lower his hackles. Raoul shouted at the children and made a shooing noise driving them from the car. They retreated a little, skittishly twitting him. He got out and opened the door for Troy, removing his cap as if she were a minor royalty. Impressed by this evidence of prestige, most of the children fell back, though two of the hardier raised a beggar’s plaint and were silenced by Raoul.

The door of Number 16 was ajar. Troy pushed it open and crossed a dingy tessellated floor to a lift-well beside which hung a slotted board holding cards, some with printed and some with written names on them. She had begun hunting up and down the board when a voice behind her said: “Madame?”

Troy turned as if she’d been struck. The door of a sort of cubby-hole opposite the lift was held partly open by a grimy and heavily ringed hand. Beyond the hand Troy could see folds of a black satin dress, an iridescence of bead-work and three quarters of a heavy face and piled-up coiffure.

She felt as if she’d been caught doing something shady. Her nursery French deserted her.

“Pardon,” she stammered. “ Je désire — je cherche — Monsieur — Garbel — le nom de Garbel .”

The woman said something incomprehensible to Troy, who replied, “ Je ne parle pas français. Malheureusement, ” she added on an afterthought. The woman made a resigned noise and waddled out of her cubby-hole. She was enormously fat and used a walking stick. Her eyes were like black currants sunk in uncooked dough. She prodded with her stick at the top of the board and, strangely familiar in that alien place, a spidery signature in faded ink was exhibited: “P.E. Garbel.”

“ Ah, merci ,” Troy cried, but the fat woman shook her head contemptuously and appeared to repeat her former remark. This time Troy caught something like… “ Pas chez elle… il y a vingt-quatre heures. ”

“Not at home?” shouted Troy in English. The woman shrugged heavily and began to walk away. “May I leave a note?” Troy called to her enormous back. “ Puis-je vous donner un billet pour Monsieur ?”

The woman stared at her as if she were mad. Troy scrambled in her bag and produced a notebook and the stub of a BB pencil. Sketches she had made of Ricky in the train fell to the floor. The woman glanced at them with some appearance of interest. Troy wrote: “Called at 11:15. Sorry to have missed you. Hope you can lunch with us at the Royal tomorrow.” She signed the note, folded it over and wrote: “M.P.E. Garbel” on the flap. She gave it to the woman (was she a concierge?) and stooped to recover her sketches, aware as she did so, of a dusty skirt, dubious petticoats and broken shoes. When she straightened up it was to find her note displayed with a grey-rimmed sunken finger-nail jabbing at the inscription. “She can’t read my writing,” Troy thought and pointed first to the card and then to the note, nodding like a mandarin and smiling constrainedly. “Garbel,” said Troy, “Gar-r-bel.” She remembered about tipping and pressed a 100 franc note into the padded hand. This had an instantaneous effect. The woman coruscated with black unlovely smiles. “Mademoiselle,” she said, gaily waving the note. “Madame,” Troy responded. “ Non, non, non, non. Mademoiselle, ” insisted the woman with an ingratiating leer.

Troy supposed this to be a compliment. She tried to look deprecating, made an ungraphic gesture and beat a retreat.

Ricky and Raoul were in close conversation in the car when she rejoined them. Three of the hard-boiled children were seated on the running-board while the others played leap-frog in an exhibitionist manner up and down the street.

“Darling,” Troy said as they drove away, “you speak French much better than I do.”

Ricky slewed his eyes round at her. They were a brilliant blue and his lashes, like his hair, were black. “ Naturellement !” he said.

“Don’t be a prig, Ricky,” said his mother crossly. “You’re much too uppity. I think I must be bringing you up very badly.”

“Why?”

“Now then!” Troy warned him.

“Did you see Mr. Garbel, Mummy?”

“No, I left a note.”

“Is he coming to see us?”

“I hope so,” said Troy and after a moment’s thought added: “If he’s true.”

“If he writes letters to you he must be true,” Ricky pointed out. “ Naturellement !”

Raoul drove them into a little square and pulled up in front of the hotel.

At that moment the concierge at 16 Rue des Violettes, after having sat for ten minutes in morose cogitation, dialled the telephone number of the Chèvre d’Argent.

iii

Alleyn and Baradi stood on either side of the bed. The maid, an elderly pinched-looking woman, had withdrawn to the window. The beads of her rosary clicked discreetly through her fingers.

Miss Truebody’s face, still without its teeth, seemed to have collapsed about her nose and forehead and to be less than human-sized. Her mouth was a round hole with puckered edges. She was snoring. Each expulsion of her breath blew the margin of the hole outwards and each intake sucked it in so that in a dreadful way her face was busy. Her eyes were incompletely closed and her almost hairless brows drawn together in a meaningless scowl.

“She will be like this for some hours,” Baradi said. He drew Miss Truebody’s wrist from under the sheet: “I expect no change. She is very ill, but I expect no change for some hours.”

“Which sounds,” Alleyn said absently, “like a rough sketch for a villanelle.”

“You are a poet?”

Alleyn waved a hand: “Shall we say, an undistinguished amateur.”

“You underrate yourself, I feel sure,” Baradi said, still holding the flaccid wrist. “You publish?”

Alleyn was suddenly tempted to say: “The odd slim vol.” but he controlled himself and made a slight modest gesture that was entirely non-committal. Dr. Baradi followed this up with his now familiar comment. “Mr. Oberon,” he said, “will be delighted,” and added: “He is already greatly moved by your personality and that of your enchanting wife.”

“For my part,” Alleyn said, “I was enormously impressed with his.”

He looked with an air of ardent expectancy into that fleshy mask and could find it in no line or fold that was either stupid or credulous. What was Baradi? Part Egyptian, part French? Wholly Egyptian? Wholly Arab? “Which is the kingpin,” Alleyn speculated, “Baradi or Oberon?” Baradi, taking out his watch, looked impassively into Alleyn’s face. Then he snapped open his watch and a minute went past, clicked out by the servant’s beads.

“Ah, well,” Baradi muttered, putting up his watch, “it is as one would expect. Nothing can be done for the time being. This woman will report any change. She is capable and, in the village, has had some experience of sickbed attendance. My man will be able to relieve her. We may have difficulty in securing a trained nurse for tonight, but we shall manage.”

He nodded at the woman, who came forward and listened passively to his instructions. They left her, nun-like and watchful, seated by the bed.

“It is eleven o’clock, the hour of meditation,” Baradi said as they walked down the passage, “so we must not disturb. There will be something to drink in my room. Will you join me? Your car has not yet returned.”

He led the way into the Chinese room where his servant waited behind a table set with Venetian goblets, dishes of olives and sandwiches and something that looked like Turkish Delight. There was also champagne in a silver ice-bucket. Alleyn was almost impervious to irregular hours but the last twenty-four had been exacting, the heat was excessive, and the reek of ether had made him feel squeamish. Lager was his normal choice but champagne would have done very nicely indeed. It was an arid concession to his job that obliged him to say with what he hoped was the right degree of pale complacency: “Will you forgive me if I have water? You see, I’ve lately become rather interested in a way of life that excludes alcohol.”