Ngaio Marsh - Spinsters in Jeopardy

He had the reputation in his department of uncanny accuracy when a quick search was in question. It’s doubtful if he ever acted more swiftly than now. Baradi had left the bottom drawer of the bureau open.

It contained half a dozen books, each less notorious if more infamous than the de Sade, and all on the proscribed list at Scotland Yard. He lifted them one by one and replaced them.

The next drawer was locked but yielded to the application of a skeleton-key Alleyn had gleaned from a housebreaker of virtuosity. It contained three office ledgers and two note-books. The entries in the first ledger were written in a script that Alleyn took to be Egyptian but occasionally there appeared proper names in English characters. Enormous sums of money were shown in several currencies: piastres, francs, pounds and lire neatly flanked each other in separate columns. He turned the pages rapidly, his hearing fixed on the passage outside, his mind behind his eyes.

Between the first ledger and the second lay a thin quarto volume in violet leather, heavily embossed. The design was tortuous, but Alleyn recognized a pentagram, a triskelion, winged serpents, bulls and a broken cross. Superimposed over the whole was a double-edged sword with formalized flames rising from it in the shape of a raised hand. The covers were mounted with a hasp and lock which he had very little trouble in opening.

Between the covers was a single page of vellum, elaborately illuminated and embellished with a further number of symbolic ornaments. Baradi had been gone three minutes when Alleyn began to read the text:

Here in the names of Ra and the Sons of Ra and the Daughters of Ra who are also, in the Mystery of the Sun, The Sacred Spouses of Ra, I, about to enter into the Secret Fellowship of Ra, swear before Horns and Osiris, before Annum and Apsis, before the Good and the Evil that are One God, who is both Good and Evil, that I will set a seal upon my lips and eyes and ears and keep forever secret the mysteries and the Sacred Rites of Ra.

I swear that all that passes in this place shall be as if it had never been. If I break this oath in the least degree may my lips be burnt away with the fire that is now set before them. May my eyes be put out with the knife that is now set before them. May my ears be stopped with molten lead. May my entrails rot and my body perish with the disease of the crab. May I desire death before I die and suffer torment for evermore. If I break silence may these things be unto me. I swear by the fire of Ra and the Blade of Ra. So be it.

Alleyn uttered a single violent expletive, relocked the covers and opened the second ledger.

It was inscribed: “Compagnie Chimique des Alpes Maritimes,” and contained names, dates and figures in what appeared to be a balance of expenditure and income. Alleyn’s attention sharpened. The company seemed to be showing astronomical profits. His fingers, nervous and delicate, leafed through the pages, moving rhythmically.

Then abruptly they were still. Near the bottom of a page, starting out of the unintelligible script and written in a small, rather elaborate handwriting, was a name — P. E. Garbel.

The curtain rings clashed in the passage. He had locked the drawer and with every appearance of avid attention was hanging over the de Sade, when Baradi returned.

iv

Baradi had brought Carbury Glande with him and Alleyn thought he knew why. Glande was introduced and after giving Alleyn a damp runaway handshake, retired into the darker part of the room fingering his beard, and eyed him with an air, half curious, half defensive. Baradi said smoothly that Alleyn had greatly admired the de Sade book-wrapper and would no doubt be delighted to meet the distinguished artist. Alleyn responded with an enthusiasm which he was careful to keep on an amateurish level. He said he wished so much he knew more about the technique of painting. This would do nicely, he thought, if Glande, knowing he was Troy’s husband, was still unaware of his job. If, on the other hand, Glande knew he was a detective, Alleyn would have said nothing to suggest that he tried to conceal his occupation. He thought it extremely unlikely that Glande had respected Troy’s request for anonymity. No. Almost certainly he had reported that their visitor was Agatha Troy, the distinguished painter of Mr. Oberon’s “Boy with a Kite.” And then? Either Glande had also told them that her husband was a C.I.D. officer, in which case they would be anxious to find out if his visit was pure coincidence; or else Glande had been able to give little or no information about Alleyn and they merely wondered if he was as ready a subject for skulduggery as he had tried to suggest. A third possibility and one that he couldn’t see at all clearly, involved the now highly debatable integrity of P. E. Garbel.

Baradi said that Alleyn’s car had not arrived, and with no hint of his former impatience suggested that they show him the library.

It was on the far side of the courtyard. On entering it he was confronted with Troy’s “Boy with a Kite.” Its vigour and cleanliness struck like a sword-thrust across the airlessness of Mr. Oberon’s library. For a second the “Boy” looked with Ricky’s eyes at Alleyn.

A sumptuous company of books lined the walls with the emphasis, as was to be expected, upon mysticism, the occult and Orientalism. Alleyn recognized a number of works that a bookseller’s catalogue would have described as rare, curious, and collector’s items. Of far greater interest to Alleyn, however, was a large framed drawing that hung in a dark corner of that dark room. It was, he saw, a representation, probably medieval, of the Château de la Chèvre d’Argent and it was part elevation and part plan. After one desirous glance he avoided it. He professed himself fascinated with the books and took them down with ejaculations of interest and delight. Baradi and Glande watched him and listened.

“You are a collector, perhaps, Mr. Allen?” Baradi conjectured.

“Only in a very humble way. I’m afraid my job doesn’t provide for the more expensive hobbies.”

There was a moment’s pause. “Indeed?” Baradi said. “One cannot, alas, choose one’s profession. I hope yours is at least congenial.”

Alleyn thought: “He’s fishing. He doesn’t know or he isn’t sure.” And he said absently, as he turned the pages of a superb Book of the Dead, “I suppose everyone becomes a little bored with his job at times. What a wonderful thing this is, this book. Tell me, Dr. Baradi, as a scientific man—”

Baradi answered his questions. Glande glowered and shuffled impatiently. Alleyn reflected that by this time it was possible that Baradi and Robin Herrington had told Oberon of the Alleyns’ enquiries for Mr. Garbel. Did this account for the change in Baradi’s attitude? Alleyn was now unable to bore Dr. Baradi.

“It would be interesting,” Carbury Glande said in his harsh voice, “to hear what Mr. Alleyn’s profession might be. I am passionately interested in the employment of other people.”

“Ah, yes,” Baradi agreed. “Do you ever play the game of guessing at the occupation of strangers and then proving yourself right or wrong by getting to know them? Come!” he cried with a great show of frankness. “Let us confess, Carbury, we are filled with unseemly curiosity about Mr. Allen. Will he allow us to play our game? Indulge us, my dear Allen. Carbury, what is your guess?”

Glande muttered: “Oh, I plump for one of the colder branches of learning. Philosophy.”

“Do you think so? A don, perhaps? And yet there is something that to me suggests that Mr. Alleyn was born under Mars. A soldier. Or, no. I take that back. A diplomat.”

“How very perceptive of you,” Alleyn exclaimed, looking at him over the Book of the Dead.