Ngaio Marsh - Spinsters in Jeopardy

“Then I am right?”

“In part, at least. I started in the Diplomatic,” said Alleyn truthfully, “but left it at the file-and-corridor stage.”

“Really? Then perhaps, I am allowed another guess. No!” he cried after a pause. “I give up. Carbury, what do you say?”

“I? God knows! Perhaps he left the Diplomatic Service under a cloud and went big-game hunting.”

“I begin to think you are all psychic in this house,” Alleyn said delightedly. “How on earth do you do it?”

“A mighty hunter!” Baradi ejaculated, clapping his hands softly.

“Not at all mighty, I’m afraid, only pathetically persevering.”

“Wonderful,” Carbury Glande said, drawing his hand across his eyes and suppressing a yawn. “You live in South Kensington, I feel sure, in some magnificently dark apartment from the walls of which glower the glass eyes of monstrous beasts. Horns, snouts, tusks. Coarse hair. Lolling tongues made of a suitable plastic. Quite wonderful.”

“But Mr. Allen is a poet and a hunter of rare books as well as of rare beasts. Perhaps,” Baradi speculated, “it was during your travels that you became interested in the esoteric?”

Alleyn suppressed a certain weariness of spirit and renewed his raptures. You saw some rum things, he said with an air of simple credulity, in native countries. He had been told and told on good authority — He rambled on, saying that he greatly desired to learn more about the primitive beliefs of ancient races.

“Does your wife accompany you on safari?” Glande asked. “I should have thought—” He stopped short. Alleyn saw a flash of exasperation in Baradi’s eyes.

“My wife,” Alleyn said lightly, “couldn’t approve less of blood sports. She is a painter.”

“I am released,” Glande cried, “from bondage!” He pointed to the “Boy with a Kite.” “ Ecce !”

“No!” Really, Alleyn thought, Baradi was a considerable actor. Delight and astonishment were admirably suggested. “Not—? Not Agatha Troy? But, my dear Mr. Alleyn, this is quite remarkable. Mr. Oberon will be enchanted.”

“I can’t wait,” Carbury Glande said, “to tell him.” He showed his teeth through his moustache. “I’m afraid you’re in for a scolding, Alleyn. Troy swore me to secrecy. I may say,” he added, “that I knew in a vague way, that she was a wedded woman but she has kept the Mighty Hunter from us.” His tongue touched his upper lip. “Understandably, perhaps,” he added.

Alleyn thought that nothing would give him more pleasure than to seize Dr. Baradi and Mr. Carbury Glande by the scruffs of their respective necks and crash their heads together.

He said apologetically. “Well, you see, we’re on holiday.”

“Quite,” said Baradi and the conversation languished.

“I think you told us,” Baradi said casually, “that you have friends in Roqueville and asked if we knew them. I’m afraid that I’ve forgotten the name.”

“Only one. Garbel.”

Baradi’s smile looked as if it had been left on his face by an oversight. The red hairs of Glande’s beard quivered very slightly as if his jaw was clenched.

“A retired chemist of sorts,” Alleyn said.

“Ah, yes! Possibly attached to the monstrous establishment which defaces our lovely olive groves. Monstrous,” Baradi added, “aesthetically speaking.”

“Quite abominable!” said Glande. His voice cracked and he wetted his lips.

“No doubt admirable from an utilitarian point-of-view. I believe they produce artificial manure in great quantities.”

“The place,” Glande said, “undoubtedly stinks,” and he laughed unevenly.

“Aesthetically?” Alleyn asked.

“Always, aesthetically,” said Baradi.

“I noticed the factory on our way up. Perhaps we’d better ask there for our friend.”

There was a dead silence.

“I can’t think what has become of that man of mine,” Alleyn said lightly.

Baradi was suddenly effusive. “But how inconsiderate we are! You, of course, are longing to rejoin your wife. And who can blame you? No woman has the right to be at once so talented and so beautiful. But your car? No doubt, a puncture or perhaps merely our Mediterranean dolce far niente . You must allow us to send you down. Robin would, I am sure, be enchanted. Or, if he is engaged in meditation, Mr. Oberon would be delighted to provide a car. How thoughtless we have been!”

This, Alleyn realized, was final. “I wouldn’t dream of it,” he said. “But I do apologize for being such a pestilent visitor. I’ve let my ruling passion run away with me and kept you hovering interminably. The car will arrive any moment now, I feel sure, and I particularly want to see the man. If I might just wait here among superb books I shan’t feel I’m making a nuisance of myself.”

It was a toss-up whether this would work. They wanted, he supposed, to consult together. After a fractional hesitation, Baradi said something about their arrangements for the afternoon. Perhaps, if Mr. Allen would excuse them, they should have a word with Mr. Oberon. There was the business of the nurse — Glande, less adroit, muttered unintelligibly and they went out together.

Alleyn was in front of the plan two seconds after the door had shut behind them.

It was embellished with typical medieval ornaments — a coat of arms, a stylized goat and a great deal of scroll-work. The drawing itself was in two main parts, an elevation, treated as if the entire face of the building had been removed, and a multiple plan of great intricacy. It would have taken an hour to follow out the plan in detail. With a refinement of concentration that Mr. Oberon himself might have envied, Alleyn fastened his attention upon the main outlines of the structural design. The great rooms and principal bedrooms were all, more or less, on the library level. Above this level the Château rose irregularly in a system of connected turrets to the battlements. Below it, the main stairway led down by stages through a maze of rooms that grew progressively smaller until, at a level which must have been below that of the railway, they were no bigger than prison cells and had probably served as such for hundreds of years. A vast incoherent maze that had followed, rather than overcome the contour of the mountain; an architectural compromise, Alleyn murmured, and sharpened his attention upon one room and its relation to the rest.

It was below the library and next to a room that had no outside windows. He marked its position and cast back in his mind to the silhouette of the Château as he had seen it, moonlit, in the early hours of that morning. He noticed that it had a window much longer than it was high and he remembered the shape of the window they had seen.

If it was true that Mr. Oberon and his guest were now occupied, as Baradi had represented, with some kind of esoteric keep-fit exercises on the roof-garden, it might be worth taking a risk. He thought of two or three plausible excuses, took a final look at the plan, slipped out of the library and ran lightly down a continuation of the winding stair that, in its upper reaches, led to the roof-garden.

He passed a landing, a closed door and three narrow windows. The stairs corkscrewed down to a wider landing from which a thickly carpeted passage ran off to the right. Opposite the stairway was a door and, a few steps away, another — the door he sought.

He went up to it and knocked.

There was no answer. He turned the handle delicately. The door opened inwards until there was a wide enough gap for him to look through. He found himself squinting along a wall hung with silk rugs and garnished about midway along with a big prayer wheel. At the far end there was an alcove occupied by an extremely exotic-looking divan. He opened the door fully and walked into the room.