Ngaio Marsh: Spinsters in Jeopardy

“I couldn’t be wakier. Matter of fac’ I’ve been awake pretty well all night.”

Alleyn groped for his shirt, staggered, barked his shin on the edge of his suitcase and swore under his breath.

“Because,” the treble voice continued, “if we aren’t getting out why are you dressing yourself?”

“To be ready for when we are.”

“I see,” said the voice. “Is Mummy getting ready for getting out, too?”

“Not yet.”

“Why?”

“It’s not time.”

“Is she asleep?”

“I don’t know, old boy.”

“Then how do you know she’s not getting ready?”

“I don’t know, really. I just hope she’s not.”

“Why?”

“I want her to rest, and if you say why again I won’t answer.”

“I see.” There was a pause. The voice chuckled. “Why?” it asked.

Alleyn had found his shirt. He now discovered that he had put it on inside out. He took it off.

“If,” the voice pursued, “I said a sensible why, would you answer. Daddy?”

“It would have to be entirely sensible.”

“Why are you getting up in the dark?”

“I had hoped,” Alleyn said bitterly, “that all little boys were fast asleep and I didn’t want to wake them.”

“Because now you know they aren’t asleep so why—?”

“You’re perfectly right,” Alleyn said. The train rounded a curve and he ran with some violence against the door. He switched on the light and contemplated his son.

Ricky had the newly made look peculiar to little boys in bed. His dark hair hung sweetly over his forehead, his eyes shone and his cheeks and lips were brilliant. One would have said he was so new that his colours had not yet dried.

“I like being in a train,” he said, “more lavishly than anything that’s ever happened so far. Do you like being in a train. Daddy?”

“Yes,” said Alleyn. He opened the door of the washing-cabinet, which lit itself up. Ricky watched his father shave.

“Where are we now?” he said presently.

“By a sea. It’s called the Mediterranean and it’s just out there on the other side of the train. We shall see it when it’s daytime.”

“Are we in the middle of the night?”

“Not quite. We’re in the very early morning. Out there everybody is fast asleep,” Alleyn suggested, not very hopefully.

“Everybody?”

“Almost everybody. Fast asleep and snoring.”

“All except us,” Ricky said with rich satisfaction, “because we are lavishly wide awake in the very early morning in a train. Aren’t we, Daddy?”

“That’s it. Soon we’ll pass the house where I’m going tomorrow. The train doesn’t stop there, so I have to go on with you to Roqueville and drive back. You and Mummy will stay in Roqueville.”

“Where will you be most of the time?”

“Sometimes with you and sometimes at this house. It’s called the Château de la Chèvre d’Argent. That means the House of the Silver Goat.”

“Pretty funny name, however,” said Ricky.

A stream of sparks ran past the window. The light from the carriage flew across the surface of a stone wall. The train had begun to climb steeply. It gradually slowed down until there was time to see nearby objects lamplit, in the world outside: a giant cactus, a flight of steps, part of an olive grove. The engine laboured almost to a standstill. Outside their window, perhaps a hundred yards away, there was a vast house that seemed to grow out of the cliff. It stood full in the moonlight, and shadows, black as ink, were thrown by buttresses across its recessed face. A solitary window, veiled by a patterned blind, glowed dully yellow.

“ Somebody is awake out there,” Ricky observed. “ ‘Out,’ ‘in’?” he speculated. “Daddy, what are those people? ‘Out’ or ‘in?”

“Outside for us, I suppose, and inside for them.”

“Outside the train and inside the house,” Ricky agreed. “Suppose the train ran through the house, would they be ‘in’ for us?”

“I hope,” his father observed glumly, “that you don’t grow up a metaphysician.”

“What’s that? Look, there they are in their house. We’ve stopped, haven’t we?”

The carriage window was exactly opposite the lighted one in the cliff-like wall of the house. A blurred shape moved in the room on the other side of the blind. It swelled and became a black body pressed against the window.

Alleyn made a sharp ejaculation and a swift movement.

“Because you’re standing right in front of the window,” Ricky said politely, “and it would be rather nice to see out.”

The train jerked galvanically and with a compound racketing noise, slowly entered a tunnel, emerged, and gathering pace, began a descent to sea-level.

The door of the compartment opened and Troy stood there, in a woollen dressing-gown. Her short hair was rumpled and hung over her forehead like her son’s. Her face was white and her eyes dark with perturbation. Alleyn turned quickly. Troy looked from him to Ricky. “Have you seen out of the window?” she asked.

“ I have,” said Alleyn. “And so, by the look of you, have you.”

Troy said, “Can you help me with my suitcase?” and to Ricky: “I’ll come back and get you up soon, darling.”

“Are you both going?”

“We’ll be just next door. We shan’t be long,” Alleyn said.

“It’s only because it’s in a train.”

“We know,” Troy reassured him. “But it’s all right. Honestly. O.K..?”

“O.K.,” Ricky said in a small voice, and Troy touched his cheek.

Alleyn followed into her own compartment. She sat down on her bunk and stared at him. “I can’t believe that was true,” she said.

“I’m sorry you saw it.”

“Then it was true. Ought we to do anything? Rory, ought you to do anything? Oh dear, how tiresome.”

“Well, I can’t do much while moving away at sixty miles an hour. I suppose I’d better ring up the Préfecture when we get to Roqueville.”

He sat down beside her. “Never mind, darling,” he said, “there may be another explanation.”

“I don’t see how there can be, unless — Do you mind telling me what you saw?”

Alleyn said carefully, “A lighted window, masked by a spring blind. A woman falling against the blind and releasing it. Beyond the woman, but out of sight to us, there must have been a brilliant lamp and in its light, farther back in the room and on our right, stood a man in a white garment. His face, oddly enough, was in shadow. There was something that looked like a wheel, beyond his right shoulder. His right arm was raised.”

“And in his hand—?”

“Yes,” Alleyn said, “that’s the tricky bit, isn’t it?

“And then the tunnel. It was like one of those sudden breaks in an old-fashioned film, too abrupt to be really dramatic. It was there and then it didn’t exist. No,” said Troy, “I won’t believe it was true, I won’t believe something is still going on inside that house. And what a house too! It looked like a Gustave Doré, really bad romantic.”

Alleyn said: “Are you all right to get dressed? I’ll just have a word with the car attendant. He may have seen it, too. After all, we may not be the only people awake and looking out, though I fancy mine was the only compartment with the light on. Yours was in darkness, by the way?”

“I had the window shutter down, though. I’d been thinking how strange it is to see into other people’s lives through a train window.”

“I know,” Alleyn said. “There’s a touch of magic in it.”

“And then — to see that! Not so magical.”

“Never mind. I’ll talk to the attendant and then I’ll come back and get Ricky up. He’ll be getting train-fever. We should reach Roqueville in about twenty minutes. All right?”