Ngaio Marsh - Spinsters in Jeopardy

“It’ll be all right,” Alleyn said. “It is cruel but it’ll be all right. I promise. You’ll be as right as a bank whatever you do. Hallo, there’s Dupont.”

A car had appeared on the main road from Roqueville.

“M. le Commissaire,” said Raoul, and flicked his headlamps on and off. The police car, tiny in the distance, winked briefly in response.

“We’re off,” said Alleyn.

iv

The entrance hall of the factory was impressive. The décor was carried out in obscured glass, chromium and plastic and was beautifully lit. In the centre was a sculptured figure, modern in treatment, suggestive of some beneficent though pinheaded being, who drew strength from the earth itself. Two flights of curved stairs led airily to remote galleries. There was an imposing office on the left. Double doors at the centre back and a series of single doors in the right wall all bore legends in chromium letters. The front wall was plate glass and commanded a fine view of the valley and the sea.

Beyond a curved counter in the outer office a girl sat over a ledger. When she saw Alleyn and Troy she rose and stationed herself behind a chromium notice on the counter: Renseignements .

“Monsieur?” asked the girl. “Madame?”

Alleyn, without checking his stride, said: “Don’t disarrange yourself, Mademoiselle,” and made for the central doors.

The girl raised her voice: “One moment, Monsieur, whom does Monsieur wish to see?”

“M. Callard, le Contrôleur.”

The girl pushed a bell on her desk. Before Alleyn could reach the double doors they opened and a commissionaire came through. Alleyn turned to the desk.

“Monsieur has an appointment?” asked the girl.

“No,” Alleyn said, “but it is a matter of extreme urgency. I must see M. Callard, Mademoiselle.”

The girl was afraid that M. Callard saw nobody without an appointment. Troy observed that her husband was making his usual impression on the girl, who touched her hair, settled her shoulders and gave him a look.

Troy said in a high voice: “Darling, what’s she saying? Has she seen him?”

The girl just glanced at Troy and then opened her eyes at Alleyn. “Perhaps I can be of assistance to Monsieur?” she suggested,

Alleyn leaned over the counter and haltingly asked her if by any chance she had seen a little boy in brown shorts and a yellow shirt. The question seemed to astonish her. She made an incredulous sound and repeated it to the commissionaire, who merely hitched up his shoulders. They had not seen any little boys, she said. Little boys were not permitted on the premises.

Alleyn stumbled about with his French and asked the girl if she spoke English. She said that unfortunately she did not.

“Mademoiselle,” Alleyn said to Troy, “doesn’t speak English. I think she says M. Callard won’t see us. And she says she doesn’t know anything about Ricky.”

Troy said: “But we know he’s here. We must see the manager, Tell her we must.”

This time the girl didn’t so much as glance at Troy. With a petunia-tipped finger and thumb she removed a particle of mascara from her lashes and discreetly rearranged her figure for Alleyn to admire. She said it was too bad that she couldn’t do anything for him. She thought he had better understand this and said that at any other time she might do a lot. She reacted with a facial expression which corresponded, Troy thought, with the “haughty little moue ” so much admired by Edwardian novelists.

He said: “Mademoiselle, will you have the kindness of an angel? Will you take a little message to M. Callard?” She hesitated and he added in English: “And do you know that there is a large and I believe poisonous spider on your neck?”

She flashed a smile at him. “Monsieur makes a grivoiserie at my expense. He says naughty things in English, I believe, ‘to pull a carrot at me.’ ”

“Doesn’t speak English,” Alleyn said to Troy without moving his eyes from the girl. He took out his pocket-book, wrote a brief message and slid it across the counter with a five hundred franc note underneath. He playfully lifted the girl’s hand and closed it over both.

“Well, I must say!” said Troy, and she thought how strange it was that she could be civilized and amused and perhaps a little annoyed at this incident.

With an air that contrived to suggest that Alleyn as well as being a shameless flirt was also a gentleman, the girl moved back from the counter, glanced through the plate-glass windows of the main office where a number of typists and two clerks looked on with undisguised curiosity, seemed to change her mind, and came out by way of a gate at the top of the counter and walked with short steps to the double doors. The commissionaire opened them for her. They looked impassively at each other. She passed through and he followed her.

Alleyn said: “She’s taking my note to the boss. It ought to surprise him. By all the rules he should have been rung up and told we’re on the road to St. Céleste.”

“Will he see us?”

“I don’t see how he can refuse.”

While they waited, Troy looked at the spidery stairs, the blind doors and the distant galleries. “If he should appear!” she thought. “If there could be another flash of yellow and brown.” She began to imagine how it would be when they found Ricky. Would his face be white with smudges under the eyes? Would he cry in the stifled inarticulate fashion that always gripped her heart in a stricture? Would he shout and run to her? Or, by a merciful chance, would he behave like the other boy and want to stay with his terrible new friends? She thought: “It’s unlucky to anticipate. He may not be here at all. It may be a false scent. If we don’t find him before tonight I think I shall crack up.”

She knew Alleyn’s mind followed hers as closely as one mind can follow another, and she knew that as far as one human being can find solace in another she found solace in him, but she suffered, nevertheless, a great loneliness of spirit. She turned to him and saw compassion and anger in his eyes.

“If anything could make me want more to get these gentlemen,” he said, “it would be this. We’ll get them, Troy.”

“Oh, yes,” she said. “I expect you will.”

“Ricky’s here. I know it in my bones. I promise you.”

The girl came back through the double doors. She was very formal.

“Monsieur Callard will see Monsieur and Madame,” she said. The commissionaire waited on the far side, holding one door open. As Alleyn stood aside for Troy to go through, the girl moved nearer to him. Her back was turned to the commissionaire. Her eyes made a sign of assent.

He murmured: “And I may understand — what, Mademoiselle?”

“What Monsieur pleases,” she said, and minced back to the desk.

Alleyn caught Troy up and took her arm in his hand. The commissionaire was several paces ahead. “Either that girl’s given me the tip that Ricky’s here,” Alleyn muttered, “or she’s the smartest job off the skids in the Maritime Alps.”

“What did she say?”

“Nothing. Just gave the go-ahead signal.”

“Good Lord! Or did it mean Ricky?”

“It’d better mean Ricky,” Alleyn said grimly.

They were in an inner hall, heavily carpeted and furnished with modern wall-tables and chairs. They passed two doors and were led to a third in the end wall. The commissionaire opened it and went in. They heard a murmur of voices. He returned and asked them to enter.

A woman with blue hair and magnificent poise rose from a typewriter. “ Bonjour, Monsieur et Madame, ” she said. “ Entrez, s’il vous plait .” She opened another door. “ Monsieur et Madame Alleyn, ” she announced.