Ngaio Marsh - Spinsters in Jeopardy

“Come right in!” invited a voice in hearty American. “C’m on! Come right in.”

v

M. Callard was a fat man with black eyebrows and bluish chops. He was not a particularly evil-looking man: rather one would have said that there was something meretricious about him. His mouth looked as if it had been disciplined by meaningless smiles and his eyes seemed to assume rather than possess an air of concentration. He was handsomely dressed and smelt of expensive cigars. His English was fluent and falsely Americanized with occasional phrases and inflections that made it clear he wasn’t speaking his native tongue.

“Well, well, well,” he said, pulling himself up from his chair and extending his hand. The other held Alleyn’s note. “Very pleased to meet you, Mr. — I just can’t quite get the signature.”

“Alleyn.”

“Mr. Alleyn.”

“This is my wife.”

“Mrs. Alleyn,” said M. Callard, bowing. “Now, let’s sit down, shall we, and get acquainted. What’s all this I hear about Junior?”

Alleyn said: “I wouldn’t have bothered you if we hadn’t by chance heard that our small boy who went missing early this afternoon, had, Heaven knows how, turned up at your works. In your office they didn’t seem to know anything about him and our French doesn’t go very far. It’s a great help that your English is so good. Isn’t it, darling?” he said to Troy.

“Indeed, yes. M. Callard, I can’t tell you how anxious we are. He just disappeared from our hotel. He’s only six and it’s so dreadful—”

To her horror Troy heard her voice tremble. She was silent.

“Now, that’s just too bad,” M. Callard said. “And what makes you think he’s turned up in this part of the world?”

“By an extraordinary chance,” Alleyn said, “the man we’ve engaged to drive us took his car up this road earlier this afternoon and he saw Ricky in another car with a man and woman.. They turned in at the entrance to your works. We don’t pretend to understand all this, but you can imagine how relieved we are to know he’s all right.”

M. Callard sat with a half smile on his mouth, looking at Alleyn’s left ear. “Well,” he said, “I don’t pretend to understand it either. Nobody’s told me anything. But we’ll soon find out.”

He bore down with a pale thumb on his desk bell. The blue-haired secretary came in and he spoke to her in French.

“It appears,” he said, “that Monsieur and Madame have been given information by their chauffeur that their little boy who has disappeared was seen in an auto somewhere on our premises. Please make full enquiries, Mademoiselle, in all departments.”

“At once, Monsieur le Directeur,” said the secretary and went out.

M. Callard offered Troy a cigarette and Alleyn a cigar, both of which were refused. He seemed mysteriously to expand. “Maybe,” he said, “you folks are. not aware there’s a gang of kidnappers at work along this territory. Child-kidnappers.”

Alleyn at once broke into a not too coherent and angry dissertation on child-kidnappers and the inefficiency of the police. M. Callard listened with an air of indulgence. He had taken a cigar and he rolled it continuously between his thumb and fingers, which were flattish and backed with an unusual amount of hair. This movement was curiously disturbing. But he listened with perfect courtesy to Alleyn and every now and then made sympathetic noises. There was, however, a certain quality in his stillness which Alleyn recognized. M. Callard was listening to him with only part of his attention. With far closer concentration he listened for something outside the room: and for this, Alleyn thought, he listened so far in vain.

The secretary came back alone.

She told M. Callard that in no department of the works nor among the gardens outside had anyone seen a small boy. Troy only understood the tenor of this speech. Alleyn, who had perfectly understood the whole of it, asked to have it translated. M. Callard obliged, the secretary withdrew, and the temper of the interview hardened. Alleyn got up and moved to the desk. His hand rested on the top of a sound system apparatus. Troy found herself looking at the row of switches and the loudspeaker and at the good hand above them.

Alleyn said he was not satisfied with the secretary’s report. M. Callard said he was sorry but evidently there had been some mistake. Troy, taking her cue from him, let something of her anxiety and anger escape. M. Callard received her outburst with odious compassion and said it was quite understandable that she was not just 100 per cent reasonable. He rose, but before his thumb could reach the bell-push Alleyn said that he must ask him to listen to the account given by their chauffeur.

“I’m sure that when you hear the man you will understand why we are so insistent,” Alleyn said. And before Callard could do anything to stop him he went out leaving Troy to hold, as it were, the gate open for his return.

Callard made a fat, wholly Latin gesture, and flopped back into his chair. “My dear lady,” he said, “this good man of yours is just a little difficult. Certainly I’ll listen to your chauffeur who is, no doubt, one of the local peasants. I know how they are around here. They say what they figure you want them to say and they don’t worry about facts: it’s not conscious lying, it’s just that they come that way. They’re just naturally obliging. Now, your husband’s French isn’t so hot and my guess is, he’s got this guy a little bit wrong. We’ll soon find out if I’m correct. Pardon me if I make a call. This is a busy time with us and right now I’m snowed under.”

Having done his best to make Troy thoroughly uncomfortable he put through a call on his telephone, speaking such rapid French that she scarcely understood a word of what he said. He had just hung up the receiver when something clicked. This sound was followed by a sense of movement and space beyond the office. M. Callard glanced at the switchboard on his desk and said: “ Ah ?” A disembodied voice spoke in mid-air.

“ Monsieur le Directeur? Le service de transport avise qu’il est incapable d’expédier la marchandise .”

“ Qu’est ce qu’il se passe ?”

“ Rue barrée !”

“ Bien. Prenez garde. Remettez la marchandise à sa place. ”

“ Bien. Monsieur, ” said the voice. The box clicked and the outside world was shut off.

“My, oh my,” sighed M. Callard, “the troubles I have!” He opened a ledger on his desk and ran his flattened forefinger down the page.

Troy thought distractedly that perhaps he was right about Raoul and then, catching herself up, remembered that Raoul had in fact never seen the car drive in at the factory gates with Ricky and a man and woman in it, that they were bluffing and that perhaps all Alleyn’s and Dupont’s theories were awry.

Perhaps this inhuman building had never contained her little son. Perhaps it was idle to torture herself by thinking of him: near at hand yet hopelessly withheld.

M. Callard looked at a platinum mounted wristwatch and then at Troy, and sighed again. “He’s trying to shame me out of his office,” she thought and she said boldly: “Please don’t let me interrupt your work.” He glanced at her with a smile from which he seemed to make no effort to exclude the venom.

“My work requires the closest concentration, Madame,” said M. Callard.

“Sickening for you,” said Troy.

Alleyn came back with Raoul at his heels. Through the door Troy caught a glimpse of the blue-haired secretary, half-risen from her desk, expostulation frozen on her face. Raoul shut the door.

“This is Milano, M. Callard,” Alleyn said. “He will tell you what he saw. If I have misunderstood him you will be able to correct me. He doesn’t speak English.”