Ngaio Marsh - Spinsters in Jeopardy

Ricky leaned back against his mother. Troy slipped her arm round him and her hand protected his two hands and the silver goat. He looked at his father and his lip trembled.

“It was beastly,” he said. “She was beastly.” And then in a most desolate voice: “They took me away. I was all by myself for ages in there. They said you’d be up here and you weren’t. You weren’t here at all.” And he burst into a passion of sobs, his tear-drenched face turned in bewilderment to Alleyn. His precocity fell away from him: he was a child who had not long ago been a baby.

“It’s all right, old boy,” Alleyn said, “it was only a sort of have. They’re silly bad lots and we’re going to stop their nonsense. We wouldn’t have been able to if you hadn’t helped.”

Troy said: “Daddy did come, darling. He’ll always come. We both will.”

“Well, anyway,” Ricky sobbed, “another time you’d jolly well better be a bit quicker.”

A whistle at the back of the factory gave three short shrieks. Ricky shuddered, covered his ears and flung himself at Troy.

“I’ll have to go in,” Alleyn said. He closed his hand on Ricky’s shoulder and held it for a moment. “You’re safe. Rick,” he said, “you’re safe as houses.”

“O.K.,” Ricky said in a stifled voice. He slewed his head around and looked at his father out of the corner of his eyes.

“Do you think in a minute or two you could help us again? Do you think you could come in with me to the hall in there and tell me if you can see that old Nanny and Mr. Garbel’s driver?”

“Oh, no, Rory,” Troy murmured. “Not now!”

“Well, of course, Rick needn’t if he’d hate it, but it’d be helping the police quite a lot.”

Ricky had stopped crying. A dry sob shook him but he said: “Would you be there? And Mummy?”

“We’ll be there.”

Alleyn reached over, picked up Troy’s gloves from the floor of the car and put them in his pocket.

“Hi!” Troy said. “What’s that for?”

“’To be worn in my beaver and borne in the van,’” he quoted, “or something like that. If Raoul or Dupont or I come out and wave will you and Ricky come in? There’ll be a lot of people there, Rick, and I just want you to look at ’em and tell me if you can see that Nanny and the driver. O.K.?”

“O.K.,” Ricky said in a small voice.

“Good for you, old boy.”

He saw the anxious tenderness in Troy’s eyes and added: “Be kind enough, both of you, to look upon me as a tower of dubious strength.”

Troy managed to grin at him. “We have every confidence,” she said, “in our wonderful police.”

“Like hell!” Alleyn said and went back to the factory.

iii

He found a sort of comic-opera scene in full swing in the central hall. Employees of all conditions were swarming down the curved stairs and through the doors: men in working overalls, in the white coat of the laboratory, in the black jacket of bureaucracy; women equally varied in attire and age: all of them looking in veiled annoyance at their watches. A loudspeaker bellowed continually:

“ ’ Allo, ’allo, Messieurs et Dames, faites attention, s’il vous plaît. Tous les employés, ayez la bonté de vous rendre immédiatement au grand vestibule. ’Allo, ’allo .”

M. Dupont stood in a commanding position on the base of the statue and M. Callard, looking sulky, stood at a little distance below him. A few paces distant, Raoul, composed and god-like in his simplicity, surveyed the milling chorus. The gendarmes were nowhere to be seen.

Alleyn made his way to Dupont, who was obviously in high fettle and, as actors say, well inside the skin of his part. He addressed Alleyn in English with exactly the right mixture of deference and veiled irritability. Callard listened moodily.

“Ah, Monsieur! You see we make great efforts to clear up this little affair. The entire staff is summoned by Monsieur le Directeur. We question everybody. This fellow of yours is invited to examine the persons. You are invited to bring the little boy, also to examine. Monsieur le Directeur is most anxious to assist. He is immeasurably distressed, is it not. Monsieur le directeur?”

“That’s right,” said M. Callard without enthusiasm.

Alleyn said with a show of huffiness that he was glad to hear that they recognized their responsibilities. M. Dupont bent down as if to soothe him and he murmured: “Keep going as long as you can. Spin it out.”

“To the last thread.”

Alleyn made his way to Raoul and was able to mutter: “Ricky describes the driver as a man with black teeth, a red beret, as your friend observed, and no jacket. The woman has a moustache, is bareheaded and wears a black dress with a whitish pattern. If you see a man and woman answering to that description you may announce that they resemble the persons in the car.”

Raoul was silent. Alleyn was surprised to see that his face, usually a ready mirror of his emotions, had gone blank. The loud-speaker kept up its persistent demands. The hall was filling rapidly.

“Well, Raoul?”

“Would Monsieur describe again the young woman and the man?”

Alleyn did so. “If there are any such persons present you may pretend to recognize them, but not with positive determination. The general appearance, you may say, is similar. Then we may be obliged to bring Ricky in to see if he identifies them.”

Raoul made a singular little noise in his throat. His lips moved. Alleyn saw rather than heard his response.

“ Bien, Monsieur, ” he said.

“M. Dupont will address the staff when they are assembled. He will speak at some length. I shall not be present. He will continue proceedings until I return. Your soi-distant identification will then take place. Au ’voir, Raoul ”

“ ’ Voir, Monsieur .”

Alleyn edged through the crowd and round the wall of the room to the double doors. The commissionaire stood near them and eyed him dubiously. Alleyn looked across the sea of heads and caught the notice of M. Dupont, who at once held up his hand. “ Attention !” he shouted. “ Approchez-vous davantage, je vous en prie .” The crowd closed in on him, and Alleyn, left on the margin, slipped through the doors.

He had at the most fifteen minutes in which to work. The secretary’s office was open, but the door into M. Callard’s room was, as he had anticipated, locked. It responded to his manipulation and he relocked it behind him. He went to the desk and turned on the general inter-communication switch in the sound system releasing the vague rumour of a not quite silent crowd and thevoiceof M. Dupont embarked on an elaborate exposé of child-kidnapping on the Mediterranean coast.

Perhaps, Alleyn thought, at this rate he would have a little longer than he had hoped. If he could find a single piece of evidence, enough to ensure the success of a surprise investigation by the French police, he would be satisfied. He looked at the filing cabinet against the walls. The drawers had independent keyholes but the first fifteen were unlocked. He tried them and shoved them back without looking inside. The sixteenth, marked with the letter P, was locked. He got it open. Inside he found a number of the usual folders each headed with its appropriate legend: Produits chimiques en commande; Peron et Cie; Plastiques, and so on. He went through the first of these, memorizing one or two names of drugs he had been told to look out for. Peron et Cie was on the suspect list at the Sûreté and a glance at the correspondence showed a close business relationship between the two firms. He flipped over the next six folders and came to the last which was headed: Particulier à M. Callard. Secret et confidentiel .