Ngaio Marsh - Spinsters in Jeopardy

Alleyn said: “That’s more than enough from you, my friend,” picked his son up and bore him into the lift. Troy followed wearily, saying: “Don’t be an ass, Ricky darling.” When they got upstairs Ricky, who had been making tentative sounds of defiance, became quiet. When he was ready for bed he turned white and said he wouldn’t sleep in “that room.” His parents exchanged the look that recognizes a dilemma. Troy muttered: “It is trying him a bit high, isn’t it?” Alleyn locked the outer door of Ricky’s room and took him into the passage to show him that it couldn’t be opened. They returned, leaving the door between the two rooms open. Ricky hung back. He had shadows under his eyes and looked exhausted and miserable. “Why can’t Daddy go in there?” he asked angrily.

Alleyn thought a moment and then said: “I can of course, and you can be with Mummy.”

“Please,” Ricky said. “Please.”

“Well, I must say that’s a bit more civil. Look here, old boy, will you lend me your goat to keep me company? I want to see if it really does light itself up.”

“Yes, of course he will,” said Troy with an attempt at maternal prompting, “which,” she thought, “I should find perfectly maddening if I were Ricky.”

Ricky said: “I want to be in here with Mummy and I want Goat to be here too. Please,” he added.

“All right,” Alleyn said. “You won’t see him light himself up, of course, because Mummy will want her lamp on for some time, won’t you, darling?”

“For ages and ages,” Troy, who desired nothing less, agreed.

Ricky said: “Please take him in there and tell me if he illumines.” He fished his silver goat out of the bosom of his yellow shirt. Alleyn took it into the next room, put it on the bedside table, shut the door and turned out the lights.

He sat on the bed staring into the dark and thinking of the events of the long day and of Troy and Ricky, and presently a familiar experience revisited him. He seemed to see himself for the first time, a stranger, a being divorced from experience, a chrysalis from which his spirit had escaped and which it now looked upon, he thought, with astonishment as a soul might look after death at its late housing. He thought: “I suppose Oberon imagines he’s got all this sort of thing taped. Raoul and Teresa too, after their fashion and belief. But I have never found an answer.” The illusion, if it were an illusion and he was never certain about this, could be dismissed, but he held to it still and in a little while he found he was looking at a fluorescence, a glimmer of something, no more than a bat-light. It grew into a shape. It was Ricky’s little figurine faithfully illuminating itself in the dark. And Ricky’s voice, still rather fretful, brought Alleyn back to himself.

“Daddy!” he was shouting. “Is he doing it? Daddy !”

“Yes,” Alleyn called, rousing himself, “he’s doing it. Come and see. But shut the door after you or you’ll spoil it.”

There was a pause. A blade of light appeared and widened. He saw Ricky come in, a tiny figure in pyjamas. “Shut the door, Ricky,” Alleyn repeated, “and wait a moment. If you come to me, you’ll see.”

The room was dark again.

“If you’d go on talking, however,” Ricky’s voice said, very small and polite, “I’d find you.”

Alieyn went on talking and Ricky found him. He stood between his father’s knees and watched the goat shining. “He honestly is silver,” he said. “It’s all true.” He leaned back against his father, smelling of soap, and laid his relaxed hand on Alleyn’s. Alleyn lifted him on to his knee. “I’m fizzily and ’motionly zausted,” Ricky said in a drawling voice.

“What in the world does that mean?’

“It’s what Mademoiselle says I am when I’m overtired.” He yawned cosily. “I’ll look at Goat a bit more and then I daresay…” His voice trailed into silence.

Alleyn could hear Troy moving about quietly in the next room. He waited until Ricky was breathing deeply and then put him to bed. The door opened and Troy stood there listening. Alleyn joined her. “He’s off,” he said and watched while she went to see for herself. They left the door open.

“I don’t know whether that was sound child-psychiatry or a barefaced cheat,” Alleyn said, “but it’s settled his troubles. I don’t think he’ll be frightened of his bedroom now.”

“Suppose he wakes and gets a panic, poor sweet.”

“He won’t. He’ll see his precious goat and go to sleep again. What about you?”

“I’m practically snoring on my feet.”

“Fizzily and ’motionly zausted?”

“Did he say that?”

“Queer little bloke that he is, he did. Shall I stay with you, too, until you go to sleep?”

“But — what about you?”

“I’m going up to the factory. Dupont’s still there and Raoul’s hiring me his car.”

“Rory, you can’t. You must be dead.”

“Not a bit of it. The night’s young and it’ll be tactful to show up. Besides I’ve got to make arrangements for tomorrow.”

“I don’t know how you do it.”

“Of course you don’t my darling. You’re not a cop.”

She tried to protest but was so bemused with sleepiness that her voice trailed away as Ricky’s had done. By the time Alleyn had washed and found himself an overcoat, Troy too was in bed and fast asleep. He turned off the lights and slipped out of the room.

Left to itself, the little silver goat glowed steadfastly through the night.

i

Alleyn left word at the office that he might be late coming in and said that unless he himself rang up no telephone calls were to be put through to Troy. Anybody who rang was to be asked to leave a message. It was nine o’clock.

The porter opened the doors and Alleyn ran down the steps to Raoul’s car. There was another car drawn up beside it, a long and stylish racing model with a G.B. plate. The driver leaned out and said cautiously: “Hallo, sir.”

It was Robin Herrington.

“Hullo,” Alleyn said.

“I’m on my way back actually, from Douceville. As a matter of fact I was just coming in on the chance of having a word with you,” Herrington said rapidly, and in a muted voice. “I’m sorry you’re going out. I mean, I don’t suppose you could give me five minutes. Sorry not to get out, but as a matter of fact I sort of thought — It wouldn’t take long. Perhaps I could drive you to wherever you’re going and then I wouldn’t waste your time. Sort of.”

“Thank you, I’ve got a car but I’ll give you five minutes with pleasure. Shall I join you?”

“Frightfully nice of you, sir. Yes, please do.”

Alleyn walked round and climbed in.

“It won’t take five minutes,” Herrington said nervously and was then silent.

“How,” Alleyn asked after waiting for some moments, “is Miss Truebody?” Robin shuffled his feet. “Pretty bad,” he said. “She was when I left. Pretty bad, actually.”

Alleyn waited again and was suddenly offered a drink. His companion opened a door and a miniature cocktail cabinet lit itself up.

“No, thank you,” Alleyn said. “What’s up?”

“I will, if you don’t mind. A very small one.” He gave himself atot of neat brandy and swallowed half of it. “It’s about Ginny,” he said.

“Oh!”

“As a matter of fact, I’m rather worried about her, which may sound a bit funny.”

“Not very.”

“Oh. Well, you see, she’s so terrifyingly young, Ginny. She’s only nineteen. And, as a matter of fact, I don’t think this is a madly appropriate setting for her.” Alleyn was silent and after a further pause Robin went on, “I don’t know if you’ve any idea what sort of background Ginny’s got. Her people were killed when she was a kid. In the blitz. She was trapped with them and hauled out somehow, which rocked her a good deal at the time and actually hasn’t exactly worn off even now. She’s rather been nobody’s baby. Her guardian’s a pretty odd old number. More interested in marmosets and miniatures than children, really. He’s her great uncle.”