Ngaio Marsh: Spinsters in Jeopardy

Cast of Characters

Roderick Alleyn…Chief Detective-Inspector, Criminal Investigation Department, New Scotland Yard

Agatha Troy Alleyn…his wife

Ricky…their son

Miss Truebody…their fellow-passenger

Dr. Claudel…a French physician

Raoul Milano…of Roqueville. Owner-driver

Dr. Ali Baradi…a surgeon

Mahomet…his servant

Mr. Oberon…of the Château de la Chèvre d’Argent

his guests

Ginny Taylor

Robin Herrington

Carbury Glande

Annabella Wells

Teresa…the fiancée of Raoul

M. Dupont…of the Sûreté. Acting Commisaire at the Prefecture, Roqueville

M. Callard…Managing Director of the Compagnie Chimique des Alpes Maritimes

M. and Madame Milano…the parents of Raoul

Marie…a maker of figurines

M. Malaquin…proprietor of the Hôtel Royal

P. E. Garbel…a chemist

i

Without moving his head, Ricky slewed his eyes round until he was able to look slantways at the back of his mother’s easel.

“I’m getting pretty bored, however,” he announced.

“Stick it a bit longer, darling, I implore you, and look at Daddy.”

“Well, because it’s just about as boring a thing as a person can have to do. Isn’t it, Daddy?”

“When I did it,” said his father, “I was allowed to look at your mama, so I wasn’t bored. But as there are degrees of boredom,” he continued, “so there are different kind of bores. You might almost say there are recognizable schools.”

“To which school,” said his wife, stepping back from her easel, “would you say Mr. Garbel belonged? Ricky, look at Daddy for five minutes more and then I promise we’ll stop.”

Ricky sighed ostentatiously and contemplated his father.

“Well, as far as we know him,” Alleyn said, “to the epistolatory school. There, he’s a classic. In person he’s undoubtedly the sort of bore that shows you things you don’t want to see. Snapshots in envelopes. Barren conservatories. Newspaper cuttings. He’s relentless in this. I think he carries things on his person and puts them in front of you without giving you the smallest clue about what you’re meant to say. You’re moving, Ricky.”

“Isn’t it five minutes yet?”

“No, and it never will be if you fidget. How long is it, Troy, since you first heard from Mr. Garbel?”

“About eighteen months. He wrote for Christmas. All told I’ve had six letters and five postcards from Mr. Garbel. This last arrived this morning. That’s what put him into my head.”

“Daddy, who is Mr. Garbel?”

“One of Mummy’s admirers. He lives in the Maritime Alps and writes love letters to her.”

“Why?”

“He says it’s because he’s her third cousin once removed, but I know better.”

“What do you know better?”

With a spare paintbrush clenched between her teeth, Troy said indistinctly: “Keep like that, Ricky darling, I implore you.”

“O.K. Tell me properly. Daddy, about Mr. Garbel.”

“Well, he suddenly wrote to Mummy and said Mummy’s great-aunt’s daughter was his second cousin, and that he thought Mummy would like to know that he lived at a place called Roqueville in the Maritime Alps. He sent a map of Roqueville, marking the place where the road he lived on ought to be shown, but wasn’t, and he told Mummy how he didn’t go out much or meet many people.”

“Pretty dull, however.”

“He told her about all the food you can buy there that you can’t buy here, and he sent her copies of newspapers with bus timetables marked and messages at the side saying: ‘I find this bus convenient and often take it. It leaves the corner by the principal hotel every half-hour.’ Do you still want to hear about Mr. Garbel?”

“Unless it’s time to stop, I might as well.”

“Mummy wrote to Mr. Garbel and said how interesting she found his letter.”

“Did you, Mummy?”

“One has to be polite,” Troy muttered and laid a thin stroke of rose on the mouth of Ricky’s portrait.

“And he wrote back sending her three used bus tickets and a used train ticket.”

“Does she collect them?”

“Mr. Garbel thought she would like to know that they were his tickets punched by guards and conductors all for him. He also sends her beautifully coloured postcards of the Maritime Alps.”

“What’s that? May I have them?”

“…with arrows pointing to where his house would be if you could see it and to where the road goes to a house he sometimes visits only the house is off the postcard.”

“Like a picture puzzle, sort of?”

“Sort of. And he tells Mummy how, when he was young and doing chemistry at Cambridge, he almost met her great-aunt who was his second cousin once removed.”

“Did he have a shop?”

“No, he’s a special kind of chemist without a shop. When he sends Mummy presents of used tickets and old newspapers he writes on them: ‘Sent by P. E. Garbel, 16 Rue des Violettes, Roqueville, to Mrs. Agatha Alleyn (née Troy) daughter of Stephen and Harriet Troy (née Baynton).’ ”

“That’s you, isn’t it, Mummy? What else?”

“Is it possible, Ricky,” asked his wondering father, “that you find this interesting?”

“Yes,” said Ricky. “I like it. Does he mention me?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Or you?”

“He suggests that Mummy might care to read parts of his letter to me.”

“May we go and see him?”

“Yes,” said Alleyn. “As a matter of fact I think we may.”

Troy turned from her work and gaped at her husband. “What can you mean?” she exclaimed.

“Is it time. Mummy? Because it must be, so may I get down?”

“Yes, thank you, my sweet. You have been terribly good and I must think of some exciting reward.”

“Going to see Mr. Garbel frinstance?”

“I’m afraid,” Troy said, “that Daddy, poor thing, was being rather silly.”

“Well then — ride to Babylon?” Ricky suggested, and looked out of the corners of his eyes at his father.

“All right,” Alleyn groaned, parodying despair. “O.K. All right . Here we go!”

He swung the excitedly squealing Ricky up to his shoulders and grasped his ankles.

“Good old horse,” Ricky shouted and patted his father’s cheek. “Non-stop to Babylon. Good old horse.”

Troy looked dotingly at him. “Say to Nanny that I said you could ask for an extra high tea.”

“Top highest with strawberry jam?”

“If there is any.”

“Lavish!” said Ricky and gave a cry of primitive food-lust. “Giddy-up horse,” he shouted. The family of Alleyn broke into a chant:

How many miles to Babylon?

Five score and ten.

Can I get there by candle-light?

“ Yes! And back again ! Ricky yelled, and was carried at a canter from the room.

Troy listened to the diminishing rumpus on the stairs and looked at her work.

“How happy we are!” she thought, and then foolishly, “Touch wood!” And she picked up a brush and dragged a touch of colour from the hair across the brow. “How lucky I am,” she thought, more soberly, and her mood persisted when Alleyn came back with his hair tousled like Ricky’s and his tie under his ear.

He said: “May I look?”

“All right,” Troy agreed, wiping her brushes, “but don’t say anything.”

He grinned and walked round to the front of the easel. Troy had painted a head that seemed to have light as its substance. Even the locks of dark hair might have been spun from sunshine. It was a work in line rather than in mass, but the line flowed and turned with a subtlety that made any further elaboration unnecessary. “It needs another hour,” Troy muttered.