Spinsters in Jeopardy

by Ngaio Marsh

  Alleyn was out of the car before it stopped. Troy stood in the hotel courtyard with her clasped hands at her lips and a look on her face that he had never seen there before. When he took her arms in his hands he felt her whole body trembling. She tried to speak to him but at first was unable to find her voice. He saw her mouth frame the word ‘Ricky.’

  ‘What is it, darling?’ he said. ‘What’s the matter with him?’

  ‘He’s gone,’ she said. ‘They’ve taken him. They’ve taken Ricky.’

  IV

  For the rest of their lives they would remember too vividly the seconds in which they stood on the tessellated courtyard of the hotel, plastered by the midday sun. Raoul on the footpath watched them and the blank street glared behind him. The air smelt of petrol. There was a smear of magenta Bougainvillaea on the opposite wall and in the centre of the street a neat pile of horse-droppings. It was already siesta time and so quiet that they might have been the only people awake in Roqueville.

  ‘I’ll keep my head and be sensible,’ Troy whispered. ‘Won’t I, Rory?’

  ‘Of course. We’ll go indoors and you’ll tell me about it.’

  ‘I want to get into the car and look somewhere for him but I know that won’t do.’

  ‘I’ll ask Raoul to wait.’

  He did so. Raoul listened, motionless. When Alleyn had spoken Raoul said, ‘Tell Madame it will be all right, Monsieur. Things will come right.’ As they turned away he called his reassurance after them and the sound of his words followed them: ‘Les affaires s’arrangeront. Tout ira bien, Madame.’

  Inside the hotel it seemed very dark. A porter sat behind a reception desk and an elegantly dressed man stood in the hall wringing his hands.

  Troy said: ‘This is my husband. This is the manager, Rory. He speaks English. I’m sorry, Monsieur, I don’t know your name.’

  ‘Malaquin, Madame. Mr Alleyn, I am sure there is some simple explanation – There have been other cases –’

  ‘I’ll come and see you, if I may, when I’ve heard what has happened.’

  ‘But of course Garçon –’

  The porter, looking ineffably compassionate, took them up in the lift. The stifling journey was interminable.

  Troy faced her husband in a large bedroom made less impersonal by the slight but characteristic litter that accompanied her wherever she went. Beyond her was an iron-railed balcony and beyond that the arrogant laundry-blue of the Mediterranean. He pushed a chair up and she took it obediently. He sat on his heels before her and put his hands on the arms of the chair.

  ‘Now, tell me darling,’ he said. ‘I can’t do anything until you’ve told me.’

  ‘You were such a lifetime coming.’

  ‘I’m here now. Tell me.’

  ‘Yes.’

  She did tell him. She made a great effort to be lucid, frowning when she hesitated or when her voice shook and always keeping her gaze on him. He had said she was a good witness and now she stuck to the bare bones of her story but every word was shadowed by a multitude of unspoken terrors.

  She said that when they arrived at the hotel Ricky was fretful and white after his interrupted sleep and the excitement of the drive. The manager was attentive and suggested that Ricky could have a tray in their rooms. Troy gave him a bath and put him into pyjamas and dressing-gown and he had his luncheon, falling asleep almost before it was finished. She put him to bed in a dressing-room opening off her own bedroom. She darkened the windows and seeing him comfortably asleep with his silver goat clutched in his hand, had her bath, changed and lunched in the dining-room of the hotel. When she returned to their rooms Ricky had gone.

  At first she thought that he must have wakened and gone in search of a lavatory or that perhaps he had had one of his panics and was looking for her. It was only after a search of their bathroom and passages, stairs and such rooms as were open that with mounting anxiety she rang for the chambermaid and then, as the woman didn’t understand English, spoke on the telephone to the manager. M. Malaquin was helpful and expeditious. He said that he would at once speak to the servants on duty and report to her. As she put down the receiver Troy looked at the chair across which she had laid Ricky’s day clothes ready for his awakening – a yellow shirt and brown linen shorts – and she saw that they were gone.

  From that moment she had fought against a surge of terror so imperative that it was accompanied by a physical pain. She ran downstairs and told the manager. The porter and two of the waiters and Troy herself had gone out into the deserted and sweltering streets, Troy running uphill and breathlessly calling Ricky’s name. She stopped the few people she met, asking them for a ‘petit garçon, mon fils.’ The men shrugged, one woman said something that sounded sympathetic. They all shook their heads or made negative gestures with their fingers. Troy found herself in a maze of back streets and stone stairways. She thought she was lost, but looking down a steep alleyway, saw one of the waiters walk across at the lower end and she ran down after him. When she reached the cross-alley she was just in time to see his coat-tails disappear round a farther corner. Finally she caught him up. They were back in the little square, and there was the hotel. Her heart rammed against her ribs and she suffered a disgusting sense of constriction in her throat. Sweat poured between her shoulder-blades and ran down her forehead into her eyes. She was in a nightmare.

  The waiter grimaced. He was idiotically polite and deprecating and he couldn’t understand a word that she said. He pursed his lips, bowed and went indoors. She remembered the Commissary of Police and was about to ask the manager to telephone the Préfecture when she heard Raoul’s car turn into the street.

  Alleyn said: ‘Right. I’ll talk to the Préfecture. But before I do, my dearest dear, will you believe one thing?’

  ‘All right. I’ll try.’

  ‘Ricky isn’t in danger. I’m sure of it.’

  ‘But it’s true. He’s been – it’s those people up there – they’ve kidnapped him, haven’t they?’

  ‘It’s possible that they’ve taken a hand. If they have it’s because they want to keep me busy. It’s also possible, isn’t it, that something entered into his head and he got himself up and trotted out.’

  ‘He’d never do it, Rory. Never. You know he wouldn’t.’

  ‘All right. Now, I’ll ring the Préfecture. Come on.’

  He sat beside her on the bed and kept his arm about her. While he waited for the number he said: ‘Did you lock the door?’

  ‘No. I didn’t like the idea of locking him in. The manager’s spoken to the servants. They didn’t see anybody. Nobody asked for our room numbers.’

  ‘The heavy trunk is still in the hall downstairs and the room number’s chalked on it. What colour are his clothes?’

  ‘Pale yellow shirt and brown shorts.’

  ‘Right. We may as well – Allô Allô! …’

  He began to talk into the telephone, keeping his free hand on her shoulder. Troy turned her cheek to it for a moment and then freed herself and went out on the balcony.

  The little square – it was called the Place de Sarrasins – was at the top of a hilly street and the greater part of Roqueville lay between it and the sea. The maze of alleys where Troy had lost herself was out of sight behind and above the hotel. As if from a high tower she looked down into the streets and prayed incoherently that in one of them she would see a tiny figure: Ricky, in his lemon-coloured shirt and brown linen shorts. But all Troy could see was a pattern of stucco and stone, a distant row of carriages whose drivers and horses were snoozing, no doubt, in the shadows, a system of tiled roofs and the paintlike blue of the sea. She looked nearer at hand and there, beneath her was Raoul Milano’s car, seeming like a toy, and Raoul himself, rolling a cigarette. The hotel porter, at that moment, came out and she heard the sound of his voice. Raoul got up and they disappeared beneath her, into the hotel.

  The tone of Alleyn’s voice suggested that he was near the end of his telephone call. She had turned away from her fruitless s
earch of the map-like town and was about to go indoors when out of the tail of her eye she caught a flicker of colour.

  It was a flicker of lemon-yellow and brown.

  The hot iron of the balcony rail scorched the palms of her hands. She leant far out and stared at a tall building on a higher level than herself, a building that was just in view round the corner of the hotel. It was perhaps a quarter of a mile away and from behind a huddle of intervening roofs, rose up in a series of balconies. It was on the highest of these behind a blur of iron railings, that she saw her two specks of colour.

  ‘Rory,’ she cried. ‘Rory!’

  It took several seconds that seemed like many minutes for Alleyn to find the balcony. ‘It’s Ricky,’ she said, ‘isn’t it? It must be Ricky.’ And she ran back into the room, snatched the thin cover from her bed and waved it frantically from the balcony.

  ‘Wait a moment,’ Alleyn said.

  His police case had been brought up to their room and contained a pair of very powerful field-glasses. While he focused them on the distant balcony he said: ‘Don’t be too certain, darling, there may be other small boys in yellow and – no – no, it’s Ricky. He’s all right. Look.’

  Troy’s eyes were masked with tears of relief. Her hands shook and her fingers were too precipitant with the focusing governors. ‘I can’t do it – I can’t see.’

  ‘Steady. Wipe your eyes. Here, I will. He’s still there. He may have spotted us. Try this way. Kneel down and rest the glasses on the rail. Get each eye right in turn. Quietly does it.’

  Circles of blurred colour mingled and danced in the two fields of vision. They swam together and clarified. The glasses were in focus now but were trained on some strange blue door, startling in its closeness. She moved them and an ornate gilded steeple was before her with a cross and a clock telling a quarter to two. ‘I don’t know where I am. It’s a church. I can’t find him.’

  ‘You’re nearly there. Keep at that level and come round gently.’

  And suddenly Ricky looked through iron rails with vague, not quite frightened eyes whose gaze, while it was directed at her, yet passed beyond her.’

  ‘Wave,’ she said. ‘Go on waving.’

  Ricky’s strangely impersonal and puzzled face moved a little so that an iron standard partly hid it. His right arm was raised and his hand moved to and fro above the railing.

  ‘He’s seen!’ she said. ‘He’s waving back.’

  The glasses slipped a little. The wall of their hotel, out-of-focus and stupid, blotted out her vision. Someone was tapping on the bedroom door behind them.

  ‘Entrez!’ Alleyn called and then sharply. ‘Hallo! Who’s that?’

  ‘What? I’ve lost him.’

  ‘A woman came out and led him away. They’ve gone indoors.’

  ‘A woman?’

  ‘Fat and dressed in black.’

  ‘Please let’s go quickly.’

  Raoul had come through the bedroom and stood behind them. Alleyn said in French, ‘Do you see that tall building, just to the left of our wall and to the right of the church? It’s pinkish with blue shutters and there’s something red on one of the balconies?’

  ‘I see it, Monsieur.’

  ‘Do you know what building it is?’

  ‘I think so, Monsieur. It will be No. 16 the Rue des Violettes where Madame inquired this morning.’

  ‘Troy,’ Alleyn said. ‘The lord knows why, but Ricky’s gone to call on Mr Garbel.’

  Troy stopped short on her way to the door. ‘Do you mean …?’

  ‘Raoul says that’s the house.’

  ‘But – No.’ Troy said vigorously. ‘No, I don’t believe it. He wouldn’t just get up and go there. Not of his own accord. Not like that. He wouldn’t. Come on, Rory.’

  They were following her when Alleyn said: ‘When did these flowers come?’

  ‘What flowers? Oh, that. I hadn’t noticed it. I don’t know. Dr Baradi, I should think. Please don’t let’s wait.’

  An enormous florist’s box garnished with a great bow of ribbon lay on the top of a pile of suitcases.

  Watched in an agony of impatience by his wife, Alleyn slid a card from under the ribbon and looked at it.

  ‘So sorry,’ he read, ‘that I shall be away during your visit. Welcome to Roqueville. P.E.Garbel.’

  CHAPTER 6

  Consultation

  Troy wouldn’t wait for the lift. She ran downstairs with Alleyn and Raoul at her heels. Only the porter was there, sitting at the desk in the hall.

  Alleyn said: ‘This will take thirty seconds, darling. I’m in as much of a hurry as you. Please believe it’s important. You can get into the car. Raoul can start the engine.’ And to the porter he said: ‘Please telephone this number and give the message I have written on the paper to the person who answers. It is the number of the Préfecture and the message is urgent. It is expected. Were you on duty here when flowers came for Madame?’

  ‘I was on duty when the flowers arrived, Monsieur. It was about an hour ago. I did not know they were for Madame. The woman went straight upstairs without inquiry, as one who knows the way.’

  ‘And returned?’

  The porter lifted his shoulders. ‘I did not see her return, Monsieur. No doubt she used the service stairs.’

  ‘No doubt,’ Alleyn said and ran out to the car.

  On the way to the Rue des Violettes he said: ‘I’m going to stop the car a little way from the house, Troy, and I’m going to ask you to wait in it while I go indoors.’

  ‘Are you? But why? Ricky’s there, isn’t he? We saw him.’

  ‘Yes, we saw him. But I’m not too keen for other people to see us. Cousin Garbel seems to be known, up at the Chèvre d’Argent.’

  ‘But Robin Herrington said he didn’t know him, and anyway, according to the card on the flowers, Cousin Garbel’s gone away. That must be what the concierge was trying to tell me. She said he was ‘pas chez elk.’

  ‘Pas chez soi,’ surely?’

  ‘All right. Yes, of course. I couldn’t really understand her. I don’t understand anything.’ Troy said desperately. ‘I just want to get Ricky.’

  ‘I know, darling. Not more than I do.’

  ‘He didn’t look as if he was in one of his panics. Did he?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I expect we’ll have a reaction and be furiously snappish with him for frightening us, don’t you?’

  ‘We must learn to master our ugly tempers,’ he said, smiling at her.

  ‘Rory, he will be there still? He won’t have gone?’

  ‘It’s only ten minutes ago that we saw him on the sixth floor balcony.’

  ‘Was she a fat shiny woman who led him in?’

  ‘I hadn’t got the glasses. I couldn’t spot the shine with the naked eye.’

  ‘I didn’t like the concierge. Ricky would hate her.’

  ‘That is the street, Monsieur,’ said Raoul. ‘At the intersection.’

  ‘Good. Draw up here by the kerb. I don’t want to frighten Madame but I think all may not be well with the small one whom we have see on the balcony at No. 16. If anyone were to leave by the back or side of the house, Raoul, would they have to come this way from that narrow side-street and pass this way to get out of Roqueville?’

  ‘This way, Monsieur, either to go east or west out of Roqueville. For the rest there are only other alleyways with flights of steps that lead nowhere.’

  ‘Then if a car should emerge from behind No. 16 perhaps it may come about that you start your car and your engine stalls and you block the way. In apologizing you would no doubt go up to the other car and look inside. And if the small one were in the car you would not be able to start your own though you would make a great disturbance by leaning on your horn. And by that time, Raoul, it is possible that M. le Commissaire will have arrived back in his car. Or that I have come out of No. 16.’

  ‘Aren’t you going, Rory?’

  ‘At once, darling. All right, Raoul?’

  ‘Perfe
ctly, Monsieur.’

  Alleyn got out of the car, crossed the intersection, turned right and entered No. 16.

  The hall was dark and deserted. He went at once to the lift-well, glanced at the index of names and pressed the call-button.

  ‘Monsieur?’ said the concierge, partly opening the door of her cubby-hole.

  Alleyn looked beyond the ringed and grimy hand at one beady eye, the flange of a flattened nose and half a grape-coloured mouth.

  ‘Madame,’ he said politely and turned back to the lift.

  ‘Monsieur desires?’

  ‘The lift, Madame.’

  ‘To ascend where, Monsieur?’

  ‘To the sixth floor, Madame.’

  ‘To which apartment on the sixth floor?’

  ‘To the principal apartment. With a balcony.’

  The lift was wheezing its way down.

  ‘Unfortunately,’ said the concierge, ‘the tenant is absent on vacation. Monsieur would care to leave a message?’

  ‘It is the small boy for whom I have called. The small boy whom Madame has been kind enough to admit to the apartment.’

  ‘Monsieur is mistaken. I have admitted no children. The apartment is locked.’

  ‘Can Nature have been so munificent as to lavish upon us a twin sister of Madame? If so she has undoubtedly admitted a small boy to the principal apartment on the sixth floor.’

  The lift came into sight and stopped. Alleyn opened the door.

  ‘One moment,’ said the concierge. He paused. Her hand was withdrawn from the cubby-hole door. She came out, waddling like a duck and bringing a bunch of keys.

  ‘It is not amusing,’ she said, ‘to take a fool’s trip. However, Monsieur shall see for himself.’

  They went up in the lift. The concierge quivered slightly and gave out the combined odours of uncleanliness, frangipane, garlic and hot satin. On the sixth floor she opened a door opposite the lift, waddled through it and sat down panting and massively triumphant on a high chair in the middle of a neat and ordered room whose french windows gave on to a balcony.