Spinsters in Jeopardy

by Ngaio Marsh

  Dupont tapped and entered. ‘Any luck?’ Alleyn said.

  ‘Of a kind. I rang the centrale and was answered by an imbecile but the call has been traced. And to where do you suppose?’

  ‘No. 16 Rue des Violettes?’

  ‘Precisely!’

  ‘Fair enough,’ Alleyn said. ‘It must be their town office.’

  ‘I also rang the Préfecture. No reports have come in from the patrols. What was the exact telephone message, if you please?’

  Alleyn told him in French, wrapping up the threats to Ricky in words that were outside Troy’s vocabulary.

  ‘The same formula,’ Dupont said, ‘as in the reported version of the former affair. My dear Mr Chief and Madame, it seems that we should now pursue our hunch.’

  ‘To the chemical works?’

  ‘Certainly.’

  ‘Thank God!’ Troy ejaculated.

  ‘All the same,’ Alleyn said, ‘it’s tricky. As soon as we get there the gaff is blown. The château, having been informed that the telephone message went through, will wait for us to go to St Céleste. When we turn up at the factory, the factory will ring the château. Tricky! How far away is St Céleste?’

  ‘About seventy kilometres.’

  ‘Is it possible to start off on the eastern route and come round to the factory by a detour? Behind Roqueville?’

  M. Dupont frowned. ‘There are some mountain lanes,’ he said. ‘Little more than passages for goats and cattle but of a width that is possible.’

  ‘Possible for Raoul who is, I have noticed, a good driver.’

  ‘He will tell us, at least. He is beneath.’

  ‘Good.’ Alleyn turned to his wife. ‘See here, darling. Will you go down and ask Raoul to fill up his tank – faire plein d’essence will be all right – and ask him to come back as soon as he’s done it. Will you then ask for the manager and tell him we’re going to St Céleste but would like to leave our heavy luggage here and keep our rooms. Perhaps you should offer to pay a week in advance. Here’s some money. I’ll bring down a couple of suitcases and join you in the hall. All right?’

  ‘All right. Voulez-vous,’ Troy said anxiously, ‘faire plein d’essence et revenez ici. OK?’

  ‘OK.’

  When she had gone Alleyn said: ‘Dupont, I wanted a word with you. You can see what a hellish business this is for me, can’t you? I know damn’ well how important it is not to let our investigations go off like a damp squib. I realize, nobody better, that a premature inquiry at the factory might prejudice a very big coup. I’m here on a job and my job is with the police of your country and my own. In a way it’s the most critical assignment I’ve ever had.’

  ‘And for me, also.’

  ‘But the boy’s my boy and his mother’s my wife. It looked perfectly safe to bring them here and they gave me admirable cover but as things have turned put, I shouldn’t have brought them. But for the unfortunate Miss Truebody, of course, it would have been all right.’

  ‘And she, too, provided admirable cover. An unquestioned entrée.’

  ‘Not for long, however. What I’m trying to say is this: I’ve fogged out a scheme of approach. I realize that in suggesting it I’m influenced by an almost overwhelming anxiety about Ricky. I’ll be glad if you tell me at once if you think it impracticable and, from the police angle, unwise.’

  Dupont said: ‘M. l’Inspecteur-en-Chef, I understand the difficulty and respect, very much, your delicacy. I shall be honoured to advise.’

  ‘Thank you. Here goes, then. It’s essential that we arouse no suspicion of our professional interest in the factory. It’s highly probable that the key men up there have already been informed from the château of my real identity. There’s a chance, I suppose, that Annabella Wells has kept her promise but it’s a poor chance. After all, if these people don’t know who I am why should they kidnap Ricky? All right. We make a show of leaving this hotel and taking the eastern route for St Céleste. That will satisfy anybody who may be watching us at this end. We take to the hills and double back to the factory. By this time, you, with a suitable complement of officers, are on your way there. I go in and ask for Ricky. I am excitable and agitated. They say he’s not there. I insist that I’ve unimpeachable evidence that he is there. I demand to see the manager. I produce Raoul who says he took his girl for a drive and saw a car with Ricky in it, turn in at the factory gates. They stick to their guns. I make a hell of a row. I tell them I’ve applied to you. You arrive with a carload of men. You take the manager aside and tell him I am a VIP on holiday.’

  ‘Comment? VIP?’

  ‘A very important person. You see it’s extremely awkward. That you think the boy’s been kidnapped and that it’s just possible one of their workmen has been bribed to hide him. You’ll say I’ll make things very hot for you at the Sûreté if you don’t put on a show of searching for Ricky. You produce a mandat de perquisition. You are terribly apologetic and very bored with me but you say that unfortunately you have no alternative. As a matter of form you must search the factory. Now, what does the manager do?’

  Dupont’s sharp eyebrows were raised to the limit. Beneath them his round eyes stared with glazed impartiality at nothing in particular. His arms were folded. Alleyn waited.

  ‘In effect,’ Dupont said at last, ‘he sends his secretary to investigate. The secretary returns with Ricketts and there are a great many apologies. The manager assures me that there will be an exhaustive inquiry and appropriate dismissals.’

  ‘What do you say to this?’

  ‘Ah,’ said Dupont suddenly lowering his eyebrows and unfolding his arms. ‘That is more difficult.’

  ‘Do I perhaps intervene? Having clasped my son to my bosom and taken him out with his mother to the car, thus giving the manager an opportunity to attempt bribery at a high level, do I not return and take it as a matter of course that you consider this an admirable opportunity to pursue your search for the kidnappers?’

  Dupont’s smile irradiated his face. ‘It is possible,’ he said. ‘It is conceivable.’

  ‘Finally, my dear Dupont, can we act along these lines or any other that suggest themselves without arousing the smallest suspicion that we are interested in anything but the recovery of the child?’

  ‘The word of operation is indeed ‘act.’ From your performance on the telephone, Mr Chief, I can have no misgivings about your own performance. And for myself,’ here Dupont tapped his chest, touched his moustache and gave Alleyn an indescribably roguish glance, ‘I believe I shall do well enough.’

  They stood up. Alleyn put his police bag inside a large suitcase. After looking at the chaos within Troy’s partly unpacked luggage, he decided on two cases. He also collected their overcoats and Ricky’s.

  ‘Shall we about it?’ he asked.

  ‘En avant, alors!’ said Dupont.

  II

  Mr Oberon looked down at the figure on the bed. ‘Quite peaceful,’ he said. ‘Isn’t it strange?’

  ‘The teeth,’ Baradi pointed out, ‘make a great difference.’

  ‘There is a certain amount of discoloration.’

  ‘Hypostatic staining. The climate.’

  ‘Then there is every reason,’ Mr Oberon observed with satisfaction, ‘for an immediate funeral.’

  ‘Certainly.’

  ‘If they have in fact gone off to St Céleste they cannot return until the day after tomorrow.’

  ‘If, on the other hand, this new man at the Préfecture is intelligent, which Alleyn says is not the case, they may pick up some information.’

  ‘Let us,’ Mr Oberon suggested as he absent-mindedly re-arranged the sprigged locknit nightgown which was pinned down by crossed hands to the rigid bosom, ‘let us suppose the worst. They recover the child,’ he raised his hand. ‘Yes, yes, it is unlikely, but suppose it happens. They call to inquire. They ask to see her.’

  The two men were silent for a time. ‘Very well,’ Baradi said. ‘So they see her. She will not be a pretty sight, but they see her.
’

  Mr Oberon was suddenly inspired. ‘There must be flowers,’ he ejaculated. ‘Masses and masses of flowers. A nest. A coverlet all of flowers, smelling like incense. Tuberoses,’ he cried softly, clapping his hands together. ‘They will be entirely appropriate. I shall order them. Tuberoses! And orchids.’

  III

  The eastern route followed the seaboard for three miles out of Roqueville and then turned slightly inland. At this point a country road branched off it to the left. Raoul took the road which mounted into the hills by a series of hairpin bends. They climbed out of soft coastal air and entered a region of mountain freshness. A light breeze passed like a hand through the olive groves and sent spirals of ruddy dust across the road. The seaboard with its fringe of meretricious architecture had dwindled into an incident while the sea and sky and warm earth widely enlarged themselves.

  The road turning about the contour of the hills was littered with rock and scarred by wheel tracks. Sometimes it became a ledge traversing the face of sheer cliffs and in normal times Troy, who disliked heights, would have feared these passages. Now she dreaded them merely because they had to be taken slowly.

  ‘How long,’ she asked, ‘will it be, do you suppose?’

  ‘Roqueville’s down there a little ahead of us. We’ll pass above it in a few minutes. I gather we now cast back into the mountains for about the same distance as we’ve travelled already and then work round to a junction with the main road to the factory. Sorry about these corners, darling,’ Alleyn said as they edged round a bend that looked like a take-off into space. ‘Are you minding it very much?’

  ‘Only because it’s slow. Raoul’s a good driver, isn’t he?’

  ‘Very good indeed. Could you bear it if I told you about this job? I think perhaps I ought to but it’ll be a bit dreary.’

  ‘Yes,’ Troy said. ‘I’d like that. The drearier the better because I’ll have to concentrate.’

  ‘Well, you know it’s to do with the illicit drug trade but I don’t suppose you know much about the trade itself. By and large it’s probably the worst thing apart from war that’s happened to human beings in modern times. Before the 1914 war the nations most troubled by the opium racket had begun to do something about it. There was a Shanghai Conference and a Hague Convention. Both were cautious tentative shows. None of the nations came to them with a clean record and all the delegates were embarrassed by murky backgrounds in which production, manufacture and distribution involved the revenue both of states and of highly placed individuals. Dost thou attend me?’

  ‘Sir,’ said Troy, ‘most heedfully.’

  They exchanged the complacent glances of persons who recognize each other’s quotations.

  ‘At the Hague Convention they did get round to making one or two conservative decisions but before they were ratified the war came along and the whole thing lapsed. After the peace the traffic was stepped up most murderously. It’s really impossible to exaggerate the scandal of those years. At the top end were nations getting a fat revenue out of the sale of opium and its derivatives. An investigator said at one stage that half Europe was being poisoned to bolster up the domestic policy of Bulgaria. The goings-on were fantastic. Chargés d’Affaires smuggled heroin in their diplomatic baggage. Drug barons built works all over Europe. Diacetylmorphine, which is heroin to you, was brewed on the Champs-Élysées. Highly qualified chemists were offered princely salaries to work in drug factories and a great number of them fell for it. Many of the smartest and most fashionable people in European society lived on the trade: murderers, if the word has any meaning. At the other end of the stick were the street pedlars, at the foot of Nurse Cavell’s statue among other places, and the addicts. The addicts were killing themselves in studies, studios, dressing-rooms, brothels, boudoirs and garrets; young intellectuals and young misfits were ruining themselves by the score. Girls were kept going by their souteneurs with shots of the stuff. And so on. Thou attendest not.’

  ‘O, good Sir, I do.’

  ‘I pray thee, mark me. At the Peace Conference this revolting baby was handed over to the League of Nations who appointed an Advisory Committee who began the first determined assault on the thing. The International Police came in, various bodies were set up and a bit of real progress was made. Only a bit. Factories pulled down in Turkey were rebuilt in Bulgaria. Big centralized industries were bust only to reappear like crops of small ulcers in other places. But something was attempted and a certain amount was achieved by 1919.’

  ‘O, dear! History at it again?’

  ‘More or less. The difference lies in the fact that this time the preliminary work had been done and the machinery for investigation partly set up. But the second world war did its stuff and everything lapsed. U.N.O. doesn’t start from scratch in the way that the League did. But it faces the old situation and it’s still up against the Big Boys. The police still catch the sprats at the Customs counter and miss the mackerels in high places. The factories have again moved: from Bulgaria into post-war Italy and from post-war Italy, it appears, into the Paysdoux of Southern France. And the Big Boys have moved with them. Particularly Dr Baradi and Mr Oberon.’

  ‘Are they really big?’

  ‘Not among the tops, perhaps. There we climb into very rarefied altitudes and by as hazardous a road as this one. But Oberon and Baradi are certainly in the mackerel class. Oberon I regret to tell you, is a British subject at the moment although he began in the Middle East, where he ran a quack religion of a dubious sort and got six months for his pains. He came to us by way of Portugal and Egypt. In Portugal he practised the same game during the war and made his first connection with the dope trade. In Egypt he was stepped up in the racket and made the acquaintance of his chum Baradi. By that time he’d acquired large sums of money. Two fortunes fell into his lap from rich disciples in Lisbon – middle-aged women, who became Daughters of the Sun or something, re-made their wills and died shortly afterwards.’

  ‘O, lord!’

  ‘You may well say so. Baradi’s a different story. Baradi was a really brilliant medical student who trained in Paris and has become one of the leading surgeons of his time. At one time he had some sort of entrée to court circles in Cairo and, thanks to his skill and charms, any number of useful connections in France. You may not think him very delicious but it appears that a great many women do. He got in with the Boys in Paris and Egypt and is known to be a trafficker in a big way. It’s his money and Oberon’s that’s behind the Chemical Company of the Maritime Alps. That’s as much as the combined efforts of the International Police, the Sûreté and the Yard have gleaned about Baradi and Oberon and it’s on that information I’m meant to act.’

  ‘And is Ricky a spanner in the works?’

  ‘He may be a spanner in the works, my pretty. He gives us an excuse for getting into the factory. They may have played into our hands when they took Ricky into the factory.’

  ‘If they took him there,’ Troy said under her breath.

  ‘If they drove beyond the turn-off to the factory the patrols would have got them. Of course he may be maddening the monks in the monastery farther up.’

  ‘Mightn’t the car have pushed on and come round by this appalling route?’

  ‘The patrols on the eastern route will get it if it did and there are no fresh tyre tracks.’

  ‘It’s so strange,’ Troy said, ‘to hear you doing your stuff.’

  Raoul humoured the car down a steep incline and past a pink-washed hovel overhanging the cliff. A peasant stood in the doorway. At Alleyn’s suggestion Raoul called to him.

  ‘Hé friend! Any other driver comes this way today?’

  ‘Pas un de si bète!’

  ‘That was: ‘no such fool’ wasn’t it?’ Troy asked.

  ‘It was.’

  ‘I couldn’t agree more.’

  They bumped and sidled on for some time without further conversation. Raoul sang. The sky was a deeper blue and the Mediterranean, now almost purple, made unexpected gestures bet
ween the tops of hills. Troy and Alleyn each thought privately how much, in spite of the road, they would have enjoyed themselves if Ricky had been with them.

  Presently Raoul, speaking slowly out of politeness to Troy, pointed to a valley they were about to enter.

  ‘The monastery road, M’sieur – Madame. We descend.’

  They did so, precipitately. The roofs of the Monastery of Our Lady of Paysdoux appeared, tranquil and modest, folded in a confluence of olive groves. As they came into the lower valley they looked down on an open place where a few cars were parked and where visitors to the cloisters moved in and out of long shadows. The car dived down behind the monastery, turned and ran out into the head of a good sealed road. ‘The factory,’ Raoul said, ‘is round the next bend. Beyond, Monsieur can see the main road and away to the right is the headland with the tunnel that comes out by the Château de la Chèvre d’Argent.’

  ‘Is there a place lower down and out of sight of the factory where we can watch the main road on the Roqueville side?’

  ‘Yes, Monsieur. As one approaches the bend.’

  ‘Let us stop there for a moment.’

  ‘Good, Monsieur.’

  Raoul’s point of observation turned out to be a pleasant one overlooking the sea and commanding a full view of the main road as it came through the hills from Roqueville. He ran the car to the outer margin of their road and stopped. Alleyn looked at his watch. ‘A quarter-past four. The works shut down at five. I hope Dupont’s punctual. We’ll have a final check. Raoul first, darling, if you don’t mind. See how much you can follow and keep your eye on the main road for the police car. Alors, Raoul.’

  Raoul turned to listen. He had taken off his chauffeur’s cap and his head, seen in profile against the homeric blue of the Mediterranean, took on a classic air. Its colour was a modulation of the tawny earth. Grapelike curls clustered behind his small ear, his mouth was fresh, reflected light bloomed on his cheekbones and his eyes held a look of untroubled acceptance. It was a beautiful head and Troy thought: ‘When we’re out of this nightmare I shall want to paint it.’