Spinsters in Jeopardy

by Ngaio Marsh

  He had bought for Raoul a pair of feminine sandals, black and elegant with highish heels. Raoul said he thought they would fit admirably. With a grimace of humorous resignation he washed his small, beautiful and very dirty feet and then fitted them into the sandals. ‘Oh, là là!’ he said, ‘one must be an acrobat, it appears.’ And for the diversion of Teresa he minced to and fro, wagging his hips and making unseemly gestures. Teresa crammed her fists in her mouth and was consumed with merriment. ‘Ah, mon Dieu,’ she gasped punctually, ‘quel drôle de type!’

  Alleyn wondered rather desperately if he was dealing with children or merely with the celebrated latin joie de vivre. He called them to order and they were at once as solemn as owls.

  ‘Teresa,’ he said, ‘you will go a little ahead of us with your candle. Go straight through the house and down the stairs to the landing beneath the library. If you see anybody, blow your nose loudly.’

  ‘Have you a handkerchief, my jewel?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Accept mine,’ said Raoul, offering her a dubious rag.

  ‘If anybody speaks to you and, perhaps, asks you why you are still on the premises, say that you missed your bus because of the message about Miss Taylor. If it is necessary, you must say you are going to her room to do some little act of service that you had forgotten and that then you will leave to catch the later bus. If it is possible, in this event, Raoul and I will conceal ourselves until the coast is clear. If this is not possible, we will behave as Mr Herrington and Miss Taylor would behave under the rule of silence. You will continue to Miss Taylor’s room, open the door for Raoul and go in for a moment, but only for a moment. Then, Teresa, I have another task for you,’ continued Alleyn, feeling for the second time in two days that he had become as big a bore as Prospero. Teresa, however, was a complacent Ariel and merely gazed submissively upon him.

  ‘You will find Mr Oberon and will tell him that Miss Taylor has returned and asks to be allowed her private meditation alone in her room until the ceremony. That is very important.’

  ‘Ah, Monsieur, if he were not so troubling to my soul!’

  ‘If you value my esteem, Teresa –’ Raoul began.

  ‘Yes, yes, Monsieur,’ said Teresa in a hurry, ‘I am resolved! I will face it.’

  ‘Good. Having given this message, come and report to me. After that your tasks for the night are finished. You will catch the late bus for your home in the Paysdoux. Heaven will reward you and I shall not forget you. Is all that clear, Teresa?’

  Teresa repeated it all.

  ‘Good. Now, Raoul, we may not have a chance to speak to each other again. Do as I have said. You are enacting the role of a frightened yet fascinated girl who is under the rule of silence. What will happen during the ceremony I cannot tell you. Mr Herrington could not be persuaded to confide more than you already know. You can only try to behave as the others do. If there is a crisis I shall deal with it. You will probably see and hear much that will shock and anger you. However beastly the behaviour of these people, you must control yourself. Have you ever heard of the Augean Stables?’

  ‘No, Monsieur.’

  ‘They were filthy and were cleansed. It was a heroic task. Now, when you get to Miss Taylor’s room you will find a robe, like the one you are wearing, laid out for her. If there is no difference you need not change. I don’t think you need try to wear her shoes but if there is anything else set out for her – gloves perhaps – you must wear whatever it may be. One thing more. There may be cigarettes in Miss Taylor’s room. Don’t smoke them. If cigarettes are given to us during the ceremony we must pretend to smoke. Like this.’

  Alleyn pouted his lips as if to whistle, held a cigarette in the gap between them and drew in audibly. ‘They will be drugged cigarettes. Air and smoke will be inhaled together. Keep your thumb over the end like this and you will be safe. That’s all. A great deal depends upon us, Raoul. There have been many girls before Miss Taylor who have become the guests of Mr Oberon. I think perhaps of all evildoers, his kind are the worst. Monsieur le Commissaire and I are asking much of you.’

  Raoul, perched on his high heels and peering out of the black hood, said: ‘Monsieur l’Inspecteur-en-Chef, in the army one learns to recognize authority. I recognize it in you, Monsieur, and I shall serve it to the best of my ability.’

  Alleyn was acutely embarrassed and more than a little touched by this speech. He said: ‘Thank you. Then we must all do our best. Shall we set about it? Now, Teresa, as quietly as you can unless you meet anybody, and then – boldly. Off you go.’

  ‘Courage, my beloved. Courage and good sense.’

  Teresa bestowed a melting glance upon Raoul, opened the door and, after a preliminary look down the passage, took up her candle and went out. Alleyn followed with his walking-stick in his hand and Raoul, clicking his high heels and taking small steps, brought up the rear.

  V

  Down in Roqueville Troy absentmindedly arranged little figures round a crib and pondered on the failure of her session with Ginny and Robin. She heard again Ginny’s desperate protest: ‘I don’t want to, I don’t want to but I must. I’ve taken the oath. Dreadful things will happen if I don’t go back.’

  ‘You don’t really believe that,’ Robin had said and she had cried out: ‘You’ve sworn and you won’t tell. If we don’t believe why don’t we tell?’

  Suddenly, with something of Ricky’s abandon, she had flung her arms round Troy, ‘If you could help,’ she had stammered, ‘but you can’t; you can’t!’ And she had run out of the room like a frightened animal. Robin, limping after her, had turned at the door.

  ‘It’s all right,’ he had said. ‘MrsAllen, it’s all right. She won’t go back.’

  There was a tidily arranged pile of illustrated papers in the private sitting-room where they had had their drinks. Troy found herself idly turning the pages of the top one. Photographs of sun-bathers and race-goers flipped over under her abstracted gaze. Dresses by Dior and dresses by Path, Prince Aly Khan leading in his father’s horse, the new ballet at the Marigny –’Les invités reunis pour quelques jours au Château de la Chèvre d’Argent. De gauche à droite: L’Hôte, M. Oberon; Mlle Imogen Taylor, M. Carbury Glande, Dr Baradi, M. Robin Herrington et la Hon. Grizel Locke.’ Troy’s attention was arrested and then transfixed. It was a clear photograph taken on the roof-garden. There they were, perfectly recognizable, all except Grizel Locke.

  The photograph of Grizel Locke was that of a short, lean woman with the face of a complete stranger.

  V

  Robin was driving up a rough lane into the hills with Ginny beside him saying feverishly: ‘You’re sure this is a shorter way? It’s a quarter to eight, Robin! Robin, you’re sure?’

  He thought: ‘The tank was three-quarter full. How long before the petrol stopped flowing?’

  ‘There’s tons of time,’ he said, ‘and I’m quite sure.’ As he turned the next corner the engine missed and then stopped. Robin crammed on his brakes.

  Looking at Ginny’s blank face he thought: ‘Now, we’re for it. It’s tonight or nevermore for Ginny and me.’

  Dupont, waiting under the stars on the platform outside the Chèvre d’Argent looked at his watch. It was a quarter to eight. He sighed and settled himself inside his coat. He expected a long vigil.

  VI

  Teresa’s candle bobbed ahead. Sometimes it vanished round corners, sometimes dipped or ascended as she arrived at steps and sometimes it was stationary for a moment as she stopped and listened. Presently they were on familiar ground. Forward, on their left, was the operating room: opposite this, the room where Miss Truebody had waited. Nearer, on their right, a thin blade of light across the carpet indicated the door into Baradi’s room. Teresa’s hand, dramatized by candlelight, shielded the flame. Beyond her, the curtain at the end of the passage was faintly defined against some further diffusion of light.

  She passed Baradi’s door. Alleyn and Raoul approached it. Alleyn held up a warning hand. He halted and then
crept forward. His ear was at the door. Beyond it, like erring souls, Baradi and his servant were talking together in their own language.

  Alleyn and Raoul moved on. Teresa had come to the curtain. They saw her lift it and a triangle of warmth appeared. Her candle sank to the floor. The foot of the curtain was raised and the candle, followed by the doubled-up shape of Teresa disappeared beneath it.

  ‘Good girl,’ Alleyn thought, ‘she’s remembered the rings.’

  He followed quickly. He was tall enough to reach the rings and hold the top of the curtain to the rail while he raised the skirt for Raoul to pass through.

  Now Raoul was in the great hall where the candelabrum still burned on the central table. Teresa had already passed into the entrance lobby. Alleyn still held the curtain in his hand when Teresa blew her nose.

  He slipped back behind the curtain, leaving a peephole for himself. He saw Raoul hesitate and then move forward until his back was to the light and he saw a white-robed figure that might have been himself come in from the lobby. Looking beyond the six burning candles he watched the two figures confront each other. The white hood was thrust back and Carbury Glande’s red beard jutted out. Alleyn heard him mutter.

  ‘Well, thank God for you, anyway. You have put him in a tizzy! What happened?’

  The black cowl moved slightly from side to side. The head was bent.

  ‘Oh, all right!’ Glande said pettishly. ‘What a stickler you are, to be sure!’

  The white figure crossed the end of the hall and disappeared up the stairway.

  Raoul moved on into the lobby and Alleyn came out of cover and followed him. When he entered the lobby, Alleyn went to the carved chest that stood against the back wall. It was there that the Egyptian servant had put the key of the wrought-iron door. Alleyn found the key and through the grill tossed it out of reach into the outside passageway.

  From the lobby, the staircase wound downwards. Teresa’s candle, out of sight and sinking, threw up her own travelling shadow and that of Raoul. Alleyn followed them, but they moved faster than he and he was left to grope his way down in a kind of twilight. He had completed three descending spirals when he arrived at the landing. The door he had noticed on his previous visit was now open and beyond it was a bedroom with a light burning before a looking-glass. This, evidently, was Robin Herrington’s room. Alleyn went in. On the outside doorhandle hung a notice: ‘Heure de Méditation. Ne érangez pas.’ He hung it outside and shut the door.

  The room had the smell and sensation of luxury that were characteristic of the Chèvre d’Argent. A white robe, like his own, was laid out together with silk shorts and shirt and a pair of white sandals. Alleyn changed quickly. On a table near the bed was a silver box, an ashtray, an elaborate lighter and, incongruously, a large covered dish which, on examination, proved to contain a sumptuous assortment of hors d’oeuvres and savouries. In the box were three cigarettes; long, thin and straw-coloured. He took one up, smelt it, broke it across and put the two halves in his case. He held a second to the candle, kept it going by returning it continuously to the flame and, as it was consumed, broke the ash into the tray.

  ‘Three of those,’ he thought, ‘and young Herrington’s values would be as cockeyed as one of Carbury Glande’s abstracts.’

  There was the lightest of taps on the door. It opened slightly, ‘Monsieur?’ whispered Teresa.

  He let her in.

  ‘Monsieur, it is to tell you that I have executed your order. I have spoken to M. Oberon. Tonight he was not as formerly he has been. He was not interested in me but all the same he was excited. One would have thought he was intoxicated, Monsieur, but he does not take wine.’

  ‘You gave the message?’

  ‘Yes, Monsieur. He listened eagerly and questioned me, saying: ‘Have you seen her?’ and I thought best, with the permission of the Saints, to say ‘yes.’

  ‘Quite so, Teresa.’

  ‘He then asked me if Mademoiselle Taylor was quite well and I said she was and then if she seemed happy and I said ‘yes, she seemed pleased and excited’ because that is how one is, Monsieur, when one keeps an appointment. And I repeated that Mademoiselle had asked to be alone and he said: ‘Of course, of course. It is essential,’ as if to himself. And he was staring in a strange manner as if I was not there and so I left him. And although I was frightened, Monsieur, I was not troubled as formerly by M. Oberon because Raoul is the friend of my bosom and to him I will be constant.’

  ‘I should certainly stick to that, if I were you. You are a good girl, Teresa, and now you must catch your bus. Tomorrow you shall choose a fine present against your wedding day.’

  ‘Ah, Monsieur!’ Teresa exclaimed and neatly sketching ineffable astonishment and delight, she slipped out of the room.

  It was now eight o’clock. Alleyn settled down to his vigil. He thought of poor Miss Truebody and of the four remaining guests and Mr Oberon, each in his or her room, and each, he believed, oppressed by an almost intolerable sense of approaching climax. He wondered if Robin Herrington had followed his advice about blocking the vent in the cap on his petrol tank and he wondered if Troy had had any success in breaking down Ginny’s enthralment.

  He turned over in his mind all he had read of that curious expression of human credulity called magic. As it happened he had been obliged on a former case to dig up evidence of esoteric ritual and had become fascinated by its witness to man’s industry in the pursuit of a chimera. Hundreds and hundreds of otherwise intelligent men, he found, had subjected themselves throughout the centuries to the boredom of memorizing and reciting senseless formulae, to the indignity of unspeakable practices and to the threat of the most ghastly reprisals. Through age after age men and woman had starved, frightened and exhausted themselves, had got themselves racked, broken and burnt, had delivered themselves up to what they believed to be the threat of eternal damnation and all without any first hand evidence of the smallest success. Age after age the Oberons and Baradis had battened on this unquenchable credulity, had traced their pentagrams, muttered their interminable spells, performed their gruelling ceremonies and taken their toll. And at the same time, he reflected, the Oberons (never the Baradis) had ended by falling into their own traps. The hysteria they induced was refracted upon themselves. Beyond the reek of ceremonial smoke they too began to look for the terrifying reward.

  He wondered to what class of adept Oberon belonged. There was a definite hierarchy. There had always been practitioners who, however misguided, could not be accused of charlatanism. To this day, he believed, such beings existed, continuing their barren search for a talisman, for a philosopher’s stone, for power and for easy money.

  Magical rituals from the dawn of time had taken on the imprint of their several ages. From the scope and dignity of the Atkadian Inscriptions to the magnificence of the Graeco-Egyptian Papyri, from the pious Jewish mysteries to the squalors, brutalities and sheer silliness of the German pseudo-Faustian cults. From the Necromancer of the Coliseum to the surprisingly fresh folklorishness of the English genre: each had its peculiar character and its own formula of frustration. And alongside the direct line like a bastard brother ran the cult of Satanism, the imbecile horrors of the Black Mass, the Amatory Mass and the Mortuary Mass.

  If Oberon had read all the books in his own library he had a pretty sound knowledge of these rituals together with a generous helping of Hinduism, Voodoo and Polynesian mythology: a wide field from which to concoct a ceremony for the downfall of Ginny Taylor and her predecessors. Alleyn fancied that the orthodox forms would not be followed. The oath of silence he had read in Baradi’s room was certainly original. ‘If it’s the Amatory Mass as practised by Madame de Montespan,’ he thought, ‘poor old Raoul’s sunk from the word go.’ And he began to wonder what he should do if this particular crisis arose.

  He spent the rest of his vigil eating the savouries that had no doubt been provided to satisfy the hunger of the reefer addict and smoking his own cigarettes. He checked over the possibilit
ies of disaster and found them many and formidable. ‘All the same,’ he thought, ‘it’s worth it. And if the worst comes to the worst we can always –’

  Somebody was scratching at his door.

  He ground out his cigarette, extinguished his candle and seated himself on the floor with his back to the door and his legs folded Oberon-wise under his gown. He was facing the dressing-table with its large tilted looking-glass. The scratching persisted and turned into a feather-light tattoo of fingertips. He kept his gaze on that part of the darkness where he knew the looking-glass must be. He heard a fumbling and a slight rap and guessed that the notice had been moved from the door-handle. A vertical sliver of light appeared. He watched the reflection of the opening door and of the white-robed candle-bearer. He caught a glimpse, under the hood, of a long face with a beaked nose. Robed like that she seemed incredibly tall: no longer the figure of fantasy that she had presented yesterday in pedal-pushers and scarf and yet, unmistakably, the same woman. The door was shut. He bent his head and looked from under his brows at the reflection of the woman who advanced so close that he could hear her breathing behind him.

  ‘I know it’s against the Rule,’ she whispered, ‘I’ve got to speak to you.’

  He made no sign.

  ‘I don’t know what they’ll do to me if they find out but I’m actually past caring!’ In the glass he saw her put the candle on the table. ‘Have you smoked?’ she said. ‘If you have I suppose it’s no good. I haven’t.’ He heard her sit heavily in the chair. ‘Well,’ she whispered almost cosily, ‘it’s about Ginny. You’ve never seen an initiation, have you? I mean of that sort. You might at least nod or shake your head.’

  Alleyn shook his head.

  ‘I thought not. You’ve got to stop her doing it. She’s fond of you, you may depend upon it. If it was not for him she’d be in love like any other nice girl, with you. And you’re fond of her. I know. I’ve watched. Well, you’ve got to stop it. She’s a thoroughly nice girl,’ the prim whisper insisted, ‘and you’re still a splendid young fellow. Tell her she mustn’t.’