Spinsters in Jeopardy

by Ngaio Marsh

  The sound of bells came close and then stopped. A door opened in the wall beside the altar and the Egyptian servant walked through. He wore only a loin cloth and the squarish head-dress of antiquity. Before each of the initiates he set down a little box. ‘More reefers,’ thought Alleyn, keeping his head down. ‘Damned awkward if he wants to light them for us.’

  But the Egyptian made no attempt to do so. He moved away and out of the tail of his eye, Alley saw Annabella Wells reach out to her brazier, take a pair of tongs and light her cigarette with a piece of charcoal. Alleyn found that his brazier, too, was provided with tongs.

  Because of the form of the pentagram the occupants of the five points all had their backs turned to Baradi and their shoulders to each other. If Baradi was on his feet he would have a sort of aerial survey of their backs. If he was seated on the divan he would have a still less rewarding view. Alleyn reached out for a cigarette, hid it inside his robe and produced one of his own. This he lit with a coal from the brazier. He wondered if it had occurred to Raoul to employ the same ruse.

  Little spires of smoke began to rise from the five points of the star. The Egyptian had retired to a dark corner beyond the altar and presently began to strike a drum and play a meandering air on some reed instrument. To Alleyn the scene was preposterous and phony. He remembered Troy’s comment on the incident of the train window: hadn’t she compared it to bad cinematography? Even the ritual, for what it was worth, was bogus: a vamped up synthesis, he thought, of several magic formulae. The reedy phrase trickled on like a tourist-class advertisement for Cairo, the drum throbbed and presently he sensed an air of excitement among the initiates. The Egyptian began to chant and to increase the pace and volume of his drumming. Drum and voice achieved a sort of crescendo at the peak of which a second voice entered with a long vibrant call, startling in its unexpectedness. It was Baradi’s.

  From that moment it was impossible altogether to dismiss the Rites of the Sun as cheap or ridiculous. No doubt they were both but they were also alarming.

  Alleyn supposed that Baradi spoke Egyptian and that his chant was one of the set invocations of ritual magic. He thought he recognized the characteristic repetition of names: ‘O Oualbpaga! O Kammara! O Kamalo! O Karjenmou! O Amagaa! O Thouth! O Anubis!’ The drum thumped imperatively. Small feral noises came from the points of the pentagram. Behind Alleyn, Carbury Glande began to beat with his palm on the floor. The other initiates followed, Alleyn with them. The Egyptian left his drum and running about the pentagram, threw incense on the braziers. Columns of heavily scented smoke arose amid sharp cries from the initiates. A gong crashed and there was immediate silence.

  It was startling, after the long exhortations in an incomprehensible tongue to hear Baradi cry in a loud voice: ‘Children of the Sun in the Outer, turn inward, now turn in. Silence, silence, silence, symbol of the imperishable god protect us, silence. Turn inward now, turn in.’

  This injunction was taken literally by the initiates who reversed their positions on the cushions and thus faced Baradi and the centre of the pentagram. Looking across, diagonally, to the Black Robe, Alleyn saw that Raoul had not moved. The exhortations, being in English, had meant nothing to him. Alleyn dared not look up at Baradi. He could see his feet and his white robe, up to his knees. Between drifts of incense he caught sight of the other initiates, all waiting. It seemed as if an age went by before the Black Robe rose, turned and reseated itself. He saw Baradi’s feet shift and his robe swing as he faced the altar.

  Baradi intoned in a loud voice: ‘Here is the Names of Ra and the sons of Ra –’

  It was the oath Alleyn had read. Baradi gave it out phrase by phrase and the initiates repeated it after him. Alleyn spoke on the top register of his deep voice. Raoul, of course, said nothing. Miss Garbel’s thin pipe was unmistakable. Annabella’s trained and vibrant voice rang out loudly. Carbury Glande’s sounded unco-ordinated and hysterical.

  ‘If I break this oath in the least degree,’ Baradi dictated and was echoed, ‘may my lips be burnt with the fire that is now set before them.’ He gestured over his brazier. A tongue of flame darted up from it.

  ‘May my eyes be put out by the knife that is now set before them.’

  With a suddenness that was extraordinarily unnerving, five daggers dropped from the ceiling and checked with a jerk before the five initiates’ faces. A sixth, bigger, fell in front of Baradi who seized and flourished it. The others hung glittering in the flame-light of the brazier. The women gave little whimpering febrile cries.

  The oath of silence was taken through to its abominable conclusion. The flame subsided, the smaller daggers were drawn up to the ceiling, presumably by the Egyptian. The initiates turned outward again and Baradi settled down to a further exhortation, this time in English.

  It was the blackest possible kind of affair, quite short and entirely infamous. Baradi demanded darkness and the initiates put out their candles. Alleyn dared not look at Raoul but knew by the delayed flicker of light that he was a little slow with his. Then Baradi urged first of all the necessity of experiencing something called ‘The caress of the left hand of perfection’ and went on to particularize in terms that would have appalled anyone who was not an alienist or a member of Mr Oberon’s chosen circle. The Egyptian had returned to his reed and drum and the merciless repetition of a single phrase had its own effect. Baradi began to pour out a stream of names: Greek, Jewish, Egyptian: – Pan, Enlil, Elohim, Ra, Anubis, Seti, Adonis, Ra, Silenus, Ereschigal, Tetragramatom, Ra. The recurrent ‘Ra’ was presently taken up by the initiates who began to bark it out with an enthusiasm; Alleyn thought, only to be equalled by the organized cheers of an American ball game.

  ‘There are two signs,’ Baradi intoned. ‘There is the Sign of the Sun, Ra’ (‘Ra,’ barked the initiates), ‘and there is the sign of the Goat, Pan. And between the Sun and the Goat runs the endless cycle of the senses. Ra!’

  ‘Ra!’

  ‘We demand a sign.’

  ‘We demand a sign.’

  ‘What shall the sign be?’

  ‘The sign of the goat which is also the sign of the Sun which is also the sign of Ra.’

  ‘Let the goat come forth which is the Sun which is Ra.’

  ‘Ra!’

  The drumming was increased to a frenzy. The initiates beat on the floor and clapped. Baradi must have thrown more incense on the brazier: the air was thick with billowing fumes. Alleyn could scarcely make out the shape of the altar. Now Baradi must be striking cymbals together.

  The din was intolerable. The initiates, antic figures, half masked by whorls of smoke, seemed to have gone down on all-fours and to be flinging their hands high as they slapped the floor and cried out. Baradi broke into a chant, possibly in his own language, interspersed with further strings of names – Pan, Hylaesos, Lupercus, Silenos, Faunus – names that were caught up and shouted in fury of abandon by the other voices. Alleyn, shouting with the rest, edged round on his knees, until he could look across the pentagram to Raoul. In the glow of the braziers he could just make out the black crouching figure and the black gloved hands rising and falling like drumsticks.

  ‘A Sign, a Sign, let there be a Sign!’

  ‘It comes.’

  ‘It comes.’

  ‘It is here.’

  Again the well-staged crescendo that ended, this time, in a deafening crash of cymbals followed by a dead silence.

  And across that silence: pathetic, ridiculous and disturbing, broke the unmistakable bleat of a billy-goat.

  The smoke eddied and swirled, and there, on the altar for all the world like one of old Marie’s statuettes, it appeared, horned and shining, a silver goat whose hide glittered through the smoke. It opened its mouth sideways and superciliously bleated. Its pale eyes stared and it stamped and tossed its head.

  ‘It’s been shoved up there from the back,’ Alleyn thought. ‘They’ve treated it with fluorescent paint. Ça s’illumine.’

  Baradi was speaking again.

&nb
sp; ‘Prepare, prepare,’ he chanted. ‘The Sign is the Shadow of the Substance. The Goat-god is the precursor of the Man-god. The Man-god is the Bridegroom. He is the Spouse. He is Life. He is the Sun. Ra!’

  There was a blare of light, for perhaps a second literally blinding in its intensity. ‘Flash-powder,’ thought Alleyn. ‘The Egyptian must be remarkably busy.’ When his eyes had adjusted themselves, the goat had disappeared and in its place the sun-burst blazed on the altar. ‘Car batteries,’ thought Alleyn, ‘perhaps. Flex soldered at the terminals. Well done, Mahomet or somebody.’

  ‘Ra! Ra! Ra!’ the initiates ejaculated, with Baradi as their cheerleader.

  The door to the left of the altar had opened. It admitted a naked man.

  He advanced through wreaths of incense and stood before the blazing sun-burst. It was, of course, Mr Oberon.

  III

  Of the remainder of the ceremony, as far as he witnessed it, Alleyn afterwards prepared an official report. Neither this, nor a manual called The Book of Ra, which contained the text of the ritual, has ever been made public. Indeed, they have been stowed away in the archives of Scotland Yard where they occupy a place of infamy rivalling that of the Book of Horus and the Swami Viva Ananda. There are duplicates at the Sûretè. In the trial they were not put in as primary evidence and the judge, after a distasteful glance, said that he saw no reason why the jury should be troubled to look at them.

  For purpose of this narrative it need only be said that with the appearance of Oberon, naked, in the role of Ra or Horus, or both, the Rites took on the character of unbridled phallicism. He stood on some raised place before the blazing sun-burst, holding a dagger in both hands. More incense burners were set reeking at his feet, and there he was, the nearest approach, Alleyn afterwards maintained, that he had ever seen, to a purely evil being.

  His entry stung the initiates into their last pitch of frenzy. Incredible phrases were chanted, indescribable gestures were performed. The final crescendo of that scandalous affair rocketed up to its point of climax. For the last time the Egyptian’s drum rolled and Baradi clashed his cymbals. For the last time pandemonium gave place to silence.

  Oberon came down from his eminence and walked towards the encircled pentagram. His feet slapped the tessellated pavement. His hair, lit from behind, was a nimbus about his head. He entered the pentagram and the initiates turned inwards, crouching beastily at the points. Oberon placed himself at the centre. Baradi spoke.

  ‘Horus who is Savitar who is Baldur who is Ra. The Light, The Beginning and The End, The Life, The Source and The Fulfilment. Choose, now, Lord, O choose.’

  Oberon extended his arm and pointed his dagger at Raoul.

  Baradi went to Raoul. He held out his hand. In the capricious glare from he sunburst Alleyn could see Raoul on his knees, his shadow thrown before him towards Oberon’s feet. His face was deeply hidden in his hood. Alleyn saw the gloved hand and arm reach out. Baradi took the hand. He passed Raoul across him with a dancer’s gesture.

  Raoul now faced Oberon.

  Somewhere in the shadows the Egyptian servant cried out shrilly.

  Baradi’s dark hands, themselves seeming gloved, closed on the shoulders of Raoul’s robe. Suddenly, with a flourish, and to a roll of the drum, he swept it free of its wearer. ‘Behold!’ he shouted: ‘The Bride!’

  And then, in the glare from the sun-burst, where, like an illustration from La Vie Parisienne, Mr Oberon’s victim should have been discovered – there stood Raoul in his underpants, black slippers and Ginny Taylor’s gloves.

  A complete surprise is often something of an anti-climax and so, for a moment or two, was this. It is possible that Annabella Wells and Carbury Glande were too fuddled with marihuana to get an immediate reaction. Miss Garbel, of course, had been prepared. As for Oberon and Baradi, they faced each other across the preposterous Thing they had unveiled and their respective jaws dropped like those of a pair of simultaneous comedians. Raoul himself merely cast a scandalized glance at Oberon and uttered in a loud apocalyptic voice the single word: ‘Anathema!’

  It was then that Miss Garbel erupted in a single hoot of hysteria. It escaped from her and was at once cut off by her own hand clapped across her mouth. She squatted, heaving, in the corner of the pentacle, her terrified eyes staring over her knuckles at Baradi.

  Baradi, in an unrecognizable voice and an unconscious quotation, said: ‘Which of you has done this?’

  Oberon gave a bubbling cry: ‘I am betrayed!’

  Raoul, hearing his voice, repeated: ‘Anathema!’ and made the sign of the cross.

  Oberon dragged Miss Garbel to her feet. He held her with his right hand; in his left was the dagger. She chattered in his face: ‘You can’t! You can’t! I’m protected. You can’t!’

  Alleyn advanced until he was quite close to them. Glande and Annabella Wells were on their feet.

  ‘Is this your doing?’ Oberon demanded, lowering his face to Miss Garbel’s.

  ‘Not mine!’ she chattered. ‘Not this time. Not mine!’

  He flung her off. Baradi turned to Raoul.

  ‘Well!’ Baradi said in French, ‘so I know you, now. Where’s your master?’

  ‘Occupy yourself with your own affairs, Monsieur.’

  ‘We are lost!’ Oberon cried out in English.

  His hand moved. The knife glinted.

  ‘Alors, Raoul!’ said Alleyn.

  Raoul stooped and ran. He ran out of the pentacle and across the floor. The Egyptian darted out and was knocked sideways. His head struck the corner of the altar and he lay still. Raoul sped through the open door into Oberon’s room. Oberon followed him. Alleyn followed Oberon and caught him up on the far side of the great looking-glass. He seized his right hand as it was raised. ‘Not this time,’ Alleyn grunted and jerked his arm. The dagger flew from Oberon’s hand and splintered the great glass. At the same moment Raoul kicked. Oberon gave a scream of pain, staggered across the room and lurched against the window. With a whirr and a clatter the blind flew up and Oberon sank on the floor moaning. Alleyn turned to find Baradi facing him with the knife in his hand.

  ‘You,’ Baradi said, ‘I might have guessed. You!’

  IV

  From the moment that the affair began, as it were, to wind itself up in Oberon’s room, it became a straightout conflict between Alleyn and Baradi. Alleyn had guessed that it would be so. Even while he sweated to remember his police training in unarmed combat he found time to consider that Oberon, naked and despicable, had at last become a negligible element. Alleyn was even aware of Carbury Glande and Annabella Wells teetering uncertainly in the doorway, and of Miss Garbel who hovered like a spinsterly half-back on the edge of the scrimmage.

  But chiefly he was aware of Baradi’s dark infuriated body, smelling of sandalwood. and sweat, and of the knowledge that he himself was the fitter man. They struggled together ridiculously and ominously, looking in their white robes, like a couple of frenzied monks. There was, for Alleyn, a sort of pleasure in this fight. ‘I needn’t worry. For once, I needn’t worry,’ he thought. Tor once the final arbitrament is as simple as this. I’m fitter than he is.’

  And when Raoul, absurd in his underpants and long gloves, suddenly hurled himself at Baradi and brought him down with a crash, Alleyn was conscious of a sort of irritation. He looked across the floor and saw that Raoul’s foot, in its ridiculous sandal, had pinned down Baradi’s left wrist. He saw Baradi’s fingers uncurl from the knife-handle. He shoved free, landed a short-arm jab on the point of Baradi’s jaw and felt him go soft. They had brought down the prayer-wheel in their struggle. Alleyn reached for it and flung it at the window. It crashed through and he heard it fall with the broken glass on the railway line below. Oberon screamed out an oath. Alleyn fetched his breath and blew with all the wind he had on M. Dupont’s police whistle. It trilled shrilly, like a toy, and was answered and echoed and answered again outside.

  ‘The house is surrounded,’ Alleyn said, looking at Glande and Oberon. ‘I have
a police authority. Anyone trying violence or flight will be dealt with out-of-hand. Stay where you are, all of you.’

  The glare from the sun-burst streamed through the doorway on clouds of incense. Alleyn bound Baradi’s arms behind his back with the cord of his gown. Raoul tied his ankles together with the long gloves. Baradi’s head lolled drunkenly and he made uncouth noises.

  ‘I want to make a statement,’ Oberon said shrilly. ‘I am a British subject. I have my passport. I offer myself for Queen’s evidence. I have my passport.’

  Annabella Wells, standing in the doorway, began to laugh. Carbury Glande said: ‘Shut up, for God’s sake. This is IT.’

  Abruptly the room was lit. Wall-lamps, a bedside lamp and a standard lamp all came to life. By normal standards it was not a brilliant illumination but it had the effect of reducing that unlikely interior to an embarrassing state of anti-climax. Glande, Annabella Wells and poor Miss Garbel, huddled in their robes, looked dishevelled and ineffectual. Baradi had a trickle of blood running from his nose into his moustache. The Egyptian servant staggered into the doorway holding his head in his hands and wearing the foolish expression of a punch-happy pugilist. Oberon, standing before the cracked looking-glass as no doubt he had often done before: Oberon, naked, untactfully lit, was so repellent a sight that Alleyn threw the cover of the divan at him.

  ‘You unspeakable monstrosity,’ he said, ‘get behind that.’

  ‘I offer a full statement. I am the victim of Dr Baradi. I claim protection.’

  Baradi opened his eyes and shook the blood from his moustache.

  ‘I challenge your authority,’ he said, blinking at Alleyn.

  ‘Alleyn, Chief Detective-Inspector, CID, New Scotland Yard. On loan to the Sûreté. My card and my authority are in my coat-pocket and my coat’s in young Herrington’s room.’