Spinsters in Jeopardy Page 7

  He went to Ricky and lifted him in his arms. Troy gave her hand to Mr Oberon. His own wrapped itself round hers, tightened, and was suddenly withdrawn. ‘You must visit us again,’ he said. ‘If you are a voyager of the spirit, and I think you are, it might interest you to come to one of our meditations.’

  ‘Yes, do come,’ urged his Sati, who had abandoned her exercises on Alleyn’s entrance. ‘It’s madly wonderful. You must. Where are you staying?’

  ‘At the Royal.’

  ‘Couldn’t be easier. No need to hire a car. The Douceville bus leaves from the corner. Every half-hour. You’ll find it perfectly convenient.’

  Troy was reminded vividly of Mr Garbel’s letters. She murmured something non-committal, said goodbye and went to the door.

  ‘I’ll see you out,’ Robin Herrington offered and took up his heavy walking-stick.

  As she groped down the darkened stairway she heard their voices rumbling above her. They came slowly; Alleyn because of Ricky and Herrington because of his stiff leg. The sensation of nightmare that threatened without declaring itself, mounted in intensity. The stairs seemed endless yet when she reached the door into the hall she was half-scared of opening it because Carbury Glande might be on the other side. But the hall was untenanted. She hurried through it and out to the courtyard. The iron gates had an elaborate fastening. Troy fumbled with it, dazzled by the glare of sunlight beyond. She pulled at the heavy latch, bruising her fingers. A voice behind her and at her feet said: ‘Do let me help you.’

  Carbury Glande must have come up the stairs from beneath the courtyard. His face, on a level with her knees, peered through the interstices of the wrought-iron banister. Recognition dawned on it.

  ‘Can it be Troy?’ he ejaculated hoarsely. ‘But it is!’ Dear heart, how magical and how peculiar. Where have you sprung from? And why are you scrabbling away at doors? Has Oberon alarmed you? I may say he petrifies me. What are you up to?’

  He had arrived at her level, a short gnarled man whose hair and beard were red and whose face, at the moment, was a dreadful grey. He blinked up at Troy as if he couldn’t get her into focus. He was wearing a pair of floral shorts and a magenta shirt.

  ‘I’m not up to anything,’ said Troy. ‘In fact, I’m scarcely here at all. We’ve brought your host a middle-aged spinster with a perforated appendix and now we’re on our way.’

  ‘Ah, yes. I heard about the spinster. Ali Baradi woke me at cockcrow, full of professional zeal, and asked me if I’d like to thread needles and count sponges. How he dared! Are you going?’

  ‘I must,’ Troy said. ‘Do open this damned door for me.’

  She could hear Alleyn’s and Herrington’s voices in the hall and the thump of Herrington’s stick.

  Glande reached for the latch. His hand, stained round the nails with paint, was tremulous. ‘I am, as you can see, a wreck,’ he said. ‘A Homeric party and only four hours’ sottish insensitivity in which to recover. Imagine it! There you are.’

  He opened the doors and winced at the glare outside. ‘Oberon will be thrilled you’re here,’ he said. ‘Did you know he bought a thing of yours at the Rond-Point show? It’s in the library. ‘Boy with a Kite.’ He adores it.’

  ‘Look here,’ Troy said hurriedly, ‘be a good chap and don’t tell him I’m me. I’ve come here for a holiday and I’d so much rather …’

  ‘Well, if you like. Yes, of course. Yes, I understand. And on mature consideration I fancy this ménage is not entirely your cup of tea. You’re almost pathologically normal, aren’t you? Forgive me if I bolt back to my burrow, the glare is really more than I can endure. God, somebody’s coming!’

  He stumbled away from the door. Alleyn with Ricky in his arms, came out of the hall followed by Robin Herrington. Glande ejaculated: ‘Oh, sorry!’ and bolted down the stairs. Herrington scowled after him and said: ‘That’s our tame genius. I’ll come to the car, if I may.’

  As they walked in single file down the steps and past the maker of figurines, Troy had the feeling that Robin wanted to say something to them and didn’t know how to begin. They had reached the open platform where Raoul waited by the car before he blurted out:

  ‘I do hope you will let me drive you down, to see the yacht. Both of you, I mean. I mean …’ he stopped short.

  Alleyn said: ‘That’s very nice of you. I hadn’t heard about a yacht.’

  ‘She’s quite fun.’ He stood there, still with an air of hesitancy. Alleyn shifted Ricky and looked at Troy, who held out her hand to Robin.

  ‘Don’t come any farther,’ she said. ‘Goodbye and thank you.’

  ‘Goodbye. If we may, Ginny and I will call at the hotel. It’s the Royal, I suppose. I mean, it might amuse you to come for a drive. I mean, if you don’t know anybody here …’

  ‘It’d be lovely,’ Troy temporized, wondering if Alleyn wanted her to accept.

  ‘As a matter of fact,’ Alleyn said, ‘we have got someone we ought to look up in Roqueville. Do you know anybody about here with the unlikely name of Garbel?’

  Robin’s jaw dropped. He stared at them with an expression of extraordinary consternation. ‘I … no. No. We haven’t really met any of the local people. No. Well I mustn’t keep you standing in the sun. Goodbye.’

  And with a precipitancy as marked as his former hesitation, he turned and limped off down the passageway.

  ‘Now what,’ Troy asked her husband, ‘in a crazy world, is the significance of that particular bit of lunacy?’

  ‘I’ve not the beginning of a notion,’ he said. ‘But I suggest that when we’ve got time to think, we call on Mr Garbel.’

  CHAPTER 4

  The Elusiveness of Mr Garbel

  Ricky woke up before they could get him to the car and was bewildered to find himself transported. He was hot, hungry, thirsty and uncomfortable and he required immediate attention.

  While Troy and Alleyn looked helplessly about the open platform Raoul advanced from the car, his face brilliant with understanding. He squatted on his heels beside the flushed and urgent Ricky and addressed him in very simple French which he appeared to understand and to which he readily responded. Marie, of the figurines, Raoul explained to the parents, would offer suitable hospitality and he and Ricky went off together, Ricky glancing up at him with admiration.

  ‘It appears,’ Alleyn said, ‘that a French nanny and those bi-weekly conversational tramps with Mademoiselle to the Round Pond have not been unproductive. Our child has the rudiments of the language.’

  ‘Mademoiselle,’ Troy rejoined, ‘says he’s prodigiously quick for his age. An amazing child, she thinks.’ And she added hotly; ‘Well, all right, I don’t say so to anyone else, do I?’

  ‘My darling, you do not and you shall never say so too often to me. But for the moment let us take our infant phenomenon for granted and look at the situation Chèvre d’Argent. Tell me as quickly as you can, what happened before I cropped up among those cups-of-tea on the rooftop.’

  They sat together on the running-board of the car and Troy did her best. ‘Admirable,’ he said when she had finished. ‘I fell in love with you in the first instance because you made such beautiful statements. Now, what do you suppose goes on in that house?’

  ‘Something quite beastly,’ she said vigorously. ‘I’m sure of it. Oberon’s obviously dishing out to his chums some fantastic hodgepodge of mysticism-cum-religion-cum, I’m very much afraid, eroticism. Grizel Locke attempted a sort of résumé. You never heard such a rigmarole … yoga, Nietzsche, black magic. Voodoo, I wouldn’t be surprised. With Lord knows what fancy touches of their own thrown in. It ought to be merely silly but it’s not, it’s frightening. Grizel Locke, I should say, is potty, but the two young ones in any other setting would have struck me as being pleasant children. The boy’s obviously in a state about the girl who seems to be completely in Oberon’s toils. It’s so fantastic, it isn’t true.’

  ‘Have you ever heard of the case of Horus and the Swami Vivi Ananda?’

  ‘N
o.’

  ‘They appeared before Curtis Bennett with Edward Carson prosecuting and got swinging sentences for their pains. There’s no time to tell you about them now but you’ve more or less described their set-up, and I assure you there’s nothing so very unusual about the religio-erotic racket. Oberon’s name, by the way, is Albert George Clarkson. He’s a millionaire and undoubtedly one of the drug barons. The cult of the Children of the Sun in the Outer is merely a useful sideline and a means, I suspect, of gratifying a particularly nasty personal taste. They suggested as much at the Sûreté though they don’t know exactly what goes on among the Sun’s Babies. The Sûreté is interested solely in the narcotics side of the show and the Yard’s watching it from our end.’

  ‘And you?’

  ‘I’m supposed to be the perishing link or something. What about the red-headed gentleman with painty hands and a carryover who was letting you out?’

  ‘He might be serious, Rory. He’s Carbury Glande. He paints those post-surrealist things … witches’ sabbaths and mystic unions. You must remember. Rather pretty colour and good design but a bit nasty in feeling. The thing is, he knows me and although I asked him not to, he’ll probably talk.’

  ‘Does he know about us?’

  ‘I can’t tell. He might.’

  ‘Damn!’

  ‘I shouldn’t have come, should I? If Glande knows who you are, he won’t be able to resist telling them and bang goes your job.’

  ‘They didn’t give me Glande’s name at the Sûreté. He must be a later arrival. Never mind, we’ll gamble on his not knowing you made a mésalliance with a policeman. Now, listen, my darling, I don’t know how long I’ll be up here. It may be an hour and it may be twenty-four. Will you settle yourself and Ricky at the Royal and forget about the Chèvre d’Argent? If there’s any goat on the premises it will probably be your devoted husband. I’ll make what hay I can while the sun shines in the Outer and I’ll turn up as soon as maybe. One thing more. Will you try, when you’ve come to your poor senses, to ring up Mr Garbel? He may not be on the telephone, of course, but if he is …’

  ‘Lord, yes! Mr Garbel! Now why, for pity’s sake, did Robin Herrington run like a rabbit at the mention of P.E.Garbel? Can cousin Garbel be a drug baron? Or an addict, if it comes to that? It might account for his quaint literary style.’

  ‘Have you by any chance, brought his letters?’

  ‘Only the last, for the sake of his address.’

  ‘Hang on to it, I implore you. If he is on the telephone and answers, ask him to luncheon tomorrow and I’ll be there. If, by any chance, he turns up before then, find out if he knows any of Oberon’s chums and is prepared to talk about them. Here comes Raoul and Ricky. Forget about this blasted business, my own true love, and enjoy yourself if you can.’

  ‘What about Miss Truebody?’

  ‘Baradi is pretty worried, he says. I’m quite certain he’s doing all that can be done for her. He’s a kingpin at his job, you know, however much he may stink to high heaven as a chap.’

  ‘Shouldn’t I wait with her?’

  ‘No. Any more of that and I’ll begin to think you like having your hand kissed by luscious Oriental gentlemen. Hallo, Rick, ready for your drive?’

  Ricky advanced with his hands behind his back and with strides designed to match those of his companion. ‘Is Raoul driving us?’ he asked.

  ‘He is. You and Mummy.’

  ‘Good. Daddy, look! Look, Mummy!’

  He produced from behind his back a little goat, painted silver grey, with one foot upraised and mounted on a base that roughly traced the outlines of the Château de la Chèvre d’Argent. ‘The old lady made it and Raoul gave it to me,’ Ricky said. ‘It’s a silver goat and when it’s night-time it makes itself shine. Doesn’t it Raoul? N’est ce pas, Raoul?’

  ‘Oui, oui. Une chèvre d’argent qui s’illumine.’

  ‘Daddy, isn’t Raoul kind?’

  Alleyn, a little embarrassed, told Raoul how kind he was and Troy, haltingly, attempted to say that he shouldn’t.

  Raoul said: ‘But it is nothing, Madame. If it pleases this young gallant and does not offend Madame, all is well. What are my orders, Monsieur?’

  ‘Will you drive Madame and Ricky to their hotel? Then go to M. le Commissaire at the Préfecture and give him this letter. Tell him that I will call on him as soon as possible. Tell him also about the operation and of course reply to any questions he may ask. Then return here. There is no immediate hurry and you will have time for déjeuner. Do not report at the château but wait here for me. If I haven’t turned up by 3.30 you may ask for me at the château. You will remember that?’

  Raoul repeated his instructions. Alleyn looked steadily at him. ‘Should you be told that I am not there, drive to the nearest telephone, ring up the Préfecture and tell M. le Commissaire precisely what has happened. Understood?’

  ‘Well understood, Monsieur.’

  ‘Good. One thing more, Raoul. Do you know anyone in Roqueville called Garbel?’

  ‘Garr-bel? No, Monsieur. It will be an English person for whom Monsieur inquires?’

  ‘Yes. The address is 16 Rue des Violettes.’

  Raoul repeated the address. ‘It is an apartment house, that one. It is true one finds a few English there, for the most part ladies no longer young and with small incomes who do not often engage taxis.’

  ‘Ah, well,’ Alleyn said. ‘No matter.’

  He took off his hat and kissed his wife. ‘Have a nice holiday,’ he said, ‘and give my love to Mr Garbel.’

  ‘What were you telling Raoul?’

  ‘Wouldn’t you like to know! Goodbye, Rick. Take care of your Mama, she’s a good kind creature and means well.’

  Ricky grinned. He was quick, when he didn’t understand his father’s remarks, to catch their intention from the colour of his voice. ‘Entendu,’ he said, imitating Raoul, and climbed into the car beside him.

  ‘I suppose I may sit here?’ he said airily.

  ‘He is a precocious little perisher and no mistake,’ Alleyn muttered. ‘Do you suppose it’ll all peter out and he’ll be a dullard by the time he’s eight.’

  ‘A lot of it’s purely imitative. It sounds classier than it is. Move up, Ricky, I’m coming in front, too.’

  Alleyn watched the car drive down the steep lane to the main road. Then he turned back to the Château de la Chèvre d’Argent.

  II

  On the way back to Roqueville Raoul talked nursery French to Ricky and his mother, pointing out the places of interest: the Alpine monastery where, in the cloisters, one might see many lively pictures executed by the persons of the district whose relations had been saved from abrupt destruction by the intervention of Our Lady of Paysdoux; villages that looked as if they had been thrown against the rocks and had stuck to them; distant prospects of little towns. On a lonely stretch of road, Troy offered him a cigarette and while he lit it he allowed Ricky to steer the scarcely moving car. Ricky’s dotage on Raoul intensified with every kilometre they travelled together and Troy’s understanding of French improved with astonishing rapidity. Altogether they enjoyed each other’s company immensely and the journey seemed a short one. They could scarcely believe that the cluster of yellow and pink buildings that presently appeared beneath them was Roqueville.

  Raoul turned aside from the steeply descending road and drove down a narrow side-street past an open market where bunches of dyed immortelles hung shrilly above the stalls and the smell of tuberoses was mingled with the pungency of fruit and vegetables. All the world, Raoul said, was abroad at this hour in the market and he flung loud unembarrassed greetings to many persons of his acquaintance. Troy felt her spirits rising and Ricky dropped into the stillness that with him was a sign of extreme pleasure. He sighed deeply and laid one hand on Raoul’s knee and one, clasping his silver goat, on Troy’s.

  They were in a shadowed street where the houses were washed over with faint candy-pink, lemon and powder-blue. Strings of washing hung from one
iron balcony to another.

  ‘Rue des Violettes,’ Raoul said, pointing to the street-sign and presently halted. ‘Numero seize.’

  Troy gathered that he offered her an opportunity to call on Mr Garbel or, if she was not so inclined, to note the whereabouts of his lodgings. She could see through the open door into a dim and undistinguished interior. A number of raffish children clustered about the car. They chattered in an incomprehensible patois and stared with an air of hardihood at Ricky, who instantly became stony.

  Troy thought Raoul was offering to accompany her into the house, but sensing panic in the breast of her son, she managed to say that she would go in by herself. ‘I can’t leave a note,’ she thought and said to Ricky: ‘I won’t be a moment. You stay with Raoul, darling.’

  ‘OK,’ he agreed, still fully occupied with disregarding the children. He was like a dog who, when addressed by his master, wags his tail but does not lower his hackles. Raoul shouted at the children and made a shooing noise driving them from the car. They retreated a little, skittishly twitting him. He got out and opened the door for Troy, removing his cap as if she were a minor royalty. Impressed by this evidence of prestige, most of the children fell back, though two of the hardier raised a beggar’s plaint and were silenced by Raoul.

  The door of No. 16 was ajar. Troy pushed it open and crossed a dingy tessellated floor to a lift-well beside which hung a slotted board holding cards, some with printed and some with written names on them. She had begun hunting up and down the board when a voice behind her said: ‘Madame?’

  Troy turned as if she’d been struck. The door of a sort of cubbyhole opposite the lift was held partly open by a grimy and heavily ringed hand. Beyond the hand Troy could see folds of a black satin dress, an iridescence of bead-work and three-quarters of a heavy face and piled-up coiffure.

  She felt as if she’d been caught doing something shady. Her nursery French deserted her.

  ‘Pardon,’ she stammered. ‘Je désire – je cherche – Monsieur Garbel – le nom de Garbel.’

  The woman said something incomprehensible to Troy who replied, ‘Je ne parle pas Français. Malheureusement,’ she added on an afterthought. The woman made a resigned noise and waddled out of her cubby-hole. She was enormously fat and used a walking-stick. Her eyes were like black currants sunk in uncooked dough. She prodded with her stick at the top of the board and, strangely familiar in that alien place, a spidery signature in faded ink was exhibited: ‘P.E.Garbel.’