Spinsters in Jeopardy

‘Then how do you know she’s not getting ready?’

‘I don’t know, really. I just hope she’s not.’

‘Why?’

‘I want her to rest, and if you say why again I won’t answer.’

‘I see.’ There was a pause. The voice chuckled. ‘Why?’ it asked.

Alleyn had found his shirt. He now discovered that he had put it on inside out. He took it off.

‘If,’ the voice pursued, ‘I said a sensible why, would you answer, Daddy?’

‘It would have to be entirely sensible.’

‘Why are you getting up in the dark?’

‘I had hoped,’ Alleyn said bitterly, ‘that all little boys were fast asleep and I didn’t want to wake them.’

‘Because now you know, they aren’t asleep so why – ?’

‘You’re perfectly right,’ Alleyn said. The train rounded a curve and he ran with some violence against the door. He switched on the light and contemplated his son.

Ricky had the newly-made look peculiar to little boys in bed. His dark hair hung sweetly over his forehead, his eyes shone and his cheeks and lips were brilliant. One would have said he was so new that his colours had not yet dried.

‘I like being in a train,’ he said, ‘more lavishly than anything that’s ever happened so far. Do you like being in a train, Daddy?’

‘Yes,’ said Alleyn. He opened the door of the washing-cabinet which lit itself up. Ricky watched his father shave.

‘Where are we now?’ he said presently.

‘By a sea. It’s called the Mediterranean and it’s just out there on the other side of the train. We shall see it when it’s daytime.’

‘Are we in the middle of the night?’

‘Not quite. We’re in the very early morning. Out there everybody is fast asleep,’ Alleyn suggested, not very hopefully.

‘Everybody?’

‘Almost everybody. Fast asleep and snoring.’

‘All except us,’ Ricky said with rich satisfaction, ‘because we are lavishly wide awake in the very early morning in a train. Aren’t we Daddy?’

‘That’s it. Soon we’ll pass the house where I’m going tomorrow. The train doesn’t stop there, so I have to go on with you to Roqueville and drive back. You and Mummy will stay in Roqueville.’

‘Where will you be most of the time?’

‘Sometimes with you and sometimes at this house. It’s called the Château de la Chèvre d’Argent. That means the House of the Silver Goat.’

‘Pretty funny name, however,’ said Ricky.

A stream of sparks ran past the window. The light from the carriage flew across the surface of a stone wall. The train had begun to climb steeply. It gradually slowed down until there was time to see nearby objects lamplit, in the world outside: a giant cactus, a flight of steps, part of an olive grove. The engine laboured almost to a standstill. Outside their window, perhaps a hundred yards away, there was a vast house that seemed to grow out of the cliff. It stood full in the moonlight and shadows, black as ink, were thrown by buttresses across its recessed face. A solitary window, veiled by a patterned blind, glowed dully yellow.

‘Somebody is awake out there,’ Ricky observed. ‘ “Out” “In”?’ he speculated. ‘Daddy, what are those people? “Out” or “In”?’

‘Outside for us, I suppose, and inside for them.’

‘Ouside the train and inside the house,’ Ricky agreed. ‘Suppose the train ran through the house, would they be “in” for us?’

‘I hope,’ his father observed glumly, ‘that you won’t grow up a metaphysician.’

‘What’s that? Look, there they are in their house. We’ve stopped, haven’t we?’

The carriage window was exactly opposite the lighted one in the cliff-like wall of the house. A blurred shape moved in the room on the other side of the blind. It swelled and became a black body pressed against the window.

Allyen made a sharp ejaculation and a swift movement.

‘Because you’re standing right in front of the window,’ Ricky said politely, ‘and it would be rather nice to see out.’

The train jerked galvanically and with a compound racketing noise, slowly entered a tunnel, emerged, and gathering pace, began a descent to sea-level.

The door of the compartment opened and Troy stood there in a woollen dressing-gown. Her short hair was rumpled and hung over her forehead like her son’s. Her face was white and her eyes dark with perturbation. Alleyn turned quickly. She looked from him to Ricky. ‘Have you seen out of the window?’ she asked.

‘I have,’ said Alleyn. ‘And so, by the look of you, have you.’

Troy said, ‘Can you help me with my suitcase?’ and to Ricky: ‘I’ll come back and get you up soon, darling.’

‘Are you both going?’

‘We’ll be just next door. We shan’t be long,’ Alleyn said.

‘It’s only because it’s in a train.’

‘We know,’ Troy reassured him. ‘But it’s all right. Honestly. OK?’

‘OK,’ Ricky said in a small voice and Troy touched his cheek.

Alleyn followed her into her own compartment. She sat down on her bunk and stared at him. ‘I can’t believe that was true,’ she said.

‘I’m sorry you saw it.’

‘Then it was true. Ought we to do anything? Rory, ought you to do anything? Oh dear, how tiresome.’

‘Well, I can’t do much while moving away at sixty miles an hour. I suppose I’d better ring up the Préfecture when we get to Roqueville.’

He sat down beside her. ‘Never mind, darling,’ he said, ‘there may be another explanation.’

‘I don’t see how there can be, unless – Do you mind telling me what you saw?’