Spinsters in Jeopardy

Alleyn lifted him from her lap and she went to Miss Truebody. ‘She’s tiny,’ Troy said under her breath. ‘Could she be carried?’

‘I think so. Wait a moment.’

He took Ricky out and was back in a few seconds with the stationmaster and a man wearing a chauffeur’s cap over a mop of glossy curls.

He was a handsome little fellow with an air of readiness. He saluted Troy gallantly, taking off his peaked cap and smiling at her. Then he saw Miss Truebody and made a clucking sound. Troy had put a travelling rug on the bench and they made a sort of stretcher of it and carried Miss Truebody out to a large car in the station yard. Ricky was curled up on the front seat. They managed to fit Miss Truebody into the back one. The driver pulled down a tip-up seat and Troy sat on that. Miss Truebody had opened her eyes. She said in a quite clear voice: ‘Too kind,’ and Troy took her hand. Alleyn, in the front, held Ricky on his lap and they started off up a steep little street through Roqueville. The thin dawnlight gave promise of a glaring day. It was already very warm.

‘To the Hôtel Royal, Monsieur?’ asked the driver.

‘No,’ said Troy with Miss Truebody’s little claw clutching at her fingers. ‘No, please, Rory. I’ll come with her. Ricky won’t wake for hours. We can wait in the car or he can drive us back. I might be of some use.’

‘To the Château de la Chèvre d’Argent,’ Alleyn said, ‘and gently.’

‘Perfectly, Monsieur,’ said the driver. ‘Always, always gently.’

Roqueville was a very small town. It climbed briefly up the hill and petered out in a string of bleached villas. The road mounted between groves of olive trees and the air was like a benison, soft and clean. The sea extended itself beneath them and enriched itself with a blueness of incredible intensity.

Alleyn turned to look at Troy. They were quite close to each other and spoke over their shoulders like people in a Victorian ‘Conversation’ chair. It was clear that Miss Truebody, even if she could hear them, was not able to concentrate or indeed to listen. ‘Dr Claudel,’ Alleyn said, ‘thought it was the least risky thing to do. I half expected Baradi would refuse but he was surprisingly cooperative. He’s supposed to be a good man at his job.’ He made a movement of his head to indicate the driver. ‘This chap doesn’t speak English,’ he said. ‘And, by the way, darling, no more chat about my being a policeman.’

Troy said: ‘Have I been a nuisance?’

‘It’s all right. I asked Claudel to forget it and I don’t suppose Miss Truebody will say anything or that anybody will pay much attention if she does. It’s just that I don’t want to brandish my job at the Chèvre d’Argent.’ He turned and looked into her troubled face. ‘Never mind, my darling. We’ll buy false beards and hammers in Roqueville and let on we’re archaeologists. Or load ourselves down with your painting-gear.’ He paused for a moment. ‘That, by the way, is not a bad idea at all. Distinguished painter visits Côte d’Azur with obscure husband and child. We’ll keep it in reserve.’

‘But honestly, Rory. How’s this debacle going to affect your job at the Chèvre d’Argent?’

‘In a way it’s a useful entrée. The Sûreté suggested that I called there representing myself either to be an antiquarian captivated by the place itself … it’s an old Saracen stronghold … or else I was to be a seeker after esoteric knowledge and offer myself as a disciple. If both failed I could use my own judgment about being a heroin addict in search of fuel. Thanks to Miss Truebody, however, I shall turn up as a reluctant Good Samaritan. All the same,’ Alleyn said, rubbing his nose, ‘I wish Dr Claudel could have risked taking her on to St Céleste or else waiting for the evening train back to St Christophe. I don’t much like this party, and that’s a fact. This’ll larn the Alleyn family to try combining business with pleasure, won’t it?’

‘Ah, well’ said Troy, looking compassionately at Miss Truebody, ‘we’re doing our blasted best and no fool can do more.’

They were silent for some time. The driver sang to himself in a light tenor voice. The road climbed the Maritime Alps into early sunlight. They traversed a tilted landscape compounded of earth and heat, of opaque clay colours – ochres and pinks – splashed with magenta, tempered with olive-grey and severed horizontally at its base by the ultramarine blade of the Mediterranean. They turned inland. Villages emerged as logical growths out of rock and earth. A monastery safely folded among protective hills spoke of some tranquil adjustment of man’s spirit to the quiet rhythm of soil and sky.

‘It’s impossible,’ Troy said, ‘to think that anything could go very much amiss in these hills.’

A distant valley came into view. Far up it, a strange anachronism in that landscape, was a long modern building with glittering roofs and a great display of plate glass.

‘The factory,’ the driver told them, ‘of the Compagnie Chimique des Alpes Maritimes.’

Alleyn made a little affirmative sound as if he saw something that he had expected and for as long as it remained in sight he looked at the glittering building.

They drove on in silence. Miss Truebody turned her head from side to side and Troy bent over her. ‘Hot,’ she whispered, ‘such an oppressive climate. Oh, dear!’

‘One approaches the objective,’ the driver announced and changed gears. The road tipped downwards and turned the flank of a hill. They had crossed the headland and were high above the sea again. Immediately below them the railroad emerged from a tunnel. On their right was a cliff that mounted into a stone face pierced irregularly with windows. This in turn broke against the skyline into fabulous turrets and parapets. Troy gave a sharp ejaculation, ‘Oh, no!’ she said. ‘It’s not that! No, ‘It’s too much!’

‘Well, darling,’ Alleyn said, ‘I’m afraid that’s what it is.’

‘La Chèvre d’Argent,’ said the driver and turned up a steep and exceedingly narrow way that ended in a walled platform from which one looked down at the railway and beyond it sheer down again to the sea. ‘Here one stops, Monsieur,’ said the driver. ‘This is the entrance.’

He pointed to a dark passage between two masses of rock from which walls emerged as if by some process of evolution. He got out and opened the doors of the car. ‘It appears,’ he said, ‘that Mademoiselle is unable to walk.’

‘Yes,’ Alleyn said. ‘I shall go and fetch the doctor. Madame will remain with Mademoiselle and the little boy.’ He settled the sleeping Ricky into the front seat and got out. ‘You stay here, Troy,’ he said. ‘I shan’t be long.’

‘Rory, we shouldn’t have brought her to this place.’

‘There was no alternative that we could honestly take.’

‘Look!’ said Troy.

A man in white was coming through the passage. He wore a Panama hat. His hands and face were so much the colour of the shadows that he looked like a white suit walking of its own accord towards them. He moved out into the sunlight and they saw that he was olive-coloured with a large nose, full lips and a black moustache. He wore dark glasses. The white suit was made of sharkskin and beautifully cut. His sandals were white suède. His shirt was pink and his tie green. When he saw Troy he took off his hat and the corrugations of his oiled hair shone in the sunlight.

‘Dr Baradi?’ Alleyn said.

Dr Baradi smiled brilliantly and held out a long dark hand. ‘So you bring my patient?’ he said. ‘Mr Allen, is it not?’ He turned to Troy. ‘My wife,’ Alleyn said and saw Troy’s hand lifted to the full lips. ‘Here is your patient,’ he added. ‘Miss Truebody.’

‘Ah, yes,’ Dr Baradi went to the car and bent over Miss Truebody. Troy, rather pink in the face, moved to the other side. ‘Miss Truebody,’ she said, ‘here is the doctor.’

Miss Truebody opened her eyes, looked into the dark face and cried out: ‘Oh! No. No!’

Dr Baradi smiled at her. ‘You must not trouble yourself about anything,’ they heard him say. He had a padded voice. ‘We are going to make everything much more comfortable for you, isn’t it? You must not be frightened of my dark face, I assure you I am quite a good doctor.’

Miss Truebody said: ‘Please excuse me. Not at all. Thank you.’

‘Now, without moving you, if I may just – that will do very nicely. You must tell me if I hurt you.’ A pause. Cicadas had broken out in a chittering so high-pitched that it shrilled almost above the limit of human hearing. The driver moved away tactfully. Miss Truebody moaned a little. Dr Baradi straightened up, walked to the edge of the platform and waited there for Troy and Alleyn. ‘It is a perforated appendix undoubtedly,’ he said. ‘She is very ill. I should tell you that I am the guest of Mr Oberon, who places a room at our disposal. We have an improvised stretcher in readiness.’ He turned towards the passage-way: ‘And here it comes!’ he said looking at Troy with an air of joyousness which she felt to be entirely out of place.

Two men walked out of the shadowed way on to the platform carrying between them a gaily striped object, evidently part of a garden seat. Both the men wore aprons. ‘The gardener,’ Dr Baradi explained, ‘and one of the indoor servants, strong fellows both and accustomed to the exigencies of our entrance. She has been given morphine, I think.’

‘Yes,’Alleyn said. ‘Dr Claudel gave it. He has sent you an adequate amount of something called, I think, pentothal. He was taking a supply of it to a brother-medico, an anaesthetist, in St Céleste and said that you would probably need some and that the local chemist would not be likely to have it.’

‘I am obliged to him. I have already telephoned to the pharmacist in Roqueville who can supply ether. Fortunately he lives above his establishment. He is sending it up here by car. It is fortunate also that I have my instruments with me.’ He beamed and glittered at Troy. ‘And now, I think …’

He spoke in French to the two men, directing them to stand near the car. For the first time apparently he noticed the sleeping Ricky and leant over the door to look at him.

‘Enchanting,’ he murmured and his teeth flashed at Troy. ‘Our household is also still asleep,’ he said, ‘but I have Mr Oberon’s warmest invitation that you, Madame, and the small one join us for petit-déjeuner. As you know, your husband is to assist me. There will be a little delay before we are ready and coffee is prepared.’

He stood over Troy. He was really extremely large: his size and his padded voice and his smell, which was compounded of hair-lotion, scent and something that reminded her of the impure land-breeze from an eastern port, all flowed over her.

She moved back and said quickly: ‘It’s very nice of you but I think Ricky and I must find our hotel.’

Alleyn said: Thank you so much, Dr Baradi. It’s extremely kind of Mr Oberon and I hope I shall have a chance to thank him for all of us. What with one thing and another, we’ve had an exhausting journey and I think my wife and Ricky are in rather desperate need of a bath and a rest. The man will drive them down to the hotel and come back for me.’

Dr Baradi bowed, took off his hat and would have possibly kissed Troy’s hand again if Alleyn had not somehow been in the way.

‘In that case,’ Dr Baradi said, ‘we must not insist.’

He opened the door of the car. ‘And now, dear lady,’ he said to Miss Truebody, ‘we make a little journey, isn’t it? Don’t move. There is no need.’

With great dexterity and no apparent expenditure of energy he lifted her from the car and laid her on the improvised stretcher. The sun beat down on her glistening face. Her eyes were open, her lips drawn back a little from her gums. She said: ‘But where is … You’re not taking me away from …? I don’t know her name.’

Troy went to her. ‘Here I am, Miss Truebody,’ she said. ‘I’ll come and see you quite soon. I promise.’