Spinsters in Jeopardy

‘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.’

‘But I don’t know where I’m going. It’s so unsuitable … Unseemly really … Somehow with another lady … English … I don’t know what they’ll do to me … I’m afraid I’m nervous … I had hoped …’

Her jaw trembled. She made a thin shrill sound, shocking in its nakedness. ‘No,’ she stammered, ‘no … no … no.’ Her arm shot out and her hand closed on Troy’s skirt. The two bearers staggered a little and looked agitatedly at Dr Baradi.

‘She should not be upset,’ he murmured to Troy. ‘It is most undesirable. Perhaps, for a little while, you’ll be kind …’

‘But of course,’ Troy said, and in answer to a look from her husband. ‘Of course, Rory, I must.’

And she bent over Miss Truebody and told her she wouldn’t go away. She felt as though she herself was trapped in the kind of dream that, without being a positive nightmare, threatens to become one. Baradi released Miss Truebody’s hand and as he did so, his own brushed against Troy’s skirt.

‘You’re so kind,’ he said. ‘Perhaps Mr Allen will bring the little boy. It is not well for such tender ones to sleep overlong in the sun on the Côte d’Azur.’

Without a word Alleyn lifted Ricky out of the car. Ricky made a small questioning sound, stirred and slept again.

The men walked off with the stretcher. Dr Baradi followed them. Troy, Alleyn and Ricky brought up the rear.

In this order the odd little procession moved out of the glare into the shadowed passage that was the entrance to the Château de la Chèvre d’Argent.

The driver watched them go, his lips pursed in a soundless whistle and an expression of concern darkening his eyes. Then he drove the car into the shade of the hill and composed himself for a long wait.

CHAPTER 2

Operation Truebody

At first their eyes were sun-dazzled so that they could scarcely see their way. Dr Baradi paused to guide them. Alleyn, encumbered with Ricky and groping up a number of wide, shallow and irregular steps, was aware of Baradi’s hand piloting Troy by the elbow. The blotches of nonexistent light that danced across their vision faded and they saw that they were in a sort of hewn passageway between walls that were incorporated in rock, separated by outcrops of stone and pierced by stairways, windows and occasional doors. At intervals they went through double archways supporting buildings that straddled the passage and darkened it. They passed an open doorway and saw into a cave-like room where an old woman sat among shelves filled with small gaily-painted figures. As Troy passed, the woman smiled at her and gestured invitingly, holding up a little clay goat.

Dr Baradi was telling them about the Chèvre d’Argent.

‘It is a fortress built originally by the Saracens. One might almost say it was sculptured out of the mountain, isn’t it? The Normans stormed it on several occasions. There are legends of atrocities and so on. The fortress is, in effect, a village since the many caves beneath and around it have been shaped into dwellings and house a number of peasants, some dependent on the château and some, like the woman you have noticed, upon their own industry. The château itself is most interesting, indeed unique. But not inconvenient. Mr Oberon has, with perfect tact, introduced the amenities. We are civilized, as you shall see.

They arrived at a double gate of wrought iron let into the wall on their left. An iron bell hung beside it. A butler appeared beyond the doors and opened them. They passed through a courtyard into a wide hall with deep-set windows through which a cool ineffectual light was admitted.

Without, at first, taking in any details of this shadowed interior, Troy received an impression of that particular kind of suavity that is associated with costliness. The rug under her feet, the texture and colour of the curtains, the shape of cabinets and chairs and, above all, a smell which she thought must arise from the burning of sweet-scented oils, all united to give this immediate reaction. ‘Mr Oberon,’ she thought, ‘must be immensely rich.’ Almost at the same time, she saw above the great fireplace a famous Breughel which, she remembered, had been sold privately some years ago. It was called: ‘Consultation of Sorceresses.’ An open door showed a stone stairway built inside the thickness of the wall.

‘The stairs,’ Mr Baradi said, ‘are a little difficult. Therefore we have prepared rooms on this floor.’

He pulled back a leather curtain. The men carried Miss Truebody into a heavily carpeted stone passage hung at intervals with rugs and lit with electric lights fitted into ancient hanging lamps, witnesses, Troy supposed, of Mr Oberon’s tact in modernization. She heard Miss Truebody raise her piping cry of distress.

Dr Baradi said: ‘Perhaps you would be so kind as to assist her into bed?’

Troy hurried after the stretcher and followed it into a small bedroom charmingly furnished and provided, she noticed, with an adjoining bathroom. The two bearers waited with an obliging air for further instructions. As Baradi had not accompanied them, Troy supposed that she herself was for the moment in command. She got Miss Truebody off the stretcher and on to the bed. The bearers hovered solicitously. She thanked them in her schoolgirl French and managed to get them out of the room, but not before they had persuaded her into the passage, opened a further door, and exhibited with evident pride a bare freshly-scrubbed room with a bare fresh-ly-scrubbed table near its window. A woman rose from her knees as the door opened, a scrubbing brush in her hand and a pail beside her. The room reeked of disinfectant. The indoor servant said something about it being ‘convenable’ and the gardener said something about somebody, she thought himself, being ‘bien fatigué’, ‘infiniment fatigué’. It dawned upon her that they wanted a tip. Poor Troy scuffled in her bag, produced a 500 fr. note and gave it to the indoor servant, indicating that they were to share it. They thanked her and, effulgent with smiles, went back to get the luggage. She hurried to Miss Truebody and found her crying feverishly.

Remembering what she could of hospital routine, Troy washed the patient, found a clean nightdress (Miss Truebody wore white locknit nightdresses, sprigged with posies, and got her into bed. It was difficult to make out how much she understood of her situation. Troy wondered if it was the injection of morphine or her condition or her normal habit of mind or all three, that made her so confused and vague. When she was settled in bed she began to talk with hectic fluency about herself. It was difficult to understand her as she had frantically waved away the offer of her false teeth. Her father, it seemed, had been a doctor, a widower, living in the Bermudas. She was his only child and had spent her life with him until, a year ago, he had died leaving her, as she put it, quite comfortably though not well off. She had decided that she could just afford a trip to England and the Continent. Her father, she muttered distractedly, had ‘not kept up,’ had ‘lost touch.’ There had been an unhappy break in the past, she believed, and their relations were never mentioned. Of course there were friends in the Bermudas but not, it appeared, very many or very intimate friends. She rambled on for a little while, continually losing the thread of her narrative and frowning incomprehensibly at nothing. The pupils of her eyes were contracted and her vision seemed to be confused. Presently her voice died away and she dozed uneasily.

Troy stole out and returned to the hall. Alleyn, Ricky and Baradi had gone but the butler was waiting for her and showed her up the steep flight of stairs in the wall. It seemed to turn about a tower and they passed two landings with doors leading off them. Finally the man opened a larger and heavier door and Troy was out in the glare of full morning on a canopied roof-garden hung, as it seemed, in blue space where sky and sea met in a wide crescent. Not till she had advanced some way towards the balustrade did Cap St Gilles appear, a sliver of earth pointing south.

Alleyn and Baradi rose from a breakfast-table near the balustrade. Ricky lay, fast asleep, on a suspended seat under a gay canopy. The smell of freshly ground coffee and of brioches and croissants reminded Troy that she was hungry.

They sat at the table. It was long, spread with a white cloth and set for a number of places. Troy was foolishly reminded of the Mad Hatter’s Tea-party. She looked over the parapet and saw the railroad about eighty feet below her and perhaps a hundred feet from the base of the Chèvre d’Argent. The walls, buttressed and pierced with windows, fell away beneath her in a sickening perspective. Troy had a hatred of heights and drew back quickly. ‘Last night,’ she thought, ‘I looked into one of those windows.’

Dr Baradi was assiduous in his attentions and plied her with coffee. He gazed upon her remorselessly and she sensed Alleyn’s annoyance rising with her own embarrassment. For a moment she felt weakly inclined to giggle.

Alleyn said: ‘See here, darling, Dr Baradi thinks that Miss Truebody is extremely ill, dangerously so. He thinks we should let her people know at once.’

‘She has no people. She’s only got acquaintances in the Bermudas; I asked. There seems to be nobody at all.’

Baradi said: in that case …’ and moved his head from side to side. He turned to Troy and parodied helplessness with his hands. ‘So, in that direction, we can do nothing.’

‘The next thing,’ Alleyn said, speaking directly to his wife, ‘is the business of giving an anaesthetic. We could telephone to a hospital in St Christophe and try to get someone but there’s this medical jamboree and in any case it’ll mean a delay of some hours. Or Dr Baradi can try to get his own anaesthetist to fly from Paris to the nearest airport. More delay and considerable expense. The other way is for me to have a shot at it. Should we take the risk?’

‘What,’ Troy asked, making herself look at him, ‘do you think, Dr Baradi?’

He sat near and a little behind her on the balustrade. His thighs bulged in their sharkskin trousers. ‘I think it will be less risky if your husband, who is not unfamiliar with the procedure, gives the anaesthetic. Her condition is not good.’

His voice flowed over her shoulder. It was really extraordinary, she thought, how he could invest information about peritonitis and ruptured abscesses with such a gross suggestion of flattery. He might have been paying her the most objectionable compliments imaginable.

‘Very well,’ Alleyn said, ‘that’s decided, then. But you’ll need other help, won’t you?’

‘If possible, two persons. And here we encounter a difficulty.’ He moved round behind Troy but spoke to Alleyn. His manner was now authoritative. ‘I doubt,’ he said, ‘if there is anyone in the house-party who could assist me. It is not every layman who enjoys a visit to an operating theatre. Surgery is not everybody’s cup of tea.’ The colloquialism came oddly from him. ‘I have spoken to our host, of course. He is not yet stirring. He offers every possible assistance and all the amenities of the château with the reservation that he himself shall not be asked to perform an active part. He is,’ said Dr Baradi, putting on his sunglasses, ‘allergic to blood.’

‘Indeed,’ said Alleyn politely.

‘The rest of our household – we are seven –’ Dr Baradi explained playfully to Troy, ‘is not yet awake. Mr Oberon gave a party here last night. Some friends with a yacht in port. We were immeasurably gay and kept going till five o’clock. Mr Oberon has a genius for parties and a passion for charades. They were quite wonderful, our charades.’ Troy gave a little ejaculation which she immediately checked. He beamed at her. ‘I was cast for one of King Solomon’s concubines. And we had the Queen of Sheba, you know. She stabbed Solomon’s favourite wife. It was all a little strenuous. I don’t think any of my friends will be in good enough form to help us. Indeed, I doubt if any of them even at the top of his or her form, would care to offer for the role. I don’t know if you have met any of them. Grizel Locke, perhaps? The Hon. Grizel Locke?’

The Alleyns said they did not know Miss Locke.

‘What about the servants?’ Alleyn suggested. Troy was all too easily envisaging Dr Baradi as one of King Solomon’s concubines.

‘One of the men is a possibility. He is my personal attendant and valet and is not quite unfamiliar with surgical routine. He will not lose his head. Any of the others would almost certainly be worse than useless. So we need one other, you see.’

A silence fell upon them, broken at last by Troy.

‘I know,’ she said, ‘what Dr Baradi is going to suggest.’

Alleyn looked fixedly at her and raised his left eyebrow.

‘It’s quite out of the question. You well know that you’re punctually sick at the sight of blood, my darling.’

Troy, who was nothing of the sort said: ‘In that case I’ve no suggestions. Unless you like to appeal to cousin Garbel.’

There was a moment of silence.

‘Too whom?’ said Baradi softly.

‘I’m afraid I was being facetious,’ Troy mumbled.

Alleyn said: ‘What about our driver? He seems a hardy, intelligent sort of chap. What would he have to do?’

‘Fetch and carry,’ Dr Baradi said. He was looking thoughtfully at Troy. ‘Count sponges. Hand instruments. Clean up. Possibly, in an emergency, play a minor role as unqualified assistant.’

‘I’ll speak to him. If he seems at all possible I’ll bring him in to see you. Would you like to stroll back to the car with me, darling?’

‘Please don’t disturb yourselves,’ Dr Baradi begged them. ‘One of the servants will fetch your man.’

Troy knew that her husband was in two minds about this suggestion and also about leaving her to cope with Dr Baradi. She said: ‘You go, Rory, will you? I’m longing for my sun-glasses and they’re locked away in my dressing-case.’

She gave him her keys and a ferocious smile. ‘I think, perhaps, I’ll have a look at Miss Truebody,’ she added.

He grimaced at her and walked out quickly.

Troy went to Ricky. She touched his forehead and found it moist. His sleep was profound and when she opened the front of his shirt he did not stir. She stayed, lightly swinging the seat, and watched him, and she thought with tenderness that he was her defence in a stupid situation which fatigue and a confusion of spirit, brought about by many untoward events, had perhaps created in her imagination. It was ridiculous, she thought, to feel anything but amused by her embarrassment. She knew that Baradi watched her and she turned and faced him.

‘If there is anything I can do before I go,’ she said and kept her voice down because of Ricky, ‘I hope you’ll tell me.’

It was a mistake to speak softly. He at once moved towards her and with an assumption of intimacy, lowered his own voice. ‘But how helpful!’ he said, ‘so we shall have you with us for a little longer? That is good; though it should not be to perform these unlovely tasks.’

‘I hope I’m equal to them.’ She moved away from Ricky and raised her voice. ‘What are they?’

‘She must be prepared for the operation.’

He told her what should be done and explained that she would find everything she needed for her purpose in Miss Truebody’s bathroom. In giving these specifically clinical instructions, he reverted to his professional manner, but with an air of amusement that she found distasteful. When he had finished she said: ‘Then I’ll get her fixed up now, shall I?’

‘Yes,’ he agreed, more to himself than to her. ‘Yes, certainly, we shouldn’t delay too long.’ And seeing a look of preoccupation and responsibility on his face, she left him, disliking him less in that one moment than at any time since they had met. As she went down the stone stairway she thought: ‘Thank heaven, at least, for the Queen of Sheba.’

II

Alleyn found their driver in his vest and trousers on the running-board of the car. A medallion of St Christopher dangled from a steel chain above the mat of hair on his chest. He was exchanging improper jokes with a young woman and two small boys who, when he rose to salute his employer, drifted away without embarrassment. He gave Alleyn a look that implied a common understanding of women, and opened the car door.