Spinsters in Jeopardy

Alleyn said: ‘We’re not going yet. What is your name?’

‘Raoul, Monsieur. Raoul Milano.’

‘You’ve been a soldier, perhaps?’

‘Yes, Monsieur. I am thirty-three and therefore I have seen some service.’

‘So your stomach is not easily outraged; then; by a show of blood, for instance? By a formidable wound, shall we say?’

‘I was a medical orderly, Monsieur. My stomach also, is an old campaigner.’

‘Excellent! I have a job for you, Raoul. It is to assist Dr Baradi, the gentleman you have already seen. He is about to remove Mademoiselle’s appendix and since we cannot find a second doctor, we must provide unqualified assistants. If you will help us there may be a little reward and certainly there will be much grace in performing this service. What do you say?’

Raoul looked down at his blunt hands and then up at Alleyn:

‘I say yes, M’sieur. As you suggest, it is an act of grace and in any case one may as well do something.’

‘Good. Come along then.’ Alleyn had found Troy’s sunglasses. He and Raoul turned towards the passage, Raoul slinging his coat across his shoulders with the grace of a ballet-dancer.

‘So you live in Roqueville?’ Alleyn asked.

‘In Roqueville, M’sieur. My parents have a little café, not at all smart, but the food is good and I also hire myself out in my car, as you see.’

‘You’ve been up to the château before, of course?’

‘Certainly. For little expeditions and also to drive guests and sometimes tourists. As a rule Mr Oberon sends a car for his guests.’ He waved a hand at a row of garage-doors, incongruously set in a rocky face at the back of the platform. ‘His cars are magnificent.’

Alleyn said: ‘The Commissaire at the Préfecture sent you to meet us, I think?’

‘That is so, M’sieur.’

‘Did he give you my name?’

‘Yes, M’sieur L’Inspecteur-en-Chef. It is Ahrr-lin. But he said that M’sieur L’Inspecteur-en-Chef would prefer, perhaps, that I did not use his rank.’

‘I would greatly prefer it, Raoul.’

‘It is already forgotten, M’sieur.’

‘Again, good.’

They passed the cave-like room, where the woman sat among her figurines. Raoul hailed her in a cheerful manner and she returned his greeting. ‘You must bring your gentleman in to see my statues,’ she shouted. He called back over his shoulder: ‘All in good time, Marie,’ and added, ‘she is an artist, that one. Her saints are pretty and of assistance in one’s devotions; but then she overcharges ridiculously, which is not so amusing.’

He sang a stylish little cadence and tilted up his head. They were walking beneath a part of the Château de la Chèvre d’Argent that straddled the passageway. ‘It goes everywhere, this house,’ he remarked. ‘One would need a map to find one’s way from the kitchen to the best bedroom. Anything might happen.’

When they reached the entrance he stood aside and took off his chauffeur’s cap. They found Dr Baradi in the hall. Alleyn told him that Raoul had been a medical orderly and Baradi at once described the duties he would be expected to perform. His manner was cold and uncompromising. Raoul gave him his full attention. He stood easily, his thumbs crooked in his belt. He retained at once his courtesy, his natural grace of posture and his air of independence.

‘Well,’ Baradi said sharply when he had finished: ‘Are you capable of this work?’

‘I believe so, M’sieur le Docteur.’

‘If you prove to be satisfactory, you will be given 500 francs. That is extremely generous payment for unskilled work.’

‘As to payment M’sieur le Docteur,’ Raoul said, ‘I am already employed by this gentleman and consider myself entirely at his disposal. It is at his request that I engaged myself in this task.’

Baradi raised his eyebrows and looked at Alleyn. ‘Evidently an original,’ he said in English. ‘He seems tolerably intelligent but one never knows. Let us hope that he is at least not too stupid. My man will give him suitable clothes and see that he is clean’

He went to the fireplace and pulled a tapestry bell-rope. ‘Mrs Allen;’ he said, ‘is most kindly preparing our patient. There is a room at your disposal and I venture to lend you one of my gowns. It will, I’m afraid, be terribly voluminous but perhaps some adjustment can be made. We are involved in compromise, isn’t it?’

A man wearing the dress of an Egyptian house-servant came in. Baradi spoke to him in his own language, and then to Raoul in French: ‘Go with Mahomet and prepare yourself in accordance with his instructions. He speaks French.’ Raoul acknowledged this direction with something between a bow and a nod. He said to Alleyn: ‘Monsieur will perhaps excuse me?’ and followed the servant, looking about the room with interest as he left it.

Baradi said: ‘Italian blood there, I think. One comes across these hybrids along the coast. May I show you to my room?’

It was in the same passage as Miss Truebody’s but a little farther along it. In Alleyn the trick of quick observation was a professional habit. He saw not only the general sumptuousness of the room but the details also: the Chinese wallpaper, a Wu Tao-tzu scroll, a Ming vase.

‘This,’ Dr Baradi needlessly explained, ‘is known as the Chinese room but, as you will observe, Mr Oberon does not hesitate to introduce modulation. The bureau is by Vernis-Martin.’

‘A modulation, as you say, but an enchanting one. The cabinet there is a bolder departure. It looks like a Mussonier.’

‘One of his pupils, I understand. You have a discerning eye. Mr Oberon will be delighted.’

A gown was laid out on the bed. Baradi took it up. ‘Will you try this? There is an unoccupied room next door with access to a bathroom. You have time for a bath and will, no doubt, be glad to take one. Since morphine has been given there is no immediate urgency but I should prefer all the same to operate as soon as possible. When you are ready, my own preparations will be complete and we can discuss final arrangements.’

Alleyn said: ‘Dr Baradi, we haven’t said anything about your fee for the operation: indeed, it is neither my business nor my wife’s, but I do feel some concern about it. I imagine Miss Truebody will at least be able …’

Baradi held up his hand. ‘Let us not discuss it,’ he said. ‘Let us assume that it is of no great moment.’

‘If you prefer to do so.’ Alleyn hesitated and then added: ‘This is an extraordinary situation. You will, I’m sure, realize that we are reluctant to take such a grave responsibility. Miss Truebody is a complete stranger to us. You yourself must feel it would be much more satisfactory if there was a relation or friend from whom we could get some kind of authority. Especially as her illness is so serious.’

‘I agree. However, she would undoubtedly die if the operation was not performed and, in my opinion, would be in the gravest danger if it was unduly postponed. As it is, I’m afraid there is a risk, a great risk, that she will not recover. We can,’ Baradi added with what Alleyn felt was a genuine, if controlled, anxiety, ‘only do our best and hope that all may be well.’

And on this note Alleyn turned to go. As he was in the doorway Baradi, with a complete change of manner, said: ‘Your enchanting wife is with her. Third door on the left. Quite enchanting. Delicious, if you will permit me.’

Alleyn looked at him and found what he saw offensive.

‘Under these unfortunate circumstances,’ he said politely, ‘I can’t do anything else.’

Evidently Dr Baradi chose to regard this observation as a pleasantry. He laughed richly. ‘Delicious!’ he repeated, but whether in reference to Alleyn’s comment or as a reiterated observation upon Troy it was impossible to determine. Alleyn, who had every reason and no inclination for keeping his temper, walked into the next room.

III

Troy had carried out her instructions and Miss Truebody had slipped again into sleep. The sound of her breathing cut the silence into irregular intervals. Her eyes were not quite closed. Segments of the eyeballs appeared under the pathetic insufficiency of her lashes. Troy was at once unwilling to leave her and anxious to return to Ricky. She heard Alleyn and Dr Baradi in the passage. Their voices were broken off by a door slam and again there was only Miss Truebody’s breathing. Troy waited, hoping that Alleyn knew where she was and would come to her. After what seemed an interminable interval there was a tap at the door. She opened it and he was there in a white gown looking tall, elegant and angry. Troy shut the door behind her and they whispered together in the passage.

‘Rum go,’ he said, ‘isn’t it?’

‘Not ’alf. When do you begin?’

‘Soon. He’s trying to make himself aseptic. A losing battle, I should think.’

‘Frightful, isn’t he?’

The bottom. I’m so sorry, darling, you have to suffer his atrocious gallantries.’

‘Well, I dare say they’re just elaborate oriental courtesy, or something.’

‘Elaborate bloody impertinence.’

‘Never mind, Rory. I’ll skip out of his way.’

‘I shouldn’t have brought you to this damn’ place.’

‘Fiddle! In any case he’s going to be too busy.’

‘Is she asleep?’

‘Sort of. I don’t like to leave her but suppose Ricky should wake?’

‘Go up to him. I’ll stay with her. Baradi’s going to give her an injection before I get going with the ether. And, Troy –’

‘Yes?’

‘It’s important these people don’t get a line on who I am.’

‘I know.’

‘I haven’t told you anything about them but I think I’ll have to come moderately clean when there’s a chance. It’s a rum set up. I’ll get you out of it as soon as possible.’

‘I’m not worrying now we know about the charades. Funny! You said there might be an explanation but we never thought of charades, did we?’

‘No,’ Alleyn said, ‘we didn’t, did we?’ and suddenly kissed her. ‘Now, I suppose I’ll have to wash again,’ he added.

Raoul came down the passage with Baradi’s servant. They were carrying the improvised stretcher and were dressed in white overalls.

Raoul said: ‘Madame!’ to Troy and to Alleyn, ‘it appears, Monsieur, that M. le Docteur orders Mademoiselle to be taken to the operating room. Is that convenient for Monsieur?’

‘Of course. We are under Dr Baradi’s orders.’

‘Authority,’ Raoul observed, ‘comes to roost on strange perches, Monsieur.’

‘That,’ Alleyn said, ‘will do.’

Raoul grinned and opened the door. They took the stretcher in and laid it on the floor by the bed. When they lifted her down to it, Miss Truebody opened her eyes and said distinctly: ‘But I would prefer to stay in bed.’ Raoul deftly tucked blankets under her. She began to wail dismally.

Troy said: ‘It’s all right, dear. You’ll be all right,’ and thought: ‘But I never call people dear!’

They carried Miss Truebody into the room across the passage and put her on the table by the window. Troy went with them, holding her hand. The window coverings had been removed and a hard glare beat down on the table. The room still reeked of disinfectant. There was a second table on which a number of objects were now laid out. Troy, after one glance, did not look at them again. She held Miss Truebody’s hand and stood between her and the instrument table. A door in the wall facing her opened and Baradi appeared against a background of bathroom. He wore his gown and a white cap. Their austerity of design emphasized the opulence of his nose and eyes and teeth. He had a hypodermic syringe in his left hand.

‘So, after all, you are to assist me?’ he murmured to Troy. But it was obvious that he didn’t entertain any such notion.

Still holding the flaccid hand, she said: ‘I thought perhaps I should stay with her until …’

‘But of course! Please remain a little longer.’ He began to give instructions to Alleyn and the two men. He spoke in French presumably, Troy thought, to spare Miss Truebody’s feelings. ‘I am left-handed,’ he said. ‘If I should ask for anything to be handed to me you will please remember that. Now, Mr Allen, we will show you your equipment, isn’t it? Milano!’ Raoul brought a china dish from the instrument table. It had a bottle and a hand towel on it. Alleyn looked at it and nodded. ‘Parfaitement,’ he said.

Baradi took Miss Truebody’s other hand and pushed up the long sleeve of her nightgown. She stared at him and her mouth worked soundlessly.

Troy saw the needle slide in. The hand she held flickered momentarily and relaxed.

‘It is fortunate,’ Baradi said as he withdrew the needle, ‘that this little Dr Claudel had pentothal. A happy coincidence.’

He raised Miss Truebody’s eyelid. The pupil was out of sight. ‘Admirable,’ he said. ‘Now, Mr Allen, we will, in a moment or two, induce a more profound anaesthesia which you will continue. I shall scrub up and in a few minutes more we begin operations.’ He smiled at Troy who was already on the way to the door. ‘One of our party will join you presently on the roof-garden. Miss Locke; the Honourable Grizel Locke. I believe she has a vogue in England. Quite mad but utterly charming.’

Troy’s last impression of the room, a vivid one, was of Baradi, enormous in his white gown and cap, of Alleyn standing near the table and smiling at her, of Raoul and the Egyptian servant waiting near the instruments and of Miss Truebody’s wide-open mouth and of the sound of her breathing. Then the door shut off the picture as abruptly as the tunnel had shut off her earlier glimpse into a room in the Chèvre d’Argent.

‘Only that time,’ Troy told herself, as she made her way back to the roof-garden, ‘it was only a charade.’

CHAPTER 3

Morning with Mr Oberon

The sun shone full on the roof-garden now, but Ricky was shielded from it by the canopy of his swinging couch. He was, as he himself might have said, lavishly asleep. Troy knew he would stay so for a long time.

The breakfast-table had been cleared and moved to one side and several more seats like Ricky’s had been set out. Troy took the one nearest to his. When she lifted her feet it swayed gently. Her head sank back into a heap of cushions. She had slept very little in the train.

It was quiet on the roof-garden. A few cicadas chittered far below and once, somewhere a long way away, a car hooted. The sky, as she looked into it, intensified itself in blueness and bemused her drowsy senses. Her eyes closed and she felt again the movement of the train. The sound of the cicadas became a dismal chattering from Miss Truebody and soared up into nothingness. Presently, she too, was fast asleep.

When she awoke, it was to see a strange lady perched, like some fantastic fowl, on the balustrade near Ricky’s seat. Her legs, clad in scarlet pedal-pushers, were drawn up to her chin which was sunk between her knees. Her hands, jewelled and claw-like, with vermilion talons, clasped her shins, and her toes protruded from her sandals like branched corals. A scarf was wound around her skull and her eyes were hidden by sun-glasses in an enormous frame below which a formidable nose jutted over a mouth whose natural shape could only be conjectured. When she saw Troy was awake and on her feet she unfolded herself, dropped to the floor and advanced with a hand extended. She was six feet tall and about forty-five to fifty years old.

‘How do you do?’ she whispered. ‘I’m Grizel Locke. I like to be called Sati, though. The Queen of Heaven, you will remember. Please call me Sati. Had a good nap, I hope? I’ve been looking at your son and wondering if I’d like to have one for myself.’

‘How do you do?’ Troy said without whispering and greatly taken aback. ‘Do you think you would?’

‘Won’t he wake? I’ve got such a voice as you can hear when I speak up.’ Her voice was indeed deep and uncertain like an adolescent boy’s. ‘It’s hard to say,’ she went on. ‘One might go all possessive and peculiar and, on the other hand, one might get bored and off-load him on repressed governesses. I was off-loaded as a child which, I am told, accounts for almost everything. Do lie down again. You must feel like a boiled owl. So do I. Would you like a drink?’

‘No, thank you,’ Troy said, running her fingers through her short hair.

‘Nor would I. What a poor way to begin your holiday. Do you know anyone here?’

‘Not really. I’ve got a distant relation somewhere in the offing but we’ve never met.’

‘Perhaps we know them. What name?’

‘Garbel. Something to do with a rather rarified kind of chemistry. I don’t suppose you, – ?’

‘I’m afraid not,’ she said quickly. ‘Has Baradi started on your friend?’

‘She’s not a friend or even an acquaintance. She’s a fellow-traveller.’

‘How sickening for you,’ said the lady earnestly.

‘I mean, literally,’ Troy explained. She was indeed feeling like a boiled owl and longed for nothing so much as a bath and solitude.

‘Lie down,’ the lady urged. ‘Put your boots up. Go to sleep again if you like. I was just going to push ahead with my tanning, only your son distracted my attention.’

Troy sat down and as her companion was so insistent she did put her feet up.

‘That’s right,’ the lady observed. ‘I’ll blow up my Li-lo. The servants, alas, have lost the puffer.’

She dragged forward a flat rubber mattress. Sitting on the floor she applied her painted mouth to the valve and began to blow. ‘Uphill work,’ she gasped a little later, ‘still, it’s an exercise in itself and I daresay will count as such.’

When the Li-lo was inflated she lay face down upon it and untied the painted scarf that was her sole upper garment. It fell away from a back so thin that it presented, Troy thought, an anatomical subject of considerable interest. The margins of the scapulae shone like ploughshares and the spinal vertebrae looked like those of a flayed snake.

‘I’ve given up oil,’ the submerged voice explained, ‘since I became a Child of the Sun. Is there any particular bit that seems underdone, do you consider?’

Troy, looking down upon a uniformly dun-coloured expanse, could make no suggestions and said so.

‘I’ll give it ten minutes for luck and then toss over the bod.,’ said the voice. ‘I must say I feel ghastly.’

‘You had a late night, Dr Baradi tells us,’ said Troy, who was making a desperate effort to pull herself together.

‘Did we?’ the voice became more indistinct and added something like: ‘I forget.’

‘Charades and everything, he said.’

‘Did he? Oh. Was I in them?’

‘He didn’t say particularly,’ Troy answered.

‘I passed,’ the voice muttered, ‘utterly and definitely out.’ Troy had just thought how unattractive such statements always were when she noticed with astonishment that the shoulder blades were quivering as if their owner was convulsed. ‘I suppose you might call it charades,’ the lady was heard to say.

Troy was conscious of a rising sense of uneasiness.

‘How do you mean?’ she asked.

Her companion rolled over. She had taken off her sunglasses. Her eyes were green with pale irises and small pupils. They were singularly blank in expression. Clad only in her scarlet pedal-pushers and head-scarf, she was an uncomfortable spectacle.

‘The whole thing is,’ she said rapidly, ‘I wasn’t at the party. I began one of my headaches after luncheon which was a party in itself and I passed, as I mentioned a moment ago, out. That must have been at about four o’clock, I should think, which is why I am up so early, you know.’ She yawned suddenly and with gross exaggeration as if her jaws would crack.

‘Oh, God,’ she said, ‘here I go again!’

Troy’s jaws quivered in imitation. ‘I hope your headache is better,’ she said.

‘Sweet of you. In point of fact it’s hideous.’

‘I’m so sorry.’

‘I’ll have to find Baradi if it goes on. And it will, of course. How long will he be over your fellow-traveller’s appendix? Have you seen Ra?’

‘I don’t think so. I’ve only seen Dr Baradi.’

‘Yes, yes,’ she said restlessly and added, ‘you wouldn’t know, of course. I mean Oberon, our Teacher, your know. That’s our name for him – Ra. Are you interested in The Truth?’

Troy was too addled with unseasonable sleep and a surfeit of anxiety to hear the capital letters. ‘I really don’t know,’ she stammered. ‘In the truth – ?’

‘Poor sweet, I’m muddling you.’ She sat up. Troy had a painter’s attitude towards the nude but the aspect of this lady, so wildly and so unpleasingly displayed, was distressing, and doubly so because Troy couldn’t escape the impression that the lady herself was far from unselfconscious. Indeed she kept making tentative clutches at her scarf and looking at Troy as if she felt she ought to apologize for herself. In her embarrassment Troy turned away and looked vaguely at the tower wall which rose above the roof-garden not far from where she sat. It was pierced at ascending intervals by narrow slits. Troy’s eyes, glazed with fatigue, stared in aimless fixation at the third slit from the floor level. She listened to a strange exposition on The Truth as understood and venerated by the guests of Mr Oberon.

‘… just a tiny group of Seekers … Children of the Sun in the Outer … Evil exists only in the minds of the earth-bound … goodness is oneness … the great Dark co-exists with the great Light …’ The phrases disjointed and eked out by ineloquent and uncoordinated gestures, tripped each other up by the heels. Clichés and aphorisms were tumbled together from the most unlikely sources. One must live dangerously, it appeared, in order to attain merit. Only by encompassing the gamut of earthly experience could one return to the oneness of universal good. One ascended through countless ages by something which the disciple, corkscrewing an unsteady finger in illustration, called the mystic navel spiral. It all sounded the most dreadful nonsense to poor Troy but she listened politely and, because her companion so clearly expected them, tried to ask one or two intelligent questions. This was a mistake. The lady, squinting earnestly up at her, said abruptly: ‘You’re fey, of course. But you know that, don’t you?’

‘Indeed, I don’t.’

‘Yes, yes,’ she persisted, nodding like a mandarin. ‘Unawakened perhaps, but it’s there, oh! so richly. Fey as fey can be.’

She yawned again with the same unnatural exaggeration and twisted round to look at the door into the tower.

‘He won’t be long appearing,’ she whispered. ‘It isn’t as if he ever touched anything and he’s always up for the rites of Ushas. What’s the time?’

‘Just after ten,’ said Troy, astonished that it was no later. Ricky, she thought, would sleep for at least another hour, perhaps for two hours. She tried to remember if she had ever heard how long an appendicectomy took to perform. She tried to console herself with the thought that there must be a limit to this vigil, that she would not have to listen forever to Grizel Locke’s esoteric small-talk, that somewhere down at the Hôtel Royal in Roqueville there was a tiled bathroom and a cool bed, that perhaps Miss Locke would go in search of whoever it was she seemed to await with such impatience and finally that she herself might, if left alone, sleep away the remainder of this muddled and distressing interlude.

It was at this juncture that something moved behind the slit in the tower wall. Something that tweaked at her attention. She had an impression of hair or fur and thought at first that it was an animal, perhaps a cat. It moved again and was gone but not before she recognized a human head. She came to the disagreeable conclusion that someone had stood at the slit and listened to their conversation. At that moment she heard steps inside the tower. The door moved.

‘Someone’s coming!’ she cried out in warning. Her companion gave an ejaculation of relief but made no attempt to resume her garment. ‘Miss Locke! Do look out!’

‘What? Oh! Oh, all right. Only, do call me Sati.’ She picked up the square of printed silk. Perhaps, Troy thought, there was something in her own face that awakened in Miss Locke a dormant regard for the conventions. She blushed and began clumsily to knot the scarf behind her.