Spinsters in Jeopardy

‘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?’

Alleyn said carefully. ‘A lighted window, masked by a spring blind. A woman falling against the blind and releasing it. Beyond the woman, but out of sight to us, there must have been a brilliant lamp and in its light, farther back in the room and on our right, stood a man in a white garment. His face, oddly enough, was in shadow. There was something that looked like a wheel, beyond his right shoulder. His right arm was raised.’

‘And in his hand – ?’

‘Yes,’ Alleyn said, ‘that’s the tricky bit, isn’t it?’

‘And then the tunnel. It was like one of those sudden breaks in an old-fashioned film, too abrupt to be really dramatic. It was there and then it didn’t exist. No,’ said Troy, ‘I won’t believe it was true. I won’t believe something is still going on inside that house. And what a house too! It looked like a Gastave Doré, really bad romantic’

Alleyn said: ‘Are you all right to get dressed? I’ll just have a word with the car attendant. He may have seen it, too. After all, we may not be the only people awake and looking out, though I fancy mine was the only compartment with the light on. Yours was in darkness, by the way.’

‘I had the window shutter down, though. I’d been thinking how strange it is to see into other people’s lives through a train window.’

‘I know,’ Alleyn said. ‘There’s a touch of magic in it.’

‘And then – to see that! Not so magical.’

‘Never mind. I’ll talk to the attendant and then I’ll come back and get Ricky up. He’ll be getting train-fever. We should reach Roqueville in about twenty minutes. All right?’

‘Oh, I’m right as a bank,’ said Troy.

‘Nothing like the Golden South for a carefree holiday,’ Alleyn said. He grinned at her, went out into the corridor and opened the door of his own sleeper.

Ricky was still sitting up in his bunk. His hands were clenched and his eyes wide open. ‘You’re being a pretty long time, however,’ he said.

‘Mummy’s coming in a minute. I’m just going to have a word with the chap outside. Stick it out, old boy.’

‘OK,’ said Ricky.

The attendant, a pale man with a dimple in his chin, was dozing on his stool at the forward end of the carriage. Alleyn, who had already discovered that he spoke very little English, addressed him in diplomatic French that had become only slightly hesitant through disuse. Had the attendant, he asked, happened to be awake when the train paused outside a tunnel a few minutes ago? The man seemed to be in some doubt as to whether Alleyn was about to complain because he was asleep or because the train had halted. It took a minute or two to clear up this difficulty and to discover that he had, in point of fact, been asleep for some time.

‘I’m sorry to trouble you,’ Alleyn said, ‘but can you, by any chance tell me the name of the large building near the entrance to the tunnel?’

‘Ah, yes, yes,’ the attendant said. ‘Certainly, monsieur, since I am a native of these parts. It is known to everybody, this house, on account of its great antiquity. It is the Château de la Chèvre d’Argent.’

‘I thought it might be,’ said Alleyn.

II

Alleyn reminded the sleepy attendant that they were leaving the train at Roqueville and tipped him generously. The man thanked him with that peculiarly Gallic effusiveness that is at once too logical and too adroit to be offensive.

‘Do you know,’ Alleyn said, as if on an afterthought, ‘who lives in the Château de la Chèvre d’Argent?’

The attendant believed it was leased to an extremely wealthy gentleman, possibly an American, possibly an Englishman, who entertained very exclusively. He believed the ménage to be an excessively distinguished one.

Alleyn waited for a moment and then said, ‘I think there was a little trouble there tonight. One saw a scene through a lighted window when the train halted.’

The attendant’s shoulders suggested that all things are possible and that speculation is vain. His eyes were as blank as boot buttons in his pallid face. Should he not perhaps fetch the baggage of Monsieur and Madame and the little one in readiness for their descent at Roqueville. He had his hand on the door of Alleyn’s compartment when from somewhere towards the rear of the carriage, a woman screamed twice.

They were short screams, ejaculatory in character, as if they had been wrenched out of her, and very shrill. The attendant wagged his head from side to side in exasperation, begged Alleyn to excuse him, and went off down the corridor to the rearmost compartment. He tapped. Alleyn guessed at an agitated response. The attendant went in and Troy put her head out of her own door.

‘What now, for pity’s sake?’ she asked.

‘Somebody having a nightmare or something. Are you ready?’

‘Yes. But what a rum journey we’re having!’

The attendant came back at a jog-trot. Was Alleyn perhaps a doctor? An English lady had been taken ill. She was in great pain: the abdomen, the attendant elaborated, clutching his own in pantomime. It was evidently a formidable seizure. If Monsieur, by any chance –

Alleyn said he was not a doctor. Troy said, ‘I’ll go and see the poor thing, shall I? Perhaps there’s a doctor somewhere in the train. You get Ricky up, darling.’

She made off down the swaying corridor. The attendant began to tap on doors and to inquire fruitlessly of his passengers if they were doctors. ‘I shall see my comrades of the other voitures,’ he said importantly. ‘Evidently one must organize.’

Alleyn found Ricky sketchily half-dressed and in a child’s panic.

‘Where have you been, however?’ he demanded. ‘Because I didn’t know where everyone was. We’re going to be late for getting out. I can’t find my pants. Where’s Mummy?’

Alleyn calmed him, got him ready and packed their luggage. Ricky, white-faced, sat on the lower bunk with his gaze turned on the door. He liked, when travelling, to have his family under his eye. Alleyn, remembering his own childhood, knew his little son was racked with an illogical and bottomless anxiety, an anxiety that vanished when the door opened and Troy came in.

‘Oh golly, Mum!’ Ricky said and his lip trembled.

‘Hallo, there,’ Troy said in the especially calm voice she kept for Ricky’s panics. She sat down beside him, putting her arm where he could lean back against it and looked at her husband.

‘I think that woman’s very ill,’ she said. ‘She looks frightful. She had what she thought was some kind of food poisoning this morning and dosed herself with castor-oil. And then, just now she had a violent pain, really awful, she says, in the appendix place and now she hasn’t any pain at all and looks ghastly. Wouldn’t that be a perforation, perhaps?’

‘Your guess is as good as mine, my love.’

‘Rory, she’s about fifty and she comes from the Bermudas and has no relations in the world and wears a string bag on her head and she’s never been abroad before and we can’t just let her be whisked on into the Italian Riviera with a perforated appendix if that’s what it is.’

‘Oh, damn!’

‘Well, can we? I said,’ Troy went on, looking sideways at her husband, ‘that you’d come and talk to her.’

‘Darling, what the hell can I do?’

‘You’re calming in a panic, isn’t he, Rick?’

‘Yes,’ said Ricky, again turning white. ‘I don’t suppose you’re both going away, are you, Mummy?’

‘You can come with us. You could look through the corridor window at the sea. It’s shiny with moonlight and Daddy and I will be just on the other side of the poor thing’s door. Her name’s Miss Truebody and she knows Daddy’s a policeman.’

‘Well, I must say …’ Alleyn began indignantly.

‘We’d better hurry, hadn’t we?’ Troy stood up holding Ricky’s hand. He clung to her like a limpet.

At the far end of the corridor their own car attendant stood with two of his colleagues outside Miss Truebody’s door. They made dubious grimaces at one another and spoke in voices that were drowned by the racket of the train. When they saw Troy, they all took off their silver-braided caps and bowed to her. A doctor, they said, had been discovered in the troisième voiture and was now with the unfortunate lady. Perhaps Madame would join him. Their own attendant tapped on the door and with an ineffable smirk at Troy, opened it. ‘Madame!’ he invited.

Troy went in and Ricky feverishly transferred his hold to Alleyn’s hand. Together, they looked out of the corridor window.

The railway, on this part of the coast, followed an embankment a few feet above sea level and as Troy had said, the moon shone on the Mediterranean. A long cape ran out over the glossy water and near its tip a few points of yellow light showed in early-rising households. The stars were beginning to pale.

‘That’s Cap St Gilles,’ Alleyn said. ‘Lovely, isn’t it, Rick?’

Ricky nodded. He had one ear tuned to his mother’s voice which could just be heard beyond Miss Truebody’s door.

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘it is lovely.’ Alleyn wondered if Ricky was really as pedantically-mannered a child as some of their friends seemed to think.

‘Aren’t we getting a bit near?’ Ricky asked. ‘Bettern’t Mummy come now?’

‘It’s all right. We’ve ten minutes yet and the train people know we’re getting off. I promise it’s all right. Here’s Mummy now.’

She came out followed by a small bald gentleman with waxed moustaches, wearing striped professional trousers, patent leather boots and a frogged dressing-gown.

‘Your French is badly needed. This is the doctor,’ Troy said and haltingly introduced her husband.

The doctor was formally enchanted. He said crisply that he had examined the patient who almost certainly suffered from a perforated appendix and should undoubtedly be operated upon as soon as possible. He regretted extremely that he himself had an urgent professional appointment in St Celeste and could not, therefore, accept responsibility. Perhaps the best thing to do would be to discharge Miss Truebody at Roqueville and send her back by the evening train to St Christophe where she could go to hospital. Of course, if there was a surgeon in Roqueville the operation might be performed there. In any case he would give Miss Truebody an injection of morphine. His shoulders rose. It was a position of extreme difficulty. They must hope, must they not, that there would be a medical man and suitable accommodation available at Roqueville? He believed he had understood Madame to say that she and Monsieur l’Inspecteur-en-Chef would be good enough to assist their compatriot.

Monsieur l’Inspecteur-en-Chef glared at his wife and said they would, of course, be enchanted. Troy said in English that it had obviously comforted Miss Truebody and impressed the doctor to learn of her husband’s rank. The doctor bowed, delivered a few definitive compliments and lurching in a still dignified manner down the swinging corridor, made for his own carriage, followed by his own attendant.

Troy said: ‘Come and speak to her, Rory. It’ll help.’

‘Daddy?’ Ricky said in a small voice.

‘We won’t be a minute,’ Troy and Alleyn answered together, and Alleyn added, ‘We know how it feels, Rick, but one has got to get used to these things.’ Ricky nodded and swallowed.

Alleyn followed Troy into Miss Truebody’s compartment. ‘This is my husband, Miss Truebody,’ Troy said. ‘He’s had a word with the doctor and he’ll tell you all about it.’

Miss Truebody lay on her back with her knees a little drawn up and her sick hands closed vice-like over the sheet. She had a rather blunt face that in health probably was rosy but now was ominously blotched and looked as if it had shrunk away from her nose. This effect was heightened by the circumstance of her having removed her teeth. There were beads of sweat along the margin of her grey hair and her upper lip and the ridges where her eyebrows would have been if she had possessed any; the face was singularly smooth and showed none of the minor blemishes characteristic of her age. Over her head she wore, as Troy had noticed, a sort of net bag made of pink string. She looked terrified. Something in her eyes reminded Alleyn of Ricky in one of his travel-panics.

He told her, as reassuringly as might be, of the doctor’s pronouncement. Her expression did not change and he wondered if she had understood him. When he had finished she gave a little gasp and whispered indistinctly: Too awkward, so inconvenient. Disappointing.’ And her mottled hands clutched at the sheet.

‘Don’t worry,’ Alleyn said, ‘don’t worry about anything. We’ll look after you.’

Like a sick animal, she gave him a heart-rending look of gratitude and shut her eyes. For a moment Troy and Alleyn watched her being slightly but inexorably jolted by the train and then stole uneasily from the compartment. They found their son dithering with agitation in the corridor and the attendant bringing out the last of their luggage.

Troy said hurriedly: ‘This is frightful. We can’t take the responsibility. Or must we?’

‘I’m afraid we must. There’s no time to do anything else. I’ve got a card of sorts up my sleeve in Roqueville. If it’s no good we’ll get her back to St Christophe.’

‘What’s your card? Not,’ Troy ejaculated, ‘Mr Garbel?’

‘No, no, it’s – hi – look! We’re there.’

The little town of Roqueville, wan in the first thin wash of dawnlight, slid past the windows and the train drew into the station.

Fortified by a further tip from Troy and in evident relief at the prospect of losing Miss Truebody, the attendant enthusiastically piled the Alleyns’ luggage on the platform while the guard plunged into earnest conversation with Alleyn and the Roqueville station-master. The doctor reappeared fully clad and gave Miss Truebody a shot of morphine. He and Troy, in incredible association, got her into a magenta dressing-gown in which she looked like death itself. Troy hurriedly packed Miss Truebody’s possessions, uttered a few words of encouragement, and with Ricky and the doctor joined Alleyn on the platform.

Ricky, his parents once deposited on firm ground and fully accessible, forgot his terrors and contemplated the train with the hardboiled air of an experienced traveller.

The station-master with the guard and three attendants in support was saying to the doctor: ‘One is perfectly conscious Monsieur le Docteur, of the extraordinary circumstances. Nevertheless, the schedule of the Chemin de Fer des Alpes Maritimes cannot be indefinitely protracted.’

The doctor said: ‘One may, however, in the few moments that are being squandered in this unproductive conversation, M. le Chef de Gare, consult the telephone directory and ascertain if there is a doctor in Roqueville.’

‘One may do so undoubtedly, but I can assure M. le Docteur that such a search will be fruitless. Our only doctor is at a conference in St Christophe. Therefore, since the train is already delayed one minute and forty seconds …’

He glanced superbly at the guard who began to survey the train like a sergeant-major. A whistle was produced. The attendants walked towards their several cars.

‘Rory!’ Troy cried out. ‘We can’t …’

Alleyn said: ‘All right,’ and spoke to the station-master. ‘Perhaps,’ he said, M. le Chef de Gare, you are aware of the presence of a surgeon – I believe his name is Dr Baradi – among the guests of M. Oberon some twenty kilometres back at the Château de la Chèvre d’Argent. He is an Egyptian gentleman. I understand he arrived two weeks ago.’

‘Alors, M. l’Inspecteur-en-Chef …’ the doctor began but the station-master, after a sharp glance at Alleyn, became alert and neatly deferential. He remembered the arrival of the Egyptian gentleman for whom he had caused a taxi to be produced. If the gentleman should be – he bowed – as M. l’Inspecteur-en-Chef evidently was informed, a surgeon, all their problems were solved, were they not? He began to order the sleeping-car attendants about and was briskly supported by the guard. Troy, to the renewed agitation of her son, and with the assistance of their attendant, returned to the sleeping-car and supported Miss Truebody out of it, down to the platform and into the waiting-room, where she was laid out, horribly corpse-like, on a bench. Her luggage followed. Troy, on an afterthought, darted back and retrieved from a tumbler in the washing cabinet, Miss Truebody’s false teeth, dropping them with a shudder into a tartan sponge-bag. On the platform the doctor held a private conversation with Alleyn. He wrote in his notebook, tore out the page and gave it to Alleyn with his card. Alleyn, in the interests of Franco-British relationships, insisted on paying the doctor’s fee and the train finally drew out of Roqueville in an atmosphere of the liveliest cordiality. On the strangely quiet platform Alleyn and Troy looked at each other.

‘This,’ Alleyn said, ‘is not your holiday as I had planned it.’

‘What do we do now?’

‘Ring up the Chèvre d’Argent and ask for Dr Baradi, who, I have reason to suppose, is an admirable surgeon and an unmitigated blackguard.’

They could hear the dawn cocks crowing in the hills above Roqueville.

III

In the waiting-room Ricky fell fast asleep on his mother’s lap. Troy was glad of this as Miss Truebody had begun to look quite dreadful. She too had drifted into a kind of sleep. She breathed unevenly, puffing out her unsupported lips, and made unearthly noises in her throat. Troy could hear her husband and the station-master talking in the office next door and then Alleyn’s voice only, speaking on the telephone and in French! There were longish pauses during which Alleyn said: ‘Allô! Allô!’ and ‘Ne coupez pas, je vous en prie, Mademoiselle,’ which Troy felt rather proud of understanding. A grey light filtered into the waiting-room; Ricky made a touching little sound, rearranged his lips, sighed, and turned his face against her breast in an abandonment of relaxation. Alleyn began to speak at length, first in French, and then in English. Troy heard fragments of sentences.

‘… I wouldn’t have roused you up like this if it hadn’t been so urgent … Dr Claudel said definitely that it was really a matter of the most extreme urgency … He will telephone from St Celeste. I am merely a fellow passenger … yes: yes, I have a car here … Good … Very well … Yes, I understand. Thank you.’ A bell tinkled.

There was a further conversation and then Alleyn came into the waiting-room. Troy, with her chin on the top of Ricky’s silken head, gave him a nod and an intimate familiar look: her comment on Ricky’s sleep. He said: ‘It’s not fair.’

‘What?’

‘Your talent for turning my heart over.’

‘I thought,’ Troy said, ‘you meant about our holiday. What’s happened?’

‘Baradi says he’ll operate if it’s necessary.’ Alleyn looked at Miss Truebody. ‘Asleep?’

‘Yes. So, what are we do do?’

‘We’ve got a car. The Sûreté rang up the local Commissioner yesterday and told him I was on the way. He’s actually one of their experts who’s been sent down here on a special job, superseding the local chap for the time being. He’s turned on an elderly Mercedes and a driver. Damn’ civil of him. I’ve just been talking to him. Full of apologies for not coming down himself but he thought, very wisely, that we’d better not be seen together. He says our chauffeur is a reliable chap with an admirable record. He and the car are on tap outside the station now and our luggage will be collected by the hotel wagon. Baradi suggests I take Miss Truebody straight to the Chèvre d’Argent. While we’re on the way he will make what preparations he can. Luckily he’s got his instruments and Claudel has given me some pipkins of anaesthetic. Baradi asked if I could give the anaesthetic.’

‘Can you?’

‘I did once, in a ship. As long as nothing goes very wrong, it’s fairly simple. If Baradi thinks it is safe to wait he’ll try to get an anaesthetist from Douceville or somewhere. But it seems there’s some sort of doctors’ jamboree on today at St Christophe and they’ve all cleared off to it. It’s only ten kilometres from here to the Chèvre d’Argent by the inland road. I’ll drop you and Ricky at the hotel here, darling, and take Miss Truebody on.’

‘Are there any women in the house?’

‘I don’t know.’ Alleyn stopped short and then said: ‘Yes. Yes I do. There are women.’

Troy watched him for a moment and then said: ‘All right. Let’s get her aboard. You take Ricky.’

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?’