Spinsters in Jeopardy (14 page)

Factories pulled down in Turkey were rebuilt in Bulgaria. Big centralized industries were busted only to reappear like crops of small ulcers in other places. But something was attempted and a certain amount was achieved by 1939.”

“Oh, dear! History at it again?”

“More or less. The difference lies in the fact that this time the preliminary work had been done and the machinery for investigation partly set up. But the Second World War did its stuff and everything lapsed. U.N.O. doesn’t start from scratch in the way that the League did. But it faces the old situation and it’s still up against the Big Boys. The police still catch the sprats at the customs counter and miss the mackerels in high places. The factories have again moved: from Bulgaria into post-war Italy and from post-war Italy, it appears, into the Paysdoux of Southern France. And the Big Boys have moved with them. Particularly Dr. Baradi and Mr. Oberon.”

“Are they really big?”

“Not among the tops, perhaps. There we climb into very rarefied altitudes and by as hazardous a road as this one. But Oberon and Baradi are certainly in the mackerel class. Oberon, I regret to tell you, is a British subject at the moment although he began in the Middle East where he ran a quack religion of a dubious sort and got six months for his pains. He came to us by way of Portugal and Egypt. In Portugal he practiced the same game during the war and made his first connection with the dope trade. In Egypt he was stepped up in the racket and made the acquaintance of his chum Baradi. By that time he’d acquired large sums of money. Two fortunes fell into his lap from rich disciples in Lisbon — middle-aged women, who became Daughters of the Sun or something, remade their wills and died shortly afterwards.”

“Oh, Lord!”

“You may well say so. Baradi’s a different story. Baradi was a really brilliant medical student who trained in Paris and has become one of the leading surgeons of his time. He had some sort of entrée to court circles in Cairo and, thanks to his skill and charms, any number of useful connections in France.
You
may not think him very delicious but it appears that a great many women do. He got in with the Boys in Paris and Egypt and is known to be a trafficker in a big way. It’s his money and Oberon’s that’s behind the Chemical Company of the Maritime Alps. That’s as much as the combined efforts of the international police, the Sûreté and the Yard have gleaned about Baradi and Oberon, and it’s on that information I’m meant to act.”

“And is Ricky a spanner in the works?”

“He may be a spanner in their works, my pretty. He gives us an excuse for getting into the factory. They may have played into our hands when they took Ricky into the factory.”

“
If
they took him there,” Troy said under her breath.

“If they drove beyond the turn-off to the factory the patrols would have got them. Of course he may be maddening the monks in the monastery further up.”

“Mightn’t the car have pushed on and come round by this appalling route?”

“The patrols on the eastern route will get it if it did and there are no fresh tyre tracks.”

“It’s so strange,” Troy said, “to hear you doing your stuff.”

Raoul humoured the car down a steep incline and past a pink-washed hovel overhanging the cliff. A peasant stood in the doorway. At Alleyn’s suggestion Raoul called to him.

“
Hé
friend! Any other driver come this way today?”

“
Pas un de si bête
!”

“That was: ‘no such fool,’ wasn’t it?” Troy asked.

“It was.”

“I couldn’t agree more.”

They bumped and sidled on for some time without further conversation. Raoul sang. The sky was a deeper blue and the Mediterranean, now almost purple, made unexpected gestures between the tops of hills. Troy and Alleyn each thought privately how much, in spite of the road, they would have enjoyed themselves if Ricky had been with them.

Presently Raoul, speaking slowly out of politeness to Troy, pointed to a valley they were about to enter.

“The Monastery Road. M’sieur — Madame. We descend.”

They did so, precipitately. The roofs of the Monastery of Our Lady of Paysdoux appeared, tranquil and modest, folded in a confluence of olive groves. As they came into the lower valley they looked down on an open place where a few cars were parked and where visitors to the cloisters moved in and out of long shadows. The car dived down behind the monastery, turned and ran out into the head of a good sealed road. “The factory,” Raoul said, “is round the next bend. Beyond, Monsieur can see the main road and away to the right is the headland with the tunnel that comes out by the Château de la Chèvre d’Argent.”

“Is there a place lower down and out of sight of the factory where we can watch the main road on the Roqueville side?”

“Yes, Monsieur. As one approaches the bend.”

“Let us stop there for a moment.”

“Good, Monsieur.”

Raoul’s point of observation turned out to be a pleasant one overlooking the sea and commanding a full view of the main road as it came through the hills from Roqueville. He ran the car to the outer margin of their road and stopped. Alleyn looked at his watch. “A quarter past four. The works shut down at five. I hope Dupont’s punctual. We’ll have a. final check. Raoul first, darling, if you don’t mind. See how much you can follow and keep your eye on the main road for the police car.
Alors,
Raoul.”

Raoul turned to listen. He had taken off his chauffeur’s cap, and his head, seen in profile against the Homeric blue of the Mediterranean, took on classic air. Its colour was a modulation of the tawny earth. Grape-like curls clustered behind his small ears, his mouth was fresh, reflected light bloomed on his cheekbones and his eyes held a look of untroubled acceptance. It was a beautiful head, and Troy thought: “When we’re out of this nightmare I shall want to paint it.”

Alleyn was saying: “…so you will remain at first in the car. After a time I may fetch or send for you. If I do you will come into the office and tell a fairy story. It will be to this effect…”

Raoul listened impassively, his eyes on the distant road. When Alleyn had done, Raoul made a squaring movement with his shoulders, blew out his cheeks into a mock-truculent grimace and intimated that he was ready for anything.

“Now, darling,” Alleyn said, “do you think you can come in with me and keep all thought of our inside information out of your mind? You know only this: Ricky has been kidnapped and Raoul has seen him being driven into the factory. I’m going to have a shot at the general manager, who is called Callard. We don’t know much about him. He’s a Parisian who worked in the States for a firm that was probably implicated in the racket and he speaks English. Any of the others we may run into may also speak English. We’ll assume, whatever we find, that they understand it. So don’t say anything to me that they shouldn’t hear. On the other hand, you can with advantage keep up an agitated chorus. I shall speak bad French. We don’t know what may develop so we’ll have to keep our heads and ride the skids as we meet them. How do you feel about it?”

“Should I be a brave little woman biting on the bullet or should I go in, boots and all, and rave?”

“Rave if you feel like it, my treasure. They’ll probably expect it.”

“I daresay a Spartan mother would seem more British in their eyes or is that a contradiction in terms? Oh, Rory!” Troy said in a low voice. “It’s so grotesque. Here we are half-crazy with anxiety and we have to put on a sort of anxiety act. It’s — it’s a cruel thing, isn’t it?”

“It’ll be all right,” Alleyn said. “It
is
cruel but it’ll be all right. I promise. You’ll be as right as a bank whatever you do. Hallo, there’s Dupont.”

A car had appeared on the main road from Roqueville.

“M. le Commissaire,” said Raoul, and flicked his headlamps on and off. The police car, tiny in the distance, winked briefly in response.

“We’re off,” said Alleyn.

iv

The entrance hall of the factory was impressive. The décor was carried out in obscured glass, chromium and plastic and was beautifully lit. In the centre was a sculptured figure, modern in treatment, suggestive of some beneficent though pinheaded being, who drew strength from the earth itself. Two flights of curved stairs led airily to remote galleries. There was an imposing office on the left. Double doors at the centre back and a series of single doors in the right wall all bore legends in chromium letters. The front wall was plate glass and commanded a fine view of the valley and the sea.

Beyond a curved counter in the outer office a girl sat over a ledger. When she saw Alleyn and Troy she rose and stationed herself behind a chromium notice on the counter:
Renseignements
.

“Monsieur?” asked the girl. “Madame?”

Alleyn, without checking his stride, said: “Don’t disarrange yourself, Mademoiselle,” and made for the central doors.

The girl raised her voice: “One moment, Monsieur, whom does Monsieur wish to see?”

“M. Callard, le Contrôleur.”

The girl pushed a bell on her desk. Before Alleyn could reach the double doors they opened and a commissionaire came through. Alleyn turned to the desk.

“Monsieur has an appointment?” asked the girl.

“No,” Alleyn said, “but it is a matter of extreme urgency. I must see M. Callard, Mademoiselle.”

The girl was afraid that M. Callard saw nobody without an appointment. Troy observed that her husband was making his usual impression on the girl, who touched her hair, settled her shoulders and gave him a look.

Troy said in a high voice: “Darling, what’s she saying? Has she seen him?”

The girl just glanced at Troy and then opened her eyes at Alleyn. “Perhaps I can be of assistance to Monsieur?” she suggested,

Alleyn leaned over the counter and haltingly asked her if by any chance she had seen a little boy in brown shorts and a yellow shirt. The question seemed to astonish her. She made an incredulous sound and repeated it to the commissionaire, who merely hitched up his shoulders. They had not seen any little boys, she said. Little boys were not permitted on the premises.

Alleyn stumbled about with his French and asked the girl if she spoke English. She said that unfortunately she did not.

“Mademoiselle,” Alleyn said to Troy, “doesn’t speak English. I think she says M. Callard won’t see us. And she says she doesn’t know anything about Ricky.”

Troy said: “But we know he’s here. We must see the manager, Tell her we must.”

This time the girl didn’t so much as glance at Troy. With a petunia-tipped finger and thumb she removed a particle of mascara from her lashes and discreetly rearranged her figure for Alleyn to admire. She said it was too bad that she couldn’t do anything for him. She thought he had better understand this and said that at any other time she might do a lot. She reacted with a facial expression which corresponded, Troy thought, with the “haughty little
moue
” so much admired by Edwardian novelists.

He said: “Mademoiselle, will you have the kindness of an angel? Will you take a little message to M. Callard?” She hesitated and he added in English: “And do you know that there is a large and I believe poisonous spider on your neck?”

She flashed a smile at him. “Monsieur makes a
grivoiserie
at my expense. He says naughty things in English, I believe, ‘to pull a carrot at me.’ ”

“Doesn’t speak English,” Alleyn said to Troy without moving his eyes from the girl. He took out his pocket-book, wrote a brief message and slid it across the counter with a five hundred franc note underneath. He playfully lifted the girl’s hand and closed it over both.

“Well, I must say!” said Troy, and she thought how strange it was that she could be civilized and amused and perhaps a little annoyed at this incident.

With an air that contrived to suggest that Alleyn as well as being a shameless flirt was also a gentleman, the girl moved back from the counter, glanced through the plate-glass windows of the main office where a number of typists and two clerks looked on with undisguised curiosity, seemed to change her mind, and came out by way of a gate at the top of the counter and walked with short steps to the double doors. The commissionaire opened them for her. They looked impassively at each other. She passed through and he followed her.

Alleyn said: “She’s taking my note to the boss. It ought to surprise him. By all the rules he should have been rung up and told we’re on the road to St. Céleste.”

“Will he see us?”

“I don’t see how he can refuse.”

While they waited, Troy looked at the spidery stairs, the blind doors and the distant galleries. “If he should appear!” she thought. “If there could be another flash of yellow and brown.” She began to imagine how it would be when they found Ricky. Would his face be white with smudges under the eyes? Would he cry in the stifled inarticulate fashion that always gripped her heart in a stricture? Would he shout and run to her? Or, by a merciful chance, would he behave like the other boy and want to stay with his terrible new friends? She thought: “It’s unlucky to anticipate. He may not be here at all. It may be a false scent. If we don’t find him before tonight I think I shall crack up.”

She knew Alleyn’s mind followed hers as closely as one mind can follow another, and she knew that as far as one human being can find solace in another she found solace in him, but she suffered, nevertheless, a great loneliness of spirit. She turned to him and saw compassion and anger in his eyes.

“If anything could make me want more to get these gentlemen,” he said, “it would be this. We’ll get them, Troy.”

“Oh, yes,” she said. “I expect you will.”

“Ricky’s here. I know it in my bones. I promise you.”

The girl came back through the double doors. She was very formal.

“Monsieur Callard will see Monsieur and Madame,” she said. The commissionaire waited on the far side, holding one door open. As Alleyn stood aside for Troy to go through, the girl moved nearer to him. Her back was turned to the commissionaire. Her eyes made a sign of assent.

He murmured: “And I may understand — what, Mademoiselle?”