Spinsters in Jeopardy (27 page)

Oberon said: “A robe. I demand a robe.”

“Look here, Alleyn,” Glande said, “what’s going to be done about me? I’m harmless, I tell you. For God’s sake tell him to let me get some clothes on.”

“Your clothes’ll be sent after you and you’ll get no more and no less than was coming to you,” Alleyn said. “In the interest of decency, my dear Dupont, Mr. Oberon should, perhaps, be given a garment of some sort.”

Dupont spoke to one of his men, who opened a cupboard-door and brought out a white robe.

“If,” Miss Garbel said delicately, “I might be excused. Of course, I don’t know—?” She looked enquiringly from Alleyn to Dupont.

“This is Miss Garbel, Dupont, of whom I have told you.”

“Truly? Not, as I supposed, the Honourable Locke?”

“Miss Locke has been murdered. She was stabbed through the heart at five thirty-eight yesterday morning in this room. Her body is in a coffin in a room on the other side of the passage-of-entry. Dr. Baradi was good enough to show it to me.”

Baradi clasped his manacled hands together and brought them down savagely on his knees. The steel must have cut and bruised him, but he gave no sign.

Glande cried out: “Murdered! My God, they told us she’d given herself an overdose.”

“Then the — pardon me, Mademoiselle, if I express it a little crudely — the third English spinster, my dear Inspecteur-en-Chef? The Miss Truebody?”

“Is to the best of my belief recovering from her operation in a room beyond a bridge across the passage-of-entry.”

Baradi got clumsily to his feet. He faced the great cheval-glass. He said something in his own language. As he spoke, through the broken window, came the effeminate shriek of a train whistle followed by the labouring up-hill clank of the train itself. Alleyn held up his hand and they were all still and looked through the broken window. Alleyn himself stood beside Baradi, facing the looking-glass, which was at an angle to the window. Baradi made to move but Alleyn put his hand on him and he stood still, as if transfixed. In the great glass they both saw the reflection of the engine pass by and then the carriages, some of them lit and some in darkness. The train dragged to a standstill. In the last carriage a lighted window, which was opposite their own window, was unshuttered. They could see two men playing cards. The men looked up. Their faces were startled.

Alleyn said: “Look, Baradi. Look in the glass. The angle of incidence is always equal to the angle of refraction, isn’t it? We see their reflexion and they see ours. They see you in your white robe. They see your handcuffs. Look, Baradi!”

He had taken a paper-knife from the desk. He raised it in his left hand as if to stab Baradi.

The men in the carriage were agitated. Their images in the glass talked excitedly and gestured. Then, suddenly, they were jerked sideways and in the glass was only the reflexion of the wall and the broken window and the night outside.

“Yesterday morning, at five thirty-eight, I was in a railway carriage out there,” Alleyn said. “I saw Grizel Locke fall against the blind and when the blind shot up I saw a man with a dark face and a knife in his right hand. He stood in such a position that the prayer wheel showed over his shoulder and I now know that I saw, not a man, but his reflexion in that glass and I know he stood where you stand and that he was a left-handed man. I know that he was you, Baradi.”

“And really, my dear Dupont—” Alleyn said a little later, when the police-car had removed the four men and the two ladies had gone away to change —“really, this is all one has to say about the case. When I saw the room yesterday morning I realized what had happened. There was this enormous cheval-glass screwed into the floor at an angle of about forty-five degrees to the window. To anybody looking in from outside it must completely exclude the right-hand section of the room. And yet, I saw a man, apparently
in
the right-hand section of the room. He must, therefore, have been an image in the glass of a man in the left-hand section of the room. To clinch it, I saw part of the prayer wheel near the right shoulder of the image. Now, if you sit in a railway-carriage outside that window, you will, I think, see part of the prayer wheel, or rather, since I chucked the prayer wheel through the window, you will see part of its trace on the faded wall, just to your left of the glass. The stabber, it was clear, must be a left-handed man and Baradi is the only left-handed man we have. I was puzzled that his face was more shadowed than the direction of the light seemed to warrant. It is, of course, a dark face.”

“It is perfectly clear,” Dupont said, “thought the verdict is not to be decided in advance. The motive was fear, of course.”

“Fear of exposure. Miss Garbel believes that Grizel Locke was horrified when her young niece turned up at the Chèvre d’Argent. It became obvious that Ginny Taylor was destined to play the major role, opposite Oberon, in these unspeakable Rites. The day before yesterday it was announced that she would wear the Black Robe tonight. My guess is that Grizel Locke, herself the victim of the extremes of mood that agonize all drug-addicts, brooded on the affair and became frantic with — with what emotion? Remorse? Anxiety? Shame?”

“But jealousy? She is, after all, about to become the supplanted mistress, is she not? Always an unpopular assignment.”

“Perhaps she was moved by all of these emotions. Perhaps, after a sleepless night or — God knows — a night of pleading, she threatened to expose the drug racket if Oberon persisted with Ginny Taylor. Oberon, finding her intractable, summoned Baradi. She threatened both of them. The scene rose to a climax. Perhaps — is it too wild a guess? — she hears the train coming and threatens to scream out their infamy from the window. Baradi reverts to type and uses a knife, probably one of the symbolic knives with which they frighten the initiates. She falls against the blind and it flies up. There, outside, is the train with a dimly lighted compartment opposite their own window. And, between the light and the window of the compartment is the shape of a man — myself.”

Dupont lightly struck his hands together. “A pretty situation, in effect!”

“He no sooner takes it in than it is over. The train enters the tunnel and Baradi and Oberon are left with Grizel Locke’s body on their hands. And within an hour I ring up about Miss Truebody. And by the way, I suggest we visit Miss Truebody. Here comes Miss Garbel who, I daresay, will show us to her room.”

Miss Garbel appeared, scarcely recognizable, wearing an unsmart coat and skirt and no make-up. It was impossible to believe this was the woman who, an hour ago, had lent herself to the Rites of the Children of the Sun and who, yesterday morning, had appeared in pedal-pushers and a scarf on the roof-garden. Dupont looked at her with astonishment. She was very tremulous and obviously distressed. She went to the point, however, with the odd directness that Alleyn was learning to expect from her.

“You are yourself again, I see,” he said.

“Alas, yes! Or not, of course altogether, alas. It is nice not having to pretend to be poor Grizel any more but, as you noticed, I found it only too easy, at certain times, to let myself go. I sometimes think it is a peculiar property of marihuana to reduce all its victims to a common denominator. When we are ‘high,’ as poor Grizel used to call it, we all behave rather in her manner. I am badly in need of a smoke now, after all the upset, which is why I’m so shaky, you know.”

“I expect you’d like to go back to your own room in the Rue des Violettes. We’ll take you there.”

“I would like it of all things, but I think I should stay to look after our patient. I’ve been doing quite a bit of the nursing — Mahomet and I took it in turns with one of the maids. Under the doctor’s instructions, of course. Would you like to see her?”

“Indeed, we should. It’s going to be difficult to cope with Miss Truebody. Of course, they never sent for a nurse?”

“No, no! Too dangerous, by far. But I assure you every care has been taken of the poor thing.”

“I’ll bet it has. They didn’t want two bodies on their hands. M. le Commissaire has arranged for a doctor and a nurse to come up by the night train from St. Christophe. In the meantime, shall we visit her?”

Miss Garbel led the way up to the front landing. M. Dupont indicated the wrought-iron door. “We discovered the key, my dear Alleyn,” he said gaily. “An excellent move!” They climbed to the roof-garden and thence though a labyrinth of rooms to one of the bridge-like extensions that straddled the outside passage-way.

They were half-way across this bridge when their attention was caught by the sound of voices and of boots on the cobblestones below.

From the balustrade they looked down into a scene that might have been devised by a film director. The sides of the house fell away from moon-patched shadow into a deep blackness. At one point a pool of light from an open door lay across the passage-way. Into this light moved an incongruous company of foreshortened figures: the Egyptian servant, Baradi and Oberon in their white robes, Carbury Glande bareheaded and in shorts, and six gendarmes in uniform. They shifted in and out of the light, a curious pattern of heads and shoulders.

“
Alors
,” said Dupont, looking down at them: “
Bon débarras
!”

His voice echoed stonily in the passage. One of the white hoods was tilted backwards. The face inside it was thus exposed to the light but, being itself dark, seemed still to be in shadow. Alleyn and Baradi looked at each other. With a peck of his head Baradi spat into the night.

“
Pas de ça
!” said one of the gendarmes and turned Baradi about. It was then seen that he was handcuffed to his companion.

“Mr. Oberon,” Alleyn said, “will be delighted.”

The procession moved off with a hollow clatter down the passage. Raoul appeared in the doorway, rolling a cigarette, and watched them go.

Miss Garbel made a curious and desolate sound but immediately afterwards said brightly: “Shall we—?” and led them indoors.

“Here we are!” she said and tapped. A door was opened by the woman Alleyn had already seen at Miss Truebody’s bedside.

“These are the friends of Mademoiselle,” said Miss Garbel. “Is she awake?”

“She is awake but M. le Docteur left orders, Mademoiselle, that no one—” She saw Dupont’s uniform and her voice faded.

“M. le Docteur,” said Miss Garbel, “has reconsidered his order.”

The woman stood aside and they went into the room. Dupont stayed by the door but Alleyn walked over to the bed. There, on the pillow, was the smooth, blunt and singularly hairless face he had remembered. She looked at him and smiled and this time she was wearing her teeth. They made a great difference.

“Why, it’s Mr. Alleyn,” she murmured in a thread-like voice. “How kind!”

“You’re getting along splendidly,” Alleyn said. “I won’t tire you now, but if there is anything you want you’ll let us know.”

“Nothing. Much better. The doctor — too kind.”

“There will be another doctor tomorrow and a new nurse to help these.”

“Not—? But — Dr. Baradi—?”

“He has been obliged to go away,” Alleyn said, “on a case of some urgency.”

“Oh.” She closed her eyes.

Alleyn and Dupont went outside. Miss Garbel came to the door.

“If you don’t want me,” she said, “I’ll stay and take my turn. I’m all right, you know. Quite reliable until morning.”

“And always,” he rejoined warmly.

“Ah,” she said, shaking her head. “That’s another story.”

She showed them where a stairway ran down to ground level and she peered after them, smiling and nodding over the banister.

“We must pay one more visit,” Alleyn said.

“The third English spinster,” Dupont agreed. He seemed to have a sort of relish for this phrase.”

But when they stood in the whitewashed room and the raw light from an unshaded lamp now shone dreadfully on what was left of Grizel Locke, he looked thoughtful and said: “All three, each after her own fashion, may be said to have served the cause of justice.”

“This one,” Alleyn said drily, “may be said to have died for it.”

v

It was a quarter past two when Grizel Locke was carried in her coffin down to a mortuary van that shone glossily in the moonlight. Two hours later Alleyn and Dupont walked out of the Château de la Chèvre d’Argent. They left two men on guard and with Raoul went down the passage-way to the open platform. It was flooded in moonlight. The Mediterranean glittered down below and the hills reared themselves up fabulously against the stars. Robin Herrington’s rakish car was parked at the edge of the platform.

Alleyn said: “These are our chickens come home to roost.”

“Ah!” said M. Dupont cosily. “It is a night for love.”

“Nevertheless, if you will excuse me—”

“But, of course!”

Alleyn, whistling tunelessly and tactfully, went over to the car. Robin was in the driver’s seat with Ginny beside him. Her head was on his shoulder. He showed no particular surprise at seeing Alleyn.

“Good morning,” Alleyn said. “So you had a breakdown.”

“We did, sir, but we think we’re under our own steam again.”

“I’m glad to hear it. You will find the Chèvre d’Argent rather empty. Here’s my card. The gendarme at the door will let you in. If you’d rather collect your possessions and come back to Roqueville, I expect we could get rooms for you both at the Royal.”

He waited for an answer but it was perfectly clear to him that although they smiled and nodded brightly they had not taken in a word of his little speech.

Robin said: “Ginny’s going to marry me.”

“I hope you will both be
very
happy.”

“We think of beginning again in one of the Dominions.”

“The Dominions are, on the whole, both tolerant and helpful.”

Ginny, speaking for the first time, said: “Will you please thank Mrs. Alleyn? She sort of did the trick.”

“I shall. She’ll be delighted to hear it.” He looked at them for a moment and they beamed back at him. “You’ll be all right,” he said. “Get a tough job and forget you’ve had bad dreams. I’m sure it will work out.”

They smiled and nodded.