Spinsters in Jeopardy (7 page)

Troy supposed this to be a compliment. She tried to look deprecating, made an ungraphic gesture and beat a retreat.

Ricky and Raoul were in close conversation in the car when she rejoined them. Three of the hard-boiled children were seated on the running-board while the others played leap-frog in an exhibitionist manner up and down the street.

“Darling,” Troy said as they drove away, “you speak French much better than I do.”

Ricky slewed his eyes round at her. They were a brilliant blue and his lashes, like his hair, were black. “
Naturellement
!” he said.

“Don’t be a prig, Ricky,” said his mother crossly. “You’re much too uppity. I think I must be bringing you up very badly.”

“Why?”

“Now then!” Troy warned him.

“Did you see Mr. Garbel, Mummy?”

“No, I left a note.”

“Is he coming to see us?”

“I hope so,” said Troy and after a moment’s thought added: “If he’s true.”

“If he writes letters to you he must be true,” Ricky pointed out. “
Naturellement
!”

Raoul drove them into a little square and pulled up in front of the hotel.

At that moment the concierge at 16 Rue des Violettes, after having sat for ten minutes in morose cogitation, dialled the telephone number of the Chèvre d’Argent.

iii

Alleyn and Baradi stood on either side of the bed. The maid, an elderly pinched-looking woman, had withdrawn to the window. The beads of her rosary clicked discreetly through her fingers.

Miss Truebody’s face, still without its teeth, seemed to have collapsed about her nose and forehead and to be less than human-sized. Her mouth was a round hole with puckered edges. She was snoring. Each expulsion of her breath blew the margin of the hole outwards and each intake sucked it in so that in a dreadful way her face was busy. Her eyes were incompletely closed and her almost hairless brows drawn together in a meaningless scowl.

“She will be like this for some hours,” Baradi said. He drew Miss Truebody’s wrist from under the sheet: “I expect no change. She is very ill, but I expect no change for some hours.”

“Which sounds,” Alleyn said absently, “like a rough sketch for a villanelle.”

“You are a poet?”

Alleyn waved a hand: “Shall we say, an undistinguished amateur.”

“You underrate yourself, I feel sure,” Baradi said, still holding the flaccid wrist. “You publish?”

Alleyn was suddenly tempted to say: “The odd slim vol.” but he controlled himself and made a slight modest gesture that was entirely non-committal. Dr. Baradi followed this up with his now familiar comment. “Mr. Oberon,” he said, “will be delighted,” and added: “He is already greatly moved by your personality and that of your enchanting wife.”

“For my part,” Alleyn said, “I was enormously impressed with his.”

He looked with an air of ardent expectancy into that fleshy mask and could find it in no line or fold that was either stupid or credulous. What was Baradi? Part Egyptian, part French? Wholly Egyptian? Wholly Arab? “Which is the kingpin,” Alleyn speculated, “Baradi or Oberon?” Baradi, taking out his watch, looked impassively into Alleyn’s face. Then he snapped open his watch and a minute went past, clicked out by the servant’s beads.

“Ah, well,” Baradi muttered, putting up his watch, “it is as one would expect. Nothing can be done for the time being. This woman will report any change. She is capable and, in the village, has had some experience of sickbed attendance. My man will be able to relieve her. We may have difficulty in securing a trained nurse for tonight, but we shall manage.”

He nodded at the woman, who came forward and listened passively to his instructions. They left her, nun-like and watchful, seated by the bed.

“It is eleven o’clock, the hour of meditation,” Baradi said as they walked down the passage, “so we must not disturb. There will be something to drink in my room. Will you join me? Your car has not yet returned.”

He led the way into the Chinese room where his servant waited behind a table set with Venetian goblets, dishes of olives and sandwiches and something that looked like Turkish Delight. There was also champagne in a silver ice-bucket. Alleyn was almost impervious to irregular hours but the last twenty-four had been exacting, the heat was excessive, and the reek of ether had made him feel squeamish. Lager was his normal choice but champagne would have done very nicely indeed. It was an arid concession to his job that obliged him to say with what he hoped was the right degree of pale complacency: “Will you forgive me if I have water? You see, I’ve lately become rather interested in a way of life that excludes alcohol.”

“But how remarkable. Mr. Oberon will be most interested. Mr. Oberon,” Baradi said — signing to the servant that the champagne was to be opened —“is perhaps the greatest living authority on such matters. His design for living transcends many of the ancient cults, drawing from each its purest essence. A remarkable synthesis. But while he himself achieves a perfect balance between austerity and, shall we say, selective enjoyment, he teaches that there is no merit in abstention for the sake of abstention. His disciples are encouraged to experience many pleasures, to choose them with the most exquisite discrimination: ‘arrange’ them, indeed, as a painter arranges his pictures or a composer traces out the design for a fugue. Only thus, he tells us, may the Untimate Goal be reached. Only thus may one experience Life to the Full. Believe me, Mr. Alleyn, he would smile at your rejection of this admirable vintage, thinking it as gross an error, if you will forgive me, as over-indulgence. Let me persuade you to change your mind. Besides, you have had a trying experience. You are a little nauseated, I think, by the fumes of ether. Let me, as a doctor,” he ended playfully, “insist on a glass of champagne.”

Alleyn had taken up a ruby goblet and was looking into it with admiration. “I must say,” he said, “this is all most awfully interesting: what you’ve been saying about Mr. Oberon’s teaching, I mean. You make my own fumbling ideas seem pitifully naïve.” He smiled. “I should adore some champagne from this quite lovely goblet.”

He held it out and watched the champagne mount and cream. Baradi was looking at him across the rim of his own glass. One could scarcely, Alleyn thought, imagine a more opulent picture: the corrugations of hair glistened, the eyes were lustrous, the nose over-hung a bubbling field of amber stained with ruby, one could guess at the wide expectant lips.

“To the fullness of life,” said Dr. Baradi.

“Yes, indeed,” Alleyn rejoined, and they drank.

The champagne was, in fact, admirable.

Alleyn’s head was as strong as the next man’s but he had had a light breakfast and therefore helped himself freely to the sandwiches, which were delicious. Baradi, always prepared, Alleyn supposed, to experience life to the full, gobbled up the sweetmeats, popping them one after another into his red mouth and abominably washing them down the champagne.

The atmosphere took on a spurious air of unbuttoning, which Alleyn was careful to encourage. So far, he felt tolerably certain, Baradi knew nothing about him, but was nevertheless concerned to place him accurately. The situation was a delicate one. If Alleyn could establish himself as an eager neophyte to the synthetic mysteries preached by Mr. Oberon, he would have taken a useful stop towards the performance of his job. At least he would be able to give an inside report on the domestic setup in the Château de la Chèvre d’Argent. Officers on loan to the Special Branch preserve a strict anonymity and it was unlikely that his name would be known in the drug-racket as an M I.5. investigator. It might be recognized, however, as that of a detective-officer of the C.I.D. Carbury Glande might respect Troy’s request, but if he didn’t, it was more than likely that he or one of the others would remember she had married a policeman. Allyn himself remembered the exuberances of the gossip columnists at the time of their marriage and later, when Troy had held one-man shows or when he had appeared for the police in some much-publicized case. It looked as if he should indeed make what hay he could while the sun shone on the Chèvre d’Argent.

“If Miss Truebody and I get through this party,” he thought. “ blow me down if I don’t take her out and we’ll break a bottle of fizz on our own account.”

Greatly cheered by this thought, he began to talk about poetry and esoteric writing, speaking of Rabindranath Tagore and the Indian “Tantras,” of the “Amanga Ranga” and parts of the Cabala. Baradi listened with every appearance of delight, but Alleyn felt a little as if he were prodding at a particularly resilient mattress. There seemed to be no vulnerable spot and, what was worse, his companion began to exhibit signs of controlled restlessness. It was clear that the champagne was intended for a stirrup cup and that he waited for Alleyn to take his departure. Yet, somewhere, there must be a point of penetration. And remembering with extreme distaste Dr. Baradi’s attentions to Troy, Alleyn drivelled hopefully onward, speaking of the secret rites of Eleusis and the cult of Osiris. Something less impersonal at last appeared in Baradi as he listened to these confidences. The folds of flesh running from the corners of his nostrils to those of his mouth became more apparent and he began to look like an Eastern and more fleshy version of Charles II. He went to the bureau by Vernis-Martin, unlocked it, and presently laid before Alleyn a book bound in grey silk on which a design had been painted in violet, green and repellent pink.

“A rare and early edition,” he said. “Carbury Glande designed and executed the cover. Do admire it!”

Alleyn opened the book at the page. It was a copy of
The Memoirs of Donatien Alphonse François, Marquis de Sade
.

“A present,” said Baradi, “from Mr. Oberon.”

It was unnecessary, Alleyn decided, to look any further for the chink in Dr. Baradi’s armour.

From this moment, when he set down his empty goblet on the table in Dr. Baradi’s room, his visit to the Chèvre d’Argent developed into a covert battle between himself and the doctor. The matter under dispute was Alleyn’s departure. He was determined to stay for as long as the semblance of ordinary manners could be preserved. Baradi obviously wanted to get rid of him, but for reasons about which Alleyn could only conjecture, avoided any suggestion of precipitancy. Alleyn felt that his safest line was to continue in the manner of a would-be disciple to the cult of the Children of the Sun. Only thus, he thought, could he avoid planting in Baradi a rising suspicion of his own motives. He must be a bore, a persistent bore, but no more than a bore. And he went gassing on, racking his memory for remnants of esoteric gossip. Baradi spoke of a telephone call. Alleyn talked of telepathic communication. Baradi said that Troy would doubtless be anxious to hear about Miss Truebody;

Alleyn asked if Miss Truebody would not be greatly helped by the banishment of anxiety from everybody’s mind. Baradi mentioned luncheon. Alleyn prattled of the lotus posture. Baradi said he must not waste any more of Alleyn’s time; Alleyn took his stand on the postulate that time, in the commonly accepted sense of the word, did not exist. A final skirmish during which an offer to enquire for Alleyn’s car was countered by Rosicrucianism and the fiery cross of the Gnostics, ended with Baradi saying that he would have another look at Miss Truebody and must then report to Mr. Oberon. He said he would be some time and begged Alleyn not to feel he must wait for his return. At this point Baradi’s servant reappeared to say a telephone call had come through for him. Baradi at once remarked that no doubt Alleyn’s car would arrive before he returned. He regretted that Mr. Oberon’s meditation class would still be in progress and must not be interrupted, and he suggested that Alleyn might care to wait for his car in the hall or in the library. Alleyn said that he would very much like to stay where he was and to examine the de Sade. With a flush of exasperation mounting on his heavy cheeks, Baradi consented, and went out, followed by his man.

They had turned to the right and gone down the passage to the hall. The rings on an embossed leather curtain in the entrance clashed as they went through.

Alleyn was already squatting at the Vernis-Martin bureau.

He had the reputation in his department of uncanny accuracy when a quick search was in question. It’s doubtful if he ever acted more swiftly than now. Baradi had left the bottom drawer of the bureau open.

It contained half a dozen books, each less notorious if more infamous than the de Sade, and all on the proscribed list at Scotland Yard. He lifted them one by one and replaced them.

The next drawer was locked but yielded to the application of a skeleton-key Alleyn had gleaned from a housebreaker of virtuosity. It contained three office ledgers and two note-books. The entries in the first ledger were written in a script that Alleyn took to be Egyptian but occasionally there appeared proper names in English characters. Enormous sums of money were shown in several currencies: piastres, francs, pounds and lire neatly flanked each other in separate columns. He turned the pages rapidly, his hearing fixed on the passage outside, his mind behind his eyes.

Between the first ledger and the second lay a thin quarto volume in violet leather, heavily embossed. The design was tortuous, but Alleyn recognized a pentagram, a triskelion, winged serpents, bulls and a broken cross. Superimposed over the whole was a double-edged sword with formalized flames rising from it in the shape of a raised hand. The covers were mounted with a hasp and lock which he had very little trouble in opening.

Between the covers was a single page of vellum, elaborately illuminated and embellished with a further number of symbolic ornaments. Baradi had been gone three minutes when Alleyn began to read the text: