Spinsters in Jeopardy (9 page)

He turned and had reached the door when somebody knocked peremptorily on it. Alleyn stepped back as it was flung open. It actually struck his shoulder. He heard someone go swiftly past and into the room.

Baradi’s voice said: “Where are you? Oh, there you are! See here, I’ve got to talk to you.”

He must be behind the glass. Alleyn slipped round the door and darted out. As he ran lightly up the stairs he heard Baradi shut the door.

There was nobody on the top landing. He walked back into the library, having been away from it for five and a half minutes.

He took out his notebook and made a very rough sketch of Mr. Oberon’s room, taking particular pains to mark the position of the prayer wheel on the wall. Then he set about memorizing as much of its detail as he had been able to take in. He was still at this employment when the latch turned in the door.

Alleyn pulled out from the nearest shelf a copy of Mr. Montague Summer’s major work on witchcraft. He was apparently absorbed in it when a woman came into the library.

He looked up from the book and knew that as far as preserving his anonymity was concerned, he was irrevocably sunk.

“If it’s not Roderick Alleyn!” said Annabella Wells.

i

It was some years ago, in a transatlantic steamer, that Alleyn had met Annabella Wells: the focal point of shipboard gossip to which she had seemed to be perfectly indifferent. She had watched him with undisguised concentration for four hours and had then sent her secretary with an invitation for drinks. She herself drank pretty heavily and, he thought, was probably a drug addict. He had found her an embarrassment and was glad when she suddenly dropped him. Since then she had turned up from time to time as an onlooker at criminal trials where he appeared for the police. She was, she told him, passionately interested in criminology.

In the English theatre her brilliance had been dimmed by her outrageous eccentricities, but in Paris, particularly in the motion-picture studios, she was still one of the great ones. She retained a ravaged sort of beauty and an individuality which would be arresting when the last of her good looks had been rasped away. A formidable woman, and an enchantress still.

She gave him her hand and the inverted and agonized smile for which she was famous. “They said you were a big-game hunter,” she said. “I couldn’t wait.”

“It was nice of them to get that impression.”

“An accurate one, after all. Are you on the prowl down here? After some master-felon?”

“I’m on a holiday with my wife and small boy.”

“Ah, yes! The beautiful woman who paints famous pictures. I am told by Baradi and Glande that she is beautiful. There is no need to look angry, is there?”

“Did I look angry?”

“You looked as if you were trying not to show a certain uxorious irritation.”

“Did I, indeed?” said Alleyn.

“Baradi
is
a bit lush. I will allow and must admit that he’s a bit lush. Have you seen Oberon?”

“For a few moments.”

“What did you think of
him
?”

“Isn’t he your host?”

“Honestly,” she said, “you’re not true. Much more fabulous, in your way, than Oberon.”

“I’m interested in what I have been told of his philosophy.”

“So they said. What sort of interest?”

“Personal and academic.”

“My interest is personal and unacademic.” She opened her cigarette case. Alleyn glanced at the contents. “I see,” he said, “that it would be useless to offer you a Capstan.”

“Will you have one of these? They’re Egyptian. The red won’t come off on your lips.”

“Thank you. They would be wasted on me.” He lit her cigarette. “I wonder,” he said, “if I could persuade you to say nothing about my job.”

“Darling,” she rejoined — she called everyone, “darling” —“you could persuade me to do anything. My trouble was, you wouldn’t try. Why do you look at me like that?”

“I was wondering if any dependence could be placed on a heroin addict. Is it heroin?”

“It is. I get it,” said Miss Wells, “from America.”

“How very tragic.”

“Tragic?”

“You weren’t taking heroin when you played Hedda Gabler at the Unicorn in ’42. Could you give a performance like that now?”

“
Yes
,” she said vehemently.

“But what a pity you don’t!”

“My last film is the best thing I’ve ever done. Everyone says so.” She looked at him with hatred. “I can still do it,” she said.

“On your good days, perhaps. The studio is less exacting than the theatre. Will the cameras wait when the gallery would boo? I couldn’t know less about it.”

She walked up to him and struck him across the face with the back of her hand.

“You have deteriorated,” said Alleyn.

“Are you mad? What are you up to? Why are you here?”

“I brought a woman who may be dying to your Dr. Baradi. All I want is to go away as I came in — a complete nonentity.”

“And you think that by insulting me you’ll persuade me to oblige you.”

“I think you’ve already talked to your friends about me and that they’ve sent you here to find out if you were right.”

“You’re a very conceited man. Why should I talk about you?”

“Because,” Alleyn said, “you’re afraid.”

“Of you?”

“Specifically. Of me.”

“You idiot,” she said. “Coming here with a dying spinster and an arty-crafty wife and a dreary little boy! For God’s sake, get out and get on with your holiday.”

“I should like it above all things.”

“Why don’t you want them to know who you are?”

“It would quite spoil my holiday.”

“Which might mean anything.”

“It might.”

“Why do you say I’m afraid?”

“You’re shaking. That may be a carry-over from alcohol or heroin, or both, but I don’t think it is. You’re behaving like a frightened woman. You were in a blue funk when you hit me.”

“You’re saying detestable, unforgivable things to me.”

“Have I said anything that is untrue?”

“My life’s my own. I’ve a right to do what I like with it.”

“What’s happened to your intelligence? You should know perfectly well that this sort of responsibility doesn’t end with yourself. What about those two young creatures? The girl?”

“I didn’t bring them here.”

“No, really,” Alleyn said, going to the door, “you’re saying such very stupid things. I’ll go down to the front and see if my car’s come. Goodbye to you.”

She followed him and put her hand on his arm. “Look!” she said. “Look at me. I’m terrifying, aren’t I? A wreck? But I’ve still got more than my share of what it takes. Haven’t I?”

“For Baradi and his friends?”

“Baradi!” she said contemptuously.

“I really didn’t want to insult you with Oberon.”

“What do you know about Oberon?”

“I’ve seen him.”

She left her hand on him, but with an air of forgetfulness. A tremor communicated itself to his arm. “You don’t know,” she said. “You don’t know what he’s like. Its no good thinking about him in the way you think about other men. There are
hommes fatals,
too, you know. He’s terrifying and he’s marvellous. You can’t understand that, can you?”

“No. To me, if he wasn’t disgusting, he’d be ludicrous. A slug of a man.”

“Do you believe in hypnotism?”

“Certainly. If the subject is willing.”

“Oh,” she said hopelessly. “I’m willing enough. Not that it’s as simple as hypnotism.” She hung her head, looking, with that gesture, like the travesty of a shamed girl. He couldn’t hear all she said but caught one phrase: “… wonderful degradation…”

“For God’s sake,” Alleyn said, “what nonsense is this?”

She frowned and looked at him out of her disastrous eyes. “Could you help me?” she said.

“I have no idea. Probably not.”

“I’m in a bad way.”

“Yes.”

“If I were to keep faith? I don’t know what you’re up to, but if I were to keep faith and not tell them who you are? Even if it ruined me? Would you think you could help me then?”

“Are you asking me if I could help you to cure yourself of drugging? I couldn’t. Only an expert could do that. If you’ve still got enough character and sense of purpose to keep faith, as you put it, perhaps you should have enough guts to go through with a cure. I don’t know.”

“I suppose you think I’m trying to bribe you?”

“In a sense — yes.”

“Do you know,” she said discontentedly, “you’re the only man I’ve ever met—” She stopped and seemed to hesitate. “I can’t get this right,” she said. “With you it’s not an act, is it?”

Alleyn smiled for the first time. “I’m not attempting the well-known gambit of rudeness introduced with a view to amorous occasions,” he said. “Is that what you mean?”

“I suppose it is.”

“You should stick to classical drama. Shakespeare’s women don’t fall for the insult-and-angry-seduction stuff. Sorry. I’m forgetting Richard III.”

“Beatrice and Benedick? Petruchio and Katharina?”

“I was excluding comedy.”

“How right you were. There’s nothing very funny about my situation.”

“No, it seems appalling.”

“What can I do? Tell me, what I can do?”

“Leave the Chèvre d’Argent today. Now, if you like. I’ve got a car outside. Go to a doctor in Paris and offer yourself for a cure. Recognize your responsibility and, before further harm can come of this place, tell me or the local commissary or anyone else in a position of authority everything you know about the people here.”

“Betray my friends?”

“A meaningless phrase. In protecting them you betray decency itself. Can you think of that child Ginny Taylor and still question what you should do.”

She stepped back from him as if he was a physical menace.

“You’re not here by accident,” she said. “You’ve planned this visit.”

“I could hardly plan a perforated appendix in an unknown maiden lady. The place and all of you speak for yourselves. Yawning your head off because you want your heroin. Pin-point pupils and leathery faces.”

She caught her breath in what sounded like a sigh of relief. “Is that all?” she said.

“I really must go. Goodbye.”

“I can’t do it. I can’t do what you ask.”

“I’m sorry.”

He opened the door. She said: “I won’t tell them what you are. But don’t come back. Don’t come back here. I’m warning you. Don’t come back.”

“Goodbye,” Alleyn said, and without encountering anyone walked out of the house and down the passage-way to the open platform.

Raoul was waiting there with the car.

ii

When she returned to the roof-garden, Annabella Wells found the men of the house party waiting for her. Dr. Baradi closed his hand softly round her arm, leading her forward.

“Don’t,” she said, “you smell of hospitals.”

Carbury Glande said: “Annabella, who is he? I mean we all know he’s Agatha Troy’s husband but, for God’s sake,
who
is he?”

“You know as much as I do.”

“But you said you’d crossed the Atlantic with him. You said it was a shipboard affair and one knows they don’t leave many stones unturned especially in your hands, my angel.”

“He was one of my rare failures. He talked of nothing but his wife. He spread her over the Atlantic like an overflow from the Gulf Stream. I gave him up as a bad job. A dull chap, I decided.”

“I rather liked him,” young Herrington said defiantly.

Mr. Oberon spoke for the first time. “A dangerous man,” he said. “Whoever he is and whatever he may be. Under the circumstances, a dangerous man.”

Baradi said: “I agree. The enquiry for Garbel is inexplicable.”

“Unless they are initiates,” Glande said, “and have been given the name.”

“They are not initiates,” Oberon said.

“No,” Baradi agreed.

Young Herrington said explosively: “My God, is there no other way out?”

“Ask yourself,” said Glande.

Mr. Oberon rose. “There is no other way,” he said tranquilly. “And they must not return. That at least is clear. They must not return.”

iii

As they drove back to Roqueville, Alleyn said: “You did your job well this morning, Raoul. You are, evidently, a man upon whom one may depend.”

“It pleases Monsieur to say so,” said Raoul cheerfully. “The Egyptian gentleman is also, it appears, good at his job. In wartime a medical orderly learns to recognize talent, Monsieur. Very often one saw the patients zipped up like a placket-hole.
Paf
! and he’s open.
Pan
! and he’s shut. But this was different.”

“Dr. Baradi is afraid that she may not recover.”

“She had not the look of death upon her.”

“Can you recognize it?”

“I fancy that I can, Monsieur.”

“Did Madame and the small one get safely to their hotel?”

“Safely, Monsieur. On the way we stopped in the Rue des Violettes. Madame inquired for Mr. Garbel.”

Alleyn said sharply: “Did she see him?”

“I understand he was not at home, Monsieur.”

“Did she leave a message?”

“I believe so, Monsieur. I saw Madame give a note to the concierge.”

“I see.”

“She is a type, that one,” Raoul said thoughtfully.

“The concierge? Do you know her?”

“Yes, Monsieur. In Roqueville all the world knows all the world. She’s an original, is old Blanche.”

“In what way?”

“
Un article défraîchi
. One imagines she has other interests besides the door-keeping. To be fat is not always to be idle. But the apartments,” Raoul added politely, “are perfectly correct.” Evidently he felt it would be in bad taste to disparage the address of any friend of the Alleyns.

Alleyn said, choosing his French very carefully: “I am minded to place a great deal of confidence in you, Raoul.”

“If Monsieur pleases.”

“I think you were more impressed with Mr. Baradi’s skill than with his personality.”

“That is a fact, Monsieur.”

“I also. Have you seen Mr. Oberon?”

“On several occasions.”

“What do you think about him?”

“I have no absolute knowledge of his skill. Monsieur, but I think even less of his personality than of the Egyptian’s.”

“Do you know how he entertains his guests?”

“One hears a little gossip from time to time. Not much. Monsieur. The servants at the Château are for the most part imported and extremely reticent. But there is an under-chambermaid from the Paysdoux, who is not unapproachable. A blonde, which is unusual in the Paysdoux.”

“What has the unusual blonde to say about it?”

Raoul did not answer at once and Alleyn turned his head to look at him. He was scowling magnificently.

“I do not approve of what Teresa has to say. Her name, Monsieur, is Teresa. I find what she has to say immensely unpleasing. You see, it’s like this, Monsieur. The time has come when I should marry and for one reason or another — one cannot rationalize about these things’my preference is for Teresa. She has got what it takes,” Raoul said, using a phrase—
elle a du fond
—which reminded Alleyn of Annabella Wells’s desperate claim. “But in a wife,” Raoul continued, “one expects certain reticences where other men are in question. I dislike what Teresa tells me of her employer, Monsieur. I particularly dislike her account of a certain incident.”