Spinsters in Jeopardy

  ‘I’ll say it for you. Why in Heaven’s name can’t we do something about Ricky instead of sitting here gossiping about Miss Garbel?’

  ‘But, dear Madame,’ cried M. Dupont, ‘we are doing things about Ricketts. Only,’ M. Dupont continued, fortunately mistaking for an agonized sob the snort of hysteria that had escaped Troy, ‘only by an assemblage of the known facts can we arrive at a rational solution. Moreover, if the former case is to be imitated we shall certainly receive a message and it is important that we are here when it arrives. In the meantime all precautions have been taken. But all!’

  ‘I know,’ Troy said, ‘I’m terribly sorry. I know.’

  ‘You brought Miss Garbel’s last letter, darling. Let’s have a look at it.’

  ‘I’ll get it.’

  Troy was not very good at keeping things tidy. She had a complicated rummage in her travelling case and handbag before she unearthed the final Garbel letter which she handed with an anxious look to Alleyn. It was in a crumpled condition and he spread it out on the arm of his chair.

  ‘Here it is,’ he said, and read aloud:

  ‘My DEAR AGATHA TROY,

  ‘I wrote to you on December 17th of last year and hope that you received my letter and that I may have the pleasure of hearing from you in the not too distant future! I pursue my usual round of activities. Most of my jaunts take me into the district lying west of Roqueville, a district known as the Paysdoux (Paysdoux, literally translated, but allowing for the reversed position of the adjective, means Sweet Country) though a close acquaintance with some of the inhabitants might suggest that Pays Dopes would be a better title!!! (Forgive the parenthesis and the indifferent and slangy pun. I have never been able to resist an opportunity to play on words.)’

  ‘Hell’s boots!’ Alleyn said, ‘under our very noses! Pays Dopes indeed, District of Dopes and Dope Pays.’ He read on:

  ‘As the acquaintances I visit most frequently live some thirty kilometres (about seventeen miles) away on the western reaches of the Route Maritime I make use of the omnibus, No. 16, leaving the Place des Sarrasins at five minutes past the hour. The fare at the present rate of exchange is about ls. English, single, and ls.9d. return. I enclose a ticket which will no doubt be of interest. It is a pleasant drive and commands a pretty prospect of the Mediterranean on one’s left and on one’s right a number of ancient buildings as well as some evidence of progress, if progress it can be called, in the presence of a large chemical works, in which, owing to my chosen profession, I have come to take some interest.’

  ‘Oh lord!’ Alleyn lamented, ‘why didn’t I read this before we left. We have been so bloody superior over this undoubtedly admirable spinster.’

  ‘Please?’ said M. Dupont.

  ‘Listen to this, Dupont. Suppose this lady, who is a qualified chemist, was in the hands of the drug racket. Suppose she worked for them. Suppose she wanted to let someone in authority in England know what goes on inside the racket. Now. Do you imagine that there is any reason why she shouldn’t write what she knows to this person and put the letter in the post?’

  ‘There is a good reason to suppose she might fear to do so, Mr Chief,’ rejoined Dupont who no doubt considered that the time had come for a more familiar mode of address. ‘As an Englishwoman she is perhaps not quite trusted in the ‘raquette.’ Her correspondence may be watched. Someone who can read English at the bureau-de-postes may be bribed. Perhaps she merely suspects that this may be so. They are thorough, these blackguards. Their net is fine in the mesh.’

  ‘So she writes her boring letters and every time she writes, she drops a veiled hint, hoping I may see the letter. The Chèvre d’Argent is about thirty kilometres west on the Route Maritime. She tells us by means of tedious phrases, ferocious puns, and used bus tickets that she is a visitor there. How did she address her letters, Troy?’

  ‘To ‘Agatha Troy.’ She said in her first letter that she understood that I would prefer to be addressed by my professional name. Like an actress, she added, though not in other respects. With the usual row of ejaculation marks. I don’t think she ever used your name. You were always my brilliant and distinguished husband!’

  ‘And is my face red!’ said Alleyn. M. Dupont’s was puzzled. Alleyn continued reading the letter.

  ‘If ever you and your distinguished husband should visit ‘these parts’! you may care to take this drive which is full of interesting topographic features that often escape the notice of the ordinary Tourist. I fear my own humble account of our local background is somewhat Garbelled (! ! ! !) version and suggest that first-hand observation would be much more rewarding! With kindest regards, etc.’

  ‘Really,’ Alleyn said, handing the letter back to Troy, ‘short of cabling: ‘Drug barons at work come and catch them,’ she could scarcely have put it more clearly.’

  ‘You didn’t read the letters. I only told you about bits of them. I ought to have guessed.’

  ‘Well, it’s no good blackguarding ourselves. Look here, both of you. Suppose we’re on the right track about Miss Garbel. Suppose, for some reason, she’s in the racket yet wants to put me wise about it and has hoped to lure me over here. Why, when Troy writes and tells her we’re coming, does she go away without explanation?’

  ‘And why,’ Troy interjected, ‘does she send flowers by someone who used them as a means of kidnapping Ricky and taking him to her flat?’

  ‘The card on the flowers isn’t in her writing.’

  ‘She might have telephoned the florist.’

  ‘Which can be checked,’ said M. Dupont, ‘of course. Will you allow me? This, I assume is the bouquet.’

  He inspected the box of tuberoses. ‘Ah, yes. Le Pot des Fleurs. May I telephone Madame?’

  While he did so, Troy went out to the balcony and Alleyn, seeing her there, her fingers against her lips in the classic gesture of the anxious woman, joined her and put his arm about her shoulders.

  ‘I’m looking at that other balcony,’ she said. ‘It’s silly, isn’t it? Suppose he came out again. It’s like one of those dreams of frustration.’

  He touched her cheek and she said: ‘You mustn’t be too nice to me.’

  ‘Little perisher,’ Alleyn muttered, ‘you may depend upon it he’s airing his French and saying ‘why’ with every second breath he draws. Did you know W.S.Gilbert was pinched by bandits when he was a kid?’

  ‘I think I did. Might they have taken him to the Chèvre d’Argent? As a sort of double bluff?’

  ‘I don’t think so, my darling. My bet is he’s somewhere nearer than that.’

  ‘Nearer to Roqueville? Where, Rory, where?’

  ‘It’s a guess and an unblushing guess, but –’

  M. Dupont came bustling out to the balcony.

  ‘Alors!’ he began and checked himself. ‘My dear Monsieur and Madame, we progress a little. The Pot des Fleurs tells me the flowers were bought and removed by a woman of the servant class, not of the district, who copied the writing on the card from a piece of paper. They do not remember seeing the woman before. We may find she is a maid at the château, may we not?’

  ‘May we?’ said Troy a little desperately.

  ‘But there are better news than these, Madame. The good Raoul Milano has reported to the hotel. It appears that an acquaintance of his, an idle fellow living in the western suburb, has seen a car, a light blue Citroën, at 2.30 p.m. driving out of Roqueville by the western route. In the car were the driver, a young woman and a small boy dressed in yellow and brown. The man wears a red beret and the woman is bare-headed. The car was impeded for a moment by an omnibus and the acquaintance of Milano heard the small one talking. He spoke in French but childishly and with a little difficulty, using foreign words. He appeared to be making an inquiry. The acquaintance heard him say ‘pourquoi’ several times.’

  ‘Conclusive,’ Alleyn said, watching Troy. She cried out: ‘Did he seem frightened?’

  ‘Madame, no. It appears that Milano made the same inquiry. The acquaintan
ce said the small one seemed exigent. The actual phrase,’ M. Dupont said, turning to Alleyn, ‘was: “Il semblait être impatient de comprendre quelquechose”!’.

  ‘He was impatient to understand something,’ Troy ejaculated, ‘is that it?’

  ‘Mais oui, Madame,’ said Dupont and added a playful compliment in French to the effect that Troy evidently spoke the language as if she were born to it. Troy failed to understand a word of this and gazed anxiously at him. He continued in English: ‘Now, between Roqueville and the point where our nearest patrol on the western route is posted there are three deviations: all turning inland. Two are merely rural lanes. The third is a road that leads to a monastery and also –’ here M. Dupont raised his forefinger and looked roguish.

  ‘And also,’ Alleyn said, ‘to the Factory of the Maritime Alps Chemical Company.’

  ‘Parfaitement!’ said M. Dupont.

  IV

  ‘And you think he’s there! ’Troy criedout.‘But why? Why take him there?’

  Alleyn said: ‘As I see it, and I don’t pretend, lord knows, to see at all clearly, this might be the story. Oberon & Co. have a strong interest in the factory but they don’t realize we know it. Baradi and your painting chum Glande were at great pains to deplore the factory: to repudiate the factory as an excrescence in the landscape. But we suspect it probably houses the most impudent manufactory of hyoscine in Europe and we know Oberon’s concerned in the traffic. All right. They realize we’ve seen Ricky on the balcony of No. 16 and have called in the police. If Blanche has succeeded in getting herself out of durance vile she’s told them all about it. They’ve lost their start. They daren’t risk taking Ricky to St Céleste, as they originally planned. What are they to do with him? It would be easy and safe to house him in one of the offices at the factory and have him looked after. You must remember that nobody up at the château knows that he understands a certain amount of French.’

  ‘The people who’ve got him will have found that out by now.’

  ‘And also that his French doesn’t go beyond the nursery stage. They may have told him that we’ve gone back to look after Miss Truebody and have arranged for him to be minded until we are free. I think they may have meant to keep him at No. 16 while we went haring off to St Céleste. La Belle Blanche (damn her eyes) probably rang up and said we’d spotted him on the balcony and they thought up the factory in a hurry.’

  ‘Could they depend on our going to St Céleste? Just on the strength of our probably getting to hear about the other kidnapping?’

  ‘No,’ said Alleyn and Dupont together.

  ‘Then – I don’t understand.’

  ‘Madame,’ said Dupont, ‘there is no doubt that you shall be directed, if not to a place near St Céleste, at least to some other place along the eastern route. To some place as far as possible from the true whereabouts of Ricketts.’

  ‘Directed?’

  ‘There will be a little note or a little telephone message. Always remember they fashion themselves on the pattern of the former affair, being in ignorance of this morning’s arrest.’

  ‘It all sounds so terribly like guesswork,’ Troy said after a moment. ‘Please, what do we do?’

  Alleyn looked at Dupont whose eyebrows rose portentously. ‘It is a little difficult,’ he said. ‘From the point of view of my department, it is a delicate situation. We are not yet ready to bring an accusation against the organization behind the factory. When we are ready, Madame, it will be a very big matter, a matter not only for the department but for the police forces of several nations, for the International Police and for the United Nations Organization itself.’

  Troy suddenly had a nightmarish vision of Ricky in his lemon shirt and brown shorts abandoned to a labyrinth of departmental corridors.

  Watching her, Alleyn said: ‘So that we mustn’t suggest, you see, that we are interested in anything but Ricky.’

  ‘Which, God knows, I’m not,’ said Troy.

  ‘Ah,Madame,’ Dupont ejaculated, ‘I, too, am a parent.’ And to Troy’s intense embarrassment he kissed her hand.

  ‘It seems to me,’ Alleyn said, ‘that the best way would be for your department, my dear Dupont, to make a great show of watching the eastern route and the country round St Céleste and for us to make an equally great show of driving in a panic-stricken manner about the countryside. Indeed, it occurs to me that I might very well help matters by ringing up the château and registering panic. What do you think?’

  Dupont made a tight purse of his mouth, drew his brows together, looked pretty sharply at Alleyn and then lightly clapped his hands together.

  ‘In effect,’ he said, ‘why not?’

  Alleyn went to the telephone. ‘Baradi, I fancy,’ he said thoughtfully, and after a moment’s consideration: ‘Yes, I think it had better be Baradi.’

  He dialled the hotel office and gave the number. While he waited he grimaced at Troy: ‘Celebrated imitation about to begin. You will notice that I have nothing in my mouth.’

  They could hear the bell ringing, up at the Chèvre d’Argent.

  ‘Allô, allô!’ Alleyn began in a high voice and broke into a spate of indifferent French. Was that the Chèvre d’Argent? Could he speak to Dr Baradi? It was extremely urgent. He gave his name. They heard the telephone quack: ‘Un moment, Monsieur’. He grinned at Troy and covered the receiver with his hand. ‘Let’s hope they have to wake him up,’ he said. ‘Give me a cigarette, darling.’

  But before he could light it Baradi had come to the telephone. Alleyn’s deep voice was pitched six tones above its normal range and sounded as if it was only just under control. He began speaking in French, corrected himself, apologized and started again in English. ‘Do forgive me,’ he said, ‘for bothering you again. The truth is, we are in trouble here. I know it sounds ridiculous but has my small boy by any chance turned up at the château? Yes. Yes, we’ve lost him. We thought there might be a chance – there are buses, they say – and we’re at our wit’s end. No, I was afraid not. It’s just that my wife is quite frantic. Yes. Yes, I know. Yes, so we’ve been told. Yes, I’ve seen the police but you know what they’re like.’ Alleyn turned towards M. Dupont who immediately put on a heroic look. ‘They’re the same wherever you go, red tape and inactivity. Most unsatisfactory.’ M. Dupont bowed. ‘Yes, if it’s the same blackguards we shall be told what we have to do. No, no, I refuse to take any risks of that sort. Somehow or another I’ll raise the money but it won’t be easy with the restrictions.’ Alleyn pressed his lips together. His long fingers blanched as they tightened round the receiver. ‘Would you really?’ he said and the colour of his voice, its diffidence and its hesitancy, so much at variance with the look in his eyes, gave him the uncanny air of a ventriloquist. ‘Would you really? I say, that’s most awfully kind of you both. I’ll tell my wife. It’ll be a great relief to her to know – yes, well I ought to have said something about that, only I’m so damnably worried – I’m afraid we shan’t be able to do anything about Miss Truebody until we’ve found Ricky. I am taking my wife to St Céleste, if that’s where – yes, probably this afternoon if – I don’t think we’ll feel very like coming back after what’s happened, but of course – Is she? O, dear! I’m very sorry. That’s very good of him. I am sorry. Well, if you really don’t mind. I’m afraid I’m not much use. Thank you. Yes. Well, goodbye.’

  He hung up the receiver. His face was white.

  ‘He offers every possible help,’ he said, ‘financial and otherwise, and is sure Mr Oberon will be immeasurably distressed. He has now, no doubt, gone away to enjoy a belly laugh at our expense. It is going to be difficult to keep one’s self-control over Messrs. Oberon and Baradi.’

  ‘I believe you,’ said M. Dupont.

  ‘Rory, you’re certain now, in your own mind, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes. He didn’t utter a word that was inconsistent with genuine concern and helpfulness, but I’m certain in my own mind.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘One gets a sixth sense
about that sort of bluff. And I think he made a slip. He said: ‘Of course you can do nothing definite until these scoundrels ring you up.’ ‘

  M. Dupont cried: ‘Ahah!’

  ‘But you said to him,’ Troy objected, ‘that we would be told what to do.’

  ‘ “Would be told what to do”! Exactly. In the other case the kidnappers’ instructions came by letter. Why should Baradi think that this time they would telephone?’

  As if in answer, the bedroom telephone buzzed twice.

  ‘This will be it,’ said Alleyn and took up the receiver.

  CHAPTER 7

  Sound of Ricky

  Alleyn was used to anonymous calls on the telephone. There was a quality of voice that he had learnt to recognize as common to them all. Though this new voice spoke in French it held the familiar tang of artifice. He nodded to Dupont who at once darted out of the room.

  The voice said: ‘M. Allen?’

  ‘C’est Allen qui parle.’

  ‘Bien. Ecoutez. A sept heures demain soir, presentez-vous à pied et tout seul, vis-à-vis du pavillon de chasse en ruines, il y a sept kilomètres vers le midi du village St Céleste-des-Alpes. Apportez avec vouc cent mille francs en billets de cent. N’avertissez-pas la police, ou le petit apprendra bien les consequences. Compris?’

  Alleyn repeated it in stumbling French, as slowly as possible and with as many mistakes as he dared to introduce. He wanted to give Dupont time. The voice grew impatient in correction. Alleyn, however, repeated his instructions for the third time and began to expostulate in English. ‘Plus rien à dire,’ said the voice and rang off.

  Alleyn turned to Troy. ‘Did you understand?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t know. I think so.’

  ‘Well, it’s all right, my dearest. It’s as we thought. Tomorrow evening outside the village called St Céleste-des-Alpes with a hundred quid in my hand. The village, no doubt, will be somewhere above St Céleste.’

  ‘You didn’t recognize the voice?’

  ‘It wasn’t Baradi or Oberon. It wasn’t young Herrington. I wouldn’t swear it wasn’t Carbury Glande who was croaking with hangover this morning and might have recovered by now. And I would by no means swear that it wasn’t Baradi’s servant whom I’ve only heard utter about six phrases in Egyptian but who certainly understands French. There was a bit of an accent and I didn’t think it sounded local.’