Spinsters in Jeopardy

  Baradi twisted his head to look at Annabella. ‘Did you know this?’ he demanded.

  ‘Yes, darling,’ she said.

  ‘You little –’

  ‘Is that Gyppo for what, darling?’

  ‘In a moment,’ Alleyn said, ‘the Commissioner of Police will be here and you will be formally arrested and charged. I don’t know that I’m obliged to give you the customary warning, but the habit’s irresistible. Anything you say –’

  Baradi and Annabella entirely disregarded him.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me who he was?’ Baradi said. ‘Why?’

  ‘He asked me not to. He’s got something. I didn’t know he was here tonight. I didn’t know he’d come back.’

  ‘Liar!’

  ‘As you choose, my sweet.’ ‘

  – May be used in evidence.’

  ‘You can’t charge me with anything,’ Carbury Glande said, ‘I am an artist. I’ve formed the habit of smoking and I come to France to do it. I’m not mixed up in anything. If I hadn’t had my smokes tonight I’d bloody well fight you.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ said Alleyn.

  ‘I desire to make a statement,’ said Oberon, who was now wrapped in crimson satin and sitting on the divan.

  ‘I wish to speak to you alone, Mr Alleyn,’ said Baradi.

  ‘All in good time.’

  ‘Garbel!’ Baradi ejaculated.

  ‘Shall I answer him, Roddy dear?’

  ‘If you want to, Cousin Penelope.’

  ‘Cousin!’ Mr Oberon shouted.

  ‘Only by marriage. I informed you,’ Miss Garbel reminded him, ‘of the relationship. And I think it only right to tell you that if it hadn’t been for all the Ginnys –’

  ‘My God,’ Carbury Glande shouted, ‘where are Ginny and Robin?’

  ‘Ginny!’ Oberon cried out, ‘where is Ginny?’

  ‘I hope,’ rejoined Miss Garbel, ‘in no place so unsanctified where such as thou mayst find her.’ The quotation, cousin, is from Macbeth.’

  ‘And couldn’t be more appropriate,’ murmured Alleyn, bowing to her. He sat down at Mr Oberon’s desk and drew a sheet of paper towards him.

  ‘This woman,’ Baradi said to Alleyn, ‘is not in her right mind. I tell you this professionally. She has been under my observation for some time. In my considered opinion she is unable to distinguish between fact and fantasy. If you base your preposterous behaviour on any statement of hers –’

  ‘Which I don’t, you know.’

  ‘I am an Egyptian subject. I claim privilege. And I warn you, that if you hold me, you’ll precipitate a political incident.’

  ‘My dear M. l’Inspecteur-en-chef,’ said M. Dupont coming in from the passage, ‘do forgive me if I am a little unpunctual.’

  ‘On the contrary, my dear M. le Commisssaire, you come most punctually upon your cue.’

  M. Dupont shook hands with Alleyn. He was in tremendous form, shining with leather and wax and metal: gloved, holstered and batoned. Three lesser officers appeared inside the door.

  ‘And these,’ said M. Dupont touching his moustache and glancing round the room, ‘are the personages. You charge them?’

  ‘For the moment, with conspiracy.’

  ‘I am a naturalized British subject. I offer myself as Queen’s Evidence. I charge Dr Ali Baradi with murder.’

  Baradi turned his head and in his own language shot a stream of raw-sounding phrases at his late partner.

  ‘All these matters,’ said Dupont, ‘will be dealt with in an appropriate manner. In the meantime, Messieurs et Dames, it is required that you accompany my officers to the Commissariat de Police in Roqueville where an accusation will be formally laid.’ He nodded to his men who advanced with a play of handcuffs.

  Annabella Wells held her robe about her with one practised hand and swept back her hair with the other. She addressed herself in French to Dupont.

  ‘M. le Commissaire, do you recognize me?’

  ‘Perfectly, Madame. Madame is the actress Annabella Wells.’

  ‘Monsieur, you are a man of the world. You will understand that I find myself in a predicament.’

  ‘It is not necessary to be a man of the world to discover your predicament, Madame. It is enough to be a policeman. If Madame would care to make such adjustment to her toilette – a walking costume perhaps – I shall be delighted to arrange the facilities. There is a femme-agent de police in attendance.’

  She looked at him for a moment, seemed to hesitate, and then turned to Alleyn.

  ‘What are you going to do with me?’ she said. ‘You’ve trapped me finely, haven’t you? What a fool I was! Yesterday morning I might have guessed. And I kept faith! I didn’t tell them what you were. God, what a fool!’

  ‘It’s probably the only really sensible thing you’ve done since you came here. Don’t regret it.’

  ‘Is it wishful thinking or do I seem to catch the suggestion that I may be given a chance?’

  ‘Give yourself a chance, why not?’

  ‘Ah,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘That’ll be the day, won’t it?’

  She grinned at him and moved over to the door where Raoul waited. Raoul stared at her with a kind of incredulity. He had kicked off his sandals and wore only his pants and his St Christopher medal and, thus arrayed, contrived to look godlike.

  ‘What a charmer!’ she said in English. ‘Aren’t you?’

  ‘Madame?’

  ‘Quel charmeur vous êtes!’

  ‘Madame!’

  She asked him how old he was and if he had seen many of her films. He said he believed he had seen them all. Was he a cinephile, then? ‘Madame,’ said Raoul, ‘Je suis un fervent – de vous!’

  ‘When they let me out of gaol,’ Annabella promised, ‘I shall send you a photograph.’

  The wreckage of her beauty spoke through the ruin of her makeup. She made a good exit.

  ‘Ah, Monsieur,’ said Raoul. ‘What a tragedy! And yet it is the art that counts and she is still an artist.’

  This observation went unregarded. They could hear Annabella in conversation with the femme-agent in the passage outside.

  ‘My dear Dupont,’ Alleyn murmured, ‘may I suggest that in respect of this woman we make no arrest. I feel certain that she will be of much greater value as a free informant. Keep her under observation, of course, but for the moment, at least –’

  ‘But, of course, my dear Alleyn,’ M. Dupont rejoined, taking the final plunge into intimacy, ‘I understand, perfectly, but perfectly.’

  Alleyn was not quite sure what Dupont understood so perfectly but thought it better merely to thank him. He said: ‘There is a great deal to be explained. May we get rid of the men first?’

  Dupont’s policemen had taken charge of the four men. Oberon, still wrapped in crimson satin, was huddled on his bed. His floss-like hair hung in strands over his face. Above the silky divided beard the naked mouth was partly open. The eyes stared, apparently without curiosity, at Alleyn.

  Dupont’s men had lifted Baradi from the floor, seated him on the divan and pulled his white robe about him. His legs had been unbound, but he was now handcuffed. He, too, watched Alleyn, but sombrely, with attentiveness and speculation.

  Carbury Glande stood nearby, biting his nails. The Egyptian servant flashed winning smiles at anybody who happened to look at him. Miss Garbel sat at the desk with an air of readiness, like an eccentrically uniformed secretary.

  Dupont glanced at the men. ‘You will proceed under detention to the Commissariat de Police at Roqueville. M. l’Inspecteur-en-Chef and I will later conduct an interrogation. The matter of your nationalities and the possibility of extradition will be considered. And now – forward.’

  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 l
ess 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 inquiringly 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 to 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 reflection and they see ours. They see you in your white robes. They see your handcuffs. Look, Baradi!’

  He had taken a paperknife 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 reflection 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 reflection 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 this 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, ‘though 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 a train with a dimly lighted compartment opposite their 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 that 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 dare say, 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 that 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 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-g
arden and thence through a labyrinth of rooms to one of the bridge-like extensions that straddled the outside passageway.

  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 passageway. 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.