Spinsters in Jeopardy. Ngaio Marsh

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СКАЧАТЬ we’ll stop.’

      Ricky sighed ostentatiously and contemplated his father.

      ‘Well, as far as we know him,’ Alleyn said, ‘to the epistolatory school. There, he’s a classic. In person he’s undoubtedly the sort of bore that shows you things you don’t want to see. Snapshots in envelopes. Barren conservatories. Newspaper cuttings. He’s relentless in this. I think he carries things on his person and puts them in front of you without giving you the smallest clue about what you’re meant to say. You’re moving, Ricky.’

      ‘Isn’t it five minutes yet?’

      ‘No, and it never will be if you fidget. How long is it, Troy, since you first heard from Mr Garbel?’

      ‘About eighteen months. He wrote for Christmas. All told I’ve had six letters and five postcards from Mr Garbel. This last arrived this morning. That’s what put him into my head.’

      ‘Daddy, who is Mr Garbel?’

      ‘One of Mummy’s admirers. He lives in the Maritime Alps and writes love letters to her.’

      ‘Why?’

      ‘He says it’s because he’s her third cousin once removed, but I know better.’

      ‘What do you know better?’

      With a spare paint-brush clenched between her teeth, Troy said indistinctly:‘Keep like that, Ricky darling, I implore you.’

      ‘OK. Tell me properly, Daddy, about Mr Garbel.’

      ‘Well, he suddenly wrote to Mummy and said Mummy’s great-aunt’s daughter was his second cousin, and that he thought Mummy would like to know that he lived at a place called Roqueville in the Maritime Alps. He sent a map of Roqueville, marking the place where the road he lived in ought to be shown, but wasn’t, and he told Mummy how he didn’t go out much or meet many people.’

      ‘Pretty dull, however.’

      ‘He told her about all the food you can buy there that you can’t buy here and he sent her copies of newspapers with bus timetables marked and messages at the side saying: ‘I find this bus convenient and often take it. It leaves the corner by the principal hotel every half-hour.’ Do you still want to hear about Mr Garbel?’

      ‘Unless it’s time to stop, I might as well.’

      ‘Mummy wrote to Mr Garbel and said how interesting she found his letter.’

      ‘Did you, Mummy?’

      ‘One has to be polite,’ Troy muttered and laid a thin stroke of rose on the mouth of Ricky’s portrait.

      ‘And he wrote back sending her three used bus tickets and a used train ticket.’

      ‘Does she collect them?’

      ‘Mr Garbel thought she would like to know that they were his tickets punched by guards and conductors all for him. He also sends her beautifully coloured postcards of the Maritime Alps.’

      ‘What’s that? May I have them?’

      ‘… with arrows pointing to where his house would be if you could see it and to where the road goes to a house he sometimes visits, only the house is off the postcard.’

      ‘Like a picture puzzle, sort of?’

      ‘Sort of. And he tells Mummy how, when he was young and doing chemistry at Cambridge, he almost met her great-aunt who was his second cousin, once removed.’

      ‘Did he have a shop?’

      ‘No, he’s a special kind of chemist without a shop. When he sends Mummy presents of used tickets and old newspapers he writes on them: ‘Sent by P.E. Garbel, 16 Rue des Violettes, Roqueville, to Mrs Agatha Alleyn (née Troy) daughter of Stephen and Harriet Troy (née Baynton.)”

      ‘That’s you, isn’t it, Mummy? What else?’

      ‘Is it possible, Ricky,’ asked his wondering father, ‘that you find this interesting?’

      ‘Yes,’ said Ricky. ‘I like it. Does he mention me?’

      ‘I don’t think so.’

      ‘Or you?’

      ‘He suggests that Mummy might care to read parts of his letter to me.’

      ‘May we go and see him?’

      ‘Yes,’ said Alleyn. ‘As a matter of fact I think we may.’

      Troy turned from her work and gaped at her husband. ‘What can you mean?’ she exclaimed.

      ‘Is it time, Mummy? Because it must be, so may I get down?’

      ‘Yes, thank you, my sweet. You have been terribly good and I must think of some exciting reward.’

      ‘Going to see Mr Garbel, frinstance?’

      ‘I’m afraid,’ Troy said, ‘that Daddy, poor thing, was being rather silly.’

      ‘Well then – ride to Babylon?’ Ricky suggested and looked out of the corners of his eyes at his father.

      ‘All right,’ Alleyn groaned, parodying despair, ‘OK. All right. Here we go!’

      He swung the excitedly squealing Ricky up to his shoulders and grasped his ankles.

      ‘Good old horse,’ Ricky shouted and patted his father’s cheek. ‘Non-stop to Babylon. Good old horse.’

      Troy looked dotingly at him. ‘Say to Nanny that I said you could ask for an extra high tea.’

      ‘Top highest with strawberry jam?’

      ‘If there is any.’

      ‘Lavish!’ said Ricky and gave a cry of primitive food-lust. ‘Giddy-up horse,’ he shouted. The family of Alleyn broke into a chant:

      How many miles to Babylon?

      Five score and ten.

      Can I get there by candle-light?

      ‘Yes! and back again!’ Ricky yelled and was carried at a canter from the room.

      Troy listened to the diminishing rumpus on the stairs and looked at her work.

      ‘How happy we are!’ she thought and then, foolishly, ‘touch wood!’ And she picked up a brush and dragged a touch of colour from the hair across the brow. ‘How lucky I am,’ she thought, more soberly and her mood persisted when Alleyn came back with his hair tousled like Ricky’s and his tie under his ear.

      He said: ‘May I look?’

      ‘All right,’ Troy agreed, wiping her brushes, ‘but don’t say anything.’

      He grinned and СКАЧАТЬ