Spinsters in Jeopardy. Ngaio Marsh

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СКАЧАТЬ turned with a subtlety that made any further elaboration unnecessary. ‘It needs another hour,’ Troy muttered.

      ‘In that case,’ Alleyn said, ‘I can at least touch wood.’

      She gave him a quick grateful look and said, ‘What is all this about Mr Garbel?’

      ‘I saw the A.C. this morning. He was particularly nice, which generally means he’s got you pricked down for a particularly nasty job. On the face of it this one doesn’t sound so bad. It seems MI5 and the Sureté are having a bit of a party with the Narcotics Bureau, and our people want somebody with fairly fluent French to go over for talks and a bit of field-work. As it is MI5 we’d better observe the usual rule of airy tact on your part and phony inscrutability on mine. But it turns out that the field-work lies, to coin a coy phrase, not a hundred miles from Roqueville.’

      ‘Never!’ Troy ejaculated. ‘In the Garbel country?’

      ‘Precisely. Now it occurs to me that what with war, Ricky and the atrocious nature of my job, we’ve never had a holiday abroad together. Nanny is due for a fortnight at Reading. Why shouldn’t you and Ricky come with me to Roqueville and call on Mr Garbel?’

      Troy looked delighted but she said: ‘You can’t go round doing top-secret jobs for MI5 trailing your wife and child. It would look so amateurish. Besides, we agreed never to mix business with pleasure, Rory.’

      ‘In this case the more amateurish I look, the better. And I should only be based on Roqueville. The job lies outside it, so we wouldn’t really be mixing business with pleasure.’

      He looked at her for a moment. ‘Do come,’ he said, ‘you know you’re dying to meet Mr Garbel.’

      Troy scraped her palette. ‘I’m dying to come,’ she amended, ‘but not to meet Mr Garbel. And yet: I don’t know. There’s a sort of itch, I confess it, to find out just how deadly dull he is. Like a suicidal tendency.’

      ‘You must yield to it. Write to him and tell him you’re coming. You might enclose a bus ticket from Putney to the Fulham Road. How do you address him: ‘Dear Cousin –’ but what is his Christian name?’

      ‘I’ve no idea. He’s just P.E. Garbel. To his intimates, he tells me, he is known as Peg. He adds inevitably, a quip about being square in a round hole.’

      ‘Roqueville being the hole?’

      ‘Presumably.’

      ‘Has he a job, do you think?’

      ‘For all I know he may be writing a monograph on bicarbonate of soda. If he is he’ll probably ask us to read the manuscript.’

      ‘At all events we must meet him. Put down that damn’ palette and tell me you’re coming.’

      Troy wiped her hands on her smock. ‘We’re coming,’ she said.

      II

      In his château outside Roqueville Mr Oberon looked across the nighted Mediterranean towards North Africa and then smiled gently upon his assembled guests.

      ‘How fortunate we are,’ he said. ‘Not a jarring note. All gathered together with one pure object in mind.’ He ran over their names as if they composed a sort of celestial roll-call. ‘Our youngest disciple,’ he said beaming on Ginny Taylor. ‘A wonderful field of experience awaits her. She stands on the threshold of ecstasy. It is not too much to say, of ecstasy. And Robin too.’ Robin Herrington, who had been watching Ginny Taylor, looked up sharply. ‘Ah, youth, youth,’ sighed Mr Oberon ambiguously and turned to the remaining guests, two men and a woman. ‘Do we envy them?’ he asked and answered himself. ‘No! No, for ours is the richer tilth. We are the husbandmen, are we not?’

      Dr Baradi lifted his dark, fleshy and intelligent head. He looked at his host. ‘Yes, indeed,’ he said. ‘We are precisely that. And when Annabella arrives – I think you said she was coming?’

      ‘Dear Annabella!’ Mr Oberon exclaimed. ‘Yes. On Tuesday. Unexpectedly.’

      ‘Ah!’ said Carbury Glande, looking at his paint-stained finger-nails. ‘On Tuesday. Then she will be rested and ready for our Thursday rites.’

      ‘Dear Annabella!’ Dr Baradi echoed sumptuously.

      The sixth guest turned her ravaged face and short-sighted eyes towards Ginny Taylor.

      ‘Is this your first visit?’ she asked.

      Ginny was looking at Mr Oberon. She wore an expression that was unbecoming to her youth, a look of uncertainty, excitement and perhaps fear.

      ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘My first.’

      ‘A neophyte,’ Baradi murmured richly.

      ‘Soon to be so young a priestess,’ Mr Oberon added. ‘It is very touching.’ He smiled at Ginny with parted lips.

      A tinkling crash broke across the conversation. Robin Herrington had dropped his glass on the tessellated floor. The remains of his cocktail ran into a little pool near Mr Oberon’s feet.

      Mr Oberon cut across his apologies. ‘No, no,’ he said. ‘It is a happy symbol. Perhaps a promise. Let us call it a libation,’ he said. ‘Shall we dine?’

       CHAPTER 1

       Journey to the South

      Alleyn lifted himself on his elbow and turned his watch to the blue light above his pillow. Twenty minutes past five. In another hour they would be in Roqueville.

      The abrupt fall of silence when the train stopped must have woken him. He listened intently but, apart from the hiss of escaping steam and the slam of a door in a distant carriage, everything was quiet and still.

      He heard the men in the double sleeper next to his own exchange desultory remarks. One of them yawned loudly.

      Alleyn thought the station must be Douceville. Sure enough, someone walked past the window and a lonely voice announced to the night: ‘Douce-v-i-ll-e.’

      The engine hissed again. The same voice, apparently continuing a broken conversation, called out: ‘Pas ce soir, par exemple!’ Someone else laughed distantly. The voices receded to be followed by the most characteristic of all stationary-train noises, the tap of steel on steel. The taps tinkered away into the distance.

      Alleyn manoeuvred himself to the bottom of his bunk, dangled his long legs in space for a moment and then slithered to the floor. The window was not completely shuttered. He peered through the gap and was confronted by the bottom of a poster for Dubonnet and the lower half of a porter carrying a lamp. The lamp swung to and fro, a bell rang and the train clanked discreetly. The lamp and poster were replaced by the lower halves of two discharged passengers, a pile of luggage, a stretch of empty platform and a succession of swiftly moving pools of light. Then there was only the night hurrying past with blurred suggestions of rocks and olive trees.

      The train gathered speed and settled down to its perpetual choriambic СКАЧАТЬ