Spinsters in Jeopardy. Ngaio Marsh

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СКАЧАТЬ the natural pallor of hills and trees and dramatized the shapes of rocks and mountains. With the immediate gesture of a shutter, a high bank obliterated this landscape. The train passed through a village and for two seconds Alleyn looked into a lamplit room where a woman watched a man intent over an early breakfast. What occupation got them up so soon? They were there, sharp in his vision, and were gone.

      He turned from the window wondering if Troy, who shared his pleasure in train journeys, was awake in her single berth next door. In twenty minutes he would go and see. In the meantime he hoped that, in the almost complete darkness, he could dress himself without making a disturbance. He began to do so, steadying himself against the lurch and swing of this small, noisy and unstable world.

      ‘Hallo.’ A treble voice ventured from the blackness of the lower bunk. ‘Are we getting out soon?’

      ‘Hallo,’ Alleyn rejoined. ‘No, go to sleep.’

      ‘I couldn’t be wakier. Matter of fac’ I’ve been awake pretty well all night.’

      Alleyn groped for his shirt, staggered, barked his shin on the edge of his suitcase and swore under his breath.

      ‘Because,’ the treble voice continued, ‘if we aren’t getting out why are you dressing yourself?’

      ‘To be ready for when we are.’

      ‘I see,’ said the voice. ‘Is Mummy getting ready for getting out too?’

      ‘Not yet.’

      ‘Why?’

      ‘It’s not time.’

      ‘Is she asleep?’

      ‘I don’t know, old boy.’

      ‘Then how do you know she’s not getting ready?’

      ‘I don’t know, really. I just hope she’s not.’

      ‘Why?’

      ‘I want her to rest, and if you say why again I won’t answer.’

      ‘I see.’ There was a pause. The voice chuckled. ‘Why?’ it asked.

      Alleyn had found his shirt. He now discovered that he had put it on inside out. He took it off.

      ‘If,’ the voice pursued, ‘I said a sensible why, would you answer, Daddy?’

      ‘It would have to be entirely sensible.’

      ‘Why are you getting up in the dark?’

      ‘I had hoped,’ Alleyn said bitterly, ‘that all little boys were fast asleep and I didn’t want to wake them.’

      ‘Because now you know, they aren’t asleep so why – ?’

      ‘You’re perfectly right,’ Alleyn said. The train rounded a curve and he ran with some violence against the door. He switched on the light and contemplated his son.

      Ricky had the newly-made look peculiar to little boys in bed. His dark hair hung sweetly over his forehead, his eyes shone and his cheeks and lips were brilliant. One would have said he was so new that his colours had not yet dried.

      ‘I like being in a train,’ he said, ‘more lavishly than anything that’s ever happened so far. Do you like being in a train, Daddy?’

      ‘Yes,’ said Alleyn. He opened the door of the washing-cabinet which lit itself up. Ricky watched his father shave.

      ‘Where are we now?’ he said presently.

      ‘By a sea. It’s called the Mediterranean and it’s just out there on the other side of the train. We shall see it when it’s daytime.’

      ‘Are we in the middle of the night?’

      ‘Not quite. We’re in the very early morning. Out there everybody is fast asleep,’ Alleyn suggested, not very hopefully.

      ‘Everybody?’

      ‘Almost everybody. Fast asleep and snoring.’

      ‘All except us,’ Ricky said with rich satisfaction, ‘because we are lavishly wide awake in the very early morning in a train. Aren’t we Daddy?’

      ‘That’s it. Soon we’ll pass the house where I’m going tomorrow. The train doesn’t stop there, so I have to go on with you to Roqueville and drive back. You and Mummy will stay in Roqueville.’

      ‘Where will you be most of the time?’

      ‘Sometimes with you and sometimes at this house. It’s called the Château de la Chèvre d’Argent. That means the House of the Silver Goat.’

      ‘Pretty funny name, however,’ said Ricky.

      A stream of sparks ran past the window. The light from the carriage flew across the surface of a stone wall. The train had begun to climb steeply. It gradually slowed down until there was time to see nearby objects lamplit, in the world outside: a giant cactus, a flight of steps, part of an olive grove. The engine laboured almost to a standstill. Outside their window, perhaps a hundred yards away, there was a vast house that seemed to grow out of the cliff. It stood full in the moonlight and shadows, black as ink, were thrown by buttresses across its recessed face. A solitary window, veiled by a patterned blind, glowed dully yellow.

      ‘Somebody is awake out there,’ Ricky observed. ‘ “Out” “In”?’ he speculated. ‘Daddy, what are those people? “Out” or “In”?’

      ‘Outside for us, I suppose, and inside for them.’

      ‘Ouside the train and inside the house,’ Ricky agreed. ‘Suppose the train ran through the house, would they be “in” for us?’

      ‘I hope,’ his father observed glumly, ‘that you won’t grow up a metaphysician.’

      ‘What’s that? Look, there they are in their house. We’ve stopped, haven’t we?’

      The carriage window was exactly opposite the lighted one in the cliff-like wall of the house. A blurred shape moved in the room on the other side of the blind. It swelled and became a black body pressed against the window.

      Allyen made a sharp ejaculation and a swift movement.

      ‘Because you’re standing right in front of the window,’ Ricky said politely, ‘and it would be rather nice to see out.’

      The train jerked galvanically and with a compound racketing noise, slowly entered a tunnel, emerged, and gathering pace, began a descent to sea-level.

      The door of the compartment opened and Troy stood there in a woollen dressing-gown. Her short hair was rumpled and hung over her forehead like her son’s. Her face was white and her eyes dark with perturbation. Alleyn turned quickly. She looked from him to Ricky. ‘Have you seen out of the window?’ she asked.

      ‘I have,’ said Alleyn. ‘And so, by the look of you, have you.’

      Troy СКАЧАТЬ