Spinsters in Jeopardy - Ngaio Marsh

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The blotches of nonexistent light that danced across their vision faded and they saw that they were in a sort of hewn passageway between walls that were incorporated in rock, separated by outcrops of stone and pierced by stairways, windows and occasional doors. At intervals they went through double archways supporting buildings that straddled the passage and darkened it. They passed an open doorway and saw into a cave-like room where an old woman sat among shelves filled with small gaily-painted figures. As Troy passed, the woman smiled at her and gestured invitingly, holding up a little clay goat.

      Dr Baradi was telling them about the Chèvre d’Argent.

      ‘It is a fortress built originally by the Saracens. One might almost say it was sculptured out of the mountain, isn’t it? The Normans stormed it on several occasions. There are legends of atrocities and so on. The fortress is, in effect, a village since the many caves beneath and around it have been shaped into dwellings and house a number of peasants, some dependent on the château and some, like the woman you have noticed, upon their own industry. The château itself is most interesting, indeed unique. But not inconvenient. Mr Oberon has, with perfect tact, introduced the amenities. We are civilized, as you shall see.

      They arrived at a double gate of wrought iron let into the wall on their left. An iron bell hung beside it. A butler appeared beyond the doors and opened them. They passed through a courtyard into a wide hall with deep-set windows through which a cool ineffectual light was admitted.

      Without, at first, taking in any details of this shadowed interior, Troy received an impression of that particular kind of suavity that is associated with costliness. The rug under her feet, the texture and colour of the curtains, the shape of cabinets and chairs and, above all, a smell which she thought must arise from the burning of sweet-scented oils, all united to give this immediate reaction. ‘Mr Oberon,’ she thought, ‘must be immensely rich.’ Almost at the same time, she saw above the great fireplace a famous Breughel which, she remembered, had been sold privately some years ago. It was called: ‘Consultation of Sorceresses.’ An open door showed a stone stairway built inside the thickness of the wall.

      ‘The stairs,’ Mr Baradi said, ‘are a little difficult. Therefore we have prepared rooms on this floor.’

      He pulled back a leather curtain. The men carried Miss Truebody into a heavily carpeted stone passage hung at intervals with rugs and lit with electric lights fitted into ancient hanging lamps, witnesses, Troy supposed, of Mr Oberon’s tact in modernization. She heard Miss Truebody raise her piping cry of distress.

      Dr Baradi said: ‘Perhaps you would be so kind as to assist her into bed?’

      Troy hurried after the stretcher and followed it into a small bedroom charmingly furnished and provided, she noticed, with an adjoining bathroom. The two bearers waited with an obliging air for further instructions. As Baradi had not accompanied them, Troy supposed that she herself was for the moment in command. She got Miss Truebody off the stretcher and on to the bed. The bearers hovered solicitously. She thanked them in her schoolgirl French and managed to get them out of the room, but not before they had persuaded her into the passage, opened a further door, and exhibited with evident pride a bare freshly-scrubbed room with a bare fresh-ly-scrubbed table near its window. A woman rose from her knees as the door opened, a scrubbing brush in her hand and a pail beside her. The room reeked of disinfectant. The indoor servant said something about it being ‘convenable’ and the gardener said something about somebody, she thought himself, being ‘bien fatigué’, ‘infiniment fatigué’. It dawned upon her that they wanted a tip. Poor Troy scuffled in her bag, produced a 500 fr. note and gave it to the indoor servant, indicating that they were to share it. They thanked her and, effulgent with smiles, went back to get the luggage. She hurried to Miss Truebody and found her crying feverishly.

      Remembering what she could of hospital routine, Troy washed the patient, found a clean nightdress (Miss Truebody wore white locknit nightdresses, sprigged with posies, and got her into bed. It was difficult to make out how much she understood of her situation. Troy wondered if it was the injection of morphine or her condition or her normal habit of mind or all three, that made her so confused and vague. When she was settled in bed she began to talk with hectic fluency about herself. It was difficult to understand her as she had frantically waved away the offer of her false teeth. Her father, it seemed, had been a doctor, a widower, living in the Bermudas. She was his only child and had spent her life with him until, a year ago, he had died leaving her, as she put it, quite comfortably though not well off. She had decided that she could just afford a trip to England and the Continent. Her father, she muttered distractedly, had ‘not kept up,’ had ‘lost touch.’ There had been an unhappy break in the past, she believed, and their relations were never mentioned. Of course there were friends in the Bermudas but not, it appeared, very many or very intimate friends. She rambled on for a little while, continually losing the thread of her narrative and frowning incomprehensibly at nothing. The pupils of her eyes were contracted and her vision seemed to be confused. Presently her voice died away and she dozed uneasily.

      Troy stole out and returned to the hall. Alleyn, Ricky and Baradi had gone but the butler was waiting for her and showed her up the steep flight of stairs in the wall. It seemed to turn about a tower and they passed two landings with doors leading off them. Finally the man opened a larger and heavier door and Troy was out in the glare of full morning on a canopied roof-garden hung, as it seemed, in blue space where sky and sea met in a wide crescent. Not till she had advanced some way towards the balustrade did Cap St Gilles appear, a sliver of earth pointing south.

      Alleyn and Baradi rose from a breakfast-table near the balustrade. Ricky lay, fast asleep, on a suspended seat under a gay canopy. The smell of freshly ground coffee and of brioches and croissants reminded Troy that she was hungry.

      They sat at the table. It was long, spread with a white cloth and set for a number of places. Troy was foolishly reminded of the Mad Hatter’s Tea-party. She looked over the parapet and saw the railroad about eighty feet below her and perhaps a hundred feet from the base of the Chèvre d’Argent. The walls, buttressed and pierced with windows, fell away beneath her in a sickening perspective. Troy had a hatred of heights and drew back quickly. ‘Last night,’ she thought, ‘I looked into one of those windows.’

      Dr Baradi was assiduous in his attentions and plied her with coffee. He gazed upon her remorselessly and she sensed Alleyn’s annoyance rising with her own embarrassment. For a moment she felt weakly inclined to giggle.

      Alleyn said: ‘See here, darling, Dr Baradi thinks that Miss Truebody is extremely ill, dangerously so. He thinks we should let her people know at once.’

      ‘She has no people. She’s only got acquaintances in the Bermudas; I asked. There seems to be nobody at all.’

      Baradi said: in that case …’ and moved his head from side to side. He turned to Troy and parodied helplessness with his hands. ‘So, in that direction, we can do nothing.’

      ‘The next thing,’ Alleyn said, speaking directly to his wife, ‘is the business of giving an anaesthetic. We could telephone to a hospital in St Christophe and try to get someone but there’s this medical jamboree and in any case it’ll mean a delay of some hours. Or Dr Baradi can try to get his own anaesthetist to fly from Paris to the nearest airport. More delay and considerable expense. The other way is for me to have a shot at it. Should we take the risk?’

      ‘What,’ Troy asked, making herself look at him, ‘do you think, Dr Baradi?’

      He sat near and a little behind her on the balustrade. His thighs bulged in their sharkskin trousers. ‘I think it will be less risky if your husband, who is not unfamiliar with the procedure, gives the anaesthetic. Her condition is not good.’

      His voice flowed over her shoulder. It was really extraordinary, she thought, how he could invest information about peritonitis and ruptured abscesses with such a gross suggestion of flattery. He might have been paying her the most objectionable compliments imaginable.

      ‘Very well,’ Alleyn said, ‘that’s decided, then. But you’ll need other help, won’t you?’

      ‘If possible, two persons. And here we encounter a difficulty.’

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