Spinsters in Jeopardy

Chapter V Ricky in Roqueville

i

It was some years ago, in a transatlantic steamer, that Alleyn had met Annabella Wells: the focal point of shipboard gossip to which she had seemed to be perfectly indifferent. She had watched him with undisguised concentration for four hours and had then sent her secretary with an invitation for drinks. She herself drank pretty heavily and, he thought, was probably a drug addict. He had found her an embarrassment and was glad when she suddenly dropped him. Since then she had turned up from time to time as an onlooker at criminal trials where he appeared for the police. She was, she told him, passionately interested in criminology.

In the English theatre her brilliance had been dimmed by her outrageous eccentricities, but in Paris, particularly in the motion-picture studios, she was still one of the great ones. She retained a ravaged sort of beauty and an individuality which would be arresting when the last of her good looks had been rasped away. A formidable woman, and an enchantress still.

She gave him her hand and the inverted and agonized smile for which she was famous. “They said you were a big-game hunter,” she said. “I couldn’t wait.”

“It was nice of them to get that impression.”

“An accurate one, after all. Are you on the prowl down here? After some master-felon?”

“I’m on a holiday with my wife and small boy.”

“Ah, yes! The beautiful woman who paints famous pictures. I am told by Baradi and Glande that she is beautiful. There is no need to look angry, is there?”

“Did I look angry?”

“You looked as if you were trying not to show a certain uxorious irritation.”

“Did I, indeed?” said Alleyn.

“Baradi is a bit lush. I will allow and must admit that he’s a bit lush. Have you seen Oberon?”

“For a few moments.”

“What did you think of him?”

“Isn’t he your host?”

“Honestly,” she said, “you’re not true. Much more fabulous, in your way, than Oberon.”

“I’m interested in what I have been told of his philosophy.”

“So they said. What sort of interest?”

“Personal and academic.”

“My interest is personal and unacademic.” She opened her cigarette case. Alleyn glanced at the contents. “I see,” he said, “that it would be useless to offer you a Capstan.”

“Will you have one of these? They’re Egyptian. The red won’t come off on your lips.”

“Thank you. They would be wasted on me.” He lit her cigarette. “I wonder,” he said, “if I could persuade you to say nothing about my job.”

“Darling,” she rejoined — she called everyone, “darling” —“you could persuade me to do anything. My trouble was, you wouldn’t try. Why do you look at me like that?”

“I was wondering if any dependence could be placed on a heroin addict. Is it heroin?”

“It is. I get it,” said Miss Wells, “from America.”

“How very tragic.”

“Tragic?”

“You weren’t taking heroin when you played Hedda Gabler at the Unicorn in ’42. Could you give a performance like that now?”

“Yes,” she said vehemently.

“But what a pity you don’t!”

“My last film is the best thing I’ve ever done. Everyone says so.” She looked at him with hatred. “I can still do it,” she said.

“On your good days, perhaps. The studio is less exacting than the theatre. Will the cameras wait when the gallery would boo? I couldn’t know less about it.”

She walked up to him and struck him across the face with the back of her hand.

“You have deteriorated,” said Alleyn.

“Are you mad? What are you up to? Why are you here?”

“I brought a woman who may be dying to your Dr. Baradi. All I want is to go away as I came in — a complete nonentity.”

“And you think that by insulting me you’ll persuade me to oblige you.”

“I think you’ve already talked to your friends about me and that they’ve sent you here to find out if you were right.”

“You’re a very conceited man. Why should I talk about you?”

“Because,” Alleyn said, “you’re afraid.”

“Of you?”

“Specifically. Of me.”

“You idiot,” she said. “Coming here with a dying spinster and an arty-crafty wife and a dreary little boy! For God’s sake, get out and get on with your holiday.”

“I should like it above all things.”

“Why don’t you want them to know who you are?”

“It would quite spoil my holiday.”

“Which might mean anything.”

“It might.”

“Why do you say I’m afraid?”

“You’re shaking. That may be a carry-over from alcohol or heroin, or both, but I don’t think it is. You’re behaving like a frightened woman. You were in a blue funk when you hit me.”

“You’re saying detestable, unforgivable things to me.”

“Have I said anything that is untrue?”

“My life’s my own. I’ve a right to do what I like with it.”

“What’s happened to your intelligence? You should know perfectly well that this sort of responsibility doesn’t end with yourself. What about those two young creatures? The girl?”

“I didn’t bring them here.”

“No, really,” Alleyn said, going to the door, “you’re saying such very stupid things. I’ll go down to the front and see if my car’s come. Goodbye to you.”

She followed him and put her hand on his arm. “Look!” she said. “Look at me. I’m terrifying, aren’t I? A wreck? But I’ve still got more than my share of what it takes. Haven’t I?”

“For Baradi and his friends?”

“Baradi!” she said contemptuously.

“I really didn’t want to insult you with Oberon.”

“What do you know about Oberon?”

“I’ve seen him.”

She left her hand on him, but with an air of forgetfulness. A tremor communicated itself to his arm. “You don’t know,” she said. “You don’t know what he’s like. Its no good thinking about him in the way you think about other men. There are hommes fatals, too, you know. He’s terrifying and he’s marvellous. You can’t understand that, can you?”

“No. To me, if he wasn’t disgusting, he’d be ludicrous. A slug of a man.”

“Do you believe in hypnotism?”

“Certainly. If the subject is willing.”

“Oh,” she said hopelessly. “I’m willing enough. Not that it’s as simple as hypnotism.” She hung her head, looking, with that gesture, like the travesty of a shamed girl. He couldn’t hear all she said but caught one phrase: “… wonderful degradation…”

“For God’s sake,” Alleyn said, “what nonsense is this?”

She frowned and looked at him out of her disastrous eyes. “Could you help me?” she said.

“I have no idea. Probably not.”

“I’m in a bad way.”

“Yes.”

“If I were to keep faith? I don’t know what you’re up to, but if I were to keep faith and not tell them who you are? Even if it ruined me? Would you think you could help me then?”

“Are you asking me if I could help you to cure yourself of drugging? I couldn’t. Only an expert could do that. If you’ve still got enough character and sense of purpose to keep faith, as you put it, perhaps you should have enough guts to go through with a cure. I don’t know.”

“I suppose you think I’m trying to bribe you?”

“In a sense — yes.”

“Do you know,” she said discontentedly, “you’re the only man I’ve ever met—” She stopped and seemed to hesitate. “I can’t get this right,” she said. “With you it’s not an act, is it?”

Alleyn smiled for the first time. “I’m not attempting the well-known gambit of rudeness introduced with a view to amorous occasions,” he said. “Is that what you mean?”

“I suppose it is.”

“You should stick to classical drama. Shakespeare’s women don’t fall for the insult-and-angry-seduction stuff. Sorry. I’m forgetting Richard III.”

“Beatrice and Benedick? Petruchio and Katharina?”

“I was excluding comedy.”

“How right you were. There’s nothing very funny about my situation.”

“No, it seems appalling.”

“What can I do? Tell me, what I can do?”

“Leave the Chèvre d’Argent today. Now, if you like. I’ve got a car outside. Go to a doctor in Paris and offer yourself for a cure. Recognize your responsibility and, before further harm can come of this place, tell me or the local commissary or anyone else in a position of authority everything you know about the people here.”

“Betray my friends?”

“A meaningless phrase. In protecting them you betray decency itself. Can you think of that child Ginny Taylor and still question what you should do.”

She stepped back from him as if he was a physical menace.

“You’re not here by accident,” she said. “You’ve planned this visit.”

“I could hardly plan a perforated appendix in an unknown maiden lady. The place and all of you speak for yourselves. Yawning your head off because you want your heroin. Pin-point pupils and leathery faces.”

She caught her breath in what sounded like a sigh of relief. “Is that all?” she said.

“I really must go. Goodbye.”

“I can’t do it. I can’t do what you ask.”

“I’m sorry.”

He opened the door. She said: “I won’t tell them what you are. But don’t come back. Don’t come back here. I’m warning you. Don’t come back.”

“Goodbye,” Alleyn said, and without encountering anyone walked out of the house and down the passage-way to the open platform.

Raoul was waiting there with the car.

ii

When she returned to the roof-garden, Annabella Wells found the men of the house party waiting for her. Dr. Baradi closed his hand softly round her arm, leading her forward.

“Don’t,” she said, “you smell of hospitals.”

Carbury Glande said: “Annabella, who is he? I mean we all know he’s Agatha Troy’s husband but, for God’s sake, who is he?”

“You know as much as I do.”

“But you said you’d crossed the Atlantic with him. You said it was a shipboard affair and one knows they don’t leave many stones unturned especially in your hands, my angel.”

“He was one of my rare failures. He talked of nothing but his wife. He spread her over the Atlantic like an overflow from the Gulf Stream. I gave him up as a bad job. A dull chap, I decided.”

“I rather liked him,” young Herrington said defiantly.

Mr. Oberon spoke for the first time. “A dangerous man,” he said. “Whoever he is and whatever he may be. Under the circumstances, a dangerous man.”

Baradi said: “I agree. The enquiry for Garbel is inexplicable.”

“Unless they are initiates,” Glande said, “and have been given the name.”

“They are not initiates,” Oberon said.

“No,” Baradi agreed.

Young Herrington said explosively: “My God, is there no other way out?”

“Ask yourself,” said Glande.

Mr. Oberon rose. “There is no other way,” he said tranquilly. “And they must not return. That at least is clear. They must not return.”

iii

As they drove back to Roqueville, Alleyn said: “You did your job well this morning, Raoul. You are, evidently, a man upon whom one may depend.”

“It pleases Monsieur to say so,” said Raoul cheerfully. “The Egyptian gentleman is also, it appears, good at his job. In wartime a medical orderly learns to recognize talent, Monsieur. Very often one saw the patients zipped up like a placket-hole. Paf! and he’s open. Pan! and he’s shut. But this was different.”

“Dr. Baradi is afraid that she may not recover.”

“She had not the look of death upon her.”

“Can you recognize it?”

“I fancy that I can, Monsieur.”

“Did Madame and the small one get safely to their hotel?”

“Safely, Monsieur. On the way we stopped in the Rue des Violettes. Madame inquired for Mr. Garbel.”

Alleyn said sharply: “Did she see him?”

“I understand he was not at home, Monsieur.”

“Did she leave a message?”

“I believe so, Monsieur. I saw Madame give a note to the concierge.”

“I see.”

“She is a type, that one,” Raoul said thoughtfully.

“The concierge? Do you know her?”

“Yes, Monsieur. In Roqueville all the world knows all the world. She’s an original, is old Blanche.”

“In what way?”

“Un article défraîchi. One imagines she has other interests besides the door-keeping. To be fat is not always to be idle. But the apartments,” Raoul added politely, “are perfectly correct.” Evidently he felt it would be in bad taste to disparage the address of any friend of the Alleyns.

Alleyn said, choosing his French very carefully: “I am minded to place a great deal of confidence in you, Raoul.”

“If Monsieur pleases.”

“I think you were more impressed with Mr. Baradi’s skill than with his personality.”

“That is a fact, Monsieur.”

“I also. Have you seen Mr. Oberon?”

“On several occasions.”

“What do you think about him?”

“I have no absolute knowledge of his skill. Monsieur, but I think even less of his personality than of the Egyptian’s.”

“Do you know how he entertains his guests?”

“One hears a little gossip from time to time. Not much. Monsieur. The servants at the Château are for the most part imported and extremely reticent. But there is an under-chambermaid from the Paysdoux, who is not unapproachable. A blonde, which is unusual in the Paysdoux.”

“What has the unusual blonde to say about it?”

Raoul did not answer at once and Alleyn turned his head to look at him. He was scowling magnificently.

“I do not approve of what Teresa has to say. Her name, Monsieur, is Teresa. I find what she has to say immensely unpleasing. You see, it’s like this, Monsieur. The time has come when I should marry and for one reason or another — one cannot rationalize about these things’my preference is for Teresa. She has got what it takes,” Raoul said, using a phrase—elle a du fond—which reminded Alleyn of Annabella Wells’s desperate claim. “But in a wife,” Raoul continued, “one expects certain reticences where other men are in question. I dislike what Teresa tells me of her employer, Monsieur. I particularly dislike her account of a certain incident.”

“Am I to hear it?”

“I shall be glad to recount it. It appears, Monsieur, that Teresa’s duties are confined to the sweeping of carpets and polishing of floors and that it is not required of her to take petit déjeuner to guests or to perform any personal services for them. She is young and inexperienced. And so, one morning, this Egyptian surgeon witnesses Teresa from the rear when she is on her knees polishing. Teresa is as good from behind as she in from in front, Monsieur. And the doctor passes her and pauses to look. Presently he returns with Mr. Oberon and they pause and speak to each other in a foreign language. Next, the femme de charge sends for Teresa and she is instructed that she is to serve petit déjeuner to this animal Oberon, if Monsieur will overlook the description, in his bedroom and that her wage is to be raised. So Teresa performs this service. On the first morning there is no conversation. On the second he enquires her name. On the third this vilain coco asks her if she is not a fine strong girl. On the fourth he talks a lot of blague about the spirituality of the body and the non-existence of evil, and on the fifth, when Teresa enters, he is displayed, immodestly clad, before a full-length glass in his salon. I must tell you, Monsieur, that to reach the bedroom, Teresa must first pass through the salon. She is obliged to approach this unseemly animal. He looks at her fixedly and speaks to her in a manner that is irreligious and blasphemous and anathema. Monsieur, Teresa is a good girl. She is frightened, not so much of this animal, she tells me, as of herself because she feels herself to be like a bird when it is held in terror by a snake. I have told her she must leave, but she says that the wages are good and they are a large family with sickness and much in debt. Monsieur, I repeat, she is a good girl and it is true she needs the money, but I cannot escape the thought that she is in a kind of bondage from which she cannot summon enough character to escape. And on some mornings, when she goes in, there is nothing to which one could object, but on others he talks and talks and stares and stares at Teresa. So that when I last saw her we quarrelled and I have told her that unless she leaves her job before she is no longer respectable she may look elsewhere for a husband. So she wept and I was discomforted. She is not unique but, there it is, I have a preference for Teresa.”

Alleyn thought: “This is the first bit of luck I’ve had since we got here.” He looked up the valley at the glittering works of the Maritime Alps Chemical Company and said: “I think it well to tell you that I am interested professionally in the ménage at the Chèvre d’Argent. If it had not been for the accident of Mademoiselle’s illness I should have tried to gain admittance there. M. le Commissaire is also interested. We are colleagues in this affair. You and I agree to forget my rank, Raoul, but for the purposes of this discussion perhaps we should recall it.”

“Good, M. l’lnspector-en-Chef.”

“There’s no reason on earth why you should put yourself out for an English policeman in an affair which, however much it may also concern the French police, hasn’t very much to do with you. Apart from Teresa, for whom you have a preference.”

“There is always Teresa.”

“Are you a discreet man?”

“I don’t chatter like a one-eyed magpie, Monsieur.”

“I believe you. It is known to the police here and in London that the Chèvre d’Argent is used as a place of distribution in a particularly ugly trade.”

“Women, Monsieur?”

“Drugs. Women, it seems, are a purely personal interest. A side-line. I believe neither Dr. Baradi nor Mr. Oberon is a drug addict. They are engaged in the traffic from a business point-of-view. I think that they have cultivated the habit of drug-taking among their guests and are probably using at least one of them as a distributor. Mr. Oberon has also established a cult.”

“A cult, Monsieur?”

“A synthetic religion concocted from scraps of mysticism, witchcraft, mythology, Hinduism, Egyptology, what-have-you, with, I very much suspect, a number of particularly revolting fancy touches invented by Mr. Oberon.”

“Anathema,” Raoul said, “all this is anathema. What do they do?” he added with undisguised interest.

“I don’t know exactly but I must, I’m afraid, find out. There have been other cases of this sort. No doubt there are rites. No doubt the women are willing to be drugged.”

Raoul said: “It appears that I must be firm with Teresa.”

“I should be very firm, Raoul.”

“This morning she is in Roqueville at the market. I am to meet her at my parents’ restaurant, where I shall introduce a firm note. I am disturbed for her. All this, Monsieur, that you have related is borne out by Teresa. On Thursday nights the local servants and some of the other permanent staff are dismissed. It is on Thursday, therefore, that I escort Teresa to her home up in the Paysdoux where she sleeps the night. She has heard a little gossip, not much, because the servants are discreet, but a little. It appears that there is a ceremony in a room which is kept locked at other times. And on Friday nobody appears until late in the afternoon and then with an air of having a formidable gueule de bois. The ladies are strangely behaved on Fridays. It is as if they are half-asleep, Teresa says. And last Friday a young English lady, who has recently arrived, seemed as if she was completely bouleversée; dazed, Monsieur,” Raoul said, making a graphic gesture with one hand. “In a trance. And also as if she had wept.”

“Isn’t Teresa frightened by what she sees on Fridays?”

“That is what I find strange, Monsieur. Yes: she says she is frightened, but it is clear to me that she is also excited. That is what troubles me in Teresa.”

“Did she tell you where the room is? The room that is unlocked on Thursday nights?”

“It is in the lower part of the Château, Monsieur. Beneath the library, Teresa thinks. Two flights beneath.”

“And today is Wednesday.”

“Well, Monsieur?”

“I am in need of an assistant.”

“Yes, Monsieur?”

“If I asked at the Préfecture they would give me the local gendarme, who is doubtless well-known. Or they would send me a clever man from Paris who as a stranger would be conspicuous. But a man of Roqueville who is well-known and yet is accepted as the friend of one of the maids at the Chèvre d’Argent is not conspicuous if he calls. Do you in fact call often to see Teresa?”

“Often, Monsieur.”

“Well, Raoul?”

“Well, Monsieur?”

“Do you care, with M. le Commissaire’s permission, to come adventuring with me on Thursday night?”

“Enchanted,” said Raoul, gracefully.

“It may not be uneventful, you know. They are a formidable lot, up there.”

“That is understood, Monsieur. Again, it will be an act of grace.”

“Good. Here is Roqueville. Drive to the hotel, if you please. I shall see Madame and have some luncheon and at three o’clock I shall call on M. le Commissaire. You will be free until then, but leave me a telephone number and your address.”

“My parents’ restaurant is in the street above that of the hotel. L’Escargot Bienvenu, 20 Rue des Sarrasins. Here is a card, Monsieur, with the telephone number.”

“Right.”

“My father is a good cook. He has not a great repertoire, but his judgment is sound. Such dishes as he makes he makes well. His filets mignons are a speciality of the house, Monsieur, and his sauces are inspired.”

“You interest me profoundly. In the days when there was steak in England, one used to dream of filet mignon but even then one came to France to eat it.”

“Perhaps if Monsieur and Madame find themselves a little weary of the table d’hôte at the Royal they may care to eat cheaply but with satisfaction at L’Escargot Bienvenu.”

“An admirable suggestion.”

“Of course, we are not at all smart. But good breeding,” Raoul said simply, “creates its own background and Monsieur and Madame would not feel out of place. Here is your hotel, Monsieur, and—” His voice changed. “Here is Madame.”

Alleyn was out of the car before it stopped. Troy stood in the hotel courtyard with her clasped hands at her lips and a look on her face that he had never seen there before. When he took her arms in his hands he felt her whole body trembling. She tried to speak to him but at first was unable to find her voice. He saw her mouth frame the word “Ricky.”

“What is it darling?” he said. “What’s the matter with him?” “He’s gone,” she said. “They’ve taken him. They’ve taken Ricky.”

iv

For the rest of their lives they would remember too vividly the seconds in which they stood on the tessellated courtyard of the hotel, plastered by the mid-day sun. Raoul on the footpath watched them and the blank street glared behind him. The air smelt of petrol. There was a smear of magenta bougainvillea on the opposite wall, and in the centre of the street a neat pile of horse-droppings. It was already siesta time and so quiet that they might have been the only people awake in Roqueville.

“I’ll keep my head and be sensible,” Troy whispered. “Won’t I, Rory?”

“Of course. We’ll go indoors and you’ll tell me about it.”

“I want to get into the car and look somewhere for him, but I know that won’t do.”

“I’ll ask Raoul to wait.”

He did so. Raoul listened, motionless. When Alleyn had spoken Raoul said, “Tell Madame it will be all right, Monsieur. Things will come right.” As they turned away he called his reassurances after them and the sound of his words followed them: “Les affaires s’arrangeront. Tout ira bien, Madame.”

Inside the hotel it seemed very dark. A porter sat behind a reception desk and an elegantly dressed man stood in the hall wringing his hands.

Troy said: “This is my husband. This is the manager, Rory. He speaks English. I’m sorry, Monsieur, I don’t know your name.”

“Malaquin, Madame. Mr. Alleyn, I am sure there is some simple explanation — There have been other cases—”

“I’ll come and see you, if I may, when I’ve heard what has happened.”

“But of course. Garçon—”

The porter, looking ineffably compassionate, took them up in the lift. The stifling journey was interminable.

Troy faced her husband in a large bedroom made less impersonal by the slight but characteristic litter that accompanied her wherever she went. Beyond her was an iron-railed balcony and beyond that the arrogant laundry-blue of the Mediterranean. He pushed a chair up and she took it obediently. He sat on his heels before her and put his hands on the arms of the chair.

“Now, tell me, darling,” he said. “I can’t do anything until you’ve told me.”

“You were such a lifetime coming.”

“I’m here now. Tell me.”

“Yes.”

She did tell him. She made a great effort to be lucid, frowning when she hesitated or when her voice shook, and always keeping her gaze on him. He had said she was a good witness and now she stuck to the bare bones of her story, but every word was shadowed by a multitude of unspoken terrors.

She said that when they arrived at the hotel Ricky was fretful and white after his interrupted sleep and the excitement of the drive. The manager was attentive and suggested that Ricky could have a tray in their rooms. Troy gave him a bath and put him into pyjamas and dressing-gown and he had his luncheon, falling asleep almost before it was finished. She put him to bed in a dressing-room opening off her own bedroom. She darkened the windows, and seeing him comfortably asleep with his silver goat clutched in his hand, had her bath, changed and lunched in the dining-room of the hotel. When she returned to their room Ricky had gone.

At first she thought that he must have wakened and gone in search of a lavatory or that perhaps he had had one of his panics and was looking for her. It was only after a search of their bathroom and the passages, stairs and such rooms as were open that with mounting anxiety she rang for the chambermaid, and then, as the woman didn’t understand English, spoke on the telephone to the manager. M. Malaquin was helpful and expeditious. He said he would at once speak to the servants on duty and report to her. As she put down the receiver Troy looked at the chair across which she had laid Ricky’s day clothes ready for his awakening — a yellow shirt and brown linen shorts — and she saw that they were gone.

From that moment she had fought against a surge of terror so imperative that it was accompanied by a physical pain. She ran downstairs and told the manager. The porter and two of the waiters and Troy herself had gone out into the deserted and sweltering streets, Troy running uphill and breathlessly calling Ricky’s name. She stopped the few people she met, asking them for a “petit garçon, mon fils.” The men shrugged, one woman said something that sounded sympathetic. They all shook their heads or made negative gestures with their fingers. Troy found herself in a maze of back streets and stone stairways. She thought she was lost, but looking down a steep alleyway, saw one of the waiters walk across at the lower end and she ran down after him. When she reached the cross-alley she was just in time to see his coat-tails disappear round a further corner. Finally she caught him up. They were back in the little square, and there was the hotel. Her heart rammed against her ribs and she suffered a disgusting sense of constriction in her throat. Sweat poured between her shoulder blades and ran down her forehead into her eyes. She was in a nightmare.

The waiter grimaced. He was idiotically polite and deprecating and he couldn’t understand a word that she said. He pursed his lips, bowed and went indoors. She remembered the Commissary of Police and was about to ask the manager to telephone the Préfecture when she heard Raoul’s car turn into the street.

Alleyn said: “Right. I’ll talk to the Préfecture. But before I do, my dearest dear, will you believe one thing?”

“All right, I’ll try.”

“Ricky isn’t in danger. I’m sure of it.”

“But it’s true. He’s been — it’s those people up there — they’ve kidnapped him, haven’t they?”

“It’s possible that they’ve taken a hand. If they have it’s because they want to keep me busy. It’s also possible, isn’t it, that something entered into his head and he got himself up and trotted out.”

“He’d never do it, Rory. Never. You know he wouldn’t.”

“All right. Now, I’ll ring the Préfecture. Come on.”

He sat her beside him on the bed and kept his arm about her. While he waited for the number he said: “Did you lock the door?”

“No. I didn’t like the idea of locking him in. The manager’s spoken to the servants. They didn’t see anybody. Nobody asked for our room numbers.”

“The heavy trunk is still in the hall downstairs and the room numbers chalked on it. What colour are his clothes?”

“Pale yellow shirt and brown shorts.”

“Right. We may as well— ’Allo! ’Allo!..”

He began to talk into the telephone, keeping his free hand on her shoulder. Troy turned her cheek to it for a moment and then freed herself and went out on the balcony.

The little square — it was called the Place des Sarrasins — was at the top of a hilly street and the greater part of Roqueville lay between it and the sea. The maze of alleys where Troy had lost herself was out of sight behind and above the hotel. As if from a high tower, she looked down into the streets and prayed incoherently that in one of them she would see a tiny figure: Ricky, in his lemon-coloured shirt and brown linen shorts. But all Troy could see was a pattern of stucco and stone, a distant row of carriages whose drivers and horses were snoozing, no doubt, in the shadows, a system of tiled roofs and the paint-like blue of the sea. She looked nearer at hand and there, beneath her, was Raoul Milano’s car, seeming like a toy, and Raoul himself, rolling a cigarette. The hotel porter, at that moment, came out and she heard the sound of his voice. Raoul got up and they disappeared beneath her into the hotel.

The tone of Alleyn’s voice suggested that he was near the end of his telephone call. She had turned away from her fruitless search of the map-like town and was about to go indoors when out of the tail of her eye she caught a flicker of colour.

It was a flicker of lemon-yellow and brown.

The hot iron of the balcony rail scorched the palms of her hands. She leant far out and stared at a tall building on a higher level than herself, a building that was just in view round the corner of the hotel. It was perhaps a quarter of a mile away and from behind a huddle of intervening roofs, rose up in a series of balconies. It was on the highest of these, behind a blur of iron railings, that she saw her two specks of colour.

“Rory,” she cried. “Rory!”

It took several seconds that seemed like as many minutes for Alleyn to find the balcony. “It’s Ricky,” she said, “isn’t it? It must be Ricky.” And she ran back into the room, snatched the thin cover from her bed and waved it frantically from the balcony.

“Wait a moment,” Alleyn said.

His police case had been brought up to their room and contained a pair of very powerful field glasses. While he focussed them on the distant balcony he said: “Don’t be too certain, darling, there may be other small boys in yellow and — no — no, it’s Ricky. He’s all right. Look.”

Troy’s eyes were masked with tears of relief. Her hands shook and her fingers were too precipitant with the focussing governors. “I can’t do it-I can’t see.”

“Steady. Wipe your eyes. Here, I will. He’s still there. He may have spotted us. Try this way. Kneel down and rest the glasses on the rail. Get each eye right in turn. Quietly does it.”

Circles of blurred colour mingled and danced in the two fields of vision. They swam together and clarified. The glasses were in focus now but were trained on some strange blue door, startling in its closeness. She moved them and an ornate gilded steeple was before her with a cross and a clock telling a quarter to two. “I don’t know where I am. It’s a church. I can’t find him.”

“You’re nearly there. Keep at that level and come round gently.” And suddenly Ricky looked through iron rails with vague, not quite frightened eyes whose gaze, while it was directed at her, yet passed beyond her.

“Wave,” she said. “Go on waving.”

Ricky’s strangely impersonal and puzzled face moved a little so that an iron standard partly hid it. His right arm was raised and his hand moved to and fro above the railing.

“He’s seen!” she said. “He’s waving back.”

The glasses slipped a little. The wall of their hotel, out-of-focus and stupid, blotted out her vision. Someone was tapping on the bedroom door behind them.

“Entrez,” Alleyn called, and then sharply, “Hullo! Who’s that?”

“What? I’ve lost him.”

“A woman came out and led him away. They’ve gone indoors.”

“A woman?”

“Fat and dressed in black.”

“Please let’s go quickly.”

Raoul had come through the bedroom and stood behind them. Alleyn said in French, “Do you see that tall building, just to the left of our wall and to the right of the church? It’s pinkish with blue shutters and there’s something red on one of the balconies.”

“I see it, Monsieur.”

“So you know what building it is?”

“I think so, Monsieur. It will be Number 16 in the Rue des Violettes where Madame enquired this morning.”

“Troy,” Alleyn said. “The Lord knows why, but Ricky’s gone to call on Mr. Garbel.”

Troy stopped short on her way to the door. “Do you mean…?”

“Raoul says that’s the house.”

“But—. No,” Troy said vigorously. “No, I don’t believe it. He wouldn’t just get up and go there. Not of his own accord. Not like that. He wouldn’t. Come on, Rory.”

They were following her when Alleyn said: “When did these flowers come?”

“What flowers? Oh, that. I hadn’t noticed it. I don’t know. Dr. Baradi, I should think. Please don’t let’s wait.”

An enormous florist’s box garnished with a great bow of ribbon lay on the top of a pile of suitcases.

Watched in an agony of impatience by his wife, Alleyn slid a card from under the ribbon and looked at it.

“So sorry,” he read, “that I shall be away during your visit. Welcome to Roqueville. P. E. Garbel.”