Spinsters in Jeopardy Read Free Page A

stared at him. “I can’t believe that was true,” she said.
    “I’m sorry you saw it.”
    “Then it was true. Ought we to do anything? Rory, ought you to do anything? Oh
dear,
how tiresome.”
    “Well, I can’t do much while moving away at sixty miles an hour. I suppose I’d better ring up the Préfecture when we get to Roqueville.”
    He sat down beside her. “Never mind, darling,” he said, “there may be another explanation.”
    “I don’t see how there can be, unless — Do you mind telling me what you saw?”
    Alleyn said carefully, “A lighted window, masked by a spring blind. A woman falling against the blind and releasing it. Beyond the woman, but out of sight to us, there must have been a brilliant lamp and in its light, farther back in the room and on our right, stood a man in a white garment. His face, oddly enough, was in shadow. There was something that looked like a wheel, beyond his right shoulder. His right arm was raised.”
    “And in his hand—?”
    “Yes,” Alleyn said, “that’s the tricky bit, isn’t it?
    “And then the tunnel. It was like one of those sudden breaks in an old-fashioned film, too abrupt to be really dramatic. It was there and then it didn’t exist. No,” said Troy, “I won’t believe it was true, I won’t believe something is still going on inside that house. And what a house too! It looked like a Gustave Doré, really bad romantic.”
    Alleyn said: “Are you all right to get dressed? I’ll just have a word with the car attendant. He may have seen it, too. After all, we may not be the only people awake and looking out, though I fancy mine was the only compartment with the light on. Yours was in darkness, by the way?”
    “I had the window shutter down, though. I’d been thinking how strange it is to see into other people’s lives through a train window.”
    “I know,” Alleyn said. “There’s a touch of magic in it.”
    “And then — to see that! Not so magical.”
    “Never mind. I’ll talk to the attendant and then I’ll come back and get Ricky up. He’ll be getting train-fever. We should reach Roqueville in about twenty minutes. All right?”
    “Oh, I’m right as a bank,” said Troy.
    “Nothing like the Golden South for a carefree holiday,” Alleyn said. He grinned at her, went out into the corridor and opened the door of his own sleeper.
    Ricky was still sitting up in his bunk. His hands were clenched and his eyes wide open. “You’re being a pretty long time, however,” he said.
    “Mummy’s coming in a minute. I’m just going to have a word with the chap outside. Stick it out, old boy.”
    “O.K.,” said Ricky.
    The attendant, a pale man with a dimple in his chin, was dozing on his stool at the forward end of the carriage. Alleyn, who had already discovered that he spoke very little English, addressed him in diplomatic French that had become only slightly hesitant through disuse. Had the attendant, he asked, happened to be awake when the train paused outside a tunnel a few minutes ago? The man seemed to be in some doubt as to whether Alleyn was about to complain because he was asleep or because the train had halted. It took a minute or two to clear up this difficulty and to discover that the attendant had, in point of fact, been asleep for some time.
    “I’m sorry to trouble you,” Alleyn said, “but can you, by any chance, tell me the name of the large building near the entrance to the tunnel?”
    “Ah, yes, yes,” the attendant said. “Certainly, Monsieur, since I am a native of these parts. It is known to everybody, this house, on account of its great antiquity. It is the Château de la Chèvre d’Argent.”
    “I thought it might be,” said Alleyn.
     
    ii
    Alleyn reminded the sleepy attendant that they were leaving the train at Roqueville and tipped him generously. The man thanked him with that peculiarly Gallic effusiveness that is at once too logical and too adroit to be offensive.
    “Do you know,” Alleyn said,