Spinsters In Jeopardy Aka The Bride Of Death

323 Pages·2016·0.85 MB·English

by  Marsh Ngaio

NGAIO MARSH

SPINSTERS IN JEOPARDY

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For
Anita and Val Muling with my thanks

HarperColliDsPublishers
77-85 Fulham Palace Road
Hammersmith, London W6 8JB
www.flreandwater.com

This paperback edition published 2001
135798642

First published in Great Britain by Collins 1954
Copyright Ngaio Marsh 1954
ISBN 000 651240 2
Set in Times
Set in Times

Printed and bound in Great Britain by Omnia Books Limited, Glasgow

AH rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a
retrieval system, or transmitted,
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This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or
otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the
publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in
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being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

FOREWORD

One rainy Sunday in London, Ngaio Marsh took out a detective novel from a
local lending library, and after reading it had what seemed to her an original
idea. The Murder Game, in which cards were drawn for murderer and detective,
the lights were turned out and a mock murder committed and investigated, was
popular in these years of the early ‘thirties. ‘Suppose, instead of a pretence
corpse, a real one was found,’ she thought. The idea, as she ruefully notes in her
autobiography, was not a new one, but still it provided a firm basis for her first
detective story, A Man Lay Dead, published in 1934. A detective seemed
obligatory, her father had been to Alleyn’s School at Duhvich, the school had
been founded by a great Elizabethan actor, and Ngaio Marsh was and has
remained deeply interested in the theatre; so Roderick Alleyn was named. He
has remained at the*centre of Ngaio Marsh’s detective stories, and has
has remained at the*centre of Ngaio Marsh’s detective stories, and has
developed in style and suavity over the years, acquiring also his wife Troy, who
is a famous portrait painter, and a son named Ricky.
Ngaio Marsh’s discreet, urbane autobiography, Blade Beech and Honeydew,
records her love for her native New Zealand and her devotion to the theatre as
actress and producer. Half the year, she says, is given to work in the theatre and
half to writing detective fiction, but there can be no doubt which has been more
important in her life. If she had not directed ten Shakespeare plays, ‘I would
have written ten more detective stories and been, I dare say, ten times better off.’
She adds: ‘How right I was,’ and for her the theatre has been a passion, the
detective story an entertainment. When she was made a Dame of the British
Empire in 1966, it was, perhaps, chiefly for her services to the drama.
In person Ngaio Marsh is elegant, charming, and highly

observant. That she has the capacities of a novelist is apparent from many of her
books. She is able to convey the undercurrents moving beneath ordinary polite
hsocial relationships with beautifully casual skill, and sometimes one can’t help
feeling that the detective problem is getting in the way of the characters’
development. She has replied to this criticism - in fact, to criticism made by me -
with her usual candour and generosity, and what she has to say is of interest
about the whole form of crime fiction, as well as about her own work. There are,
she says, two main streams in crime fiction, one concerned almost entirely with
a puzzle and its solution. She goes on:
The second stream, to which I think I belong … treats, or attempts to treat, of
persons in the round and is obliged, constantly, to come to terms with the
limitations of the genre … I invariably start with two or three or more people
about whom I feel I would like to write. Because I am a maker of detective
fiction I must involve one of them in a crime of violence. So I have to ask myself
which of these persons is capable of such a crime, what form it would take and
under what circumstances would he or she commit it …
The basic predicament that confronts every ‘novelistic’ crime writer is this: the
more deeply and honestly /fie) examines his characters, the more disquieting
becomes the skulduggery that he is obliged to practise in respect of the guilty
party.
This criticism presents as clearly as anything I know the problems facing the
writer who wants to create characters, yet knows the need to present and
organize a puzzle. But Ngaio Marsh has sometimes escaped from these problems
by writing another kind of book, the simple, purely enjoyable thriller in which
the puzzle is a secondary element. Spinsters in Jeopardy is such a story. Alleyn,
Troy and their delightful small son Ricky are more closely involved than Alleyn
ever intended with the sinister goings-on at the Chateau de la Chevre d’Argent,
because of the unexpected problems posed by Miss True body’s appendix. There
are some minor surprises, but we are

never in doubt about the identities of the villains nor about what they are trying
to do. The lively taxi-driver Raoul, who plays a considerable part in the plot, is a
felicitous invention, and the story is really a high-spirited romp which we are not
meant to take very seriously, not even when Ricky is kidnapped.
Yet the quality of the writing does not fall below Ngaio Marsh’s own high
standard. Miss Truebody being taken into the station waiting-room, ‘laid out,
horribly corpselike, on a bench’, Troy suddenly remembering to retrieve the sick
woman’s false teeth, the arrival at the Chateau, and the curious readiness of the
unsavoury Dr Baradi to perform the operation - all this sends just the right kind
of shiver up our spines. A comparison with the earlier Death in Ecstasy, which
also deals with a semi-mystical erotic cult, shows how much Ngaio Marsh had
developed as a writer over the years. Spinsters in Jeopardy gives us an author
having fun, and when the author is as skilled as Ngaio Marsh that is a guarantee
of our having fun too.

Julian Symons

CONTENTS

Prologue 9
I Journey to the South 15
I Journey to the South 15
II Operation Truebody 36
III Morning with Mr Oberon SO
IV The Elusiveness of Mr Garbel 65
V Ricky in Roqueville 87
VI Consultation 105
VII Sound of Ricky 125
VIII Ricky Regained 146
IX Dinner in Roqueville 166
X Thunder in the Air 185
XI P. E. Garbel 203
XII Eclipse of the Sun 227

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PROLOGUE

Without moving his head, Ricky slewed his eyes round until he was able to look
slantways at the back of his mother’s easel.
‘I’m getting pretty bored, however,’ he announced.
‘Stick it a bit longer, darling, I implore you, and look at Daddy.’
‘Well, because it’s just about as boring a thing as a person can have to do. Isn’t it
Daddy?’
‘When I did it,’ said his father, ‘I was allowed to look at your mama, so I wasn’t
bored. But as there are degrees of boredom,’ he continued, ‘so there are different
kinds of bores. You might almost say there are recongisable schools.’
‘To which school,’ said his wife, stepping back from her easel, ‘would you say
Mr Garbel belonged? Ricky, look at Daddy for five minutes more and then I
promise we’ll stop.’
Ricky sighed ostentatiously and contemplated his father.
‘Well, as far as we know him,’ Alleyn said, ‘to the epistolatory school. There,
he’s a classic. In person he’s undoubtedly the sort of bore that shows you things
you don’t want to see. Snapshots in envelopes. Barren conservatories.
Newspaper cuttings. He’s relentless in this. I think he carries things on his
person and puts them in front of you without giving you the smallest clue about
what you’re meant to say. You’re moving, Ricky.’
‘Isn’t it five minutes yet?’
‘No, and it never will be if you fidget. How long is it, Troy, since you first heard
from Mr Garbel?’
‘About-eighteen months. He wrote for Christmas. All toW I’ve had six letters
and five postcards from Mr Garbel.
This last arrived this morning. That’s what put him into my head.’
‘Daddy, who is Mr Garbel?’
‘One of Mummy’s admirers. He lives in the Maritime Alps and writes love
letters to her.’
‘Why?’
‘He says it’s because he’s her third cousin once removed, but I know better.’
‘What do you know better?’
With a spare paint-brush clenched between her teeth, Troy said indistinctly:
‘Keep like that, Ricky darling, I implore you.’
‘O.K. Tell me properly, Daddy, about Mr Garbel.’
‘Well, he suddenly wrote to Mummy and said Mummy’s great-aunt’s daughter
was his second cousin, and that he thought Mummy would like to know that he
lived at a place called Roqueville in the Maritime Alps. He sent a map of
Roqueville, marking the place where the road he lived in ought to be shown, but
wasn’t, and he told Mummy how he didn’t go out much or meet many people.’
‘Pretty dull, however.’
‘He told her about all the food you can buy there that you can’t buy here and he
sent her copies of newspapers with bus timetables marked and messages at the
side saying: ‘I find this bus convenient and often take it. It leaves the corner by
the principal hotel every half-hour.’ Do you still want to hear about Mr Garbel?’
‘Unless it’s time to stop, I might as well.’
‘Mummy wrote to Mr Garbel and said how interesting she found his letter.’
‘Did you, Mummy?’
‘One has to be polite,’ Troy muttered and laid a thin stroke of rose on the mouth
of Ricky’s portrait.
‘And he wrote back sending her three used bus tickets and a used train ticket.’
‘Does she collect them?’
‘Mr Garbel thought she would like to know that they were his tickets punched by
guards and conductors all for

10

,-^p’.

;*:

‘ ‘SSif.;-‘
him. He also sends her beautifully coloured postcards of the Maritime Alps.’
‘What’s that? May I have them?’
‘ … with arrows pointing to where his house would be if you could see it and to
where the road goes to a house he sometimes visits, only the house is off the
postcard.’
‘Like a picture puzzle, sort of?’
‘Sort of. And he tells Mummy how, when he was young and doing chemistry at
Cambridge, he almost met her great aunt who was his second cousin, once
removed.’
‘Did he have a shop?’
‘No, he’s a special kind of chemist without a shop. When he sends Mummy
presents of used tickets and old newspapers he writes on them: ‘Sent by P.E.
Garbel, 16 Rue des Violettes, Roqueville, to Mrs Agatha Alleyn (nee Troy)
Garbel, 16 Rue des Violettes, Roqueville, to Mrs Agatha Alleyn (nee Troy)
daughter of Stephen and Harriet Troy (nee Baynton.)”
‘That’s you, isn’t it, Mummy? What else?’
‘Is it possible, Ricky,’ asked his wondering father, ‘that you find this
interesting?’ ‘
‘Yes,’ said Ricky. ‘I like it. Does he mention me?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Or you?’
‘He suggests that Mummy might care to read parts of his letter to me.’
‘May we go and see him?’
‘Yes,* said Alleyn. ‘As a matter of fact I think we may.’
Troy turned from her work and gaped at her husband. ‘What can you mean?’ she
exclaimed.
‘Is it time, Mummy? Because it must be, so may I get down?’
‘Yes, thank you, my sweet. You have been terribly good and I must think of
some exciting reward. *
‘Going to see Mr Garbel, frinstance?’
‘I’m afraid,’ Troy said, ‘that Daddy, poor thing, was being rather silly.’

11

This last arrived this morning. That’s what put him into my head.’
‘Daddy, who is Mr Garbel?’
‘One of Mummy’s admirers. He lives in the Maritime Alps and writes love
letters to her.’
‘Why?’
‘He says it’s because he’s her third cousin once removed, but I know better.’
‘What do you know better?’
With a spare paint-brush clenched between her teeth, Troy said indistinctly:
‘Keep like that, Ricky darling, I implore you.’
‘O.K. Tell me properly, Daddy, about Mr Garbel.’
‘Well, he suddenly wrote to Mummy and said Mummy’s great-aunt’s daughter
was his second cousin, and that he thought Mummy would like to know that he
lived at a place called Roqueville in the Maritime Alps. He sent a map of
Roqueville, marking the place where the road he lived in ought to be shown, but
wasn’t, and he told Mummy how he didn’t go out much or meet many people.’
‘Pretty dull, however.’
‘He told her about all the food you can buy there that you can’t buy here and he
sent her copies of newspapers with bus timetables marked and messages at the
side saying: ‘I find this bus convenient and often take it. It leaves the corner by
the principal hotel every half-hour.’ Do you still want to hear about Mr Garbel?’
‘Unless it’s time to stop, I might as well.’
‘Mummy wrote to Mr Garbel and said how interesting she found his letter.’
‘Did you, Mummy?’
‘One has to be polite,’ Troy muttered and laid a thin stroke of rose on the mouth
of Ricky’s portrait.
‘And he wrote back sending her three used bus tickets and a used train ticket.’
‘Does she collect them?’
‘Mr Garbel thought she would like to know that they were his tickets punched by
guards and conductors all for