Her jaw trembled. She made a thin shrill sound, shocking in its nakedness. “No,” she stammered, “no… no… no.” Her arm shot out and her hand closed on Troy’s skirt. The two bearers staggered a little and looked agitatedly at Dr. Baradi.
“She should not be upset,” he murmured to Troy. “It is most undesirable. Perhaps, for a little while, you’ll be so kind…”
“But of course,” Troy said, and in answer to a look from her husband, “of course, Rory, I must.”
And she bent over Miss Truebody and told her she wouldn’t go away. She felt as though she herself was trapped in the kind of dream that, without being a positive nightmare, threatens to become one. Baradi released Miss Truebody’s hand and as he did so, his own brushed against Troy’s skirt.
“You’re so kind,” he said. “Perhaps Mr. Allen will bring the little boy. It is not well for such tender ones to sleep over-long in the sun on the Côte d’Azur.”
Without a word Alleyn lifted Ricky out of the car. Ricky made a small questioning sound, stirred, and slept again.
The men walked off with the stretcher. Dr. Baradi followed them. Troy, Alleyn and Ricky brought up the rear.
In this order the odd little procession moved out of the glare into the shadowed passage that was the entrance to the Château de la Chèvre d’Argent.
The driver watched them go, his lips pursed in a soundless whistle and an expression of concern darkening his eyes. Then he drove the car into the shade of the hill and composed himself for a long wait.
Chapter II
Operation Truebody
i
At first their eyes were sun-dazzled so that they could scarcely see their way. Dr. Baradi paused to guide them. Alleyn, encumbered with Ricky and groping up a number of wide, shallow and irregular steps, was aware of Baradi’s hand piloting Troy by the elbow. The blotches of non-existent light that danced across their vision faded and they saw that they were in a sort of hewn passage-way 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 sculpted 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 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 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 Brueghel 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,” Dr. 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 onto the bed. The bearers hovered solicitously. She thanked them in her school-girl 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 freshly 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 “bienfatigué, infiniment fatigue.” It dawned upon her that they wanted a tip. Poor Troy scuffled in her bag, produced a 500 franc 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 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 Saradi 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 roofgarden hung, as it seemed, in blue space where sky and sea met in a wide crescent. Not till she advanced some way towards the balustrade did Cap St. Gilles appear, a sliver of earth pointing south.