“Yes. So what are we to do?”
“We’ve got a car. The Sûreté rang up the local commissioner yesterday and told him I was on my way. He’s actually one of their experts who’s been sent down here on a special job, superseding the local chap for the time being. He’s turned on an elderly Mercedes and a driver. Damn civil of him. I’ve just been talking to him. Full of apologies for not coming down himself but he thought, very wisely, that we’d better not be seen together. He says our chauffeur is a reliable chap with an admirable record. He and the car are on tap outside the station now and our luggage will be collected by the hotel waggon. Baradi suggests I take Miss Truebody straight to the Chèvre d’Argent. While we’re on the way he will make what preparations he can. Luckily he’s got his instruments, and Claudel has given me some pipkins of anaesthetic. Baradi asked if I could give the anaesthetic.”
“Can you?”
“I did once, in a ship. As long as nothing goes very wrong, it’s fairly simple. If Baradi thinks it is safe to wait he’ll try to get an anaesthetist from Douceville or somewhere. But it seems there’s some sort of doctor’s jamboree on today at St. Christophe and they’ve all cleared off to it. It’s only ten kilometres from here to the Chèvre d’Argent by the inland road. I’ll drop you and Ricky at the hotel here, darling, and take Miss Truebody on.”
“Are there any women in the house?”
“I don’t know.” Alleyn stopped short and then said: “Yes. Yes, I do. There are women.”
Troy watched him for a moment and then said: “All right. Let’s get her aboard. You take Ricky.”
Alleyn lifted him from her lap and she went to Miss Truebody. “She’s tiny,” Troy said under her breath. “Could she be carried?”
“I think so. Wait a moment.”
He took Ricky out and was back in a few seconds with the station-master and a man wearing a chauffeur’s cap over a mop of glossy curls.
He was a handsome little fellow with an air of readiness. He saluted Troy gallantly, taking off his peaked cap and smiling at her. Then he saw Miss Truebody and made a clucking sound. Troy had put a travelling rug on the bench and they made a sort of stretcher of it and carried Miss Truebody out to a large car in the station yard. Ricky was curled up on the front seat. They managed to fit Miss Truebody into the back one. The driver pulled down a tip-up seat and Troy sat on that. Miss Truebody had opened her eyes. She said in a quiet, clear voice: “Too kind,” and Troy took her hand. Alleyn, in the front, held Ricky on his lap and they started off up a steep little street through Roqueville. The thin dawnlight gave promise of a glaring day. It was already very warm.
“To the Hôtel Royal, Monsieur?” asked the driver.
“No,” said Troy with Miss Truebody’s little claw clutching at her fingers. “No, please, Rory. I’ll come with her. Ricky won’t wake for hours. We can wait in the car or he can drive us back. I might be some use.”
“To the Château de la Chèvre d’Argent,” Alleyn said, “and gently.”
“Perfectly, Monsieur,” said the driver. “Always, always gently.”
Roqueville was a very small town. It climbed briefly up the hill and petered out in a string of bleached villas. The road mounted between groves of olive trees and the air was like a benison, soft and clean. The sea extended itself beneath them and enriched itself with a blueness of incredible intensity.
Alleyn turned to took at Troy. They were quite close to each other and spoke over their shoulders like people in a Victorian “Conversation” chair. It was clear that Miss Truebody, even if she could hear them, was not able to concentrate or indeed to listen. “Dr. Claudel,” Alleyn said, “thought it was the least risky thing to do. I half expected Baradi would refuse, but he was surprisingly co-operative. He’s supposed to be a good man at his job.” He made a movement of his head to indicate the driver. “This chap doesn’t speak English,” he said. “And, by the way, darling, no more chat about my being a policeman.”
Troy said: “Have I been a nuisance?”
“It’s all right. I asked Claudel to forget it and I don’t suppose Miss Truebody will say anything or that anybody will pay much attention if she does. It’s just that I don’t want to brandish my job at the Chèvre d’Argent.” He turned and looked into her troubled face. “Never mind, my darling. We’ll buy false beards and hammers in Roqueville and let on we’re archaeologists. Or load ourselves down with your painting gear.” He paused fora moment. “That, by the way, is not a bad idea at all. Distinguished painter visits Côte d’Azur with obscure husband and child. We’ll keep it in reserve.”
“But honestly, Rory. How’s this débâcle going to affect your job at the Chèvre d’Argent?”
“In a way it’s useful entrée. The Sûreté suggested that I call there representing myself either to be an antiquarian captivated by the place itself — it’s an old Saracen stronghold — or else I was to be a seeker after esoteric knowledge and offer myself as a disciple. If both fail I could use my own judgment about being a heroin addict in search of fuel. Thanks to Miss Truebody, however, I shall turn up as a reluctant Good Samaritan. All the same,” Alleyn said, rubbing his nose, “I wish Dr. Claudel could have risked taking her on to St. Céleste or else waiting for the evening train back to St. Christophe. I don’t much like this party, and that’s a fact. This’li larn the Alleyn family to try combining business with pleasure, won’t it?”
“Ah, well,” said Troy, looking compassionately at Miss Truebody, “we’re doing our blasted best and no fool can do more.”
They were silent for some time. The driver sang to himself in a light tenor voice. The road climbed the Maritime Alps into early sunlight. They traversed a tilted landscape compounded of earth and heat, of opaque clay colours — ochres and pinks — splashed with magenta, tempered with olive-grey and severed horizontally at its base by the ultramarine blade of the Mediterranean. They turned inland. Villages emerged as logical growths out of rock and earth. A monastery safely folded among protective hills spoke of some tranquil adjustment of man’s spirit to the quiet rhythm of soil and sky.
“It’s impossible,” Troy said, “to think that anything could go very much amiss in these hills.”
A distant valley came into view. Far up it, a strange anachronism in that landscape, was a long modern building with glittering roofs and a great display of plate glass.
“The factory,” the driver told them, “of the Compagnie Chimique des Alpes Maritimes.”
Alleyn made a little affirmative sound as if he saw something that he had expected and for as long as it remained in sight he looked at the glittering building.
They drove on in silence. Miss Truebody turned her head from side to side and Troy bent over her. “Hot,” she whispered, “such an oppressive climate. Oh, dear!”
“One approaches the objective,” the driver announced, and changed gears. The road tipped downwards and turned the flank of a hill. They had crossed the headland and were high above the sea again. Immediately below them the railroad emerged from a tunnel. On their right was a cliff that mounted into a stone face pierced irregularly with windows. This in its turn broke against the skyline in fabulous turrets and parapets. Troy gave a sharp ejaculation. “Oh, no!” she said. “It’s not that! No, it’s too much!”
“Well, darling,” Alleyn said, “I’m afraid that’s what it is.”
“La Chèvre d’Argent,” said the driver, and turned up a steep and exceedingly narrow way that ended in a walled platform from which one looked down at the railway and beyond it sheer down again to the sea. “Here one stops. Monsieur,” said the driver. “That is the entrance.”
He pointed to a dark passage between two masses of rock from which walls emerged as if by some process of evolution. He got out and opened the doors of the car. “It appears,” he said, “that Mademoiselle is unable to walk.”