Spinsters in Jeopardy

For Anita and Val Muling with my thanks

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

Cast of Characters

Prologue

1. Journey to the South

2. Operation Truebody

3. Morning with Mr Oberon

4. The Elusiveness of Mr Garbel

5. Ricky in Roqueville

6. Consultation

7. Sound of Ricky

8. Ricky Regained

9. Dinner in Roqueville

10. Thunder in the Air

11. P.E. Garbel

12. Eclipse of the Sun

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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 recognizable 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 told 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.’

‘OK. 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 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.’