Spinsters in Jeopardy by Ngaio Marsh Page B

instruments, and of Miss Truebody’s wide-open mouth and of the sound of her breathing. Then the door shut off the picture as abruptly as the tunnel had shut off her earlier glimpse into a room in the Chèvre d’Argent.
    “Only
that
time—” Troy told herself, as she made her way back to the roof-garden —“it was only a charade.”

Chapter III
Morning with Mr. Oberon
    i
    The sun shone full on the roof-garden now, but Ricky was shielded from it by the canopy of his swinging couch. He was, as he himself might have said, lavishly asleep. Troy knew he would stay so for a long time.
    The breakfast-table had been cleared and moved to one side and several more seats like Ricky’s had been set out. Troy took the one nearest to his. When she lifted her feet it swayed gently. Her head sank back into a heap of cushions. She had slept very little in the train.
    It was quiet on the roof-garden. A few cicadas chittered far below and once, somewhere a long way away, a car hooted. The sky, as she looked into it, intensified itself in blueness and bemused her drowsy senses. Her eyes closed and she felt again the movement of the train. The sound of the cicadas became a dismal chattering from Miss Truebody and soared up into nothingness. Presently, Troy, too, was fast asleep.
    When she awoke, it was to see a strange lady perched, like some fantastic fowl, on the balustrade near Ricky’s seat. Her legs, clad in scarlet pedal-pushers, were drawn up to her chin which was sunk between her knees. Her hands, jewelled and claw-like, with vermillion talons, clasped her shins, and her toes protruded from her sandals like branched corals. A scarf was wound around her skull and her eyes were hidden by sun-glasses in an enormous frame below which a formidable nose jutted over a mouth whose natural shape could only be conjectured. When she saw Troy was awake and on her feet she unfolded herself, dropped to the floor, and advanced with a hand extended. She was six feet tall and about forty-five to fifty years old.
    “How do you do?” she whispered. “I’m Grizel Locke. I like to be called Sati, though. The Queen of Heaven, you will remember. Please call me Sati. Had a good nap, I hope? I’ve been looking at your son and wondering if I’d like to have one for myself.”
    “How do you do?” Troy said without whispering and greatly taken aback. “Do you think you would?”
    “Won’t he awake? I’ve got
such
a voice as you can hear when I speak up.” Her voice was indeed deep and uncertain like an adolescent boy’s. “It’s hard to say,” she went on. “One might go all possessive and peculiar and, on the other hand, one might get bored and off-load him on repressed governesses. I was offloaded as a child which, I am told, accounts for almost everything. Do lie down again. You must feel like a boiled owl. So do I. Would you like a drink?”
    “No, thank you,” Troy said, running her fingers through her short hair.
    “Nor would I. What a poor way to begin your holiday. Do you know anyone here?”
    “Not really. I’ve got a distant relation somewhere in the offing but we’ve never met.”
    “Perhaps we know them. What name?”
    “Garbel. Something to do with a rather rarefied kind of chemistry. I don’t suppose you—”
    “I’m afraid not,” she said quickly. “Has Baradi started on your friend?”
    “She’s not a friend or even an acquaintance. She’s a fellow-traveller.”
    “How sickening for you,” said the lady earnestly.
    “I mean, literally,” Troy explained. She was indeed feeling like a boiled owl and longed for nothing as much as a bath and solitude.
    “Lie down,” the lady urged. “Put your boots up. Go to sleep again if you like. I was just going to push ahead with my tanning, only your son distracted my attention.”
    Troy sat down and as her companion was so insistent she did put her feet up.
    “That’s right,” the lady observed. “I’ll blow up my li-low. The servants, alas, have lost the