Read Online Spinsters in Jeopardy by Ngaio Marsh - Free Book Online

puffer.”
    She dragged forward a flat rubber mattress. Sitting on the floor she applied her painted mouth to the valve and began to blow. “Uphill work,” she gasped a little later, “still, it’s an exercise in itself and I daresay will count as such.”
    When the li-low was inflated she lay face down upon it and untied the painted scarf that was her sole garment. It fell away from a back so thin that it presented, Troy thought, an anatomical subject of considerable interest. The margins of the scapulae shone like plough-shares and the spinal vertebrae looked like those of a flayed snake.
    “I’ve given up oil,” the submerged voice explained, “since I became a Child of the Sun. Is there any particular bit that seems undertone, do you consider?”
    Troy, looking down upon a uniformly dun-coloured expanse, could make no suggestions and said so.
    “I’ll give it ten minutes for luck and then toss over the bod,” said the voice. “I must say I feel ghastly.”
    “You had a late night, Dr. Baradi tells us,” said Troy, who was making a desperate effort to pull herself together.
    “Did we?” The voice became more indistinct, and added something like: “I forgot.”
    “Charades and everything, he said.”
    “Did he? Oh. Was I in them?”
    “He didn’t say particularly,” Troy answered.
    “I passed,” the voice muttered, “utterly and definitely out.” Troy had just thought how unattractive such statements always were when she noticed with astonishment that the shoulderblades were quivering as if their owner was convulsed. “ I suppose you might call it charades,” the lady was heard to say.
    Troy was conscious of a rising sense of uneasiness.
    “How do you mean?” she asked.
    Her companion rolled over. She had taken off her sunglasses. Her eyes were green with pale irises and small pupils.
    They were singularly blank in expression. Clad only in her scarlet sans-culotte and head scarf, she was an uncomfortable spectacle.
    “The whole thing is,” she said rapidly, “I wasn’t at the party. I began one of my headaches after luncheon, which was a party in itself and I passed, as I mentioned a moment ago, out. That must have been at about four o’clock, I should think, which is why I am up so early, you know.” She yawned suddenly and with gross exaggeration as if her jaws would crack.
    “Oh, God,” she said, “here I go again!”
    Troy’s jaws quivered in imitation. “I hope your headache is better,” she said.
    “Sweet of you. In point of fact it’s hideous.”
    “I’m so sorry.”
    “I’ll have to find Baradi if it goes on. And it will, of course. How long will he be over your fellow-traveller’s appendix? Have you seen Ra?”
    “I don’t think so. I’ve only seen Dr. Baradi.”
    “Yes, yes,” she said restlessly, and added, “You wouldn’t know, of course. I mean Oberon, our Teacher, you know. That’s our name for him — Ra. Are you interested in The Truth?”
    Troy was too addled with unseasonable sleep and a surfeit of anxiety to hear the capital letters. “I really don’t know,” she stammered. “In the truth—?”
    “Poor sweet, I’m muddling you.” She sat up. Troy had a painter’s attitude towards the nude but the aspect of this lady, so wildly and so unpleasantly displayed, was distressing and doubly so because Troy couldn’t escape the impression that the lady herself was far from unself-conscious. Indeed she kept making tentative clutches at her scarf and looking at Troy as if she felt she ought to apologize for herself. In her embarrassment Troy turned away and looked vaguely at the tower wall which rose above the roof-garden not far from where she sat. It was pierced at ascending intervals by narrow slits. Troy’s eyes, glazed with fatigue, stared in aimless fixation at the third slit from the floor level. She listened to a strange exposition on The Truth as understood and venerated by the guests of Mr. Oberon.
    “… just a tiny group of Seekers…