by Ann Bridge
Then Julia deliberately mentioned the boy’s illness, and how it had completely stumped the local doctor; she described his symptoms minutely—the cough and wheezing, the frightful headache, which neither aspirin nor Codeine seemed to touch, and his dazed condition. It was with the utmost satisfaction that she heard the old lady ask—“Had he been up on this plateau place too?”
Pauline looked startled.
“Oh, I don’t think there’s any question of that” she said.
“Well actually, Pauline, Aglaia did think of it, you know, only Penelope slapped her down—and when I’d seen the child I began to wonder too” Julia said.
“How long has he been ill?” Mrs. Hathaway wanted to know.
“Over a week—one would hardly expect an ordinary cold to last so long.”
“I wonder if Nannie has ever met anything like it” Mrs. Hathaway said—and when Julia went up to the nursery to see the Philipino she described this peculiar ailment.
Nannie listened, looked wise. “And nothing much in his chest, according to this local doctor?” she asked.
“No—certainly not bronchitis, or anything like that, Nannie.”
“Well, I hope they’re keeping his bowels open; it’s probably a stomach cough” Nannie Mack pronounced. “As to this pain in his head, it sounds like a mastoid, to me. That is a really shocking pain, aspirin and so on don’t touch it—nothing but morphia is any good. Poor little fellow.” Then she went on to her own concerns. “This crowd up here really are a set, Madam! What do you think they did yesterday? Put Master Philip in the goldfish pool —in his Sunday suit, and all!”
“Did Philip mind?”
“No—it was lovely!” the child said. “Can I be put in again, Mummie?” Nannie and Julia both laughed. Obviously everything was all right on the home ground, Julia thought, as she went to her room.
When Gerald Shergold got back that evening he brought some rather peculiar news.
“That water’s all right” he began at once. “Both the analyst and the man in Pereira’s lab could find exactly nothing in it but faint traces of coffee.”
“Well, that’s something” his wife said.
“I’m not so sure. It makes it look as though what the sheep have got must be some sort of infection, and that could spread all over the island—might be very serious.”
“Is Pereira back? It’s his opinion we need now” Pauline observed.
“Yes, he got back today—he’s going down tomorrow.”
“How is the little boy?” Mrs. Hathaway asked; she was more concerned about him than about the sheep.
“Manoel’s child? Not so good. De Carvalho brought him back to Funchal in his car, and has put him into his clinic.”
“Did he say what was wrong with him?” Julia asked.
“No, he’s completely foxed—that’s why he wants to have him under observation, and make tests. He went to see Terence at the office, and told him to make sure that he was rung up at once if anyone else showed the same sort of symptoms. I gather he gave Manoel and the whole family a tremendous going-over—and rather slated old Fonseca for having let it go on so long without asking for a second opinion.”
“How did you hear all this?” Pauline asked. “Oh, from Terry, I suppose.”
“Yes, I saw him in the Club. He said de Carvalho seemed rather bothered about it all, for some reason—he fairly grilled him about whether anyone else round about had had the same sort of cough and headache.”
“And I suppose Terence told him only the sheep up on the plateau” Julia put in. Gerald Shergold stared at her.
“Yes, he did happen to tell him exactly that—what made you think so?”
“Oh, just an idea. And what did Dr. Carvalho say?”
“De Carvalho” he corrected her. “Oh, he was onto it like a knife! He wanted to know if the vet had seen the sheep, and what he said?—only of course he hadn’t seen them yet. But Terence said he told him to find out if the boy had been up there at any point, and to let him know at once if so. Odd, that, isn’t it?”
“No, Julia and Aglaia both had that idea” Pauline said.
“Then why on earth didn’t you put it up to Terence?” Gerald asked, turning to Julia.
“I did, but he didn’t think there was anything in it.”
“Well, it looks as though you may have been smarter than the rest of us” Gerald remarked.
“There wouldn’t be anything very new in that” Mrs. Hathaway observed, looking fondly at Julia.
“No, I daresay not.”
“Well, thank goodness the vet is going down tomorrow. Be sure to see Terence and hear what he said” Pauline urged.
“I don’t think Terence will be coming into Funchal—he’ll wait to take Pereira up. But we can ring him in the evening, of course.”
On the following morning Julia was sitting on the verandah, superintending Philip and Susan at play in the garden while Nannie did some washing—including the unfortunate Sunday suit, considerably the worse for its immersion in the goldfish pool—when she heard a car drive up. She was a little surprised; callers so early in the morning were unusual up at the Serra. She was still more surprised when Aglaia came running round the end of the house, darted up to her, and gave her a hug. “There you are—thank goodness! I simply must talk to you.”
“Talk away” Julia said, returning her kiss. “But what on earth are you doing up here?”
“I had to see you—Terry let me have the small car.”
“Well, tell me what’s happened” Julia said comfortably. “Would you like some coffee?”
“Oh, I’d love some—no, I’d rather talk first.”
“Well do—what on earth has happened?”
“Nothing—it’s what he said” Aglaia stammered out.
Julia got up and rang the bell.
“I think you’d better have some coffee—help you to calm down” she remarked; when a maid came she ordered it. “Now, begin at the beginning, and tell me who said what.”
“It was this doctor from Funchal. Penelope got Dr. Fonseca to come over to meet him, and when they’d seen Marcusinho together they came back to the house to talk it over, and to tell Penel that the boy must go into the clinic for tests.”
“Yes, we heard about that last night” Julia said. So far there seemed to be nothing very earth-shaking in Aglaia’s tidings. “Go on” she said.
“Well, then Penelope went across to get Marcusinho ready, and to cheer up Carmen, who was in a most frightful fuss, of course. And the two doctors went on talking to one another, and the one from Funchal—who is much brighter than old Fonseca, I may say—said the only time he’d ever seen any symptoms in the least like Marcusinho’s was when he was working in France. He said there was a factory there, and that the fumes from some process did bring on the same sort of thing when the workmen were careless and didn’t wear their respirators!” She stopped and stared at Julia.
For a moment Julia simply stared back at her. At last, “Respirators?” she said, almost in a whisper.
“Yes. Well, respiradori was the word he used, of course; they were talking Portuguese. And Julia, Marcusinho did go up onto the plateau. After I’d heard that, when the doctors had gone off I went across and asked Carmen, and he had gone up one morning all by himself, they don’t know why; and he came back late for their mid-day meal, and Carmen scolded him frightfully, and then she noticed that he was wheezing and coughing, and he had this fearful headache, and was sort of dopey.”
“Good Heavens!” Julia said slowly. “Did you tell Dr. de Carvalho this?”
“No—he’d gone then, I said.”
“Nor Terence?”
“No. But Julia, don’t you see? If Marcusinho has really got the same thing as the sheep, he must have got it up on the plateau; and all those strangers going up there spending the night! And the symptoms being the same as people get from not using respirators! I think we ought to find out who those foreign tourists were.”
Julia sat silent, frow
ning in thought. She and Terence Armitage had agreed not to talk about her guess at the nationality of the tourists who camped on the plateau, and their possible connection with the Russian trawler; but Aglaia’s account of Dr. de Carvalho’s words made her think that it would not be possible to stick to that line much longer. De Carvalho himself would have to be told, for one thing; it could give him a clue that might save the child’s life. And the word “respirator” naturally led her mind back to the expedition to Central Asia—almost certainly onto Russian territory.
“Well?” Aglaia asked, rather impatiently.
“Let me think a minute. Ah, here’s the coffee.” She poured the girl out a cup and lit a cigarette. After a moment or two she reached her decision—Aglaia would have to be in on this.
“Listen, Aglaia; there’s something I want to tell you, but you must promise me, if I do, not to speak of it to anyone unless I say you can. Will you?”
“Oh yes, I will. Like about Colin—I swear I won’t say a word to a soul unless you say I may.”
“Right—good. Well, Terence and I both think those men who camped up on the Paul da Serra came off a Russian trawler, one of those spy-ships they use.”
“No! Why does Terence think that?”
Julia told her why, and how all the dates fitted, except of Marcusinho’s actual visit to the Paúl da Serra. Even that, she pointed out, was known near enough; the boy had been ill for over a week when she and the Shergolds went down to the quinta, and that fitted in fairly closely with when she had seen the trawler off Funchal, and when the strangers had landed at Seixial. “And now what the doctor said about fumes—well, it really does look at though it might tie in,” she finished. “I think” —she paused. “Yes, I really do think, although it’s all still so vague, that we shall have to let the Office know. They could send someone.”
“No!” Aglaia exclaimed so loudly that Julia almost jumped. “No, Julia!—no, no, no!” She actually stamped her little foot. “But why on earth not?”
“Colin!” the girl said. “It’s he who must come and see about this.”
“Could he get away?” Julia asked, practically.
“He’ll have to! He must come” Aglaia said, with a determination Julia had never seen in her before. “If there is a connection between this and that job out in Asia, it’s he who must handle it—they think he failed before, I know they do; but if he comes now, and succeeds, it will put him all right again! Oh, surely you can see that?” she said, clasping her hands and fixing her immense eyes compellingly on Julia’s face.
“Yes, I do see what you mean.” Julia spoke pacifically; she was far from sure that this was the right way to handle the matter, or that it would produce the results Aglaia so confidently expected, but she could not be indifferent to the girl’s urgency. “Have you got an address for him in Spain?” she asked, remembering how in her own time of crisis in the Pyrenees Colin had failed to leave her one.
“Oh yes, at Pamplona—and a telephone number. But he says the telephone is pretty hopeless; it’s better to telegraph—in Spanish, it has to be, if it isn’t to get all muddled up.”
“Well, there’s no difficulty about telegraphing in Spanish” Julia said.
“Oh, can you? How marvellous!”
“Yes, of course; only one would have to think of a way of phrasing it that would give nothing away—even to his colleagues, if he’s to get a head start of everyone else” Julia said. She was partly thinking aloud—undoubtedly, if Colin was off on one of his tours, the boy-friends would open any telegram that came for him in his absence.
“Oh, would you? I’m sure you could,” Aglaia said eagerly.
“I expect so. Look, Aglaia, this wants some thinking about” Julia said slowly. “I don’t think it would be at all easy to send a wire that would bring him off a job he’s actually on, without giving too much away. I think he’ll have to go to some place where I can talk to him.”
“But where could that be? Come here, do you mean?”
“Not at first—that would blow the whole thing wide open. I think he’d better go to Gralheira and ring up from there. On the telephone he and I can talk in a way no one else would understand. Have you got his address on you?”
“Yes—in my diary.” As she felt in her hand-bag—“Oh, what day of the month is it?” she asked suddenly.
“The thirty-first—why?”
“Then he’ll be on his way to Madrid. He was going there for three or four days to report, arriving on the thirty-first or the first.”
“Does that mean that you can only reach him through the Madrid office?” Julia asked, slightly taken aback.
“Oh no, he was going to borrow some friends’ flat—the Twinings, I think he said—because they’ll be at Santander. I’ve got the address.” She began to look in her diary. “Oh, I haven’t!” she exclaimed in dismay. “It’s in his last letter, and I didn’t bring it with me. Oh, what are we to do?”
“We’ll draft the telegram, and you can send it when you’ve found the address” Julia said reassuringly.
“But it’s no good my sending it” the girl objected. “He wouldn’t come, or go anywhere, for a wire from me. You must send it. Oh, you will, won’t you? He’d do anything you told him to.”
“All right, I’ll sign it” Julia said, thinking that a certain light was beginning to be thrown on Colin’s relations with his wife, about which she had felt she knew next to nothing when Terence Armitage had first talked to her about Aglaia. She was also thinking that in any case there would be no point in alerting the Office in London until both the vet and Dr. de Carvalho had reported on their findings, so no great harm would be done, nor time wasted, by trying to get into touch with Colin first.
“Now keep quite quiet while I settle what to say” she said; she went through into the sitting-room and collected a pad and a pencil. “In English first; then I can put it into Spanish.” She scribbled away for a minute or two, with a certain amount of crossing-out; at last—“I think this will do” Julia said. “By the way ’darling darling’ is a sort of code between Colin and me, Aglaia; it just means something really serious is up—like the call-note a bird uses for danger.”
“Oh yes—I remember he told me that once” Aglaia said readily. “He said it was so safe, because no one would guess. Well, what have you said?”
Julia read out: “Serious situation arisen darling darling essential we speak telephonewise urgentliest stop proceed immediately Luzia’s home she has my number stop I believe very much the mixture as last time. Julia.”
Aglaia began to giggle a little. “How shall you put ’telephone-wise’ and ’urgentliest’ into Spanish?” she asked.
Julia laughed. “Well, I could, but as it’s going to Madrid and not to Pamplona it can go in English—in fact I think that’s probably as safe as Spanish there. In capital cities English is an international language for telegrams.” She tore the top sheet off the pad and began to copy the telegram out in block capitals.
“Might I hear the last part again?” Aglaia asked—“about the mixture?”
Julia read it out.
“Will he know what that means?” the girl asked rather hesitantly.
“I think so. I want to warn him that it may be the same sort of thing as they were up against before” Julia said slowly.
“I thought perhaps you meant that” the girl said. Julia went on copying. “There” she said, handing the sheet over; “now you’ve only got to put the Madrid address, and hand it in. Where’s the nearest post office at the quinta?”
“I’m not sure. Anyhow I think this had better go from Funchal; they might muddle it in a village office. D’you know, Julia, I think I’ll go straight back now, and get the address, and run in with it—then it will go in good time.”
“How are you off for petrol?” Julia asked.
“I filled up before I came out—anyhow I can get more in Funchal.” She put the paper in her bag and got up. “I think I’ll flash.”
“Hold
on a minute—if you’re going to send that from Funchal you might as well take the other too” Julia said. “What other?”
“To Luzia, giving the number for Colin to ring; I’ve no idea where the post office here is—if there is one! Just give me a minute.” Again she bent her tawny-gold head over the pad and began to write and cross out, frowning a little. At length she read aloud—“Condesa Luzia Heriot Gralheira Sao Pedro do Sul. My dear cousin from Larège will shortly visit you stop please make him welcome and give him this number Sao Filipo da Serra 437 fondest love J. Probyn.”
“Why Probyn?” Aglaia asked.
“My maiden name. Luzia always called me Miss Probyn when I was her governess—she still does sometimes, when I tick her off” Julia said, smiling, as she began to re-write the message in capitals.
“And will she know who you mean?”
“Yes indeed. She was with me at Larège when Colin was working that end of the Pyrenees before—she put him onto a red-hot clue at one point!” Julia replied, beginning to laugh a little. “There you are” she said, tearing off the sheet. “Oh bother—my purse is upstairs. I’ll just get it.”
“Don’t bother—I’ve got heaps of money! I’d like to get off.”
“Well, don’t get too tired with all this dashing to and fro, Ag dear” Julia said, getting up and kissing the eager little face. “Bless you—drive carefully.”
As she came back from seeing Aglaia off she encountered Mrs. Hathaway, accompained by Mme. Bonnecourt—the Frenchwoman was laden with The Times, two books, and a bag of kniting, which she disposed on a small table on the verandah beside Mrs. Hathaway’s usual chair.
“Good morning, my dear” the old lady said. “I thought I heard a car drive off—has Pauline gone out?”
“No, it was Aglaia—she wanted to see me about something,” Julia said. “She was sorry not to stay, but she was in a hurry.”