The Malady in Maderia

by Ann Bridge

  “Well, do tell everyone, now that they have, that they’re not to be talked to.”

  “I’ll try. D’you know if they speak Portuguese?”

  “They must do, to have arranged all this.” She paused. “Do you think there’s any chance of my seeing Aglaia? Because if not I think I’d better be off.”

  “To tell you the truth, I don’t think it would be the slightest use your seeing her, even if she would let you in” Terence said, with a sort of calm bluntness. “It’s you she’s so upset about.”

  “What, my driving Colin and Sir Percy, and not her?”

  “Yes—why, has she been on to you about it, too?”

  “Well yes, when Colin and I came down to get the car—more to him” Julia said. “Oh dear, how silly!”

  “Unfortunately she is a very silly girl, if she is my cousin” Terence said. “She knows it, too, up to a point, which is what makes her so wildly jealous of people who aren’t silly.”

  “But I thought I’d made her see, when I was down here the first time, that she couldn’t be told about all his things” Julia said distressfully.

  “Well, if she saw it then, she’s forgotten it now—she was quite wild at lunch-time. I’m sure you’d better not try to see her.”

  “No, I won’t, of course.” She got up. “Oh, if only she could get away!—it’s so dangerous to have anyone wild and reckless about, just now.”

  “I was thinking about that” Terence said, getting up too. “How would it be if Pauline were to take her up to the Serra for a bit?”

  “When? Today?”

  “That’s what I thought. Penel is quite prepared to be tough with her; she’s pretty fed up with having a door locked against her in her own house.”

  “Oh, if you could arrange that, it would be perfect” Julia said. “It won’t be much longer now” she added, relief making her a little reckless.

  “Oh, won’t it? I’m glad of that” Terence said, beginning to grin again. “Are you laying on the Royal Navy to sink the trawler?”

  “That’s what Sir Percy would like!” Julia said, laughing too. “But, no—I don’t think so.”

  “Oh well, hurry up and produce a deus ex machina from somewhere!” Terence said, as he saw her out.

  13

  The Discussion With Terence on what to do about Aglaia had for the moment almost made Julia lose sight of her main preoccupation—to get the cofrezinho into Sir Percy’s hands as soon as possible. Now, as she drove off, this returned in full force; she slowed down and actually opened her bag, on the seat beside her, to make sure that the metal object was still there. It was, bright and shining; in a sudden panic she wrapped it in her handkerchief, to make it less conspicuous. Then she began to wonder if the Spanish boys would still be at the turn onto the main road; they could have no earthly reason for suspecting that she had got the thing that her bag contained, but she was immensely relieved, as she swung out onto the road, to see no sign of them. She slowed down to check if they had carried off the stakes? No, these had been roughly bundled together and re-tied—“incompetently”, as Sir Percy had said of their re-attaching the basket screen. Then they weren’t all that efficient!—careless about small details. Now for the first time she wondered what they had done with their car? —they would surely not go any great distance from it, seeing what the boot contained. The only cover near at hand was the banana-grove, now on her right; she looked carefully as she drove past to see if there was any way into it. Yes—at the farther end a cultivation track, quite wide enough for a car, led in; no doubt they had parked there, safely screened, to make their report to the trawler about the thermograph. Well, let them get on with it while they had the chance, she thought rather grimly.

  But as she drove back towards Funchal her thoughts turned, inevitably, to her husband. That expedition to Central Asia had been mounted, presumably at great expense, to try to get hold of some of the actual substance which produced the new Russian nerve gas, and it had cost Philip’s life; now, if her guess was correct, at least a small quantity of that very substance lay here, under her hand—picked up quite casually, by an inquisitive Madeiran peasant boy on a mountain plateau, and equally casually handed to her off a window-sill in a Madeiran farm-house kitchen. The thought struck her—it must have been standing there when she first went to see Carmen, to take the aspirin-filled grapes for the child!—before they even sent for Colin, let alone before Sir Percy flew out in his executive jet from England. How strange!—no one had missed it, no one had paid any attention; if Marcusinho’s bantams had not begun to lay, just then, and his father had not asked her to take some eggs to him, it might never have come to Sir Percy’s knowledge at all. Well, it should now, she thought, her face set; resisting a strong impulse to speed, she drove steadily on into Funchal.

  At the clinic she ran into Dr. de Carvalho in the hall.

  “Ah, bonjour, Madame. Do you come to visit my patients? À la bonne heure!—I will come up with you; I have some news for Sir Paircy.”

  For a moment Julia stared at him almost with dismay. Then pulling herself together, she made some suitable response, and went up with him in the lift; it would only be a few minutes extra delay, anyhow.

  On the balcony of Colin’s room, which they had all come to treat as a common sitting-room, they found only Colin himself; Sir Percy, he explained, was having a nap, after his early start.

  “Can he not be awakened? I have some important news for him” the doctor said. Colin looked a little dubious.

  “He did say he didn’t wish to be called till five thirty” he said, rather hesitantly.

  “But I have the results! From Paris!” the Portuguese exclaimed urgently. “They are excellent—I would say conclusive! I am sure he would wish to have them at once.”

  “I think you ought to wake him, darling darling” Julia said, slowly. The doctor looked at her, in slight surprise at her last words; Colin looked at her too—still slowly, she nodded her head. He went through to the next balcony, where they heard him tap gently on the French window. There was a long pause. At last Colin re-appeared, followed by Sir Percy, wearing a towelling bathrobe; his hair appeared to be wet—Julia wondered, with ill-timed frivolity, if he had been applying whatever “rinse” he might use to keep it so black.

  De Carvalho, seating himself at the table, pulled a typed letter out of his pocket and spread it out in front of the scientist.

  “Where is this from?” Sir Percy asked.

  “But from the laboratory in Paris!—results of the analysis of the specimens of blood that I sent. De Boisson signs it himself! See—in both cases it is positive.”

  “Why ‘A’ and ‘B’?” Sir Percy asked, rather unhelpfully— Julia felt increasingly sure that he had been interrupted in giving himself a shampoo.

  “ ‘A’ was the blood of the sheep; ‘B’, that of the child. But you see, both cases show positive cholinesterase inhibition.”

  Sir Percy now began to pay a little more attention, to Julia’s relief; she couldn’t bear to see the doctor’s enthusiasm damped down. But everything to do with cholinesterase was Greek to her, and when the two men got down to discussing dates and times, and probable density of distribution, she slipped through into Colin’s bedroom, took up the telephone, and put through yet another call to the Office in London—Sir Percy would want to talk to Major Hartley again, she felt sure, when he had seen what she was about to show him, and this would save delay; then she went out into the corridor and stood by the window at the end of it, looking out over the sunny, flowery, fruitful garden, thinking how inappropriate it was that it should have been the scene of so many discussions on horrors like the distribution of nerve gas.

  Presently she heard the door open, and Colin and de Carvalho came out.

  “Then you will send me up two copies of that, as quickly as possible” she heard Sir Percy’s voice say. “I am very much obliged to you.” As the two men hurried off, she slipped quickly back into the bedroom, and out onto the balcony.
>
  “Sir Percy! Could you spare just a minute?” she called, as the scientist started towards his own room.

  He turned back with evident reluctance.

  “Could it wait till I am dressed?” he asked.

  “I suppose it can wait almost indefinitely” Julia said coolly, opening her hand-bag. “It seems to be well sealed.” As she spoke she put the metal cylinder down on the table; Sir Percy came over towards it. “Is that Russian lettering? It looks like it to me” she said.

  The scientist’s reaction was all Julia could have wished. He took the cylinder up off the table, peered at it, turned it about, and weighed it in his hand. “Lead-lined” he muttered. “Where did you get this?” he asked sharply.

  “I’ve just been back to the Armitages’ Quinta to fetch it. The little boy picked it up on the plateau the day he was gassed.”

  “Where has it been since?” Sir Percy enquired, putting the thing down again on the table, and eyeing it as one might a venomous reptile.

  “In his mother’s kitchen, on the window-sill.”

  “Why was it not shown to anyone before?”

  “No one knew anything about it, nor what it was. Come to that, I don’t really know what it is” Julia said, with her slow smile. “I’m just guessing that it contains gas, in some concentrated form. What do you say?” she asked the scientist.

  “It must be that—it is that” he said. “But why did you go to look for it?” he asked now.

  “When the child got better he remembered about the tin, but not where he had put it; he calls it his little coffer” she said. “And when he told me this morning that he had picked it up on the mountain where the sheep were, I thought I had better see if I could get hold of it for you.”

  “You did perfectly rightly. This makes all our other endeavours needless, or nearly so.” He paused. “This must be got to England at once” he said, with sudden emphasis. “I will get dressed. No—this infernal telephone! I had better put in a call to London first.”

  “If it’s Major Hartley you want, I put in a call to him while you were talking to Dr. de Carvalho” Julia said. “I thought you might want a word with him.”

  “I do—and I want a plane! Vairy good—I will go and dress.” He went rapidly through to his room. Julia picked up the cylinder and put it back in her hand-bag.

  A few minutes later Colin returned, with two sheets of typescript. “Where’s Sir Percy?” he asked.

  “Gone to dress. How did you get on with the doctor? Is he getting curious?”

  “Not for the moment—he’s too pleased with his lab results,” Colin said, putting the typed sheets down on the table, and weighting them with an orange off a bowl of fruit on a side-table. “What did Ag say?”

  “I couldn’t see her—she’d gone to lie down” Julia said; for the moment she decided to suppress the fresh plans for Aglaia— she wanted Colin to concentrate on the job in hand.

  “Surely you could have popped up to her room and had just a word with her?” the young man protested.

  “No, I couldn’t—I was in too much of a hurry” his cousin said firmly.

  “What on earth were you in such a hurry about?”

  “This—I thought you and Sir Percy ought to see it at once” she said, and again took the cylinder out of her hand-bag, and handed it to him. “Feel the weight” she said.

  “Good God!” For a moment, staring at the lettering, he looked almost aghast. “But—but this it IT” he stammered. “How on earth did you get hold of it?”

  She told him of her visit to the child before lunch, and how he had begged for his cofrezinho. “So I thought I’d better nip down and see if I could find it. And there it was, sitting in Carmen’s kitchen!—been there all this time.”

  Colin got up hastily and started towards the bedroom.

  “If you’re wanting to ring up the Major, I put the call through twenty-five minutes ago” Julia called after him. He came back, laughing.

  “Oh darling, you’re running absolutely true to form!” He gave her a tremendous thump on the back.

  “Ouch! Steady on!” Julia protested. “I’m not wearing riot-control protective clothing!”

  “Sorry, sweet. But this is so marvellous!”

  “Yes, isn’t it a piece of luck? Now tell me what the Major said about the Spanishes and their radio?”

  “Oh, he’d assumed their existence, of course. He was going to get on to Lisbon and Madrid and see if any more was known about them.”

  “What about the trawler being given permission to land at Seixial?”

  “Well, Hartley said he’d have to ponder a bit about that—he seemed to think it might be difficult to find out without alerting the locals, and Sir P. is rather against that still.”

  “I should think he’d be more than ever against it now,” Julia said. “But look, even now we’ve got this, I hope the Major is going to take steps at some point to get hold of those boys’ tapes and films of the sheep? If Polunsky wants them so much, they ought to be useful to Sir Percy too.”

  “Who is taking my name in vain?” that gentleman said, suddenly re-appearing from beyond the bamboo screen that divided the two balconies. He was now sprucely dressed; his hair, still damp, neatly brushed close against his head; he looked uncommonly brisk and cheerful.

  “I was—I was just saying I thought you would probably want to have the film and the tape-recordings that those two boys have taken of the sheep.”

  “Yes—most certainly. But that can wait, can it not? The essential thing is to get that sample back to England.”

  “Well, can it wait? They may put them in a sponge-bag and row them out to the trawler tonight, for aught we know” Julia said.

  “Oh, do they use a rowing-boat?” Sir Percy asked, quite seriously.

  “I’ve no idea what they use, or even if they are having any physical contact with the trawler at all” Julia said. “All I mean is that as things are, we have no knowledge of their movements, and no control over them; so that we can’t prevent their disposing of these recordings that your chum Polunsky is so keen on having. They could do them up in a parcel and post them quite openly, here in Funchal, come to that.”

  “Then what is your idea?” Sir Percy asked.

  “I can’t see anything for it, if you really want this stuff, but to ask London to get Lisbon to lay on the local authorities here to pounce on the Spaniards at once, search their rooms and their car, and impound anything that could be of use to us.”

  Sir Percy frowned, and was silent.

  “Do you know, sir, I believe she’s right” Colin said. “It would be much better if those boys were taken into protective custody, or whatever they call it—or at least tailed, so that their movements would be known.”

  “How long would that take to organise?”

  “A very short time, I should think. The Portuguese Security Police could fly some of their own people out here in a couple of hours, or less.”

  “But would not these Security Police have to be told the reason for taking this action?—what has been going on here?”

  “Well, some of it, I suppose,” Colin said.

  “No!” Sir Percy suddenly pronounced. “Police are always busy-bodies; they might wish to interview everybody concerned —me!” he said with an indignant stress that amused Julia—“and that would hold everything up. I do not wish any of the Portuguese authorities to know anything about this affair until that sample is safely in England.” He looked about him. “Where is it now?” he asked sharply.

  “Here, in my hand-bag” Julia said. “I didn’t want to leave it standing about, in case the doctor or anyone else came in.”

  “Quite right. May I take it now?” When she produced the cylinder he buttoned it into an inside pocket, and patted his jacket with a satisfied air.

  “Do you propose to take it to England yourself, sir?” Colin asked.

  “Most certainly. And once it is airborne, you can collogue to your heart’s content with your Portuguese
colleagues in Intelligence, and the good doctor, and the local police,” he said cheerfully.

  “What about the boy? I thought you wanted to check on when the effects of the gas pass off with him?” Colin persisted.

  “The doctor can see to that. He will arrange temporary pauses in the atropine injections, to make that clear; he is after all perfectly competent in such matters” the scientist said airily.

  “I don’t much like that—will the child have to have that fearful pain again?” Julia asked.

  “Only for a few moments—as soon as the symptoms recur he will be given another injection. The doctor will be in touch with the vet, of course, who will make periodic inspections of the sheep, as a double check.”

  At that moment the telephone rang. Sir Percy darted towards the bedroom door; Colin, courteously but firmly, took his arm. “Just one moment, sir; when I am sure that we have the proper connection, you shall speak if you wish to.” Julia looked on with deep pleasure—here was the Intelligence man on the spot, in charge; Colin really was growing up. She stood by Sir Percy as Colin lifted the receiver; both listened intently.

  “Daly? Yes, I do want him again, personally—as quickly as you can.” A pause. “Hullo—yes, here we are again! First, can you send the little machine back at once, same place as before? Right; the sooner the better. Yes, our learned friend is returning at once—you might almost say mission completed.”

  At this point Julia did a rather unwonted thing; she went quickly back onto the balcony and through into Sir Percy’s bedroom, where she noiselessly lifted the receiver of the other telephone. Now she could hear both parts of the conversation— Colin was speaking.

  “Yes; in fact we have got a small sample of the thing itself.”

  “No!—how on earth?” Hartley said. “No—don’t tell me— the wonder-girl, I suppose?”

  “It was, as a matter of fact.” Colin laughed a little. “Now, how soon can the machine be with us?”

  “Say seven A.M. tomorrow—that all right?”

  “Yes, fine. And look, there’s another thing, that you might be laying lines for in advances. You remember the two worthies I mentioned earlier today, with the very up-to-date equipment?”