The Malady in Maderia

by Ann Bridge

  “That’s what I want to ask you. It wasn’t very nice for him, my clearing out in the middle of the night, with no notice, though he was perfectly polite about it; but it will be even less nice if the P.I.D.E. come and arrest his two favourite clients!” Julia said urgently.

  “Are they going to arrest them?”

  “I’ve no idea. I suppose they might have them tailed for a day or two, and try to pick up their wireless messages to the trawler; I suppose it depends on what they make of what Colin, and de Carvalho, and you and I tell them.”

  “Why should I have to tell them anything?” Terence asked, looking rather startled.

  “Well, you found the sheep, didn’t you? Anyhow you can vouch for da Silva, can’t you? I’m positive he hasn’t a clue about the Spanishes not being what they seemed.”

  “Yes, I can do that,” Terence said.

  “Right.” Julia got up.

  “Where are you going now?” he asked.

  “Back to the clinic. Oh, one other thing—de Carvalho thinks it might be as well to play Sir Percy down as far as possible, not to hurt local susceptibilities” Julia said.

  “Yes, I can see he might prefer that!” Terence said. “I’m not sure that it will be possible. All right—thank you for coming.”

  “Thank you for the coffee” Julia said.

  15

  When Julia Got back to the clinic Colin was in the telephone-box in the hall; she waved to him, whereupon he slammed down the receiver and came out.

  “ There you are! Where on earth had you got to?”

  “Been to wise-up Terence” Julia said.

  “Well, come along and wise-up the Lisbon party!” Colin said. “They want you.”

  “Where are they?” Julia asked—“and what do they want me for?”

  “Up in that summer-house place” he said, leading her out into the garden. “They want to know about the trawler, and the Spanishes—I can’t follow it all, but I get the impression that they’re being a bit tiresome to the Doctor.”

  “Could be, I suppose” Julia said, obediently following him up the path through the beds of vegetables and the avocado pear-trees. “Is that their car in the drive, with the two policemen in it?”

  “Yes.”

  In the open-sided garden-house sat four men—a short stout Portuguese, a tall, sandy, quite obvious Englishman, whom Julia guessed to be Henry Hamilton, and Dr. de Carvalho in vigorous and declamatory argument with a man who was seated with his back to her—when Colin announced “ Void Madame Jamie-son” they all rose, and this individual turned round. Then he fairly ran at her with outstretched hands— “A Menina Probeen! Che prazer!” Though he was a little greyer, and even stouter than when she had last seen him at Gralheira some years before, Julia at once recognised Colonel Marques, the head of the Portuguese Security Police.

  “Oh, hullo, Colonel—how nice to see you again” she said; one of the amusing and unexpected things about Colonel Marques had always been that he spoke such excellent English. The others stood by in surprise while they chatted for a few moments as old friends, deploring the death of the Duke of Ericeira, discussing Luzia Ericeira’s recent marriage to Nicholas Heriot. “And imagine, Nannie Brown is back at Gralheira, to look after Luzia’s baby when it comes! That will be her third Ericeira baby!” Julia said happily. Then Colin, a little impatiently, introduced Major Hamilton, and Marques his number two, also a Major, and they all sat down.

  “Alors, Monsieur le Colonel” Julia began, switching to French—she knew that de Carvaiho’s English was limited— “Monsieur Monro said you wished to speak with me. What can I tell you?”

  “But everything!” the Colonel exclaimed. “We seem to have been told remarkably little so far” he said, with a slightly unamiable glance in the doctor’s direction.

  “There was very little to tell but suppositions and guesses, till yesterday” Julia observed calmly—“and I know that Monsieur le Colonel prefers hard facts to those.”

  “Yet Monsieur Monro is here, from British Intelligence, since some time” Colonel Marques countered.

  “No, not from British Intelligence” Julia stated firmly. “He came from Spain, on leave, to see Madame his wife, who is staying here; though in fact I asked him to come, on account of those suppositions and guesses which I have referred to.”

  “You sent for him without informing London?” Marques asked, surprised.

  “Certainly—can a lady not invite her cousin, if she wishes to seek his advice?” Julia said, smiling a little. “We only informed London after Monsieur Monro was already here.”

  During this interchange the doctor sat watching Julia, relief and satisfaction gradually spreading over his dark face. “But now” Julia pursued, in her slow, measured tones, “would Monsieur le Colonel care to hear the sequence of events from the beginning, as far as I know them? It might help him to a clearer appreciation of a situation that for some time remained excessively confused.”

  “Certainly” Colonel Marques said; after their warm-hearted meeting he was ever so slightly deflated by this formal manner.

  Julia held forth at some length: her two encounters with the Russian trawler, finding the stricken sheep, the hammock-men’s account of the ten nocturnal tourists, and their smoking pale-brown cigarettes with cardboard mouthpieces—“which to me suggested that they were Russians”—the mysterious illness of the child, and his being taken to the clinic for observation. “Then Madame Monro had a fortunate connection of ideas— one might say a guess. We owe much to her feminine intuition!” Julia said gaily, though in fact she was choosing her words with considerable care. She slid lightly over the fact that Mme. Monro of course knew that her husband had recently been in Central Asia in search of a new Russian nerve gas, whose existence had been revealed by a defector, and suggested that he should come to investigate—“but since this was all still a matter of guesses and suppositions, we did not inform London at that stage.”

  At this point de Carvalho began to look slightly nervous. Julia flowed on.

  However, Dr. de Carvalho had at once taken the precaution of sending specimens of the child’s and the sheep’s blood to laboratories on the mainland, and their reports, which he received yesterday, confirmed Madame Monro’s guess. ”Madame a une très jolie faç on de sauter” Julia observed, smiling again. De Carvalho looked relieved; Colonel Marques asked if he could see Madame Monro?

  Alas, not for the moment, Julia told him; Madame was confined to her bed with a feverish complaint; her doctor would not allow her to be disturbed. “But now we come to the matter which is, I assume, of most immediate concern to Monsieur le Colonel” Julia pursued blandly—“the local accomplices, about whom my cousin has already told you.”

  “Ah yes—how were these discovered?” the Portuguese Major asked, speaking for the first time; he had been making notes on a pad.

  “By pure good fortune!” Julia said. Their existence, she went on, had of course been assumed from the outset, but it was just an unheard-of stroke of luck that she should have been staying in the same hotel, and have overheard them discussing the question of photographing the sheep on behalf of someone called Polunsky. At this point Marques held up his hand.

  “One moment, Madame, je vous prie.” He turned to Colin. “Was this name already familiar to you?”

  “No” Colin said.

  “To you?” Marques asked, turning to de Carvalho.

  “Certainly—he is one of the principal Russian experts on nerve gases” the doctor said. “But . . .”

  Marques interrupted him. “Yet you did not inform the local authorities that there were people here, in Funchal, acting on this person’s behalf? An employee of a foreign country?”

  Julia leaned over and put a long white hand on Marques’ sleeve.

  “Monsieur le Colonel is trying to go too fast” she said quietly. “Dr. de Carvalho only heard Polunsky’s name this morning, less than an hour ago. I told him myself. I only told Monsieur Monro of his existence yesterday,
and I think your office was given this information yesterday evening, quite early, was it not?”

  The Colonel grunted. “That is so” he admitted.

  “Then I do not think there was any unreasonable delay in the information being passed to you” Julia said firmly, causing the Portuguese Major to stare at her. “Mr. Monro informed London as soon as he got within reach of a telephone, and British Intelligence decided that in a matter of this importance it was better to inform your office rather than the local police. If Monsieur le Colonel has any complaints on that score, he should address himself to London” she added quite stiffly—“not to Dr. de Carvalho, who in any case was unaware of any of the facts; nor to my cousin.”

  Marques grunted again—the Portuguese Major stared harder than ever at this young Englishwoman who so hardily rebuked his chief.

  “Why was Monsieur Monro not within reach of a telephone?” the Colonel asked now, but less disagreeably.

  “Because when I told him, we were already on our way to the plateau again, to see how the sheep were getting on” Julia said easily—“and there we got confirmation of what I had heard about the photography, for the two young Spaniards were up there with their machine, taking ciné-pictures of the sheep!”

  “And it was on the way down that you examined their car, and found the radio-apparatus?” Marques asked, of Colin this time.

  “Yes, sir.”

  The Colonel was silent for a moment or two; he appeared to reflect.

  “Monsieur le Docteur, I ask your pardon” he said at length. “Mademoiselle is right—I was going too fast!” he added, turning to Julia with a smile.

  “Well, now I suppose you go and apprehend them?” Julia said.

  “Assuredly. Do you know what names they are using?”

  “Yes—Cristofero and Domingo de Calderón” Julia replied. “And their room number is seventeen—I looked them up in the hotel register.”

  “ Merci, Mademoiselle. Your assistance has been of the greatest value” the Colonel said—“Sons tous les aspects!”

  “Thank you, Colonel” Julia said, now again in English; she smiled at him, pleased that his usual urbanity had been restored.

  “Then let us be on our way” Colonel Marques said, getting up. “Monro, do you know these men by sight?”

  “Certainly, sir.”

  “Then we need not trouble Mademoiselle” the Colonel said. He turned to de Carvalho. “You will be able to furnish us with these reports from the laboratories later” he added. “They will be valuable as evidence.”

  “You do not wish to see the boy?” the doctor asked.

  “Not at this moment. He will assuredly not attempt to escape!” Marques replied cheerfully.

  As they started down the garden Colin drew Julia aside.

  “Well, you pulled that off all right” he said. “Why are you and he such chums?”

  “Oh, we met at Gralheira, when Luzia and Nannie Brown snaffled a rather important Communist for him. But I wish I’d asked you on the way up whether you’d told him about Sir Percy —as it was I had to take a chance on that.”

  “No, I hadn’t—I thought we’d agreed I wasn’t to.”

  “Oh well, it worked. But I should try and get word to the people at the airport to keep their mouths shut about Sir Percy’s plane, if I were you.”

  “I dare say if he gets his Spaniards he won’t worry too much about that” Colin said easily. “It’s bound to come out in the end, of course; but let’s hope at governmental level. After all this whole operation is directed against us, not the Portuguese. What are you going to do now?”

  “Go up to the Serra and get some breakfast.”

  “Goodness, haven’t you had any? Well, if you get the chance, you might have a word with old Dr. Urquhart about Ag.”

  Julia in fact intended to do that very thing; but after the police cars had driven off—a second one had appeared—she was intercepted by Dr. de Carvalho, who thanked her warmly for her defence of him—Colonel Marques, he said, was not a person in whose bad books it was at all comfortable to be! He, too, wanted to know how she came to be on such familiar terms with that remote and dreaded figure; Julia again explained. “But I’m only sorry I couldn’t tell Colonel Marques just how much you have in fact really helped us” she ended. “I may get the chance later.”

  “Do not trouble; you have done all that was necessary!” the doctor said, showing his white and gold teeth in a cheerful grin. “Au revoir, Madame.”

  It was after half-past nine when Julia reached the Shergolds, and she was very hungry indeed. She hurried into the dining-room—it was empty of occupants, but coffee still stood on the hot-plate, and a place had been laid for her—she tucked into rolls and bilberry jam thankfully. What a lot had happened since that bilberry-picking with the children, she thought—how little, on that quiet and innocent afternoon, she had guessed what strange doings lay ahead. Well, all that was nearly over now; what remained, as unfinished business, was how to sort out Colin and Aglaia.

  During her meal she occasionally cautiously felt her elbow with her other hand; driving, especially on bends, it had been rather painful; she decided to let Dr. Urquhart see it when he came; it would be a good excuse to meet him, and hear his views on Colin’s wife. She rang the bell when she had finished, and asked the maid where her hostess was?—out with the children, she was told. Julia went up to see Nannie, whom she found doing some ironing; Philip had gone out with the others. “How is little Mrs. Armitage?” Julia asked.

  “Still under” Nannie said. “Not a sound out of her all night.”

  “Oh good. Nannie, I want to see the doctor when he’s seen her; I’ve hurt my elbow, and I’d like him to look at it. Will you tell him so? I expect I shall be with Mrs. Hathaway.”

  Nannie of course wanted to see the elbow herself. “That’s a nasty bruise, Madam—you’d better let me put on some Pomade Divine.” She did so, and wrapped it in gauze—“Now you won’t greasy your dress.”

  Mrs. Hathaway was still in bed, and Julia sat with her. “Oh yes, Colin’s job here is nearly finished” she told the old lady; “I should think he’d be free any day now.”

  “And then what will he do? Take that child home and look after her?”

  “I don’t know” Julia said sadly. “I expect it depends partly on what the doctor says.”

  “Well, I am sure you ought to see him” Mrs. Hathaway said. “He asked me and Pauline all sorts of questions about her, and about Colin, that of course we couldn’t answer—you might be able to.”

  “Yes, I will see him” Julia said.

  Her interview with Doctor Urquhart took place half an hour later, after he had seen both his other patients, in her own room. While he examined her elbow she studied him—except for his grey hair he gave little impression of age, but a strong one of competence and kindness. Nothing was broken, he pronounced, washing his hands, and no treatment better than Nannie’s prescription. “Get her to put some more on. And lie on your bed for a while; it was a bit of a shock, yon fall.” Julia obediently lay down; he drew up a chair and sat beside her.

  “Mistress Hathaway tells me you know young Mrs. Monro and her husband well” he began.

  “Him, very well; he’s my cousin, and we’ve seen a lot of one another ever since we were children. Her, no; I’ve seen very little of her till we came out here, and to tell you the truth, we all found her rather difficult to get to know” Julia said.

  “The truth is what I want!” Dr. Urquhart remarked with a rather quizzical smile. “First, who are ’we all’?”

  “Mr. Monro’s sister Edina, Mrs. Reeder; Philip Reeder, her husband, and me and Mrs. Hathaway,” Julia replied readily.

  “A close-knit group, would you say?—a little difficult for a newcomer to settle into?”

  “Philip Reeder didn’t find it so! But he’s a very mature and confident person” Julia said, smiling at his shrewdness.

  “Quite so. When she is in normal health is Mrs. Monro confident? She do
esn’t seem very mature.”

  “No, confident isn’t a word one would use for her—at least not superficially” Julia said slowly.

  “Just what do you mean by superficially? Can you say?”

  “I’m trying to think how to put it” Julia said. “She’s timid with people, I think because she realises that she is rather silly—or perhaps I mean rather less of a person than many people are; but inside she has a quite ruthless determination, and an intense conviction that her own ideas are right, and everyone else’s wrong!”

  “How did you discover this—since you found her so hard to get to know?”

  “Well, I’d better tell you something of her recent circumstances, and give you an example” Julia proceeded. “Colin Monro is in the British Intelligence Service, and was number two to my husband on an expedition to Asia some months ago— my husband was killed, and Colin brought the expedition back —unsuccessful. Aglaia got it into her head that Colin was being blamed for the failure—unjustly, she thought; especially as he was sent to do a rather dull job in Spain.”

  “Is he being blamed, in fact?” Dr. Urquhart interjected.

  “I don’t know. I heard nothing of it, but then I might well not have done. Well, something has happened here recently—I can’t tell you what—that made both her and me suspicious; and she was very sharp about that, and gave me an invaluable clue! Now the normal thing would have been to inform Mr. Monro’s Office in London; but she was absolutely adamant that he should come here and go into it, to have a success to counterbalance his imagined failure—she was so set on this, and so distressed, that I did as she wished, and sent for him.”

  “Are you in British Intelligence?” the doctor asked.

  “No” Julia replied smiling. “But one way and another I have worked in with them for years—through my husband, and Colin, and other people. Let me tell you one rather key thing: when she was pressing me to send for him she said—’He’ll come if you tell him to; he wouldn’t for me.’ A sense of inferiority, you see, even about her own relation with her husband.”