Gore had been arrested for illicit trade in dagga, grown on his own estate.
A word from Richard to an ambitious young police officer of his acquaintance had set going an investigation tha.t had quickly uncovered the whole organisation of which Gore and his manager O’Rourke were the heads.
Of course, by the time the police arrived to investigate the field of dagga it had been reaped and reploughed. But Gore’s lorries, stopped on their way to Cape Town, were found to be carrying thousands of pounds worth of the stuff, hidden in the false bottoms of trays of his out-of-season fruits and vegetables.
His contacts in Cape Town and elsewhere had been located and arrested too. There would be a big national clean-up of the evil trade in dagga as a result. The ambitious young police officer said he couldn’t thank Richard enough.
Paradise, stunned at first, was soon simmering and boiling with excitement.
Never had there been so much to speculate over and talk about. Never had there been so much social activity, so many morning coffee parties, lunch, tea, cocktail, sundowner and dinner parties as now.
When it was revealed that Eric Gore was really Erich Goering, one of a family of notorious illicit diamond buyers in the old German South-West, all the armchair detectives in the place sagely nodded their heads.
They had always sensed something Teutonic about him. Those blond Aryan looks. That immaculate, rather military bearing. That love of ostentatious display...
Lady Merrick and Alix found themselves in great demand. Everyone wanted to see how they were taking it—poor dear Drusilla must have been sadly disappointed!—condole with them, above all, pump them about Eric Gore. Their telephone rang and rang till they could have cried with vexation.
“Come to Paradise for peace and quiet,” Lady Merrick said with sardonic humour one morning at breakfast, coming back to the table after taking a call. With a sigh she added, “It’s strange how everything seems to have gone wrong with this place since Andrew Herrold arrived on the scene.”
Alix gave her a rather shocked look.
“But Aunt Drusilla, you surely aren’t blaming Mr. Herrold for Eric Gore?” she exclaimed.
“No, of course not. I merely said everything seemed to have gone haywire since he came.”
“But surely unmasking a drug-smuggling ring is all to the good, isn’t it?” Alix insisted.
Her aunt said crossly, “Oh, I suppose so. Yes, of course. But look at all the scandal-mongering and sensationalism it’s caused. Paradise is ruined. I’m glad your Uncle Edgar isn’t here to see it. It’ll never be the same place any more.”
Alix agreed, placatingly, that it wouldn’t be the same.
But ruined! That depended, didn’t it, on the point of view? There were plenty of people who thought it was going to be better, now, than ever.
Lady Merrick retorted that she knew what her own point of view was and didn’t intend to change it. There was an obstinate look in her eyes still, but the zest had gone out of her. She was sadly out of humour these days.
Apart from her chagrin over Eric Gore, it maddened her that every time she walked or drove out of the gates of ‘Laguna’ she was confronted with Andrew Herrold’s project, now nearing completion.
That the buildings were, in point of fact, very pleasant to look at was an added annoyance. They were in the cool attractive Spanish style—cream-white walls and terracotta tiles, terracotta curlicues over windows and doors, ornamental wrought-iron grilles, tiled patios with orange and lemon trees in tubs, tall slim cypresses, stone pots of gay bright flowers.
Even the entrance arch was pleasing, now it was finished. And the caravans would be in bays among the big trees, on well shaven grass; the utility features tactfully concealed behind pleasant white-washed walls.
The fact was that Mr. Herrold had done a very good job. Everybody except Lady Merrick, who found herself hemmed in, just as she had feared, by camp activities on either side of her, was enthusiastic. Paradise was not only unblemished, but when Mr. Herrold had finished with it, it was going to be a great deal more fun to live in, it was generally agreed
All this, though she put a brave front on it, Lady Merrick was finding singularly hard to bear.
Alix was having a difficult time too.
She had been surprised to find her professional services in sudden urgent demand.
“But it isn’t their gardens they want to discuss with me, it’s Eric Gore,” she told her aunt despairingly after fulfilling three or four engagements.
“Better refuse to take any more jobs till this has blown over,” her aunt advised brusquely. “They’ll tire of the subject in time. No scandal lasts for ever.”
Alix said doubtfully, “I suppose that’s what I’d better do.”
But she knew it meant the end of her hopes of building up a business in the district. People would be offended. They wouldn’t offer her work again. She might just as well pack up and go.
But where?
She needed knowledgeable advice about that. And her aunt, even if she could have given it, was in no mood just now to be worried. She had worries enough of her own.
Alix began to long for sight of Richard.
She hadn’t seen him at all since their adventure on the river, though he had telephoned the next day to make sure she was none the worse for it. She herself had been leaving early each morning on her Corgi for the Pascalls’, and had had no time for her morning swim. Perhaps Richard hadn’t been fishing anyway—he had mentioned that he too was going to have a very busy time.
She began to feel, now, that she would give anything to see that eyebrow of his cocked at her, that twinkle in the grey eyes, those strong brown hands, the forceful nose and chin, that engaging grin. She wanted to hear his voice. She longed to hear his laugh—the laugh that always set her laughing too. She needed the reassurance of his presence, so easy, so comfortable, so ... dear.
She wondered if she was falling in love with him.
She had thought, before, that love ought to be all rapture and thrill and excitement; a leaping of the heart, a rushing of the blood in the veins.
That wasn’t how she felt about Richard. He just made her feel safe, at ease, happy.
Was that enough?
She woke one night after a frightening dream. In it she had relived those moments beside the river, when the shot had whined past them like an angry bee, and Richard had flung her to the ground and dropped down beside her.
She woke trembling and sweating, saying aloud, “Eric Gore is a crack shot, Richard. He might have killed you.”
In her half-waking state she lay shuddering and sobbing.
“I might have lost you,” she cried.
Suddenly, quite wide awake, she thought. If I had, I’d have wanted to die too.
That was when she knew, beyond any doubt. What she felt for Richard was love. Without knowing it, she had fallen in love with him.
Now that she knew, she felt airy, excited, almost lightheaded. She couldn’t wait to tell him. The most important thing in the world, now, was to see Richard and tell him, before he went away.
But where was he?
Before, he had seemed to be always turning up, wherever she happened to be. At Port Elizabeth, on the lagoon, in the airliner, at Punchestown, at the Ball, up the river...
Always, when she needed him or when she didn’t he had been there. Now, ironically, she never seemed to see him at all. Was he busy?—out of town?—or deliberately keeping away, perhaps to give her time to recover from the shock of Eric Gore?
Whatever the answer, she could make no coherent plans about the future till she had seen him.
After that—if he still loved her—surely the future would look after itself? ...
Now Paradise, growing tired of Eric Gore, turned to another source of gossip and amusement—the giant braaivleis Andrew Herrold was giving to mark the opening of his new caravan park.
Lady Merrick had received an invitation, on a handsome gilt-edged card, for herself and
Alix. She snorted over it, tore it in two, replaced the pieces in the envelope; stuck it down with a dab of gum, re-addressed it in her enormous handwriting to Andrew Herrold, and dropped it in the post.
It was for the following Saturday night, starting at seven o’clock.
“We’ll arrange to be out that night,” she told Alix. “And we’d better get away early, before the rush of cars starts. I know. We’ll go out and have dinner at that nice roadhouse beyond Edward. And then we’ll see a film. I’ll get James Gurney to escort us. He loves to dine out. With any luck this tamasha of Herrold’s’ll be over by the time we get back.”
Alix agreed docilely. She couldn’t help wishing her aunt would give in, let ‘Laguna’ go, accept the new site and the new house and make the best of it. New lamps for old—and not a bad exchange. But her aunt, bless her, was proud as well as obstinate. Unless something happened to force her to go, she would never give in.
When the three of them drove out from ‘Laguna’ on the Saturday evening of the barbecue, they saw that Herrold had been at pains to clear away the horrid traces of his building activities, at least on the Chambers’ side. Building was still going on on the Braines’ acreage, the new road to which had now been made. But that was all hidden behind trees.
“Give the feller his due, he’s made a tidy job of it,” James Gurney remarked fairly.
Lady Merrick snorted. This was one devil to whom she was not prepared to give his due.
“I suppose everybody in the place—except our three selves—will be gorging themselves at his horrible party soon,” she snapped.
“I wouldn’t be surprised,” said James Gurney.
Along the road a figure came weaving towards them. On its head was a dreadful old hat; it wore a raggedy old shirt, raggedy pants. Alix, at the wheel, slowed up to avoid knocking it down. She saw that it was Francis.
He lurched by, his legs unsteady, his eyes unco-ordinated. This time he didn’t take off the dreadful old hat. He gave her, instead, a very unpleasant scowl. He shouted, “I going to get Christina. Christina my wife.”
“Oh dear,” Lady Merrick said. “I’m afraid Francis is drunk. Or else it’s dagga. Or both. And Christina is alone in charge of the house. Except Nelson who’s shut up indoors. I do hope Francis won’t try to make trouble. He can be so very pugnacious when he’s been smoking dagga.”
“Don’t worry, Drusilla,” James Gurney said. “With all those folks around at Herrold’s braaivleis, if the fellow makes trouble for Christina, she can always run across and get some help.”
“Yes, that’s so. Of course she can,” Lady Merrick agreed.
They drove through the stands of wattle and gum, past the salt meadows from which the tide water was now receding, and on to the broad national road. They followed this till it by-passed Edward, continued for a few miles, and turned in under a pergola of gay bougainvillaea to a group of thatched buildings standing on a level stretch of grass.
This was the Wayside Inn, a roadhouse and motel with a well-earned reputation for excellent grills. This was where Lady Merrick had ordered, by telephone, mixed grills for three. She knew that this was her old friend’s favourite dish.
While they waited for the food, which they could see being cooked over charcoal through a big glass window between the kitchen and dining-room, James Gurney ordered cocktails and the management played soft music to them on the radiogram.
Ordinarily, on Saturday night, there would have been a dozen or more parties from Paradise and Edward, listening to the music, dancing a little on the minute dance floor, and enjoying watching their grills being cooked.
Tonight the three of them were the only guests. Andrew Herrold’s barbecue had swallowed up all the rest.
Though they did their best, it wasn’t a very merry evening for them. It is difficult for one small party of three people, two of them rather disturbed in mind, to feel merry in a large empty restaurant capable of holding three score.
The grill, when it came, was excellent. The bottle of Nederburg Reisling that James Gurney insisted on contributing to the feast was cold and delicious. The ices and coffee left nothing to be desired.
But Lady Merrick wasn’t herself.
“I’ve been made to look a fool by Herrold, James, let’s face it,” she said wryly as she sipped her liqueur.
“He’s got the better of me—and it’s made me hopping mad. What I’m asking myself now is—what more will he do, to get me out? That’s what he’s said he’ll do, y’know—and he strikes me as a man who keeps his promises.”
“Yes. Not the sort of feller to give up,” James Gurney agreed, stroking his white moustache with a thin, well-bred hand and wishing his dear Drusilla, the foolish, obstinate creature, would have the sense she was born with, and take the feller’s really very decent offer of a good plot and a new house, and be blowed to the old place; it was full of wood-worm as she very well knew. But there, women—with even the best of them, which Drusilla in his opinion was, you never could tell what they would or wouldn’t do...
Alix said, “I wonder what else he can do?”
“I thought I’d got him stymied for a bit when I closed the road,” her aunt said with a grimace. “But in a week he’d got around that. Now I can’t think of anything else. I can only sit and wait till he fires the next round.”
“Perhaps he hopes that one season of living cheek by jowl with this circus of his will wear you down quicker than any action he can take,” James Gurney suggested shrewdly. “I wouldn’t mind betting that’s what he’s counting on.”
Lady Merrick looked doubtful.
“Except that I wouldn’t expect such tame tactics of Tornado Andrew,” she observed. “I’d expect something more dramatic. Something that would force me to go—at pistol point as it were.”
“I think perhaps you overrate him, Drusilla,” James Gurney said. “He isn’t such a wonderful feller, after all.”
“Not wonderful. No. Just dynamite, James.”
James Gurney looked at his love with sudden suspicion. He considered she was thinking and talking far too much about this Herrold feller. He changed the subject, asking her what film they were going to see. He kept the talk away from Herrold for the rest of the evening.
The film, unfortunately, was not very good. Edward was rather off the beaten track for the main circuits, and hadn’t yet got one of the wide screens that the newer pictures require. This one was a rather tedious old comedy of American family life. By the time it was half-way through they were all beginning to be very bored.
But presently something was shown on the screen which was of interest. It woke them out of the stupor of ennui into which they had fallen.
It was an emergency announcement.
It said: “If Lady Merrick is in the audience, will she please come out to the box office at once. The matter is urgent.”
The lights went up. The scanty audience turned their heads to see if Lady Merrick was there .They craned to follow her with their eyes as she and her two companions got up and hurriedly left the hall. They only turned their heads back as the lights went down again.
Outside, a police officer was awaiting them.
“Oh dear, I suppose it’s Francis, I knew he would make trouble,” Lady Merrick boomed.
But it was something quite different.
“ ‘Laguna’ is on fire, Lady Merrick,” said the police officer. “We just had a telephone call and as your servant knew where you were I came to inform you at once. Luckily there are hundreds of people at the braaivleis. The fire’s got a good hold on the thatch, I’m afraid, but they’ve formed a chain gang with buckets and are doing what they can. And Edward are sending their fire engine as soon as they can.”
They piled into the car, and Alix drove out in the direction of Paradise as fast as she dared. Now they could see the reflection of the fire in the sky—a glow of lurid red above the trees.
The lights picked up the signpost, WELCOME TO PARADISE. Alix swung the car off the smooth broad
tarmac of the national road on to the rough causeway, and perforce slowed down.
At that moment Lady Merrick gasped and put a hand to her mouth.
“Oh God,” she said. “Nelson! He was shut up in the house. He—hurry, Alix, hurry. Nelson was shut up inside.”
“Now, now, Drusilla,” James Gurney soothed. “Nelson would bark. Dogs smell fire very quickly. I wouldn’t wonder if it was Nelson that gave the alarm. And with all those people about, do you think there wouldn’t be one of them who’d have the guts to go in and get him out?”'
“I d—don’t know,” she stammered. “I want to be sure. Hurry Alix!”
Alix was hurrying as much as she dared on the rough, rutted road. Now they were over the causeway, and taking the rise that led through the stands of wattles and gums to the plateau on which ‘Laguna’ stood.
Long before they reached Herrold’s tall white archway they could smell the fire. The night was warm and the car windows were open. Mingled with the smell of burning thatch and wood was another smell—that of meat cooked in the open on open grills. The smell of Andrew Herrold’s braaivleis.
It brought a new thought into Lady Merrick’s mind. She said grimly, “I told you Andrew Herrold hadn’t finished with me. He hadn’t got me out. I said he wouldn’t be satisfied till he’d forced me out. But I didn’t think even he would go so far as to burn me out.”
James Gurney remonstrated, a little shocked at his dear.
“Come now, Drusilla, you really don’t think it was Herrold set fire to ‘Laguna.’ ”
As Alix pulled up the car—she had to, she couldn’t get it any further on account of the crowd, the other cars that had parked to get a view of the fire, and the chain of workers that were passing buckets filled with water from the lagoon and flinging them on to the flames—she heard her aunt say, still in that grim way, “I wouldn’t put anything—anything—past that man.”
Welcome to Paradise Page 19