by Sheila Burns
She woke with a start, aware of a strange new sound in the flat, new for at this time of day the whole of Malta was asleep, or seemed to be. In the hall beyond the bedroom door someone was arguing quite fiercely in a state of violent ferment. She heard Carmina protesting vigorously, but the trouble with Carmina when she protested was, of course, that she seemed to lose all touch with the English language and be completely lost. Carmina kept saying, ‘No, no, no … I tell you, signora … No, no, no,’ in an agony of apprehension. Mandy sprang up, pulled on a kimono and stuck her feet into white mules. She pushed her hand over her hair in an easy attempt to smooth it, and went out into the hall to see what was happening.
Her mother stood there.
She had two suitcases beside her, new ones of the more ormolu type, and a flowery hat of the kind she always fancied and which provided her with no shelter from the Maltese sun; also she looked to be indignant.
Mandy’s experienced eye immediately went to the foot which was still bound, of course, but nothing like as swollen as she would have expected it to be. It was always an extraordinary thing that her mother could make such a supreme fuss about anything that happened to her, yet bounce out of it indifferently when there was something going on which she wished to do. She was using a stick, it was true, and that must have been sheer martyrdom for her, for she hated anything which might give the impression that she was ‘getting on’ in years. To her a stick was the hallmark of old age.
‘Mandy?’ she gasped.
‘Mother!’
‘Mandy, my lamb! I nearly died on the journey out, but I’ve got here.’
Mandy drew her mother into her own room and shut the door behind them. ‘Cam is asleep at the moment, and he badly needs the rest. Making that noise in the hall could rouse him and make him ill again. Please …?’
‘But what am I doing wrong? I’ve got here. I thought it was awfully clever of me, and now you say …?’ She looked deeply perplexed.
‘Sit down here a moment.’ Mandy drew her down on to the light-green sofa by the window. Nothing could be more likely to upset Cam than to realize that Mother had already arrived, and after the trouble with the packet it could very easily bring on another attack. At all costs she must save him from this. ‘What made you come out all of a sudden, Mother?’
‘I had a dream. I dreamt that he was dying, was in great trouble; some awful men were badgering him, and I felt that whatever happened, I had got to come! I flew out, and we had the most dreadful trip. I thought that I should have died.’
‘I’m sorry about that.’
Mother pulled off the flowery hat and pushed it aside, running her fingers through her hair. ‘I didn’t even have time to get my hair done first for it. Is there someone who can do it here? Someone good? They must be good.’
It was so like Mother to be thinking about her hair when Cam had been so ill, and was in this worry about the stolen packet, though Mother was not to know that, and as far as Mandy was concerned it would be kept from her at all costs. ‘I don’t know about a good hairdresser, Mother.’
‘Oh but you must know, Mandy. It’s so important to have your hair looking nice.’
‘Carmina might know of someone. Now, about Cam?’
‘Yes, yes, of course. He’s better, isn’t he? Lots better and will be able to fly home with me this weekend ‒ if I can bear another flight. The thought of the last one makes me sick with horror still.’
One had to remember that, as far as Mother was concerned, she herself was her main concern, and what she liked best. Mandy began talking very slowly. ‘You have got to remember that Cam has had quite a nasty thrombosis, and nobody gets over that at speed; you can’t expect it. Also he could get another one.’
‘Do you mean that he has had a stroke? The worst of you nurses is that you can’t talk English.’
‘It is a heart attack.’
‘But ‒ but it couldn’t kill him?’
Mandy knew that she had to be brutal to be kind, and to be sure that her mother adopted the right attitude towards Cam. ‘Thrombosis is the biggest killer that we have got today,’ she said, almost brutally. It was high time that her mother grew up and did something to help.
At that moment the telephone rang on the table by the bed, and Mandy had to take it. Of all people, it was Contessa Lucinda.
The thought of the flamboyant woman at the other end of the line petrified her, for she knew how people felt about Lucinda, and that she and Cam were great friends. She explained that he was not well. Lucinda wanted to visit him, and Mandy had to insist that today of all days he could not receive visitors. Instantly Lucinda became aggressively haughty, which gave Mandy the feeling of being only a servant and someone beneath her. But she did get the impression that Lucinda, great lady as she might be, knew a good deal more than she had thought. She received the impression also that Lucinda knew about the packet of papers in the secret drawer from the S.S.
‘I’m afraid you cannot see him.’
‘Very well, I shall ring Dr Mallea,’ and the peremptory voice went cold as she rang off.
Crushed, and privately worried, Mandy went back to her mother. It was a mercy that Mother was so full of her own worries, that she did not even ask who it was. That was one help, and Mandy went on with their talk.
‘Cam has been worried about his job, and he has got to fly home the moment that he can, because of this.’
‘All right, that suits me fine! I hate this place, for it’s much too hot.’ Then suddenly, ‘Dearest one, what is his job? He never really explained it to me and I would so like to know.’
One thing was certain, you could never tell Mother anything without being quite sure that within the hour the whole of the rest of the world would know about it.
‘It’s a very, very secret job, Mother, and I’m not free to tell you.’
‘But Mandy, your own mother? Surely you can tell your own mother.’
She said ‘No’ quite calmly, and only hoped that her mother realized it was no use asking any further questions.
Mrs Sykes said ‘Tst. Tst. Tst.’ to herself and turned away. ‘Now when can I see him?’ she asked.
‘He is sleeping now, and must not be disturbed. What I would suggest is that you go and have a cold bath, for that is the greatest possible help out here; get ready, and by that time I can tip-toe in and see how he is.’
‘You won’t tell him that I am here? I want it to come as a surprise.’
‘Very well.’
She took her mother to a far bedroom where she would be farther away from Cam, and less likely to disturb him. Mandy turned on the bath for her, and opened the luggage. She was now worried to death that Cam would get a nasty shock when he learnt that his wife had arrived, for she had to admit that the first joy of love had left him. Cam had probably married her mother because she was rich, and plainly he had little to call on that was his own. He had married her, and had found her to be a nuisance. Maybe this was how he had started on these long trips away, for he must have realized that he was happier abroad.
She left Mother changing and bathing and went to Cam’s room, walking very quietly. She need not have taken this precaution for, as she approached, she heard the sound of voices. Surely there was not someone inside the room with him? She hesitated outside the door, then opened it quietly. As she did so she saw a shadow slip through the open French windows, then like a shot disappear on to the patio beyond. It was a man’s shadow.
Her first idea was that it was Giuseppe who had come back again, using the garden entrance and had got in to bully Cam for money. Yet instinctively she knew that this was not so in the strange way that these things happen.
She remembered, with a distinctness which was perplexing, that when she had left she had closed the doors, and had drawn the curtains, for the day outside was at its hottest. Someone had opened them. Cam had had a visitor; a man whom she did not recognize, nor did she want to recognize him, and she shuddered.
Cam was lying there awa
ke, and he looked to be flushed. Instantly she sized him up, as a nurse always sizes up her patients.
‘Was someone here with you?’ she asked. ‘Did you have a visitor?’
He seemed to be half-asleep, and she realized that he had not seen the man. She, entering the room had seen him there, and she had been the reason why he had disappeared; it had been herself who had awakened Cam.
‘I don’t think so. I have only just woken up.’
She spoke before she could stop herself. ‘But I thought that I left the windows closed, for it is awfully hot outside.’ He turned his head to look at the window, and she, watching him, saw a sudden uneasiness come into his eyes, and a new apprehension, as though he were dismayed. Something must have happened, and it was something about which he did not know. She recognized this.
He said, ‘Was there someone in here?’
She did not want to worry him, and calmed her own fears down. ‘I just thought that I saw somebody. I may have imagined it, for I was so worried. There has been something of a surprise outside, for Mother has arrived.’
‘Oh, Lord! She hasn’t really got here?’
‘She has, I’m afraid. I woke, heard her talking in the hall, and went to her. She had a bad flight, and felt wretched, so I got her to have a bath before she saw you, and to rest a bit.’
‘But her ankle? I thought that ankle would stop her coming out here?’
‘The ankle has made a miraculous recovery of the kind which only people like Mother get, I’m afraid.’
He looked pitiful against the pillows, and with agony in his voice he said, ‘Don’t let her come in here just now, Mandy. Please don’t let her come in here. Say I’m not so well, asleep, or anything you like, but don’t let her come in here and get at me.’
‘You can’t keep her out for ever.’
‘I know, but give me time to come round. I’m worried. I’m dreadfully worried, Mandy. I believe that a man was here in this room,’ and his anxious eyes turned to her.
She tried to soothe him though she knew that she had seen the shadow of a man, almost a ghost, slipping through the green silk curtains out on to the patio and gone before she could even recognize him.
‘It’s no good getting too worried, Cam.’
But he was worried, desperately so. ‘Mandy, my packet? What about that packet of mine? Do go and see that it is all right, for I have an awful hunch that something could have happened to it.’
She saw by the look in his eyes that he was far more worked-up than she would have expected, and this was the worst possible condition for him to be in.
‘Cam, don’t be silly! You’ll only make yourself ill, you know, and that’s absurd. I’ll go and see, of course, but the packet is all right, for it is double locked. Nobody could possibly have got at it.’
He was restlessly uneasy. ‘I have a hunch, and when I get these hunches, there is always more in them than meets the eye.’ He was a wildly superstitious man, a man who trusted to instinct, and relied on premonition, one of the most difficult men to nurse when he was seriously ill.
‘Don’t worry! I’ll go and have a look, and come back and laugh with you, you’ll see.’
She went into the little ante-room and over to the escritoire on the side. She had a little difficulty in making the key fit into the slot, it had been tricky from the first, and she let down the flap. She unlocked the inner drawer and drew it out into her hand.
The drawer was completely empty.
Chapter Nine
For one moment Mandy was so utterly startled that she nearly made an exclamation of dismay, but steadied herself just in time. Every nurse is trained to stand silent in the face of horror. She had complete control of herself. She tried again. She opened other drawers, wondering if it could have been put back into the wrong place, and even as she did it, knew that this was utterly futile and absurd, because of course it had gone.
In the end she closed the escritoire again, and came back into the bedroom wondering how on earth she could break this horror to her patient. She did not have to break it to him. Possibly it was that instinctive hunch of his which helped him, for he took one long look at her, then he said, ‘I was right. It’s gone, hasn’t it?’
He had gone sheet-white. She would never have thought that his eyes could look so dead, and so scared against that whiteness of his cheeks, and shock of any kind was extremely dangerous for him. She went to him and laid him back amongst the pillows, for he must make no effort.
‘I’ll get the island police at once. The sooner the better, for the thief cannot be very far away. It must have been the man I saw when I came in here.’
Cam let out a low shriek. It was the first time that she had ever heard him make a sound like that, and it horrified her.
‘You must not send for the police! That is the last thing to do. I’d lose my job.’
‘But they would help you.’
‘You’re dead wrong! Surely you know that the Secret Service can never ask for help? When they are in a hole, they have to get out of it themselves; you must know this.’ She had read that somewhere, but for the moment could not place it.
‘What do you do?’
He was breathing hard; she only hoped that he was not going into another attack. ‘I don’t know. I just don’t know. It wasn’t Giuseppe?’
‘It did not look like Giuseppe, but it was over in such a flash I hardly saw enough to identify anyone.’
‘I suspect Max Jefferies.’
She had brought him a sedative, and put the glass to his lips. ‘Do drink this, Cam, and try to take it easily. It won’t help you to get ill yourself.’
‘Take it easily! I like that one!’ All the same he did drink it. She laid him back again and fanned him. The first of that staring whiteness had gone, but he was now a hideous shade of grey.
‘Cam, what was in that packet? Were they papers? If they were, surely they would have been in code, and then would have protected themselves.’
‘They were not papers at all. I told you that they were medical goods, vital and of urgent importance. Hundreds of pounds were tied up in those packets, and I was the agent who distributed the contents, so what?’
A gleam of light came to her as she listened, and she was ashamed that she saw the truth with a startling clarity which was quite unnerving.
‘They were drugs,’ she said. ‘I don’t believe a word of what you are saying, and I don’t think that you are in the Secret Service at all, but that you are selling dangerous drugs.’
He looked at her.
His face began working, but no word came, one of those distortions which typify certain maladies. When he could, he whispered hoarsely, ‘This is our secret. No one else must know. No one else must know ever.’
‘Which drug is it?’ and as she asked instinctively she knew before he whispered the word. Heroin sells well, she thought; there is a little fortune in it, and she remembered Tutor Sister telling her of its danger. Heavens, that he could do this! Aloud, she said, ‘I suppose you know what this does for people? Some die in as little time as three weeks. You know that?’
He began whispering to her a broken story. He had lived by his wits for years, for he was no good at the ordinary career, a dunce at school, unable to pass the examinations which would have taken him places. He had for a time been so much on the rocks that he had been hungry, and he admitted that had hurt him. He had travelled all over the world doing this, that, and the other, any job that was going so that he could make sufficient to eat and to sleep at night with a roof over his head.
Then he had fallen in with a friend who made a fortune in drugged cigarettes. They had done good trade together, selling all over Europe, and it had been easy money. One day his friend had been found in the bargees’ quarters on the Seine, his throat cut, and his body lying in the shallow water. That had scared Cam off it for a time. He had taken his few savings and had tried to live an honest living in the way a frightened man does.
But poverty had neve
r been his bedfellow, and he was no good at pruning his expenditures until he could save sufficient. He adored luxury. He gloated on success. So he had turned back to the old drugs, and had built up a connection. He travelled everywhere with them, staying a few days, selling what he had got, then on to some other place where he was known, to pick up another packet that was waiting for him. Those caught in the snare which drugs provide did not care what they paid, for they had to get the daily rationing of them.
She nodded.
‘You don’t think of the young lives which you destroy this way?’ she asked him slowly.
‘I have to live.’
‘They might say the same thing, and you don’t give a junkie a chance to live,’ she said.
He held out a hand. ‘Mandy, you can’t be like this to me. I’m ill.’
‘If the police find out, you will be much more ill,’ she said.
‘What do I do? Your mother here, too.’
‘I should think we get Mother to fly you home at once. That ought to be the first step.’
‘I have another idea. I want you to ring up Max Jefferies, and say you saw him. Say that you recognized him, and that you are sending for the police because something is missing. That would help.’
‘But I didn’t see him! I was not able to identify the man. I was in fact so utterly surprised to see anyone here that I didn’t even think of identifying him,’ she said.
‘You could save my life.’
She looked at him coldly. ‘You are asking me to get myself further involved in something which could bring disaster to all of us.’
He panted a little. She laid a finger on his pulse and was amazed that it was as good as it was. He had been through a lot this evening, and still anything could happen.
‘You could ring him up. It is the only thing to do, and I beg you to do. I ‒ I’ll make it worth your while later.’
