The Malady in Maderia Read online

  THE

  MALADY

  IN

  MADEIRA

  ANN BRIDGE

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  1

  “I Should Definitely go, Mrs. H.” Philip Reeder said, getting up and putting another log onto the library fire at Glentoran; it was late July, but one is usually glad of a fire in the West Highlands at all times of the year. As he sat down again he picked up a letter from the arm of his chair, and handed it back to his elderly guest. “They say they can have you ‘indefinitely’, and your doctor most definitely wants you and your respiratory tract out of these islands this winter, so I should take Pauline Shergold at her word and go and ‘settle down’ there, as she suggests.”

  “Honestly, Mrs. H., I think Philip’s right” Edina Reeder said. “This last was your third go of congestion, and in the summer at that.”

  “It seems an awful imposition, to ’settle down’ on anyone actually for months on end” Mrs. Hathaway said. Her nice, kind old face wore a worried expression. “Especially with a maid” she added—“and I have to have someone now. Being old is the greatest possible bore!” she added briskly.

  Mrs. Reeder laughed.

  “I dare say it may be—presently.”

  “No, but my dear, Watkins is apt to be troublesome in other people’s houses—and she’s not getting any more adaptable. She’s getting on, too!”

  “I should scrub Watkins, and take someone else” Philip Reeder said bluntly. “Not that she’s any trouble here” he added rather hastily, noticing his wife’s expression; “but I can imagine she might play up in places she wasn’t accustomed to.”

  “I should be rather nervous of going so far afield with a total stranger” the old lady said, looking worried again.

  “I’ve got it!” Edina exclaimed. “Mrs. H., I see your point about the devil one knows being better than the devil one doesn’t know, but you needn’t risk either! Take Madame Bonnecourt—she’s bored to tears here now that Bonnecourt has had to go to Spain; I expect she’d love it, and I’m sure she’d be no trouble. She’s thoroughly European, which no one can accuse Watkins of being!”

  Mrs. Hathaway laughed.

  “But my dear, could you spare her for so long? I thought she helped so much in the laundry and the dairy.”

  “So she does—but we managed before she came, and we shall manage while she’s away” Edina said cheerfully. “My hankies and undies won’t look nearly so nice, but I can thole that. I’m sure she’d make a perfectly good maid, and she’s such a nice person.”

  “But good Lord, Edina, how long do you expect Bonnecourt to be away?” Philip Reeder broke in. “Won’t he be back for the stalking? We shall be in a fearful fix if he isn’t.”

  “The letter from London said ’an indefinite period’—surely he showed it you?” his wife replied crisply. “Anyhow I know Colin thought it might be a long job. You’d better rout round for an extra stalker, I’d say.”

  “What hell!” Reeder exploded.

  When, some three years before, Bonnecourt, who in his native Pyrenees combined the roles of climbers’ guide, smuggler, izard-hunter and O.A.S. agent, came under the suspicion of the French Sûreté, Edina’s brother Colin Monro had learned with astonishment that, like himself, the Frenchman was employed by British Intelligence as well; he had been hastily smuggled out of France and given shelter, and a cover-job, as stalker at Gletoran. There he had made himself invaluable, not only as a stalker, but in supplementing the deficiencies of the aging shepherd in looking after the hill sheep, so Philip Reeder’s dismay was quite understandable; however his wife showed little sympathy.

  “You knew from the start that if London wanted him he would have to go—that was always the understanding” she said flatly. “I think we’re almighty lucky to have had him for so long. Anyhow even if he does come back before Mrs. H.’s Madeira jaunt is over, I’m sure he can manage perfectly well by himself.” She got up. “Mrs. H., shall I run down to the Stalker’s House and throw a fly over her? I shall just have time before lunch.”

  “Yes, do, my dear, if it isn’t a bother—though I don’t know what poor Watkins will say. Oh dear—I’m not sure.”

  “Leave Watkins to us” Edina said firmly. “She can go to her dreary old sister at Aldershot on a retainer basis. She’s no pity!” She gave her old friend a reassuring kiss, and went out. She returned at lunch-time with the agreeable news that Madame Bonnecourt had always wished to visit Madeira, which she understood enjoyed un climat plutôt bénévolent, and that nothing would give her greater pleasure than to soigner la personne de Madame Hattaway for as long as required.

  “I think she’s really delighted at the idea” Edina said, helping herself to more rabbit pie. “The only thing she had on her mind was her chickens, and she’s going to let Olimpia look after them.” Olimpia was the Reeders’ Spanish cook. “After all, no one could call the climate here benevolent exactly. So now you can write to Pauline Shergold, Mrs. H.; we’d better start enquiring about boats. There must be some line that calls at Madeira.”

  “Quite a lot of boats put in at Funchal” Philip Reeder said. “There should be no difficulty about that. I tell you what, Mrs. H.—if you get berths while Julia is still at Gralheira she might come across and join you for a bit.”

  “That would be lovely!” the old lady said. “Pauline knows her; they were at the same school for a time. And she was going to make quite a long stay at Gralheira with Nick and Luzia.”

  “I wonder how Nannie Mack is getting on in Portugal?” Edina speculated.

  “Oh my dear, in that marvellous house!—I’m sure she’ll be perfectly happy. And Nick and Luzia have put in so many baths and basins that Julia says there is boiling hot water everywhere now. Not but that there always was hot water, even in the old Duke’s time; but having it brought isn’t quite the same as turning on a tap whenever one wants to.”

  “How did Julia sound when she wrote?” Edina asked.

  “Oh, quite cheerful—she always does write cheerfully. Only she said she missed ’the dear Duque’, as she calls him, rather badly; she said it was odd, since one saw him so little except at meals, what a difference it made his not being there in the background.” Mrs. Hathaway paused, and sighed. “That made me fear that she was feeling the same about her Philip—he was away so much of the time, but he did appear at intervals, and he was there in the background, too.”

  “Yes, I’m afraid she took a bad knock over that” Philip Reeder said. “Pity about the old Duke being dead. We’d hoped getting out there would make a break, and take her mind off it.”

  “Really, Philip!” his wife said, impatiently.

  “Really what?”

  “Such a bromide!—‘Take her mind off it.’ What a way to talk!”

  “Well, you advised her to go, didn’t you? I thought that was what you had in mind.”

  “Oh, never mind! Mrs. H., have a peach—or cheese and oatcake? There’s no pudding today.”

  “Why, is Olimpia out?”

  “Yes, she’s gone to the movies in Machrahanish.”

  After lunch Mrs. Hathaway went off to lie down—since her recent illness this was insisted upon by her doctor. The Reeders lingered over their coffee in the library.

  “I’m sorry I snapped at
you” Edina said, presently. “It’s just that the whole thing is so wretched, it’s like touching a nerve in a tooth whenever it’s mentioned. After all that havering, and rubbing off one man after another, to be so happy at last, and then to go and lose him, when they’d only had such a short time together.”

  “Yes, I know. No harm done” her husband said, reaching out and taking her hand.

  “Such miles away, too, and not hearing till ages after it had happened. I’m not clear exactly where it was, even. Do you know? Colin was so vague, to me—he said Afghanistan, but he’d got on his untruthful face, and he jerked his thumb out.”

  Philip Reeder gave a brief laugh—he was familiar with his brother-in-law’s habit of pushing his thumb out of joint in moments of embarrassment or emotion.

  “I suppose they have to be a bit cagey in his job,” he said, “though I must say I think Colin overdoes it, in his own family. The mission was definitely in Central Asia, and if Colin said Afghanistan to you, it was almost certainly somewhere else! Colin did let out to me that the cover-story was to be big-game shooting of some sort—it often is, but that doesn’t give one much of a clue. As a matter of fact I did hear a bit more when I was in Edinburgh last week; something rather odd—I meant to tell you, but then Mrs. H. had that bad turn, and with Bonnecourt going off like that in a hurry, I forgot.”

  “Monster!” his wife said, without heat. “What was it, and who from?”

  “I ran into Watherston in the New Club—he’s in the same line of business—and he said how sorry he was about Jamieson, and what a loss he would be to the Service. And then he went on to say that he’d met a man who’d been in Philip Jamieson’s party, quite a youngster, I gathered, and when he was talking about it he said that Philip had wandered off without his respirator— and then he got into a frightful stew, and said ‘Forget that!’— and shut up like a clam! Funny idea, to wear a respirator when you’re shooting yaks, or ovis ammon, or whatever they were supposed to be after.”

  “I don’t suppose they were really after any animals” Edina said, frowning a little, “if the young man got into such a fuss; though I suppose one might wear a respirator at great heights, mightn’t one?”

  “Not unless they were using oxygen. No, it’s very queer.”

  “But was it being without his respirator that killed Philip J.?”

  “Oh no—he was shot, as Colin told me all along; Watherston said there were several rifle-bullets in him when they found the body. But Watherston got the impression that Jamieson had walked into some sort of ambush in broad daylight. Such an odd thing for him to do; he may have been a bit of a bore sometimes, but he wasn’t in the least stupid—on the contrary, he was fearfully good at his job, and he had lots of experience.”

  “How very peculiar” Edina said, still frowning a little. “That was all Watherston told you?”

  “Yes, I think so. I could see he was a bit dissatisfied with the whole story, and so am I—you see, Philip had a queer sort of intuition about danger, sometimes—remember how he guessed that there was a booby-trap attached to that last satellite-tracker he found in the Scillies, after that poor dotty old chum of Mrs. H.’s got killed?—Professor What’s-his-name?”

  “Burbage” Edina said.

  “That’s it—Burbage. Well, Julia and he had found all these others in the Hebrides, and in Ireland, before, and there was nothing wrong with any of them; but something gave him a funny feeling about that particular one, so when the Navy sent to fetch it he took the boffin from the patrol-boat along—and by God, there was a booby-trap attached, with enough dynamite to blow up a church!”

  “How ghastly! I never heard that.”

  “Well, that’s how it was—Philip told me about it himself; and as I say, it makes this ambush business more peculiar than ever.”

  “I wonder if Julia heard about the respirator” Edina speculated.

  “I’ve no idea. Colin may have told her, as he was there; he might easily tell her more than he told us.”

  “Yes, of course. Where is he now?”

  “I think he was going to have some leave—they were all pretty shaken up by Jamieson’s death. And—don’t mention this to your mother, or Mrs. H.—but Watherston got the impression that Colin wasn’t in terribly good odour in London just now.”

  “Why on earth not?”

  “They seemed to think he’d boobed in some way after Philip was killed—of course he was in charge of the party then.”

  “Boobed how?” Edina asked, frowning again; she might readily enough adopt a rather condescending attitude to her younger brother herself, and indeed usually did; but the idea of official disapproval roused her protective instincts.

  “Well, he seems to have decided that the important thing was to get poor Philip’s body out, instead of following through for whatever they were after; anyhow he didn’t bring back the expected results, so the whole expedition was a failure, and Philip’s death a pure waste.”

  “What results, for goodness sake?” Edina asked impatiently.

  “I honestly don’t think Watherston knows that himself. It was something madly hush, and very important—at least London attached tremendous importance to it. And as they didn’t get it, whatever it was, and Philip was killed, poor wretched Colin’s image is a bit blown upon.”

  “What bores they are!” Edina said. “Oh well”—she got up. “At least if Colin’s on leave he’ll be there when Aglaia’s baby comes—it’s due the week after next.” As she went out of the room, “A respirator!” Philip Reeder heard her mutter to herself.

  Enquiries were duly made about passages to Funchal for Mrs. Hathaway and her attendant; Edina Reeder, with characteristic ruthlessness, sent Mrs. Hathaway to stay with some neighbours, the Monteiths, for a few days, and in her absence despatched Watkins back to England, with a suitably golden handshake, for five or six months. “I couldn’t have Mrs. H. subjected to all that selfish old creature’s moans and complaints” she told her husband, when he seemed slightly taken aback by this arbitrary action. “And she didn’t really mind. I told her that no one in Madeira spoke any English, and that they’d be right out in the country, which they will, and that Mrs. H. would probably go out by air—you know nothing will induce Watkins to fly. When she asked if there were no steamers, I reminded her about the Lakonia!—and after that she seemed quite cheerful.” Philip Reeder laughed. “Now I’ll go and fetch Madame Bonnecourt up; she’s all packed and ready.” And by the time Philip Reeder brought Mrs. Hathaway back from the Monteiths the Frenchwoman was installed in the house, cheerfully preparing to soigner la personne de Madame. “I must say she makes a marvellous maid” the old lady said that evening at dinner. “Watkins never pressed my petticoats; and she washes gloves beautifully.”

  “Watkins is a lazy hound” her hostess replied, with finality.

  A day or two later there was a letter to Edina from Colin Monro. He and his wife had been involved in a car crash, and Aglaia’s long-awaited baby had been born dead—“It was a boy, too” Colin wrote sadly. Aglaia was in hospital—“but she’s going to be all right; she only got slight concussion. It was just the shake-up that was too much for the mite, they say.” And he asked his sister to tell Mrs. Hathaway—“and Julia, if you’re writing. Don’t anybody write to Aglaia yet.”

  Before she even told Mrs. Hathaway Edina rang her brother up; always practical, she wanted to learn more first.

  “Well, Ag will be in hospital—oh, University College—for about another week.”

  “And then shall you take her away? You know you can always come here.”

  “I’d like to get her away” Colin said rather distressedly. “You see there’s the nursery all fitted up, and the cot by her bed for it to be in at night—she was determined to nurse it herself—all that sort of thing. But I’ve got to go off again myself, worse luck.”

  “Botheration! When?”

  “Next week.”

  “How maddening! May one know where to?”

 
“Oh, Spain again—I’ll be seeing old B., I expect.”

  “Well, let Ag come here if she’d like to. Will she be able to travel alone, or can you bring her before you start?”

  “Actually I think she’s probably going to those cousins of hers in Madeira; it so happens that they’re in England. They were supposed to be dining with us the very night of the smash.”

  “Lawks!”

  “Quite so!” Colin said, with a brief giggle, which slightly reassured his sister. “Thanks frightfully, Edina, but I think Madeira will probably be the best bet; they’ve got a charming house down in the South, near Madalena do Mar—she and I were there last year, and she loved it. Penelope breeds pigs and things, and it’s so hot and lovely; and all these Portuguese comics about the place, it will make a more complete change for her.”

  “Yes, of course. What a good idea. They’ll take her out, I suppose?”

  “Well no, actually; they’ve got to fly home tomorrow. He’s in a shipping firm there, and he must get back.”

  “Oh well, Mrs. H. is going to Madeira as soon as she can get a passage; you’d better get Aglaia’s shipping cousin to put them on the same boat,” Edina said cheerfully.

  “I’ll do that thing! What boat is Mrs. H. going on?”

  “We don’t know yet.”

  “Oh well, Terry will fix it up for them both! He’s in with all the shipping lines—he used to be with old Thalassides.”

  “What, Aglaia’s millionaire grandfather, that left her all the money?”

  “Of course—but there’s no need to go on about that” Colin said rather petulantly; he was always a little touchy about his wife’s enormous fortune.

  “Well, tell your shipping chum to fix a cabin for Madame Bonnecourt too, next to Mrs. H.’s” Edina swam on, ignoring his petulance.

  “Why, what on earth is she going for?” Colin asked in surprise.

  “To maid Mrs. H. I’ve disbanded Watkins pro tem—she’d have been more useless than ever in furrin parts, silly old creature.”

  “What does Madame Bonnecourt say to this?” Colin enquired.

  “Thrilled to pieces at the idea of getting out of the rain and into the sun!—and Mrs. H. was frightfully good to her when she first came here, and was rather adrift; now she adores her. I’m much easier in my mind now that I know there will be a sensible person to look after precious Mrs. H. on the voyage, and while she’s out there; this last illness really has aged her quite a bit.”