Operation Nassau Read online

  ‘Lady Edgecombe invited me,’ I said.

  ‘All the same, it seems to lay a great deal of stress on your undoubtedly efficient role as guardian angel. Or are they worried not because you might save him from another attack, but because you might spot something a layman might miss? You’ll note that in everything they do they are very careful not to come into the open. No overt murder attempts have ever been made. Everything has been carefully designed to look like an accident.’

  ‘I couldn’t go to Great Harbour Cay,’ I said briefly. ‘I understand you think I might be of some use, but I really cannot risk leaving my post any longer. I do depend on it, as you know, for my living.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Johnson, but not at all with the inflection I expected. The bifocal glasses flashed, and he got up and began in a leisurely manner patting the pockets of his now severely creased suit. ‘That reminds me. Do you remember Pally Loo-loo?’

  I stared at him with a great deal of misgiving.

  ‘You don’t remember,’ said Johnson.

  ‘No, I don’t,’ I said sharply. ‘And by the way, who was it who kept putting vodka into my—.’ Johnson stopped, with his hand on his pocket-book. ‘That’s another mysterious thing,’ he said. ‘I assumed it was the Begum, but she says it wasn’t. And Beltanno, how do you know it was vodka?’

  I stared at him. ‘I don’t, for sure,’ I said at length. ‘But it’s the only tasteless strong drink I could think of. Wasn’t it?’

  ‘It may well have been,’ Johnson said. ‘I just wondered. Because, you know, tomato juice with sauce in it can disguise almost anything. But let’s get back to Pally Loo-loo.’

  ‘What is Pally Loo-loo?’ I said. I was becoming annoyed.

  ‘She’s a bitch,’ Johnson said. ‘Owner Marty Stootzer. Kennel, Marty Stootzer. Trainer, Willy Emmet. Whelped June 1964, Pally-itzy out of Pot-pot. Post weight sixty-five pounds. Record in last six races: Collide 1st turn; Steady fade; Tiring; Brief Lead; Weakened; Gamely. She’s won you three thousand four hundred dollars.’

  ‘What?’ I said. My stitches cracked.

  Johnson finished counting green dollar bills on to the bedcover. ‘Three thousand four hundred. With a record like that, what do you think the odds were?’

  I sat with my mouth open. I was still sitting like that when he waved, grinning and began to go out of the room. I collected myself just in time to pack them away before the Begum arrived. I dare say my headache was still there, but I can’t say I felt it.

  The sari was green, embroidered with peacocks today, and the Begum’s brown-shadowed eyes were, I think, quite genuinely solicitous. She sat down with not quite her usual grace and said, ‘Beltanno. My dear child. If only I had stopped you.’

  ‘Well. It might have been a genuine call,’ I said.

  ‘The sister tells me there will be no lasting effects. But you don’t mean to go back to Nassau today?’ She actually looked worried.

  I said, ‘Really, there’s nothing to keep me. Sir Bartholomew and Lady Edgecombe and Mr Johnson are going, and I ought to accompany my patient back. I have to make my report.’

  The Begum said sharply, ‘Beltanno, this is not economy, is it? The hospital are not so short of funds that they would force you to pay your own fare if you don’t take a free trip with Johnson?’

  ‘I’m not worrying,’ I said, and smiled cautiously. ‘Didn’t you hear of my windfall?’

  The Begum regarded me. ‘From Lady . . . ?’

  She didn’t finish. It seemed too unlikely, I suppose. ‘No. From a bitch,’ I said, ‘called Pally Loo-loo.’

  I suppose I was slightly light-headed. But I must say it gave me great pleasure to say it.

  Before she left, the Begum gave me two parcels. As I drew breath to refuse them civilly she sat down again on the edge of my bed and spoke first. ‘Beltanno. I gave you an unpleasant day yesterday. Some of it wasn’t my doing, but I did take you right out of your depth and keep you there for longer than I had any right to. It was like watching a good car trying to run with the petrol choke out. This is my way of saying I’m sorry. If you don’t like them, don’t use them. Throw them away. You’ve got money now to buy something else. But it would please me very much if you took them.’ She stopped, and smiled, that sidelong, regal smile. ‘And Beltanno. There are no strings attached.’

  I smiled a little, cautiously, back. ‘Or bridges?’ I said.

  The first parcel contained a straight sleeveless dress in plain Ottoman silk with a small high collar and some interesting anatomical seaming about the bust. The other contained a wig of dark hair, the exact shade of my own. But longer, and fuller, with two little sweeps over the cheekbones. I drew the curtains round my bed and slipped it on rapidly, then took it off and thrust it under the bedclothes. It was not my face. But I needed something to travel in. Already, since I wakened, I had suffered the open smiles of every damned person who had come into my room. I couldn’t go to Miami Airport with the Edgecombes and Johnson and look like a freak.

  I could wear a hat. But a hat in hot weather? And I hadn’t got a hat.

  I hadn’t got a dress either. They’d searched the car-park, and my shirtwaister had vanished. All I had was a good strong brassiere, a pair of sensible knickers, a girdle, a pair of thirty-denier nylons, a cotton petticoat and my Dr Scholl sandals.

  When the moment for discharge came, I put them all on, and the Begum’s blue dress on top. My petticoat showed four inches below it, and so had to come off. The ridge of my girdle, invisible under the shirtwaister, also showed through the silk. My girdle had to come off and with it my stockings. I wore my wig, my knickers, brassière. the blue dress and my sandals, and I felt indecently exposed: a brunette Jean Harlow. I went through all the necessary formalities, and joined Sir Bartholomew and Lady Edgecombe, by arrangement, in the entrance hall.

  Sir Bartholomew was looking slightly drawn but a better colour, I thought, than when I had last seen him. I realized he was staring at me and then that lady Edgecombe was drifting towards me, after a moment’s frozen assessment, like an Afghan hound sighting a colour supplement photographer. I said icily, ‘The Begum kindly brought me some things for the journey.’

  Lady Edgecombe came to a halt. ‘My dear. I’d never have believed it,” she said. Bart Edgecombe, just behind, put a hand on her shoulder. He said to me, ‘Maybe you’re sensitive about the change in your appearance. But let me say it’s very pretty.’

  He had been really a very reasonable patient. ‘I’m afraid I don’t worry very much about my appearance, one way or the other,’ I said. But not too sharply.

  He made a movement of acknowledgement. ‘Your time is valuable. Of course. But do take the trouble sometimes, Dr MacRannoch . . It can be very pleasant for others.’

  His wife smiled at him, and I thought, smiling myself, that there was something to be said for taking the trouble to be diplomatic as well. It might be worth trying.

  At the airport we met Johnson and boarded the Piper Twin Otter. Whether he knew of the Begum’s present I couldn’t detect; I rather thought not. But he merely tilted his head and said, ‘Very nice,’ and then got on with the business of helping to stow Lady Edgecombe’s myriad cases. My medical bag, retrieved from the Columbus, was already there. The Begum and Krishtof Bey, I learned, were leaving that afternoon for Crab Island via Great Harbour Cay, and Johnson himself was joining them shortly.

  ‘Leaving Sir Bartholomew in Nassau?’ I said.

  ‘Don’t be tart,’ Johnson said. ‘It’s not our fault we like you in drag. I shall stay in Nassau till Bart gets his clearance and then fly him to Great Harbour Cay with Denise. Today, I hope. You know they still want you to stay with them?’

  Sir Bartholomew had brought this up on the way to the airport. I drew breath to restate my arguments, but the engines started and the subject was dropped. Miami and its waterways sank far down below us: the golden webbed dome where Flipper played skittles daily . . . the hotels . . . the apartments . . . the dog-track.

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bsp; I smiled. I was still smiling vaguely when coffee came, and we saw below us the white kerb of sand give way to the wide purple road of the Gulf Stream. I gazed out of the window, thinking, until we landed.

  James Ulric was standing in front of the long sunshine-yellow block of airport buildings at Nassau looking furious in candy-striped Bermuda shorts. As we stood waiting by the plane for our luggage, he came stumping across on his spider legs, passed me, stopped and whirled into reverse like an egg-whisk. ‘Great jumping Christ!’ he said. ‘The creature looks almost human.’

  ‘Thank you. Father,’ I said. ‘I am glad to hear it. I have decided, by the way, to marry Mr T. K. MacRannoch. If the Begum names the day, we could make it a foursome.’

  For a moment I thought he was going to jump straight into status asthmaticus, but he relaxed out of sheer spite. ‘Bloody undersexed doctor,’ he said. ‘You’ve never met him. You wouldn’t marry him. And if you did, what’d you live on? Not a penny of mine or Thelma’s is going to that ill-gotten Nip.’

  I picked up my case. ‘Then,’ I said airily, ‘I’ll have to start betting on dogs.’ and walked past him into the airport. Edgecombe had already pushed his wife off. Only Johnson, I noticed, had remained a blank spectator of the whole petty scene.

  But he didn’t come after me and neither of course did my father, so I got the Edgecombes into the United Commonwealth on my own. I pulled off the wig in the airport lavatory on the way. I looked freakish all right, but that had nothing to do with my qualifications. I kept the Begum’s dress on because I had nothing else to wear.

  The hospital of course was an obstacle-course of cries and giggles and people running after me and trying to summon the courage to turn me about. You would think that after all they had seen in those wards, they would find a cropped head beneath their attention. Not so.

  At any rate, Sir Bartholomew got his final examination, his clothes were collected and his wife’s from her hotel, and they were seen off at last for the airport, where Johnson awaited them. He was being as good as his word. The Twin Otter would fly them all to Great Harbour Cay. And from there, Johnson would sail to Crab Island.

  Sir Bartholomew stood by the car a long time trying to persuade me to fly with them. I convinced him, I think, that a doctor’s job is not one which can be left indiscriminately. But I promised that I would ring him the first leave I got, and perhaps spend a week-end or longer at Great Harbour Cay. Then I went back to the hospital and was summoned before the Chief Medical Officer, who asked what the hell I meant by coming on duty while I looked like a tough case of ringworm.

  I remember looking blankly at him and saying that I felt quite all right.

  ‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘But McGonagall, I am less concerned with your medical health than with your ludicrous appearance. In this eminent hospital, as you are aware, the nursing staff are far from stable -’

  ‘But -’ I said.

  ‘ . . . and far from according you sympathetic respect, are liable to ignore you while rolling about in fits of helpless hysteria . . . Well?’

  “You’re short-staffed,” I pointed out. I refrained from adding that the number of competent medical officers in my view was not very high.

  He gazed at me. ‘No doubt we shall have to close down,” he said. But in spite of that, Dr MacRannoch, I wish you to take ten days’ sick leave.’

  I fear I spoke with some sharpness. ‘My hair will hardly have made much progress, Doctor, in ten days.’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘But I feel ten days’ peace will give us the strength to confront you. Close the door on the outside.’

  I had turned on my heel when he called out, ‘Couldn’t you wear a wig?’ But when I looked over my shoulder, he merely shook his head and answered himself. ‘No, you couldn’t.’

  I was hungry, but James Ulric was at home. I put on my wig. I got out the Ford, and rattled down to park it off Bay Street, and went through the dark Jacobean doors of El Morocco and had a cold turkey sandwich, which in Nassau is a whole turkey with salad and bread somewhere round the perimeter. The girl, who was forty-two. overweight, and had varicose veins, pushed the bunny frill up from her brow and asked what I wanted to drink.

  An advertisement in front of my nose for Grand Bahama said, Come Play on the Adult Island.

  I said, ‘What have you got?’

  I am aware that this does not sound like the climacteric it actually was. The waitress intoned a long and incomprehensible list of alcoholic drinks. I said, ‘What’s a Bossa Nova?’

  ‘It’s a dance, ma’am,’ she said. ‘This drink’s named itself after it. Rum, apricot brandy and pineapple-juice, ma’am. Very special.’

  ‘I’ll have one,’ I said.

  A man, a good-looking man, said, ‘Is this anyone’s seat?’ and I said, ‘I’m sorry. I’m expecting a friend.’

  There were plenty of other seats. Equally, it was obvious that I was half-way through my meal. He smiled and moved off. The Bossa Nova came and I drank a third of it. I had brains, good health and clean habits. Why the hell should these go for nothing unless I had a trendy dress and hairstyle as well?

  I drank the second third of my Bossa Nova. It was rather good with a deep fruity taste. I wondered how I could get hold of T. K. MacRannoch.

  I drank the last of it, and pulled out my notecase in a casual way to flutter dollars on to the bill. Dollars, in the plural. I had to put a fork on top to keep them from blowing away. Then I left and got into the Ford and rattled off to the villa.

  James Ulric had gone. I knew it by the singing and laughter going on in the kitchen which stopped as I unlocked the door. Daffodil, our housekeeper, trotted in and said, ‘Oh, Miss Beltanno, how smart you look. Miss Beltanno . . ‘

  I cut it short, though all the others were crushed in the doorway now, gaping. Father had packed, taken the car and gone to the airport. To fly to Great Harbour Cay and Crab Island.

  Lost in slightly hazed thought, I wandered alone through the house. Daffodil brought me coffee and I took it into the study. The files on the MacRannoch Gathering had gone.

  So. The Begum was on Crab Island with Krishtof Bey and Johnson, soon to be joined by my father. Sir Bartholomew and Lady Edgecombe were at Great Harbour Cay, the next island, where Wallace Brady also stayed. Sooner or later, if I knew my father, to one island or the other would come every MacRannoch in the Bahamas and beyond.

  Including T. K. MacRannoch, my father’s heir. I thought of what I had said to my father. Said out of pique. I well knew: it was the single unthinkable outcome of all his manoeuvrings which he would never face. Through the female line, if I were to marry, all the blood and wealth of the MacRannochs would be safely transmitted to good Caucasian stock. But for me to marry his Japanese heir . . !

  I laughed to myself, sitting there drinking my coffee, though guardedly. I remembered vaguely that alcohol is really not to be recommended after a blow on the head. It didn’t seem to be having any effect. I wondered how I would strike T. K. MacRannoch with my blue dress and my wig. All I knew of him was that he played golf.

  I got up and looked for my golf bags. I got my old fibre case and put into it three sets of clean underwear, my girdles, my stockings, my toilet bag, my pyjamas, dressing-gown and slippers and my brush. I took out my brush.

  Handkerchiefs. My Horrocks cotton. My Bri-Nylon two-piece, which had been washed. My swimming-suit, helmet and towel. Two pairs of sandals and one pair of lacing shoes. Two skirts and two shirt blouses, for golfing. One crêpe dress with short sleeves for evening, and a cardigan, in case it was chilly. A plastic raincoat and headscarf... Sudden doubt. I added a small plastic hood.

  The case, of medium size, was quite full. I looked at it with quiet satisfaction and then with a shock caught sight of my new head in the mirror. The head didn’t go with any of the clothes in the case.

  Too bad, Beltanno. I shut the case and locked it, and lay down on the bed because my head had started to ache. I was wakened by the telephone-bell.

  It was S
ir Bartholomew Edgecombe, from Great Harbour Cay. ‘Dr MacRannoch? I phoned the hospital and they say you’re on sick leave. Are you all right? You are? How long are you to be off? Right,’ said Bartholomew Edgecombe. ‘Listen. A company plane from Great Harbour Cay is landing at 4.30 at Nassau. There are no tickets to buy and nothing to do. Just walk on to the plane, and you’ll be taken care of. Denise and I want you here as our guest.’

  I didn’t know about Denise, but unmistakably. Sir Bartholomew’s voice was sincere. ‘It’s very kind of you—’ I began, when he broke in, ‘I’m being selfish, not kind. What do you think it’s worth to have my own private M.D. staying with me?’

  He sounded as if he were joking, but I knew that in a sense he did mean it. He added, ‘And if that isn’t sufficient inducement, let me tell you that you won’t be the only MacRannoch in sight.’ I opened my mouth. ‘Oh?’ I said.

  ‘Yes. I had a look at the Tamboo register to see who’s arrived since I left and I see there’s one of your clan dealing death on the golf course. Chap by the name of T. K. MacRannoch. Any relation? Or is it heresy to claim relationship to the Clan Chieftain’s daughter?’

  ‘Oh no,’ I said. ‘Father always says we should stand shoulder to shoulder, a single blood-brotherhood. Coherent, that’s us.’

  Bart Edgecombe laughed. ‘You certainly are, Doctor,’ he said. ‘Can we expect you then, on that plane?’

  ‘Yes. And thank you,’ I said, holding the back of my head.

  My emotions, to be candid, were exceedingly mixed. My lifelong small-arms battle with The MacRannoch was one thing; the attempts on Sir Bartholomew’s life another entirely. I was going to stay with the Edgecombes. And I had just received a blow on the head to dissuade me from doing this very thing.

  What was more, Johnson wouldn’t even be present. Instead, I should have the company of one of our suspects. Wallace Brady, the engineer, lived and worked on Great Harbour Cay.

  To protect myself I had my common sense. And the protection a doctor always carries in his medical bag. And the little Frommer, six and a half inches long, which Johnson had given me, to keep in my handbag. ‘Remember,’ he’d said cheerfully. ‘Aim for the right wing, in self-defence only. Corpses are tricky things to dispose of. And don’t go anywhere lonely with less than two people.’