Operation Nassau (3 page)

Instead of looking irritated, his expression became merely rueful. ‘Sergeant Trotter,’ he said, ‘is everyone’s friend, as you will find out. He’s regular army and going to Nassau on business, that’s all I know. But he was the only other man to jump to it when Bart honked out and fell, and he stayed with me till you came. In fact, he’s in the next room to mine now, waiting to hear what you say. Just one of Nature’s Samaritans.’

I know that type too. I almost changed my mind; but it was a two-hour flight, that was all, and a first-class passenger lunch would save me buying a supper. I stood up and said, ‘Since we have an early start, perhaps we should have some sleep then. Good-night, Mr Brady.’

He put down his coffee-cup and got up. For a moment I thought he was going to reduce the conversation to personalities; then he shut his mouth and held out his hand. ‘Good-night, Doctor,’ he said.

I put the chain back on the lock and emptied the syringe before getting into bed. It was 11.40 p.m. I do not like unorthodox days.

There is nothing to sap the moral fibre quite like a first-class flight on a Super VC 10, from the nuts and taped music to the champagne and hot cologne-scented towels which quickly succeed them.

The journey to the airport with Sir Bartholomew, who was quite sensible, although unsteady on his feet, had passed off without incident, and after installing him in comfort on a double seat on the other side of the gangway, I was able to put my walking-shoes on the scarlet plush foot-rest and receive the menu with pleasure. Hot prawns in batter were passed round. ‘Looks a bit better than he did yesterday, doesn’t he?’ said a London voice in my ear, and I perceived that I was sitting next to Mr Brady’s helper of the airport lounge, and that Mr Brady himself was nodding good morning from the seat just behind. ‘Rodney Trotter,’ the Cockney voice further volunteered, with accents of boundless goodwill. ‘Sergeant Trotter of the Royal Scots. Your part of the world, eh, Miss MacRannoch?’

I smiled, slightly, without I trust showing my irritation. Behind, the man Brady’s voice said, ‘Doctor MacRannoch, Trotter. Name, rank and number, you know?’

The Sergeant was a small muscular man, aged perhaps forty- seven, with the lined face of one much given to bawling commands. His voice was rich and unexpectedly carrying. He took Brady’s intervention in good humour. ‘I thought she was travelling in civvies like myself,’ he said. ‘Don’t want all the world to know you’re a doctor, eh, Doctor? The arguments I’ve got into about the Army, so soon as I mentioned me rank. Besides, a girl wants to be chatted up as a girl, not a bloody meat-butcher, don’t she?’

I am aware that I lose colour when angry, but I am perfectly capable of keeping my temper under provocation. ‘If you address me as “Doctor”,’ I said, ‘I shall be perfectly satisfied.’

His eyes became round, and for a moment I thought he was going to add to his impertinence. However, he merely said, after a moment, ‘Well, my name’s Rodney, and you can call me that any time you like, Doctor. You did a great job on that chap, anyhow. You can quote me for reference.’ Then the drinks trolley came round, followed by lunch, and he was snoring before the brandy was finished.

I had caviare, clear turtle soup with sherry, lamb noisettes with truffles, cherry meringue gateau with coffee, and two petits fours. Sir Bartholomew, to whom I had given a mild sedative slumbered peacefully through lunch, and had a little warm milk on awakening. Shortly after this, he expressed a wish to retire, and since both Brady and Trotter were slumbering, he was aided to do so by the steward, assisted by a Turkish youth sitting behind him. I thought when he returned he looked pallid; his pulse rate had risen and his breathing had become rapid and more shallow. He showed no wish to speak. I moved over beside him, and had just fastened his seat-belt for the descent when he became rigid and I saw that another attack was imminent, on at least the same scale as the one he had suffered the previous day. I pressed the button for the steward and opened my bag with one hand, supporting him with the other.

The details of what followed are not particularly attractive or even clinically abnormal, given the proper diagnosis, and I shall not dwell on them. Enough to say that the worst was over by the time the ambulance got us from the New Providence airport through Nassau and up the incline to the United Commonwealth Hospital, and that by the time he was settled in the private ward with the entire staff hanging about chattering, Bahamian-style outside his open door, he was conscious and weakly recovering. Indeed he smiled up at me as I bent over him, changed into my white coat. ‘What was it?’ he said.

‘Something you ate. Sir Bartholomew, did you have anything to eat or drink on the plane, apart from the warm milk?’

‘You know I didn’t,’ he said. He had a slow, mannered voice: a remnant perhaps of official days in Britain. I would guess at public school and Cambridge, perhaps. His face changed. ‘At least - I had an aspirin in the lavatory, from the pack in my pocket. Had a crashing headache.’

‘In water?’

‘Steward gave me a glass.’

‘Do you mind, Sir Bartholomew,’ I said, ‘if I remove the aspirins and subject them to some tests? If food poisoning is at the root of your trouble, we must for everyone’s sake discover the source of bacteria. Contaminated tablets, for example, might have caused both attacks. There is another thing I wish to ask you. Sir Bartholomew, do you know of anyone in New York with a personal grudge against you?’ And I informed him of the telephone call I had received at the Trueman.

‘A joke, perhaps,’ I said. ‘On the other hand, there was a degree of menace in the words. They implied, quite clearly, that the caller did not wish your life to be saved.’

He laughed. It was a laugh I had heard many times before when questioning patients. It is important to show no disbelief. He said. ‘When you said joke, I got it. It’s all right. I haven’t got an enemy, but I have a very funny brother-in-law called George. His idea of humour. I’m sorry, Doctor. Did it keep you awake?’

‘Not at all,’ I said. ‘I was hardly to know a second occasion would involve me so quickly. Your wife has been sent for. I shall be in to see you again, but I suggest you allow at least two days in bed before you attempt to go home to Great Harbour Cay. Is there anything further you wish done for you?’

‘No, thank you,’ he said slowly. ‘At least -’

‘Yes?’ I had a round of the wards to do in five minutes.

‘I have another favour to ask you,’ he said. ‘I’d ask my wife, but she’s. . . well, she gets easily upset. I’d rather Denise thought it was a bad case of air-sickness . . . something small, something like that. If I’m going to get bills from New York, and maybe inquiries and correspondence, I’d rather a family friend looked after it all. I still have some small business interests, and–’

‘You won’t feel like business for a day or two,’ I said. ‘You want me to telephone a friend? Where can I reach him?’ I opened my notebook.

He lay scanning my face, and I concealed my impatience. This meant, presumably, a mistress in another part of the island. However, no patient will recover unless his mind is at rest. I waited.

‘I want you to take a letter,’ he said. ‘To Coral Harbour. That’s where he is. Or so the papers all said three days ago. He’s Johnson Johnson, the portrait painter, maybe you know the name? And you’ll find him on his yacht, a biggish ketch called the
Dolly
.’

I said I would think about it, and left him to write his letter while I did a tour of my cases. My two stomachs were doing quite well, the perforation having dispensed with his Levine already. We had lost the cervical spine dislocation. An amoebic abscess had come in, and two new tubercular cases: I read the notes on my desk. After a thorough afternoon’s work I walked through the private wing and across the path into the laboratory. There I found a room to myself, and set to analysing four samples I had taken from my bag in the hospital. One was of warm milk and the other of aspirin. The remaining two were from the contents of Sir Bartholomew Edgecombe’s stomach after each of his attacks.

The warm milk was innocent, and so was the aspirin. But both the samples from Edgecombe confirmed my own clinical diagnosis.

Neither attack had been caused by B. botulinus, or B. enteritidis or anything resembling an infected crab sandwich.

Sir Bartholomew Edgecombe had been poisoned by arsenic.

James Ulric MacRannoch was at home when I called in, on my way to the Coral Harbour marina.

My father, in his efforts to deny to Japanese hands the substance of the MacRannochs, had rented for his sojourn in Nassau a delightful and expensive villa with a white pillared porch and a swimming-pool. Hummingbirds, species Calliphlox evelynae, lurked in the butterfly flowers, and the coconut palms were placed as nicely as sutures.

Inside, he had pink bamboo furniture on pink mohair carpeting, offsetting the large coloured staff who stood about smiling, because of the amount he was paying them. This had all been settled by his friend the Begum long before we arrived, and I took nothing to do with it. I stayed with my father because he needed to be under medical supervision, but I was financially independent of him and intended to remain so, although the cost of living in the Bahamas was reducing my bank account to eunuchoidism.

However, since I had finally made a clean incision in the chain of worthy and well-connected young suitors prepared by my father, I felt that this unfilial action should at least discharge the MacRannoch from the duty of paying for me as a daughter. What he chose to do with his money was therefore his affair, although he made it, such was his excitable nature, all the world’s.

There was in fact a crowd of people on the terrace when I made my way through the house. They had not changed for dinner and from their costume I guessed that there had been a tennis party on our excellent hard court. One couple from Government House, I recognized, and there was a titled lady from the retired British colony, a banking family and one or two of the younger moneyed set from Lyford Cay. There was also a tall hair-lacquered blonde lady in a bikini a little too smart for her, for whom my father, in flowered Bermuda shorts and green shirt, was pouring a large Bloody Mary. F noticed that it was more blood than Mary, and after a second hard glance at the lady, diagnosed why. Then he turned round.

‘Beltanno! Did you kill ‘em off early? Come and get a nice strong tomato juice under the whalebone. You know my daughter Beltanno, Denise, everyone?’

I call myself, as I have said, Dr B. Douglas MacRannoch, Douglas being my middle name and the surname of my mother. It is unimportant, but perhaps simpler to explain now that I was christened Beltanno, which was the name of Cairbre’s wife, the daughter-in-law of Cormac. Since it conveys nothing but a sense of ridicule to members of an Anglo-Germanic culture, I never use it and dislike hearing it used, as my father well knows. The woman called Denise smiled graciously, and someone said, ‘Good evening’; then they all returned to their drinks. The MacRannoch said, ‘Denise here has been deserted by her dear husband. The hotel wouldn’t let her hang on to her room. I’ve said she can stay here till he comes.’

Denise. The white population of Nassau is not all that enormous. I said, ‘Is his name by any chance Edgecombe?’ and received half my tomato juice down my Bri-Nylon two-piece as the woman Denise jolted my arm. ‘He’s in hospital? Bart! Is he hurt?’ she said, her voice sliding upwards.

Conversation stopped. There was no point in doing anything about the tomato juice. It is in any case possible to put the whole garment into a washing-machine. I said briskly, ‘He is perfectly well: only getting over a fairly sharp stomach upset. The hospital has been trying to reach you . . Lady Edgecombe, all afternoon.’

She stared at me, frowning. Her
voice
was attractively husky: her accent less native, I felt, than the result of an excellent tutor. She said. ‘Oh, Bart! I had to leave my hotel. He was a day late . . .’ She pressed my wrist again, her sharpened nails damaging the first and even second stratum of my epithelium. ‘You work there! Is he all right? He’s not badly ill? Oh, dear!’ She broke off to stare at me as a new danger occurred to her. ‘I hope he has a good doctor!’

‘Does he have a good doctor, Beltanno?’ asked my father, his hair a quiff of white above that ridiculous gnome’s face, and the orange and green flowered shorts.

Spasmodic childishness is a feature of my father’s condition. I addressed Lady Edgecombe. ‘I am his doctor. I am sure my father will arrange for you to go straight to the hospital, and find another hotel in Nassau for a day or two. Perhaps your brother George could assist.’

‘Who?’ said Lady Edgecombe. Her hair, I now saw, was not naturally blonde, although it had been skilfully treated, and she wore false eyelashes, though no other make-up. A certain development of the leg muscles, added to the undoubted grace of her carriage, made me think that she had belonged at one time to some branch of the dancing profession. ‘I haven’t got a brother George,’ said Denise Edgecombe.

‘Of course,’ I said. ‘It was another patient. I do beg your pardon. Father -’

But Sadie, Father’s big Bahamian driver from Eleuthera, was already waiting to take Lady Edgecombe to see her husband. It was not until after he had gone that I discovered he had used my car. ‘But you’re not on call?’ my father said. ‘I forgot to tell you they were mending the Chevrolet.’ He stood, vodka bottle in hand, and surveyed my juice-smeared Bri-Nylon. The remaining guests, finishing their drinks, lay about chatting. My father said, reasonably, ‘I wasn’t to know you had a date to hear Bang Bang Lulu at the Bamboo Conch Club.’

The years have made him, as you can see, inexorably frivolous. I said, ‘I have an appointment at the Coral Harbour marina.’ There was a slight pause, then one of the Lyford Cay group said, ‘I’ll drive you.’ His martini was still three-quarters up and the offer was hardly enthusiastic. I accepted however, politely, and after retiring briefly to change my two-piece for a pleated cotton dress by Horrocks I have found comfortable for many years, I returned to the drive where a car was drawn up waiting. My father was nowhere in sight, so I got in. The driver started the engine.