The Devil at Archangel (4 page)

to find work these days, and this offer seems to have come at just the

right time for you.'

'Yes,' Christina acknowledged doubtfully. 'It just seems so odd that

she should want to do this for me. I mean, she could just have thrown

Aunt Grace's letter away and forgotten about it. Mrs Webster was

right, really. I am a complete stranger to the Brandons and they have

no obligation to do anything for me. As it is, I don't even have to

make up my mind yet about working for her, but can just have a

holiday at Archangel.' She repeated the name wonderingly. 'How

strange that sounds.'

Mr Frith frowned a little. 'If you're really unsure, Christina, I can

always make some inquiries for you,' he said. 'Have you any reason to

doubt this lady's probity?'

'Oh, no,' Christina said quickly. 'It seems she's just what she said—a

friend of Aunt Grace's. That's really all I wanted to know.' She

paused, then held out her hand. 'I shall be joining her in London

tomorrow, so I don't suppose I shall have the chance to see you again.

Will—will you thank your wife for me for all her kindness.'

Mr Frith took her hand and pressed it warmly. 'I hope everything

works out well for you, my dear. It seems your godmother did have

your best interests at heart after all. A summer in the Caribbean at the

very least. We shall all envy you.' He hesitated briefly. 'If

you—should find yourself in difficulties of any kind, you can always

write to me. I know it's what Miss Grantham would have wished.'

'Yes.' Christina felt suddenly awkward. 'Thank you for that—and for

everything.'

She felt curiously forlorn as she watched his car drive off, as if she

had lost her only friend in all the world. And that was nonsense,, she

told herself robustly. She now had Mrs Brandon, who had come

halfway across the world apparently to befriend her, and there would

be other people too—at Archangel. People she had not known

existed, whom she would meet and learn to know in the weeks to

come.

But, strangely enough, as she turned to walk back to the Bay Horse,

that thought did not bring in its train quite the comfort that she had

expected.

CHRISTINA opened the louvred shutters and stepped out on to her

balcony into blazing sunshine. She looked down into an interior

courtyard of the hotel where gaily coloured loungers surrounded the

brilliant turquoise of a swimming pool and gave a little sigh of

satisfaction. Mrs Brandon had been angry in the extreme when a

delay in their flight to Martinique had meant that they missed the

afternoon boat to Ste Victoire, but Christina herself had no regrets.

She had not the slightest objection to spending some time in

Martinique, even though she had resigned herself to the fact that there

would be insufficient time to pay a visit to Les Trois Hets, the

birthplace of the Empress Josephine of France. On the way to the

hotel, she had seen a large statue of the great lady and realised how

proud the Creoles were of their famous daughter.

Mrs Brandon had retired to her room and had curtly advised that

Christina should do the same, but Christina knew that she would

never rest. It was all too new and exciting, and her first jet flight had

stimulated her rather than induced any signs of jet lag.

It was still very much a flight into the unknown as far as she was

concerned. She still knew very little about Archangel and its

inhabitants, and her diffident questions had met with little response

from Mrs Brandon. One thing she had elicited was that Vivien

Webster had been quite right when she had said that Marcelle and her

sister had married two brothers. She had also learned that Madeleine

Brandon and her husband had both died in a boating tragedy a few

years earlier, although she was given no details.

One thing Christina had found out for herself was that Mrs Brandon

had not been unfair to herself when she mentioned her temper. After

only a day in her company in London, she had learned that the older

woman expected any service to be rendered both promptly and

perfectly. Otherwise, a thinning of her lips and a slight spot of colour

In each cheek signalled storms ahead. She was unfailingly civil to

Christina, but various members of the staff both at the London hotel

and later at the airport had suffered under the whiplash of her tongue.

Christina decided wryly that Mrs Brandon had probably been right to

warn her that a job as her companion would be no sinecure, but in

some ways this made her feel better about the whole thing. At least, if

she stayed, she would feel she was earning her salary, she told herself

prosaically.

But her thoughts at the moment were far from prosaic. Life was

suddenly too golden, too full of promise for that. It had been real and

earnest, and might be again, but new she was free to indulge herself in

any fantasies that occurred to her. She could even, if she wished,

change into one of the new bikinis in her case and go down to join the

sunbathers round the pool, just as if Aunt Grace's rather mousy little

goddaughter who had never worn anything more daring than the

regulation one-piece swimsuit on the school uniform list had never

existed.

Perhaps she didn't, she thought wonderingly. Perhaps all along that

had merely been a facade for this strange, excited creature, enclosed

in her iridescent bubble of exhilaration. The thought that all bubbles

burst eventually, she crushed down with determination, lifting her

face almost ecstatically to meet the sun.

One thing was certain. No matter what Mrs Brandon had said, she

was not going to spend the rest of the day shut up in a stuffy hotel

room. She had gathered from her employer that visits to Martinique

were rare, and she was going to make the most of this one.

Half an hour later she was descending the wide stairs to the foyer. She

had changed out of the trouser suit she had worn for the flight, and

was wearing a brief scarlet cotton skirt, topped by a white shirt which

tied in a bow at the front of her waist, leaving her midriff bare. She

had experimented with her hair, tying it back with a ribbon, and piling

it on top of her head, but had finally decided to leave it loose on her

shoulders, even though, she thought with a grimace, it made her look

younger than ever.

She had shopped for her new clothes in London, revelling in the

choice offered by the boutiques and department stores. It was such

fun for a change to be able to choose things because they were

becoming, and not because they were classic styles which would

'wear'. Mrs Brandon, to her surprise, had encouraged her to pick gay

clothes and up-to-the-minute styles, but when Christina had

mentioned that she was planning to visit the hotel beauty salon to

have her hair cut and re-styled, her employer had issued an

implacable veto.

Christina supposed rather ruefully that she could have insisted, but it

did not seem worth making a fuss over such a relatively unimportant

matter. Besides, Mrs Brandon's attitude had taken her aback

somewhat. She would have supposed that Mrs Brandon would prefer

her new companion to look slightly older and more dignified without

a mass of hair hanging round her face, but it proved, if Christina had

needed convincing, that her employer was not a woman who could

easily be summed up, or whose reactions to anything could be

confidently predicted-

She had bought a small guide book at the reception desk, and decided

to confine herself to an exploration of Fort de France. Time did not

permit very much else, although she would have liked to have taken

one of the guided tours to Mount Pelee, and the nearby city of St

Pierre which the volcano had well-nigh destroyed over seventy years

before.

But Fort de France had plenty to offer in the way of sightseeing.

Christina was entranced by the houses with their wrought iron

grillework, so redolent of bygone eras when Creole beauties wore

high-waisted Empire line dresses, and cooled themselves with

embroidered fans rather than air-conditioning. She toured the

cathedral, and walked dreamily through the Savane, oblivious of the

other tourists and their busy cameras.

The perfume shops on the Rue Victor Hugo lured her into parting

with yet more of her direly depleted stock of money, and she could

not resist buying a tiny doll in the traditional
foulard
costume of

Martinique.

There seemed to be flowers everywhere. Bougainvillea and hibiscus

spilled from balconies in a riot of colour, and street sellers pressed

bunches of wild orchids and other exotic blooms on her as she walked

along. But she refused them smilingly, using her schoolgirl French. It

would be
a
shame to leave them behind to wither and die in the hotel,

she thought, and she could not imagine that Mrs Brandon would

happily accept the spectacle of her companion boarding the morning

boat, weighed down by flowers.

She was beginning to feel hungry and would have liked to sample the

reality behind some of the delectable odours that drifted from the

restaurants she passed, but Mrs Brandon had made it clear that they

would be dining at the hotel in their suite, so she regretfully turned

her steps in the direction of the hotel. Or thought she did.

Somewhere along the line, the advice in her little guide book had

been misleading, she thought vexedly. Or, more likely, she herself

had simply taken a wrong turning. Certainly she had never seen this

particular street before, and ske^should have found herself in the

square in the front of the hotel.

Biting her lip, she swung round, staring back the way she had come.

Don't be a fool, she adjured herself briskly, fighting a feeling of slight

panic. You're not lost. You just think you are. One of the main streets

will be just around the corner, and you'll soon get your bearings

again.

But the corner merely led to another street, narrower even and

shabbier than the one she had just left. The shadows were lengthening

now, and the tall houses with their crumbling stucco seemed to crowd

in on her disconcertingly. A dog lying on its side in the shade lifted its

head and snarled at her, and she crossed the street, her heart beating a

little faster, to avoid it.

This is what happens, she scolded herself, trying to regain her

confidence, when you overestimate your capabilities as' a tourist. The

fairy-tale had suddenly degenerated into a nightmare in this grimy

and unprepossessing place, and like a child, she found herself

wishing desperately for the fairy-tale again—for the silken thread that

would lead her out of the labyrinth and to safety, back to the bright

streets and the scent shops and the flowers.

Her footsteps slowed as she gazed uncertainly around her.

Somewhere in one of the high shuttered liouses, a child was crying, a

long monotonous drift of sound that played uncomfortably on her

tautened nerves. There were other footsteps now coming steadily and

purposefully along the street behind her, and she gave a short relieved

sigh. At last there was someone she could ask, and surely, even with

her limited French, she could make herself understood and obtain

directions back to the hotel.

But even as she turned, the halting words died on her lips. There were

three of them, youths of her own age or even slightly younger. When

she stopped, they did the same. They stood a few feet away from her,

their hands resting lightly on their hips, silent, even smiling a little,

and Christina knew she had never felt so frightened Oisso helpless in

her life. For the first time since she had left the hotel, she was acutely

conscious of the length of leg revealed by her skirt, and the expanse

of bare flesh between her shirt and the waistband of the skirt.

It was a war of nerves that was being waged, she thought

despairingly, as they stood facing each other, but she didn't know

what else to do. Something told her that to make a run for it would be

fatal. Besides, where could she run to? They were cutting off one of

her lines of retreat, and who knew what might lie at the end of the

other.

She tried to drag the rags of her courage around her, lift her chin, bluff

them into thinking she was unconcerned, but she knew by the

widening grins on their dark faces that they were not deceived.

Someone had once told her that panic affected the throat muscles,