The Portuguese Escape (32 page)

‘But of course, my dear young friend. Shall we walk in the garden?—the sun shines.'

French windows led from several of the ground-floor rooms into the knot-garden; stepping out, they walked there. For years afterwards any sense of shame or embarrassment would bring back to Atherley, quite unbidden, a picture of dark geometrical patterns on a pale ground, so deeply were the close-clipped shapes of the tiny box hedges burnt into his mind that morning during his talk with the priest.

‘Monsignor, I want to tell you—I—in fact this is all my fault,' the young man began, with none of his usual aplomb.

‘You wish to explain to me why Countess Hetta made this journey with Monsieur Waller rather than with you?' Subercaseaux asked as Richard paused.

The young man stared.

‘You know, then?'

‘No, I deduce. Did she ask you to bring her here?'

‘Yes, and really I wished nothing more than to do so; but she happened to suggest it at—at an awkward moment. I said I would telephone to her later, but when I tried she was not taking any calls.'

‘This was when?'

‘Sunday evening.'

‘Had Madame de Vermeil arrived?'

Richard stared again—then, in spite of his distress, he gave one of his baying laughs.

‘Monsignor, there is no end to you! Yes, she had; in fact they met at the Pretender's, at luncheon.'

‘Ah, that explains much. I expect this detestable Fanny —I am sorry, my dear Richard, but to be honest with you I do really regard this person as one of the most pernicious of creatures!—did or said something perfectly hideous to that poor child. And then she asked you to bring her up here, and you temporised? Is that it?'

‘Yes, that was it.' He kept his eyes on the box hedges. ‘She said she would make her own arrangements,' he said wretchedly. ‘Well we know what those were, and what they have led to! I would give
anything
that it hadn't happened; I could kill myself!'

‘More practical is to decide, finally and definitively, which of these two ladies you now propose to pursue,' Subercaseaux said, with elegant severity.

‘Hetta! I've broken with Fanny. She doesn't believe it yet, but it's true.'

‘She will find plenty of consolations, believe me,' the priest said sardonically. ‘But if—when—' he sighed and looked distressed. ‘If and when you are able to renew your addresses to Countess Hetta,' he went on, ‘I think you should realise that there must be no sentimental harking back, in fact no outside flirtations at all. This young girl is not the sort of person either to understand that kind of thing, or to tolerate it.'

‘I know she isn't,' Richard said humbly. ‘And honestly, Monsignor, I didn't start it this time. I had no idea, even, that Madame de Vermeil was coming to Lisbon till she turned up at my house on Sunday evening. That was the damnable part of it.'

‘Damnable is indeed the word, especially for this poor child, in the event,' the Monsignor said. He could guess at the details of the ‘awkward moment'. ‘But can you explain one thing to me—how came the American to let her out of his sight?'

‘That was my fault too,' Richard said miserably. ‘He was with us the night Miss Probyn's car was crashed, and I promised to tell him what it was all about—or at least
enough to make him careful; but what with one thing and another I never did. He isn't in the least to blame.'

‘I see—no.'

A little silence fell, as they walked to and fro in the strong sunlight.

‘If only there were something one could
do
!' Richard broke out.

‘You could pray, of course, if you have that habit.' Richard shook his head. The priest looked at him quizzically.

‘Of course if you were a Catholic I could give you a swingeing penance,' he said. ‘That would do you all the good in the world. But for a Protestant penitent, who doesn't even pray, I hardly know what to prescribe! I suggest that you go and do something to distract poor Mr. Waller—play billiards with him, or take him for a walk. Not in the least as a penance, he is too nice. And when you are alone—' he paused.

‘Yes?'

‘Reflect long and carefully on what your relations are to be with Countess Hetta, if by God's mercy she is restored to her friends, and to you. If you were to marry her, both her integrity and her naïveté would irritate you twenty times a week! Spend this time of suspense and distress in asking your heart whether you can school yourself to abide that with patience, and with
sweetness;
if you cannot, leave her alone.'

He turned away and went into the house.

When the breakfast-party broke up Julia had gone first to find Dona Maria Francisca, and make her apologies both for returning so late, and for keeping Luzia out. Then, at last, the girl felt free to do what had been at the back of her mind all the morning, namely to ring up Mrs. Hathaway in Lisbon. They had so tormented the Duke with all their telephoning the previous day that she went straight to that inconvenient instrument by the pantry, and put through a call to the Hotel Lucrezia; she lit a cigarette and waited, perched on a case of wine. When the call came through she demanded Mrs. Hathaway, and presently heard that familiar voice.

‘Darling Mrs. H., there you are at last! I only got your
letter up here yesterday afternoon, just as I was going out; I meant to ring you up last night, but we didn't get back till one o'clock this morning. I am so sorry. How are you? Is the pub all right? I do wish I hadn't been away.'

Mrs. Hathaway replied, cheerfully, that she was quite all right, and the hotel charming; also she had been astonished to see how
red
Portugal looked from the air—‘like Devon—quite extraordinary!' Then as usual she brushed aside her own concerns to enquire into Julia's. ‘Dearest child, what
were
you doing, out till 1 a.m.? A ball? Was it fun?'

‘No, it wasn't a ball, and it wasn't fun,' Julia said sombrely. ‘I can't tell you properly now, but a quite darling girl has been carried off by perfectly
deadly
people, and we were chasing after her. You can probably guess for yourself who the deadliest people in the world are today! —well, it's them, and we're all in agony till we get her back. I don't know when I can come down, Mrs. H. dear, with this going on.'

‘Was she carried off in a car?' Mrs. Hathaway asked sharply.

‘Yes,' Julia said a little surprised. ‘Why?' It wasn't like Mrs. Hathaway to ask futile questions.

‘She isn't short and dark?—and her initials P. H. or H. P.?' Mrs. Hathaway pursued very briskly.

Julia was utterly amazed.

‘Yes—yes to both. But how on earth
do you
know this?'

‘I've got her here in my room in the hotel, at least I think it must be her.
Exquisite
H. and P. monograms on all her underclothes! The Doctor thinks she's been drugged, but he gave her an injection, and we've
poured
black coffee into her, and now she seems to be sleeping it off fairly naturally. There's a policeman outside my door, too, and another at the front door; they seem quite concerned about it.'

‘But why is she with you?' Julia asked weakly.

‘Because when the car she was in rammed my taxi and we all got out, I saw her lying in the back, with a gag in her mouth, and I was worried. I
peeped
, you see,' said Mrs. Hathaway, in a satisfied voice. ‘So I got them to let me have her carried up to my room in the hotel, and made
that nice police official, who speaks such
good
English, get a doctor. I really couldn't let her be left to the police.'

‘Well!' said Julia—all other words failed her.

‘Oh, here's the police officer again—I think I must ring off,' Mrs. Hathaway said. ‘I'll ring you up later.'

‘No,
wait
, for goodness' sake!' Julia protested. ‘I must—'

But Mrs. Hathaway, implacably, had rung off.

Julia sank down again on the wine-case. After a moment she got up. ‘Hugh must hear this,' she murmured as she walked towards the hall; and then, ‘How
like
Mrs. H.!' She was all astray, between relief, astonishment, and uncertainty; but Colonel Marques could soon settle whether it
was
or was not Hetta Páloczy whom Mrs. Hathaway was, so improbably, nursing in her room in the Lucrezia.

‘Anyhow if it
is
her, that's Father Antal's Mass,' Julia said out loud, as she stepped into the hall.

Mrs. Hathaway, descending from the sky at Portela airport on that Monday afternoon, soon registered that her young friend Julia Probyn, at whose instance she had decided to visit Portugal at all, was not there to meet her. Resigned and calm, she submitted quietly to the inquisitions of the Portuguese Customs, and presently, by air-line bus and taxi, found herself at the hotel recommended by Mr. Consett. There she lay down and rested in - the double-bedded room which the management, untruthfully, said was all they had free; later she took a bath, and went down and had a very good dinner. Afterwards she caused the hall-porter to ring up the Ericeira Palace— which created a great impression—and learned that the Duke with all his party had left for Gralheira two days before. Still resigned, she decided to start looking at Lisbon by herself, and told the porter to order a taxi to be at the hotel at 9.15 next morning to take her to Belém to see the Tower, the Jeronimos Church, and the Museum of the Coaches; she also ordered
petit déjeuner
for half-past eight. Then she went to bed, and slept the sleep of the just and the sensible.

The taxi was a little late, and Mrs. Hathaway first bought a camellia from a man on the pavement with a tray of them, for what seemed to her nothing, and then stood at the door of the hotel watching with interest the brisk morning bustle of traffic in the street: cars and taxis shooting by in the bright sunshine, women in black mantillas returning from Mass, and, what completely charmed her, the
varinhas
, the women fish-sellers, striding up barefoot from the river-side markets with shallow oval baskets of fish balanced on their heads, their shoes perched casually on top of the fish. The Lisbon City Fathers wage an unequal contest with the
varinhas
over this matter of shoes: they hold that barefooted women in the streets of a capital create an impression of poverty and backwardness, and
insist on shoes; the fishwives, who have always walked barefoot and prefer it—and anyhow how much more economical!—conform to the point of having shoes with them; but they habitually carry these objects not on their feet but on the fish, a charming piece of individualism in our regimented modern world.

When the taxi finally arrived the hall-porter handed Mrs. Hathaway into it with the deference due to someone who telephoned to the Duke of Ericeira's, gave the requisite instructions to the driver, and slammed the door; Mrs. Hathaway drove off, full of the happy anticipation of the intelligent sightseer in a strange city on a fine morning.

She did not get very far. Less than a hundred yards from the door of the hotel a large grey car, shooting out of a side turning, collided with her taxi; both vehicles were slewed round sideways by the force of the impact and came to a halt, partly blocking the steep and crowded street. Three men in grey overcoats leapt out of the car, cursing and gesticulating at their driver—their fury surprised Mrs. Hathaway; her taxi-man got out too and examined the damage, shrugging his shoulders phlegmatically. Cars started to hoot angrily; a little crowd gathered round the accident, and a small, neatly-uniformed policeman came up and began to ask questions.

It was at this point that Mrs. Hathaway, realising that she would certainly not reach Belém in this particular taxi, got out of it. The calm demeanour of the little policeman impressed her, but she was struck afresh by the fury, almost desperation, of the three men when the policeman produced a note-book and began, obviously, to demand names and addresses, while two more of his colleagues appeared from nowhere. It was probably this curious display of emotion, combined with her natural curiosity, which caused the good lady to ‘peep' into the other car; there to her immense astonishment she saw, lying across the back seat, what she at first took to be the corpse of a young girl, white and motionless.

After that there was of course no holding Mrs. Hathaway. She opened the door to examine this corpse more closely; took a wrist and felt a very faint pulse—moreover, she then noticed, projecting from one corner of the pallid
lips, a piece of material. Rather gingerly she pulled at it; the lax jaws allowed her to draw out a sizeable piece of some rough, coarse, rather dirty rag, sodden and disgusting. Mrs. Hathaway stared at it incredulously; then quietly put it in her handbag, from which at the same time she drew out her Portuguese phrase-book, and stood for a moment ruffling the pages, looking for words which would enable her to say—‘There is a young lady who has been gagged in this
automovel.
' Unfortunately phrase-books seldom contain information of that sort, and after a few seconds of fruitless search Mrs. Hathaway decided to rely on English and on herself, and went to tackle the policeman.

By now the crowd had concentrated round this worthy, his colleagues, and the three furious men in the grey overcoats; the group was joined by an elegant slender man in a green uniform at the very moment when Mrs. Hathaway, tall, grey-haired, and imposing, lifted up her voice and said—‘Does anyone here speak English?'

‘I do, Madame,' said the man in green. ‘Can I help you? Or you have information to offer?'

‘Yes, a little information. But I think you should put those three men under control immediately—the ones in grey.'

Police in all countries, but especially in the Latin ones, make a regular practice of stalling in any emergency; as she spoke Mrs. Hathaway saw incredulity appear on the face of the official in green.