Dangerous Inheritance (30 page)

‘I know one that we could,' Fleur put in quickly. ‘That is, if he is free.' Turning to the Duke, she went on, ‘You remember that nice Police Inspector, Nicholas van Goens, who took charge of things after our terrible experience at Olenevka? I ran into him again only a few weeks ago. Like nearly all the senior police officers who were trained under the British, things were made so unpleasant for him that he was virtually forced to retire, and he moved down to Colombo where he is doing his best to make a living as a private detective.'

‘Sounds just the man,' said Simon. ‘Think you can get hold of him?'

It was Douglas who replied. ‘Yes. After he met Fleur he sent me a line asking me to put in his way any business I could. And we couldn't get a better chap. His knowing about the d'Azavedos' earlier activities will be a great advantage, too. It means we can tell him everything; except, of course, about the Duke having got the jewels.'

There being no other matters to discuss, de Richleau said that he was going back to bed. Simon had already asked Rex and Truss to dine with him downstairs, and he invited the
Rajapakses to join them. Fleur would have liked to accept, in the hope of finding some excuse to have a private talk with Truss afterwards; but Douglas, as well as having been up a good part of the night, had had a long day at his office; so he refused for both of them. In consequence, as they were about to leave, she said to Truss:

‘Are you going to be hard at work tomorrow or would you like me to pick you up in the morning and run you out to Mount Lavinia for a swim?'

‘I'd love that,' he smiled. ‘Just for once I'll give Dad a treat, and let him handle our appointments without me.'

Rex gave him an indulgent smile. ‘O.K., son. I hope the time will come when I can land you with all of them.'

Next morning Fleur duly picked Truss up at the American Embassy, but on the drive out to Mount Lavinia they refrained from saying anything about the matter that was uppermost in both their minds. It was not until they had changed in two of the cabins on the terrace of rock below the hotel, had a brief swim and came out to sunbathe that Fleur broached the subject.

‘I want to apologise,' she said, ‘for my outburst on Sunday night. I was terribly wrought up, and Douglas arrived on the scene before I had a chance to explain myself.'

Truss gave her a sidelong look. ‘Are you trying to tell me that you were just in a fed-up mood and didn't really mean that you'd ruined your life by marrying him?'

‘I wouldn't say that… altogether. But at the time I did give you to understand that I was absolutely desperate—shattered by the mess I'd made of things. And you very nobly offered to pick up the pieces.'

‘Let's be accurate,' he said a shade coldly. ‘What I actually said was that “it might not be too late to pick up the pieces”. I didn't say that I was the guy who was going to do the collecting.'

‘Oh!' her mouth drooped a little. ‘I got the impression that you were still in love with me.'

‘Maybe I am … in a way. I've always thought of you as the Number One girl in my life. When we were in Corfu I'd have given anything to have had you for keeps. But that's two and a half years ago, and you know how things ended. As soon as
Douglas came on the scene you showed that going to bed with me hadn't meant more to you than playing a game of skittles.'

‘I know, Truss; I know. I've often thought since of how shockingly I treated you. But I just couldn't help myself. To say that Douglas was the snake and I was the bird would be a gross distortion of the situation. There is not a trace of evil in him. But that's how I felt. Just fascinated by and drawn to him beyond my power to resist. I became insensitive to every other feeling. It was obvious to me from the beginning that he'd fallen for me; but there was that awful barrier of the colour-bar. And he is too decent a man ever to have taken me as a mistress. So it had to be marriage or nothing. To get him I had to be brutal to you and ride roughshod over my mother and father and everyone. Can you understand?'

‘Yes, I think so. But it hasn't paid off. That's the long and short of it.'

‘It did to begin with. To some extent it does still. Douglas is the kindest and most considerate husband any woman could ever have. But Mummy was right in saying that it wouldn't work out. It's having become a member of an Asiatic family that has got me down. They are different from us; utterly different. They don't look on women as individuals who have minds and ambitions of their own. For them women are only a superior sort of servant whose job it is to produce children. For some reason I can't; at least, not by Douglas. It may be his fault; but, of course, his family put it down to me. So my mother-in-law and those awful aunts regard me as a sort of criminal who snared Douglas into marriage under false pretences. They hate my guts and have me spied on the whole time, then retail to Douglas every little thing I do of which they think he might not approve. I've plenty of acquaintances but no real friends with whom I can let down my hair. No Sinhalese woman would have the least sympathy for me. She just wouldn't understand. And the European women that I know would sympathise too much. Their pity for one of their own kind who had been idiot enough to marry a coloured man would be quite unbearable. So I'm trapped, and go round and round like a squirrel in a cage.'

Truss threw a pebble into the surf, and asked, ‘Well, what do you intend to do?'

‘God knows! Having made my bed I must continue to lie on it, I suppose. Anyhow, I'm thankful now that I didn't land on you any feeling that you were under a chivalrous obligation to get me out.'

‘We'd better qualify that. I've a pretty soft spot for you, you know. I made no secret of the fact that when coming to Ceylon I hoped that, having been married for a couple of years, you'd be game for a little fun on the side. You made it pretty clear that that wasn't on. But later you threw yourself at me and asked me to get you out of this mess you've landed yourself in. Naturally, that made me think again. In the past two and a half years I've grown up quite a bit, and your life has been very different from what it was when you lived in England. I asked myself, could we bridge that gap? You see, when I do marry I want it to be for keeps, and not just to pull someone of whom I'm fond out of a hole, with the possibility that she may ditch me again later.'

‘Yes, Truss. I appreciate that. As far as I'm concerned I feel that I sowed all the wild oats that I'm ever likely to want to before I married Douglas. So if I did marry again, a man I loved, I'd be a faithful wife. But even if you wanted to I wouldn't like to rush you into anything.'

For a few minutes he remained silent, then he said, ‘I'll be here for another week. If you come up to the ancient cities as our guide we'll be seeing a lot of one another. Before I fly out we might have another talk and see how we feel about things then.'

Fleur's eyes were full of tears and she looked away quickly as she said, ‘It's … it's good of you, Truss, even to think of this seriously—much more than I deserve. I must be honest, though. I've got to consider Douglas. Perhaps a short break of this kind may be what I need—to enable me to go on with him; as I ought to do. In any case, even if you asked me to run away with you, I couldn't. Ceylon is not like England or America where wives can go off with other men and no-one gives a second thought to what they've done. Here, among the Sinhalese, for a
wife to leave her husband would cause him a most terrible loss of face. If I ever do decide that I simply can't stand things here any longer I'll have to go home to England, wait for a few months then write to Douglas that I don't mean to return.'

Truss smiled at her. ‘I get the situation, and it's O.K. by me. Let's leave it that neither of us is committed either way. If at the end of the week you feel resigned to staying here and making the best of things, that will be that. And if I feel we've grown too far apart to plan a future together you'll understand.'

For a little while they remained silent, then they went in for another swim. When they came out Fleur said, ‘Whatever we may decide later, while you are here I want to spend as much time as possible alone with you. Young married women don't normally go about with unattached men in Colombo; but fortunately the Rajapakses look on Greyeyes as though he were the head of a family of which we are all members.'

‘That's not surprising, seeing we both refer to him at times as “Grandpa Greyeyes” and speak of each other's dad as “Uncle.” Anyhow, it's lucky for us. Tomorrow and Thursday I'll have to give a couple of hours both mornings to going round with my old man meeting the local financial big shots, and I can't get out of a dinner party that's being thrown for him at the Embassy tonight. But, apart from that, my time's all yours.'

‘Then when you and your father lunch with us today, I'll say that I've promised to show “Cousin Truss” the sights. We have six other people coming and giving them the impression that we're related will serve to check any scandal that might get round if we are seen frequently together.'

As a result of this measure Fleur was able to spend that afternoon and the greater part of the next two days with Truss. They saw no sights, but drove out to deserted beaches where they talked interminably. It was so long since she had been able to disclose her thoughts freely to anyone of her own kind and generation that the days seemed all too short to her; and now that Truss was older she found him a much more interesting companion than she had in Corfu.

When there it had been mainly sexual attraction that had drawn them together but now, while he was very conscious of
her lovely golden body masked only by a bikini, he was content, for the time being, to restrain his impulse to attempt to seduce her and, instead, delight in seeing the strain she had been under gradually replaced by natural, carefree laughter.

On the Wednesday, Douglas brought Nicholas van Goens to see the Duke and the ex-Inspector expressed his willingness to undertake the role of bodyguard. A room near de Richleau's suite was secured for him, and on the Thursday he moved into the Galle Face.

That night the Duke gave a final dinner party and afterwards, upstairs, they held a last conference about possible developments which might arise from their dealings with Lalita d'Azavedo.

Douglas reported that he had, the previous day, received a letter from the Land Registry Office concerning the transfer of Olenevka. He had replied that he was much surprised as he had no knowledge of any such transaction, and he would like to see the document on which it was based. When it reached him, which might be the next day, he would repudiate de Richleau's signature as a forgery. The balloon would then go up and they must be prepared for trouble. Lalita would again become the legal owner of the jewels; and, naturally, he would do his utmost to get them back. In an attempt to do so it was quite probable that, on a trumped-up charge that de Richleau was implicated in some sort of illegal activity, he would secure a warrant to search the Duke's rooms.

At that the Duke laughed and remarked, ‘Then he'll have his trouble for nothing.'

‘Yes,' Douglas agreed. ‘You must send for me at once, of course, and van Goens will be here. They won't dare do you any harm in his presence, and in this the law will be on our side; so I can require that you should not be further inconvenienced without due cause first being shown.' Turning to Rex, he added:

‘There's another thing. By now Lalita is certain to have learned that you have a private aircraft at Trincomalee, and will shortly be leaving Ceylon in it. He'll naturally jump to the conclusion that you will be taking the jewels out with you for
the Duke. As it is illegal to export precious stones without a licence, you must be prepared for him to come on the scene with his men and make a thorough search of your aircraft before you are allowed to take off. And if he finds them you will be in very serious trouble.'

‘He won't,' grinned Rex. ‘The Duke foresaw such a possibility and refused to allow me to take the risk. For the time being the jewels are staying put.'

Douglas wondered for a moment if it had been agreed to tell him that only to save him from becoming an accessary before the fact to an illegal act; but he nodded and said, ‘I'm very relieved to hear it.'

An hour later, as the party was making an early start the next morning, Simon, as well as Rex and Truss, said good-bye to their old friend. Both the former had, at first, been decidedly dubious about leaving him; but, talking it over later, they had decided that, with van Goens and Max in the hotel, Douglas who could be rung up at once and, if need be, the British High Commissioner, who could be called on to make serious trouble with the Government if one of its officials interfered with the well-being of a distinguished British citizen, he would be adequately protected. Fleur, too, would be back in Colombo in less than a week, and looking in every day to see that he lacked for nothing.

But if they could have foreseen what was in store for them during the next few weeks the Duke and Douglas would have accompanied the others to Trincomalee and got out of Ceylon in Rex's aircraft while the going was good.

Next morning, with Truss beside her and the two older men in the back of the car, Fleur took the main road north-east, which cuts the island diagonally in half and ends at Trincomalee. The road was straight, more or less flat and the countryside uninteresting with hills in the distance. After two hours they passed through Kurunegala and, an hour later, entered Dambulla, an old town in the very centre of the island.

It was here that they passed from the ‘wet' zone into the ‘dry' zone, and so striking was the change in the scenery that they might have entered an entirely different country. In the former thunderstorms and cloudbursts bring the rain sheeting down at a higher rate in a month than the whole of the rainfall in London during a very wet year; whereas in the latter the rain is barely sufficient to keep the vegetation alive and, when it does come, so hot and baked is the earth from months of cloudless skies and torrid sun that much of the rain ascends again in steam.