Dangerous Inheritance by Dennis Wheatley Page B

sails.
    â€˜Fine,’ said Richard. ‘That’s very sensible. Shall we say six months?’
    â€˜No, Daddy!’ Fleur shook her head in violent protest. ‘That’s absurd. Long engagements went out of fashion ages ago. Besides, I’m twenty-four and not getting any younger.’
    De Richleau laughed. ‘That’s a terrible age to be, my child. In no time at all you will be pulling out your grey hairs. But, seriously, you are proposing to make your home and live your life in entirely different circumstances from those in which you were brought up. In fairness to your future husband, if to no-one else, you should satisfy yourself that you can make him happy there. To do so I suggest three months would not be unreasonable.’
    Fleur hesitated. ‘Well, all right Grandpa. That is provided that no objections are raised to my going with Douglas when he flies home from Rome on the 11th.’
    â€˜I’ve nothing against that,’ Richard declared cheerfully. ‘In fact, your mother and I felt sure you would wish to. The 11th is next Sunday, so we’ve got the whole week and I shouldn’t think there are heavy bookings for Ceylon at this time of year. With luck, there should be places on the same aircraft for all of us. I’ll telephone the B.O.A.C. office in Rome this afternoon.’
    â€˜For all of us!’ Fleur echoed. ‘But surely …’
    â€˜Yes, dear,’ Marie Lou said quickly. ‘You can’t have thought we’d let you get married without a proper trousseau, and getting it ready will take several weeks.’
    â€˜That’s sweet of you, Mummy. But you say you don’t want me to get married for another three months, and assembling atrousseau won’t take all that long. If you came out towards the end of July that would give you time enough.’
    â€˜It was my idea that we should all go out now,’ the Duke put in smoothly. ‘In the company of your parents I’ll come to no harm. Douglas tells me that my late cousin made quite a fortune mining for precious stones. Parts of Ceylon are very rich in them, you know. We’ll all go up to Olenevka and select enough jewels to deck you out like the Queen of Sheba.’
    â€˜Oh, Grandpa!’ Fleur’s eyes danced with delight. ‘How terribly sweet of you.’
    So matters were settled. The remainder of the week passed uneventfully, its halcyon days being all too short for Douglas and Fleur. On Friday the 9th, with the Duke’s elderly valet, Max, in attendance, they left for Rome, and they should have taken off from there in the weekly Britannia service on the afternoon of the 11th for Ceylon. But they learned that the flight had been delayed; so they did not, after all, get off from Rome until the Monday morning.
    Twenty hours later, after calling at Damascus, Bahrein and Bombay, they landed in Ceylon, thus arriving in the early morning of the 13th, a date long regarded by the superstitious as unlucky. For them it marked the beginning of a long series of anxieties and dangers, culminating in a desperate struggle to keep their freedom and their lives that they did not all survive.

7

A Rose with Many Thorns
    They landed early in the morning at Katunayake, the great R.A.F. Base which, together with the historic Naval Base at Trincomalee, had been handed over to Ceylon only seven months earlier, marking the final withdrawal of British power.
    It was surrounded by lines of coconut palms through which could be glimpsed the sparkling sea. Douglas’s presence ensured them a quick passage through Immigration and Customs, and his father had sent two cars to meet them. By the time they set off for Colombo the sun was well up, it was pleasantly warm and the air balmy.
    Fleur had never before been in the tropics, and during the hour’s drive she could hardly have had a more pleasing sight of them. The road ran all the way through what had once been primitive