Operation Nassau by Dorothy Dunnett Page A

as eye teeth passing below us, surrounded by vacant stretches of plain and of water, and the stubble of acres of houses, set in palm trees and blue pools and a sparkling mosaic of cars. ‘There is no reason,’ said Johnson, ‘why any one of you shouldn’t have a fully sodded lot there in Leisureville.’
    ‘Leisureville is rather attractive,’ said Lady Edgecombe. ‘I was shown over it once. Or maybe it was Canongate-on-the-Links. They’re very careful whom they admit.’
    ‘But you have your perfect setting, Denise,’ said Johnson. ‘On Great Harbour Cay.’
    ‘Denise misses the company a bit, off-season,’ Sir Bartholomew said into the ensuing small silence.
    I had been neglecting him. I said, ‘You’ll be in very good hands. I shall see you settled and comfortable, and I shall be on call if they want me. You’ll be surprised how simple it all is.’
    ‘I dare say,’ he said, and smiled at me. With his wife there, and the two airmen, nothing could be said. But he must be wondering, as Johnson was wondering, why after all these years should he be singled out for attack now? And for such sordid and painful attacks, as if personal malice were in some way involved, not simply the task of one agent to dispose of another.
    Johnson said, ‘You’ve got the best of it, you fully sodded lot in Miami. I’ve got to go and be buddy to forty society ladies and gentlemen I’ve had the misfortune to immortalize on canvas. I’ll expect you both at the Fontainebleau whenever you’re free, Denise, Dr MacRannoch. Ask for Timpson, my agent. Nice chap. Lives in Miami. Made of fine bonded copper with a verdigrised patina.’
    It was in fact a surprisingly accurate description of the bronzed Timpson, who stepped forward to meet Lady Edgecombe and myself inside the undulating white frontage of the Hotel Fontainebleau later that morning. After the cool of the hospital the sun blazed on the flights of white steps leading up to the two sets of doors: inside Lady Edgecombe sighed with relief in the vast space of the lounge with its islands of armchairs and tables on several acres of squared marble floor. Above us blazed oval chandeliers the size of small swimming-pools: the room, if you could call it a room, seemed crowded with American citizens in wigs and dark glasses purring at one another, with cigarettes spiralling smoke from their knuckle-rings.
    Mr Timpson, however, was a personable middle-aged man with a neat dark suit and strong deductive powers: he had us singled out in a moment, and, taking my medical bag, drew us through the heavier socializing to the back of the hall, which was on a lower level. On the way Lady Edgecombe, I noticed, acquired a glass of champagne while I lifted a tumbler of ice water.
    I had put on a fresh cotton shirtwaister that morning, and already it was looking limp. I had just noticed, through the throng, that the back wall of the big room was a gallery, on which some forty large paintings had been hung against velvet drapes, when I became aware of a tall, cool, scented presence, blocking my way like a single tree-trunk in a mill race.
    ‘Don’t tell me,’ an English voice said with amusement - I swear with amusement, ‘that you’re Beltanno MacRannoch?’
    ‘I am Dr Douglas MacRannoch,’ I said automatically. She was five foot ten inches at least, although her shoulders had rounded with age, giving her tallness and thinness an extreme of dry elegance. Her hair was still black mixed with grey, and expensively dressed over the prominent bones of her face. Her eyes in particular were extremely fine and heavily made up: she also wore a bright lipstick. Her head and all of her body were shrouded in blue and silver silk voile, caught with a large sapphire brooch on one shoulder. None of her rings, I should judge, was worth less than five thousand pounds. ‘The Begum Akbar?’ I added.
    To rent Castle Rannoch, its staff, its shooting and fishing, season after season, at James Ulric’s price