Operation Nassau by Dorothy Dunnett Read Free Book Online Page B

MacRannoch clan gathering.’
    ‘Here?’
    I wasn’t thinking of Brady. I was thinking of James Ulric’s bronchial spasms.
    ‘Here, or at the Begum’s house,’ I said, on reflection.
    ‘But,’ he said, ‘I thought the Begum spent the winter at your castle in Scotland?’
    I stared at Wallace Brady with surprise, and then with increasing suspicion.
    I hadn’t told him that. I had no desire to talk about the Begum, who is the decayed English widow of an extremely rich Indian prince, and who annually rents Castle Rannoch as a shooting-lodge from James Ulric MacRannoch.
    While he disports himself in the sunshine, the Begum Akbar from the time of my senior schooldays has moved into the castle with her clothes, her butler and maid, and using our gillies, our cook and our house staff has killed deer and fished salmon and shot our grouse with her friends.
    I had never met her. I would never go home when she was there, and I had avoided her house here on Crab Island by Nassau. It was she who had found our present villa and rented it in advance for my father. It was because of the Begum, I was sure, that James Ulric had come to Nassau at all. They were welcome. I do not care for life on the edge of a Barclaycard.
    But I had said nothing of all that to Brady. I said, ‘How do you know that? You knew about Father before I mentioned him to you?” And. as an unlikely thought struck me. ‘Mr Brady. What do you do for a living? On Great Harbour Cay?’
    To do him credit, he looked me in the eye as he answered. ‘My firm has a project there,’ he said. ‘A big constructional project. I’m a civil engineer, Dr MacRannoch.’
    There was a deadly and sundering silence, fully understood by both contributing parties.
    ‘You build bridges,’ I said. I opened my handbag, selected my car keys, snapped it shut and stood up. ‘I’m sorry I can’t introduce you to my father .’ I said. ‘He has built five bridges, Mr Brady. And those were five bridges too many. Thank you for the golf and the coffee. Good-bye.’
     
    He didn’t say anything, but half-way to the door a thought struck me, and I went back to give him the benefit of it. ‘You might go back to the golf-course and try Mr T. K. MacRannoch,’ I suggested.
     
    The hospital was busy when I drove in under the blue arch: there had been a triple crash in Bay Street and a British frigate had called on her way south for combined exercises; which meant sixty pints for the blood bank and a long, robust queue of A.B.s calling four-letter words to the nurses while poor Currie, the lab technician, sat inside draining them off in batches of four.
    It was needful to keep our blood stock replenished. But I sometimes wondered if the naval platelets storming through the Bahamian vascular system were not the source of the strange tribal love-rock appeal of New Providence Island.
    However, it was cool as yet, which cuts down the casualties; and too early for the rum and meths drinkers, so we got through the work unimpeded, and by mid-afternoon I was able to look in on Sir Bartholomew Edgecombe, about whom I had already taken advice. Although there was no cause for anxiety, renal function after the second attack had undoubtedly been more seriously impaired than the previous day, and was not responding to treatment as well as it should. Dialysis was indicated, and after this had been settled, I walked through the private wing to inform Sir Bartholomew.
    The United Commonwealth is an informal hospital: peanut-sellers and newsvendors have free access to the front door, and it is the habit of the staff to take matters at comfortable speed and with many sociable exchanges in the passages. While white patients and even white doctors require to be reassured about this, there is no doubt that the Bahamian cases thrive in such an atmosphere. I was surprised therefore amid the hum of conversation and laughter coming from the short private wing to distinguish the complaint of a woman, coming from