Free Nine Coaches Waiting by Mary Stewart

paper, you understand."
    I puckered my brows, trying to remember if Albertine had given me a prescription along with the shopping-list. The chemist made a movement of ill-concealed impatience, and his mouth drew up and thinned till it disappeared. He repeated very slowly, as to an imbecile: "You-must-have-a paper-from -the-doctor."
    "Oh," I said evilly. "A prescription? Why didn't you say so? Well, she didn't give me one, monsieur. May I bring it along next year?"
    "Next
year
?"
    "I mean next week."
    "No," he said curtly. "I cannot give you the drugs without the prescription."
    I was already regretting having teased him. I said distressfully: "Oh, but Madame asked specially for the medicine. I'll bring the paper as soon as I can, or send it or something, honestly I will! Please, Monsieur Garcin, can't you trust me for a day or two?"
    "Impossible. No." His bony fingers were rearranging the tablets of soap. "And what else do you want?"
    I glanced down at the list in my hand. There were various things on it, listed-luckily for Monsieur Garcin's patience and my own ingenuity-in French. I read them out to him carefully: someone wanted tooth-powder and Dop shampoo: someone else (I hoped it was the sour-faced Albertine) demanded corn-plasters and iodine, and so on to the end, where came the inevitable aspirin, eau-de-cologne, and what Mrs. Seddon simply listed as "my bottle".
    "And Mrs. Seddon's pills," I said finally.
    The chemist picked up the packet of aspirin.
    "No," I said, "the others." (I wouldn't know the word for asthma, would I? And I genuinely didn't know the word for anti-histamine.) "The pills for her chest."
    "You got them last week," said Monsieur Garcin.
    "I don't think so."
    "I know you did."
    His voice was curt to rudeness, but I ignored it. "Perhaps," I said politely, "she has need of more?"
    "She cannot have, if she got them last week."
    "Are you so sure she did, monsieur? She put them herself on the list today."
    "Did she give you the paper-the prescription?"
    "No," I said.
    He said impatiently: "I told you she got them last week. You took them yourself. You were in a hurry and you handed me a list with a prescription for Madame Sed-don. I sent the tablets. Perhaps you forgot to give them to her. I have an excellent memory, me; and I remember handing them to you. Moreover, I have a record."
    "I am sorry, monsieur. I just don't remember. No doubt you're right. I thought-oh, just a minute, here's a paper in my bag! Here it is, monsieur, the prescription!
Voyez-vous.
Is this it?"
    I handed him the paper, carefully keeping anything of I-told- you-so out of my voice. Which was just as well, because he said tartly: "This is not for Madame Sed-don. It is the paper for Madame de Valmy's heart-medicine."
    "Oh? I hadn't realised I had it. It must have been with the list. I came out in a hurry and didn't notice. I'm so sorry." I smiled winningly at him. "Then you can give me the medicine after all, monsieur. I'll get the tablets in Thonon on Friday."
    He shot me a queer look out of those oyster eyes, and then, by way of teaching me (I suppose) that servants shouldn't argue with their betters, he proceeded to put on his spectacles and read the prescription through with exaggerated care. I watched the sunlight beyond the doorway and waited, suppressing my irritation. He read it again. You'd have thought I was Madeleine Smith asking casually for half a pound of arsenic. Suddenly I saw the joke and laughed at him.
    "It's all right, monsieur. It's quite safe to let me have it. I'll see I deliver it promptly where it belongs! I don't often eat digitalis, or whatever it is, myself!"
    He said sourly: "I don't suppose you do." He folded the paper carefully and pushed my purchases towards me. "There you are then. I'll give you the drops, and perhaps you will also see that Madame Seddon gets the tablets I sent up on Wednesday?" As I gathered the things up without replying I saw him throw me that queer, quick look yet again. "And I