Free The Tropical Issue by Dorothy Dunnett

‘The police don’t handle everything. If you have money, you can see justice done, and without any publicity. Do you want to stay with me, Rita? If I show you how sorry I am that this has happened? If I promise that nothing like it will be allowed to happen again?’
    I closed my eyes. My head ached, and I thought.
    I wanted to stay. I didn’t believe in Mrs Sheridan’s “anonymous crank “. Anyone who felt that strongly about her was already, surely, on her Christmas card list.
    I had a feeling that I could trust Natalie Sheridan to root out my attacker.
    And in case she didn’t, I was prepared to do a bit of footwork myself. I wanted my own back, very badly.
    I opened my eyes. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I see what you mean. I want to stay, if it won’t happen again.’
    I hoped there wasn’t chrome all over the pillows to spoil the finale. But she gave me a warm smile, and told me she thought I’d been perfectly dauntless, and that once the doctor had seen me, I was to order anything I wanted to eat or to drink, and not to think about anything else till tomorrow.
    The doctor was bland, English and told me nothing except what I knew already about my own cuts and bruises. I had no concussion. A good night’s sleep would cure all the rest. I waited until he was leaving to ask the question I’d forgotten to ask of my employer.
    ‘How was I found?’
    He finished packing his bag, closed it, and picked it up, smiling. ‘What a shock for poor Miss Dodo. Mrs Sheridan’s maid. She had just left for a walk when she saw the car. She thought you had driven straight for the gates somehow and killed yourself.’
    I was slow. ‘What gates?’ I said.
    He looked surprised. ‘These gates. The gates of the villa. The car had stopped with its wheels at the wall, and you were lying in the front seat. No one could tell if you had been driving or not. The thieves must have had some good in them at least. They brought you where you could get attention. Pity about your camera, though. Tell Mrs Sheridan to get you another.’
    I don’t have a camera. He smiled, opening the door, and I smiled back, thanking him. The official story of the assault, put about before I’d even agreed not to report it.
    How Natalie Sheridan got to be where she is.
    I fell asleep. I was wakened by the click of the door and the appearance, looming over me, of Mrs Sheridan’s all-American maid, a tray in her hands.
    On the tray was a small cup of cocoa and an envelope, both of which she put on my bedside table. Then she stood holding the tray and just looking at me.
    Her lips held apart a set of teeth like a weir. Whoever called her Dodo had a sense of humour.
    At the same time, in the pecking order below stairs she was the tops. And below stairs was where I might hear some gossip.
    The envelope was thick and expensive-looking, and I left it alone. The cocoa seemed worth talking about. I said, ‘I don’t know about you, but I could do with something stronger. Wasn’t it a shock, when you found me?’
    She lifted her eyebrows, which seemed to weigh a lot. ‘Shock?’ she said. ‘I was a nurse for ten years, on Emergency. Drunks and layabouts, junkies and beaten-up deadbeats . . . I’ve handled more meat than the Army has. If you want any liquor, Aurelio will have to go to Mrs Sheridan, and she’s busy.’
    In a house like this, there would be a butler. I didn’t say that Mrs Sheridan had offered me anything. I just said, ‘There’s a bottle of Haig over there, and I’m fed up lying in bed. What about splitting it in the kitchen?’
    Since she’d unpacked it, she knew it was there. And when she said, ‘Well, there’s no law against it,’ and stood back, I smelt the whisky again on her breath as I stood up and aimed for my dressing-gown. The room went up and down quite a bit before I got it on, and I was quite glad when Dodo offered to carry the bottle.
    Then I thought of the guy who had hit me, and ploughed on after her into the service wing,