I didn’t move an inch.
Again, I pushed harder. Nothing.
‘What are you waiting for, Mr Linton?’ Mr Ambrose was standing a little way away from the crate, his gaze fixed on the door of the warehouse, prepared at any time for an enemy to come through it. ‘We have to go.’
One final time I pushed - to no avail. ‘I can’t,’ I growled. ‘I… don't seem to fit through the hole.’
Certain generously-endowed parts of me, anyway.
‘The hole should be big enough for an average person, Mr Linton.’
‘Well, then maybe I’m a special person,’ I hissed. ‘At least that’s what my little sister always says. Will you get rid of another board, already?’
‘Manners, Mr Linton!’
‘Will you get rid of another board, Sir, before somebody comes along and shoots us?’
In two seconds he was on the crate, his cane in hand. Placing it under the nearest board, he pushed down. There was a crack, as if from a pistol shot, and the board flew away. I popped out of the crate like a cork out of a bottle. Hurriedly, I slid down until I stood firm with both feet on the ground, and started to dust off my rumpled uniform.
‘Thanks,’ I grumbled, my face two shades darker than normal.
He, of course, didn’t even deign to notice my flushed cheeks. He was already at the door, sliding it slowly open, and peeking out through the crack.
‘There is nobody in the vicinity. Come.’ And he slipped outside. Mumbling a very unladylike word, I followed him, and stepped out into a world of wonder.
I didn’t know exactly what I had expected the island stronghold of the evil Lord Dalgliesh to look like, but this was certainly not it. We stood in a courtyard surrounded by a charming, low stone wall. Moss and other foliage grew out of the cracks in the stone, and it was just the right height to comfortably sit down and have a picnic - an idea to which the rest of the surroundings would have lent themselves beautifully. The courtyard was surrounded by charming, little knobby trees, from which drifted a delicious smell of pines and the sounds of a busy wood. The sound of frolicking squirrels and twittering nightingales mingled with the distant rush of the sea. Bees flew between beautiful flowers which peeked out from between the foremost trees' roots, and a robin fluttered across the courtyard to disappear in the forest on the other side.
‘What the heck?’ I looked from left to right. ‘Did we get sent to the wrong address? Eden, instead of Evil Fortress?’
Mr Ambrose opened his mouth. But I never found out what he was going to say, because all of a sudden, we heard footsteps from around the corner of the warehouse. I hesitated for a moment - and then it was already too late to flee. A man came around the corner, and stopped in his tracks as he spotted us.
Blast!
Île Marbeau
I wanted to step back, run away, anything, but Mr Ambrose’s hand closed around my arm like a vice, holding me in place.
‘Don’t move!’ His voice was barely audible. ‘We’re wearing our uniforms. He might take us for one of theirs!’
Slowly, the man started forward again. His eyes travelled from me to Mr Ambrose, and back again. Finally, he bowed.
Bowed? To us?
‘Bonjour, Messieurs,’ he proclaimed. ‘Puis-je vous offrir un verre de limonade glacée?’
I swallowed convulsively.
‘What is he saying?’ I whispered. ‘Is he telling us that we are going to get shot?’
‘No. He is asking whether we want a glass of iced lemonade.’
‘What?’ I stared at the man, nonplussed. Only now did I notice that he was wearing a white waiter’s jacket. ‘What does he mean?’
‘He means to offer us a drink,’ Mr Ambrose told me coolly, as if he had expected all along to be greeted in Lord Dalgliesh’s secret abode of evil by waiters wielding glasses of lemonade. He turned to the man in the white jacket. ‘Non, merci. Je suis assez frais comme ça.’
This, whatever it meant, didn’t seem to deter the fellow. He smiled a broad smile under his pointy moustache and gave another bow. ‘Une tasse de café, peut-être? Ou un repas léger? Messieurs, vous avez l’air un peu pâle.’
‘Non. Mais pourriez-vous nous indiquer le bâtiment principal? Il semblerait que nous avons perdu notre chemin.’
The waiter beamed and bowed once more. ‘Bien sûr, Monsieur. Suivez-moi, s'il vous plaît.’
And he marched off.
‘What did you say to him?’ I demanded.
‘I asked him to direct us to the main building.’ Mr Ambrose set off after the waiter with long, determined strides that didn’t give a hint of his having been cooped up in a wooden crate for most of the night. I hobbled after him, cursing my burning and itching muscles.
‘The main building to what?’
‘I have no idea, Mr Linton. I’ve never been here, remember?’
‘But that means this fellow could be leading us right into Lord Dalgliesh’s headquarters!’
‘I doubt that will happen. Not unless Lord Dalgliesh has started using French waiters to guard his perimeter, which I consider a remote possibility.’
We followed the mysterious waiter along a path thickly lined with ferns, trees and other flora, down a gently sloping hill. The trees were of a rugged beauty - maltreated so severely by the ceaseless wind blowing in from the sea that they were almost bent double, but still stubbornly standing. They were grouped so closely that we could not see anything on either side of the path for some time. Yet suddenly, the flora retreated, and I looked on a sight such as I had never seen before. A horror beyond all the horrors I could have imagined seeing in this stronghold of evil. A terrified gasp escaped my mouth.
‘That… can’t be!’ I whispered.
Mr Ambrose looked on the spectacle for a moment, then nodded gravely. ‘Yes. Here, in foreign countries, such practices are not considered… reproachable.’
‘But… they are doing it together! Everyone, in plain sight of each other!’
‘Yes. As I said, you are in England no longer, Mr Linton.’
Wide-eyed, I gazed down onto the beach in front of us, where multitudes of people were laughing, running about, and swimming in the water. People of both sexes! Very well I remembered the bathing places in England where, when women wanted to bathe, they did it in the confines of a bathing machine - a marvellous contraption in the form of a horse-drawn carriage without a bottom, which was pulled into the sea and protected you from all prying eyes. Here, in the country of baguettes and revolutions, women seemed to have no inhibitions about letting the men see them in their swimwear. Moreover, unlike in England, this swimwear did not consist of several heavy, knee-length gowns and a giant hat, under which the woman could hardly be detected. Not only were the feet, calves and knees - yes, knees! - of every female on the beach clearly visible, so was pretty much everything else up to an area which, in England, ladies wouldn’t even have thought of, much less dared to mention!