The Twenty-Third Man by Gladys Mitchell

Author:Gladys Mitchell
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781448113910
Publisher: Random House

CHAPTER 10

Botanical Information

LAURA WAS DETERMINED to earn her unexpected holiday. She felt she had gained very little by her first attempts, for her duty, as she saw it, was to obtain a first-hand impression of the guests and staff at the Hotel Sombrero and (although she had kept any hint of this from Dame Beatrice) to give the bandits and the troglodytes the benefit of her scrutiny.

‘I’ll knock off the troglodytes first,’ she confided to the baby, as she gave him his morning six o’clock feed. ‘So do yourself proud, cully, while you’re at it, as I may be late for the next one.’

She breakfasted off rolls and coffee at seven, went into the Plaza and woke a taxi-driver.

‘Cavernas,’ she said.

‘A solas?’ The driver looked astounded.

‘Sí, sí!’

‘Madre de Dios!’ It was clear that for a young woman to venture alone to the country of the cave-dwellers was unprecedented.

‘Con presteza!’ urged Laura, unconcerned with questions of precedent but merely with the necessity for haste. ‘Como el viento?’

The driver contrived to emulate the speed of the wind so successfully that Laura began to wonder whether her command had been strictly necessary. They bounced, swerved, climbed, and ricocheted up the mountain-side at a reckless speed which brought them to the caves in what she felt must be record time.

The troglodyte girls were already at work on the banana plantations or in the cigarette factories, or (thought Laura, with visions of the bird-loving Mrs Angel) getting themselves shipped off to South America, so the only people at home were the old women and one or two unkempt, unshaven men. At the end of a baffling and fruitless hour she returned to the taxi-driver, whom she had told to wait, and bade him take her back to the hotel. It was some time before she realized that he was doing nothing of the kind, but just as it dawned upon her that they were on a very different route from the one by which they had come, the taxi drew up, the driver got down, and two tall, thin men appeared in front of a bit of scrub behind which they had been hiding.

‘Hold-up,’ thought Laura. ‘Oh, well, I wanted to see the bandits, so this is it.’

The driver opened the door of the cab and bowed as she got out. The two thin scarecrows bowed. Laura inclined her head and graciously extended her hand. In turn, the bandits kissed it.

There followed a staccato conversation in the island patois. Even if they had spoken Spanish, it was so fast that Laura could not have followed what was said. At last one of the bandits turned to her and told her, in fair Spanish, to pay the taxi. Laura shook her head. She needed the taxi to take her home, she explained. The three men smiled. Laura, on an inspiration, declared that she had to feed her baby at ten o’clock and that it was already half past nine.

‘A baby?’

‘Yes.’

‘A boy?’

‘Yes.’

‘How old? – Ah, a small baby.

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