She lay there for at least five minutes, for the busy road had emptied magically. One minute it had been full of people, carts, and the occasional lorry; the next the dust on which she lay could have been sand in an uninhabited desert. This island had heard plenty of gunfire and had developed its own technique to deal with it: you simply hadn’t been there at the time.
Agnes Withers lay still and considered calmly, for she realised she hadn’t been seriously wounded. From its blast, the weapon had been a shotgun, and its owner had been less than a marksman. Just the same, her left leg was decidedly painful and it was probable# she couldn’t use it. So she lay till she saw the old man, walking strongly.
“Zekky,” she called. “Come here and help me.” Zekky was a Turk and her gardener. He lived with an unmarried daughter, and this daughter was Agnes’s general maid. She wouldn’t have Greek servants inside her house.
He’d been too far away to hear the shot and was also a little dim in the head; he hadn’t noticed that the road was deserted, but he could see a woman lying prone in it. He broke into a lumbering canter.
When he arrived at his mistress he wished her good morning, then stood over her and thought it out. It took him some time to do so; he was slow. Finally he asked, “You are ill?”
She almost said, “I’ve been shot,” but didn’t. Instead she told him, “I’ve hurt my leg.” He might or might not notice the wound. He was getting pretty blind by now and there didn’t seem to be much blood.
“You would wish to go home?”
“Do you think you could carry me?”
The old man didn’t bother to answer. He bent his strong back and picked her up. He didn’t sling her across his shoulder but carried her, three hundred yards down the hill to her villa. His daughter, the maid, was already there and together they put Agnes to bed. The maid saw the wound and began to clamour. Agnes silenced her at once.
“It is nothing.”
“But your ladyship has been shot. The police…
“Keep away from the police.”
She understood that without asking questions.
“But go and get the doctor quickly.”
The doctor arrived on his moped in half an hour. He was a Belgian struck off the Belgian Register, and he wasn’t supposed to practise at all. But “practise” was an elastic word, and there were more ways of paying a man than with money. The authorities knew most things about him but had shrugged their shoulders in resignation. He wasn’t taking much bread from local leeches, for however pro-Greek were the British in theory, they preferred a doctor from nearer home. They were that sort of people with that sort of prejudice. So this doctor made a modest competence provided he didn’t flaunt that he did so, and any Englishman needing serious surgery could mostly afford to fly home to receive it.
He looked at Agnes’s leg and whistled. “Gunshot wound,” he said with professional blandness; he looked again, then added softly, “Just between the two of us. You call the tune.”
Like Agnes’s maid he knew local form.
“Naturally,” she said in Dutch. The doctor had learnt a good deal of English, but she could understand Flemish and he her Dutch.
“It isn’t very serious, but I’ll have to give you a local injection.”
She knew that he wasn’t supposed to do it. There was nothing to prevent him prescribing — there was nothing to stop any oaf prescribing if a second was fool enough to accept it — but using a hypodermic was# near the line “Thank you,” she said. Agnes Withers meant it.
He took out the pellets and looked at them quizzically. “Number eight shot, I think,” he said. “What they use for the birds.”
“I’m not a bird.”
The doctor had bandaged her up and laughed. For a Fleming he had a sharp sense of humour. “Since you offer the opening, no, you are not. But I can see that the Greeks might well think you a pest. Your political opinions, you know—”
“They’ve reached your ears?”
“They could hardly fail to. If I may say so, you’re a very Dutch Dutchwoman.”
“Eoka?” she asked softly.
He shrugged. “I’m inclined to discount it and pretty strongly. Eoka is away in the mountains, and in any case whoever shot you was hardly up to their standard of marksmanship.” He considered, then added blandly again, “Have you offended anyone recently? I mean rather more than you always do. More than just disliking them and not bothering to hide your contempt.”
“It’s as bad as that?”
“I’m afraid it is.”
“Well, I knocked a man about a bit.”
“You did what?” He was shaken.
“He was only a youth, but he’d busted the greenhouse. I’m trying to grow some English roses, and when my husband comes down for visits here he experiments with sprays and powders for an answer to the local greenfly. When I found this youth he’d# smashed most of the glass, and when he saw me he picked up a pot and threw it. It didn’t hurt much, but I lost my temper. There was a pickhelve around, so—”
“Say nothing more, please.” The doctor sighed. A woman beating a man — unforgivable. Unforgivable down to the grave and beyond it. He asked at last “Did you tell the police?”
“Of course I didn’t.”
“And not of this wound?”
“That’s rather more tricky. I was on my way to see the police when whoever it was took a pretty poor shot at me. Since they’d sent for me, not vice versa, they’re pretty sure to come here when I don’t turn up.”
“Tricky, as you say.”
“But manageable. I shall tell them I’ve sprained my ankle badly. They’re hardly likely to pull the sheets down. Old Zekky is too far gone to remember even if he ever noticed, and his daughter won’t talk to a Greek on principle.”
“But I thought the local boss was a Turk?”
“He was, but they’ve changed him.”
“I don’t like that. For God’s sake, be careful.”
“I’ve lived here for nearly six years. I’ll survive.”
The doctor rose and took his leave. He thought Lady Withers excessively tactless, but he admired her forthrightness and envied her courage. Just the same, she had used the word survive. He very sincerely hoped she would, but if they had really marked her down…
He shrugged again. There was nothing he could do about that in this race-torn, corrupt, and bloodstained island.
The new Inspector arrived on the doctor's heels. The maid showed him in, and he bowed and sat down. Agnes saw what she’d expected to see, a slick town Greek in a carefully pressed uniform. He had crisp, curly hair, not too clean but pomaded, with a pencil moustache over rather coarse lips. He wore dark glasses which were quite unnecessary. The Inspector saw an attractive woman with startlingly blue eyes and still naturally blonde hair. He put her in her later twenties. In fact, she was a little more.
“My name is Zephos,” he said. “Inspector.”
“It is kind of you to call here.”
“Not at all. It has reached me that you met with an accident as you were presumably on your way to see me.
He left it at that, for the next move was hers. As it happened, he had the whole story on ice, for he knew she had clobbered a petty thief, and a youth had been seen with a gun and reported. The trouble about that simple equation was that the boy’s uncle was a politician, neck-deep in the island’s least savoury scandals. The Inspector could never book this boy, his job wouldn’t last a week if he did, and he was a good deal more than a simple policeman. But if Agnes complained, he must go through the motions of trying to hunt her assailant down. That, though a fiddle and therefore congenial, would also be a tedious business, and like most Greeks he was very easily bored. But equally she had motive for silence. He had an even chance that she wouldn’t embarrass him.