Love Is Dangerous Read online

  Chapter 1

  1949

  “You are both incompetent and impudent!”

  Mrs. Schuster rose as she spoke and crossed the room to the writing desk by the window.

  “Here is a week’s wages and your hotel room is paid for the next two days.”

  Melina could not help thinking that Mrs. Schuster was giving a fine theatrical performance. This was not the spontaneous impulse of the moment, but a carefully thought-out preconceived action.

  Then, as she took the envelope automatically and felt it heavy with coins to make it exactly the right amount, she knew that whatever she had said or done that particular day the ultimate result would have been the same.

  Yet because she was so desperate she had to argue.

  “I don’t understand,” she said. “I am sorry if you did tell me to be back by two o’clock, but I certainly don’t remember you saying so and, as to bringing you a particular book from the English Library, I’ve never heard you mention it before.”

  “You don’t listen, that is what’s wrong with you,” Mrs. Schuster retorted. “I did tell you to be back at two and I did ask you to bring me Rom Landau’s book on Morocco. However, there is no point in going over this again. It’s only typical of several incidents in the last fortnight and I’m afraid I cannot put up with it any longer. When I brought you here, I was looking for someone who would consider me and my interests.”

  “Mrs. Schuster, that’s not fair!” Melina broke out. “I have considered you in every possible way. You asked me to come with you to Tangier to drive your car and to do any secretarial work that was required – ”

  “You can’t say there’s much of that!” Mrs. Schuster interrupted.

  “No, not a lot,” Melina admitted. “But there have been other things.”

  She was thinking, although it was hardly worth saying so, that Mrs. Schuster had used her in a great many capacities besides that of secretary-companion. She had acted as lady’s maid for one thing, pressing Mrs. Schuster’s clothes, packing and unpacking for her, carrying parcels up and down stairs and doing dozens of small things that should have been done by the hotel servants.

  At the same time, Melina knew, everything had been perfectly all right until Ambrose Wheatley arrived. His appearance had been unexpected, but it had been quite obvious that Mrs. Schuster was not only delighted to see him but found that another woman making the party à trois was not at all to her liking.

  Melina had not been so stupid as not to realise that Lileth Schuster wanted Ambrose to herself, and she had been as self-effacing as possible, making excuses to go out at lunchtime to see the museums and slipping away upstairs as soon as dinner was over so as to leave them alone.

  That might have worked if Ambrose Wheatley had not shown her such marked attention.

  “Let’s drive along by the sea this afternoon,” Mrs. Schuster would suggest. “It’s a lovely day and I adore the way you drive, Ambrose dear.”

  “Of course,” he would answer. “And what about Melina? She must come too.”

  He would smile at Melina and, as he did so, she would see Mrs. Schuster’s eyes darken.

  It was annoying enough for her employer that the young man of her choice should call her secretary by her Christian name while she kept very strictly to the formal, ‘Miss Lindsay’. But that he should wish to include her in the party was intolerable and she let Melina know it in no uncertain manner.

  ‘It’s hopeless,’ Melina thought now, ‘and there’s no point in arguing. The break was inevitable.’

  With a little gesture of pride she straightened her shoulders.

  “Very well, Mrs. Schuster,” she said. “I accept a week’s notice – but – but what about my fare back to England?”

  “I cannot remember that we made any arrangements about that when I engaged you,” Mrs. Schuster answered coldly.

  Melina was so astonished that she could not speak.

  “I am afraid that I cannot take any responsibility for you other than to pay you for a week’s work you did not do,” Mrs. Schuster went on. “Mr. Wheatley and I are leaving tomorrow for Marrakesh and so, Miss Lindsay, I’m afraid you must look after yourself.”

  So this was her revenge, Melina thought. She knew well enough what it would mean to the girl to be left alone in Tangier without the money to return home.

  She had thought Lileth Schuster to be pretty unscrupulous on several occasions, but now she knew her to be utterly and completely despicable. It was a shoddy and dirty action and one that only a woman of her calibre would attempt.

  “You know as well as I do,” she said aloud, “that the arrangement was that I should go with you to Tangier for your holiday and go back with you to England.”

  “I cannot remember saying anything of the sort,” Mrs. Schuster replied. “Just as you, Miss Lindsay, cannot remember my instructions to you to return at two o’clock.”

  “And what do you suggest I do?” Melina said. “Because, quite frankly, I do not have my fare back to England.”

  Mrs. Schuster shrugged her shoulders.

  “I believe the British Consulate can provide for British subjects stranded in such a manner,” she said. “But anyway, I am afraid I cannot concern myself with it. Perhaps you can find a job out here. I’m sure some of the rich Moroccans would be only too delighted to employ an attractive English girl!”

  There was an unpleasant insinuation in her voice that made Melina long to throw her paltry week’s wages at her feet and then march out of the room. But as she realised that such a dramatic gesture would only hurt herself, she merely walked towards the door, pausing as she opened it to say,

  “Goodbye, Mrs. Schuster, and thank you for bringing me to Tangier.”

  She could not help feeling, as her late employer did not reply, that she had scored points in dignity if nothing else, but that in itself was cold comfort as she took the lift to the top floor where her bedroom was situated.

  She had not, as they say, ‘taken to’ Mrs. Schuster at their first interview, but she had wanted, above all else, to go to Tangier.

  When she had seen the advertisement in The Times asking for a driver-secretary-companion she had made up her mind that whatever the hardships of the journey she would put up with them just for the joy of seeing the country she had always longed to visit.

  Then, having obtained the job after being interviewed by Mrs. Schuster in her luxurious flat in Grosvenor Square, she had thought herself the luckiest person in the world. It was only after they had crossed the Channel and were motoring through France and then Spain that the first doubts began to creep in.

  She had learned in the first twenty-four hours of her acquaintance that Mrs. Schuster was exceedingly mean. She always had the best naturally, but Melina, as a matter of course, had also to put up with the worst.

  She had the worst room looking out on to the little, hot, airless courtyard or over the kitchens of the hotels. She ate with her employer, but while Mrs. Schuster chose caviar, oysters and every possible expensive dish from the menu, Melina ate the table d’hôte meal and even then Mrs. Schuster tried to bargain a cut price for it.

  “It’s nonsense for people to say that the water in France isn’t good,” she would say. “The whole idea is fostered by the hoteliers who wish to sell their mineral waters.”

  It was very likely true, but Melina could not help wondering why her employer did not feel uncomfortable as, having said that at least once on every day of their journey, she ordered herself wine or half a bottle of champagne and the inevitable demi-Evian.

  It was quite obvious from the outset that she had to have her pound of flesh where Melina was concerned.

  “If s not worth sending these things to the laundry,” she would say, pr
oducing an armful of underclothes, blouses, gloves, stockings and handkerchiefs. “Just wash them out, there’s a good girl. You can hang them by your window as everything dries so quickly in this wonderful air.”

  She always spoke of the air and the sunshine as if she had given them as a special present to Melina and expected her to thank her for them.

  But Melina had not minded all these things. There was always the excitement of knowing that Morocco lay ahead.

  She would dream about it at night, making pictures in her mind of what it would be like, remembering all the illustrations she had seen of Tangier, Marrakesh, the Atlas Mountains and the golden shores of Casablanca. They were names to conjure with, names that seemed to her to glitter almost like diamonds every time she thought of them.

  And now, after she had been in Tangier only six days, this had happened. She came out of the lift on the fifth floor and walked down the narrow passage to her room.

  The room itself was small and unpretentious and yet it had something that meant more to Melina than the luxurious suite on the first floor occupied by Mrs. Schuster.

  It had a balcony! It was small and square between high walls on either side so that she was secluded from the occupiers of the next rooms, but there was a window-box filled with brightly coloured geraniums and over them Melina could see the flat roofs of Tangier, dazzling white against the vivid blue of the sea.

  She had never expected to be so fortunate in her accommodation. The receptionist who had taken her up had explained the reason.

  “Madame has asked for one of our cheap single rooms looking onto the street,” she said, “but they are already all engaged. So because Madame is such a good client we have put you in this one for the same price. It’s a double room really,” she said, looking at the two small beds squeezed together and occupying most of the space in the room, “but there’s a private bathroom.”

  “Thank you for letting me have it,” Melina had smiled. “And thank you, too, for allowing Mrs. Schuster to have it so cheaply.”

  She was sincere in thanking her for that. She knew by now how Mrs. Schuster would have grumbled and complained about the unnecessary extravagance if they had insisted on charging more for her secretary’s bedroom.

  How absurd, Melina had thought then, as she had thought so often before, to be so rich and so mean at the same time. Clothes, jewels, furs, motor cars and expensive furniture, all these things were necessities to Lileth Schuster, but everyone else must have as little as possible. Economy on other people was an obsession with her.

  Entering her bedroom now, Melina stood for a moment inside the door and looked to where the open window onto the balcony let in a blaze of golden light. The white walls, the geraniums cascading crimson against them and the blue sky above – it was something, she thought, that she would never forget for the rest of her life.

  She had been feeling depressed and unhappy. Now her spirits rose. She had seen Tangier! At least she had known for six days the intoxicating excitement of those flat-roofed houses, of the native streets, the veiled shapeless figures of the women, the smell of mimosa and, above all, the inscrutable, mysterious atmosphere of Africa. It had invaded her senses, it had quickened her heartbeats and had made her feel, as she had known all the time she would feel, that she was on the edge of something significant and exciting.

  Melina walked across the room and out onto the balcony. The sun was suddenly hot on her bare head and turning her hair to a fiery red as she raised her little face towards it. She felt as if the warmth and strength of it kissed her. She felt the comfort and the power of it. Then in sudden misery she knew that she would have to leave it all behind.

  ‘I can’t go! I can’t!’ she whispered to herself. ‘I have wanted so much to come here and now to have to leave after seeing so little of Morocco.’

  At the back of her mind she knew that her protests were useless and that she must do as Mrs. Schuster scornfully suggested. She must go to the Consulate, explain her position and ask them to lend her Third Class fare home.

  She would promise to repay it. She would be able to do that, not in small instalments but almost as soon as she returned home.

  There was a brooch of her mother’s, a diamond star that she had kept when everything else had to be sold, because she had loved it so much.

  She could see it now nestling in her mother’s hair as she had come to say goodnight to her.

  “Where are you going, Mummy?”

  “To a party with Daddy. Go to sleep like a good girl. I’ll tell you all about it tomorrow.”

  How lovely she had looked! Melina gave a little sigh and opened her eyes. The diamond star would have to go although somehow she felt that she betrayed her mother’s memory in getting rid of it. But her father would understand. He would know why she had to see Morocco and why it meant so much.

  She bent forward to touch the scarlet geraniums with gentle fingers.

  She could telegraph to her uncle and aunt at Wimbledon, but she knew, if she did, what tiresome explanations there would have to be when she returned.

  Why had she been so stupid as to throw up her good job in that nice Solicitor’s office? It was so ridiculous to go junketing half across the world and then get stranded so that she had had to ask them for money.

  She could hear their voices reiterating the same things over and over again, being annoyed by her behaviour and finally forcing her to admit that the whole adventure had been stupid and misconceived and that she had made a fool of herself.

  No, no, she would not eat humble pie to them. They meant well, but they wanted her to be safe and secure and clamped down in that deadly Solicitor’s office, month after month, year after year, so that they could feel that they had done their best for her in giving her the job in the first place.

  No! The diamond star would have to go, but at least she had two more days in Heaven.

  She sat down on the tiny wooden seat that was fixed to one of the walls on the balcony. The space was too small for a chair, but the hotel had done its best to provide a seat.

  She raised her face to the sun and let her head drop back against the warm brick wall behind her. She could feel the warmth of it through her thin cotton dress and she felt the rays of the sun again on her eyes and on her lips almost like the kiss of a lover.

  ‘I must not stay like this for long,’ Melina thought to herself. ‘It’s too hot. I shall get sunstroke. But it’s so wonderful to feel it, the glorious sun of Morocco.’

  She could smell the sweet fragrance of mimosa drifting up from the gardens.

  She could hear in the distance the cries from the native market that lay below the hotel on a different level. The voices were like a note of music one has always been trying to hear and could never quite remember until it came again.

  ‘I am happy,’ Melina thought suddenly. ‘Happier than I have ever been in my whole life, despite the fact that I have lost my job and I am here all alone.’

  Perhaps that was what was making her so happy, she mused, the fact that she was no longer trammelled. She was free, free to do as she wished for two days – or until the money she held in her hand ran out.

  She realised in surprise that she was still holding it, and, laughing a little at herself, she bent forward and threw it through the open window on the nearest of the twin beds.

  The envelope burst open and the money lay there scattered. Six pounds, three half-crowns, two shillings and a threepenny bit. Mrs. Schuster had paid her exactly, Melina noted with a little smile, having deducted her national insurance.

  She laughed at the thought. There was something ridiculous, somehow, in Mrs. Schuster with her twenty thousand pound diamond ring on her finger and her two thousand pound mink stole draped over the chair, deducting the money for national insurance stamps.

  “I’m free!”

  Melina said the words aloud and this time there was laughter in her voice.

  It was then that a sudden noise startled her.

  There was a
scuffle, the sound of a tile falling and smashing, then almost before she could realise what was happening a figure came flying off the roof and onto the balcony beside her.

  She stared wide-eyed, too surprised and, a second later, too frightened to move.

  It was an Arab, his face shadowed by his cotton kosia, but there was a gash of blood on his cheek while his right hand clasped a short bloodstained knife.

  They stared at each other and his dark eyes seemed to Melina to glitter frighteningly. There was a shout from somewhere above!

  The Arab looked up swiftly, then turned his face towards her again.

  “You are English?” he asked and to her surprise he spoke in English.

  Melina nodded, somehow her voice would not come.

  “Then help me,” he begged. “Please help me, because it is of the utmost importance. There is no time to explain, but I am not what I appear. I won’t hurt you. The men who are after me are evil and if they catch up with me they will kill me. It sounds rather like something from the movies, but it happens to be true.”

  There was another cry from above and it seemed to Melina as if it was nearer. The man stepped into her bedroom.

  “Where can I hide?” he asked frantically.

  With an effort, as if she awoke from same strange incredible dream, Melina found her voice.

  “The – the bathroom is the only place.”

  “Good,” he said. “Keep them out as long as you can. Tell them anything – that I am your husband, but for God’s sake give me time.”

  He crossed the room in one quick stride and she heard the bathroom door slam behind him.

  She stared, thinking that she must have dreamed it. A native dressed as he was could not have spoken in English, which she knew without any shadow of a doubt was his natural tongue. What could it mean? Was it a trick?

  She saw her money lying on the bed. Was he after that? And then even as her thoughts rushed bewildered through her head, a tile crashed down on the floor of the balcony and a moment later two men came scrambling after it.

  They were Moroccans, dressed in native clothes and she saw with a feeling of sickness that they both carried knives in their hands.