The Sad Variety Read online

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Also by Nicholas Blake

  Title Page

  1. A Prelude in W.3

  2. The Guest House: December 27

  3. Smugglers’ Cottage: December 28

  4. General Post Office: December 28

  5. The Blizzard: December 28–29

  6. Ask Me Another: December 29

  7. Little Girl Lost: December 29

  8. The Bug: December 30

  9. The Beleaguered Café: December 31–January 1

  10. Little Boy Found: December 31

  11. Confession: December 31

  12. Dart Home: January 1

  13. Paid on All Sides: January 1

  More from Vintage Classic Crime

  Copyright

  About the Book

  The government’s security department have asked private detective Nigel Strangeways to keep a discreet eye on Professor Alfred Wagley, a research scientist who is spending the Christmas holidays in the South-West of England. But someone else is also very interested in the professor and his work, and when his young daughter is kidnapped, Nigel finds himself in a race to avert a tragedy.

  About the Author

  Nicholas Blake was the pseudonym of Poet Laureate Cecil Day-Lewis, who was born in County Laois, Ireland, in 1904. After his mother died in 1906, he was brought up in London by his father, spending summer holidays with relatives in Wexford. He was educated at Sherborne School and Wadham College, Oxford, from which he graduated in 1927. Blake initially worked as a teacher to supplement his income from his poetry writing and he published his first Nigel Strangeways novel, A Question of Proof, in 1935. Blake went on to write a further nineteen crime novels, all but four of which featured Nigel Strangeways, as well as numerous poetry collections and translations.

  During the Second World War he worked as a publications editor in the Ministry of Information, which he used as the basis for the Ministry of Morale in Minute for Murder, and after the war he joined the publishers Chatto & Windus as an editor and director. He was appointed Poet Laureate in 1968 and died in 1972 at the home of his friend, the writer Kingsley Amis.

  Also by Nicholas Blake

  A Question of Proof

  Thou Shell of Death

  There’s Trouble Brewing

  The Beast Must Die

  The Widow’s Cruise

  Malice in Wonderland

  The Case of the Abominable Snowman

  The Smiler with the Knife

  Minute for Murder

  Head of a Traveller

  The Dreadful Hollow

  The Whisper in the Gloom

  End of Chapter

  The Worm of Death

  The Morning After Death

  CHAPTER 1

  * * *

  A Prelude in W.3

  ‘BUT I CAN’T understand why——’

  ‘Why what?’ said the man called Petrov repressively.

  Paul Cunningham blinked at him, as if he had picked up a leaf and found it was a scorpion. He was more accustomed to imposing discipline than to being disciplined. ‘Why kids have to be brought into it. Surely the obvious thing would be to——?’

  ‘To deal direct with the principal?’ Petrov gave his jolly laugh. ‘My dear Mr Cunningham, I have explained it to you—the Professor is a very tough nut to crack. Even supposing we could smuggle him out of the country, there’s no saying how long it would take to break him down, efficient though our methods are. And speed is essential. No, he’s a tough nut, but the nut has one soft spot.’ He beamed at Paul Cunningham. ‘We know your feeling for the young, dear sir. But personal feelings are not important when——’

  ‘I still don’t like it.’

  ‘I’m afraid you haven’t very much choice in the matter.’

  Paul flushed. It was like being in the grip of a boa-constrictor. Almost a loving embrace at first, then the coils gradually tightening. No, a bear’s grip: Petrov resembled a bear—the bulky body and sloping shoulders. Paul felt the breath squeezed out of him.

  ‘Another cup of coffee, comrade?’ said Annie Stott. She was a sallow woman of thirty-eight, thin-lipped, skimpy-haired, with the pebble eyes of a fanatic. Paul had not met her till tonight: the preliminary approaches had not included her. He put her down as an old-guard Party member, in whose mind even the Hungarian rising had not caused the slightest deviation. All he knew about her was that she occupied this flatlet in Acton and worked in a commercial electronic-apparatus firm near by.

  ‘I suppose she’s going as my political commissar,’ he said to Petrov’s broad back.

  ‘Miss Stott is an intelligent and resourceful woman,’ replied Petrov, not turning round from his scrutiny of Annie Stott’s bookcase. ‘She’ll keep you in order … All the right books. Marx, Engels, Lenin, Palme Dutt; Jack London for relaxation. An earnest type … And here’s a darker patch on the wall. Once occupied by the late lamented Joseph Stalin. Splendid!’ Petrov gave another bellow of hearty laughter.

  ‘Curious way to conceal your political affiliations.’ Paul’s present humiliation and prospective danger made a sour taste on his tongue.

  ‘There’s cover and cover, my friend. Ah, here’s the coffee.’ Petrov drank, smacked his lips. ‘Delicious.’

  ‘For you?’ Annie Stott ungraciously plunked down a cup in front of Paul.

  ‘No thanks, comrade. I can’t bear Instant anything.’

  She looked at him contemptuously. ‘What d’you want? Best Brazil? Do you realise that last year 20,000 tons of coffee were thrown into the sea, by order of the bosses?’

  ‘Well, don’t blame me. I’m not a capitalist.’

  Petrov clapped his large hands. ‘Well done! Just like brother and sister. A bossy sister and her sulky younger brother. I see you don’t need teaching your parts.’

  So the odious Miss Stott was to masquerade as his sister, thought Paul. Two or three weeks of it, in an isolated West-country cottage: it would be insupportable. He looked round at the flat. Everything in it was commonplace, drab, ostentatiously austere. How different from his comfortable room in the staff quarters at the training college, let alone the more exotic hide-out in Pimlico. He glared at a filing cupboard beside the wretched little gas fire, and shivered: in its utilitarian ugliness it bore a close resemblance to its owner. The room smelt of dust, cyclostyle ink, leaflets and the closed mind.

  ‘How fortunate we are’, said Petrov expansively, placing his palms on his fat thighs, ‘that Mr Cunningham is so respectable … Long may it last.’

  ‘Are you referring to that posh place he teaches at?’ Miss Stott disagreeably asked.

  ‘I am referring particularly to his contacts with the mighty. It’s quite a stroke of luck that he should know the head of an Oxford college well enough to rent his cottage for the Christmas vacation. Nice and handy to the scene of operations. Yes, really a godsend.’

  ‘Be careful. Miss Stott is wincing. She doesn’t believe in God.’

  ‘It was a figure of speech, Paul. And since she is your sister, you’d better start calling her Annie … I said, you’d better start calling her Annie.’

  Paul flushed again. ‘Very well.’

  ‘Let me recapitulate. You will pick up the equipment here and drive down to Smugglers’ Cottage on 18th December. You will bring the necessary provisions. There’s a farm a hundred yards down the hill, where you can get milk and butter. Your excellent sister will arrive by train, with the child, on the 21st: you will meet them at Longport station, on the 6.23 p.m. Before she arrives, establish your presence there and your ostensible reason. You need quiet to start a book. What book,’ continued Petrov, his rumbling tones quite unaltered, ‘are you writing?’r />
  ‘I—well, I haven’t——’

  ‘Come, come, Paul, this will never do. A little more attention to detail, please. You must not only decide what you’re going to write, but start writing it. One weak spot, and a cover story can be ripped open.’

  ‘Oh God! I think all this absurd cloak-and-dagger stuff——’

  ‘The comrade is not interested in what you think,’ said the woman.

  ‘You may call it absurd, but your life—and more important things than your life—will depend upon it. You and Annie must establish, in the minds of any neighbours you may meet, a firm impression of brother and sister holidaying together with another sister’s child—one who has recently been ill and needs the country air. Before you go down there, Annie will coach you in all the necessary facts about her family, upbringing, career, and so on. Don’t forget people in the country are extremely curious about strangers. There must be no discrepancies to cause gossip or suspicion.’

  In the stuffy room Paul Cunningham heard Petrov’s voice rumbling hypnotically on. Perhaps it felt like this to be brainwashed … The telephone at the cottage must not be used, after the coup, except in an extreme emergency. There was a public call-box half a mile down the hill, in the village of Eggarswell … London would put through the calls to the target, Annie would do the collecting … The preliminary coup at the Guest House five miles away would be carried out by the pair of them … How long it would take to soften up the subject was uncertain——

  ‘But he’ll call in the police at once,’ protested Paul, ‘and then we’re sunk.’

  ‘We shall make it clear to him that this would be inadvisable. He dotes on the child. He wouldn’t want anything unpleasant to happen.’

  ‘But even suppose he does cough up, the child will tell where we—I had to rent the cottage in my own name.’

  ‘The child will be taken there in the dark. The view from the back windows could hardly be identified later by a——’

  ‘The fact is, you don’t care a damn what happens to me afterwards,’ Paul shouted. ‘I suppose you and Annie will have skipped out of the country.’

  ‘You are taking a risk. We’re taking a bigger one. You just have to remember that, if you won’t gamble, you’ll certainly be ruined. We’ve had all this out before.’ Petrov stretched his powerful arms above his head, yawning. ‘Besides, the child is expendable.’

  The gas-fire creaked and popped. The fusty little room seemed to contract round Paul. ‘Look, you can’t mean——?’ His voice dried up.

  Annie Stott sniffed. ‘Paul still seems to think we’re playing kiss-in-the-ring. My poor dear brother, no one is asking you to be an executioner.’ She rapped on the baize-covered table. ‘Will you try to get it into your head that great issues are at stake? Wragby has made a major break-through which could put the Western powers five years ahead of us in the anti-missile field. If we fail, the imperialists can count on that period of immunity. Do you suppose the Pentagon wouldn’t yield to the temptation to attack Russia? And that would mean the death of hundreds of thousands of children, not one.’

  ‘I simply don’t agree that——’

  ‘We’re wasting time,’ broke in Petrov. ‘If Mr Cunningham proposes to back out, he can sub-let the cottage to you, Annie, and we’ll find you another assistant. But you know the consequences, my friend. You’re in the thing too deep already.’

  Paul knew all too well. He thought of his own childhood with an impoverished widow mother, his congenial job, his comforts, and the austere South African uncle who would leave him a fortune if—if Paul were not involved in a scandal. All this could be swept away by one movement of Petrov’s hand.

  He pushed the thought of Professor Wragby’s child to the back of his mind. ‘I’m not backing out. I——’

  ‘That’s better.’ Petrov put his arm round Paul’s shoulders, and gave him a bear’s hug. ‘I never thought you were a timid fellow.’

  Paul caught Annie Stott’s eye fastened sceptically upon him. The bitch. The mustard-faced bitch, with her ridiculous Communist jargon and political paranoia. ‘All I’m saying is that Wragby’s not going to hand over his formula or whatever it is, without laying a police trap first.’

  ‘My dear Paul, you’re a child in these matters. Wragby will not find it possible to double-cross us.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘We shall have a—a friend planted in the Guest House.’

  ‘Great scot, you’re thorough enough! To tap the telephone, you mean?’

  ‘To prevent any knavish tricks by the good Professor.’ Petrov laughed jovially.

  Paul felt a sudden spasm of weakness for the man. Petrov was such a male person: perhaps the father-figure which the boy Paul had lacked.

  ‘Who is it, then?’

  ‘Oh, you mustn’t ask that. Even Annie doesn’t know. In this game, the less the pieces know about each other, the better.’

  ‘So we’re just pawns to you?’

  ‘Everyone is a pawn,’ said the woman impatiently, ‘moved about by the hand of historical necessity.’

  ‘Historical necessity being represented, in this case, by Comrade Petrov?’

  ‘No, no, Paul. I am not God. I am just another piece on the board.’

  ‘A powerful piece, though. A bishop?’

  ‘Excellent! Excellent!’ said Petrov, with boyish enthusiasm. ‘What do you think of me as a bishop, Annie? Wouldn’t I look well in gaiters, with an apron over my paunch?’

  Miss Stott contrived to make her thin smile both obsequious and disapproving.

  ‘I’m fascinated by all this,’ said Paul. ‘How did you know in advance that the Wragbys would be going to the Guest House at Downcombe?’

  ‘That is simple. He stayed there for Christmas last year, to get away from the establishment where he works, no doubt. And a little research discovered that he would be there again this Christmas. We also have an agent in his establishment, unfortunately not in a high position.’

  ‘And that’s the one you’re planting in the Guest House?’

  ‘Most certainly not. You’re very naïve, Paul.’ Petrov smiled, as if at some inner joke of his own, showing large teeth with several gold fillings. He was reflecting on the neatness of the process by which they had got hold of the person to inform about Wragby’s movements at the Guest House: it had all fitted in very nicely. Petrov liked accuracy—no fumbling, no loop-holes. He glanced at Annie Stott, sitting by the table with her hands lightly clasped on her lap. An excellent worker, disciplined and reasonably intelligent: she had done no under-cover work before, and the British counter-espionage would have nothing on her except her Party membership. The young man was another matter. Clever certainly, but unreliable: a moral weakling: which, together with his access to the cottage, was why he’d been roped in for this. Wouldn’t attempt to break the bonds, though he’d put up a token struggle. Just another turn of the winch might be desirable, for all that.

  ‘There was one awkward moment,’ he said. ‘We found every room in the Guest House was already booked for Christmas. Fortunately, one of the prospective guests had an accident.’

  Petrov watched Paul Cunningham’s expression change from wary interest to wakening horror. ‘You see the point, my dear Paul. It was not a fatal accident. Which is not to say that fatal accidents cannot happen.’

  It’s like taking chocolates from children, thought Annie Stott. This young fool would believe anything. A bourgeois upbringing, topped up with a diet of James Bond fantasy. Surely even he should know that the Party forbade acts of individual violence. There were times when violence was necessary, of course—to liquidate a counter-revolutionary movement, or to keep the Soviet Union on equal terms with the imperialist powers; but it must be sanctioned by the Party at the highest level.

  Miss Stott had never seen a blow struck in anger since the days when she was tormented by her schoolmates in a Salford slum. Her mental world was one of abstractions, slogans, diagrams, statistics, where everything—even the ki
dnapping of a child—became de-personalised. She would not have accepted this, nor did she understand it was a reason why she had been chosen for the task: a woman was essential to it, but a woman who would not be softened by the pleadings of a child.

  ‘Well, is there anything else?’ she inquired briskly.

  Paul came out of his daze. Ever since they had shown him the ruinous evidence, a miasma of fear and unreality had hung over his life: though he tried to pretend to himself that, because there was no attempt at blackmail, the whole horrid business had somehow ceased to exist, the uneasiness persisted. This evening it had come to a head. He vaguely heard a brief conversation between Petrov and Annie, and its commonplace detail heightened the sense of unreality, as though it was not words but ectoplasm that was coming out of their mouths, swirling into the dingy room like a fog, reaching for him, wrapping him round in a cocoon.

  ‘Well, Paul, I’ll be seeing you.’ Petrov’s voice, with its faint American accent, broke into the nightmare.

  ‘Just a word,’ said Paul, ‘I must have a word with you alone.’

  ‘No microphones fixed on your stairs, Annie?’ Petrov guffawed, took Paul’s upper arm in a ferocious grip, and led him out. The staircase was dark. The hall smelt of tomcats and carbolic.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘The photographs. When do I get them back?’

  ‘You can have them now.’ Petrov produced an envelope from the pocket of his voluminous overcoat. ‘Go on. You can look at them, if you don’t believe me. They’re the right ones, aren’t they?’

  Hurriedly, shamefacedly, in the yellowish hall gaslight, Paul glanced at the photographs. Petrov peered over his shoulder. ‘Really, what antics!’

  Licking his lips, Paul said: ‘What about the negatives?’

  ‘They’ll be returned after the operation. We could hardly——’

  ‘No, of course not. But how do I know I’ll get them back?’

  The big man kneaded Paul’s arm painfully. ‘You don’t. Or you might get them, but there could be copy negatives. You’ll just have to trust your old Petrov. After all, we’re trusting you. Nah, nah, don’t worry so, we’ll see you all right. You’re a good fellow. I’ve got to quite like you.’