The Sad Variety Page 13

  Nigel cut into the girl’s merry prattle. ‘When did he declare himself? He started off by insinuating things, didn’t he?’

  ‘Oh yes. Trying to soften us up, scare us, I suppose. He put on the screws—tried to, I mean—the morning Lucy was snatched.’

  ‘Will you tell me the truth about this? Did he, at that point, try to put pressure on you to do anything except sign a document and start handing over money to him?’

  ‘Oh, no.’

  ‘Hinted at nothing else you might do for him? “We might forget about the money if you helped me to”—that sort of thing?’

  ‘No. Truthfully.’

  Nigel frowned in thought. How far could one rely on this extraordinary girl’s evidence? ‘We’d better turn back,’ he said brusquely.

  ‘All right. Don’t you believe me?’

  ‘I’d like not to. It complicates things.’

  Cherry took off her glove, slipped a naked hand into Nigel’s overcoat pocket, and twined her fingers with his.

  ‘Are you going to seduce me now?’ he inquired.

  ‘I’d like to.’

  ‘Well, you can’t. Tell me, Cherry, if you find Leake such a bore, and you’re so hopelessly unblackmailable, why do you still go about with him so much—you and Atterson?’

  The girl’s fingers stiffened round his, then tried to withdraw: he held them firm.

  ‘That’s not my secret,’ she said at last, head bowed.

  ‘Shall I ask Atterson, then?’

  ‘Oh, no! … Well, I suppose I might as well tell you. When Leake found he couldn’t get change out of me, he started putting the bite on Lance. He’d evidence that Lance peddled tea—for reefers, you know. And snow too. I didn’t know about the heroin, honestly.’

  ‘Leake’s idea was that, if you wouldn’t cough up to preserve your own reputation, you would to protect Atterson? Pertinacious fellow, Leake.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But that angle failed too? Because you’ve gone off Atterson?’

  Cherry looked uncomfortable: her fat little body wriggled. ‘Well, it’s not as simple as that. We’ve been stringing him along, I know, but—oh, you’d never understand.’

  ‘You’ve come to realise Atterson is a hollow man, but you still don’t want to see him prosecuted for this drug racket?’

  Silently Cherry nodded agreement.

  ‘Sort of perverted sense of loyalty? You’d pay up for him because it’d make your conscience easier about giving him the pay-off?’

  ‘I suppose so. I know he’s a shit. But he’s sort of pathetic, underneath.’

  ‘Oh, God,’ muttered Nigel to himself, ‘when will they ever learn?’—and startled Cherry by bursting into the plangent song with that refrain as they approached the drive gate.

  CHAPTER 9

  * * *

  The Beleaguered Café

  DECEMBER 31–JANUARY 1

  ON MONDAY MORNING Professor Alfred Wragby woke up soon after seven. The room was dark: his eyes went automatically in the direction of Lucy’s bedroom door, as if she had called out to him from a nightmare. He was wryly conscious that for the last two nights, in spite of everything, he had had almost his full usual quota of sleep. He ran over a mathematical problem in his mind, as a pianist might play scales to limber up his fingers: then he addressed himself to the graver problem.

  Why had he not received the instructions which the kidnappers had told him two mornings ago he would be getting? Perhaps they were afraid of telephoning again.

  But it seemed more likely that they had dropped their attempt to secure his knowledge; and they would not do that unless they had lost their bargaining counter—unless Lucy was dead.

  Wragby’s heart began to ache, with the torturing, throbbing persistence of an abscessed tooth. Suppose they had carried out their threats to hurt Lucy, and gone too far and killed her? He remembered giving her a rather pompous lecture once on facing the facts: he’d better instruct himself on that subject now. He was grievously aware how the intellectual demands and discipline of his work had too often taken him away from Lucy, prevented him from giving the child the fatherly attention which was her due. It was the kind of vain regret one feels for one’s failures towards a loved person now dead.

  It was little consolation to know that his work must be the most important thing in his life: that is no excuse for neglecting the living. Face the facts.

  Elena stirred at his side. He must do more to support her through this terrible ordeal: she had suffered far worse things in the past than had ever befallen him, and she had no work to distract her mind now. In sleep, her hand came out and grasped his. He recalled the first time he had seen Elena, and how her likeness to his first wife had made his heart miss a beat. What could he do for her? She had seemed more cheerful yesterday evening, but later she relapsed into the dumb misery which he could find no way of breaking through. Such contact as they had now was a physical one only.

  Wragby’s feelings of helplessness was increased by their present situation, snowed up in the Guest House with little to do except eat, talk to their fellow guests—a pretty odd lot anyway—and tramp along the deep lanes. They were living in a limbo on the very edge of hell …

  At seven o’clock this morning, Jim’s wife put a packet of sandwiches into the pocket of his great-coat. As she did so, her hand encountered a crumpled ball of paper, which she extracted.

  ‘What’s this, Jim? Someone written ee a love-letter?’

  ‘Dunno. Oh, kid up at Smugglers’ threw it to me. Out of window. Paper dart, see?’

  ‘It’s got writing on it. “Chapter Two, Where am I?”.’

  ‘Evan bin writing a story, looks like.’

  ‘Paper dart! Paper dart! Give it I!’ yelled their little boy, Ernie.

  Jim folded the paper into the lines marked on its surface, and threw it at Ernie, who hurled it back. The dart struck his elder sister, Sue, who was just coming into the kitchen.

  ‘Give over now, do,’ said Jim’s wife. ‘Time your dad was up to the farm. Give him a kiss, you two.’

  The dart lay on the floor, where it had fallen, while the two children ate their porridge. Through the window they could see snow falling again in the little village street of Eggarswell as their father tramped off to work in his Army great-coat and red knitted hat …

  Justin Leake turned in bed, wincing at the bruises Lance Atterson had inflicted, looked at his watch, switched on the transistor set to hear the regional weather news. It was unpromising. No break in the weather. The section of the London road between Belcaster and Longport had been cleared by snow-ploughs, but was still blocked farther west by a ten-foot drift. Whether or not, in view of recent developments, it was worth staying on here, apart from police surveillance, it would be physically impossible to get out of the valley at all yet. Justin Leake, a townsman born and bred, cursed at the uncouthness, the unco-operativeness of nature—and of that bloody little whore, Cherry. Then his mind, like a spider darting over a web, moved to another part of his design …

  Nigel Strangeways sat up in bed, thinking. No suspicious evidence had been found in Leake’s room last night. Well, he’d hardly have left it lying about for the police to find. Nigel meditated for a little on the visit he had paid last night to the shed at the back where the proprietor of the Guest House kept a carpenter’s bench and tools. Then his mind turned to Lance Atterson: perhaps he should have paid more attention to this preposterous and unlikeable individual: a person who trafficked in drugs would be easy meat for the other side. Atterson could have given them the tip-off in Belcaster that morning; but how could he have obtained the information? A wire laid from the Wragbys’ room into Leake’s could have been protracted out of the door, under the passage carpet, into Atterson’s room; but surely Leake would have seen it. And whose was the voice the Admiral’s wife had heard in Leake’s room that morning, if it wasn’t Elena’s over the bug? And if, as Leake claimed, he’d had the transistor set on, and if the wire led into Atterson’s room,
Cherry must have known there was a speaker operating there, and concealed the knowledge to protect her lover …

  At nine o’clock in the nursery room at the back of Smugglers’ Cottage, Lucy was trying to eat her breakfast. She could not be sure what day it was, but she thought it was Monday. Uncle Paul had spent some time with her yesterday; talking and playing draughts—a game at which he lost his temper rather easily for a grown-up. The rest of the day she had been alone. There didn’t seem much point in going on with the story of Cinders, for the dreariness of her own existence blanketed her imagination from any more fictitious adventures in which Cinders might be involved. Lucy had little hope that the paper dart she had thrown yesterday—two days, two weeks ago?—could reach its destination.

  If she was not to be rescued, she must escape. She had given much thought to this yesterday. Being a sensible child, she knew she must find some boots and her anorak, or some sort of overcoat, to wear over her boy’s clothes, or she would freeze to death in the snow. The farm was only a hundred yards away; but its occupants might be on the side of her captors—she would not risk going there for help: which meant she must creep out of the cottage and hurry past the farm in the dark. And, if she succeeded, the nearest village might be miles away.

  After supper last night, however, Lucy’s problem was solved for her. When Uncle Paul took away her tray, she did not hear the key turning in the lock outside. She crept to the door and opened it, stood listening at the head of the stairs. Now would be an opportunity to reconnoitre the ground floor and find the quickest way of slipping out, when she was properly equipped to escape: she might even find her anorak and Wellingtons down there. But, before she could move, Lucy heard the woman Annie’s voice saying, ‘He’s coming himself,’ and Uncle Paul’s voice in reply, ‘How the hell does he think he’s going to get here? Fly?’

  Lucy slid back into her room. It was the most wonderful moment. Her papa was coming—she had not the least doubt who the ‘he’ was—to rescue her. Perhaps they’d make him pay a ransom. Lucy hoped he’d be able to afford it. But he was coming at last. She undressed, got into bed, and was soon asleep, a smile on her face.

  Now, this morning, she could hardly eat her breakfast for the excitement of it. The snow outside was thick as ever. Papa would fetch her, and she’d have hours, days of tobogganing after all …

  Half a mile away, Jim’s wife left the cottage in Eggarswell to do some shopping, with strict instructions to her children not to go near the oil stove. Presently Ernie picked up the paper dart, and asked his sister to read him what was written on it. Smoothing out the paper, she did this, then happening to turn it over saw that there was writing on the back too.

  ‘Hey, Ern, it says to post this to Professor Wragby, F.R.S.’

  ‘What’s F.R.S.?’

  ‘Dunno. Gives his address and all. Over to Downcombe.’

  ‘So what? ’Taint nothing to do with we.’

  ‘Says it’s a scientific experiment.’

  ‘Jees! Dropped from space like?’

  ‘Says there’ll be a reward. Five pounds.’

  ‘Get on!’

  ‘Shall us then?’

  ‘It’s an April Fool, Sue.’

  ‘April Fool yourself. We’re in December.’

  ‘Mum says we’re not to go out.’

  ‘Five quid, Ern. Think of it. You could buy that tommy-gun we saw in Longport.’

  ‘And billions of bubble-gum packets. Go on then, pinch one of Mum’s stamps. I dare you.’

  Sue opened a drawer, took an envelope and copied out the address on it. Then she folded the paper dart and sealed it up in the envelope.

  ‘Cor! Mum won’t half wallop you, pinching one of her stamps,’ said Ernie in awed tones.

  ‘I don’t care. I’ll just slip round and post it. Shan’t be a mo …’

  The postman did not reach the Guest House till 10.50 this Monday morning. Wragby had conceived it possible that X, knowing the police would intercept communications, might try to contact him by post, using some name on the envelope which he would cotton on to himself, but which would arouse no suspicion in the police. Now, as he passed the hall table, he saw an envelope addressed to one of his former colleagues in the Establishment, now dead. Assuring himself he was alone, Wragby opened the letter. It told him to go this evening to the Bellevue Café on the Belcaster-Longport road, and await instructions. A map reference was given—not that he needed it, for he knew the place, a pull-up for lorry-drivers a few hundred yards from where one of the roads out of the valley climbed steeply to join the main London highway. The letter told him it was his last chance—and Lucy’s.

  Entering the drawing-room, he threw the crumpled flimsy on the fire, aware of Mrs ffrench-Sullivan’s eyes fixed inquisitively upon him. A gust of wind blew the sweet smell of wood-smoke into the room. Outside, it was snowing, not heavily but steadily, the flakes dancing and dithering against the screen of trees beyond the lawn.

  ‘No news, I suppose?’ asked the Admiral’s wife in a sick-room voice.

  ‘Afraid not,’ he answered curtly. The woman meant to be sympathetic, no doubt, but he could not stand being treated as an invalid.

  ‘You mustn’t lose hope,’ she persisted.

  ‘I’ll endeavour not to, ma’am.’

  ‘How is Mrs Wragby today?’

  ‘She had a bad attack of migraine in the night. I’m keeping her in bed.’

  ‘I have some Veganin, if——’

  ‘No. I shall go into Belcaster and get a special prescription she has, in case the migraine recurs.’

  Alfred Wragby left the room, Mrs ffrench-Sullivan gazing after him in an affronted way. ‘He may be a great scientist, and I’m sure we’re all very sorry for him; but the man’s a boor,’ she remarked to the company at large.

  Going into the little writing-room, Wragby set down in his clear, decisive hand certain facts which he desired, if things went wrong, to be known, addressed the envelope to the Chief of his Establishment, and enclosed it in an envelope to his solicitors with a covering note that the document should be forwarded in the event of his death or disappearance.

  He sat on a little longer. Now that there was a prospect of action before him, his mind was working again with its usual speed and clarity: he felt almost exhilarated.

  The Bellevue Café was barely two miles from Downcombe. He would do best to go there on foot, for he must throw off the police and there was always a danger that his car would be recognised. The Admiral’s wife would no doubt tell others of his expressed intention to go into Belcaster and get the special drug for his wife. It would gain time, when he was missed, if the police searched in that direction first. But Wragby did not know to what extent he himself was under surveillance. Would he be allowed to leave Downcombe, by car or on foot, unaccompanied?

  ‘I’m fed up sitting about here,’ he said when he’d found Nigel. ‘Any reason why I shouldn’t drive into Belcaster? I want to get a prescription for Elena.’

  ‘Telephone it to Sparkes. He’ll bring it out when he comes this afternoon. Sorry.’

  So that was that. Wragby didn’t argue the toss. The authorities couldn’t afford to lose him too: here he was protected, but on the road to Belcaster anything might happen to a solitary driver.

  Wragby became aware of his companion’s pale blue eyes gazing fixedly at him.

  ‘Funny you’ve not heard from them. I’d have thought, if they’ve given up telephoning, they’d write to you.’

  ‘Perhaps they’re going to call on me in person.’

  ‘You’ve had no letter from them?’

  ‘No,’ the Professor dourly replied. ‘And if I had, the police would have read it first.’

  He went to the bedroom. Not made up, with her white hair and ravaged face, Elena looked like an old woman.

  ‘No news?’ she asked.

  ‘Nothing.’

  She walked listlessly into Lucy’s room, took up the doll from the dressing-table, set it down again. Wragby went
in, put his arms round her.

  ‘What is it?’ he said. ‘What is it, love? There’s something come between us.’

  ‘Are you surprised?’ she said harshly, disengaging herself.

  ‘Now, love, you aren’t still blaming yourself for Lucy?’

  ‘You do, Alfred—in your heart of hearts.’

  ‘That’s simply not true. You’re overwrought still. You——’

  ‘I’m a hideous, vile creature, and I hate myself,’ she burst out. ‘Lucy, your work, your first wife—they mean far more to you than I do. I’m jealous of them.’

  ‘That’s wild talk, my darling. Haven’t I shown you how much I——’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ She smiled palely. ‘We mustn’t shout at each other in Lucy’s room. D’you remember how she hated it when we quarrelled?’

  ‘Don’t talk as if she’s dead.’

  ‘But you believe it. Don’t you, my poor Alfred?’

  ‘I shall soon know—one way or the other,’ he found himself grimly saying.

  Elena stood away, her tragic eyes searching his face. ‘I see,’ she said at last. ‘Have they? … You will be careful?’ She came into his arms now, her long fingers stroking his temples.

  ‘Would you despise me, Elena, if I gave them what they wanted?’

  ‘I would never despise you, my dear.’ She gazed at him enigmatically. ‘We must all do what we must—for what we love most …’

  Professor Wragby was not missed till dinner-time. He had stolen out after dusk, two hours before, not using the drive but through a back door and the paddock behind the house. The snow soon filled in his footprints. He had no weapons, except for a heavy spanner in his overcoat pocket—and the lethal capsule tucked away where he had used to keep it during the most dangerous of his Special Operations during the war. What awaited him at the Bellevue Café, he had no idea: he would have to play it by ear, as his younger colleagues at the Establishment put it. Steadily uphill he plodded, snow falling fitfully now, the snowy lane unwinding ahead of him in the darkness like a bandage. For the first time since Lucy had been taken, he felt in command of things: it all depended upon him now, and he had made his decision—there were no complications left.