The Sad Variety Page 15

  CHAPTER 10

  * * *

  Little Boy Found

  DECEMBER 31

  WHILE HER FATHER was plodding up the lane towards the Bellevue Café, Lucy waited for the moment to escape. This afternoon her lovely hope had been smashed to pieces. When Annie Stott came in with the tea-tray, Lucy, bubbling with excitement, had said: ‘Will he come today?’

  ‘Will who come?’

  ‘My papa, of course.’

  ‘He’s not coming.’

  Lucy’s mouth began to quiver. ‘But I heard you say “He’s coming himself”.’

  ‘Oh. That’s a friend of ours.’ The woman gazed at her bleakly. ‘How did you hear this?’

  ‘I—well, I was at the top of the stairs, and——’

  ‘You’re very naughty. You’re not allowed to leave this room, you know that perfectly well. If you do it again, you’ll be beaten.’

  It was a double blow. Her father was not coming, and now they’d make sure to keep the door locked. For a while Lucy cried, heart-broken. Then exhausted with crying, she began to think of escape again.

  The heroines of adventure stories often managed to soften the heart of one of their captors. No use trying loopy Annie—she was as hard as the batch of rock-cakes Lucy had cooked once, and nearly broken a tooth on. Uncle Paul? He was different, much nicer to her; but instinct told the child she could not trust him. There was something slimy about him, she thought—you couldn’t get a grip on him: one moment he’d be smiling and joking, and the next he’d withdraw himself, his eyes went cold and uninterested, and he reminded Lucy of the princess with a splinter of ice in her heart.

  In adventure stories the prisoner filed through the bars on his window, or dug a tunnel through the floor. Such activities were not in her power. Her only way out was the door, and the door was locked. Why didn’t they teach you something useful at school, like how to pick a lock? She grinned to herself, thinking of the consternation there’d be if her captors found the room empty when they’d carefully locked her in it. Stinking Annie would get in a fearful bate. But——

  But, why not? Another time-honoured device of escape fiction shot into her head. Why on earth didn’t you try it before, you steaming nit? she reproached herself; and remembering the snow outside, deep and crisp and even, started undressing, put on her pyjamas, then the underclothes, then the boy’s shorts and jersey on top of them. There’d be no time to find a pair of Wellingtons—she’d have to make do with the walking shoes they’d given her, though they were at least a size too big. But she’d better string them round her neck, and go down the stairs in stockinged feet. If the idea worked at all. She waited, sweltering.

  When Paul came up half an hour later with cocoa and biscuits, he found the room in darkness. He had been drinking a lot recently, to dispel the shadows that were closing in on him, and his reactions had slowed. He put the tray down on the bed, felt a small body beneath the clothes (the child must have gone to sleep), and fumbled for the light switch: in the course of which proceedings Lucy slipped out from behind the door where she’d hidden, quietly locked it, and made for the satirs.

  Before she could reach the front door, there was a frantic yelling and banging from above. Lucy slipped into the nearest refuge—a lavatory—as Annie rushed out of the sitting-room. Hearing Annie’s footsteps pounding upstairs, Lucy slid out into the hall and through the front door, turned right and raced away as fast as she could through the snow. No time to put on the shoes yet. She had only got thirty yards away when she heard the sounds of pursuit.

  Silly fool, she said to herself, why didn’t you take the bedroom- door key away when you locked it? Then you’d only have had one of them after you.

  The track glimmered ahead of her, the way to freedom. Panting and whimpering, Lucy floundered on. It was a game no longer, and there seemed nowhere to hide; she had left the protective bulk of the garage behind her. The only hope now was the farm. If they were enemies there too, she’d be finished. A stockinged foot slipped on an ice-hard rut made by a tractor, and Lucy fell to the side of the track. As she lay there winded, a figure hurried past her in the darkness. It was Annie, and she was calling in a low, urgent voice, ‘Evan! Where are you? Come here at once!’

  When Annie had disappeared, the child got to her feet, and gave a gasp of pain: she had turned her ankle. Behind her, she heard Paul searching around the garage and out-buildings of the cottage. Setting her teeth, Lucy limped towards the light of a farmhouse window, got to the door. No bell. She began hammering on the knocker. Mr Thwaite opened the door.

  ‘Why, Evan, what’re you doing out here, son?’

  Sobbing, Lucy ducked under his arm into the house, found herself in a kitchen, dazzling bright after the darkness outside.

  ‘I’m not Evan! Help me! I——’

  ‘There, there, my little chap,’ crooned the farmer’s wife. ‘Sit ee down a while. You’re not well.’

  ‘They’ve kidnapped me! Oh, you must believe——’

  At that moment there came a thunderous knocking. Annie Stott, who had heard the child banging the knocker, had turned back. Lucy was paralysed, like a rabbit before a stoat: her voice wouldn’t work any more. She threw herself into Mrs Thwaite’s arms, hiding her head.

  ‘Oh there he is,’ said Annie’s voice. ‘Evan, you’re really very naughty. Never mind, we’ll forget it.’ She lowered her voice. ‘The child’s delirious again, Mrs Thwaite.’

  ‘He said something about being kidnapped. My gracious, he is hot, though, isn’t he?’

  It was not surprising, with the weight of clothes Lucy wore, and the running away.

  ‘I must take him back to bed at once. I’m so sorry he’s given you this trouble.’

  ‘And the poor lamb’s feet, soaking wet,’ exclaimed Mrs Thwaite.

  ‘Ah, here you are, Paul. Will you carry Evan back?’

  Lucy began to kick and faintly scream; but Paul whisked her out while Annie explained that the child in high fever has this delusion of being kidnapped as a result of hearing the broadcast news about Professor Wragby’s daughter. Mr and Mrs Thwaite, though disturbed by the occurrence, had no suspicion—the substituting of one child for another had completely deceived them.

  Back in the nursery-bedroom prison, Lucy wept her heart out. She hardly heard Annie say, ‘I’ve lost patience with you, you wretched child. You’re very wicked. I shall give you the slipper,’ or Paul say, wresting the slipper from Annie’s hand, ‘You’ll do nothing of the sort. The child’s had enough. Anyway, I disapprove of corporal punishment …’

  At dusk, while Lucy was planning her escape, a snow-plough, its yellow Cyclops-eye winking, thrust its way over the crest of a hill above Longport. The driver congratulated himself on having only half a mile more to cover, then he could call it a day and stop off at the Kings Arms before going home to supper.

  It was bitterly cold in the exposed cabin of the snow-plough. He envied his mates following him in the sheltered truck, with nothing to do but tumble out from time to time and keep warm by digging bays where cars could pass one another in the channel he had cut.

  A continuous bow-wave of snow pushed whiskering and cascading out from the diagonal share. Lights sparkled up from Longport in the valley below. Suddenly there came a frenzied hooting from the truck. The snow-plough driver stopped, jumped out and ran back. The men in the truck had got out too. They were standing around a dark object embedded in the wall of snow which the plough had excavated from the drift and flung to one side of the road. …

  Superintendent Sparkes had turned up at the Guest House about tea-time, delivered the prescription to Mrs Wragby and was now closeted with Nigel. His men had searched the house and grounds for the bug and speaker, but fruitlessly: if Justin Leake had buried them somewhere, the signs of interment were covered over by the fresh falls of snow. So, for all the county police could discover, were the traces of Lucy. It was inconceivable that a child should have been kept alive all these days, with no hint of it reaching th
e neighbours and every house searched now by the police.

  ‘I’m afraid it looks as if we have to write her off,’ said Sparkes, a slow flush of anger coming to his cheeks. ‘I tell you, Mr Strangeways, I’ve had some failures in the Force but I’ve never felt so badly as I do about this one. It’s a bastard.’

  ‘Yes. I’m afraid you may be right. And that’s why the other side have not tried to get in touch with Wragby again.’

  ‘I wonder. Kidnappers have often kept the heat on after—look at the Lindbergh case——’

  ‘If only we knew where to turn the heat on, ourselves,’ said Nigel. ‘That deplorable type, Leake, for instance——’

  ‘I had another go at him. He’s not giving an inch. He knows we know he’s a blackmailer. We’re searching his office and house in London—not got enough on him yet to make a charge, in spite of Miss Cherry’s disclosures—can’t see her evidence standing up in court. Anyway, proving blackmail is one thing, proving conspiracy with foreign agents is another.’

  ‘Yes, and a successful blackmailer in his own right wouldn’t be awfully likely to get mixed up with them.’

  ‘Unless they’d rumbled him and threatened exposure.’

  ‘That’s true. Well, where do we go from here?’

  ‘I’d like to clear up some loose ends. Your notion about Lance Atterson. And the Admiral’s wife.’

  After a brief consultation, Cherry and Lance were summoned together. Sparkes had them sitting on hard chairs, well separated, on the other side of the table.

  ‘Now then, Atterson,’ he said, ‘I’ve wasted enough time on you already. You’re in an awkward situation. It’s known that you peddle drugs——’

  ‘That’s a lie! Who told you?’

  ‘Information received.’

  ‘You’ll get me stroppy if you start bullying, you bloody flatfoot.’

  ‘No lip from you, my bearded wonder, or I’ll take you to pieces.’

  ‘Big deal!’ jeered Lance, but he went pale.

  ‘I’m not interested at the moment in your filthy drug-racket—that’ll come later. You enjoy ruining adolescents. Right. Do you enjoy kidnapping children too? How low can you get?’

  ‘I simply don’t know what you’re talking about,’ stammered Lance.

  ‘It’s escaped your notice that a child has been kidnapped? Are you a moron, or don’t you care?’

  ‘It’s nothing to do with me,’ Lance sullenly replied.

  ‘Suppose I tell you that you listened in to a conversation between Professor Wragby and his wife on the morning of Friday last, and conveyed the gist of their conversation to the kidnappers?’

  ‘Well, suppose you do tell me?’

  Sparkes’s huge fist crashed on the table. ‘You admit it?’

  Lance wet his lips. ‘No.’

  ‘You fixed up a bug in the Wragbys’ room and a wire leading into yours.’

  ‘Balls to that.’

  ‘You were listening in just before 9 a.m.’

  ‘I wasn’t. I don’t dig this. You were with me, Cherry. Did you see me with my ear glued to some gadget——?’

  ‘No. But I couldn’t have anyway. I wasn’t in our room,’ said Cherry with her flattest intonation. ‘I was in Justin’s.’

  ‘You bloody little bitch!’

  ‘Shut UP!’ roared the Superintendent. ‘Now, Miss Cherry. I’m talking about the period between, say, eight forty-five and nine last Friday morning. You were not in the bedroom then?’

  ‘No, I started going down to breakfast, about ten to nine.’

  ‘“Started”?’

  ‘Yes. On the way I met Justin Leake and he asked me to come into his room. He wanted to talk about—well, you know what.’

  ‘Another attempt at blackmailing you and Mr Atterson?’

  ‘Yes. He was in a hurry for me to sign something.’

  ‘And how long were you there?’

  ‘Ten minutes maybe.’

  ‘So you were out of your own bedroom at the operative time. Atterson could have been listening in, unknown to you,’ said Sparkes triumphantly.

  The girl took her time about it. ‘I don’t think so. I don’t know about these concealed microphone things, but I suppose you’d need quite a bit of equipment. Well, we only brought one suitcase, and I unpacked it, and I didn’t see any bugs or wires or stuff.’

  So that was that. Sparkes couldn’t shake her, and the staff confirmed later that she and Lance had arrived with only one piece of luggage and a guitar. Of course, Lance could have fixed up the equipment—from an agent in Belcaster maybe—after they had arrived. But it was pretty well a blind alley, since Cherry swore that Lance had made no attempt to hustle her out of the bedroom at 8.45—and besides, how could he know that the Wragbys would be discussing plans just then.

  ‘You’re very quiet,’ said Sparkes when the pair had been dismissed.

  ‘I’m feeling sick. At my own thoughts. Comes of looking through a hole and seeing hell beneath.’ Nigel stopped abruptly, then muttered to himself. ‘Why? Why? Why?’

  Sparkes glanced at him sharply. ‘A hole?’

  ‘A small hole.’

  ‘Ah … Well, we’d best tidy up the remains.’

  ‘I suggest interviewing the Admiral and his wife together. Do you mind if I do the talking?’

  ‘It’s all yours. You’ll be more tactful, I’m sure,’ said Sparkes, a humorous gleam in his eye.

  Tact, however, was not needed, though patience was. Mrs ffrench-Sullivan appeared at her most voluble. She made it clear, if not quite in those words, how gratifying she and the Admiral found it to have a gentleman in charge of the investigation (here Sparkes winked covertly at Nigel). She proceeded to express at some length her indignation at the state of the country, when Red agents were allowed to run riot. It was all the result of the late Labour Government and that dreadful Canon Collins. Nigel was unable to stem the flow. Finally, the Admiral interposed gently, ‘I think they want to ask us some questions, Muriel dear.’ Nigel leapt into the momentary pause.

  ‘Yes. I would like you to tell us a little more about Mr Justin Leake.’

  ‘Odious man.’

  ‘About his attempt to blackmail you.’

  ‘I sent him away with a flea in his ear, believe me.’

  ‘May I have some more details? If you’d prefer to talk quite in private——’ Nigel glanced at the Admiral.

  ‘Oh no. My husband knows all about it now.’ A flush came into her over-powdered cheeks, turning them an unpleasant shade of mauve. But her eyes were bright—almost girlish for a moment.

  ‘Yes,’ said the Admiral. ‘The shop-lifting business. All my fault, really. Away in the Med. Mind rather occupied—convoys, y’know—didn’t think about rising prices at home, should have increased my wife’s allowance.’

  ‘Well,’ said Nigel after an appreciative pause, ‘that’s all over and done with. Justin Leake threatened to tell your husband about it?’

  ‘Yes. He really became quite offensive, and——’

  ‘Unless?’ Nigel broke in firmly.

  ‘“Unless”?’

  ‘What did he demand in return for keeping silent?’

  ‘Oh, I see. Well, it was perfectly absurd, you’d hardly credit it. He wanted me to persuade my husband to dig up scandal for him. As if Tom would lend himself to that sort of thing!’

  The Admiral coughed, gazing poker-faced at Nigel, a mischievous glint in his eye. ‘Hrrmph. Sort of gossip column. Y’know? Muck-raking amongst the landed gentry and so forth.’

  ‘Extraordinary,’ remarked Nigel, as if he hadn’t heard it all before. ‘Impudent fellow, asking you to be a blackmail scout. You were wise, ma’am, to inform your husband.’

  ‘And courageous,’ said the latter, smiling at his wife. ‘Took a bit of doing, y’know.’

  ‘There’s just one more thing, Mrs ffrench-Sullivan. Did Leake put pressure on you to do anything else—not openly perhaps, but hinting?’

  ‘I don’t quite——’

&
nbsp; ‘Did he ever insinuate that he’d like any information you could pick up about the Wragbys—or any of the other guests?’

  ‘Oh, no, there was nothing like that, I assure you.’

  ‘We’ve been a little worried about that telegram you sent to your friends in Belcaster.’

  ‘It was about the mink,’ put in the Admiral.

  ‘Why did you send a telegram, instead of phoning her direct?’

  Mrs ffrench-Sullivan bridled a little. ‘That’s surely my affair, Mr Strangeways, But I don’t mind telling you. Susie Hollins was away for two days—I didn’t know the address—and I didn’t want to discuss the matter over the telephone with her assistant, the girl’s a dreadful gossip.’

  Sparkes’s lips silently formed the words, ‘never thought of that one, did you?’ …

  The interview with Justin Leake that followed was little more satisfactory than Sparkes’s previous attempts to break him down. The Superintendent could neither intimidate nor wheedle him into any further admissions, except that he had talked a little with Cherry in his room before breakfast on Friday.

  ‘You were making another effort to tighten the screws?’

  ‘Was I?’

  ‘Don’t box clever with me!’ roared the Superintendent, smashing his fist down on the table. ‘You were hired by her guardian to find her and prevent her marrying Atterson. You found her, then you started to worm out what pickings there’d be for yourself. You tried to get her to sign a document—pay you for not giving her away to your employer, with a promise of more money when she came of age.’

  ‘That’s your interpretation,’ replied Leake equably. ‘The actual fact is that I was trying to persuade her to leave Atterson. I told her that, if she did so, I would keep quiet about this escapade.’