The Sad Variety Read online

  ‘What can I do?’ asked the boy in his gruff little voice. Then, greatly daring, ‘Could I go to the movies?’

  ‘I’m afraid not, dear. You see, in the country they only run in the evenings, and your train goes at 6.10.’

  ‘And then I go back to London, and see——’

  ‘Yes, Evan. But you mustn’t get over-excited about it.’

  ‘No, Dr Everley,’ Paul put in. ‘At all costs he mustn’t get over-excited.’ There was a rasp of bitterness in his voice which made Annie Stott raise her eyebrows. There was always the chance that Paul would go soft, but she had not expected it to show up so early in the proceedings.

  ‘Have another bun, Evan,’ she said.

  Tea at the Guest House was just over. Elena Wragby and her husband had gone upstairs to write letters. The rest of the party was assembled in the large panelled drawing-room, having jockeyed for positions near the log fire—a contest in which Mrs ffrench-Sullivan, Lance Atterson and Cherry had dead-heated.

  ‘Other people like to be warm too, Mr Atterson,’ the first-mentioned of these was remarking from her vantage point.

  ‘Sure, lady. It’s the universal yen of mankind. First gratified, the legends do say, by a sharp schemer called Prometheus.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ the lady replied with hauteur. She turned away in a marked manner to Cherry. ‘In my youth, young persons were always trained to give place to their elders.’

  ‘Oh, I sympathise with you madly,’ said Cherry in her flat drawl. ‘Personally, I feel older than the rocks on which I sit.’

  Justin Leake broke in, a nondescript-looking man, with the attentive but disabused expression of a journalist. ‘Which can hardly be true, Mrs Atterson. You look charmingly youthful. I mean that as a compliment.’

  ‘Like hell you do,’ muttered Lance, his teeth flashing white above his black beard.

  Mr Leake persisted. ‘I’m sure I’ve seen your face somewhere before. Could it have been in a photograph, now? In the Press?’

  ‘As the stranger said to the Egyptian, “The name escapes me, but the fez is familiar”,’ remarked Lance. There came a fizz of laughter from Lucy, who was lying on the carpet chalking a picture.

  ‘My husband and I had a most delightful stay in Egypt, just before the war. He was stationed at Alexandria,’ Mrs ffrench-Sullivan gave out.

  ‘Did you see any belly-dancing?’ inquired Cherry.

  ‘No, dear. I don’t think they had a ballet company there.’

  Lance Atterson turned up his eyes to heaven. ‘But you had lots of slaves?’

  ‘Servants. Certainly. The fuzzy-wuzzies are a spineless lot—look at that man Nasser; but I always say they make excellent servants. So attentive and good-mannered.’

  ‘Whereas in this country——?’

  ‘Exactly, Mr Leake. The lower classes are utterly ruined. It’s the Welfare State, of course. No one will go into service now. The Admiral and I had to move out of our beautiful house at Stoke Trenton simply because we could not find staff. I dare say it’s easier in London, Mrs Strangeways.’

  ‘Not really. And by the way, my name is Clare Massinger.’

  ‘A name to conjure with,’ said Mr Leake, covering Mrs ffrench-Sullivan’s confusion. ‘Miss Massinger is one of our leading sculptors. I greatly admired your last exhibition.’

  ‘Kind of you.’ Clare could not make out why this man gave her the creeps. It seemed cruel to snub so inoffensive a person. ‘What did you like best?’

  Mr Leake hesitated. ‘Well now, I can’t just remember the names of——’

  ‘Describe just one of the exhibits,’ put in Lance, smirking at him.

  ‘Well, there was that figure of a woman, a nude,’ Mr Leake began uneasily.

  ‘I don’t believe you ever went to the exhibition,’ announced Cherry in her penetrating monotone.

  The Admiral’s wife turned to Clare. ‘Do you make those modernistic things out of wire? I think they’re perfectly ridiculous myself. Can’t see any art about them.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But I suppose they’re fashionable—make a lot of money?’

  ‘Clare knocks up whopping great nudes. Stone or marble. Makes pots of money out of them,’ said Nigel.

  ‘What? Like those awful Epstein things?’ Mrs ffrench-Sullivan looked both avid and petulant.

  ‘Not very,’ said Clare.

  ‘I liked that “Virgin and Child” of his in Cavendish Square,’ lisped the Admiral. ‘But I find Henry Moore’s work more to my taste in general.’

  ‘Good for you,’ said Clare.

  ‘Those awful things with holes in them,’ murmured Lance.

  At this point, Professor Wragby entered the room and sat quietly in a corner. The Admiral’s wife changed the subject with a crash of gears.

  ‘What’s that badge you always wear, Mrs Atterson? A cycling club badge?’

  ‘No. C.N.D.’

  ‘C.N.D.?’

  ‘The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.’

  Mrs ffrench-Sullivan recoiled, as if Cherry had uttered some frightful indecency. ‘Really! D’you mean you sit about on wet pavements, and go for those dreadful marches? On Good Friday too! It’s absolutely blasphemous.’

  Cherry’s voice took on an unwonted animation. ‘Well, I think it’s absolutely blasphemous to make plans for killing millions of harmless people all over the world.’

  ‘You don’t want to defend your own country? Well, I must say!’

  ‘The atom bomb is not built for defence. It’s to attack other countries.’

  ‘You don’t believe in it as a deterrent?’ asked the Admiral gently.

  ‘You’d rather be Red than dead?’ said Justin Leake, scrutinising the girl with his fixed, attentive eyes.

  ‘Yes, of course. Who wouldn’t? At least, I’d rather be Red than be responsible for killing millions of innocent people, white, red, or black.’

  ‘Cherry’s a fanatic,’ said Atterson, smirking into his beard.

  ‘And I don’t believe it will deter—not for long,’ the girl stubbornly went on.

  ‘It does seem to have, so far, Cherry,’ suggested the Admiral, his faded blue eyes blinking at her in a kindly, worried way. She felt a certain sympathy there, and exclaimed:

  ‘I’m not trying to get at you, Admiral. Honestly I’m not. Soldiers and sailors—well, I mean they have a job to do, and——’

  ‘Ours not to reason why, my dear?’ he said, smiling at her.

  ‘Actually, you’re a pet. No, what makes me sick—it’s the bloody scientists who never seem to reason why.’

  ‘Hush, dumpling,’ said Lance. ‘Scientists present.’

  Lucy looked up apprehensively at her father; but she knew the signs when he was going to explode, and it was all right. The Professor strolled towards the fire, a tall man, broad-shouldered but stooping a little, reddish-haired.

  ‘Well, young woman, you’d better enlarge on that.’

  ‘Sorry, I didn’t know you were in the room.’

  ‘Never mind about that. I won’t bite you. Just carry on.’

  The girl clasped her fingers tightly together. ‘Well, then, I think you scientists just go blindly ahead with your theories and experiments and never stop to ask yourselves what the consequences will be—for mankind, I mean.’

  ‘You’re saying we should be, not only scientists, but prophets and moral censors of our own work.’

  Cherry flushed, but bravely hung on. ‘You don’t need to be a prophet to know that, when you make an atom bomb, you’re making an atom bomb and it’ll destroy a great many people.’

  ‘Nuclear fission was a neutral discovery. It could be used for destructive purposes and productive ones. Surely you can see that? Would you have suppressed the discovery of the internal combustion engine because motor cars can kill people?’ The Professor spoke unaggressively, but with a trace of pedagogic arrogance in his tone.

  Clare said, ‘So the scientist has no moral concern whatsoever wi
th the end-products of his activity?’

  ‘The pure scientist, no. The technologist, of course, has.’

  ‘As a pure scientist, you have no concern. All right. But you’re also a human being.’

  ‘As a man, I must be concerned, Miss Massinger. I agree. It can be a very real conflict.’

  ‘But why should there be any conflict about it?’ said Justin Leake. ‘Isn’t it a first principle of scientific morality that every new discovery should be published and made accessible to humanity as a whole?’

  ‘In theory, yes. In practice, if you broadcast a discovery, you merely enlarge the area of moral conflict . I mean, the authorities of every other nation, as well as your own, will have to decide what use to make of it.’

  ‘But some scientists have stuck to the principle,’ said Leake. ‘The ones the rest of us call traitors. Do you approve their conduct?’

  ‘That would depend on the individual. I wouldn’t approve if he handed over knowledge simply to further the ends of some other power-group against his own country’s.’

  ‘Not if, by doing so, he redressed the balance of power?’ asked Nigel. ‘Isn’t the whole argument for a deterrent based on both sides having an approximately equal force of it?’

  Alfred Wragby laughed, and threw up his hands. The Admiral’s wife was asleep in her chair.

  ‘This is a drag, all this yakking,’ remarked Lance Atterson, yawning. ‘Anyway, scientists aren’t all making bombs. What’s your line, Prof?’

  ‘I’m a mathematical physicist.’

  ‘Which explains everything,’ muttered Lance sourly. Nigel thought the young man was disgruntled by Cherry’s bold stand and his own failure to contribute anything.

  ‘We are luckier in the Services,’ said the Admiral. The horizon’s narrowed down to one’s duty, and that’s generally plain enough. Find the enemy, engage him, and destroy him, eh? No moral conflicts.’

  ‘Oh, you sailors are fearful escapists, aren’t you?’ said Cherry.

  The Admiral chuckled at her. ‘Ah, here’s Mrs Wragby. Come on, postman.’ He tapped Lucy with his foot.

  She sprang up, put on the blue anorak and sou’wester which Elena had brought down, and took the sheaf of letters from her hand. Most days since they’d arrived, Lucy had gone down the lane to catch the evening collection: she was an independent little girl, and liked going by herself.

  ‘Don’t dawdle, love,’ said the Professor. ‘It’s very cold outside.’

  After a few seconds Nigel unobtrusively followed Lucy and her stepmother into the hall. He heard Mrs Wragby’s footsteps as she ran rapidly upstairs, and the front door closing. It was sufficiently obvious to him that Lucy was the Professor’s weak spot. He could not imagine enemy agents, if they knew anything about Wragby—as presumably they would—making a frontal attempt: they’d know it’d be altogether too chancy. On the other hand, Nigel could not stand about over Lucy all day and night; the Department itself had discouraged any obvious surveillance. It was a thousand to one against an attempt upon Lucy being made, yet Nigel, unknown to the others—or so he believed—had kept her in sight every evening she went down to the pillar box.

  Tonight it was not so easy. The moon, in its last quarter, was obscured by heavy cloud. The snow played odd tricks with what little light there was. Nigel went farther down the hill than usual. At the bottom, a hundred yards from the Guest House, the lane joined the road at the western end of the village. At the T-junction stood a pillar box, very faintly illuminated from a window of the post office round the corner. Fifty yards away from it now, Nigel could see that the wedge of darkness opposite the pillar box was in fact a car with its lights switched off. He hastened his step: and the next instant a blow from a heavy spanner struck him on the back of the head, and the world disintegrated in a shower of vanishing sparks.

  Paul Cunningham rolled the body into the ditch, and hurried silently down the lane, congratulating himself on his idea of waiting in the shadows to choke off anyone who might follow Lucy from the Guest House. It was gratifying, too, to find that he had the nerve to clobber someone so efficiently.

  Annie Stott, sitting in the car, saw Lucy approach and leant out of the window. ‘Could you tell me which way I go for Longport?’ she asked, switching on the headlights to dazzle anyone who might approach along the village street, and getting out of the car.

  ‘You turn right here. But——’ Lucy had no time to say more. The woman snatched the letters from her hand, threw a rug over her head and bundled her into the back seat. Paul arrived that moment, took the letters from Annie’s outstretched hand and posted them, then jumped into the car, slammed the door and drove off along the Longport road.

  The whole business had not taken ten seconds. Lucy thrashed about on the back seat like a fish in a net, but she was firmly held and the rug stifled her cries. It smelt of paraffin. Paul said, over his shoulder, ‘Chap was following her. I bashed him.’

  ‘Did you?’ remarked Annie unimpressed. ‘Stop as soon as you get amongst those trees.’

  A quarter of a mile along the deserted road, Paul braked, the car slewing dangerously on the snowy surface. He took a filled hypodermic syringe from the glove-compartment, and got into the back seat.

  ‘Torch,’ said Annie.

  He switched it on. She parted the rug, seized Lucy’s arm, rolled up a sleeve of the anorak, and stuck in the needle, while Paul used his other hand to hold the child down.

  ‘Stop it! That hurt!’ screamed Lucy. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Taking you for a nice long ride,’ Paul said, a maniac excitement filling him.

  Annie Stott swathed Lucy in the rug again, Paul drove on, and soon the whimpering ceased.

  CHAPTER 3

  * * *

  Smugglers’ Cottage

  DECEMBER 28

  PROFESSOR WRAGBY PUT on his overcoat and went out. It was nearly ten minutes since Lucy had gone down to the pillar box: of course, she did dawdle sometimes, lost in one of those dreamy states which made her school teachers impatient; but a certain indefinable disquiet had seeped into the Professor’s mind. Ten minutes, and on such a cold night. Lucy was generally back in three or four.

  A groan came from the ditch to his right. He threw his torch beam in that direction. A dark, snow-splashed lump was lying there.

  ‘Good God, Strangeways, have you hurt yourself?’

  Nigel, with Wragby’s help, crawled out of the ditch, and on hands and knees vomited in the snow. It was agony to raise his head, but presently he did so.

  ‘Lucy,’ he gasped, and was seized with a fit of retching. He tried again. ‘Is she back yet?’

  ‘No. What the devil is all this?’

  ‘How long since she went out?’

  ‘About ten minutes. But——’

  ‘Telephone. Guest House. Afraid they’ve got her. Quick.’ Nigel struggled to his feet. As Wragby supported him up the hill, Nigel’s brain began to clear, and he told Lucy’s father what he had seen before he was knocked out.

  ‘Tell Chalmers. No one else. Ring the police on his private phone.’

  ‘Look here, you’ve had a nasty experience. Are you sure? She could have dropped in to see Emma.’

  ‘Somebody bashed me. That proves it.’ Nigel fumbled in his pockets, took out his wallet. ‘Not been robbed.’ He extracted his credentials. ‘Here. Read this before you telephone. And mention it to nobody except the police.’

  The light outside the front door gleamed on the Professor’s face. He looked more dazed than his companion.

  A minute later, Clare’s fingers were feeling the back of Nigel’s head.

  ‘I don’t think it’s broken,’ she said, trying to keep her voice steady.

  ‘Of course it isn’t,’ he replied irritably, ‘or I wouldn’t be talking to you. Just bathe it and put some antiseptic on. A nice bloody mess I’ve made of things. Where’s Wragby?’

  ‘He went to telephone.’

  After she’d bathed his head and wrapped a bandage roun
d it, Nigel asked urgently, ‘Clare darling, when I went out, did anyone follow me?’

  She took her time. ‘Well, we were in the drawing-room. Mrs Wragby had gone out with Lucy.’

  ‘Yes, she ran upstairs. And then?’

  ‘Mr Leake left the room soon after you.’

  ‘How soon?’

  ‘Oh, almost at once. And Cherry and Lance Atterson about the same time. Sort of general exodus. Only the Admiral and his wife and I were left. And now, what is all this about?’

  ‘Lucy’s been kidnapped.’

  ‘Oh, Nigel! No! How do you——?’

  Professor Wragby strode into the room. ‘The village bobby is coming up. And I rang the doctor too. How are you feeling?’

  ‘Bloody awful. And what the hell use is a village constable? We want County Headquarters,’ Nigel grumpily remarked.

  ‘He’s getting on to them straightaway.’ The Professor was keeping a stern control on himself. ‘Pity you didn’t get a better look at the car.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Not that I’m blaming you, Strangeways.’

  ‘You’d have a right to.’

  Wragby handed him the Department’s credentials. ‘Here’s this piece of bumf. Why the devil couldn’t they have let me know what was in their minds?’

  ‘Have you told your wife yet?’

  ‘No. Fact is, I’m funking it a bit. She’s devoted to Lucy. And I don’t want to alarm her until we know for certain—after all, Lucy may have dropped in at Emma’s house or somewhere else in the village.’

  ‘Would you mind if Clare broke it to her?’

  ‘Well, no, I’d be grateful, Miss Massinger. She’ll be worrying.’

  At a nod from Nigel, Clare slipped out of the room. He knew how well he could rely on her powers of observation.

  Wincing, he looked up at Alfred Wragby, who was gazing out of the window as if he might yet see a small figure in a blue anorak dancing back along the drive.

  ‘I simply can’t take it in yet. The dirty bastards!’ His slow Yorkshireman’s anger was beginning to flare. ‘If your people suspected this might happen——’

  ‘It seemed to them only the remotest possibility conceivable.’