The Sad Variety Read online

  ‘Still, they might have warned me of it.’

  ‘Yes, perhaps they should. But even then, you couldn’t have stood over her night and day.’

  Wragby stared at him, unseeingly. After a silence, he asked, ‘What do they want, these chaps who——’

  ‘They want your last discovery.’

  ‘Yes. I knew that really, of course.’ He swallowed. ‘Would they give her back if they got it?’

  It was the question Nigel dreaded. He was saved from trying to answer it by the entrance of the village constable, whom the proprietor showed in. Nigel said to the latter, ‘Mr Chalmers, will you please let us know at once if any of your guests attempt to leave the house.’

  The man looked puzzled, but gave an acquiescent nod and went out.

  ‘Sorry, Constable. I’ll explain. This is Professor Wragby. My name’s Strangeways. The Professor’s little girl was taken away in a car, when she went to post the letters. She’d been down to post them about the same time every night since the Wragbys arrived here. The kidnappers could hardly have known this and made the plans they did, unless they had an accomplice in the Guest House to give them the information. Now, what are County Headquarters doing?’

  The constable, fortunately, was not one of the notebook-ruffling, pencil-licking school. Catching the urgency of Wragby’s voice on the telephone, he had jumped into action with commendable promptness. County Headquarters had been alerted first. In the fifteen minutes before the Superintendent could take action, the kidnapper’s car would not have got more than twelve miles from Downcombe on these treacherous, winding roads. Blocks were set up on the roads leading out of the valley, at distances of twenty miles from Downcombe: an outer cordon was being formed too. Every car would be stopped at the road blocks and examined. Mobile police within a radius of fifty miles were alerted, railway stations informed; a description of Lucy was being telephoned to every police station in this part of England, and the regional B.B.C. service would broadcast it in the next news bulletin.

  ‘Well, that sounds like a good job,’ said Wragby.

  ‘Oh, we’re not so sleepy in these parts as some do say,’ the young constable remarked. ‘Tom Oakes at the Lion, he’s organising a search party, just in case the little girl is wandering round here-abouts.’

  ‘No chance of that, I’m afraid,’ said Nigel.

  ‘I thought not, sir. After the Professor told me who you were and what had happened to you. But for that, I’d have had a job convincing the Superintendent. He’ll be here within the hour.’

  ‘You’ve done very well indeed. I suggest you go down to the end of the lane now. Keep people off the spot where the car was standing. There’ll be tyre-marks and footprints for the Super to examine. And take a look at the place where that bleeder hit me over the head. Maybe he left a visiting card there. The Professor will show you.’ Anything to give Wragby something to do: his expression of stony despair underlined Nigel’s own failure.

  Meanwhile, Clare was with Elena Wragby. When she knocked on the Wragbys’ door, Elena called out, ‘Lucy! Where have you been all this time?’

  Clare went in. By the light of the bedside lamp, Elena Wragby’s face looked almost distraught. ‘Oh, it’s you. What’s the matter? Is it Lucy?’ Her voice was vibrant with emotion. Actresses, thought Clare, cannot help playing up a dramatic moment, even when it’s no make-believe: she said,

  ‘I’m sorry, my dear.’

  Elena crossed the room to her in three magnificent strides. ‘Is she—has there been an accident?’

  Clare gripped her outstretched wrists. ‘No. She has not come back. Try to be calm. She has been taken away. Kidnapped.’

  ‘No! But that’s impossible.’ The great eyes blazed into Clare’s. ‘Little Lucy? Kidnapped? But why? We are not rich. I do not understand this.’ Horror broke slowly through incomprehension on Elena’s face. ‘Yes, you do mean it. Tell me—but how do you know this?’

  Clare told her what little she could. Elena had slumped down on the bed. In the shaded light, her face looked marmoreal now, petrified in grief. Niobe, thought Clare; Rachel weeping for her children, for they are not. Then the marble dissolved, the mouth began to tremble, the thin body was shaken by a storm of sobbing.

  ‘I’ll fetch your husband. He’s talking with Nigel. You mustn’t distress yourself too much. We’ll get her back.’

  Elena moved convulsively in her arms. ‘No, not yet. Stay with me! I can’t face him.’

  ‘But, my dear——’

  ‘If I hadn’t sent her to post the letters, she’d never—I wanted her to be independent. An only child can so easily—— Oh, I don’t know what I’m saying. I’m distracted. It hurts so. She was like my own child.’ The tear-stained face looked up wildly. ‘You never had one, did you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I did. One of my own. They killed it. And now they’ve taken Lucy too.’

  That night, out of a windless sky, it snowed heavily, silently, obliterating tracks, overlaying and penetrating—it seemed—even men’s sleep, so that when they awoke next morning they had a sense, before they looked out of the window, that some change had come about.

  Lucy Wragby, under the influence of the drug, drowsed till ten o’clock. When she came half awake, her head felt queer—the way it had felt during a bad attack of ’flu, like a shell stuffed with cotton-wool, unnaturally light, but congested. Vaguely she knew there was something she did not want to remember, and tried to sleep again. This did not work for long. Climbing heavily out of bed, she drew the curtains. Not till then did she realise that she was not in her own room at the Guest House. The lower half of the window was barred, like a nursery’s. It was light outside—dazzling light, for through the bars she could see nothing but a wall of white and the sky above it. With a rush, last night’s happenings flooded into her mind: the snowy lane, the pillar box, the car, the woman, the stab in her arm, the paraffin-smelling rug.

  She looked down at her forearm, and saw that she was wearing pyjamas, not her usual nightdress.

  ‘I am Lucy Wragby,’ she heard herself saying. ‘I am Lucy Wragby.’ As though there were some doubt about it.

  When in perplexity, she had a habit of putting one of her long, dark tresses in her mouth and chewing it. Automatically her hand went to the hair that should have been hanging down her back. There was no hair. Lucy felt at her head. It seemed to be covered with bristle.

  ‘But I am Lucy Wragby.’

  Her voice was frightened and tearful now. Looking wildly round the room, she saw a mirror on a dressing-table. She stumbled over to it. It was the worst moment in her life: far the worst. The face that looked at her out of the mirror was not her own. It was a boy’s face, with short, blond hair and blond eyebrows. The face gazed at her in horror, opened its mouth, began to howl.

  Lucy rushed back to the bed, drew the bedclothes over her head, and sobbed as if her heart would break …

  Downstairs at Smugglers’ Cottage, Annie Stott was preparing some food to take up to the child, who presumably had not awoken yet or she’d have started bawling. Everything had been carried out correctly so far. Last night they had got back without misadventure, and informed Comrade Petrov over the short-wave transmitter. The next move would be his. Annie had then shorn off Lucy’s long tresses and dyed what hair was left, burning the rest in the incinerator. She went into the living-room, put some more wood on the fire. Outside, the snow covered everything. She noticed that it was nearly half-way up to Paul Cunningham’s knees, as he walked away down the track with Evan to get milk at the farm. It might be awkward if further snowfalls took place; but the sky seemed clear enough just now. Annie gazed out resentfully at the panorama of rolling, white-clad hills. She disliked the countryside: she had been bored by Evan and irritated by Paul for nearly a week already.

  At the farm, while his milk-pail was being filled and Evan stared in a lack-lustre manner at the hens that scrabbled in the yard, Paul Cunningham was conversing with Mr Thwaite.

 
‘Going to be any more of this?’

  ‘Shouldn’t be surprised,’ said the farmer. ‘Have you got chains for your car? You may need them.’

  ‘I’m afraid not.’

  ‘I believe I’ve got a spare set kicking around somewhere.’

  ‘That’s very kind of you.’

  ‘Staying on much longer?’

  ‘Well, we ought to get back to London on Saturday. But—’ Paul lowered his voice—‘young Evan doesn’t seem awfully fit. Hope he’s not sickening for anything. He’s a bit delicate, you know. I wouldn’t like to risk his travelling if——’

  ‘Lucky you’ve got a doctor in the house.’

  ‘What? Oh yes, my sister’s very capable. Gave up her practice when she got married, but——’

  ‘Here’s your milk, then.’

  Paul collected Evan and walked back, angrily conscious of having babbled in an unconvincing way to cover up a blunder. Still, he’d established the main point—always supposing Thwaite’s bucolic mind was capable of taking it in …

  Lucy had the resilience of a child who has always been given love and security. Moreover, she possessed the enviable faculty of entering into the spirit of any dramatic event in which she was involved. Her father, whom she hero-worshipped, had once said to her, ‘Never be afraid of the truth. Face facts. Take them to the light and look at them. If you learn to accept them—especially the nasty ones—for what they are, you’ve won half the battle.’

  She could understand this better now than when he’d said it. She sat up in bed. The facts were that she’d been kidnapped, and was a prisoner in an unknown house. Or was she? Lucy leapt out of bed, turned the door handle: the door was locked. Nor could she squeeze through the top of the window above the bars. Her captors had cut and dyed her hair. Why? So that if a policeman came to the house, he would not recognise in her the little girl whose disappearance would no doubt be in the papers and the broadcast news. How absurd to have been frightened by that altered face in the mirror. Lucy fingered the mastoid-operation scar under her ear, and pulling up the pyjama top inspected the mole on the left of her belly-button: they proved she was Lucy Wragby.

  Whoever her captors were, they could not be like the kidnappers one saw on the telly. She was not incarcerated in a mouldering attic, compelled to lie on a heap of filthy rags while unshaven, greasy men played cards in one corner, uttering oaths and fingering their revolvers. She was in a neat, bare room: bright-patterned curtains: floor well polished: plenty of warm bedclothes. A dado of ducks and geese along the wall suggested the room was once a nursery. There were some tattered children’s books on a shelf, and a cupboard which proved, on investigation, to hold a few toys. The only peculiar thing was that the pages on which the owner’s names had been written were torn out of every book.

  Lucy became aware of hunger, and even more of thirst. And at the same time she was conscious of a creeping dread. She did not want to see that beastly woman who had dragged her into the car. Never again. She struggled with this fear for ten minutes. Face facts. The filthy old cow is a fact. All right, face her. Lucy could almost hear her father saying it. There were sounds of movement downstairs. Lucy rattled the door-knob and called out, first in a dry little croak, then louder. She jumped back into bed. Lay there, trembling. Perhaps it wouldn’t be the same woman.

  But it was. Horrid mustardy-yellow face, over a pink jumper which clashed with it like an unlovely discord: skirt bagging at the knees. The woman laid a tray on Lucy’s bed—it held two boiled eggs, some bread and butter, and a mug of milk—then as silently moved towards the door. She must be a deaf mute, thought Lucy, drawing upon her knowledge of sensational fiction. No, of course she isn’t, you nit—she asked you the way to Longport.

  ‘Just a minute,’ said the little girl timidly.

  The woman hesitated. ‘Yes?’

  ‘Suppose I want to go to the lavatory?’ It was not at all what Lucy had meant to say.

  ‘There’s a basin behind that curtain, and a pot under the bed.’

  ‘But I—I can’t do everything in the pot.’

  ‘You can, and you must.’

  The woman’s pebbly eyes looked past Lucy’s shoulder.

  ‘What’s your name?’ asked Lucy.

  ‘You can call me Annie. Aunt Annie.’

  ‘But you’re not my aunt.’

  ‘And your name is Evan. Don’t forget it.’

  Lucy was convinced she had a lunatic to deal with. A fantasy began to bubble up in her mind—about a woman who had lost a boy called Evan and gone potty and stolen a little girl to replace him.

  ‘Well, don’t you want your breakfast?’ said the loopy woman.

  Lucy drank some of the milk and started on an egg.

  ‘I suppose you’ve stolen me,’ she said in a humouring tone.

  ‘You can suppose what you like.’

  ‘Where is this house?’

  Aunt Annie became, for her, quite garrulous. ‘It’s my cottage in Buckinghamshire. About thirty miles from London. We brought you a long way last night. You slept all the way.’

  ‘How long shall I be staying here?’

  ‘That depends.’

  ‘This is a very nice egg.’ It annoyed Lucy that she could not catch the woman’s eyes, but that—she supposed—is how a madwoman behaves.

  ‘When you’ve finished breakfast, put on these clothes. They should fit you.’ The woman took out from the chest of drawers a boy’s jersey, short trousers, stockings, pants and vest. They all looked a bit tatty, thought Lucy: belonged to the poor child she lost, I expect. The woman departed, locking the door behind her. Lucy opened the second egg, and while she ate it addressed her mind to radical changes in her new serial. Perhaps she should scrap the chapters already written and start again: she had a real adventure to write about now. She thought of the exercise book on her bedside table at the Guest House. Papa and Elena would be worrying about her. Poor darling Papa. Lucy found the spoonfuls of egg difficult to swallow now. A feeling of desolation crept over her …

  ‘How is she?’ asked Paul Cunningham downstairs.

  ‘Awake. Eating her breakfast. She’s a queer little girl, I must say.’

  ‘How d’you mean, queer?’

  ‘Takes it all very calmly,’ Annie Stott replied.

  ‘You’d prefer her to be in hysterics?’

  Annie curled her thin mouth so that it resembled the rind of some bitter fruit. She glanced at her companion. There was something faun-like about his face and the shape of his head, giving him a faint likeness to a certain Russian dancer who had recently run out on his ballet company and gone over to the capitalists: it did not endear him any the more to Annie.

  ‘Poor kid,’ he said.

  ‘If you’re so sorry for her,’ snapped Annie, ‘you can go and be her nursemaid.’

  ‘Certainly not,’ he coldly replied. ‘The arrangement was that she should set eyes on no one but you. If she sees me, she might meet me again and recognise me. Oh, I forgot, of course you’re going to cut her throat when all this is over.’

  ‘Don’t be a fool. The child believes she is in Buckinghamshire. So long as she has nothing to give away about us afterwards——’

  ‘About me, you mean. You’ll be quite safe, sunning yourself in the salubrious Crimea.’

  ‘—violence would be quite incorrect. When I’ve passed on the information and it has been checked, I’ll give the child another shot in the arm and you can drive her away and dump her wherever you like. You’ve nothing to get in a panic about,’ the woman added contemptuously.

  ‘I wouldn’t have, if I could believe a word you people say.’

  ‘Now what’s the matter?’

  ‘You know perfectly well.’ Paul’s voice became a little shrill. ‘I don’t set myself up as a model of the virtues, but at least I don’t pretend that whatever suits my book is the truth, like you and your bloody Party do.’

  ‘There’s no need to shout at me. Where’s Evan?’

  ‘Digging the
snow away from the garage doors. Thwaite says he’ll lend me some chains.’

  ‘Well, you’d better go and put them on soon. My appointment is for midday.’

  ‘Don’t get caught, my dear sister. I’ll need the car this evening to take Evan to the station. I say, aren’t you nervous about putting your hand into the hornet’s nest? Belcaster’ll be swarming with police today.’

  ‘Not if Wragby follows his instructions.’

  ‘But if he doesn’t?’

  ‘So much the worse for him.’

  ‘And for you.’

  ‘Oh no. I shall be informed if he proposes to try any tricks.’

  ‘Do you think he will?’

  ‘Search me. He might, once. Not a second time. Not after we’ve turned on the heat.’

  ‘You mean, you’ll saw off one of Lucy’s fingers and send it to him by post?’ asked Paul flippantly. Then, as the woman made no answer, he added in an appalled voice, ‘Good God, I believe you would.’

  ‘You should bring your reading up to date,’ said Annie. ‘What d’you suppose we have that tape-recorder for?’

  ‘I thought you were going to practise some dreary political speeches.’

  Annie’s rejoinder was stopped by a banging on the floor somewhere overhead. ‘Are you sure Evan’s outside? He mustn’t know there’s anyone but us in the house.’

  ‘Don’t panic, comrade.’ Paul went to the window and looked out sideways. ‘Yes, there he is. Shovelling madly away.’

  When Annie came downstairs, Paul asked, ‘What does she want?’

  ‘Paper and pencil.’

  ‘Going to write a letter home?’

  ‘No. She wants to write a story. It’ll keep her mind occupied. Where’s the foolscap you’re supposed to be writing your book on?’

  Paul collected some sheets and a pencil off the desk in the corner. As Annie ran upstairs again, there was the sound of a tractor. Paul went out. Farmer Thwaite was standing on the machine’s platform, one of his men driving. He held out a set of rusty chains. ‘Can you fit these, or would you like Jim here to help?’

  ‘That’s tremendously kind of you. If you could spare him——’