Beggar Bride (36 page)

Every now and again the phone rings, everyone jumps, and Inspector Evans speaks in monosyllables to whoever is on the other end.

The same happened last time. But this is different, this is a little boy they know who might be in pain and suffering. Pandora imagines how she would feel if Gog or Magog were made off with. She bends and picks up her little dog, cuddles him, holds him tight in her arms, imagines how wretched poor Angela must be feeling.

‘You never discovered what happened to Lady Helena,’ cries Maudie Doubleday all of a sudden, when the silence around the circle grows almost too grave to penetrate. ‘So how d’you think you’re going to solve this one?’

‘Maudie, shush,’ says Nanny Barber. ‘This is quite nerve-racking enough without you…’

‘Do be quiet, Miss Doubleday,’ snaps Fabian, impatiently. ‘We can do without that sort of nonsense just now.’

But Maudie won’t be subdued. She goes on in baffled resentment. ‘If we knew who killed Helena we might find ourselves on the right track now. There’s a killer on the loose…’

‘Maudie, for heaven’s sake, do try and separate the plots of your macabre novels from the realities of life. This might be a country house, we might be called a gathering, but any other resemblance to that sinister world inside your head is pure fantasy, dear. Now please, stop it.’

Why will nobody take her seriously apart from Murphy O’Connell in London, who agreed with her at the time and therefore probably still does. Not the most savoury character, but at least the man’s got an open mind, unlike this miserable lot sitting here, listening to the ticking of the grandfather clock and solving absolutely nothing. Great lead-lined jardinières, some unfortunately ruined by Lady Elfrida’s canal art, filled with lupins and dahlias, roses and antirrhinums from the gardens send out scents that remind Maudie of church. Only the wild bursts of sweet peas, their colours flowing from pink to rose, from mauve to purple to blue manage to lighten the atmosphere with a languorous midsummer sweetness, to bring some flame of life into the deathly room.

By eight o’clock a sad red sun peeps bleakly over the horizon and the tempting smell of bacon from the dining-room reminds everyone that life must go on. When Martin the hall-boy shuffles in with the Sunday papers nobody thinks it strange. Lord Ormerod opens
The Times
without thinking and allows all the supplements, the magazines, the Culture, the Book pages and everything except the Sport to fall onto the flagged floor with various assorted slaps. It is left to Lady Elfrida automatically to pick them up. She jumps back in her chair as if she’s been stung.

‘By Jove. What’s this?’ Her blue eyes are frantically blinking at a piece of neatly folded paper. ‘It doesn’t look like the blasted paper bill, either.’

‘Give it to me,’ says Inspector Evans crisply. ‘It looks as if this is what we have been waiting for.’

It is a kidnap.
Their worst fears are confirmed.

A Polaroid snapshot of little Jacob staring wide-eyed into the camera sets everyone’s nerves on edge. The kidnappers are demanding a ransom of one-and-a-half million pounds. A fingerprint man pores over the cryptic note and dusts it with powder.

‘And they’re obviously using local connections, someone must have gone into the local newsagents…’

‘Dwyers,’ Lady Elfrida reminds them all unnecessarily, sipping a small cup of black coffee in the panelled dining room. Under the wretched circumstances it is the only thing she can get down.

‘Someone must have gone into Dwyers first thing this morning to insert this note,’ deduces Inspector Evans.

‘That’s bright of you,’ says Maudie, nibbling nothing but her nails. They sit sparsely round a darkly polished table designed to take twenty-six.

Inspector Evans ignores her and helps himself to more smoked back bacon. His manners are poor, like Lord Ormerod’s and he tucks his napkin into his collar and he scoops his tomatoes up with a spoon after burying them with pepper. Nobody else has much of an appetite. ‘We are questioning the delivery boys and girls now.’

‘There is only one, and he is a boy,’ says Lady Elfrida determined to be helpful. ‘He does the whole village and then comes up here. He opens up the shop on a Sunday, marks the papers and takes them round. He does the lot on his racing bicycle. His name is Moppy Blunt.’

‘Well,’ says Inspector Evans with patience, ‘in that case, my men will be interviewing Moppy Blunt.’

Getting the money together will not be a big problem, the only real handicap being that it is a Sunday and nobody’s around on a Sunday. Even so, Simon Chalmers and Ruth Hubbard are dealing with the matter now by phone and fax in Fabian’s study. Fabian curses the fact, understandable though it was, that Angela felt it necessary to call in the police in the first place. All in all, apart from sudden bursts of tears, his young wife is standing up to it all quite well. But the police can be such
bumbling fools, when all Fabian wants is the safe return of his son. He is determined to make quite sure that they leave him alone, no secret traps, when he makes the drop.

The kidnappers’ representative, an unnamed priest, an innocent pig-in-the-middle picked out at random, is due to telephone Hurleston at four o’clock this evening with important instructions.

‘I’m going out,’ says Honesty all of a sudden, pushing back her chair so it nearly falls over. ‘I can’t stay suffocating in here all day waiting like this, just waiting, it is driving me mad.’

‘Don’t leave the immediate area,’ warns Inspector Evans.

Honesty gives a patronising scowl and takes some sugar lumps from the silver dish.

‘And do take care, midear,’ puts in Elfrida, only able to munch on a Horlicks tablet. She can’t face her usual boiled egg and toast. ‘These blighters might still be hanging around.’

‘I doubt that,’ says Inspector Evans. ‘They’ll be well away from here by now if they’ve got any sense.’

Honesty needs to think. She saddles her black gelding, Conker, after giving him his sugar lump treats, and allows him to walk at his own pace through the summer fields, his warm hide mingling pleasantly with the scents of grasses and clover.

She needs to think and she needs to talk to Callister.

After Helena’s death, coming so suddenly after Callister learned of her pregnant state, Honesty froze when she heard there would be an inquest. So the police actually believed the woman could have been murdered and this idea, which had come to Honesty right away, took some grappling with.

Could Callister have taken the necessary steps to protect his investment?

But Helena was the one who provided the funds which enabled the travellers to survive—materials for the handiwork they sold in the local market, tools, refits and spare parts for their dodgy vehicles, vets’ bills for their dubious animals, saws and axes to enable them to gather fuel from the Hurleston Woods. In short, anything the travellers asked for, Helena provided, so why would Callister cut off his nose to spite his face? With Helena gone he would have to find another sponsor, although he knew full well, of course, that Honesty would happily step forward.

There were many folks willing and eager to martyr themselves for his cause.

There is no way of predicting him, and yes, Honesty needs every penny she can lay her hands on, supporting Callister and his loyal congregation proves surprisingly expensive.

But if he had done something terrible, if Callister had coldbloodedly murdered Helena, then why would he come forward and admit to finding her body?

When she’d approached him at the time he’d told her, with that quiet dignity that made her feel witless and a louse, ‘Why don’t you have more faith, Honesty? The power of prayer, the power of thought, the power of the woods and the skies and all the forces of all the gods, why would I ever have need to soil my hands?’ His big dark eyes directed their gaze into Honesty’s and seemed to light and flame with violent conviction. And he quoted from
The Prophet,
‘Trust the physician, and drink his remedy in silence and tranquillity…’

And then, ‘Why would I kill a woman who was bearing my child?’

His child? He and Helena? He smiled when he told her that, seemed to enjoy the telling. Honesty felt sick with heart-break and jealousy. She hated him then and she hated Helena, she was glad she was dead. So much for the precious plan, and how vulnerable she really was. If the child had turned out to be male Callister wouldn’t have needed her… he’d have had all the influence he wanted over Fabian’s second wife.

She had hung her head and turned meekly away, not knowing what to make of that answer, but she does understand that, for some mystical reason, Callister has the power to manipulate fate in his two strong hands. For he has studied ancient arts, medicines, pagan rites and beliefs dating almost as far back as when human life first began.

But now her doubts are back, bigger and more terrifying than ever, pounding to get in no matter how fast she urges the black horse on, demanding admission to her head.

She must see him, she must.

Could Callister, that incubus, half devil, half man, have grown tired of waiting, could he be so impatient he’s decided to take this terrible step instead, to collect his money and go, in exchange for the child?

In her mind she hears his contemptuous laugh, the laugh he will give when she confronts him in all his challenging and monumental beauty.

Could he be contemplating scuppering the plan, the plan they have depended on for so long,
could he be planning to go away and abandon her
?

Oh God, this is the effect he has, he takes away any future save that of the anticipation of being with him again…

Never has Honesty imagined such terrible, intense pain, a pain which daren’t be touched, a pain which must be left in a kind of hollow cradle to float and rock, so safe that nothing can break in and set free the kind of swarming anguish she knows she would be unable to bear.

K
EEPING ARCHIE OUT OF
sight… that’s the imperative task assigned to Billy and Tina and they are doing their absolute best. Not that there’s been too much difficulty so far, nobody is remotely interested in the handyman’s kids playing happily in the nursery, and if he goes out Archie wears a baseball cap with the peak pulled down hard over his eyes.

Neither Jacob, nor Petal, have ever dabbled in the everyday life of the grandly aristocratic Ormerods, their parts have always been to stay quietly in the wings, to know their place. When Billy and Tina gave their statements to the police early this morning, Petal and Archie stayed out of sight in the day nursery. ‘We don’t want to worry them,’ said the detective called Dowell. ‘It’s surprising how kids can sense a panicky atmosphere and this has to be the worst nightmare for any child to be thinking about in bed at night. It’s not so hot for the adults, either. Shit.’

As soon as Ange can properly get away, pleading a headache, taking with her the bottle of sleeping pills prescribed, she wobbles frailly upstairs to the nursery, flinging herself into Billy’s arms which are waiting there for her.

‘Oh Ange,’ he sobs, ‘oh Ange.’

‘We have to show them the letters now, Billy,’ she cries, wetting his cheeks with her tears. ‘They might help the police, they might provide the necessary clue, I just don’t bloody care what happens to us, they must find Jacob and bring him back safe and sound.’

‘I know, Ange, I know,’ Billy holds her tight.
‘But the letters can’t possibly come from the kidnapper
…’

Ange pushes herself away, scowling in bewilderment.
‘Why not? How d’you know?’

He tries to explain, tries to sound sensible and under control while inside his heart is burning away to cinders. ‘You must try and understand. The letter writer knows everything, he knows about Jacob and Archie, if he was the kidnapper he’d never have made such a stupid sodding mistake.’

Tina, red-eyed, chips in, ‘And if we show the letters to Fabian we’re lost, Ange, you know that already. Fabian would never pay over a million pounds for Jacob, especially once he realises what we’ve done.’

‘So there’s nothing we can do?’ groans Ange sighing deeply. ‘Nothing? Nothing.
Is that what you’re telling me?’
And then she collapses, throws herself down on the sofa and weeps and Billy and Tina stand and cry quietly beside her.

Their only hope now is that Jacob is released when Fabian pays the ransom. The minute she’s got him back in her arms Ange is going to run, to run and run away from here forever and never come back, they should never have come in the first place, they should never have contemplated such an ambitious scheme, and there she was in Willington Gardens believing that Jacob would grow up in danger of fights, drugs, muggings but not this, dear God, never this.

Oh, what are they doing to him now?
Please God, whoever they are, don’t let them hurt him. He’s so frail, so brave, so innocent, so anxious to please, such a loving, funny little boy. And how can they possibly wait, doing nothing, nobody else in their thoughts but Jacob, until the next communication from the kidnappers supposedly at four o’clock.

‘Some people go for months, for years waiting for news,’ cries Ange, lying flat on her stomach with her head in her arms. ‘I mean, think about your mum, Billy, think how she must be feeling. She can’t have stopped caring, just because the person you love has disappeared you don’t stop caring.’

‘That’s different,’ says Billy. ‘I went on my own. I was a grown man when I left.’

‘It was my sodding mam who ditched me,’ sighs Tina, hugging herself in her arms, pacing up and down, from rug to rug, over the cork-tiled nursery floor. ‘She found a man and that was that, we didn’t get on and it was up to me to get out. But I was sixteen, and wise, huh, so I thought. I hadn’t met Ed then. And then I wasted all those years with that dumb bastard, he broke nearly every bone in my body and I managed to convince myself that that was something to do with love…’

‘But you got out in the end,’ says Ange, sniffing hard. ‘We all got out in the end, didn’t we? And it was working, wasn’t it? Tell me, Billy,
tell me it was working until…
’