Dorothy Eden (43 page)

“It’s printed. It says:

BECAUSE I WAS WATCHED LAST NIGHT I COULDN’T PICK UP THE MONEY, SO THE SAME AMOUNT TONIGHT. PLEASE. DO IT IN A PARCEL AND THROW IT OVER THE WALL OF THE BOMBED SITE ON THE CORNER OF PARKER AND ABBOTT STREET HAMMERSMITH AT NINE O’CLOCK. MAKE SURE YOU’RE NOT WATCHED. YOU’D BETTER BORROW THE MONEY FROM YOUR BLIND FRIEND SO YOUR BANK DON’T ASK NO AWKWARD QUESTIONS. YOUR LITTLE GIRL’S HAIR WILL GROW AGAIN—IF YOU’RE CAREFUL.”

Flynn spoke authoritatively, “Millie, are you there? Gather up those wrappings carefully. Don’t handle them more than you can help. Harriet, you have yesterday’s note, as well as today’s, I imagine.”

“Yes, of course. Why are you asking?”

“Because whether you agree or not, this is when the police come in.”

“Otherwise—”

“Otherwise we wait all day until nine o’clock this evening, then probably again until midnight—”

“Another midnight,” Harriet said dazedly.

“Which would be unendurable, for you as well as your children. I am able to dial the police, but it would be simpler if you did it for me.”

Harriet got slowly to her feet. They were leaden, as she walked towards the telephone.

T
HE DOORBELL RINGING WAS
not to announce the arrival of the police, but merely of Mrs. Blunt, wrapped in her shapeless coat, clutching her familiar string bag bulging with its various sharp-cornered parcels.

“Good morning, madam,” she said cheerfully. “Cold, ain’t it? That wind would cut you in half. Did you get my message about the soap? I believe the baby ate half the last lot, and of course Jamie wastes it shockingly. Oh, I beg your pardon, you’ve got a visitor.”

“We’re having coffee,” Harriet said inanely. “Actually, we’re waiting for the police.”

Mrs. Blunt gasped. “You haven’t had burglars!”

“In a way, yes,” Harriet said wryly. “But it isn’t jewelry that’s missing, it’s the children.”

Unlike Millie, Mrs. Blunt did not sob and threaten to have hysterics. She listened to Harriet’s story soberly, and at the end she said, “I thought you wasn’t telling me the truth yesterday about the children being in the country, but it wasn’t none of my business. But, oh, madam, why didn’t you get the police immediately?” She turned on Flynn. “Why didn’t you make her do it, sir?”

“Don’t blame Mr. Palmer,” Harriet intervened. “He tried his best. And now—now they’re coming.”

Mrs. Blunt, stout and solid and reassuring, stood over her protectively.

“You sit down, madam, and I’ll make some fresh coffee. You look fair worn out, and no wonder. Kidnapping!” She seemed to be just beginning to realize the enormity of the situation. “My goodness! The nerve of whoever it is! I’d like to lay my hands on him. Where’s that lazy Millie? Her carelessness is to blame for this. Wait till I tell her what I think of her! Oh madam, fancy keeping all this to yourself yesterday. But don’t you worry, your little ones will come back safe and sound. And the kidnapper will have no soap left in his house! Death on soap, those two! Only I don’t suppose he’d have any variety Arabella would favor the taste of.”

The loud, astonished voice, which was Mrs. Blunt’s way of expressing shock, went on in the kitchen. Harriet could hear her beginning to scold Millie, and Millie’s whimpering protests. But now the need for secrecy, and the need to devise her own way of action, was gone, she found she could think no more. She was unbearably tired. It seemed almost impossible to cope with the questions of the police. When Flynn said he must go down to let Jones in and tell him what had happened, she begged him to stay.

“I can’t face the police alone. Please! Jones will come up here when he finds you not at home.”

“Of course I’ll stay, Harriet.”

His quiet voice calmed her incipient hysteria, and presently Mrs. Blunt arrived with steaming coffee and buttered toast.

“Now, madam, you’re to have this. You, too, Mr. Palmer. You’ve both had a shocking night, I can see. And as for Millie, she’s scared of her own shadow. Wants to know if she’ll get sent to jail. I’ve told her there’s such a thing as criminal negligence. But I reckon the police will decide she’s just plain dumb. Oh, Lor’, there’s the doorbell now! I’ll answer it, madam. Then I’ll put more coffee on. I’ve no doubt they’re humans, same as us.”

When Mrs. Blunt came back, followed by a tall, grizzled middle-aged police inspector, and a young constable, she drew back the curtains and the gray day came into the room.

Harriet stood up to greet the older man who introduced himself as Inspector Burns. She then explained who Flynn was, and the long-dreaded inquisition began.

Fortunately Inspector Burns was a quietly-spoken man who at once inspired confidence. At first he was startled, then deeply interested. He scarcely interrupted at all while Harriet told her story. He made notes and then talked almost to himself. Kidnappings were extremely rare in England, he said. He guessed that they would not now be dealing with the highly-organized and ruthless gangster type, but with an amateur, probably extremely nervous, ready to disappear like a startled rabbit the moment his plans went even slightly wrong. The fact that the presence, even at a long distance, of Flynn and his servant last night had scared him off was evidence of this.

On the other hand, he could be the sort of man Flynn suggested—the greedy blackmailer who, having succeeded once in extorting money from his victim, would go on playing his luck until he made his inevitable mistake.

“In that case, what would be happening to my children?”

“Your guess is as good as mine, Mrs. Lacey. But I’d say it would be regrettable that you hadn’t called us earlier.” Inspector Burns had kind eyes. He did not intend to waste time in useless recriminations. He left the room to have a low-voiced conversation with the young constable in the hall, then came back, smiling reassuringly.

“I’ve sent Reilly to the park to check up on any evidence. If your man was scared off last night that money may still be there. It’s early, and it’s snowing. Or some honest person may turn it in to a police station. We constantly get surprises in our job. Now, Mrs. Lacey, I want to ask quite a lot of questions. And later I want to interview everyone who has had any part in this affair-the porter and his mother, Mr. Palmer’s servant, the nursemaid, particularly the nursemaid.”

It was Fred who sprang up from the breakfast table to answer the telephone when it rang in the basement. His mother, listening with concealed alarm, heard him exclaim, “The police, Mr. Palmer! They’re there now? But why didn’t you stop her getting them? Now she’s upset the apple cart!”

Then he recollected himself, and after listening for a moment said, “Certainly, sir. They can ask me what they like. I haven’t got anything to hide.”

He hung up and turned towards his mother. His handsome face was flushed with anger, and something else, was it fear? Did she imagine that his eyes did not quite meet hers?

“What do you think, Mrs. Lacey lost her nerve and called the police. At least, she didn’t do it. It was that interfering Mr. Palmer. Fancied himself playing the hero, I suppose. He won’t fancy himself so much if the kids are fished out of the Thames.”

“I think they’ve done the right thing,” Mrs. Helps said stoutly. She was always a little afraid of her big son’s flashing eyes and sudden tempers, but she was not going to be intimidated now. The police should have been called at the beginning. If Fred hadn’t a clear conscience he would have to face the consequences.

This was what she told herself, even though she knew she would lie to the end to save him.

Fred crossed the room agitatedly.

“You don’t know anything about it, ma, so keep your mouth shut. The right thing! Knowing the way a desperate man’s mind works. Knowing that now he can’t either give the kids up or take them with
him
when he gets out. So what do you think he’ll do?”

With that Fred left his half-finished breakfast and went to put on his working overalls.

“If they come trying to snoop in here, call me.”

“Why shouldn’t they snoop in here? Or have you something to hide?”

Fred came out of his room.

“Course I haven’t. But I don’t like cops, see. And I particularly don’t like them snooping. Now I got to go and stoke the furnaces, or all the old women will be complaining they’re cold.” He grinned. He had recovered his breezy good-humor. But in that moment of being caught off his guard his mother had seen his fear, and she couldn’t forget it.

If Fred were in any way connected with this shameful thing that was the end of life for her. But surely he couldn’t be. He may not have been completely honest in the past, but he had never been unkind or brutal. Even now he pursued his secretive affairs, refusing to tell her where he had been the afternoon the children had disappeared, when she had lied for him and said he was sleeping on his bed, and again last night, when he had come in late, with snow on his shoulders, and a strange excitement in his eyes that he could not hide.

She made herself do her housework, washing the breakfast dishes, tidying the flat, making Fred’s bed. Presently she would sit down to her wig-making, and that would calm her.

It was the day for changing the bed linen. If it hadn’t been for that fact she might never have noticed the small trickle of fluff from the mattress under Fred’s bed. That was funny, there must be a hole in the covering. She turned it over to look. No, there was no sign of a tear. But wait a moment. What was this? The stitching along the edge seemed to have been slit to make a small opening. It had been stitched together again, but clumsily. It had been done recently, as evidence the little unnoticed drift of fluff, like dirty snow.

Her heart beat suffocatingly as the old lady ripped open the amateur stitching, and plunged her hand into the soft wool. She had to grope for a little while before she found the foreign article. When she drew it out, her hand was shaking. It was a neat brown paper parcel. She knew what was in it, even before she had unwrapped it. Five hundred pounds in crisp one pound notes.

The ransom for the Lacey children!

On the fourth floor Inspector Burns was saying to Harriet in his gentle probing voice, “And you’re sure you have no enemies, Mrs. Lacey? What about your late husband?”

“My husband has been dead for two years.”

“I understand that, but before he died. Perhaps some old score?”

“Joe wasn’t the kind to make enemies.”

“His parents in Boston, then? You tell me they’re wealthy.”

“You mean,” said Harriet incredulously, “that you think someone would cross the Atlantic just to find Joe’s children, and steal them, for a miserable five hundred pounds!”

“It’s a thousand now, isn’t it?” the inspector pointed out courteously. “And it may not stop at that. On the whole, I don’t expect it to, depending on what happens this evening.”

“You’re going to follow the instructions in that note?”

“You’re going to, Mrs. Lacey. To the letter.”

Harriet winced. She did not think she could face another of those solitary trips, in the biting wind, with the feeling that unseen eyes were watching her all the way.

“You believe the same thing as Mr. Palmer,” she said unhappily. “That the kidnapper really got that money last night and now is getting bolder.”

“Reilly reports that it was gone. Unfortunately the snow has covered any footprints. Not that they would be much use in a public park. We’ll be fingerprinting the threatening notes, and the parcel wrappings, of course. But there are eight million people in London. Without some personal clue it’s a long job tracking down a criminal of this kind.”

“There’s no time to waste.”

He looked at her reflectively. He did not point out that already thirty-six hours had been wasted. He merely said, “We’ll set a trap tonight. If that fails, we shall have to come out in the open. Publish photographs of the children and broadcast for anyone who has seen them. Someone will have, you know. Out of the thousand people who think they have, there’ll be perhaps one who has some real information.”

“But that means the kidnapper will panic!”

“Perhaps. On the other hand, tomorrow will be the fourth day. It’s a long time, whatever way you look at it. By the way, I’m not very happy about the nursemaid. How much do you know about her?”

“Very little. I’m afraid I took her on trust. She seemed young and jolly. For a week it was wonderful. It really was. The children were happy and so was Millie.”

“And then what happened?”

“Well, as Millie told you, she began to imagine this strange blonde woman was watching her. Jamie played a trick one day, wearing a blonde wig, and frightened her, but that same night she came home from a dance positively trembling. She said this woman had been watching her from the square gardens. After that, somehow, she was never quite the same. I should have realized, but I’m afraid I didn’t. And then it was too late.”

“Do you think she has invented this woman?”

Harriet looked surprised. “No, I don’t. She was in a state of absolute panic. She couldn’t have invented that.”

“Something else could have frightened her.”

But Harriet shook her head.

“No, I don’t think so. She couldn’t have made it up about the woman. She just hasn’t enough imagination.”

“I’d like to talk to her again,” the inspector said. “So far I haven’t got much beyond tears.”

Harriet smiled wryly. “You’ll get plenty of those, I’m afraid.”

“She sticks to this rather odd story that she told Jamie to stay home that afternoon. Was that a usual thing to do?”

“Not at all. She’d never done it before, or Jamie would have told me.”

“It was cold, and she wanted to hurry. That’s plausible enough. But it seems to me there might be more behind it. Send her in again, will you? And after that I’ll see Palmer’s servant, what’s his name, Jones ? The man with the sick wife. By the way, I suppose he has a sick wife?”

“Oh, I’m sure he has. He worries so much about her.”

“But you don’t know of anyone who has actually seen her? Well, we’ll check on that later. I also want to see the porter.” Inspector Burns looked up and smiled. “Cheer up, Mrs. Lacey. We’re getting on nicely.”