The door was opened by the butler, Callaghan. His face was unusually grey, the only colour coming from the broken capillaries on his nose. His expression was strained, nauseous even, his eyes staring in alarm. And yet it was almost as if he was expecting them. ‘Thank heavens you’re here,’ he cried as he let them in. ‘The doctor is with Lady Emma now.’
Quinn exchanged a quizzical glance with his two officers. ‘Doctor?’
‘Lady Emma collapsed. Understandably. The shock was too much for her.’
‘Ah. She has been informed then?’
‘Informed? Of course she has been informed! She was here when Miss Greene came back from the Heath.’
‘I’m sorry. I don’t understand. What has Miss Greene got to do with this?’
‘Miss Greene was there when it happened.’
‘When what happened?’ Quinn had the uncomfortable sensation that they were talking at cross purposes.
‘When Master John was taken!’
‘What do you mean, taken?’
‘Kidnapped! Young Master John has been kidnapped! I had assumed that’s why you’re here. We tried to get hold of Inspector Pool but he had been called away on urgent business, or so they told us. What could be more urgent than this?’ Callaghan shook his head incredulously, before adding, ‘They sent a constable instead!’ He gave the word a disparaging emphasis, as if he considered this an unforgivable lapse of protocol. ‘He’s with Miss Greene now, taking a statement.’
Quinn nodded tersely, accepting the invitation to join them that was implied in Callaghan’s statement.
Hattie Greene was in the drawing room. Her face was pale and drawn and streaked with tears. She looked up with two huge red eyes as Quinn and the others came in.
Quinn acknowledged the constable’s presence with a brief nod that was also a dismissal. ‘What happened?’ he demanded of the nanny.
Pale lids trembled down to veil her raw, glistening eyes. It was a relief to have that anguish hidden from them, if only for a moment. A huge sob shook itself out from her, wracking her suddenly frail body in an uncontrollable shudder.
But when she opened her eyes, she seemed to have found the composure she needed to speak. ‘I had taken John to Hampstead Heath. He was very excited about his impending trip to Scotland Yard this morning.’ She flashed Quinn a look of rebuke, as if this was somehow all his fault. ‘He was rather playing up, I’m afraid. Being beastly to his sister. As you can imagine, Lady Emma’s nerves were somewhat frayed, what with everything that has happened, so I thought it best to take him out of the house. I hoped he might burn off some energy. Thought it might calm him down. Or at least get him out of his mother’s hair.’ She had held herself together well until now, but suddenly the reality of what had happened must have hit her afresh. Her face crumpled and a high, keening wail came out of her mouth.
The policemen stood over her, helpless in the face of her overwhelming emotion. All they could do was wait for the anguish to work its way through her.
Eventually, she was able to dab her eyes with a tightly clenched hanky. She drew herself up on the sofa with an involuntary groan. Her eyes flitted about the room, as if it was the first time she had taken in her surroundings. It seemed to appal her to find herself in such elegant surroundings at this moment. ‘This is all my fault!’ Her voice was small and tremulous. Even so, it brooked no argument.
None was offered. No mercy, either.
‘You went to the Heath,’ prompted Quinn. ‘Just you and John?’
She nodded, yes.
‘And what? What happened?’
‘As soon as we got there, he ran away from me.’ She gave an anguished grimace. ‘He can be quite a handful, you know.’
‘Has he done that before?’
‘Oh, he always does it. I don’t try to keep up with him. There’s no point. He always comes back.’
‘But this time it was different?’
She closed her eyes and nodded tensely. ‘He ran off shouting poop-poop!’
‘Poop-poop?’
‘His head has been full of Mr Toad these last few days. Especially since you said that you wanted him to go to Scotland Yard to look at pictures. He was convinced that you were going to arrest Mr Toad. Oh, I don’t know how seriously he believed it, but that was what he said. Anyhow, he came running back to me …’
‘Yes?’
‘And he said that he had seen Mr Toad. That Mr Toad was there on the Heath and had been waving to him.’ Miss Greene began to sob. ‘I thought it was just make-believe! I didn’t think he really had!’
‘But he had seen someone?’
‘Yes! Oh, God forgive me!’
‘What happened then?’
‘He said he was going to warn Mr Toad that the police were looking for him. And he ran off again.’
‘Go on.’
‘And then I lost sight of him.’ She squeezed her eyes tightly shut, as if replaying the moment when John Fonthill disappeared from her view. Perhaps she hoped that when she opened her eyes again, he would reappear. ‘At first, I didn’t think anything of it. We often play hide and seek. It’s always John who hides. We have our set hiding places. I always know where to find him. I looked in every one of them. But he wasn’t there. I began to get worried. Frightened. I called out his name. He didn’t come. Didn’t answer. And then I saw …’
‘What?’
‘In the distance. A man. Holding a boy’s hand. Leading him away towards the exit. I shouted and ran after them. I screamed for people to help me. John looked back. And waved. I ran. I ran, as fast as I could. But when I got out on to East Heath Road, there was no sign of them.’
‘This man who took him. Did you see his face?’
She shook her head with her eyes closed.
‘Did you form an impression of how tall he was? His build? What was he wearing?’
‘I don’t think he was tall. Not tall. Quite stout. He had a cap on, I think. The kind of cap men wear when they are driving.’
‘A chauffeur’s cap?’
‘No, more like a flat cap.’
‘Like Mr Toad,’ said Macadam.
Hattie Greene’s mouth rippled with an involuntary spasm and she gave a weak little nod.
‘One more thing, Miss Greene.’ Quinn did not allow himself any pity as he looked down at the nanny. He knew that she was at her weakest now, frightened, vulnerable, and no doubt feeling guilty over what had happened to the boy in her charge. Which was precisely why he needed to press her mercilessly. ‘Your friend, Private Delaware. We contacted his regiment. He has been on leave since Friday.’
‘No. That’s not true.’ The confusion in her eyes seemed genuine. ‘Jack would have told me.’
‘Did you meet him? Did you talk about Sir Aidan?’
‘No! I haven’t seen Jack! I swear.’
She began to cry. Quinn did not believe that any woman could feign the ugly, uncontrollable sobs that took her over.
Quinn did not like to ring the bell for a servant. Instead he opened the drawing-room door and called out. ‘Hello. I say … Mr Callaghan?’
Callaghan appeared hurriedly, his face flushed with anger. ‘Keep your voice down, will you?’ he hissed. ‘The doctor has given her ladyship a sedative.’
Quinn did not like the sound of that. ‘What on earth for? We need to speak to her.’
‘That won’t be possible.’
‘Where is she? Unless you want to be arrested for obstructing the police, you’ll take me to her. Now.’
Callaghan shook his head unhappily but led Quinn upstairs all the same. Quinn had Leversedge and Macadam wait for him in the hallway. Three heavily booted detectives in her bedroom was unlikely to induce Lady Fonthill to cooperate. Even one was pushing it.
She lay barefoot but fully clothed on top of a large four-poster bed, her chestnut hair fanned out around her head. Her eyes were closed, but she did not seem to be asleep, rather cast under a spell, like a princess in a fairy tale. There seemed to be no weight to her, as if she might float away at any moment.
Her mouth was slightly open, in a downturned curve. Now and then it seemed to twitch, as if she was crying out in a dream.
At that moment, all her privilege and inherited wealth was stripped from her. The luxuriousness of her surroundings meant nothing. None of this would help her in what she was facing now.
Beside the bed, the doctor was packing his things away in his bag.
‘Can you rouse her?’ demanded Quinn.
‘Good heavens, no!’
‘But I need to ask her some questions. Her son’s life may depend on it.’
‘You can try, but I doubt you’ll get any sense out of her.’
Quinn leant over the woman on the bed. ‘Lady Fonthill. Emma. It’s DCI Quinn.’
There was no sign of a response. Not even the pattern of her breathing changed.
Quinn turned to the doctor. ‘Can she hear me?’
‘I should think so. Whether or not she will be able to respond is another matter.’
Quinn felt a sudden surge of rage at the doctor’s infuriatingly calm demeanour. ‘Why did you do this?’
‘What?’
‘Sedate her.’
‘Because she was hysterical.’
‘So what? Her son’s been kidnapped. It’s natural that she would be hysterical. Did it not occur to you that the police would want to speak to her? Or that she herself might want to stay conscious? She is his mother.’
‘My only consideration was the wellbeing of my patient. I deemed sedation necessary on medical grounds.’
‘And she let you do it?’
‘She was in no state to refuse.’
Quinn shook his head in frustration. ‘She’s run away. Away from us. Away from John. She’s abandoned her son.’
There was a stirring from the bed. Lady Fonthill’s mouth juddered in a spasm of distress. A murmur that could have been ‘no’ trembled in her throat.
Quinn bent over her again. ‘Lady Fonthill. Is there anything you want to tell me? Anything that you have kept from me, that you now wish to share, now that John’s life depends on it?’
A quick, darting movement showed beneath her eyelids. In the next moment, they flickered open. Her whole head quaked under a tremendous effort to lift it. ‘Find. Him!’
Quinn wondered at the less than gentle – almost venomous – force with which she expelled that last word. But perhaps it was simply the strain of rousing herself from the bonds of oblivion.
But before he could challenge her about it, her eyes closed again, and her head sank back into the pillow.
‘Well, that was a waste of time,’ said Leversedge, after Quinn had relayed the details of his interview with Lady Fonthill. ‘What now?’
It was a good question. Quinn ran his hand down over his face as he thought through his next move. ‘DS Macadam, what can you tell us about Sir Aidan’s clubs?’
With a flash of temper, Leversedge demanded, ‘What the devil have his clubs got to do with anything?’
Quinn tried to keep his voice calm as he explained, ‘We don’t yet know what links Sir Aidan Fonthill to the man who has taken his son. That is because we don’t yet know enough about Sir Aidan Fonthill. We need to find more answers. We need to look more deeply into his life. There is something in his life, some huge aspect of it, that is so far unknown to us. We will not discover it from his wife, not now, not in her current state. There have been inklings of this secret life revealed by some of those we have spoken to already. Charles Cavendish hinted at Sir Aidan’s need for money, for example. And we know a mysterious stranger came to the house.’
‘Mr Toad,’ put in Macadam. ‘You know my views on that, sir.’
‘Yes. And the only person who saw him other than Sir Aidan was John Fonthill.’
‘That’s why he was taken,’ observed Leversedge. ‘Because he could identify the man.’
‘It’s a possibility,’ was all that Quinn would concede.
Macadam rounded on Leversedge. ‘Your old governor, Coddington. He was thick as thieves with Tiggie Benson.’
‘What of it?’
‘If I’m right, that’s who Mr Toad is.’
‘If.’
‘Anyone would think you didn’t want to find the boy.’
‘I just don’t want us to waste time on any more wild goose chases. What if it’s not Tiggie Benson? We don’t have a positive ID. All we have, in fact, is your wild guesswork. Besides, if Benson has taken the boy, he’s unlikely to be holding him at any of his known haunts. Benson may be many things, but he’s not stupid.’
It was time for Quinn to intervene. ‘That’s why we keep digging. That’s why we keep talking to people who knew Sir Aidan. It’s the only thing we can do. Those clubs, Macadam.’
‘Sir Aidan Fonthill is listed in Debrett’s as having membership to three clubs. White’s. The Athenaeum. And Pootle’s.’
Quinn was aware of experiencing a slight sense of relief. He had half-expected Fonthill’s clubs to include The Panther Club, an esoteric establishment which had figured in an earlier investigation; he found he had no desire to return there.
‘Mr Callaghan?’ The butler had been standing discreetly to one side as the three detectives conferred in the hallway. He now answered Quinn with a solemn bow. ‘To which of those were you in the habit of forwarding Sir Aidan’s mail during his absences from the house? Think carefully before you answer. A boy’s life may depend on it.’
But Callaghan did not hesitate. ‘Pootle’s.’
It was as good a place as any to start.