CHAPTER 10

---

Little Boy Found

DECEMBER 31

WHILE HER FATHER was plodding up the lane towards the Bellevue Café, Lucy waited for the moment to escape. This afternoon her lovely hope had been smashed to pieces. When Annie Stott came in with the tea-tray, Lucy, bubbling with excitement, had said: ‘Will he come today?’

‘Will who come?’

‘My papa, of course.’

‘He’s not coming.’

Lucy’s mouth began to quiver. ‘But I heard you say “He’s coming himself”.’

‘Oh. That’s a friend of ours.’ The woman gazed at her bleakly. ‘How did you hear this?’

‘I—well, I was at the top of the stairs, and——’

‘You’re very naughty. You’re not allowed to leave this room, you know that perfectly well. If you do it again, you’ll be beaten.’

It was a double blow. Her father was not coming, and now they’d make sure to keep the door locked. For a while Lucy cried, heart-broken. Then exhausted with crying, she began to think of escape again.

The heroines of adventure stories often managed to soften the heart of one of their captors. No use trying loopy Annie—she was as hard as the batch of rock-cakes Lucy had cooked once, and nearly broken a tooth on. Uncle Paul? He was different, much nicer to her; but instinct told the child she could not trust him. There was something slimy about him, she thought—you couldn’t get a grip on him: one moment he’d be smiling and joking, and the next he’d withdraw himself, his eyes went cold and uninterested, and he reminded Lucy of the princess with a splinter of ice in her heart.

In adventure stories the prisoner filed through the bars on his window, or dug a tunnel through the floor. Such activities were not in her power. Her only way out was the door, and the door was locked. Why didn’t they teach you something useful at school, like how to pick a lock? She grinned to herself, thinking of the consternation there’d be if her captors found the room empty when they’d carefully locked her in it. Stinking Annie would get in a fearful bate. But——

But, why not? Another time-honoured device of escape fiction shot into her head. Why on earth didn’t you try it before, you steaming nit? she reproached herself; and remembering the snow outside, deep and crisp and even, started undressing, put on her pyjamas, then the underclothes, then the boy’s shorts and jersey on top of them. There’d be no time to find a pair of Wellingtons—she’d have to make do with the walking shoes they’d given her, though they were at least a size too big. But she’d better string them round her neck, and go down the stairs in stockinged feet. If the idea worked at all. She waited, sweltering.

When Paul came up half an hour later with cocoa and biscuits, he found the room in darkness. He had been drinking a lot recently, to dispel the shadows that were closing in on him, and his reactions had slowed. He put the tray down on the bed, felt a small body beneath the clothes (the child must have gone to sleep), and fumbled for the light switch: in the course of which proceedings Lucy slipped out from behind the door where she’d hidden, quietly locked it, and made for the satirs.

Before she could reach the front door, there was a frantic yelling and banging from above. Lucy slipped into the nearest refuge—a lavatory—as Annie rushed out of the sitting-room. Hearing Annie’s footsteps pounding upstairs, Lucy slid out into the hall and through the front door, turned right and raced away as fast as she could through the snow. No time to put on the shoes yet. She had only got thirty yards away when she heard the sounds of pursuit.

Silly fool, she said to herself, why didn’t you take the bedroom- door key away when you locked it? Then you’d only have had one of them after you.

The track glimmered ahead of her, the way to freedom. Panting and whimpering, Lucy floundered on. It was a game no longer, and there seemed nowhere to hide; she had left the protective bulk of the garage behind her. The only hope now was the farm. If they were enemies there too, she’d be finished. A stockinged foot slipped on an ice-hard rut made by a tractor, and Lucy fell to the side of the track. As she lay there winded, a figure hurried past her in the darkness. It was Annie, and she was calling in a low, urgent voice, ‘Evan! Where are you? Come here at once!’

When Annie had disappeared, the child got to her feet, and gave a gasp of pain: she had turned her ankle. Behind her, she heard Paul searching around the garage and out-buildings of the cottage. Setting her teeth, Lucy limped towards the light of a farmhouse window, got to the door. No bell. She began hammering on the knocker. Mr Thwaite opened the door.

‘Why, Evan, what’re you doing out here, son?’

Sobbing, Lucy ducked under his arm into the house, found herself in a kitchen, dazzling bright after the darkness outside.

‘I’m not Evan! Help me! I——’

‘There, there, my little chap,’ crooned the farmer’s wife. ‘Sit ee down a while. You’re not well.’

‘They’ve kidnapped me! Oh, you must believe——’

At that moment there came a thunderous knocking. Annie Stott, who had heard the child banging the knocker, had turned back. Lucy was paralysed, like a rabbit before a stoat: her voice wouldn’t work any more. She threw herself into Mrs Thwaite’s arms, hiding her head.

‘Oh there he is,’ said Annie’s voice. ‘Evan, you’re really very naughty. Never mind, we’ll forget it.’ She lowered her voice. ‘The child’s delirious again, Mrs Thwaite.’

‘He said something about being kidnapped. My gracious, he is hot, though, isn’t he?’

It was not surprising, with the weight of clothes Lucy wore, and the running away.

‘I must take him back to bed at once. I’m so sorry he’s given you this trouble.’

‘And the poor lamb’s feet, soaking wet,’ exclaimed Mrs Thwaite.

‘Ah, here you are, Paul. Will you carry Evan back?’

Lucy began to kick and faintly scream; but Paul whisked her out while Annie explained that the child in high fever has this delusion of being kidnapped as a result of hearing the broadcast news about Professor Wragby’s daughter. Mr and Mrs Thwaite, though disturbed by the occurrence, had no suspicion—the substituting of one child for another had completely deceived them.

Back in the nursery-bedroom prison, Lucy wept her heart out. She hardly heard Annie say, ‘I’ve lost patience with you, you wretched child. You’re very wicked. I shall give you the slipper,’ or Paul say, wresting the slipper from Annie’s hand, ‘You’ll do nothing of the sort. The child’s had enough. Anyway, I disapprove of corporal punishment …’

At dusk, while Lucy was planning her escape, a snow-plough, its yellow Cyclops-eye winking, thrust its way over the crest of a hill above Longport. The driver congratulated himself on having only half a mile more to cover, then he could call it a day and stop off at the Kings Arms before going home to supper.

It was bitterly cold in the exposed cabin of the snow-plough. He envied his mates following him in the sheltered truck, with nothing to do but tumble out from time to time and keep warm by digging bays where cars could pass one another in the channel he had cut.

A continuous bow-wave of snow pushed whiskering and cascading out from the diagonal share. Lights sparkled up from Longport in the valley below. Suddenly there came a frenzied hooting from the truck. The snow-plough driver stopped, jumped out and ran back. The men in the truck had got out too. They were standing around a dark object embedded in the wall of snow which the plough had excavated from the drift and flung to one side of the road. …

Superintendent Sparkes had turned up at the Guest House about tea-time, delivered the prescription to Mrs Wragby and was now closeted with Nigel. His men had searched the house and grounds for the bug and speaker, but fruitlessly: if Justin Leake had buried them somewhere, the signs of interment were covered over by the fresh falls of snow. So, for all the county police could discover, were the traces of Lucy. It was inconceivable that a child should have been kept alive all these days, with no hint of it reaching the neighbours and every house searched now by the police.

‘I’m afraid it looks as if we have to write her off,’ said Sparkes, a slow flush of anger coming to his cheeks. ‘I tell you, Mr Strangeways, I’ve had some failures in the Force but I’ve never felt so badly as I do about this one. It’s a bastard.’

‘Yes. I’m afraid you may be right. And that’s why the other side have not tried to get in touch with Wragby again.’

‘I wonder. Kidnappers have often kept the heat on after—look at the Lindbergh case——’

‘If only we knew where to turn the heat on, ourselves,’ said Nigel. ‘That deplorable type, Leake, for instance——’

‘I had another go at him. He’s not giving an inch. He knows we know he’s a blackmailer. We’re searching his office and house in London—not got enough on him yet to make a charge, in spite of Miss Cherry’s disclosures—can’t see her evidence standing up in court. Anyway, proving blackmail is one thing, proving conspiracy with foreign agents is another.’

‘Yes, and a successful blackmailer in his own right wouldn’t be awfully likely to get mixed up with them.’

‘Unless they’d rumbled him and threatened exposure.’

‘That’s true. Well, where do we go from here?’

‘I’d like to clear up some loose ends. Your notion about Lance Atterson. And the Admiral’s wife.’

After a brief consultation, Cherry and Lance were summoned together. Sparkes had them sitting on hard chairs, well separated, on the other side of the table.

‘Now then, Atterson,’ he said, ‘I’ve wasted enough time on you already. You’re in an awkward situation. It’s known that you peddle drugs——’

‘That’s a lie! Who told you?’

‘Information received.’

‘You’ll get me stroppy if you start bullying, you bloody flatfoot.’

‘No lip from you, my bearded wonder, or I’ll take you to pieces.’

‘Big deal!’ jeered Lance, but he went pale.

‘I’m not interested at the moment in your filthy drug-racket—that’ll come later. You enjoy ruining adolescents. Right. Do you enjoy kidnapping children too? How low can you get?’

‘I simply don’t know what you’re talking about,’ stammered Lance.

‘It’s escaped your notice that a child has been kidnapped? Are you a moron, or don’t you care?’

‘It’s nothing to do with me,’ Lance sullenly replied.

‘Suppose I tell you that you listened in to a conversation between Professor Wragby and his wife on the morning of Friday last, and conveyed the gist of their conversation to the kidnappers?’

‘Well, suppose you do tell me?’

Sparkes’s huge fist crashed on the table. ‘You admit it?’

Lance wet his lips. ‘No.’

‘You fixed up a bug in the Wragbys’ room and a wire leading into yours.’

‘Balls to that.’

‘You were listening in just before 9 a.m.’

‘I wasn’t. I don’t dig this. You were with me, Cherry. Did you see me with my ear glued to some gadget——?’

‘No. But I couldn’t have anyway. I wasn’t in our room,’ said Cherry with her flattest intonation. ‘I was in Justin’s.’

‘You bloody little bitch!’

‘Shut UP!’ roared the Superintendent. ‘Now, Miss Cherry. I’m talking about the period between, say, eight forty-five and nine last Friday morning. You were not in the bedroom then?’

‘No, I started going down to breakfast, about ten to nine.’

‘“Started”?’

‘Yes. On the way I met Justin Leake and he asked me to come into his room. He wanted to talk about—well, you know what.’

‘Another attempt at blackmailing you and Mr Atterson?’

‘Yes. He was in a hurry for me to sign something.’

‘And how long were you there?’

‘Ten minutes maybe.’

‘So you were out of your own bedroom at the operative time. Atterson could have been listening in, unknown to you,’ said Sparkes triumphantly.

The girl took her time about it. ‘I don’t think so. I don’t know about these concealed microphone things, but I suppose you’d need quite a bit of equipment. Well, we only brought one suitcase, and I unpacked it, and I didn’t see any bugs or wires or stuff.’

So that was that. Sparkes couldn’t shake her, and the staff confirmed later that she and Lance had arrived with only one piece of luggage and a guitar. Of course, Lance could have fixed up the equipment—from an agent in Belcaster maybe—after they had arrived. But it was pretty well a blind alley, since Cherry swore that Lance had made no attempt to hustle her out of the bedroom at 8.45—and besides, how could he know that the Wragbys would be discussing plans just then.

‘You’re very quiet,’ said Sparkes when the pair had been dismissed.

‘I’m feeling sick. At my own thoughts. Comes of looking through a hole and seeing hell beneath.’ Nigel stopped abruptly, then muttered to himself. ‘Why? Why? Why?’

Sparkes glanced at him sharply. ‘A hole?’

‘A small hole.’

‘Ah … Well, we’d best tidy up the remains.’

‘I suggest interviewing the Admiral and his wife together. Do you mind if I do the talking?’

‘It’s all yours. You’ll be more tactful, I’m sure,’ said Sparkes, a humorous gleam in his eye.

Tact, however, was not needed, though patience was. Mrs ffrench-Sullivan appeared at her most voluble. She made it clear, if not quite in those words, how gratifying she and the Admiral found it to have a gentleman in charge of the investigation (here Sparkes winked covertly at Nigel). She proceeded to express at some length her indignation at the state of the country, when Red agents were allowed to run riot. It was all the result of the late Labour Government and that dreadful Canon Collins. Nigel was unable to stem the flow. Finally, the Admiral interposed gently, ‘I think they want to ask us some questions, Muriel dear.’ Nigel leapt into the momentary pause.

‘Yes. I would like you to tell us a little more about Mr Justin Leake.’

‘Odious man.’

‘About his attempt to blackmail you.’

‘I sent him away with a flea in his ear, believe me.’

‘May I have some more details? If you’d prefer to talk quite in private——’ Nigel glanced at the Admiral.

‘Oh no. My husband knows all about it now.’ A flush came into her over-powdered cheeks, turning them an unpleasant shade of mauve. But her eyes were bright—almost girlish for a moment.

‘Yes,’ said the Admiral. ‘The shop-lifting business. All my fault, really. Away in the Med. Mind rather occupied—convoys, y’know—didn’t think about rising prices at home, should have increased my wife’s allowance.’

‘Well,’ said Nigel after an appreciative pause, ‘that’s all over and done with. Justin Leake threatened to tell your husband about it?’

‘Yes. He really became quite offensive, and——’

‘Unless?’ Nigel broke in firmly.

‘“Unless”?’

‘What did he demand in return for keeping silent?’

‘Oh, I see. Well, it was perfectly absurd, you’d hardly credit it. He wanted me to persuade my husband to dig up scandal for him. As if Tom would lend himself to that sort of thing!’

The Admiral coughed, gazing poker-faced at Nigel, a mischievous glint in his eye. ‘Hrrmph. Sort of gossip column. Y’know? Muck-raking amongst the landed gentry and so forth.’

‘Extraordinary,’ remarked Nigel, as if he hadn’t heard it all before. ‘Impudent fellow, asking you to be a blackmail scout. You were wise, ma’am, to inform your husband.’

‘And courageous,’ said the latter, smiling at his wife. ‘Took a bit of doing, y’know.’

‘There’s just one more thing, Mrs ffrench-Sullivan. Did Leake put pressure on you to do anything else—not openly perhaps, but hinting?’

‘I don’t quite——’

‘Did he ever insinuate that he’d like any information you could pick up about the Wragbys—or any of the other guests?’

‘Oh, no, there was nothing like that, I assure you.’

‘We’ve been a little worried about that telegram you sent to your friends in Belcaster.’

‘It was about the mink,’ put in the Admiral.

‘Why did you send a telegram, instead of phoning her direct?’

Mrs ffrench-Sullivan bridled a little. ‘That’s surely my affair, Mr Strangeways, But I don’t mind telling you. Susie Hollins was away for two days—I didn’t know the address—and I didn’t want to discuss the matter over the telephone with her assistant, the girl’s a dreadful gossip.’

Sparkes’s lips silently formed the words, ‘never thought of that one, did you?’ …

The interview with Justin Leake that followed was little more satisfactory than Sparkes’s previous attempts to break him down. The Superintendent could neither intimidate nor wheedle him into any further admissions, except that he had talked a little with Cherry in his room before breakfast on Friday.

‘You were making another effort to tighten the screws?’

‘Was I?’

‘Don’t box clever with me!’ roared the Superintendent, smashing his fist down on the table. ‘You were hired by her guardian to find her and prevent her marrying Atterson. You found her, then you started to worm out what pickings there’d be for yourself. You tried to get her to sign a document—pay you for not giving her away to your employer, with a promise of more money when she came of age.’

‘That’s your interpretation,’ replied Leake equably. ‘The actual fact is that I was trying to persuade her to leave Atterson. I told her that, if she did so, I would keep quiet about this escapade.’

‘Without any money changing hands? Do you take me for an imbecile, Leake?’

‘Do I have to answer that question?’

Sparkes controlled himself with difficulty. ‘Your story is very different from hers. Why should she lie about the business?’

‘I presume because she dislikes me, dislikes my having found her out, and wants to do me all the dirt she can,’ replied the colourless man. ‘You realise, of course, that she’s a pathological liar. I don’t see her evidence standing up in court.’

The impudence of it took Sparkes’s breath away. Nigel came to his rescue. ‘You’re telling us, Mr Leake, that your attempts to ingratiate yourself with Cherry were motivated by an unselfish desire to rescue the young woman from a fortune-hunter?’

Leake looked at him cautiously. ‘You could put it that way.’

‘I do. You were prepared to break your agreement with her guardian?’

‘If necessary. I——’

‘And of course return the fee he’s paying you?’

‘Oh, no. I shall have earned the fee by stopping the marriage.’

‘I see. Thank you, Mr Leake. You are’, continued Nigel in the same unimpassioned tone, ‘one of the nastiest and most contemptible persons I’ve ever had the ill luck to meet. But you have made one useful contribution to the case Mr Sparkes is working on, so I suppose we should be grateful to you. Good-morning.’

‘You’d better put on your bullet-proof vest,’ said Sparkes when the man had gone out. ‘See that look he gave you?’

‘Well, we know now who tipped off the kidnappers. The question is, what do we do about it?’

Nigel and Sparkes discussed this at some length. They were prepared to take action without waiting for absolute proof; but in so delicate a situation, a false move could wreck any plan of action. The one they finally worked out depended upon a preliminary talk with Professor Wragby.

But Professor Wragby was not to be found.

Sparkes and his sergeant hurled themselves into activity. The Guest House was searched, every room and outbuilding of it. No car had been taken out of the garage: if there were footprints they had been covered up by the falling snow. It was inconceivable that Wragby had been kidnapped from under their noses, nor were there any signs of a struggle. He must have voluntarily walked out and disappeared.

The last people to have seen him were his wife—after tea, when he told her he was going to write some letters—and the plain-clothes man on duty, who had noticed him going through the hall towards the writing-room. He had chatted for a minute with Mrs Wragby after her husband retired.

The Professor could have gone out by the other door of the writing-room into the back quarters of the Guest House, while Nigel and Sparkes were interviewing the guests, though neither the proprietor nor any of the staff had seen him do so.

One thing, after all these investigations, became clear. Since by 9 p.m. the Professor had not returned or sent any word back, he must somehow have received a communication from the kidnappers and gone out to meet them on foot. Whether he had walked to be picked up by a car, or to some house in the neighbourhood, the rendezvous could not have been very far away. Sparkes had alerted the whole county force, and road blocks were set up on the few roads that were not already blocked by snow.

‘Do you think he’s knuckled under to them at last?’ said Sparkes wearily, looking up from the large-scale ordnance maps on which he had marked the clear roads.

‘I can’t believe it,’ replied Nigel. ‘He’s not a quitter. We’ve failed to find Lucy, so he decided he must try himself. His only hope was to meet the other side’s agent, and make some sort of bargain.’

‘He’s got nothing to bargain with except the information they’ve been demanding. So he is going to quit.’

‘He’ll try to trick them again. I’ll give you what you want when you’ve shown me Lucy alive, and let her go. Then he’ll hold them off as long as he can, and after that he’ll kill himself. That’s how I read it, anyway.’

‘It’s more or less what his wife told me, too.’

‘Is it indeed?’ Do you think she knew he was going to bolt?’

‘Can’t tell. I’d have doubted it, from her manner. But she’s an actress. And she did hold my chap in conversation for a little—never talked to him before, he said—just at the time Wragby went into the writing-room.’

‘That child found dead in the drift——’

‘Nothing to do with the case. A boy. I told you.’

‘Murdered?’

‘No visible signs of injury. They’ll ring me again if the autopsy finds anything.’ Sparkes’s voice was rough with exhaustion. ‘Listen to the late night news bulletin and hear all about it. Now I must go and throw some meat to the vultures.’

‘You’ll have to fight them off Elena Wragby, when you tell them the Prof has disappeared.’

‘She’s in her room, with one of my chaps at the door,’ said Sparkes. ‘No one’s going to get in. Or out,’ he added grimly.

But Elena Wragby did. A little before the regional news was due, Nigel, who had arranged it with the man on guard, sent Clare to fetch Elena down. He knew the guests would all be in the drawing-room, waiting for the news bulletin, and he wished to observe reactions—one person’s in particular. A theory had formed in his mind which could only be tested thus: a theory which had nothing to commend it except its cold logic, from which he shrank.

The other guests, who had been talking in a desultory way, fell silent when the two women came in. They knew the Professor had disappeared: they did not know how to take it. Had he been kidnapped? Had he gone over to the other side? Had he just, after the fearful strain of the last few days, lost his wits and wandered out into the snowy night?

The Admiral took Elena’s hand and led her gently to an armchair by the fire, opposite his wife’s. She moved, as always, with dignity, but her limbs seemed stiff, as though she had just come through some physical ordeal, and there was a far-away look in her deep eyes.

The others kept eyeing her covertly, with embarrassment or a shameful intentness, as one might eye the still-living body of a martyr. Only Mrs ffrench-Sullivan, after one glance, averted her eyes and began poking at the fire: her lips were set in a faintly complacent expression which might have been interpreted to convey a silent ‘I told you so. No foreigners are ever reliable. You can take it from me—she’s mixed up in all this somehow.’

Justin Leake had been playing patience, at a table apart from the others. Presently he resumed the game, his cards slurring one over another, but his whole mien suggesting a wary attentiveness to something quite different. Lance Atterson, looking half-dead with boredom, tickled the Guest House cat behind the ears. It was Cherry who broke the intolerable silence, moving over to sit on the floor by Elena’s feet and saying:

‘I’m awfully sorry. I’m sure he’ll be all right. Try not to worry, Mrs Wragby.’

‘Thank you, my dear.’

The Admiral glanced at his watch, turned up the volume of the muttering radio set, went back to his chair. Nigel, standing beside the set, saw Clare’s fingers curl into fists: his own tension had communicated itself to her. The others moved a little closer, or leant forward, as if the announcer’s voice were that of the Delphic oracle.

‘Professor Alfred Wragby, F.R.S., whose daughter disappeared last Thursday and is believed to have been kidnapped, is now missing. He was last seen—’ the well modulated voice began. A description of the Professor was given; an appeal was made for anyone who had seen him to come forward: the police believed he might have lost his memory … It was as cagey as an announcement could be. Only the handful of people in Britain who knew the nature of Wragby’s work would realise that his disappearance could mean a major defeat for their country.

The announcer gave a gentlemanly cough, and apologised. There was a rustle of paper. He began speaking again.

‘A snow-plough, clearing a road in the vicinity of Longport this evening, turned up the body of a child.’

Elena Wragby gasped, as if she had been kicked in the heart.

‘The body, that of a boy of about eight, had been lying buried in a drift for several days. There were no signs of violence upon it. It is believed that the boy may have died in a blizzard, while making his way towards Longport station: a zip-bag containing articles of clothing was found near the body, and the boy had a return ticket to London in his pocket. His identity is at present a mystery, for no boy had been reported to the police as missing in this part of the country.’

Elena, who had relaxed in her chair when the sex of the dead child was mentioned, grew tense again.

‘A curious feature of the affair is that there were no name-tapes or other distinguishing marks on the boy’s clothing. The only clue is a thin silver medallion, about the size of an identity disc, worn on a chain under the boy’s clothing. On one side of the disc is embossed a phoenix rising from the ashes. On the reverse, an engraved inscription——’

The announcer’s voice was blotted out by the most terrible sound Nigel had ever heard. Elena’s face had gone ashy; her eyes stared at the radio set as if the voice of her damnation spoke from it. A shuddering cry broke like blood from her bloodless lips—a cry all the more appalling because it was not loud and yet it filled the room and seemed to beat back off the walls in waves of agony after Elena had started to her feet, then fallen on the floor fainting. ‘Ivan!’