The Sad Variety

by Nicholas Blake

  She automatically moved her head away—she didn’t like being fondled by strangers—then, remembering she must play up to him, squeezed his hand. ‘Can I stay in this room?’ she asked.

  ‘But all your books and things are in the other one.’

  ‘Couldn’t you fetch me something to play with? I was writing——’ Lucy broke off.

  ‘Oh, that story of yours. I’m terribly sorry, but Annie found it this morning and destroyed it.’

  ‘Destroyed it? But why?’ A whine came into her voice.

  ‘She does funny things occasionally. Never mind. You can start another one.’

  ‘But she has no right to——’

  ‘And I’ll see she doesn’t lay her long, long claws on it.’

  Lucy was not mollified. ‘I suppose she tore it up because it was about a girl being kidnapped. I call that mean of her.’

  ‘Don’t nag at me, young woman. You females will go on and on so. Now, what shall I get you?’

  ‘That Ransome book beside the bed, please.’

  ‘O.K., chum. How’s the headache now?’

  ‘Gone, thanks, matey.’

  So far, so good, thought Lucy. Paul had brought her the book and retired. A soppy sort of man, she decided, though he spoke to her much more pleasantly than the potty woman. Who apparently was not potty—all the time, anyway. Lucy verified that Paul had not locked the door: but she could hear their voices arguing downstairs, and decided against trying a dash from the house.

  Tip-toeing out, along the passage, into the nursery room at the back, Lucy recovered the sheet of foolscap she had hidden under the lining paper of a drawer. Back in bed, she read it through again. Chapter Two. Where am I? Then she pushed the folded paper inside her jersey and settled down to think.

  People must come to this house sometimes. The man who brought the milk, Jim. When someone comes, as long as they let me stay in this room, I’ll see him. No use just talking to him through the window-pane—he’d not hear what I said. And if I yelled, the woman would hear it and rush up with that beastly hypodermic. Of course, if the window opens—

  She stood up in bed and tried it. The lower half was absolutely stuck: she could pull down the upper, with a great effort, but only a couple of inches, and she couldn’t get her mouth near enough to this opening to talk quietly through it and be heard by a person outside. If she just made faces and signs through the pane, the person would think she was ragging him, or potty. Nobody would be looking for Lucy Wragby in Buckinghamshire.

  They won’t even have heard of me here. So it’d be no use writing a message, ‘Help! S.O.S. I am Lucy Wragby. I’ve been kidnapped. Get the police!’ and throwing it out of the window. The person would think it’s some sort of kid’s game.

  Lucy knew all too well the inability of grown-ups to understand when you were being serious and when you were larking. Then she had an idea. Suppose she wrote on the back of the foolscap sheet that the finder should post this at once to Professor Alfred Wragby, F.R.S., The Guest House, Downcombe. Reward of £5. It is a scientific experiment.

  Exhilarated by the promise of this idea, she took her pencil and wrote those words, in large capitals, on the back of the sheet. With luck, she could shoot a paper dart through the gap at the top of the window. Lucy folded the sheet carefully into a dart. But where could she hide it, so that her captors didn’t find it before someone turned up to throw it to?

  After some thought, she pushed it gently behind the framed photograph of the man in cap and gown on the opposite wall.

  So it was just a matter of waiting patiently for someone to turn up. Now that she had worked out a plan, time dragged worse than ever. Nothing to look at outside except the landscape of snow, which bored her now. Sounds of mooing came from the farmyard. She took up her book, but the exploits of Mr Ransome’s desperately resourceful children could not hold her attention long: I bet they’d look pretty silly in real life, she thought, if they got into an adventure like mine. Fat lot of good being able to sail a boat and cook their own meals would do them.

  She watched a tree shadow, bluish on the snow, willing it to lengthen visibly. Hurry on, time. No, because it’ll grow dark soon and the person wouldn’t be able to find my dart—white paper stuck in the white snow below the window—and I’d have to wait till tomorrow.

  But what person? A dismal thought struck her. Supposing it was the man from the farm, or a stranger? How could she know if he’d be on her side? They might be accomplices of her captors. The farm man, Jim—if he wasn’t in the know, why should Annie have made her wave to him through the window early this morning? Was it this morning? It seemed a week ago.

  Wait a minute, though. Annie had put her into this bed, made her wave to Jim: he’d called up something about her being poorly. But of course she’d look like a boy to him, a sick boy. The mustard-faced hag would tell Jim that she—Evan—had some infectious disease, measles or leprosy, so she’d have an excuse for not letting him, or any of the farm people, come to visit her. Therefore Jim could not be in the plot.

  Lucy was so ravished by this elegant train of reasoning that she almost did not hear the squinching of boots in deep snow growing louder, approaching from the direction of the farm.

  She leapt out of bed, took the paper dart from behind the picture, pinched out a ridge that had been crumpled, stood on the bed close to the window.

  It was Jim, carrying a basket with some big oranges in it. Lucy rapped on the window, afraid to rap too loud. Harder. Jim looked up, waved. She put her finger to her lips, saying a ‘ssh’ which he certainly could not hear. Before he could shout up at her and bring the other two out of the house, Lucy projected the dart through the opening at the top of the window. It sailed in a beautiful arc, falling right at his feet.

  Then the triumph of it turned to disaster. Jim picked it up all right; but he threw it straight back at her. Having a game with the kid. Good sport, young Evan was.

  The dart struck the window-pane and eddied down like a shot bird into the snow, a foot from the wall of the cottage.

  Lucy made frantic signs through the window, jabbing her finger downward, then opening an imaginary paper dart and pretending to read it. Jim grinned up, looking bemused. And at that moment Lucy heard footsteps in the hall, going towards the front door. At all costs she must stop them going out and seeing the dart. She screamed out ‘Help! Help!’

  The footsteps changed direction and came pounding up the stairs. Bursting into the room, Annie Stott clapped a hand over Lucy’s mouth and dragged her away from the window.

  ‘How dare you make that disgusting noise? You’re a very naughty child.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Lucy, when she could speak. ‘I had a horrid dream. I dreamt the house was on fire.’

  Annie went to the door and called down. ‘Paul! Come up at once, please.’

  Jim started to knock on the front door.

  ‘Paul, see this child keeps quiet. She says she had a nightmare. Did you open that window, child?’

  ‘I felt so hot. Then I went to sleep and had a beastly dream.’

  ‘Shut it, Paul, and stay here. Keep her away from the window.’

  Annie Stott hurried downstairs, in a furious temper.

  ‘What do you want?’ she asked Jim. ‘What’s been going on? Have you been talking to Evan?’

  Like most rural persons Jim, though slow-thinking, could be both obstinate and crafty. He didn’t want to get the little fellow in trouble with this sour-faced aunt of his. Better say nothing about the paper-dart throwing.

  ‘Nothing’s been going on—not that I knows of. I waved up to young Evan. Then you come screeching out at me.’

  ‘The boy’s delirious. He must be kept quiet.’

  ‘Sorry to hear that. Bert Hardman asked me to bring up these oranges for Evan.’

  ‘Hardman?’

  ‘Our village copper.’

  ‘Oh, yes, the one who came up this morning. Very kind of him, I’m sure.’

  Annie Stott ga
zed suspiciously around: but Jim was standing between her and the dart. When she had gone indoors with the basket, he bent down, picked up the dart, scrumpled it into his great-coat pocket—and forgot all about it.

  Lucy had no means of knowing whether its message had been taken, or whether it still lay at the foot of the wall, for she was removed at once into the nursery room at the back of the cottage.

  CHAPTER 8

  * * *

  The Bug

  DECEMBER 30

  ELASTIC, KEPT STRETCHED too long, loses its tension. At the Guest House on Sunday morning there was an atmosphere, slack and sagging, of nervous exhaustion. Elena Wragby had sat at breakfast, stony-faced, eating little, eyes downcast as if to avoid looking at the chair occupied once by Lucy. Her husband was attentive to her, in an absent-minded way, but she could make little response and his ear kept waiting for the expected sound of the telephone. Why hadn’t they rung him since yesterday? The morning dragged on, and still there was not a word. They’d said he’d be getting new instructions from them: but no instructions came—which preyed upon Wragby’s nerve all the more because he had privately made up his mind what line to take when they did come.

  The wind had dropped again in the night, and a very severe frost turned the road-surfaces, on which the snow had begun to melt a little yesterday, into stretches of ice. At 10.50 the Admiral and his wife went off to the village church, slipping and supporting each other like drunks.

  In the sitting-room, Lance Atterson was strumming on his guitar, while Cherry’s fat little body jerked to the rhythms, unconsciously, like the body of a dog twitching in its sleep. Justin Leake was reading a paper-back with a lurid cover: that is to say, he had the book open in his hand, but he never seemed to turn a page, and the book might just as well be reading him—as Nigel would have liked to, but the man was indecipherable. There could be little doubt what game he was playing here: but was he covertly playing another game at the same time?

  Superintendent Sparkes had rung Nigel last night.

  ‘The Surrey chums have come through at last,’ he said. ‘Sir James Allenby wasn’t at home—called away suddenly to Stockholm, but they interviewed the housekeeper.’ A note of wry amusement came into Sparkes’s voice. ‘Your Cherry—it seems she really is Miss Smith. Frobisher-Smith, to be precise. Sir James’s ward. Aged sixteen years, ten months.’

  ‘Well, that tidies up that one. You’re going to let it ride for a bit?’

  ‘I certainly am. If she lays information against our friend, or vice versa, I’ll have to act. Not till then.’

  ‘Conniving at malpractices, eh?’

  ‘Just so.’

  ‘Nothing about Lucy yet?’

  ‘Nothing. We’ve combed nearly all the likely places hereabouts. It’s getting me down.’

  ‘What about that telephone call to Wragby from London?’

  ‘Came from a flat whose tenant is abroad. Can’t trace him yet. Maybe an undercover Party member. Wish you could break through to the contact at this end.’

  ‘The informer? I think I know who that is.’

  ‘You do, do you?’

  ‘Yes.’ Nigel told him a name. There was a long silence. ‘Well, that’d be a turn-up for the book,’ said Sparkes at last …

  Nigel and Clare had talked till midnight. He had gone into her room, adjoining his, and sat down on the bed. ‘You look more beautiful than ever, Clare love,’ he said, admiring the magnolia-white skin of her face and shoulders, the gloss of the black hair that cascaded about them.

  ‘Shall we make love?’ She gazed up at him. ‘No, you want me to do something else for you. Tell me.’

  ‘This is what comes of living with a witch. Simply can’t have a private thought of my own.’

  ‘You know you couldn’t live with anyone else, my darling,’ she replied, not possessively, not anxiously—with the affectionate detachment that kept her so charming for him.

  ‘You could say no. I wouldn’t blame you. It’s a fairly beastly job.’

  ‘Well, go on.’

  ‘Like being given a knife and asked to go and twist it in someone else’s wound.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘And that person may not deserve it, may be quite innocent.’

  Clare’s eyes were fastened upon his worried face. In her high, light voice, she said, ‘You mean Elena Wragby.’

  ‘Clairvoyant again.’

  ‘No. It’s just that we know each other so well, bless you. Also, I’ve got some brains.’

  ‘And the loveliest body. Put on your bed-jacket. I want to keep my mind on the problem.’

  Nigel began to talk, her hand in his, her fingers stroking his. The problem was the identity of the kidnappers’ accomplice. They had been tipped off about the trap at the G.P.O. How? Either by telephone from Downcombe or by making some sort of contact in Belcaster. The only suspicious call from the Guest House that morning was Mrs ffrench-Sullivan’s. But she had telephoned a wire. You don’t do that unless you are not sure whether the recipient will be at home: if the friend, Mrs Hollins, was in the kidnapping plot, she would certainly stay at home awaiting any message that might come from the Guest House.

  ‘Neither the Admiral nor his wife left the Guest House that morning. Leake, Lance Atterson and Cherry went into Belcaster. Unless they’re all in the plot together, which I don’t believe, they clear one another fairly adequately for most of the time they spent there. Of course, one of them could have given a warning sign to the kidnappers, unnoticed by the other two. But our X must have thought it more than likely that the police would shadow any of us who went into Belcaster: I don’t believe he’d have risked making any sort of contact there. And remember, he could have nothing more than Wragby’s hints to go on: Wragby said he’d make a fight of it: he did not even hint that the information he was going to deposit in the G.P.O. would be bogus. But the kidnappers knew it was bogus without seeing it.’

  ‘So you’re left with Elena?’

  ‘Elena rang some friends after breakfast, from the village call-box. Unfortunately we didn’t have those calls monitored till a little later. There was nothing to prevent her putting through another, and there’s no evidence that she didn’t. But the main point is this—Wragby told her exactly what he and the police had planned. She was the only person here, apart from myself, who knew the details of it.’

  ‘I see,’ said Clare after a pause. ‘I see, but I don’t believe. She loves Lucy. That I’m sure of. Nothing could induce her to—why, it’s utterly fantastic. And I thought she’d been thoroughly screened by the authorities.’

  ‘So did they. I’ve been in touch with the department, and they’re bringing out their fine-tooth combs to start all over again. But it’ll take time. And time’s what we haven’t got. It may be too late already,’ Nigel added bleakly.

  ‘You must assume that Lucy’s alive still.’

  ‘Or pack it up. I know. I admire Elena. I like her. But we’ve no notion what pressures the other side may not be able to put on her … Tell me again what happened when you broke the news to her.’

  Clare told him.

  ‘Doesn’t it strike you that she overplayed the scene? You knocked at her bedroom door and went in. Before you told her anything, she assumed that Lucy had met with some accident. She looked distraught. If she’d genuinely been so worried about the child’s absence, wouldn’t she have come downstairs, asked if Lucy had returned, gone out to look for her? Her behaviour was that of a woman who knew what had happened, was appalled by it, couldn’t face it. She tried to explain her distraction by telling you she blamed herself bitterly for having sent Lucy down to post the letters. That was clever. It was also genuine. I’ve no doubt her conscience was torturing her about it. She’s not a wicked woman.’

  Clare’s eyes opened at him, dark and lustrous as pansies. ‘I see. It’s an intelligent deduction all right. But you say she’s not wicked. What on earth could compel a decent woman to sacrifice a child she loves for a Cause she hates?’

/>   ‘That’s for you to find out, my dear.’

  ‘Me? But, good God——’

  ‘If I’m wrong, I’m wrong. I’ll eat dirt. If Elena’s innocent, it’ll be another turn of the screw for her. I hate the possibility. But Lucy is more important than her stepmother’s feelings.’

  After a long silence, Clare said, ‘What do you want me to do …?’

  That afternoon Clare went up to the Wragbys’ room with her sketching block and charcoal pencils. Elena had been persuaded by her husband to sit for Clare.

  ‘It’s very good of you to let me——’

  ‘I’m honoured. Alfred said it would be—what is the word?— therapeutic,’ Elena replied with a sad, bitter little quirk of the mouth. She sat down as Clare directed, on an upright chair by the window, falling fluently into an attitude of repose which belied the tautness of her face, the nervous tic that now and then twitched the skin at the side of her temples. Clare gazed for a minute or two at the proud, ravaged profile, feeling for the bone structure beneath, trying to clear her mind of everything but the forms it presented, before she took up her pencil. With the instinctive respect of one artist for another’s work, Elena remained silent during this scrutiny. When the pencil made its first bold sweep on the paper, she asked, ‘Do you generally start your portrait heads with sketches like this, my dear?’

  ‘No. I prefer modelling straight off with the clay, but I haven’t brought any. Raise your chin, just a fraction: that’s it … You must have sat for many painters in your own country.’

  ‘Ah, yes. In my young days. I was beautiful then. My husband—my first husband—painted me often.’

  ‘Your face is the kind that will age into greater beauty. Tell me about him.’

  ‘Oh, he was a wild one. But very talented. Very brave. As an artist he chafed under the regime.’

  ‘Socialist realism?’

  ‘Yes. He said such indiscreet things. I was always afraid they would come to the ears of the Party officials. Of course, he was very young—five years younger than me. Well, they killed him in the end. He died in my arms, in a barricaded house. He was angry to die, poor man. You know what he said, dying?—“Just when I was learning to paint. All those pictures—I shall never paint them now.” I never thought I should live to envy him his death.’