The Big House

by Larche Davies

  As she left the court, she turned to thank the judge, and he felt the warmth of her smile.

  *

  “So many murders must be a record!” exclaimed Miss Clements. “And to think she was in this very house!”

  Well, at least it had given her an excuse to make this magnificent celebratory gateau. She’d had her eye on the recipe for a long time.

  “And then, that Father Copse being found unfit to plead! Would you like a bit more cream on it, Dorothy, dear? All these months of worrying, and now no more trials! I can’t think why David won’t join us. He normally loves gateau.”

  Lucy guessed why David had gone to his room. He needed to be left alone. After all, Isobel was his mother, and Lucy sensed that, in a way, he felt tainted by her guilt. Copse was her father, and she certainly didn’t feel at all tainted by his guilt, but having both Isobel and Drax for parents was a double dose. Maybe, now it was all over, he’d be able to find his old live-wire self again and move on. With Copse locked up somewhere for the criminally insane, Isobel in prison for life and Drax dead, they might actually be free at last. There must be a catch!

  *

  Now that Copse and Isobel were safely out of their lives, Miss Clements felt she had no further excuse for postponing her wedding, and she fixed a date for the last Saturday in August. She found the prospect of marriage disturbing.

  “Mr Nicholas wants me to live in his house,” she said one morning at breakfast, after Dorothy had left for work. “He says this house is too big. I won’t be sorry, because it is a lot to manage, but it won’t be the same only cooking for two, and I’ve worked all my life and would really prefer not to be a kept woman – so restricting, you know. I do like to have my independence. I’ve always been in charge of myself and Marilyn, and I’ve supported her through all her education. But there you are. I said I’d marry him, and I won’t go back on my promise. Maybe I’ll get a part-time job in one of the hotels on the front.”

  No one could think of anything appropriate to say in response to this uncharacteristic outpouring of private thoughts. The dish of bacon and scrambled eggs was passed up the table in silence. Mrs Ferranti unobtrusively sniffed at the delicious smell that rose from her cup of very good coffee, and wondered how she should put her plan to Miss Clements.

  “I suppose it will be time for you children to move on anyway, and I shall miss you,” said Miss Clements sadly. “I do hope they don’t send you away to Birmingham or London, or some such remote spot. So distressing, don’t you think? It would be nice if you could stay here somewhere, so I could see you often and make sure you’re eating properly.”

  She wiped a tear from her eye.

  “Oh dear, oh dear,” she sighed. “In all my life it never occurred to me that I might get married, and our parents warned us about it and told us not to, but it’s too late now. Mr Nicholas is such a lovely man, and I can’t let him down. And Dorothy is getting on so well with my cookery lessons.”

  “We hope Dorothy can rent a house here,” said Lucy anxiously. “We don’t want to stop seeing you or Nain Jones. And Nonna will be living with us. Everyone we trust is here, and Dorothy’s cooking lessons are really important because one day she’s going to be a famous cook on television and write cookery books.”

  Miss Clements sighed, and there was gloom around the table until a rat-tat on the front door told them that Gwen had come to fetch Paul for school and they were all going to be late. There was a mad rush, and suddenly the table was empty, apart from Miss Clements and Mrs Ferranti.

  “Another cup of coffee?” asked Miss Clements. “Do help yourself to a croissant.”

  Mrs Ferranti passed up her cup. She pulled her rose-coloured peignoir tightly around her and sat up very straight. What a beautiful woman, thought Miss Clements. Now that she was filling out and the colour was coming back to her cheeks, it was easy to see what Dorothy would look like when she was sixty. Perhaps I’ll stop wearing grey once I’m married, she thought. She loved red.

  There was a clattering and banging as the children rushed down the stairs and out through the front door.

  Mrs Ferranti sat up even straighter. “Miss Clements, I have a proposition to put to you,” she said, as soon as the house was quiet. “I’ll come straight to the point. How much are you asking for this house?”

  It was quite late when the two ladies rose from the table, after a very pleasant and fruitful discussion. Miss Clements went off to her kitchen to think about lunch and the large sum of money that would shortly be coming her way, and Mrs Ferranti went upstairs to what had once been Miss Marilyn’s bedroom suite. She put on a crimson shirt and her straw-silk trousers. Thank goodness they almost fitted her again, she thought, instead of hanging off her like a scarecrow.

  She could hear Gladys, the cleaner, clearing up the dining room and was glad that part of the agreement was that she would stay with the house — provided she was willing, of course. Also, for a generous fee, Miss Clements was to come in on Dorothy’s days off from the hotel and, together, the two of them would plan and cook a week’s menu to put in the freezer.

  “It may not exactly be a day of rest for Dorothy,” Mrs Ferranti had said, “but it’ll be wonderful training for her. And, perhaps, sometimes the two of you could prepare enough for a month, if the freezer will take it, so that she has practice in cooking for large numbers.”

  Miss Clements had agreed wholeheartedly. “She can help me do the cooking for my wedding buffet,” she said. “It may be a good thing if she has something to occupy her mind on her days off,” she added, “because she does attract an awful lot of young men.”

  Mrs Ferranti had laughed. “She’ll never be too busy for that, I’m sure.”

  Now, here she was, fit and well, dressed in the elegantly classic clothes she had forgotten about in her dark time – and buying a lovely house in which to live with her beautiful granddaughter and that granddaughter’s adopted family. Life could begin again. She picked up the phone and rang her brother.

  “Mario, I think I’ve got us a really promising trainee,” she said. “Someone who may well be fit to take over the business from us one day.”

  *

  “Miss Clements has kindly agreed to let us to stay on in the house once she’s married,” Mrs Ferranti announced at supper that night. “That is, provided Mr Lovett or the court or whoever it is agrees, of course. And your nain has decided to sell her house and will move in with us.”

  There was a silence as the children digested the information.

  Lucy pinched herself. It must be a dream. She would have to wait for it to happen before she could believe it was true.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Robin stood on the pavement outside the primary school and watched the children in the playground, all screeching and yelling and bumping into each other. He was looking for brown curly hair and olive skin, but all the kids looked the same to him.

  Patience was a virtue, and Robin had plenty of it. The only two holy leaders who hadn’t fled abroad had promised him a fortune if he could bring this prize home to them. The hot July sun beat down on him, and he longed for the cool water of the nice blue pool at the Spanish finca.

  His patience was rewarded at last. A teacher blew the whistle and, as the children lined up, she shouted something incomprehensible in a foreign language.

  Robin was irritated. “At least everyone speaks English in Spain,” he muttered to himself. He studied the lines of children carefully. Good! There he was – that boy at the back of the queue. He’d seen him before, trailing down the road after Dorothy.

  At three o’clock, he came again, and stood well back several yards up the road to watch the children run out to their parents. He saw Paul take hold of a woman’s hand and, when they moved away, he followed them. So that was the grandma. They went through the town towards the sea, and waited on the promenade, near the pier. A few moments later,
Dorothy emerged from one of the hotels. Robin held his breath. He had almost forgotten how lovely she was. She picked up Paul for a second, gave him a big, cheerful kiss and plonked him down again.

  So, that was definitely the right Paul. Next thing was to check the pick-up point. ‘Be prepared’ was his motto, just like the boy scouts. At least they couldn’t pretend he wasn’t an efficient abduction agent, whatever they said about his brains. He walked back to the school to survey the road access. ‘Research’ he called it, just like those big-heads who went to university.

  He couldn’t believe his luck. The situation was perfect. The road leading down from the main road to the school was marked with a white line, indicating permitted parking for parents. Most parents would approach that way. The beauty of it was, when it reached the school, the road looped round some bushes and back towards the main road. So that was the departure route. It was separated from a graveyard by a thick privet hedge, and marked with double yellow lines. No parking there, but plenty of discreet hiding spots on benches set into recesses in the hedge. Or, if he needed to run, a fit and agile individual like himself could easily slip into the graveyard through a weak spot in the hedge.

  Robin knew his driver well. He was as highly experienced and efficient as Robin himself, which was saying something. Give credit where credit was due. All the driver had to do was stop the car dead on time on the double yellow lines, while carefully selected local yobs caused a diversion. Robin would deliver the goods. The car would drive off, and Robin would either be running through the graveyard or resting with his eyes closed in a recess in the hedge, having not seen a thing.

  He ran over the plan in his mind. Foolproof. The next task was to find the local yobs to create the diversion. That should be no problem. There were plenty of idiots if you knew how spot them, and they were always glad of the extra cash.

  When all this was over he would concentrate on Dorothy. If there were any other abductors left he might pay one to come back later to help him, and then he would take her to Spain.

  *

  The evening sun streamed through the sitting-room window from a brilliant-red sky and all was peaceful. David and Lucy sat on the sofa, poring over Miss Clements’s Radio Times, looking for suitable programmes to enhance their cool image. Paul lay on the floor with a book, and Dorothy was stretched out on the window seat with her eyes closed after a hectic day full of summer visitors.

  Paul was mouthing the words as he read to himself. Suddenly he sat up. “I saw Dorothy’s Robin today,” he said, “and he made my hum come.”

  “He’s not mine!” said Dorothy indignantly, without opening her eyes. “Anyway, you never got close enough to have a good look at him.”

  “I saw him talking to you that time on the pier, and then afterwards when he was going away down the prom. He had a funny walk. Lucy couldn’t see it, but I did.”

  Dorothy’s eyes flew open and she sat up. “Where did you see him today?”

  “He was watching us in the playground. Miss Wyn Lloyd came out and he went away, and I could see him walking. His foot swings out.”

  Alarm bells rang. The three older ones looked at each other. Perhaps Dorothy’s instinct had been right! Perhaps he was more than just creepy.

  “Then I saw him again,” added Paul. “He was waiting at the end of the road when we came out of school, but he disappeared.”

  Lucy’s throat tightened. What was he doing near the school? Surely he couldn’t be after Paul?

  “It’s the last day of term tomorrow,” she said slowly. “It would be his last chance to catch Paul coming out of school.”

  “We mustn’t jump to conclusions,” said Dorothy unconvincingly. “After all, he might be one of the parents.” She sat thinking. “No, I’m sure he’s up to something,” she continued. “It’s not just the creepiness. There definitely is something fishy about him. Izzy really fancied him when she saw him on the pier. She said if I didn’t want him she did, so she checked in the admin office and they said there was no one called Robin working there, and that they were all women.”

  David picked up his mobile phone. “I’m going to ring Nain, and ask her to call in on her way down from the hospital,” he said. “We won’t say anything to Nonna, in case it makes her ill again.”

  Fortunately, there was no need to say anything, because after supper Miss Clements took Mrs Ferranti down into town with her to visit her friend Mary.

  Gwen arrived just after Paul had gone to bed. The older three were huddled around the empty summer fireplace discussing their strategy. Eventually, with Gwen’s agreement, they decided that Paul should go to school as usual.

  “Keeping him at home won’t help,” said Dorothy. “Robin may be innocent, but if he’s not, we’ll have to trap him or he’ll try another time.”

  Gwen had a shift in the afternoon, but would try to find cover for the two last hours. If she couldn’t make it in time to pick up Paul, David and Lucy would definitely be there, because they finished school early on the last day of term. When Gwen dropped him off in the morning, she would warn Miss Wyn Lloyd not to let him go near the school gate unless she, or his sister, was there.

  “And I’ll ask if I can leave work early,” said Dorothy, “for important family business. If they say I can’t, I’ll leave anyway.”

  It was agreed that the three of them would be outside Paul’s school by three o’clock, all in different strategic positions. Lucy would be at the gate in case Gwen didn’t get there in time. The others would be a few yards away, David to the right of the crowd of parents and Dorothy to the left.

  “If he does come,” muttered David, through gritted teeth, “whichever way he runs one of us will be there.”

  “Supposing he doesn’t come and leaves it till we’ve all relaxed?” asked Lucy.

  “Well, we’d certainly never relax,” Gwen Jones replied. The sad lines that had so recently faded from her gentle face had returned. “We’ll just have to be on guard, always. Now, assuming that it could be tomorrow, I’ll ring my friend Sam – the one you call Peter Pan – and he’ll have someone in among the parents, just in case.”

  *

  The next day, Paul set off for school, his ears ringing with dire warnings not to go off with anyone except Lucy or his grandmother.

  Just before three the parents started gathering outside the gates. Dorothy, David and Lucy checked the street from a distance. They were looking for a handsome, young man with a head of gleaming black hair. There was no sign of him.

  “Come on, quick!” said Dorothy. “It’s nearly time. Let’s get in position. He may come at the very last minute.” She pulled her straw hat well down and pushed her sunglasses higher up on her nose.

  *

  Robin stood surrounded by parents. He wore a baggy old tracksuit and the peak of his baseball cap hid his face. He looked around. An insignificant little car was waiting on the double yellow lines next to the graveyard, facing up towards the main road. It wasn’t the only car parked illegally, so it didn’t stand out like a sore thumb. His unsavoury-looking yobs were poised for action on opposite edges of the crowd, waiting for his signal. Everything was in place except for one thing. He swore to himself. No sign of grandma.

  Just in time! Here she came, puffing and panting. Thoughtless old cow, giving him nerves like that.

  Gwen wriggled her way through the crush of bodies and reached the gate just as the bell rang. The teachers carefully scrutinised the crowd before releasing children one by one. Paul pointed at Gwen and said something to Miss Wyn Lloyd, and she waved him off. As he came through the gate, two youths suddenly charged into the crowd from different directions and there was havoc. With screams of fear and outrage, parents and children fell back and landed on top of each other, while the youths ran off.

  Robin slipped into the mass of bodies and took Paul by the hand.

  “It’s alright, Paul,
” he said soothingly. “I’ll look after you. I’ve got some sweeties in the car. We’ll wait there till your granny’s picked herself up.”

  There was no time to hum. Paul kicked out fiercely. Robin picked him up, clapped a hand over his mouth and walked briskly to the waiting car. He shoved him in the back seat, slammed the door and slipped through the hedge into the graveyard. Lucy scrambled to her feet and looked around. She heard David shouting, “He’s in the car!”, and was just in time to see Paul’s face, mouth wide open, pressed up against the back window.

  Lucy ran. The car moved out, but was blocked momentarily as the car in front of it swerved away from the double yellow lines and cut across it. David reached it first and tugged at the driver’s door handle. It was locked. Lucy threw herself onto the bonnet and banged on the front window. The car lurched forward and she fell off. It reversed, lurched forward, bumped and stalled, and would not restart. David pulled Lucy to the side of the road, and Dorothy grabbed the door handle and hung on. The engine restarted, juddered and died. The driver flung open the door with a shove that sent Dorothy toppling and he ran round the front of the car towards the hedge. David was still crouching over Lucy as he passed. He shot out his hand and grabbed an ankle, and the driver fell into the arms of one of Peter Pan’s men. By the time he had been handcuffed and taken away, Paul was sitting on the pavement next to Lucy, howling.