by Dick Francis
“Don’t you fret. We took them without a fight. They were coughing and crying all over the place.” His voice smiled. “There were three of them. Two were on the top story running about, absolutely frantic, looking for the kid and not being able to see for tears. They kept saying he’d fallen down the chute.”
“Did you find the chute?” I asked curiously.
“Yes. It was a circular canvas thing like they have for escapes from aircraft. It slanted from the hole in the floorboards into a small cupboard on the floor below. The door of the cupboard had been bricked up and wallpapered and there was a wardrobe standing in front of it. All freshly done, the cement wasn’t thoroughly dried. Anyway, they could have slid the boy down the chute and replaced the chunk of floorboards and put a rug over the trap door, and no ordinary search would have found him.”
“Would he have survived?” I asked.
“I should think so, yes, as long as they’d taken him out again, but to do that they’d have to have unbricked the doorway.”
“All rather nasty,” I said soberly.
“Yes, very.”
Tony and I put Eagler’s account of the chute into our report and decided not to tell Miranda.
Eagler also said that none of the kidnappers was talking; that they were tough, sullen, and murderously angry. None of them would give his name, address, or any other information. None of them had said a single word that could with propriety be taken down and used in evidence. All their utterances had been of the four-letter variety, and they had been sparing even with those.
“We’ve sent their prints to the central registry, of course, but with no results so far.” He paused. “I’ve been listening to your tapes. Red-hot stuff. I’ll pry open these fine oysters with what’s on them, never fear.”
“Hope they utter pearls,” I said.
“They will, laddie.”
Towards midday I telephoned to Alessia to postpone the lunch invitation and was forgiven instantly.
“Miranda telephoned,” she said. “She told me you brought Dominic home. She can’t speak for tears, but at least this time they’re mostly happy.”
“Mostly?” I said.
“John and that policeman, Superintendent Rightsworth, both insisted on Dominic being examined by a doctor, and of course Miranda didn’t disagree, but she says they are talking now of treatment for him, not because of his physical state, which isn’t bad, but simply because he won’t talk.”
“What sort of treatment?”
“In hospital.”
“They can’t be serious!” I said with alarm.
“They say Miranda can go with him, but she doesn’t like it. She’s trying to persuade everyone to let Dominic stay at home with her in peace for a few days. She says she’s sure he’ll talk to her, if they’re alone.”
I reflected that once the news of his kidnap and return hit the public consciousness there would be little enough peace for a while, but that otherwise her instincts were right on the button.
I said, “Do you think you could persuade John Nerrity, referring to your own experiences, that to be carted off to hospital among strangers would be desperately disturbing for Dominic now, even if Miranda went with him, and could make him worse, not better?”
There was a silence. Then she said slowly, “If Papa had sent me to a hospital, I would have gone truly mad.”
“People sometimes do awful things with the best intentions.”
“Yes,” she said faintly. “Are you at home?”
“No. In the office. And . . . about lunch . . . I’m very sorry . . .”
“Another day will do fine,” she said absently. “I’ll talk to John and ring you back.”
She telephoned back when Tony and I had finished the report and he’d gone home to a well-earned sleep.
“John was very subdued, you’d be surprised,” she said. “All that self-importance was in abeyance. Anyway, he’s agreed to give Dominic more time, and I’ve asked Miranda and Dominic down to Lambourn tomorrow. Popsy’s such a darling. She says it’s open house for kidnap victims. She also suggested you should come as well, if you could, and I think . . . I do think it would be the best ever thing . . . if you could.”
“Yes, I could,” I said. “I’d like to, very much.”
“Great,” she said; then, reflectively, “John sounded pleased, you know, that Miranda and Dominic would be out of the house. He’s so odd. You’d think he’d be delirious with joy, having his son back, and he almost seemed . . . annoyed.”
“Think of your own father’s state after you got home.”
“Yes, but . . .” She broke off. “How very strange.”
“John Nerrity,” I said neutrally, “is like one of those snowstorm paperweights, all shaken up, with bits of guilt and fear and relief and meanness all floating around in a turmoil. It takes a while after something as traumatic as the last few days for everything in someone’s character to settle, like the snowstorm, so to speak, and for all the old pattern to reassert.”
“I’d never thought of it like that.”
“Did he realize,” I asked, “that the press will descend on him, as they did on you?”
“No, I don’t think so. Will they?”
“ ’Fraid so. Sure to. Someone down in Sussex will have tipped them off.”
“Poor Miranda.”
“She’ll be fine. If you ring her again, tell her to hold on to Dominic tight through all the interviews and keep telling him in his ear that he’s safe and that all the people will go away soon.”
“Yes.”
“See you tomorrow,” I said.
DOMINIC WAS A big news item on breakfast television and near-headlines in the newspapers. Miranda, I was glad to see, had met the cameras with control and happiness, the wordless child seeming merely shy. John Nerrity, head back, moustache bristling, had confirmed that the sale of his Derby winner would go through as planned, though he insisted he was nowhere near bankruptcy; that the story had been merely a ploy to confound the kidnappers.
They all asked who rescued his son.
The police, John Nerrity said. No praise was too high.
Most people in the office, having seen the coverage, read Tony’s and my report with interest, and we both answered questions at the Monday session. Gerry Clayton’s eyebrows rose a couple of times, but on the whole no one seemed to want to inquire too closely into what we had done besides advise. The chairman concluded that even if Nerrity stuck to his guns and refused to pay a fee it shouldn’t worry us. The deliverance of Dominic, he said contentedly, had been tidily and rapidly carried out at little cost to the firm. Liaison with the police had been excellent. Well done, you two chaps. Any more business? If not, we’ll adjourn.
Tony adjourned to the nearest pub and I to Lambourn, arriving later than I would have liked.
“Thank goodness,” Alessia said, coming out of the house to meet me. “We thought you’d got lost.”
“Held up in the office.” I hugged her with affection.
“No excuse.”
There was a new lightness about her: most encouraging. She led me through the kitchen to the more formal drawing room where Dominic sat watchfully on Miranda’s lap and Popsy was pouring wine.
“Hello,” Popsy said, giving me a welcoming kiss, bottle in one hand, glass in the other. “Out with the wand, it’s badly needed.”
I smiled at her green eyes and took the filled glass. “Pity I’m not twenty years younger,” she said. I gave her an “oh, yeah” glance and turned to Miranda.
“Hello,” I said.
“Hello.” She was quiet and shaky, as if ill.
“Hello, Dominic.”
The child stared at me gravely with the big wide eyes. Blue eyes, I saw by daylight. Deep blue eyes.
“You looked terrific on the box,” I said to Miranda. “Just right.”
“Alessia told me . . . what to do.”
“Alessia told her to dress well, to look calm, and to pretend everything was normal,”
Popsy said. “I heard her. She said it was a good lesson she’d learned from you, and Miranda might as well benefit.”
Popsy had made an informal lunch in the kitchen, of which Miranda ate little and Dominic nothing, and afterwards she drove us all up to the Downs in her Land Rover, thinking instinctively, I reckoned, that as it was there that Alessia felt most released, so would Dominic also.
“Has Dominic eaten anything at all since we brought him back?” I asked on the way.
“Only milk,” Miranda said. “He wouldn’t touch even that until I tried him with one of his old bottles.” She kissed him gently. “He always used to have his bedtime milk in a bottle, didn’t you, poppet? He only gave it up six months ago.”
We all in silence contemplated Dominic’s regression to babyhood, and Popsy put the brakes on up by the schooling fences.
“I brought a rug,” she said. “Let’s sit on the grass.”
The three sat, with Dominic still clinging to his mother, and I leaned against the Land Rover and thought that Popsy was probably right: the peace of the rolling hills was so potent it almost stretched out and touched you.
Miranda had brought a toy car, and Alessia played with it, wheeling it across the rug, up Miranda’s leg and onto Dominic’s. He watched her gravely for a while without smiling and finally hid his face in his mother’s neck.
Miranda said, her mouth trembling, “Did they . . . did they hurt him? He hasn’t any bad bruises, just little ones . . . but . . . what did they do, what did they do to make him like this?”
I squatted beside her and put an arm round her shoulder, embracing Dominic also. He looked at me with one eye from under his mother’s ear, but didn’t try to squirm away.
“They apparently kept him fastened to a bed with the sort of harness you get in prams. I didn’t see it, but I was told. I don’t think the harness itself would have hurt him. He would have been able to move a little—sit up, kneel, lie down. He refused to eat any food and he cried sometimes because he was lonely.” I paused. “It’s possible they deliberately frightened him more than they had to, to keep him quiet.” I paused again. “There was a hole in the floorboards. A big hole, big enough for a child to fall through.” I paused again. “They might have told Dominic that if he made a lot of noise they’d put him down that hole.”
Miranda’s whole body shuddered and Dominic let out a wail and clung to his mother with frenzy. It was the first sound I’d heard him utter, and I wasn’t going to waste it.
“Dominic,” I said firmly. “Some nice policemen have filled up that hole so that no little boys can fall down it. The three men who took you away in a boat are not coming back. The policemen have locked them up in prison. No one is going to take you to the seaside.” I paused. “No one is going to stick any more tape on your mouth. No one is going to be angry with you and call you horrid names.”
“Oh, darling,” Miranda said in distress, hugging him.
“The hole is all filled in,” I said. “There is no hole anymore in the floor. Nobody can fall down it.”
The poor little wretch would have nightmares about it perhaps all his life. Any person who could find a prevention for nightmares, I often thought, would deserve a Nobel prize.
I stood up and said to Alessia and Popsy, “Let’s go for a stroll,” and when they stood up I said to Dominic, “Give your mummy lots of kisses. She cried all the time, when those horrid men took you. She needs a lot of kisses.”
She needed the kisses her husband hadn’t given her, I thought. She needed the comfort of strong adult arms. She was having to generate strength enough to see herself and Dominic through alone, and it still seemed to me a tossup whether she’d survive triumphantly or end in breakdown.
Popsy, Alessia, and I walked slowly over to one of the schooling fences and stood there talking.
“Do you think you did right, reminding him of the hole in the floor?” Popsy asked.
“Splinters have to come out,” I said.
“Or the wound festers?”
“Yes.”
“How did you know what they threatened?”
“I didn’t know. I just guessed. It was so likely, wasn’t it? The hole was there. He was crying. Shut up you little bleeder or we’ll put you down it.”
Popsy blinked. Alessia swallowed. “Tell Miranda,” I said to her, “that it takes a long time to get over something as awful as being kidnapped. Don’t let her worry if Dominic wets the bed and clings to her. Tell her how it’s been with you. How insecure it made you feel. Then she’ll be patient with Dominic once the first joy of having him back has cooled down.”
“Yes, I’ll tell her.”
Popsy looked from Alessia to me and back again, but said nothing, and it was Alessia herself who half smiled and gave voice to Popsy’s thought.
“I’ve clung to you all right,” she said to me, looking briefly over to Miranda and then back. “When you aren’t here, and I feel panicky, I think of you, and it’s a support. I’ll tell Miranda that too. She needs someone to cling to, herself, poor girl.”
“You make Andrew sound like a sort of trellis for climbing plants,” Popsy said. We walked again, as far as the next schooling fence, and stopped, looking out across the hills. High cirrus clouds curled in feathery fronds near the sun, omen of bad weather to come. We’d never have found Dominic, I thought, if it had rained the day after he was taken and there had been no canal digger with his grandmother on the beach.
“You know,” Alessia said, suddenly stirring, “it’s time for me to go back to racing.” The words came out as if unpremeditated and seemed to surprise her.
“My darling!” Popsy exclaimed. “Do you mean it?”
“I think I mean it at this moment,” Alessia said hesitantly, smiling nervously. “Whether I mean it tomorrow morning is anyone’s guess.”
We all saw, however, that it was the first trickle through the dike. I put my arms round Alessia and kissed her: and in an instant it wasn’t just a gesture of congratulation but something much fiercer, something wholly different. I felt the fire run through her in return and then drain away, and I let go of her thinking that the basement had taken charge of me right and proper.
I smiled. Shrugged my shoulders. Made no comment.
“Did you mean that?” Alessia demanded.
“Not exactly,” I said. “It was a surprise.”
“It sure was.” She looked at me assessingly and then wandered away on her own, not looking back.
“You’ve pruned her off the trellis,” Popsy said, amused. “The doctor kissed the patient; most unprofessional.”
“I’ll kiss Dominic too if it will make you feel better.”
She took my arm and we strolled in comradely fashion back to the Land Rover and the rug. Miranda was lying on her back, dozing, with Dominic loosely sprawled over her stomach. His eyes, too, were shut, his small face relaxed, the contours rounded and appealing.
“Poor little sweetheart,” Popsy murmured. “Pity to wake them.”
Miranda woke naturally when Alessia returned, and with Dominic still asleep we set off on the short drive home. One of the bumps in the rutted Downs track must have roused him, though, because I saw him half sit up in Miranda’s arms and then lie back, with Miranda’s head bent over him as if to listen.
Alessia gave me a wild look and she too bent her head to listen, but I could hear nothing above the sound of the engine, and anyway it didn’t seem to me that Dominic’s lips were moving.
“Stop the car,” Alessia said to Popsy, and Popsy, hearing the urgency, obeyed.
Dominic was humming.
For a few seconds the low noise went on: randomly, I thought at first, though certainly not on one note.
“Do you know what that is?” Alessia said incredulously, when the child stopped. “I simply don’t believe it.”
“What, then?” I said.
For answer she hummed the phrase again, exactly as Dominic had done. He sat up in Miranda’s arms and looked at her, clearly res
ponding.
“He knows it!” Alessia exclaimed. “Dominic knows it.”
“Yes, darling,” Popsy said patiently. “We can see he does. Can we drive on now?”
“You don’t understand,” Alessia said breathlessly. “That’s out of Il Trovatore. ‘The Soldiers’ Chorus.’ ”
My gaze sharpened on her face. “Do you mean . . .” I began.
She nodded. “I heard it five times a day for six weeks.”
“What are you talking about?” Miranda asked. “Dominic doesn’t know any opera. Neither John nor I like it. Dominic only knows nursery rhymes. He picks those up like lightning. I play them to him on cassettes.”
“Holy hell,” I said in awe. “Popsy, drive home. All is fine.”
With good humor Popsy restarted the car and took us back to the house, and once there I went over to my car to fetch my briefcase and carry it into the kitchen.
“Miranda,” I said, “I’d like Dominic to look at a picture.”
She was apprehensive but didn’t object. She sat at the kitchen table with Dominic on her lap, and I took out one of the photostats of Giuseppe and laid it face up on the table. Miranda watched Dominic anxiously for a frightened reaction, but none came. Dominic looked at the face calmly for a while and then turned away and leaned against Miranda, his face to her neck.
With a small sigh I put the picture back in the case and accepted Popsy’s offer of a universal cup of tea.
“Ciao bambino,” Dominic said.
My head and Alessia’s snapped round as if jerked by strings.
“What did you say?” Alessia asked him, and Dominic snuggled his face deeper into Miranda’s neck.
“He said ciao bambino,” I said.
“Yes . . . that’s what I thought.”
“Does he know any Italian?” I asked Miranda.
“Of course not.”
“Goodbye baby,” Popsy said. “Isn’t that what he said?”
I took the picture of Giuseppe out of the case again and laid it on the table.
“Dominic, dear little one,” I said, “what was the man called?”
The great eyes swiveled my way, but he said nothing.
“Was his name . . . Michael?” I asked.