The Case of the Missing Bronte

by Robert Barnard

  There I was much more exposed than at the back. There was a street-light no more than a few yards up the road. I lingered under an evergreen of a particularly aggressive kind. The light enabled me to get a good look at the front porch. The usual resort of the feeble-minded was the front-door mat. Miss Boothroyd was not so silly. Over the door, on the top ledge, was a possibility. But she was not that tall, and I guessed she would only just be able to reach there. There were two geranium pots on either side of the porch. Those seemed very good bets. What say she would put it under the one to her right hand as she came out of the front door?

  I strolled up to the porch, raised the pot with an air of casual authority, felt under it, extracted the key, and let myself in by the front door as if I were a helpful friend, come to water the pot plants. Easy as winking.

  But inside was pitch dark. I was fairly sure I had not been seen coming in, so there was no point in advertising my presence. Miss Boothroyd could well have phoned a neighbour and asked her to keep an eye on the place. I had not been able to get a look at the hall through the crack in the door Miss Boothroyd had vouchsafed me on our interview. I had to switch on my torch. Cautiously I played it round the walls. It was very much the sort of place one would expect: a chiming clock, ticking authoritatively and showing the wrong time; lots of dark varnish; and the sort of wall-paper that seems to be aspiring to the condition of dark varnish.

  I flashed the torch along, keeping the beam close to the floor. To the right, the front room. The best room, no doubt. Miss Boothroyd certainly had not been typing there — the noise had come from further off. I advanced a few steps. To the left was the staircase. Shabby carpeting, getting stringy and dangerous in places. I went further forwards. Two other doorways: to the left, the kitchen, to the right — what? The other living-room, probably — doubling, perhaps, as a study, to save on heating? This seemed to be the best bet. I pushed open the door. Through the window, sailing above the acacias and laurels, the moon gazed pale and solemn through the window. I extinguished the torch and went over to pull the curtains. They were heavy and old, velvet with worn pile. I tugged the cord at their side and they slid closed. Now I felt well shut in, insulated. I put the torch on again and flashed it with more confidence.

  It was a big room, damp and chill. Dark too, at the best of times, I guessed. The armchairs were deep, heavy and springy: you could see the round marks of the springs through the covers. The desk was not by the window but near the door, facing the wall. No distraction, no deviation from the work in hand — unless one could call a mildewed print of Landseer’s Hawking in the Olden Time a distraction. In the centre of the desk an upright, heavy, manual typewriter. And on either side . . . I went over to it, my heart beating.

  On the right side, face downwards, was the transcript. Two hundred and fifty pages of it. Industrious Miss Boothroyd! Money-hungry Miss Boothroyd! On either end of the desk, two piles — one large, one small. Square, brown, aged sheets of paper, folded and roughly torn at the edges. As I gazed at them, Miss Boothroyd’s dark room, Jubilee Parade, Leeds itself, faded to nothingness, and I remembered seeing other tiny manuscript books on that visit to Haworth Parsonage; and as my mind went back to that July visit two years ago I remembered the moors outside, and that endless purple blanket of heather, its blinding, incongruously regal splendour.

  My heart seemed to contract, my whole body stand still, as if I had caught a first glimpse of something or somebody overwhelmingly beautiful. I took the large pile in my hands. A feeling flowed through me that was almost sexual. I turned over the sheets of the typescript. She had done the first three-quarters or so of the novel, with only twenty-odd sheets left in the small pile of manuscript. There was no title, but the words Chapter I were written at the top of the page. I brought my torch closer and peered at the opening words:

  That summer, the summer of my twenty-second year, was the last summer of my content. July and August had been hot, with blazing sun and a heavy air . . .

  Suddenly my torch was no longer the only light in the room. Two shafts of light from the door illuminated an automatic and a long, gleaming knife. And above the knife was the impassive, Mongolian face of the Norwegian Finn, his eyes sparkling in the torchlight.

  ‘Ah, Mr Police. I said I would know you again.’

  CHAPTER 15

  GRIEVOUS BODILY HARM

  ‘Put it down, Mr Police,’ said Knut Ratikainen. ‘Put it down on the desk where you got it from.’

  He had a soft, silky voice, almost a purr. You didn’t have to dislike cats to dislike his voice.

  ‘And then put your hands on head,’ said Rolf Tingvold. ‘You done enough trouble for today.’

  I meditated some kind of action with my feet. There seemed a choice between kicking at the knife and getting a bullet in my ribs, and kicking at the gun and getting a knife in my ribs. Both feet at once was the sort of Bruce Lee stuff I couldn’t manage. I put my hands on my head and decided to delay things with a little light conversation, in the traditional manner.

  ‘Trouble?’ I said. ‘What kind of trouble was that? Upset Miss Boothroyd before she had finished the job, I suppose? Very worrying for you. Mr Parfitt will not be pleased.’

  ‘All those names, just like before. We never heard of this guy. You talk nonsenses. Is not important, anyway. Plenty of typists in the world.’

  ‘Lucky she’d got so far,’ I said. ‘Fast worker she must be.’

  ‘With us to hurry her up,’ said Ratikainen, with a nasty snigger.

  ‘Oh, you’ve been here all the time, have you? That must have been cosy for her. She looked the type who’d really appreciate having chaps like you in her house.’

  ‘Two days,’ said Tingvold. ‘Since we knew we’d shaken off your people. We thought we might as well keep a watch over our property. Keep the work going well.’

  ‘That rather explains her nervous condition, then. Anyway, why worry about that? Mr Parfitt will be proud of you. Millionaires like employees who keep their noses to the grindstone.’

  ‘What’s this about noses? You talk riddles, as usual. We do this for ourselves. For our love of literature, eh, Knut? Still, it’s nice to have a little chat. Cosy, like you say. We been waiting for this.’

  ‘I been waiting for it,’ said Ratikainen.

  ‘Knut’s been waiting. Knut, he’s very good with little chats. But in this case we don’t expect much from you. You haven’t got anything we want.’

  ‘Unlike Tetterfield,’ I said.

  ‘Unlike poor old Tetterfield. What a brave man! Even the best Knut could do was not enough. He never told us anything. We had to find the thing ourselves.’

  ‘With Tetterfield you struck lucky,’ I said. ‘He wouldn’t talk to us.’

  ‘He thought he still got it,’ said Tingvold, with a sneer. ‘He laid in that hospital and he thought he still got it. He thought it was worth going through all that.’

  ‘Tetterfield was different,’ said Ratikainen, flicking his tongue round his lips. ‘I had to be sure Tetterfield didn’t die.’

  I didn’t like the unspoken corollary.

  ‘Well, well,’ said Tingvold. ‘We don’t think we leave till maybe two, three in the night. Very dark. Everybody sleep. That give us four, five hours, right? We can have fun, eh?’

  ‘Anyone for Scrabble?’ I said, feeling a bit like Albert Campion.

  ‘Where shall we take him, Rolf?’ said Ratikainen. ‘What say we take him upstairs? We can put the light on in the landing. Nobody see. Then Mr Police can see what happen to him. Watch it all in slow motion, like the football on the television. Perhaps we put him in the bath, eh, Rolf? I like the bath game.’

  ‘Whatever you say, Knut,’ said his obedient side-kick. ‘I always enjoy your shows. What say we tie him up first? Truss him up like a chicken, eh?’

  ‘Just the hands, Rolf. Maybe a gag, so he don’t make too much noise. Not that it matters much. If he does, the neighbours think it’s the television. Nice gangster show. I tie him up
, Rolf.’

  He took his knife firmly in his hand and came towards me. If it had been him left covering me I might have tried something. But the revolver glimmered in the torchlight, and there is something very final about a revolver. Ratikainen took the collar of my jacket in his left hand and slit it down the back with his knife. Then he pulled it over my head. He went out into the kitchen to fetch some rope. He jerked my hands down, and tied them behind my back. It was coarse, hairy rope. It would be. It chafed like hell. The really nasty thing was when he came round in front of me again and looked into my face. The broad, impassive face was changed: he was practically slobbering with anticipation. Then he went into the kitchen again, and fetched a tea-towel. He tied it tightly round and in my mouth. It smelt of stale food, and seemed to be going right down my throat. I retched with nausea. Ratikainen kicked me, as if I ought to be showing gratitude.

  Then Tingvold came round behind me, and prodded me with the gun.

  ‘Get going,’ he said.

  I started out into the hall in an eerie silence. Their torches lit the way, but I stumbled on the frayed carpet of the stairs. Ratikainen kicked me again. Tingvold picked out every stair with the beam of his torch, and on and up we marched. It felt a bit like getting out of the tumbril and walking up the steps to the waiting invention of the good Dr Guillotine. Though one thing you could say for the guillotine: it was fast.

  Up on the landing, Tingvold went around closing all the doors to the bedrooms. Then he switched on the landing light. A dim bulb of low wattage hardly made the scene more comfortable. Knut Ratikainen’s face acquired menacing shadows. It had resumed its impassive expression, but the eyes seemed to sparkle more.

  ‘We put him in the bathroom, eh, Rolf? Put him on the seat, then run a bath. Maybe the British police need a bit of cleaning up. I think that’s what we do.’

  So they shoved me forward into the bathroom, and sat me down on the lavatory. The dim light from the landing just penetrated here, so they pulled down a blind. Then they tied my feet. Knut Ratikainen stood over me with his knife, while Rolf Tingvold ran the bath. The cold tap. In the quarter light the dark water looked as uninviting as the Dead Sea. He turned off the tap, and the two of them stood there waiting, in that eerie silence. They enjoyed the silence. It was one of their weapons.

  ‘What we do,’ said Ratikainen, putting his face close to mine, ‘is, we shove you in, then we shove you under, and we hold you there till your lungs are bursting. Then we let you up, and you get a few breaths of air — right? — and then we shove you down again and the game begins again. That’s a real nice game. Real fun game. That’s just to freshen you up for what comes after. You like that. What comes after. P’raps I give you a little taste of that in advance, eh?’

  For some reason there flashed through my mind a picture of my father. Perhaps I was thinking how much he would have enjoyed this. But as it did so, Ratikainen leant over, ever so slowly, and took hold of my shirt. He ripped it down slowly to the waist.

  ‘Shine the torch, Rolf, so he can see.’

  And he put the knife down against my abdomen. Then, forcing himself against my legs to prevent my kicking, he delicately pushed it in an inch or so, then slowly, lovingly, twisted the knife round. I tried to scream with the pain, but the gag choked me. Ratikainen kept his face close to mine, watching me, the ends of his mouth turned upwards in a parody of a smile. Saliva gathered at the corners of his mouth. Then he slowly took the knife out, and wiped it on the rags of my shirt.

  ‘You see? Just a little taste. Show you what we can do. I been looking forward to this, you can’t imagine, Mr Police. Ever since the tennis I been looking forward to this. Shall we try another game now? Another little bit of fun? Or shall we have one more little bit of knife fun first?’

  And he pushed himself against me again, and started bringing the knife slowly forward, a few inches above the first wound. He was just about to shove it in, when there was a noise from downstairs.

  The two of them jerked upright, and stood frozen to the spot like two bits of monumental masonry from Vigeland Park. If I’d been in the mood to laugh, it would have been rather funny. Like one of those moments in a Rossini opera when, at the height of the brouhaha, there’s a knocking at the door or something, and everyone goes completely quiet, and starts whispering ‘Che sara?’ or whatever in unison. But, as I say, I wasn’t in chuckling mood at the time.

  The noise came again.

  ‘Window!’ said Rolf Tingvold.

  ‘Downstairs,’ said Ratikainen. ‘The manuscript.’

  They moved to the bathroom door and out on to the landing with a speed and silence that was creditable in men their size. I heard them move to the head of the staircase. Shafts of light were still coming in from the landing, but I heard a tiny creak as they began to move down the stairs. Fine — I still had some light. I looked around me, and fiddled my fingers to see that there was still feeling in them. There was a little pair of nail scissors on the edge of the bath. Useless. Bathrooms are the silliest places to get oneself tied up in. Nothing in the way of sharp knives at all. Then I saw, on the shelf above the washbasin, Miss Boothroyd’s lady’s razor. Not the equal of a cut-throat, but at least she hadn’t gone electric. If only I could get it, and, having got it, not drop it. I stood up, manoeuvred myself over to the washbasin, stood tiptoe against it and grasped the handle of the razor in my tied hands. The wound in my stomach sent shafts of pain darting through my body. I clutched firmly to the razor handle, and the pain began to abate. I sat down on the edge of the bath. Warm blood was oozing again over my shirt and the top of my trousers, but I took no notice. Worse things than flesh wounds were going to happen to me if I didn’t get free. I began to work the blade of the fragile little razor over one strand of the rope. One strand, thank God, would be enough.

  Suddenly I was startled out of my wits by a crash, and shouting, from downstairs. I nearly dropped the razor, but clutched on to it at the last moment and went on shaving away at the rope for dear life. Please God the fighting didn’t bring them upstairs. Every stroke I made with it hurt my wrists, from the harshness of the rope still around them. From downstairs there was sudden silence. I was beginning to find silence menacing. The rope began to get looser. Suddenly, just as it seemed to be getting intolerably urgent, the one strand came apart. I had got through. I pulled my hands apart and the rope fell off. I brought my hands round to my front and began to rub life into my wrists. I bent down — God, the pain! — and pulled furiously at the rope around my ankles. When it came loose, I threw the rope aside, grabbed a hand towel and shoved it around my bleeding stomach, wrenched the gag from my mouth and slipped out on to the landing.

  Silence, still, from downstairs. If only Miss Boothroyd had had a phone extension upstairs I could have got help. I peered into each of the bedrooms, turned on the lights. No. I didn’t expect it. Selina Boothroyd was emphatically not the type who went in for phone extensions. At the top of the stairs I listened. All was not so silent as I had thought. Talk was going on downstairs. Talk of a kind. It came in bursts, some of them loud. Then there were long pauses — tense, Pinterish silences. Some kind of negotiation, it seemed, was going on. At any rate the Scands hadn’t squashed the intruder into the floorboards. Another burst of talk came. Could I get down the stairs during those bursts and out of the front door to the phone-box without being heard? I wasn’t too sure. On the other hand, the options weren’t enticing. Do a Tarzan through the evergreens from the bedroom window and risk them coming straight out and taking me? Stay upstairs and wait for little endearing to do another corkscrew job on my abdomen? Anything was better than that. If only Miss Boothroyd had a weapon of some kind. But it wasn’t worth investigating. I didn’t believe the maiden ladies of Leeds had yet started sleeping with a gun beside their beds.

  I started off down the stairs.

  By some blessed dispensation they did not creak. I kept to the sides, but by now the talk in the back room was becoming less sporadic. There were s
everal voices, several different brands of hum. With infinite precaution I gained the bottom, and stood irresolute in the hall. Should I make for the front door and get help? Help could be an awfully long time coming. The voices from the back room were now audible, and they shook my resolution to get out — they enticed me, like sirens’ songs. Through the half-open door at the other end of the passage I could see splashes of torchlight, and some dark, lowering shapes. Clearly the two sides were split up, one group by the window, the other by the door.

  A wavering torch beam gave me a glimpse of the desk, with the manuscript in two piles at either end of it. I didn’t want to leave it. My decision was made for me by the voice of Amos Macklehose, rising above the subdued hum. It was now less stage-parsonical than when he had talked to me, and it veered between broad North Country and the vernacular of California. It was still not an attractive voice, but it doubtless expressed the real Amos. I listened like a three years’ child.

  ‘You seem to forget who started all this. Perhaps you haven’t been told. Well, it was me gave your boss the info. He’d never have heard about this if it ‘adn’t been for me.’

  ‘We don’t know nothing about that,’ said Rolf Tingvold. ‘You talk it over with him, right?’

  ‘Oh yes — talk it over with him. Where would that get me? Even if I could find him to talk to, which he’d make good and sure I couldn’t, I know what I’d get: “I’ve never soiled my hands with anything dubious — ” and all that baloney. I had all that in his reply to my letter. “Mr Parfitt thanks you for the information, and would be interested in acquiring the item you mention from its legal owner. But he asked me to emphasize that in no eventuality could he engage in a transaction of uncertain legality.” Him and his eventualities! Toffee-nosed git! I knew some classy stinkers in California, but California class wears hobnail boots compared to your East Coast aristocracy!’