by Mark McShane
The road was quiet, a field on one hand and a dusty-looking works on the other. Bill came to a fast stop, leaned to the side and vomited. His stomach muscles tore harshly at one another and his eyes burned hotly, but he was soon finished, and, looking up at the sky and gulping, felt much better, the tension gone, but replaced by a pressing weariness.
The waterproof was knocked up again. Bill hit the place hard, by letting gravity pull down his uplifted, tired arm, and summoned all his energy to shout, ‘Be quiet!’ Silence and stillness from the side-car. He drove on, picking up speed rapidly, and thought about nothing except how much better he felt.
Myra was getting nervous. The estimated time of Bill’s return was two o’clock. Now it was ten past. With her imagination suggesting many things, from a fatal accident to an arrest, she had spent the past quarter-hour moving back and forth between the front and rear windows, staying no more than a minute at each, glad to have the comfort of movement and the work of opening and closing the door from lounge to kitchen.
The time had passed quickly since the police visit. She had put the plywood back in both windows, given the house a rough clean, had a snack, and chatted for a while with a woman who had called to make an appointment for a private séance on Friday next. Myra had smiled, watching the woman leave, thinking that soon there would be queues for appointments, and perhaps a secretary to handle them.
She was standing at the sink, looking over the fields to the back of the housing estate, hoping to catch a glimpse of the motor-bike as her husband came to look for the bedsheet signal, when she heard the growl of an engine, and recognized it. Rushing back to the front of the house, smiling with relief, she went outside just as Bill reached the gate. She swung open the garage and followed the bike inside, blinking at the trebled noise from the exhaust.
Bill switched off the engine, pulled his hands from the bars, and sagged, his chin sinking to his chest. The smile went from Myra’s face as she came round to front him. She asked, ‘What is the matter? Anything wrong?’
He began to shake his head, but quickly lifted it, jerking his body upright, and raised a forefinger to his mouth. He climbed from the saddle and backed out, beckoning. Myra followed worriedly.
‘She’s awake,’ he whispered, pulling off his gloves.
‘How do you know?’
‘She’s been shouting.’
‘How long has she been awake?’
‘A good half-hour.’
‘Did anyone hear?’
‘No.’ He removed the goggles an began to unstrap the helmet. ‘And she’s been sick.’
Myra could see that he’d had a hard time; his face seemed to have shrunk a little. She asked, ‘Nothing went wrong, did it?’
‘No. Everything worked perfectly.’
She glanced back inside the garage, and said, ‘Do you think she knows she is in a motor-bike?’
He blinked. ‘My God! I never thought of that.’
She nodded. ‘We shall soon know. You wait here. I will go and change.’ She went into the house, up the stairs, and quickly donned the white dress and tied the handkerchief over her hair. Downstairs again she went through to the rear, leaving the doors open, and round to the front. She said, panting slightly, ‘You keep out of sight.’
Bill moved behind the open half of the garage door, and glanced up the road. Apart from a small boy on a tricycle at the far end, the street was deserted.
With her upper body bent horizontally above the side-car and as close to it as possible, Myra unsnapped the cover and pulled it back. Adriana lay partly covered by the twisted blanket, and was staring up with angry and frightened eyes. She said, ‘Where am I?’ Myra ignored the question, and swiftly re-wrapped the child, covering her head, and lifted her out.
Bill waited till his wife’s footsteps died away at the rear of the house before he went in the garage. He picked up the carrier bag and slowly put the escaped oranges into its top, sighing down wearily at the mess the child had made. In the house he walked straight through to the kitchen, where he placed the bag on the bottom shelf of a tall cupboard, standing it upright against a saucepan.
After throwing aside the soiled blanket Myra settled Adriana in the bed, tucking her in comfortably. She sat down and asked, ‘Feel better?’
The child nodded, the fear and anger gone from her eyes. She was subdued, and seemed glad to be back in familiar surroundings. She said, ‘I’m hungry.’
‘Do you know where you have been?’
Adriana frowned. ‘Well …’
‘I will tell you. You have been in a special cabinet, for treatment. Did you ever see a picture of an iron lung? Well, the cabinet is something like that, but it makes a lot of noise and shakes about. It is the vibration that gives the treatment.’
Adriana didn’t look too interested. She said, ‘It made me sick.’
‘It is supposed to.’
‘I thought it was an aeroplane.’
Myra laughed and stood up. ‘Soon I will bring you something to eat. And in the morning, if you have been a good little girl, you can go home.’ She left the room, taking the soiled blanket with her and dropping it in the bath with the other dirty linen.
In the kitchen she set the kettle on the stove, brought out a loaf, and looked into the lounge to ask her husband what he wanted to eat. Bill was sitting in his chair, leaning back with eyes closed. His coat, helmet, goggles and gloves had been thrown carelessly on the couch, and Myra raised her eyebrows at them and knew now for certain that he’d had a nerve-wracking morning. She asked, ‘Did you clean out the side-car?’
He opened his eyes and began to pull himself forward. ‘No. I forgot.’
‘All right. Sit still. I will attend to it.’ She took a floor-cloth out to the garage and cleaned the whole of the side-car’s interior, cleaning the mess and removing any fingerprints the child might have left. She lifted out the chloroform bottle, tutting at her husband’s laxity in forgetting it, and took it with her into the house.
In the lounge she asked, ‘What do you want to eat?’
Bill said, ‘Nothing, thanks. Not hungry.’
She shrugged, and joined him at the hearth. ‘What happened? You got the money?’
He sat up. ‘Yes. I put it in the kitchen cupboard.’
‘Tell me everything,’ she said, folding her arms and sitting down. ‘Did he speak to you?’
Bill told her the events of the morning, starting and ending with the parking place in the Mile End Road. He told her every detail, not forgetting the man with the green hat. He didn’t mention the incident with the policeman, knowing she would be angry with him for not remembering to fill up the fuel tank; he couldn’t stand her anger; it took the form of complete silence, cold and forbidding, and sometimes lasted for days.
She said, ‘Well, that seems fine. Nothing went wrong as far as I can judge. And you saw the signal all right?’
‘Signal?’
‘That the bedsheet had gone from the back.’
‘Oh yes. Yes, I saw.’ He’d forgotten the sheet till now. He felt his face redden, and said quickly, ‘So the police came then? What did they have to say?’
Myra tilted her head as she heard the thin squeak of the kettle’s whistle. She rose. ‘I will make the girl a bite to eat and then tell you about the police—it was nothing—and what the detective said about the Clayton’s chauffeur. It will probably be in the evening paper.’
At seven o’clock Myra came downstairs. The people would be arriving soon for the regular Wednesday night séance, and she had just finished preparing for them. She had washed, combed her hair and rubbed a tinge of black from an ordinary lead pencil into her scar to deepen it. The preparation in the séance room consisted of switching on the light, covering the window and placing a candle in a china holder in the centre of the table. She had gone in quietly to the girl’s room, and found her asleep, and had left the chloroform and a cloth under the the bed for her husband to use, should it be necessary, should there be any noise to wak
en the child—which was unlikely; people were generally church-quiet at séances.
The light was on in the hall, and as she reached the foot of the stairs she saw that the newspaper was sticking through the letter slot. She pulled it out and opened it. The large headline said RANSOM PAID FOR CLAYTON GIRL. There was a picture of Adriana, a blurred one of her father, frowning heavily, and a studio portrait of her mother, taken in débutante days; at the bottom of the column was a small picture of a middle-aged man. Myra quickly read the story, nodded, and went into the living-room.
Her husband was asleep in his chair. He’d been asleep for two hours; which, thought Myra, was long enough. She coughed loudly, switched on the light and drew and pinned the curtains.
Bill came awake, sucking in a deep breath and stretching open his eyes, and smiled when he saw that he was safely at home; he’d been having a frightening dream of being chased by green-faced men down labyrinthine ways. He felt rested now and not so depressed, and leaned forward eagerly as his wife sat in her chair, his eyes on the paper in her hands.
She said, ‘Listen,’ and began to read aloud. ‘At twelve o’clock noon today Mr. Charles Clayton of … etcetera … paid the sum of twenty-five thousand pounds to an unknown person for the return of his daughter, Adriana, who was kidnapped on Monday while on her way home from school. Mr. and Mrs. Clayton are now awaiting the return of their only child. The police were not informed of the time and place of the meeting with the man who collected the ransom, since it was stated in a letter from the kidnappers that harm might befall the girl if any attempts were made to apprehend the collector. At two o’clock today Mr. Clayton issued a statement at his home in Barnet. He said the money, in a small handbag bearing the initials B.O.A.C., was handed to a man in Piccadilly Underground station. The man made off down a no-entry passage leading from a platform just as a train came in, making it almost impossible for anyone to give chase through the outward rush of out-going passengers. Mr. Clayton was unable to give a description of the man. The chauffeur to the Claytons, Henry Webster, who was with … etcetera … was taken to Barnet police station today to help with the investigation.’ She lowered the paper and looked at her husband. ‘Help with the investigation?’
Bill said, ‘That means he’s unofficially arrested.’
‘That is what I thought.’ She lifted the paper again and ran her eyes down the column, saying, ‘The rest of it is about the Claytons and the school.’
‘Does it say anything about the car they’re looking for?’
‘Ummm, oh yes, here. But it is just the same as in this morning’s paper. A small car of about eight horse-power. Where did they get that idea from, and what happened to the green van they wanted?’
Bill told her his assumption about the tracks left by his motor-cycle in the field. She looked pleased; so pleased that he was tempted for a moment to tell her of his escapade with the constable; but only for a moment. He said, ‘As a matter of fact, I had an idea right from the first that they’d think that.’
‘Let us hope they go on thinking it.’ She handed him the newspaper.
His eye was caught by the small photo at the foot of the column. He looked at it for a moment, and asked, ‘I wonder what they’ll do with the chauffeur?’
She shrugged. ‘Let him go, sooner or later. They could not do anything to an innocent man. It is only a temporary thing.’
‘I hope so. Wouldn’t it be awful if they somehow proved he was mixed up in it.’
She shrugged again and looked at the clock. ‘It is nearly time.’
He rose to his feet and stretched. ‘I’ll wash my hands and face.’
‘And I will put your things away.’ She followed him from the hearth, and collected his clothes off the couch and carried them into the kitchen. After fixing the curtains and putting on the light she sat at the table and folded her hands in her lap. She would wait now till everyone was in the séance room, before making her entrance.
Bill had a quick wash, combed his hair and straightened his tie, and brushed the dandruff off his collar. Halfway through the bathroom door he stopped, frowned, and looked back. Hurrying down the stairs he poked his head inside the kitchen, just as the knocker on the front door was banged.
He said to his wife, ‘What if someone wants to go to the toilet?’
‘Well?’
‘They’ll see the plywood.’
‘Oh yes.’ She frowned thoughtfully, and said, ‘It is rare that that happens, but it might. I shall say that everything in the bathroom has been painted and is still wet.’
He nodded and turned away. Walking quickly to the front door he swung it wide and said, ‘Good evening. Please come in.’
‘Evenin’, Mr. Savage,’ said a black-clad woman of about seventy. She fiddled with a flashlight and switched it off. ‘Nippy.’
‘Yes, Mrs. George, it is a bit.’ He reached out and took her arm to help her over the step. ‘But spring’s around the corner.’
She walked slowly past him and went to the foot of the stairs, saying happily, ‘There ’asn’t been no springs for me since my Alfie crossed the Rubicon.’
Bill said, ‘Ah.’ He took her arm again and they began to climb, side by side and closely clamped, his shoulder blade sliding along the wall. He ushered her into the séance room, gritting his teeth at the noise their feet made on the bare boards, sat her down and left her regaining her breath.
In the next fifteen minutes four more women, all middle-aged to old, came to the door, were greeted by name and taken upstairs. When he came down after the last arrival, Bill looked at his wrist-watch, checked it by the living-room clock, and turned toward the kitchen.
A knock sounded on the front door. Bill swung about smartly and opened it.
A tall well-groomed and expensively dressed woman stood blinking at the light. She was, Bill thought, about thirty. She was pretty, and her long hair was almost white. She said, ‘Am I too late for the séance?’
‘No. In perfect time, actually. Won’t you come in, Mrs …?’
‘Clayton.’
The name hit Bill like a punch in the chest; his head and shoulders jerked back. He stared at the woman searchingly as she came past him into the hall, and flicked his eyes away as she turned. Closing the door carefully, using both hands, as though it were not an easy task, he composed his features into something as close to blandness as he could get, telling himself that there was nothing to fear, that the woman had only come in answer to Myra’s invitation and couldn’t possibly have any suspicions.
He turned around, mumbled, ‘Will you come this way, please,’ and led the way upstairs. In the séance room he introduced her quickly to the other women, only one of whom, he noted, showed any interest in the name of the newcomer. He made a gesture to show that it was time to start, and the women rose from their chairs and carried them quietly to the table, he following with a chair for Myra. There was the usual polite and apparently unintentional manœuvring to get a place directly next to the medium’s, and then they were seated. Bill put a match to the candle, switched off the ceiling light and went out. He hurried down to the kitchen and threw open the door.
He said, ‘Guess who’s here?’
Myra, rising from the table, frowned thoughtfully, and said, ‘Mr. Clayton.’
‘No,’ he said, disappointed that she’d come so close, and without surprise. ‘Mrs. Clayton.’
‘Oh.’ Myra was disappointed too. She had been thrilled for a second with the prospect of sitting in séance with Charles Clayton, but his young wife had no para-normal gifts whatever.
Bill said, ‘You don’t suppose she knows anything, do you?’
‘Of course not. I have been hoping one of them would come. It strengthens my connexion with the affair.’ She walked past him. ‘But you had better keep a close watch on the child.’
They went upstairs and separated, she to the front room and he to the back. Bill closed the door gently behind him and tiptoed across to the bed. The dim light showed him Adri
ana’s upturned face, vacant and openmouthed in sleep; a sleep that seemed deep enough, he thought, not to need the aid of chloroform. He smiled as he carefully, and unnecessarily, tucked the blankets around her ears. He felt a kinship existed between them, as though they had been through the events of the day side-by-side, sharing the danger. Tenderly he stroked the black hair, and thought she was a sweet little girl really.
He heard faintly the scrape of a chair, and left the bed abruptly and went to the wall. With one hand he moved the picture and with the other followed it, ready to cover the peep-hole and keep the light from penetrating the other room. When the picture was firmly in place upside down he put his eye to the hole.
Myra stood at the head of the table, and thought it would be a very ordinary séance indeed. None of the women had the slightest hint of psychic power. It would be just a routine job of trying with the subconscious mind, failing, and improvising with the conscious mind, making banal and vague but encouraging statements.
There were three women on either side, the farthest on her left Mrs. Clayton. Before sitting down Myra greeted each of them by name, adding to the woman from Barnet, ‘Nice to see you here.’
The candle—more evidence of Myra’s mediumistic unconventionality—threw seven large, gently waving shadows on the walls; shadows whose shoulders lifted in response to Myra’s command, ‘Let us make a circle.’ Hands were clasped all round on the table, and one or two pairs of eyes were closed, and the séance was on.
Myra, her fingers lying loosely in hands at either side, fixed her gaze straight ahead, a few inches above the flame of the candle, and began to concentrate. Even though she knew there would be nothing for her subliminal to work on, she gave it, as she always did, a chance to try; she felt it her duty to do so. First she cleared her mind of everything, especially the fact that she was being closely and awesomely watched, and forgot space, time and herself.
The friendly glow of the candle worked like a hypnotist’s bauble on her senses. Her mind became a complete blank, not even holding the thought of what she was trying to do. She began to feel drowsy. Her eyelids dropped, her mouth sagged, and she was floating into a trance.…