“Well…” She looked hopefully at their two young companions.
“Yes, of course,” said Peter. “Wouldn’t leave a dog out in weather like this. Come on—” The siren sounded again. “Direttissimo.” He led the way swiftly across a bridge and down a path to where the excursion boat was moored in a deep channel.
It was smaller than Julia had expected, but there was just room for everyone under cover. No room, though, for writing her note to Breckon, and not much time to plan it, with tourist talk flashing this way and that, like the lightning overhead. But at least the ride back—direttissimo as Peter had said—was blessedly quick, and landed them at St. Mark’s instead of at the Linea Twelve stop on the north side of the island. It was still pouring with rain, but Julia refused to stop and shelter over a drink. She half expected Tarn to escort her back to the Da Rimini, but he explained, with a touch of apology, that he had arranged to dine with his author. “I’ll ring you in the morning.” A quick glance at his watch. “Sorry, girl, I said I’d drop your note in, didn’t I? Thought you’d get it written out at Torcello. Trouble is, now, by the time you’ve got it done…I can’t be late for Mr. Dammit Heyward. Besides, I bet your sweet life you’re going to find a message from your Breckon back at the hotel. Full of humble pie.”
“I do hope so.” She saw her boat coming and ran for it through drenching rain.
By the time she got to the Da Rimini her hair was in dripping rats’ tails on her neck, and water sogged in her shoes. The lobby was crowded with refugees from the rain, and she was working her way towards the desk when a cold hand fell on hers. “What have you done with him?” asked Breckon in a voice she hardly recognised.
“Done? What do you mean? What’s the matter?” He, too, had been out in the rain and his fair hair clung close to his skull, but that was not what gave the death’s-head look to his face.
“Come here.” He pulled her, not gently, into a small room that was kept unlighted by the frugal management of the hotel. Then, turning her face to the drowned light from the window: “Don’t pretend not to understand. Just tell me what you’ve done with him, and that he’s not been too frightened, and maybe, in a million years, I’ll think of forgiving you.”
Her teeth were chattering. “Breckon! Dominic? You don’t mean—”
“Don’t hedge. You know just what I mean. Didn’t take you long, did it? You had it all arranged, I suppose? Brought a posse of some kind along with you? Friends of Sir Charles’? Even now, even after everything—I wouldn’t have believed it of you.”
“And you’d have been right.” Horror and anger, evenly balanced, almost choked her. “Breckon, you’ve got to tell me. Dominic’s been—”
“Kidnapped. As if I had to tell you! But maybe Sir Charles didn’t explain all his delightful plans for my son. If you must have it spelled out, here you are. He went to the beach—the Lido—this afternoon, with Lucia, his nurse. When the rain started, they ran for the vaporetto, with a million other people. They were holding hands, she says. Laughing together in the rain. Suddenly his face changed. ‘Lucy,’ he said. He speaks English, mostly, ‘I don’t feel—’ And then, he was pulled one way and she the other, and he was gone. Not a scream, not a sound. She thinks he must have been drugged, right there in the crowd, and just carried away. Easy enough, a little boy like him.” He was watching her face with a kind of furious intensity as he talked, and now gave a sigh of angry satisfaction. “You didn’t expect that, did you?”
“Breckon, you’ve got to believe me. I didn’t expect any of this.” It was more horrible than the worst of her fears, but at all costs she must keep her head, and convince Breckon, against the odds, that he and she were on the same side—Dominic’s.
“No? You thought it would be all sweetness and light? Sir Charles driving up in a flowery chariot and carrying off my son to realms of glory? That kind of thing? Nothing so vulgar as drugs and kidnapping. And where is he now? Dominic. He’s afraid of the dark. He doesn’t , admit it, but I know. So—where is he?”
“Breckon, I don’t know.” Idiotic never to have realised that he was jealous of Sir Charles. And, simply, now, another huge block in the wall of misunderstanding between them. Of which nothing mattered but Dominic and his danger. And that was so horribly worse than Breckon had realised. “Please.” She held out a desperate cold hand to him. “You must listen. Try to understand. You wouldn’t this afternoon. I don’t blame you. But, now, for Dominic’s sake, you must.”
“Let it get out of hand have you?” A quick, impatient glance at his watch. “Ten minutes to go. I promised Lucia that if you weren’t here, or didn’t make sense, I’d telephone the police at five sharp.”
“You haven’t yet?”
Now, for the first time, the horror in her voice carried its own conviction. His face changed. “You can’t mean…Julia, you haven’t got him? I was so sure…”
“I can’t blame you. And it’s all my fault, in a way.” Could he possibly have delayed calling in the police for her sake? But a mistake just the same. Perhaps a disastrous one.
“Of course it’s your fault.” Inevitably, he took it wrong. “I’m glad at least you have the grace to admit it. I suppose you just didn’t let yourself think how Sir Charles would set about it. Well, you know now. And I’ll put the police on to you, Julia, if I don’t have him back tonight.”
“But I haven’t got him,” she waited. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you, Breckon, only you won’t listen, just the way you wouldn’t this morning. Yes?” She turned impatiently as the girl from the desk entered the room.
“Telephone for you, Signora.”
The kidnappers? “Coming.” She turned back to Breckon. “Perhaps it’s them. The people who’ve got him. They wrote me anonymous letters. That’s why I’m here. That’s what I tried to tell you. Why I’m so frightened. Breckon, go to the police at once. No, wait, now, just in case it is them—” She hurried after the girl into the crowded lobby and picked up the receiver on the desk. “Yes?”
“Signora Rivers?” It was an unknown, Italian voice, and hope surged in her.
“Yes,” she said again, breathlessly.
“Good. There is someone wishes to speak to you. One moment please, signora. I will put you through.” The telephone went silent, as if a line had been plugged in at a switchboard.
“Hullo?” said Julia into the silence. No answer, just the odd, crackling noises of a connected telephone. “Hullo?” Her voice rose as she repeated it, and instinctively, she looked at her watch. Five o’clock. The time when Breckon had promised to go to the police. Promised Lucia. What was the relation between them? Something Tarn had said…Shameful to be thinking of this, now, with Dominic in what she felt to be horrible danger. And yet—why? Almost, she found herself hoping that this was merely an ordinary kidnapping, of which, God knew, one heard often enough. But, if so, why the anonymous letters? “Hullo!” she said again into the silent telephone and, looking across the crowded hotel lobby, saw Breckon emerge from the little room, a piece of paper in his hand, and push his way through the crowd to the street door. He must have heard from them. She longed to run after him, but must not. The telephone she held, as easily as the note he had got, might be a lifeline to Dominic.
The girl at the desk was looking at her impatiently. “You have finished, signora?”
“No, I don’t seem to have got through yet. Hullo?” Her voice lacked conviction, even to her. A quick glance at her watch showed that almost five minutes had ebbed away. An English girl was standing beside her, waiting to use the telephone, making a poor attempt at hiding impatience.
“Let me?” The girl at the desk took the receiver, and as she did so, Julia heard the click as the line was disconnected and the dial tone resumed. “Finished.” She handed the receiver to the English girl.
Useless to protest. There was no way she could persuade them to keep this telephone free in case the unknown Italian called again. She turned and pushed in her turn through the crowded lobby,
trying to convince herself she was not too late to catch Breckon. But, outside, there was no sign of him. She stood for a moment, stock-still in pouring rain, wondering in anguish whether to go back and wait for another call or to follow instinct and head for Breckon’s house.
Instinct won. After all, he had had that note. She was moving already, half running, in the direction of the canal and another water taxi. It took longer to get one this time, and when she did arrive, it was to an impasse. The door was opened by the Italian girl, Lucia. Her face just showed round the crack at which she held it, on the chain. When Julia asked for Breckon, she shook her head. The signor had gone out and not returned.
So the note had not brought him home. Was this good news? She had to think so. “May I come in and wait?”
“No,” said the girl. “The signor said no one. I am sorry.”
How much did she know? Enough to share Breckon’s horrible suspicions? Very likely. It was unpleasantly easy to imagine that, even in her own distress, she was taking a certain pleasure in Julia’s. “When he comes back,” said Julia, “tell him I must speak to him. Ask him to telephone me. And”—thank God she had remembered—”please, may I have your telephone number?”
“There is no telephone,” said the girl. “The signor does not like them.”
True? False? Impossible to tell. “Well, then. Ask him, please, to come and see me. At the Hotel Da Rimini. Mrs. Rivers.”
“I know.” The girl closed the door.
Standing outside that blank face, Julia wished passionately, for a moment, that she had seized the momentary chance when the chain was down, and forced her way in. And yet, what purpose would it have served? She turned, aware all at once of just how cold and wet and wretched she was, and made her way fast as she could back to the Da Rimini. Perhaps there would be a telephone message. Perhaps…
There was none. She knew she had not expected it and had already been planning what to do next. As usual, someone was using the telephone. She waited impatiently, then rang Tarn’s hotel, only to learn he had gone out, presumably to meet his author. So, that was that. Breckon would have called in the police by now. Incredibly, there was nothing else, for the moment, that she could do. Or—was there? She asked the girl to place a call to England, gave her Sir Charles’ number, and hurried upstairs, at last, to get out of her cold wet clothes. Now there really was nothing to do except wait, make herself eat tasteless food in the rapidly emptying dining room, and hope to God she would hear from Breckon before Sir Charles’ call came through.
Nothing came through. No word from Breckon. And the girl at the desk reported, first, that the lines to England were all busy, then, incredibly, that there was no answer from Sir Charles’ number. Which was always monitored. Rather sulkily, the girl rechecked the number with Julia. It was correct. She agreed, with a cross look at her watch, to try again. This time, Julia stood by the desk as she put the call through, concentrating on the quickly spoken Italian numerals. Yes, it was Sir Charles’ private number, and yet, once again, when, more quickly at this time of night, the connection was made, there was no answer. “They are probably having a strike,” said the girl helpfully. “And now, signora, it is time I went.”
“But if a call comes through for me?”
“The night man will be here. You wish to be waked?”
“Yes, please. At any time.” And yet, somehow, she did not hope to be.
Of course, the bath water was cold by now, and Julia went chilly to bed with little expectation of sleep. Lying rigid with anxiety, she thought of Dominic, who was afraid of the dark. In what dark place had they got him tonight? And why had Breckon not telephoned to tell her about the note? Surely, its very arrival must have convinced him of her innocence. Or—must it? She shivered convulsively at the thought of the wall of suspicion that had built itself between her and Breckon. Built itself? Or been built, carefully, hint by hint, stone by stone, pebble by pebble. As long ago as at La Rivière .
Now, looking back, she was sure of it. Someone, then, had been deliberately, skilfully, subtly poisoning Breckon’s mind against her. And someone he loved and trusted, or it would not, could not have worked. It was curious what a light her recognition of Breckon’s jealousy of Sir Charles had cast over their whole situation. Breckon had met and worked with Sir Charles, back in Paris. A million years ago it seemed now. They had liked and respected each other, and it had been totally understood between the three of them that Sir Charles’ opposition to their marriage had been, simply, because he hated to lose her. “An old man’s selfishness,” she remembered him saying, to both of them, giving them a lavish dinner when they announced their engagement. “You’re a lucky man, Rivers, and don’t you forget it.”
A long time ago. Would she never be warm again? What had the unknown enemy managed to make Breckon believe about her and Sir Charles? That they were lovers? Had always been? It would make a kind of horrible sense. She suddenly thought of that secretary of Sir Charles’ who had not much liked his habit of taking his assistant to lunch. Suppose someone had sent Breckon to talk to her? What would she have said? Something, perhaps, that could have been twisted, with the help of a clever, dominating mind. Because, no doubt about it, Sir Charles had been Pygmalion to her Galatea. Only—that was all it was. He had recognised the possibilities of the awkward, desperate child of seventeen who had passed a written test so brilliantly that he had decided, on impulse, to see her. And he had seen through the shabby gym tunic, the wrinkled black stockings, the old blazer in which she had run away to London; seen, even, through that formidable Glaswegian accent of hers, to the person underneath. A person, he had decided on the spot, who could be useful to him.
He had put her through a ruthless training, always at one remove. The gift of total recall, and the brain, “like a computer” on which he had congratulated her, that first day, had been sharpened to razor-keenness at the extraordinary finishing school to which he had sent her. And at the same time she had learned so many other things. How to speak, how to dress, how to eat; almost, it seemed, how to live.
How had he paid the bills for all that schooling? Surely, not directly. But—if someone had managed to trace them back to him? Shown the results to Breckon? Someone Breckon trusted? She lay, fighting the old horrors, thinking of Uncle Paul, who could walk if he had a mind to…of Raoul, who was not always drunk…of gentle Fanny and kind Amanda. Fanny, who had frightened her so, that day in the hospital, when she came, unannounced, with flowers. But (she and Sir Charles had come back to this over and over again when they discussed that disastrous time) the family had all been together, that day she was attacked. And, if it had been hard, then, to believe any of them capable of contriving all that dark plot, it was impossible, now, to imagine them reaching out a hand, half across the world, to attack Breckon and her here.
And where did that leave her? In the dark, like poor little Dominic. She let herself cry, and, at last, exhausted, slept.
Morning. And no message. Nothing from Tarn, either. He must have been up late with his author. She must eat some breakfast, but after that, even if it meant she also missed a phone call, she would go back to Breckon’s house and insist on seeing him. But, after breakfast, the police came.
There were two of them, very polite. The management had turned on the lights in the dark little saloon for them, and they had placed a chair for Julia under the dusty chandelier. Standing between her and the window, the door closed behind them, they established, swiftly, that she was indeed Signora Rivers and that her Italian was better than their English. Or so they said. “But what is it?” She had bitten back the question impatiently through the necessary preliminaries. “Is there news of the child?”
“Nothing. Indeed, we hoped you might have news for us, signora.”
“Oh, no.” She put distracted hands to her head. “But I told Signor Rivers. Surely, when he thought it over he must have realised I had nothing to do with it. The kidnapping.”
“Ah.” The two men let out a kind
of mutual sigh. “So you admit that you saw Signor Rivers?” asked the senior of the two.
“Admit? Of course, I admit it. I told him to come to you—at once. It’s fatal, isn’t it, to delay over a kidnapping?”
“When did you see him?”
“Why?” Absurd to waste time with this type of question, but the quickest way of dealing with them, she knew, was to answer. She looked at her watch, thinking back. “A little before five yesterday afternoon.”
“And you quarrelled.” It was not a question.
“I suppose someone listening might have thought so. But what does it matter? The thing is, now he has told you about the kidnapping, what are you doing to find the child?”
“Your child, signora?”
“Yes.” Hard-held patience was slipping away. “Hence my concern.”
“Naturally. Only, signora, you are under a misapprehension. It was not Signor Rivers who reported the child as missing.”
“No? Then how do you know?”
“Because the nursemaid telephoned us. Lucia Capella.”
“Of course,” said Julia with relief. “How sensible of her. At five o’clock, as he said?”
The younger of the two policemen started to speak, but was interrupted by his superior. “Later. For the moment, signora, if you would be good enough to tell us what you and Signor Rivers discussed.”
“But that’s absurd,” she protested. “Of course we talked about the kidnapping. He thought I had had something to do with it.” The admission was incredibly painful, but Sir Charles had taught her that the truth is always the quickest. “I think I had almost convinced him that I was as appalled as he was, and that we must get in touch with you at once, when I was called to the telephone. I hoped it might be the kidnappers,” she explained.
“And was it?”
“I don’t know. They kept me on the line for about five minutes and then rang off. By then I had seen Breck—Signor Rivers leaving. He had a note in his hand. I thought it must be from them. I ran after him, but he’d vanished. I went to his house, but the girl, Lucia, wouldn’t let me in.”
One Way to Venice Page 11