by Katie Penryn
*
Nina lay fast asleep, her hand in her father’s.
Jean-Claude whispered, “I changed her clothes and Dr Joseph helped me give her a quick sponge bath. He’s put antiseptic ointment on all the scratches and cuts.”
The doctor rose from his chair at the side of the room and joined me at the bedside. “Physically, she’s going to be fine. As you can see we have her on a drip to counteract any effects of dehydration. Psychologically, it’ll be another matter. We’ll have to see what her attitude is when she wakes up.”
“That’s why I’m here, doctor,” I said. “The police would like to know when they can question her. They need her story of what happened. Anything she can tell them about where she was held could help them track down this man. Also, at the moment we don’t know if he let her go to make her own way back, or if she escaped.”
Jean-Claude sighed and whispered, “Of course, if he let her go, that’s positive. Maybe he’ll stop now, but if she escaped, he’s still hell-bent on his campaign against me and mine. So, how long, doctor?”
Doctor Joseph checked Nina’s pulse and felt her forehead.
“She’s not running a fever. I was worried about pneumonia, but so far so good. If that is still the case when she wakes up, you could let the police in for ten minutes, but I suggest Penzi is here with them. Nina mentioned your name several times in her sleep,” he said turning to me.
I told Jean-Claude he should not relax the restrictions he’d placed on the movements of his other two children. They were not to leave the garden immediately surrounding the château. No horse riding and no bicycle trips.
“And Jean-Claude, as soon as Nina is awake and feels safe leave her with Madame Brune. The police would like you to tour your vineyards and check for any new damage to the vines. They want to know if the villain was telling the truth about continuing with the poisoning.”
Jean-Claude nodded his understanding and turned back to Nina. Dr Joseph said he would accompany me downstairs to speak to Dubois before he left. There was no more he could do for Nina for the moment, sleep and her father’s love being the best medicine.
*
After the doctor had left, the morning ground on with the police continuing their routine work to find Nina’s kidnapper. Everyone was waiting for the chance to hear Nina’s story. The whole future direction of the investigation depended on whether her abductor had let her go or whether she had escaped.
I took the opportunity to spend some time with Nina’s sister and her twin brother in their den, making sure they understood they were still to be cautious. They were glad to hear Nina had suffered no serious harm from her exposure out in the woods and were counting the minutes until they could visit her. I checked they had plenty to keep themselves occupied and had access to food and drink should they need it. With the house in such turmoil I wasn’t sure how much attention they’d be getting from their father and Madame Brune.
As I was going downstairs, I ran into Juno. She was on her way to join Jupiter in guarding Nina. I suggested it would be better for her to look after the other children and left her running up to the children’s den.
Next, I popped back into the library and asked Felix to accompany me.
“Where to?” he asked looking annoyed as he was involved in checking a list for one of Dubois’s officers.
“Shush,” I said. “Just come.”
“Huh,” he said as he closed the library door behind us. “What is it, boss? I was busy.”
“I want to go across to the stable and update the animals on what’s happened. I was sure you wouldn’t want me to go alone.”
“Certainly not,” he replied grabbing hold of my arm and marching me to the front door. “That villain probably knows by now that you’re helping the police with their inquiries. He may try to snatch you and then where would we be?”
*
They were all waiting in a clump in the barn: cats, horses and ponies. At this time of the day the cats were usually asleep storing up energy for their nocturnal patrols. The ponies and horses would be out in the paddock, but no one had thought to take them out. Where the workers were I didn’t know. I guessed Dubois had roped them in to help his operation.
Nina’s pony banged his head on the door to his stall when he saw us approach. “Ah, news at last. About time.”
“Yes,” said the top cat. “We saw you carry Nina inside, but no one’s told us if she’s alive or dead.”
“I’m so sorry,” I said stroking the pony’s nose. “We’ve all been taken up with police business and seeing that Nina has the attention she needs. She’s doing well. Only minor scratches and grazes. The doctor says she’ll be fine once she’s caught up on her sleep.”
While I’d been talking, Felix had put halters on the three horses.
“We should take these guys out, boss,” he said throwing a couple of halters at me for the ponies.
As soon as the equine component of the de Portemorency family was ready, Felix and I led them out into the large grassy paddock that opened onto the stable yard, closely followed by all the stable cats who wanted to hear more.
With the ponies and horses listening to us over the gate and the cats grouped around us, Felix and I told them the story of how Toby had led us to the forest and then through the trees to the clearing where we found Nina.
“He’s a good scout, that cat,” said the chief. “I’ll think twice before attacking him next time he ventures onto our property.”
“What can we do to help?” one of the other cats asked.
“The police are working out roughly where Nina could have come from, when we have that area pinpointed, you could all carry out a recce of the area in combination with the feral cats to see if you can find anything that would help the police. At the moment all they have to go on is a white van and the fact that this villain does his work of poisoning the vines at night. Maybe you could split up into teams and see if you can catch him at it.”
Felix and I left them discussing who would do what and where.
Chapter 33
Nina came to later that afternoon. The bewildered and disoriented little girl opened her eyes to find her anxious father sitting on one side of her bed and me on the other.
She stared at Jean-Claude, her pupils adjusting to the light. “What happened?” she croaked.
I raised her head and held the water glass to her cracked lips. She took a few sips and dropped her head back on the pillow.
“Better?” I asked.
She rewarded me with a faint smile. “You’re Penzi, Jimbo’s sister. What’re you doing in my bedroom?”
Jean-Claude bent forwards and kissed her cheek. “So, you recognize your room and Penzi. You had us worried for a while there, young lady.”
“Why are you both looking at me like that?” she asked as she tried to sit up.
She noticed the drip in her arm. “And what’s this?” she asked shaking her wrist.
“It’s to put liquid back into you, chérie. You were dehydrated when Penzi and Felix found you,” her father answered.
“I don’t understand,” she said. “Can I sit up so I can see things properly?”
Jean-Claude and I took hold of her under the arm, one on each side, and hoisted her up the bed. As she helped us by scooting her feet up the mattress, she let out a cry.
“Ouch! My feet hurt,” she said feeling down inside the covers with her free hand. “They’re all bandaged up. Papa?”
“There, there, chérie,” Jean-Claude said patting her arm. “Wait a few moments and see if anything comes back to you.”
“I’m locking the door,” I said suiting action to word and returning to my seat next to Nina. “We don’t want Dubois or Madame Fer-de-Lance coming in and pestering Nina with questions until she’s herself again.”
Jean-Claude nodded in agreement. “And I’d like to hear what Nina has to say before things get official.”
Nina had been following this conversation with a look of puzzleme
nt on her face. She needed more time to adjust. I picked up the glass of water and this time she took it from me with her free hand and drained it.
“I was so thirsty,” she said as she handed the empty glass off to me. She raised a knee and pushed the covers down so she could see her feet. “But why are my feet in bandages?”
Jean-Claude signaled for me to answer by tipping his head to the side.
“You had to walk a long way. Do you remember?” I asked her.
She shook her head.
I bent down under her bed, pulled out her shredded ballet shoes and laid them on her knees. “Do these help you to remember?”
“Oh my goodness. They’re brand new. Papa, I didn’t mean to ruin them,” she said turning to her father her voice rising as she anticipated his disappointment, “but….”
“Yes?” prompted Jean-Claude. “But?”
Nina closed her eyes for a moment and shook her head as if attempting to banish an unpleasant memory. Her eyelashes fluttered, and she opened her eyes wide in disbelief.
“The man took my shoes away so I couldn’t escape. I’m beginning to remember.”
Jean-Claude and I waited quietly for the events of the past few days to resurface in Nina’s mind and for her to process what had happened to her.
At last she said, “I ran away… in the dark… from that nasty man.”
Jean-Claude hugged her to his chest. “That’s right, Nina. You were a very brave girl. Now, do you think you could tell us about him and about where you were?”
“Papa, I was lost. I thought you’d never find me. And you’d be so angry with me.”
“Angry, my darling?”
“Yes, you made us all promise not to get into a car with a stranger.”
“I understand you told the teacher he wasn’t a stranger; that you knew him.”
She wrinkled up her face while she thought that idea through, then she said, “I did know him… sort of… from a long time ago, but I knew I’d made a bad mistake when he went the wrong way. I tried to tell him he should have taken the other road, but he wouldn’t listen. That’s when I began to get scared.”
I took hold of hand and held it firmly. “You’re safe now, Nina. Home with your dad and your sister and brother. The nasty man is far away. Can you tell us about him? What did he look like?”
“He was big, bigger than Papa, and a bit fat. He didn’t smell very nice. When he took his beret off, he was almost completely bald.”
I looked across at Jean-Claude. The teacher hadn’t mentioned a beret, not that it was a great help. Many of the local farmers wore berets though it did put him in a certain age group, over fifty or thereabouts.
“Did he hurt you? Hit you?” asked Jean-Claude.
Nina shook her head. “No, but he did tie me up with rope at first and that was painful. Look.”
The doctor had already shown us the abrasions on her wrists so that was not as distressful as it could have been for Jean-Claude.
“And he made me use a bucket for a toilet. I didn’t like that.”
“Where was this, Nina?” I asked her. “The police want to catch him for the bad things he’s done. It would help them if they knew where he’s living. I have a funny feeling it was a cave or something like that.”
“How did you know?” she asked her eyes widening again. “You’re so right. It was a cave, but it was also a tunnel.”
“How come?”
Her brow knotted up with the effort of trying to explain. She gave up and shrugged saying, “You know….”
“Were you hungry?”
“No, he gave me food to eat and left packets of biscuits and crisps when he went out. I wasn’t hungry, but the food was boring. The whole thing was boring. There was nothing to read. No games. He said he hadn’t meant to take me, so he had nothing for children in the cave.”
Jean-Claude nodded at me. I, too, had noticed that Nina said the man’s seizure of her was unplanned.
“So, what did you do all day?” I asked her.
“He had a laptop but he didn’t let me use it. I couldn’t use it when he went out because I didn’t know his password.”
“You had electricity then?”
“Yes, and we had the lights on all the time because there were no windows. It was a cave, you see. There were wires everywhere; just hooked over roots and bits of sticking out rock. And one big thing.”
“A TV?” Jean-Claude guessed.
“He had a small TV, but that’s not what I mean. It’s that thing that all the plugs go into and there were plugs going into the plugs.”
“Electric plugs? A multi-socket?”
“Yes. It wasn’t tidy like our house. Sometimes the lights flickered and last night they suddenly went out–right at the end of Future Number One–just as they were about to announce the person who’d won. The man–he told me to call him Albert, but I didn’t–opened the door to the cave.”
She stopped and breathed in deeply as she recalled the scene.
“I guessed he wouldn’t be able to see me because it had gone dark so suddenly. I grabbed up my ballet bag and pushed past him. I ran… and ran… and ran… then I stopped to put on my ballet pumps and ran some more until I was too tired. So there. That’s what happened,” she finished in a rush.
Jean-Claude gave her another big hug and told her she was wonderful only to break away when a mighty thumping hit the door. I unlocked it and pulled it open quickly, guessing it would be Dubois. It was, looking angry, but standing beside him was Violette.
“Papa,” she cried out as she pushed past Dubois and ran into the room. “I can’t find Marc. I only went to the cloakroom for five minutes leaving him in front of the TV. When I came back, he’d gone. I’ve looked everywhere for him. No one’s seen him. Papa, you said we were to stay safe, but he’s gone off somewhere.”
Dubois had followed Violette into Nina’s bedroom. He had the grace to stand aside while Violette told her father about her brother’s disappearance, but he tapped his foot.
Jean-Claude jumped to his feet pushing his chair over. “I have to go, Nina, but I’ll be back. Come on, Inspector,” he said tugging at Dubois’s arm. “We have to find Marc. He’s a stubborn kid, but I’m sure he won’t have gone far.”
Violette called out after her father, “Papa, his bike’s gone. He’s done something stupid, I just know.”
I couldn’t leave Nina alone so I called down to the kitchen for Madame Brune. She came running up the stairs as fast as her girth would allow.
“Stay and keep Nina company, madame,” I said. “We have to find Marc.”
“Oh no,” she said. “Not Marc. What’s wrong with these children? They never do anything they’re told.”
Nina whimpered and burrowed down into her bed. I threw Madame Brune a warning glance and ran down the stairs after the two men. Jean-Claude slowed as we reached the hallway, wincing as he set his bad leg down on the floor. I sent him to fetch Felix and suggested he wait while we made a quick search.
*
Marc wasn’t to be found in any of his usual haunts and his bike had gone. We checked the stables, the gardens, all the rooms in the house but he was nowhere to be seen. Jean-Claude called all his grounds-men together and Dubois added the men he could spare. The search for Marc began in earnest, everyone hoping he’d come cycling up the drive any minute.
Eventually, the search had to spread wider. We found his bicycle in a ditch on the main road not far from the turning into the château. No amount of shouting and blowing of whistles raised him. Dubois sent for the dogs again, but it would be some time before they arrived. He delegated the search to his next in command. Felix, Dubois and I raced back to the château.
As Dubois ran up the front steps breathing heavily after our run up the drive, he said, “I hate to mention this, but it’s time for another Alerte-Enlèvement. Madame Fer-de-Lance is not going to be pleased.”
“That’s the least of our worries, Xavier,” I said. “Marc is more important that Madame F
er-de-Lance’s bad temper.”
Dubois harrumphed loudly and shrugged as only a Frenchman can. “Do you really think I don’t know that?”
As we walked into the library, Jean-Claude’s laptop pinged to announce an incoming email. My stomach lurched. My intuition was working over time.
Another batch of hateful yellow smileys appeared on the screen when Dubois clicked. Everyone gasped as they read the message. They didn’t have to tell me what it said. I knew. The only thing I didn’t know was how much the villain was asking for this time.
Felix read the email out:
I see you’ve found my runaway. Never mind. Plenty more where she came from. Because of the trouble caused me and because of your non-payment of the five hundred thousand Euros I asked for, the bill’s increased to seven hundred and fifty thousand.
Pay your bill and you get your brat back.
I must say I preferred his sister. She didn’t whinge so much.
And you can tell the police they’ll never find me.
Madame Fer-de-Lance laced her fingers through her hair and nodded her head up and down moaning softly, “I don’t believe it. I’ve never heard of anyone doing this before. Never. I must phone the Ministry at once. They’re going to wonder what is happening here in the Charente.”
She dragged herself over to her workstation in the corner and for the next few minutes spoke feverishly into the phone.
Felix pulled me aside. “Boss, we should go. There’s nothing more we can do here tonight. You’ve been up since five. Time for your family. You’re spreading yourself too thin.”
I gave Jean-Claude a hug and told him we’d be back next day; my family needed me at home now. Dubois caught up with me as we were leaving.
“Did little Nina tell you her story?” he asked.
So much drama had elapsed since his appearance at her door annoyed that we hadn’t called him as soon as she felt ready to talk that he’d calmed down, his manner reverting to its usual courtesy.