‘Oh my God! What are we to do?’
Mary looked over his shoulder. Carrie would have been happy to know that she was at home again.
‘It’s the boy who saw me writing up the number of the bank account. The devils have got him too!’
‘Then we have to go to the police whether we like it or not,’ she said firmly.
‘We can’t! We mustn’t! They might kill them both. They have nothing to lose.’
‘They need not know we have called in the police, Rupert. We have no right not to tell these poor parents what must have happened to their son.’
The disappearance of Michael Prowse was on the front page. He was last seen at about half past eleven on Saturday morning when he visited the sporting goods shop of Messrs Edwards in Hanborough to ask about eel traps. Mr Edwards, who knew him well, said that he seemed full of beans and was a very intelligent young chap whom he was always pleased to see. Nobody knew where Michael had gone after that, but a boy answering his description had been seen crossing the waste ground by the gasworks. The derelict factory nearby had been thoroughly searched. As he was known to be interested in water, frogmen were down inspecting the river and canal, but the boy was an excellent swimmer and would have come to no harm if he fell in. Police, the paper said, suspected foul play.
‘Show me the kidnappers’ note again!’ Mary Falconer asked her husband.
He took the square of paper from his wallet, unfolded it and laid it on the breakfast table. The message was composed of words cut from a newspaper and pasted on the sheet so as to avoid clues which might be discovered from handwriting or a typewriter.
‘We have your daughter in a safe place from which she cannot escape. It will cost you £100,000 to get her back. If you tell the police or the newspapers we may be forced to go away and leave her. She cannot ever be found and will die of starvation.
‘You earned £100,000 from your last film and you put the money in a secret, numbered account at the Munster Creditanstalt in Zurich. We have a similar, secret account at the same branch.
‘You will authorise the bank to transfer the money to our account as soon as we give them the number of yours. We have arranged that no other instructions will be required. Thus it is unnecessary for you to know the number of our account, but we must know the number of yours.
‘We require that number immediately. At the south side of Hanborough gasworks you will find a brick wall on which children write and draw. There you will write the number in red chalk so that the first figure is below the white painted heart and the last above UP THE HAMMERS. When the money has been transferred your daughter will be released.’
‘She’ll be back the day after tomorrow,’ Rupert Falconer asserted, trying to sound as if he were sure of it.
‘But what about the boy?’
‘Why should they do him any harm?’
‘He might know their names, faces, anything.’
‘It’s not likely.’
‘It’s very likely, Rupert. We have to tell the police and trust them to see that nothing about Carrie leaks out.’
‘We daren’t go into a police station in case we are watched. And we must not have policemen calling here.’
‘I shall ring them up and leave it to them,’ Mary said firmly.
She dialled Hanborough police and asked for the officer in charge of the Prowse case. She had difficulty in getting through to him, for she would not give her name or her reason. But it was always hard to stop Mary Falconer when her mind was made up, and eventually she had the Chief Superintendent on the line.
‘I can explain the disappearance of Michael Prowse,’ she told him. ‘But I dare not come to the police station or ask you to my house. It might be dangerous for him. What do you suggest?’
‘Walk past the White Horse at eleven o’clock, madam. That is a small pub in Castle Street behind the Corn-market. One of my sergeants will be there in plain clothes. He will be able to judge the importance of your information and will report to me. How will he recognise you?’
‘I shall be with my husband. And my husband’s face will be familiar to your sergeant even if he can’t quite remember who he is.’
‘Of course he will know who I am,’ Rupert said.
‘Will he? What about the time when that woman thought you were the Member of Parliament?’
‘We are very much alike.’
‘You are not in the least alike, Rupert. Come on! We have no time to lose.’
They parked the car in Hanborough and walked through side streets to the White Horse. Nobody was there except a shabby individual obviously impatient for a drink and waiting for the pub to open. They never realised that he was the sergeant they had come to meet until he slid off into the yard at the back of the pub and beckoned to them.
He did recognise the actor – much to Rupert’s satisfaction – and assured him at once that the police would be very careful.
‘I realise that anything you do, Mr Falconer, is of interest to the public.’
Even so they told him as little as possible: simply that it was indeed Michael Prowse who had been crossing the waste ground and that the reason for his kidnapping was that he had been making notes of numbers scribbled on the gasworks wall. How they discovered it and a great deal more they were prepared to explain to the Chief Superintendent and no one else.
‘Know Backley Wood?’ the sergeant asked.
‘Very well.’
‘Be at the footbridge over the railway at midday. I think I can say the Chief will be there. Are you likely to be followed?’
‘We don’t know.’
‘Well, we will see that you are not.’
The Falconers drove out to Backley Wood, more miserable than ever because Carrie loved to picnic there in the pale green light under the beeches. A deserted lane crossed the railway by a narrow bridge, which must have been built a hundred years earlier to give some farmer access to his fields on the other side of the line and was now so little used that grass had grown over the surface.
A car was waiting on the far side of the bridge. Beyond it, under the trees, they could see another – near enough to take action if necessary, far enough away to ensure privacy for the Falconers and the Chief Superintendent.
He left his car and joined them. He was a lean, little man with a deeply-tanned face – not very impressive in build but with the eyes and mouth of an experienced commander. Mary Falconer at once felt sure of his discretion, and that she wouldn’t like to be one of his policemen who talked out of turn.
They showed him the ransom note and told him how Michael Prowse had watched the writing on the wall and recognised his favourite actor.
‘I see. Well, that will save us wasting a lot of time. And you have told no one that your daughter is missing?’
‘No one. We want to pay and get it over.’
‘You followed their instructions, Mr Falconer?’
‘Yes, at once.’
‘As we have proof that a criminal offence has been committed we can compel the Swiss bank to reveal who are the owners of the account to which your money was transferred.’
Mary challenged him fiercely.
‘I won’t have it, Superintendent!’ she cried. ‘We love her! Don’t you understand that we love her? It’s all very well for you to stand there like a lump of wood in uniform, but she is our daughter. If you start your damned official enquiries at the bank she might never be released!’
‘Calm yourself, Mrs Falconer! We need not do it yet. I agree that your daughter is in real danger. We will not let it be known that she has disappeared. All our enquiries will be concerned with the kidnapping of the boy, which comes to the same thing. What have you told her school?’
‘That she’s at home ill.’
‘Somebody must have noticed the car which picked her up.’
‘Nobody did,’ Mary said. ‘When I got to the school very late and was told she had left, I thought it must be my husband or one of the studio chauffeurs who had picked h
er up. Oh, why haven’t people got any eyes! Only two girls had seen the car at all. They just said it was black and of course they didn’t notice the number.’
‘Certainly false anyway,’ the Chief Superintendent remarked. ‘Why were you late?’
‘The garage said that somebody had put water in the petrol tank.’
‘The gang had it well worked out. Must have been watching your movements for days! Now, Mr Falconer, I imagine you receive a lot of fan mail and that you have a secretary to deal with it. How did the kidnappers ensure that you and only you would open this letter?’
‘I found it on the windshield of my car behind the wiper. My car was in the studio car park and the envelope just had “Rupert” written on it. So I thought it was a note from a friend who hadn’t been able to find me and I opened it then and there.’
‘A lot of people in the car park?’
‘Plenty. I reckoned that somebody must have been watching to make sure that I got the note and read it, but it was hopeless to try to guess who it was.’
‘Yes. Well, no doubt I shall have more questions for you later. Meanwhile Mr and Mrs Prowse must be told the truth. You realise that?’
‘It’s the only reason why we came to you,’ Mary said.
‘But will they keep their mouths shut?’ Falconer asked anxiously. ‘What sort of people are they?’
‘Mr Jack Prowse farms three hundred acres of good land and is well liked and respected. Mrs Prowse is a warm and responsible woman who gives a lot of her time to local activities. Jack and Janet of the Manor Farm – that’s what they are known as for miles around.’
‘But everything I do is news and worth money,’ the actor complained. ‘And they are just plain farmers.’
‘They have kept more secrets than yours in their time, Mr Falconer. I shall want to bring you both together with them this afternoon.’
‘What they call confrontation? To see if the stories fit?’
‘They do fit, and there is no question of confrontation. I should like to hear you talk about your children and what they are likely to do. Keep their heads? Break down? Work out how to escape? Try to arouse pity?’
‘Carrie would play that one,’ Mary Falconer said.
‘There you are, you see! All this may help us. We have no line at all on the gang, so the next best thing is to learn about the children. A description of Carrie, please!’
‘A very lovely young thing,’ said her father. ‘Fair-haired, blue-eyed and graceful.’
‘She is not lovely at all yet,’ Mary snapped. ‘Puppy fat, Superintendent, but tall for her age.’
‘Quite so, Mrs Falconer. Fathers are inclined to exaggerate. Now, the meeting with the Prowses will not take place at Hanborough in case you are seen together. I will arrange it at Northam this afternoon where none of you will be expected. But we will take no chances. So I suggest you travel by public transport and walk to the police station. Go in the back way and ask for me! Mr and Mrs Prowse will be with me.’
The Falconers drove back to Hanborough and went to Northam by an afternoon train. They found that they would have a longish walk to the police station and took a taxi. The Chief Superintendent had advised them to walk, but they were desperately impatient for news. They got out when they were not far from the police station, but as they were approaching the back entrance the taxi passed them and the driver gave a cheerful wave.
‘He recognised me,’ Rupert said. ‘But it doesn’t matter. He can’t know where we are going.’
‘I don’t think there is anywhere else on this street where we could be going,’ Mary answered uneasily.
They passed through a yard where police cars were parked and then up a few steps to the back door of the station. They were led straight to an office where the Superintendent was sitting with Mike’s parents. Jack Prowse was a big, red-faced man over six feet high and broad in proportion, yet no one who talked to him could feel small in his presence for he always had a friendly, interested smile. His wife was a pretty woman, dark and plump. She would have had a merry face, Mary thought, in normal life but now looked drawn with anxiety and lack of sleep.
The parents found little to say to each other beyond exclamations of sympathy, seated as they were in a line before the Superintendent. He opened up his questions at once, asking if Michael Prowse often visited the wall.
‘I don’t know,’ his father replied. ‘He had his secrets like any other boy. And then one day – when he felt like it – out they would come.’
‘Independent sort of character?’
‘That he was! And that was what we wanted.’
‘His teachers tell me he had a lot of imagination.’
Janet Prowse agreed but said he used it on things, not people.
‘Carrie is just the opposite. She’s clever with people,’ Mary said, ‘and all for a quiet life if she can get them to do what she wants.’
‘What I am wondering is whether much violence had to be used to get them,’ the Superintendent explained.
Mr Prowse said he thought Mike would fall for a good story. Mary Falconer believed that Carrie would not. She added with a shade of embarrassment, ‘But if the kidnapper said he was a chauffeur from the studio, and if she had reason to think that we were both together in London, she might have been – well, too eager to be on her guard.’
‘I see. The kidnappers must have held her down and put her to sleep as soon as they were clear of the school. But they could have risked taking Mike a bit further before fixing him. With luck we may find someone who saw the boy with them in the car. Have you any comment on the photographs which have been circulated, Mr Prowse?’
‘Near enough. Dark, wide mouth, brown-eyed. They say he looks like me, but he won’t grow so tall.’
‘What’s worrying me,’ his mother said, ‘is that Mike was only wearing a sweater and jeans.’
‘Well, it’s July and hot at that, Mrs Prowse. And you both say he’s as tough as nails.’
‘You’ve had no demand for ransom?’ Falconer asked Jack Prowse.
‘No. I wish to hell there had been. I’d have sold everything I have to get Mike back.’
‘They’ll release him with Carrie,’ Mary said. ‘They must! Surely they must?’
Nobody made any remark. It was so obvious that the kidnappers had nothing to gain by letting Mike go.
The Falconers signed their statements, said goodbye to Mr and Mrs Prowse and went out as they had come in – down a passage and out at the back of the station. Then Janet raced after them as if they had forgotten something in the office, and at the door threw her arms round Mary and murmured how sorry she was for her and how in the cold police office she could not express it. Standing at the top of the steps, both burst into tears and hugged each other. There was a flash and a click. A photographer who had crouched in the angle between steps and wall gave a casual nod and bolted out of the yard into the street before anyone could stop him.
At once they returned to the Superintendent and told him what had happened.
‘The only hope is that he was after a shot of Mrs Prowse,’ Rupert Falconer said, ‘and didn’t recognise Mary or me.’
‘He could not know that the Prowses were here. Somebody knew that you were.’
‘That taxi driver! He must have been shooting off his big mouth on the rank or in a pub or somewhere that I had come into the police station. And some blasted newshawk heard him and thought there might be a story in it.’
‘I’ll try to get hold of him,’ the Superintendent said. ‘But there’s a big case on at the Assizes and a dozen reporters from the national papers whom we don’t know. Did you notice the number of the taxi?’
‘No. Who does?’
Later in the afternoon the police traced the taxi driver. Yes, he had recognised Rupert Falconer. Yes, he had told his pals in their usual café and they had all wondered why the police wanted to talk to the actor. Yes, there had been two strangers who joined in the conversation and quickly left.
; Nothing could be done. And when next day the Falconers ran through all the morning papers they found the picture. It was clear and good. The caption under it was outwardly quite harmless:
JANET PROWSE COMFORTED BY MARY FALCONER
So if and when the kidnappers saw it they would know that Rupert Falconer had appealed to the police after all and that they risked being traced and arrested if they ever collected their hundred thousand pounds.
All that day the Falconers waited for news, praying that the gang had already drawn out the ransom from the bank, covered their tracks and disappeared. Rupert stayed by the telephone hoping that every call would be from police or a stranger to tell him that a girl had been found who said she was Carrie Falconer. Mary waited at the gate and watched every passing car in case it should stop for an instant and push her daughter out on to the pavement. But by nightfall nothing whatever had happened to tell them that they would ever see her again.
3
The Well
When the children had finished their breakfast on the third day of their imprisonment, Mike remarked:
‘I wonder what is behind that brickwork. It’s been bothering me all night – in between dreams, you know. Suppose there was an old staircase?’
‘We can never find out anyway.’
‘We might. That mortar is all damp and rotten. I think I could pick it out with my knife. Do they go into that second cellar much?’
‘They never have yet. It’s not very nice in there.’
‘Well, we can’t help that. Let’s imagine there’s a notice of GENTLEMEN in the right corner and LADIES in the left.’
‘Powder Room,’ said Carrie, which made them both laugh.
They wrapped blankets round them for warmth and went through into the smaller vault, taking a lit candle with them which they put out when Mike’s fingers had got used to the work. It was a pleasant occupation picking away at the mortar, and it did not take him long to slip out a brick. He worked away until Carrie had stacked a pile of a dozen bricks and then said he couldn’t go on any longer.
‘Fingers sore?’ she asked.
Escape into Daylight Page 2