The Chinese Egg

by Catherine Storr

  “But if they really could? If they could see where Caroline Ann is? What’s happening to her? Then you could go there and stop them. . . get her back. It just might work, mightn’t it?”

  Price hated to have to take away any slightest thread of hope, but he knew his duty. “Look, Mrs. Wilmington. If I thought there was the smallest chance of these youngsters being able to tell us where to find your baby, you know I’d take it. But there’s no reason to think they can. Whichever of the stories they told is true, they haven’t said they can tell us where to look. And I’m short enough of men as it is. To my way of thinking it’s better to use the force I’ve got going around London and asking questions, following up other leads, than sending men off on a harebrained chase set up by a crazy schoolgirl who thinks she sees visions.”

  “I know you’ll do your best,” Sally Wilmington said.

  “You can be sure of that.”

  “Only. . . if those children do suggest anything. . . You won’t turn it down straight away?”

  “I won’t do that. And I’m certainly going to interview that precious pair again and get to the bottom of this caper,” Price said. He left the house, disturbed, angry with himself for having been taken in by the precious pair, and yet unable to decide how they’d picked out Purfitt’s picture if they were indeed impostors. It was too late to do anything more that evening, he’d have to leave the confrontation until tomorrow.

  Twenty Four

  The next morning Detective Chief Superintendent Price was at the address the girl had given, bright and early. He knocked on the door and it was opened at once. Before he knew it, he’d almost come out with his thought—“So you’re the pretty one,” but he managed to check the words before he’d said them and he only asked, “Does Vicky Stanford live here?”

  Chris said, “Yes,” and stood looking at him.

  “She’s at home? Could I see her? Police.” He showed her his card.

  “She’s out,” Chris said.

  “Know where she’s gone to, by any chance?” Price asked.

  “She’s having coffee with. . . with a friend.”

  “Would that be Stephen Rawlinson?” He was amused to see her surprise. Show her that her sister and the boy-friend weren’t the only ones with second sight.

  “How did you know?” Chris asked, not liking it.

  “They came round to see us in the Criminal Investigation Department on Sunday with some information about a case I’m working on. There are one or two things I’d like to ask them about. We’ve had some further evidence we think they might be able to help us with.”

  Chris obviously hesitated.

  “Could you tell me the name of the coffee shop?” Price inquired.

  “It’s in the High Street. The, Witches’ Cauldron. I’ll show you, if you like.”

  “I’d like that, if you can spare the time,” Price said. It was always useful to get some idea of the sort of background there was to a story as unusual as this was. He was still sure they’d been taken in by this Stanford girl and the boy because although Mrs. Wilmington seemed to think they were genuine, the stories just didn’t fit. Something must be wrong somewhere.

  But he didn’t get much further during the ten minutes’ walk with Chris. The most interesting thing he picked up was the strong impression of normality. By the time they reached the High Street he’d have been willing to swear, against all his better reason, that this girl wasn’t mixed up in anything shady, and was convinced her sister and boy-friend weren’t either.

  He saw Vicky and Stephen, talking earnestly, before they saw him. Plotting something else? his suspicious mind asked. But again when he reached the table and they stood up to greet him, they didn’t look to him guilty. Vicky, in fact, seemed pleased to see him. She asked, “Is there any news?” at the same moment as he said, “I’d like to ask you a few more questions.”

  “What. . .? Do you mean here?” Stephen asked.

  “Not here. Would there be a room at your house that we could have to ourselves for half an hour? Or at yours?” Price said, looking at Vicky.

  Chris and Vicky looked at each other, and Chris said, “The front room. Mum’s out anyway.”

  “You’ll come?” Price said to Stephen. It was not exactly a question, more a statement.

  They hardly spoke till they’d got back to the Stanford house and were sitting round the table in the small, seldom used front room, Chris as well as the other two. Vicky asked again, “You haven’t found the baby, then?”

  “No.”

  “I thought perhaps you’d caught them.”

  “No such luck.”

  “Something’s happened though, hasn’t it?”

  “Why do you say that? Seen the future in a crystal ball?” It was meant to take her off her guard, and it did. She flushed and looked quickly at her sister, “Chris! You didn’t. . . .”

  “Your sister never said a word. It was Mrs. Wilmington told me you’d been round there before you came to us, with a story about seeing what’s going to happen before it takes place.”

  She sat scarlet and silent. The sister urged her, “Tell him it’s true.”

  She said, “What’s the use? No one ever believes us.”

  “Is that why you told a different story at the Yard?”

  She said, “Yes,” defiantly.

  “Which story are we supposed to believe? The one about the tube train or the other?”

  She said, “Does it matter? If you want to get the baby back.” “So now you don’t believe a word we’ve said?” the boy asked. “I didn’t say I didn’t.”

  “What have you come here for, then?”

  “To ask you which is the truth. The story you told us or the one you told the Wilmington couple?”

  The boy said, “It seemed important to tell you what we knew. So I told Vicky we should pretend it happened on the train like we told you.”

  “But it didn’t really?”

  “No.”

  “How, then?”

  Vicky was silent, Stephen tried to explain. Pictures, flashes. Unexpected, they never knew when or why. Like remembering, Vicky had thought, only working backwards. You didn’t always choose what you remembered, did you? They didn’t always get it exactly the same. . . Vicky interrupted.

  “I’ll tell you what it’s like. It’s like smells.”

  “Smells? Not for me it isn’t. . . .”

  “I don’t mean in the flash. I mean how it comes. Don’t you know how sometimes you suddenly remember something and you can’t think why just then, and then you realise it’s because of a smell? Like meths always reminds me of hospital, when I had my tonsils done. They used meths to clean the trolleys.”

  “That’s right! Kippers make me think of Yarmouth. . .” Chris said, but Price wasn’t listening to her. In his mind he was standing by a fruit and vegetable shop on a hot day last summer, wondering why he’d suddenly had a picture of the garden where his grandmother had lived in Kent. He could see her clearly, a little woman with white hair pulled back into a bun and the black apron with white spots that she always seemed to wear, laughing. She was laughing at him, Jimmy Price. Only Jimmy Price was a small boy who’d been caught eating the gooseberries before they were ripe. The sourness of them had made him screw up his face and spit them out. Then she’d picked a leaf from another fruit bush and told him to smell it, it would take the sharpness away, and he’d smelled blackcurrant for the first time he ever remembered. A lovely distinctive smell, different from anything else. Funny! He didn’t like the fruit much even now, but he did like the smell. It had been the smell of sun-warmed blackcurrants on that fruit stall that had brought back his Granny and her country voice and the garden which had seemed to him, a London child, so big and rich. He wondered what had happened to that cottage and its garden now. Pulled down to make room for a council estate probably. Or worse, bought by some business man who’d be there only for weekends. . .

  He came back suddenly to the Stanford front room and the other t
hree at the table. Chris was still speaking. Funny thing too how all those memories and all that feeling could take no time at all. He’d lived through five summer holidays of exploration and content such as he’d never recaptured, and the girl hadn’t come to the end of the sentence.

  “. . . because they’d only been caught that morning,” Chris ended.

  “Only it isn’t a smell that starts it off,” Vicky said.

  “And you’ve no idea what it is?” Price asked. He saw Vicky look at him. She’d cottoned on to a change in his attitude. Whether this girl could see the future or not, she was certainly quick on picking up people’s feelings.

  “I think it’s something that happens when we’re together. We’ve never had flashes when we weren’t,” Stephen said.

  “What about that first time? You weren’t together then. We hadn’t even met you,” Chris said.

  “But we were near each other. We were both at the zebra waiting to cross the road,” Vicky said.

  “Was that when you saw the baby being taken?”

  “No, quite different. We both saw an old lady being knocked down by a van.”

  “I don’t see what. . . .”

  “It hadn’t happened when we saw it. . . .”

  “I thought Vicky was crazy,” Chris said.

  “I said to Chris she was going to be knocked down and Chris said there wasn’t an old lady on the crossing.”

  “But it did happen five minutes later.”

  Price sat looking from one face to another, wondering. Could they possibly be such good actors? It sounded impossible and yet he found he’d begun to half believe them.

  “We weren’t together the next time either,” Vicky said.

  Stephen, embarrassed by the recollection, said, “I was outside the café, though.”

  “We had different flashes that time. I saw the headlines in the paper and Stephen saw Mrs. Wilmington and the pram without the baby in it.”

  “How long before it actually happened? Five minutes again?” Price asked.

  “Much longer. Must have been days. More like a week.”

  “Neither of you’ve ever had one of these flashes by yourself?”

  “No.”

  “Can you get them when you want?”

  “No. We’ve tried. It doesn’t work.”

  “Have either of you ever had anything like this before? Visions? Heard voices? That sort of thing?”

  “You make it sound phoney,” Vicky said frowning.

  “More like Joan of Arc,” Chris said.

  “Never mind what it sounds like. Have you?”

  “I haven’t,” Vicky said.

  “Nor have I. Thank goodness. I could do without them now,” Stephen said.

  “When was the first one? How long ago? When you saw the accident on the zebra crossing?”

  “Right at the end of last term. So it must have been a Saturday or we wouldn’t have been in the High Street in the morning. More like three weeks.”

  “Is it always accidents you see? You didn’t happen to see any Cup results? Or who won the National? You could make your fortune,” Price said, just as Chris had done.

  Stephen said, “Yes,” just as Vicky said, “No, it isn’t.” She added, “Don’t you remember when we saw Chris and Paul? And she said about him getting a place at York?”

  “That’s right! I’d forgotten.”

  “But that was the only time.”

  “And you haven’t had any more since Sunday?” Price asked.

  “No.”

  Price said, “All right. Now tell me what you saw that last time. When you heard the girl say that about hurting the baby. You did see something as well as hear them talking, didn’t you?”

  “Saw them. I saw him, sort of, and Stephen saw her.”

  “Anything else? Where were they? Was it in a tube train?”

  They told him. But just a room, no indication where, wasn’t going to be much use. “They never mentioned the place or anything?” No, all they’d heard was that one sentence of the girl’s. Nothing about the room that they’d be able to recognize? No, it was just a room.

  “Tell him about the picture,” the boy said.

  “How’s that going to help?”

  “What’s that?” Price said sharply.

  “Vicky saw a picture on the wall. Behind the girl’s head.”

  “It was one of those mountains. . . a volcano. With fire and sparks and things coming out of its top.”

  “How big? What, sort of frame, do you remember?”

  “The frame was black, with gold bits. About that big,” Vicky said, measuring with her hands.

  Price said, “Well, I’m. . . blowed.” In his mind he used a stronger word. Because how could the girl have known? It wasn’t the sort of thing you’d invent. He’d been surprised himself, when he was looking round it, to find in Mrs. Plum’s front first floor double a print of Vesuvius showering fire down on the unaware, bustling city of Pompeii. And the frame had indeed been black and gold.

  Twenty Five

  When Price had left them, Stephen and the two girls sat round the table and stared at each other.

  “He believes you! I knew he would!” Chris said.

  “I didn’t,” Stephen said.

  “He really does. He asked you to tell him if you had any more flashes.”

  “I wish we knew why we sometimes do and sometimes don’t,” Stephen said.

  “It’s when you’re together.”

  “But not always when we’re together.”

  “There must be something else, then.”

  “Perhaps it’s the time of day?” Chris suggested.

  “No, it isn’t. It’s been all sorts of time of day.”

  “Something to do with the moon? When it’s full. Like people going mad.”

  “Thanks very much, Chris.”

  “Anyway, it can’t be that, because you’ve been having them all this month, and the moon’s only full every four weeks.”

  “I don’t know, then.”

  “What’s up, Vicky? You look moonstruck or something.”

  “You don’t think. . .? No, it’s silly.”

  “What?”

  “It’s just that it never happened before.”

  “What didn’t happen?”

  “The flashes. They only started afterwards, didn’t they?”

  “After what? Do finish what you were going to say. After what?”

  Vicky took her hand out of her pocket and put the piece of wood on the table between them.

  “You mean. . .? You mean, it’s the egg that does it? My egg? But I don’t see how. . . .”

  “I don’t either. Only it wasn’t until you had it that we started seeing anything.”

  “No. . . o. Only that doesn’t prove anything really.”

  “I just thought. . .” Vicky said, disappointed.

  “I suppose it could be that.”

  “Did you have it with you when we had the flashes?” Vicky asked. Stephen thought. “That first time, I did. And the next. I think I did the other two times too. It was in my pocket most of the time, I hadn’t bothered to take it out.”

  “Did you have your bit then, Vicky? Vicky? Did you?”

  “I think so. I can’t be absolutely sure.”

  “That’s it, then! You both have to be together, and you have to have the bits of the puzzle thing with you! That must be it. Mustn’t it, Steve?”

  “But it doesn’t happen all the time even when we are and we’ve got the bits,” Vicky said.

  “Why don’t you try? You might see something else about the baby, and then you could go straight off and tell that detective,” Chris said.

  Vicky and Stephen looked at each other.

  “I think you ought to. Suppose something awful did happen to the baby?”

  “You’d better come back to my place,” Stephen said, remembering gratefully that his father would certainly be at work.

  “You don’t need me,” Chris said.

  B
ut Vicky wanted her to come. Even with Chris there she only half liked being taken into the house by Stephen, and she was relieved when he said, after looking round the door of the kitchen, “Nobody here. Why don’t you come in?” He sat them at the table and asked, “Had enough coffee, or would you like some more?”

  “Can you make it like your Mum does?” Chris asked at once.

  “No. But there’s probably some here in the pot. Yes, there is. Would you like it?”

  “Smashing. Tell you what, Steve. You go and fetch your bit of egg and Vicky and me’ll put the coffee on to warm up.”

  Stephen left them and went upstairs. To his fury he couldn’t at once find the plastic bag which held the bits of the egg. He didn’t realize why, then saw that his mother had been on one of her tidying jags, and everything was in a different place. He searched, swearing softly under his breath, and eventually found the plastic bag in the pocket of his other coat. He’d put it there himself and forgotten. He laughed at himself and wondered how many other sins which were really his own he blamed his mother for.

  As he went down the stairs he could smell the coffee, and when he’d almost reached the hall, he could see Vicky’s feet as she stood with Chris at the cooker. He was on the bottom step when the flash hit him. He grabbed the banister and stood still while the jagged edges of the frame jolted each other and the bright picture inside trembled into clarity. He just had time to feel surprise that what he was looking at wasn’t the face of that fuzzy-haired girl with the baby. It was Chris’s. He heard a boy’s voice, a voice he should have recognized but didn’t immediately. The boy was saying, “. . . didn’t want to interfere. . . thought you were going out with him.” He saw Chris’s face change and she said a name. His. She said, “Stephen? He’s really nice but there’s never been anything. . . .” He saw her face light up and glow—she really was astoundingly pretty—as the boy said, “Then it’s all right if I ask you. . .” and then the blackness closed in and he was stepping down the last step and crossing the hall towards the kitchen door, trembling.

  In the kitchen-dining room, Chris was standing at the cooker, with her back towards him, intent on pouring the coffee from the saucepan to a jug. Vicky was looking towards him. He saw immediately from her face that she’d had it too. She shook her head a fraction and he understood she meant that they mustn’t speak of it in front of Chris. That was right. No one would want to think you could overhear bits of their private conversations. Funny, how he and Vicky sometimes knew without speaking what the other was thinking.