That Man Next Door

by Lucy Gillen

  "It never even occurred to me," Kim admitted. She was intrigued by the fact that the woman she had seen pictured at the top of the fashion page in one of the big glossy magazines so often should turn out to be her uncle's stunning blonde. It was even more intriguing to wonder how the rather brittle-looking creature Eve Mellors appeared to be would deal with three small children. James Fleming, it seemed, would have a problem on his hands if he ever decided to marry her. For some reason, that idea pleased her enormously.

  It was more than a fortnight after Kim came to Summer

  House that she again had reason to complain to James Fleming about the children. During the time she had been with her aunt she had learned that the eldest of the children was called Ronnie and that he was six, and the youngest a little girl of two, christened Teresa but called Terry by her brothers.

  She had spoken to them across the hedge from her aunt's back garden and the children had regarded her suspiciously at first, but by now they were more friendly, encouraged by the little girl. Kim had asked them their names and how old they were, but she had drawn the line at questioning them about their father or anything else he could possibly take exception to. Instead she confined herself to childish subjects they were interested in. They never once, she noticed, referred to their father as anything but James.

  Little Terry seemed to take to Kim after her initial shyness and Kim suspected she missed her mother far more than the boys did. Kim had seen James Fleming several times and had always politely acknowledged his greeting, but never attempted to take the acquaintance into the conversational stage. For some reason she could not explain she always found him disconcerting to speak to, and she knew that she invariably coloured like a shy schoolgirl each time, a fact which did nothing to endear him to her.

  She liked the children, but could not bring herself to even begin liking their father. Terry she grew increasingly fond of and she always thought the tiny girl such a soulful waif that she instinctively blamed James Fleming the more for her pathos.

  It was Terry she found outside the front gate crying one morning when she went out to work. The chubby little face was streaked with tears and grubby from rubbing her eyes with her hands. "What's the matter, Terry?" Kim crouched down beside her, using a clean handkerchief to wipe her

  tearful face. "Tell me about it."

  There was no sign of anyone coming to look for the child and Kim could hear the muffled hum of a vacuum cleaner in the house. Presumably the housekeeper was busy with her cleaning and unaware that one of her charges had escaped.

  Terry eyed her for a moment anxiously. "Lee," she said, "gone."

  "Oh no, not again!" Kim groaned inwardly at the prospect as she mopped Terry's face again and planted a cautious kiss on one damp cheek. "Don't cry, darling, we'll find Lee. You go in and I'll look for him."

  "Gone," Terry insisted, and added dauntingly, "Wonnie."

  "Ronnie too?" Kim gazed at her uncertainly. "Are you sure, Terry?" Whether the child understood or not, she nodded, and Kim stood up, glancing hastily at her watch. She had little enough time to spare before she was due to start work, but she thought George would not be unreasonable in the circumstances.

  "Gone," Terry reminded her plaintively, and Kim sighed.

  "Come on," she told her, taking her hand, "I'll pop you in the house and then go and look for Ronnie and Lee, I don't suppose they've gone very far."

  The housekeeper was an elderly woman who looked rather flushed and harassed when she answered the door to Kim's ring, and she blinked her surprise when she saw Terry. "Oh, they're a real handful," she told Kim. "I need eyes in the back of my head."

  Kim nodded understanding. "I'm sure you do, and I don't want to make things worse, but are you sure the boys are in the garden? Terry seems to think they're gone."

  "Oh, lord ! " The anxious face creased further. "I was so

  sure they'd stay there until I'd finished cleaning." She hurried off, leaving Kim with Terry just inside the front door.

  "Gone," Terry insisted, and a few seconds later her claim was confirmed when the housekeeper returned looking even more anxious.

  "They're not there," she told Kim. "Neither of them. They've both gone off somewhere."

  "And left Terry behind because she couldn't keep up," Kim guessed, and sighed. "Well, we'd better try and find them, Mrs. —"

  "Pannet," the woman supplied absently. "I don't know what Mr. Fleming will say when he knows, he'll be very cross."

  "Well, I don't see how he can blame you," Kim retorted. "You can't be expected to clean and keep an eye on three children."

  "He did say he'd get a full-time girl to look after them," Mrs. Pannet told her, "but I don't think —" She stopped, as if she had almost overstepped the bounds of discretion. "I'd better leave this and look for the boys."

  "They may not have gone far," Kim consoled her, "Lee had only got as far as the sea wall once before when he ran off, so maybe they're both down there. I have to walk along that way, Mrs. Pannet, so we may as well walk together."

  "Thank you." The woman looked harassed and Kim felt sorry for her. She was not of an age when coping with three small children came easily.

  Terry clung to Kim's hand as they went along the sea wall, but there was no sign of the two small boys, and for the first time Kim felt an odd, empty coldness in the pit of her stomach. She could not, she felt, leave Mrs. Pannet to cope with the situation alone, so she gave up all idea of being on time that morning, praying that George would be

  as understanding as she hoped.

  "Now where do we look?" Mrs. Pannet asked. "I've never known them both go off before. Lee often does, but never Ronnie. I can't understand it."

  They looked along both sides of the sea wall, but there was absolutely no sign of the boys and Mrs. Pannet's pale face betrayed the fact that she shared Kim's horrible feeling of helplessness. "Perhaps we should notify the police," Kim suggested, but Mrs. Pannet shook her head.

  "I don't think Mr. Fleming would like that," she told her. "Not without asking him first."

  "If he cared anything about them he'd make sure they were better taken care of," Kim retorted. "Not that I'm blaming you," she added hastily. "It's not fair to put such a responsibility on you."

  "Oh, I don't mind too much," Mrs. Pannet assured her. "Mr. Fleming's been very good to me and the children aren't too much trouble as a rule, it's just that — well, lately things have upset them."

  "Like Miss Eve Mellors," Kim hazarded a guess, and saw that she was right when Mrs. Pannet blinked uneasily.

  "They don't seem to take to her," she admitted, and Kim was hardly surprised.

  "I can imagine," was all she committed herself to. "Now we'd better ring Mr. Fleming and let him know that the boys are missing — if he cares."

  "Oh, he does," Mrs. Pannet protested, "he loves the children."

  "Then he should take more care of them," Kim said, adamantly refusing to give James Fleming any credit at all.

  It was Kim who rang the number Mrs. Pannet gave her and a woman's voice answered, a cool, businesslike voice that informed her she was speaking to Fleming Enterprises.

  Kim swallowed hard on her momentary surprise and asked for Mr. James Fleming. There were buzzes and clicks and then another female voice, equally cool and businesslike, informed her that Mr. Fleming was at a board meeting and definitely could not be disturbed. She sounded as if she expected argument and was prepared to deal with it as a good secretary should.

  "Is that Miss Mellors?" the voice asked, and Kim felt an almost overwhelming temptation to say it was; instead she weakened and was honest.

  "No, it isn't," she said, "it's Miss Anders."

  Kim felt sure she detected a hint of polite surprise in the voice when it spoke again. "Oh! Well, I'm sorry, Miss Anders, but Mr. Fleming is not available at the moment. Shall I tell him you called?"

  "I just wanted to —" Kim began, but the smooth voice interrupted her.

  "I'm sorry, Miss Anders, there's
a call on the other line. Will you hold on?"

  "But —"

  "Excuse me." The receiver at the other end was put down heavily and Kim hastily moved the instrument away from her ear.

  "Oh, never mind ! " she said crossly to the silent telephone, and slammed the receiver down hard, her eyes blazing angrily. Even at a distance she could lose her temper with James Fleming, or at least with those who worked for him.

  Mrs. Pannet looked at her anxiously. "Did you tell him?" she asked, and Kim shook her head.

  "Mr. Fleming," she told her scathingly, "is otherwise engaged — with a board meeting."

  "Oh dear." Mrs. Pannet bit her lip. "What shall we do?" "I suggest we notify the police," Kim told her, "whether

  Mr. Fleming likes it or not."

  The police sergeant at the tiny Woodsea police station was most sympathetic, but he considered it rather too early to panic about the boys. They wouldn't have gone far, he assured them, but he would take their descriptions and pass it on to Woodmouth and the men on the beat would look out for them. It was all that could be done at the moment, and Mrs. Pannet thanked Kim, though she still looked so much at a loss that Kim decided to help her continue the search when she had let George know why she had not appeared for work that morning.

  "Of course I understand, Kim darling," he told her when she reported to him, a little shamefaced for not letting him know before. "Don't worry about it."

  "I'm worried about those two little boys," Kim confessed. "I'd hate it if anything happened to them."

  "I doubt if anything has," George consoled her,- "Kids are pretty independent little objects, aren't they? And from what I've heard of these three they're craftier than most."

  "They're only babies," Kim reproached him, "and somebody should care about them."

  George beamed her a smile and put an arm round her shoulders, hugging her close for a second. "Well, you care about them, my little angel of mercy, and don't you give me another thought until they're safely returned to the fold."

  "Thank you, George. You're very — nice." She gave him a smile and he pulled a face.

  "Only nice?" he asked. "Couldn't you enlarge on that ?" "I will," Kim promised, "when I have time. Right now I have to try and find two little boys."

  Woodsea may only have been a very small community, but by the time she and Mrs. Pannet had walked over every inch of it Kim felt that it was the whole world. She was

  wearing shoes that were not intended for so much activity and she was soon not only tired but irritable.

  Only one woman, of all the people they asked, had seen two small boys, and she thought she had seen two answering the description of Ronnie and Lee walking along the Merrick Road. Merrick Road, Mrs. Pannet informed Kim, led on to the main Woodmouth road, and Kim's heart sank at the prospect when she thought of all the passing traffic and the vulnerability of two such small boys on their own.

  Forced at last to abandon the search and leave it to the police, they returned to Sea Wall, and it was only then that Kim realised with a start that her aunt and uncle had no idea that she had been otherwise occupied than with George Daley's secretarial work. As she broke the news to them she felt again that maddening sense of helplessness.

  "I just don't know where to look," she said. "They could be anywhere; they could even have walked as far as Woodmouth, I suppose, although it's an awful long way."

  "It's much too far for two such little chaps," her uncle protested. "Unless of course they caught a bus."

  Kim blinked at the possibility. "I suppose they could have if they had some money with them," she mused. "I hadn't thought of that."

  It was just before one o'clock when she heard a car outside, and from the window she saw James Fleming's blue car turning into the driveway of his house. She just took enough time to make quite sure it was him before she opened the door and went out. Someone, she felt, should break the news to him gently. Despite her anger with him earlier, she hated to think of any man having such news sprung on him suddenly and without warning.

  "Mr. Fleming ! "

  He had been about to close the front door behind him when she called and he turned his head, obviously surprised

  that she had spoken to him. "Yes, Miss Anders?"

  He came out of the house again, pulling the door to behind him. "I'm — I'm afraid that something awful's happened." She knew she was wording it badly, that she was making it sound far worse than it was, so far, but it was proving much harder to say than she had expected, and the fact that they had the dividing hedge between them did not help matters at all. She felt very much at a disadvantage, for he could see over it quite easily, being over a foot higher than the hedge, but Kim was only at eye-level with the top of it and she felt overshadowed and very small, especially with those light eyes fixed on her so enquiringly.

  "Have you seen Mrs. Pannet yet?" she asked, and he shook his head, obviously puzzled.

  "No, I haven't, we've only just arrived." She scarcely noticed the plural he used, she was so anxious. "I don't understand," he went on, a slight frown between his brows. "What's happened? Terry's all right, isn't she?"

  "Oh yes. It isn't Terry, it's — it's Ronnie and Lee."

  His frown deepened and he sighed a little impatiently. "I'm sorry, Miss Anders, I'm just not with you."

  "They're — they're missing." She could find no way of wrapping it up, making it sound less stark, and she stared at him in horror when he laughed. "You — you monster!" she gasped, her eyes blazing, yet near to tears when she thought of the fruitless search she and Mrs. Pannet had made. They had worn themselves out looking in vain for the children, and Kim's feet were still aching. They had been worried to death about them, and yet he cared so little he was actually laughing. The man wasn't even human! "How can you possibly laugh. when those two little mites are wandering around, heaven knows where and in heaven knows what danger ?"

  "Those two little mites, as you call them," he told her,

  sobering a little but with a hint of laughter still in his voice, "are at this moment plaguing Mrs. Pannet for their lunch, unless I miss my guess. I've just brought them home."

  "You've you've just — ooh !" She clenched her hands, relief and anger fighting for precedence. She was unutterably relieved that Ronnie and Lee were safe, but so angry she could cheerfully have hit him. "Do you realise the police are looking for them? And that Mrs. Pannet and I have spent the entire morning searching all over Woodsea for them?"

  That, she noted with satisfaction, really surprised him, and he looked down over the hedge at her with an expression both guilty and disbelieving, the latter slightly prevalent. "The police?" he echoed. "Why, for heaven's sake?"

  "Of course the police," she said scornfully. "The boys were missing and Mrs. Pannet was worried to death. I tried to phone you, but apparently you were otherwise engaged on more important matters."

  "Wait a minute!" He snapped his fingers. "Miss Norton said someone had phoned, and she did say Miss Anders, now I come to think of it, but she said the woman hung up while she was answering the other phone. Was that you?"

  "It was," Kim admitted, still cross. "She said on no account were you to be disturbed, so I respected your wishes. Of course had I been Miss Eve Mellors," she added, without quite knowing why she was being so rash, "I gather I'd have been put through straight away, board meeting or no."

  "Mi-a-ow !" He regarded her with amusement rather than anger as she expected, shaking his head at her. "You are a little pussy, aren't you? And actually you're wrong about Eve — no one interrupts board meetings, and why did you hang up? You could have left a message with Miss Norton."

  "Because she didn't seem to grasp the fact that I was

  trying to tell her something important," Kim snapped, her expression still furious after his taunt about being catty. "If you had the boys with you why didn't you let Mrs. Pannet know, instead of putting us both to all that worry and trouble? I haven't even been to work this morning, but fortunately Mr. Daley was ver
y understanding."

  His smile did nothing to placate her and he flicked an eloquent gaze over her face. "I can imagine," he commented, "George knows what he's up to."

  She flushed, only partly in anger. "You could have let us know," she insisted, still trying to fix the blame firmly on him.

  She should have known from his expression that he was prepared for that one and she lowered her gaze hastily when it showed in his eyes. "You did say that you and Mrs. Pannet had been out all morning, didn't you?" he asked quietly, and she nodded. "Then how do you suggest I should have let Mrs. Pannet or you know, since there was no reply to any of my telephone calls?"

  "I — I hadn't thought of that," Kim confessed, and felt even smaller as she tried to shrink from sight behind the hedge.

  "I'm sorry you were put to a lot of trouble, but rest assured that those two little monsters won't get away with it altogether."

  She raised her eyes then, apprehension replacing anger. "You — you won't be too hard on them?" She might have been begging on her own behalf, and his eyes gleamed with something she found disturbing.

  "Discipline is good for their souls," he told her, frowning sternly, "if not for their sit-upons."

  "Oh no ! " She was pleading now, hating to think of Ronnie and little Lee being spanked for running away from something they obviously felt very deeply about, which was

  Eve Mellors, if Mrs. Pannet was to be believed.

  "Oh yes ! " he argued adamantly. "They've put a lot of people to a lot of trouble and they deserve what's coming to them."

  "But they're only babies," she protested.

  "Ronnie is six," he reminded her wryly, "and capable of taking his brother into Woodmouth on the bus. If one of the secretaries hadn't spotted them from a window they'd probably be signed on the crew of a merchant ship by now. Oh no, Ronnie knows what he's up to, and he wouldn't take kindly to hearing himself called a baby, he'd sooner have a walloping."