Betty reiterated with emphasis:
“B-a-ad!” and with a terrific effort, “Dirrrty!”
She seized the book from Tuppence and replaced it in the line, then tugged out an identical book from the other end of the shelf, announcing with a beaming smile:
“K-k-klean ni’tice Jackorner!”
Tuppence realised that the dirty and worn books had been replaced by new and cleaner editions and was rather amused. Mrs. Sprot was very much what Tuppence thought of as “the hygienic mother.” Always terrified of germs, of impure food, or of the child sucking a soiled toy.
Tuppence, brought up in a free and easy rectory life, was always rather contemptuous of exaggerated hygiene and had brought up her own two children to absorb what she called a “reasonable amount” of dirt. However, she obediently took out the clean copy of Jack Horner and read it to the child with the comments proper to the occasion. Betty murmuring “That’s Jack!—Plum!—In a Pie!” pointing out these interesting objects with a sticky finger that bade fair to soon consign this second copy to the scrap heap. They proceeded to Goosey Goosey Gander and The Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe, and then Betty hid the books and Tuppence took an amazingly long time to find each of them, to Betty’s great glee, and so the morning passed rapidly away.
After lunch Betty had her rest and it was then that Mrs. O’Rourke invited Tuppence into her room.
Mrs. O’Rourke’s room was very untidy and smelt strongly of peppermint, and stale cake with a faint odour of moth balls added. There were photographs on every table of Mrs. O’Rourke’s children and grandchildren and nieces and nephews and great-nieces and great-nephews. There were so many of them that Tuppence felt as though she were looking at a realistically produced play of the late Victorian period.
“’Tis a grand way you have with children, Mrs. Blenkensop,” observed Mrs. O’Rourke genially.
“Oh well,” said Tuppence, “with my own two—”
Mrs. O’Rourke cut in quickly:
“Two? It was three boys I understood you had?”
“Oh yes, three. But two of them are very near in age and I was thinking of the days spent with them.”
“Ah! I see. Sit down now, Mrs. Blenkensop. Make yourself at home.”
Tuppence sat down obediently and wished that Mrs. O’Rourke did not always make her feel so uncomfortable. She felt now exactly like Hansel or Gretel accepting the witch’s invitation.
“Tell me now,” said Mrs. O’Rourke. “What do you think of Sans Souci?”
Tuppence began a somewhat gushing speech of eulogy, but Mrs. O’Rourke cut her short without ceremony.
“What I’d be asking you is if you don’t feel there’s something odd about the place?”
“Odd? No, I don’t think so.”
“Not about Mrs. Perenna? You’re interested in her, you must allow. I’ve seen you watching her and watching her.”
Tuppence flushed.
“She—she’s an interesting woman.”
“She is not then,” said Mrs. O’Rourke. “She’s a commonplace woman enough—that is if she’s what she seems. But perhaps she isn’t. Is that your idea?”
“Really, Mrs. O’Rourke, I don’t know what you mean.”
“Have you ever stopped to think that many of us are that way—different to what we seem on the surface. Mr. Meadowes, now. He’s a puzzling kind of man. Sometimes I’d say he was a typical Englishman, stupid to the core, and there’s other times I’ll catch a look or a word that’s not stupid at all. It’s odd that, don’t you think so?”
Tuppence said firmly:
“Oh, I really think Mr. Meadowes is very typical.”
“There are others. Perhaps you’ll know who I’ll be meaning?”
Tuppence shook her head.
“The name,” said Mrs. O’Rourke encouragingly, “begins with an S.”
She nodded her head several times.
With a sudden spark of anger and an obscure impulse to spring to the defence of something young and vulnerable, Tuppence said sharply:
“Sheila’s just a rebel. One usually is, at that age.”
Mrs. O’Rourke nodded her head several times, looking just like an obese china mandarin that Tuppence remembered on her Aunt Gracie’s mantelpiece. A vast smile tilted up the corners of her mouth. She said softly:
“You mayn’t know it, but Miss Minton’s Christian name is Sophia.”
“Oh,” Tuppence was taken aback. “Was it Miss Minton you meant?”
“It was not,” said Mrs. O’Rourke.
Tuppence turned away to the window. Queer how this old woman could affect her, spreading about her an atmosphere of unrest and fear. “Like a mouse between a cat’s paws,” thought Tuppence. “That’s what I feel like. . . .”
This vast smiling monumental old woman, sitting there, almost purring—and yet there was the pat pat of paws playing with something that wasn’t, in spite of the purring, to be allowed to get away. . . .
“Nonsense—all nonsense! I imagine these things,” thought Tuppence, staring out of the window into the garden. The rain had stopped. There was a gentle patter of raindrops off the trees.
Tuppence thought: “It isn’t all my fancy. I’m not a fanciful person. There is something, some focus of evil there. If I could see—”
Her thoughts broke off abruptly.
At the bottom of the garden the bushes parted slightly. In the gap a face appeared, staring stealthily up at the house. It was the face of the foreign woman who had stood talking to Carl von Deinim in the road.
It was so still, so unblinking in its regard, that it seemed to Tuppence as though it was not human. Staring, staring up at the windows of Sans Souci. It was devoid of expression, and yet there was—yes, undoubtedly there was—menace about it. Immobile, implacable. It represented some spirit, some force, alien to Sans Souci and the commonplace banality of English guesthouse life. “So,” Tuppence thought, “might Jael have looked, awaiting to drive the nail through the forehead of sleeping Sisera.”
These thoughts took only a second or two to flash through Tuppence’s mind. Turning abruptly from the window, she murmured something to Mrs. O’Rourke, hurried out of the room and ran downstairs and out of the front door.
Turning to the right she ran down the side garden path to where she had seen the face. There was no one there now. Tuppence went through the shrubbery and out on to the road and looked up and down the hill. She could see no one. Where had the woman gone?
Vexed, she turned and went back into the grounds of Sans Souci. Could she have imagined the whole thing? No, the woman had been there.
Obstinately she wandered round the garden, peering behind bushes. She got very wet and found no trace of the strange woman. She retraced her steps to the house with a vague feeling of foreboding—a queer formless dread of something about to happen.
She did not guess, would never have guessed, what that something was going to be.
II
Now that the weather had cleared, Miss Minton was dressing Betty preparatory to taking her out for a walk. They were going down to the town to buy a celluloid duck to sail in Betty’s bath.
Betty was very excited and capered so violently that it was extremely difficult to insert her arms into her woolly pullover. The two set off together, Betty chattering violently: “Byaduck. Byaduck. For Bettibarf. For Bettibarf,” and deriving great pleasure from a ceaseless reiteration of these important facts.
Two matches, left carelessly crossed on the marble table in the hall, informed Tuppence that Mr. Meadowes was spending the afternoon on the trail of Mrs. Perenna. Tuppence betook herself to the drawing-room and the company of Mr. and Mrs. Cayley.
Mr. Cayley was in a fretful mood. He had come to Leahampton, he explained, for absolute rest and quiet, and what quiet could there be with a child in the house? All day long it went on, screaming and running about, jumping up and down on the floors—
His wife murmured pacifically that Betty was really a dear little mite, but
the remark met with no favour.
“No doubt, no doubt,” said Mr. Cayley, wriggling his long neck. “But her mother should keep her quiet. There are other people to consider. Invalids, people whose nerves need repose.”
Tuppence said: “It’s not easy to keep a child of that age quiet. It’s not natural—there would be something wrong with the child if she was quiet.”
Mr. Cayley gobbled angrily.
“Nonsense—nonsense—this foolish modern spirit. Letting children do exactly as they please. A child should be made to sit down quietly and—and nurse a doll—or read, or something.”
“She’s not three yet,” said Tuppence, smiling. “You can hardly expect her to be able to read.”
“Well, something must be done about it. I shall speak to Mrs. Perenna. The child was singing, singing in her bed before seven o’clock this morning. I had had a bad night and just dropped off towards morning—and it woke me right up.”
“It’s very important that Mr. Cayley should get as much sleep as possible,” said Mrs. Cayley anxiously. “The doctor said so.”
“You should go to a nursing home,” said Tuppence.
“My dear lady, such places are ruinously expensive and besides it’s not the right atmosphere. There is a suggestion of illness that reacts unfavourably on my subconscious.”
“Bright society, the doctor said,” Mrs. Cayley explained helpfully. “A normal life. He thought a guesthouse would be better than just taking a furnished house. Mr. Cayley would not be so likely to brood, and would be stimulated by exchanging ideas with other people.”
Mr. Cayley’s method of exchanging ideas was, so far as Tuppence could judge, a mere recital of his own ailments and symptoms and the exchange consisted in the sympathetic or unsympathetic reception of them.
Adroitly, Tuppence changed the subject.
“I wish you would tell me,” she said, “of your own views on life in Germany. You told me you had travelled there a good deal in recent years. It would be interesting to have the point of view of an experienced man of the world like yourself. I can see you are the kind of man, quite unswayed by prejudice, who could really give a clear account of conditions there.”
Flattery, in Tuppence’s opinion, should always be laid on with a trowel where a man was concerned. Mr. Cayley rose at once to the bait.
“As you say, dear lady, I am capable of taking a clear unprejudiced view. Now, in my opinion—”
What followed constituted a monologue. Tuppence, throwing in an occasional “Now that’s very interesting” or “What a shrewd observer you are,” listened with an attention that was not assumed for the occasion. For Mr. Cayley, carried away by the sympathy of his listener, was displaying himself as a decided admirer of the Nazi system. How much better it would have been, he hinted, if did not say, for England and Germany to have allied themselves against the rest of Europe.
The return of Miss Minton and Betty, the celluloid duck duly obtained, broke in upon the monologue, which had extended unbroken for nearly two hours. Looking up, Tuppence caught rather a curious expression on Mrs. Cayley’s face. She found it hard to define. It might be merely pardonable wifely jealousy at the monopoly of her husband’s attention by another woman. It might be alarm at the fact that Mr. Cayley was being too outspoken in his political views. It certainly expressed dissatisfaction.
Tea was the next move and hard on that came the return of Mrs. Sprot from London exclaiming:
“I do hope Betty’s been good and not troublesome? Have you been a good girl, Betty?” To which Betty replied laconically by the single word:
“Dam!”
This, however, was not to be regarded as an expression of disapproval at her mother’s return, but merely as a request for blackberry preserve.
It elicited a deep chuckle from Mrs. O’Rourke and a reproachful:
“Please, Betty, dear,” from the young lady’s parent.
Mrs. Sprot then sat down, drank several cups of tea, and plunged into a spirited narrative of her purchases in London, the crowd on the train, what a soldier recently returned from France had told the occupants of her carriage, and what a girl behind the stocking counter had told her of a stocking shortage to come.
The conversation was, in fact, completely normal. It was prolonged afterwards on the terrace outside, for the sun was now shining and the wet day a thing of the past.
Betty rushed happily about, making mysterious expeditions into the bushes and returning with a laurel leaf, or a heap of pebbles which she placed in the lap of one of the grown-ups with a confused and unintelligible explanation of what it represented. Fortunately she required little cooperation in her game, being satisfied with an occasional “How nice, darling. Is it really?”
Never had there been an evening more typical of Sans Souci at its most harmless. Chatter, gossip, speculations as to the course of the war—Can France rally? Will Weygand pull things together? What is Russia likely to do? Could Hitler invade England if he tried? Will Paris fall if the “bulge” is not straightened out? Was it true that . . . ? It had been said that . . . And it was rumoured that. . . .
Political and military scandal was happily bandied about.
Tuppence thought to herself: “Chatterbugs a danger? Nonsense, they’re a safety valve. People enjoy these rumours. It gives them the stimulation to carry on with their own private worries and anxieties.” She contributed a nice tit-bit prefixed by “My son told me—of course this is quite private, you understand—”
Suddenly, with a start, Mrs. Sprot glanced at her watch.
“Goodness, it’s nearly seven. I ought to have put that child to bed hours ago. Betty—Betty!”
It was some time since Betty had returned to the terrace, though no one had noticed her defection.
Mrs. Sprot called her with rising impatience.
“Bett—eeee! Where can the child be?”
Mrs. O’Rourke said with her deep laugh:
“Up to mischief, I’ve no doubt of it. ’Tis always the way when there’s peace.”
“Betty! I want you.”
There was no answer and Mrs. Sprot rose impatiently.
“I suppose I must go and look for her. I wonder where she can be?”
Miss Minton suggested that she was hiding somewhere and Tuppence, with memories of her own childhood, suggested the kitchen. But Betty could not be found, either inside or outside the house. They went round the garden calling, looking all over the bedrooms. There was no Betty anywhere.
Mrs. Sprot began to get annoyed.
“It’s very naughty of her—very naughty indeed! Do you think she can have gone out on the road?”
Together she and Tuppence went out to the gate and looked up and down the hill. There was no one in sight except a tradesman’s boy with a bicycle standing talking to a maid at the door of St. Lucian’s opposite.
On Tuppence’s suggestion, she and Mrs. Sprot crossed the road and the latter asked if either of them had noticed a little girl. They both shook their heads and then the servant asked, with sudden recollection:
“A little girl in a green checked gingham dress?”
Mrs. Sprot said eagerly:
“That’s right.”
“I saw her about half an hour ago—going down the road with a woman.”
Mrs. Sprot said with astonishment:
“With a woman? What sort of a woman?”
The girl seemed slightly embarrassed.
“Well, what I’d call an odd-looking kind of woman. A foreigner she was. Queer clothes. A kind of shawl thing and no hat, and a strange sort of face—queer like, if you know what I mean. I’ve seen her about once or twice lately, and to tell the truth I thought she was a bit wanting—if you know what I mean,” she added helpfully.
In a flash Tuppence remembered the face she had seen that afternoon peering through the bushes and the foreboding that had swept over her.
But she had never thought of the woman in connection with the child, could not understand it now.
/> She had little time for meditation, however, for Mrs. Sprot almost collapsed against her.
“Oh Betty, my little girl. She’s been kidnapped. She—what did the woman look like—a gipsy?”
Tuppence shook her head energetically.
“No, she was fair, very fair, a broad face with high cheekbones and blue eyes set very far apart.”
She saw Mrs. Sprot staring at her and hastened to explain.
“I saw the woman this afternoon—peering through the bushes at the bottom of the garden. And I’ve noticed her hanging about. Carl von Deinim was speaking to her one day. It must be the same woman.”
The servant girl chimed in to say:
“That’s right. Fair-haired she was. And wanting, if you ask me. Didn’t understand nothing that was said to her.”
“Oh God,” moaned Mrs. Sprot. “What shall I do?”
Tuppence passed an arm round her.
“Come back to the house, have a little brandy and then we’ll ring up the police. It’s all right. We’ll get her back.”
Mrs. Sprot went with her meekly, murmuring in a dazed fashion:
“I can’t imagine how Betty would go like that with a stranger.”
“She’s very young,” said Tuppence. “Not old enough to be shy.”
Mrs. Sprot cried out weakly:
“Some dreadful German woman, I expect. She’ll kill my Betty.”
“Nonsense,” said Tuppence robustly. “It will be all right. I expect she’s just some woman who’s not quite right in her head.” But she did not believe her own words—did not believe for one moment that the calm blonde woman was an irresponsible lunatic.
Carl! Would Carl know? Had Carl something to do with this?
A few minutes later she was inclined to doubt this. Carl von Deinim, like the rest, seemed amazed, unbelieving, completely surprised.
As soon as the facts were made plain, Major Bletchley assumed control.
“Now then, dear lady,” he said to Mrs. Sprot. “Sit down here—just drink a little drop of this—brandy—it won’t hurt you—and I’ll get straight on to the police station.”
Mrs. Sprot murmured:
“Wait a minute—there might be something—”
The Complete Tommy and Tuppence Page 58