Dorothy Eden (48 page)

She might be any small anonymous woman, she thought, and had a fleeting pang for the trick she was playing on Flynn, left alone and unseeing in her flat. But Arabella’s crying was still echoing in her ears, and she had only one thought, to get to this house as quickly as possible. Alone and defenseless, so that the blonde woman would take pity on her.

It was not a long taxi ride. The driver, peering into the fog, said, “It’s hard to see the numbers, madam. This isn’t a way I come much. There’s a six. Fourteen won’t be far. Afraid I’ll have to let you out here, madam, I can’t turn further down.”

Harriet got out and paid the man. She stood a moment in the swirling fog. Then she walked briskly down the narrow street, peering at numbers, until she came to number 14 on the door of a narrow, shabby house that showed no lights.

She felt for the bell and rang. No one came. She could hear the hiss and ripple of the river, unseen in the fog. The air was full of a clammy cold damp.

Was there no one home? But there must be. It was less than twenty minutes since the woman had answered the telephone. Harriet rang again, impatiently.

Still no lights appeared. There was no sound of footsteps within.

But this was the right address, unless the woman had played a trick on her. This was where, such a short time ago, she had heard Arabella crying.

Suddenly, losing the remains of her patience, Harriet rapped sharply on the door and then turned the knob.

To her surprise, the door opened. She found herself facing a narrow dark hall. Groping her way inside, she felt for a light switch. When the light flashed on she saw the dreary place, with its peeling wallpaper, its uncarpeted floor.

“Is there anyone home?” she called.

There was no answer. The house had a forlorn look of being completely uninhabited. But the door had been unlocked, and in the tiny living room there were the remains of a fire in the grate and a vague lingering warmth. Here was the kitchen, a dank, moldering place, with dishes in the sink. Unwashed dishes, used recently. There was a saucepan with remains of porridge. Porridge! Children!

In a state of tense excitement and apprehension, Harriet hastened up the narrow stairway. She switched on more lights and found a bathroom and two small bedrooms. In one the bed was unmade and there she found Arabella’s fuzzy wool beret. And there also was the note, roughly penciled:

HE’S JUST RUNG TO SAY HE’S ON HIS WAY. I’M TOO SCARED TO STAY. AM TAKING BABY FOR SAFETY.

Harriet was still on her knees, clutching the scrap of paper, tears of desperate disappointment running down her cheeks, when she heard the sound in the next room. There was someone there! Someone who had obviously been listening and waiting!

There was only one doorway. Whoever was in there had to come through this room to get downstairs.

Harriet looked at the dark doorway.

“Who is it? Who’s there?” she whispered. And when there was no answer, but only another furtive sound, she shouted passionately, “Who is it, tell me!”

A tall figure appeared at the door. There was a faint silver shine from the long thick hair. The face was strange, beige-colored, horrible.

“Why, it’s me, my dear,” came the throaty voice that last she had heard on the telephone that morning. “Weren’t you expecting me?”

M
ILLIE LAY IN HER BED
repeating her story incoherently but stubbornly.

“It was Fred who rang me, but it was the blonde woman who did this.” She touched her throat tenderly. “She just suddenly sprang at me. O-oh! It was awful!”

“But Fred asked you to meet him in that particular spot?”

“Yes. I thought it was a funny place. But he said he had something to do out there. Some business.” She opened her eyes in weary puzzlement “He wasn’t there at all. I didn’t even see him.”

“Only this woman?”

The inspector leaned forward. He looked kind and paternal, not in the least the sort of person of whom one needed to be afraid.

“Now, Millie,” he said briskly. “What about telling me the whole story from the beginning…”

In Harriet’s flat Flynn began to grow impatient. Harriet was taking a deuced long time over that call. Was she all right? But surely nothing could happen to her between here and the third floor. She had asked him to wait there in case her telephone rang. He was reluctant to leave. But how much time had gone by? Half an hour? This was absurd. He must go down and see what she was doing.

He made the now familiar journey safely, and opened the unlocked door of his flat.

“Harriet! Harriet, where are you?”

There was silence within. He crossed the hall into the living room.

“Harriet!”

If she were there she would speak to him. She would not stand motionless, concealing her presence from him.

But if she were not there, where had she gone?

Millie had suddenly disappeared earlier this afternoon and then had been discovered on Barnes Common, half dead. Millie, of course, must have had an assignation. But supposing Harriet, in the last half hour, had also made an assignation. If it were to recover her children she would plunge into it blindly and impulsively. He knew that by her previous behavior when she had kept the whole terrifying thing to herself.

Surely now the police had been called in she would not do a reckless thing like that, at least not without leaving a message.

But probably she had left a message and he could not see it!

It was a long time since he had had one of his bitter, useless rages about his blindness. Now one swept over him, irresistibly, and he stood rigid, gripping his stick, wanting to destroy things, wanting to plunge about the room breaking down his carefully erected facade, stamping on phonograph records, tearing up the carefully preserved letters of his great-grandfather, hurling the typewriter with its Braille lettering out of the window. All these things, these carefully nurtured compensations, were useless in the wilderness that faced him. Harriet had disappeared, she may have left a message, and he could not see. He was helpless. And he loved her.

He had loved her from the beginning. At first it had been guiltily, because of his inadvertent part in her husband’s death, and secretly, for how could he, a blind man, burden her with unwanted love?

So the façade of Zoe and the other girls, gaiety, music, extravagance, had been built up. He had even been almost contented, knowing that she was near, that she might walk in at any moment, that one day his fingers would explore her face.

But it was no longer possible to skim lightly and facetiously on the surface when this trouble had come. It had been so difficult, from the moment of his first suspicion that something was wrong, not to take her in his arms and comfort her.

He, a blind man, helpless to her!

And now she was gone off somewhere without telling him, no doubt because she was too kind to admit to him his uselessness.

But he did not need to be entirely useless. He could ring the police. Someone would come up and search to see if there were any clue as to where Harriet had gone. She may merely have slipped out to the shops, improbable as such a thing seemed at this moment. But one could do something about that. It was not difficult for him to dial the police. If the inspector thought he was fussing like an old woman it could not be helped.

He had scarcely picked up the receiver, however, when the door opened behind him.

“Harriet!”

“It’s only me, sir,” came Jones’s apologetic voice. “My wife was better, so I came back. Has anything more transpired, sir?”

“Thank God you’re here, Jones. Have a look and see if Mrs. Lacey has left a message anywhere.”

“A message, sir?”

“Yes, she went out rather suddenly, without an explanation.”

Jones moved about, searching. “There’s nothing here, sir. Isn’t she in her flat?”

“I’ve just come from her flat, you fool! I want you to ring the police.”

“But mightn’t she just have gone shopping, sir?”

Flynn tried to control his impatience and apprehension.

“Millie went out a couple of hours ago, and she was picked up on Barnes Common, half strangled.”

Jones gave a horrified gasp. “That isn’t very nice, sir.”

“An understatement, Jones.”

“Who did it, sir?”

“If we knew that we’d know a lot, wouldn’t we? Now get on to the police.”

“Excuse me, sir, but shouldn’t I inquire first if Mrs. Lacey is in the building? She might have called on someone else, or gone down to see Mrs. Helps in the basement. Listen, there’s someone coming now.”

Flynn, too, had heard the footsteps pause at his door, and then the urgent ring of the bell.

Jones opened the door, and then exclaimed in his flat voice, “Talk of angels! It’s Mrs. Helps, herself.” His voice grew concerned. “Is something wrong, Mrs. Helps?”

The old lady seemed to be gasping for breath. She got out, in a wheezy whisper, “I went up to Mrs. Lacey, but there’s no one there. I thought she might be here.”

“She isn’t,” said Flynn curtly. “What’s wrong?”

“Oh, sir, they’ve arrested my Fred!”

“No!” ejaculated Jones.

“It’s that Millie—I told him she was no good—after that I had to confess everything. Oh dear, oh dear, what will become of us now?”

“Sit down, Mrs. Helps,” Flynn said. “Try to tell us clearly what happened. What did you confess?”

“About the money. I found it hidden in Fred’s mattress this morning. The five hundred pounds. But I still couldn’t believe it. Fred isn’t that sort. Oh, he might be a sharp one, now and then, but he wouldn’t do anything to innocent children. I know he wouldn’t.”

“Now listen,” said Flynn calmly. “If he’s innocent he can prove it. You confessed about the money because of what happened to Millie this afternoon. Do the police accuse Fred of that?”

“They said he’d lured her,” the old lady gasped. “She told them so. But Fred wouldn’t criminally assault anybody. It’s a lie. They shouldn’t believe what she says.”

“But you believed her or you wouldn’t have confessed about discovering the money. Would you?”

“I had to do that, Mr. Palmer. Because of Jamie.”

“Jamie!”

“He’s asleep in my bed at this minute.”

Flynn was incredulous.

“Mrs. Helps, you haven’t had Jamie here all the time!”

“Oh, no, sir! Of course I haven’t. He only came back this morning. It was just after I’d found the money in Fred’s mattress, and it made me panic, seeing him there, knowing Fred must have done it. I couldn’t think of anything except that I had to hide him until Fred came and explained. I put him in my bed and gave him one of my sleeping pills in a glass of milk. He’s still asleep.” The old lady snuffed noisily. “Poor lamb.”

“Where’s the baby?” Flynn demanded.

“In that house with the woman, I suppose.”

“The blonde woman?”

“No, Jamie said she had black hair. And he’d know. He notices things like that, after watching my work. The house must be near the river because she talked of throwing him in. But a five-year-old can’t tell you much. And now we’ve got to wait till he wakes up.”

“Can’t he be wakened?”

“The sergeant tried. But he was too dopey. I suppose one of my pills was rather a large dose for a child.”

“Mrs. Helps, do you realize how very foolishly you have behaved?”

The old lady snuffled again pathetically.

“Yes, sir, I do now. But if you had an only son you’d try to save him, wouldn’t you?”

“At the expense of two little children?”

“Oh, sir! I’m that upset. They’ve taken Fred away to try to make him tell them where this house with the dark woman and Arabella is. But he keeps saying he doesn’t know anything about it. He says he never rang Millie up this afternoon and never saw her.”

“If he wasn’t on Barnes Common he can prove it, surely.”

“But he can’t. Because he says he was taking a look at the bombed place in Hammersmith where the money is to be put tonight. No one saw him, he said. And that’s guilty, you see, being so interested in where the second lot of money is going. And what Mrs. Lacey will say when she finds out I’ve got Jamie! Oh dear, oh dear! I must go now in case Jamie wakes. But if you can do anything to help Fred, you will, won’t you?”

“If he deserves it, yes.”

When the old lady at last had gone Flynn said softly, “Fred! I suppose he always was the obvious one. Do you believe it, Jones?”

“Can’t say I’m surprised, sir. And he was leading Millie up the garden path. With ulterior motives, as you can now see.”

“The thing is whether he’s been able to warn this woman who’s got the baby. If not, she’s still in that house by the river. Waiting…”

“Yes, sir.”

“And when she doesn’t hear from Fred…” Flynn began pacing up and down. “You know, I can’t altogether reconcile Fred with this. A petty crime, perhaps, but not this. He liked women too much. He wasn’t likely to kill one, or even attempt to.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised, sir,” Jones said in his flat voice. “Stranger things happen. It was more likely Fred than the blonde woman, like Millie said…”

Flynn frowned suddenly in concentration.

It was then that Inspector Burns arrived. He came in briskly, apologizing for being away so long, but they had made important progress. Fred, whom Millie had said had made an assignation with her on the common that afternoon, had been taken away for questioning. It was thought he could help a good deal in their inquiries.

“He’s not arrested?” Flynn asked.

“No, we’ve made no charges yet. There are some strange aspects to this case. For instance, Millie insists it was this mysterious blonde woman, and not Fred, who attacked her. She swears to that. On the other hand Fred had the ransom money, and his mother has been hiding the boy. By the way, Mrs. Lacey is with you, is she? I’ve been up to her flat but there’s no one there. She’ll want to know the boy’s safe.”

Flynn quickly and clearly told him what had happened. Harriet had now been gone for more than an hour, with no explanation whatever. She had come down here to try to ring Jones’s wife who had been complaining that she was lonely, and that was the last Flynn had seen of her.