“Off Palmerston Road,” Lily said. “Excuse me, Sir, but are there men looking for Christopher, now?”
He nodded. “Yes, there are,” he said. “What I have to do is to see if you, or anyone in this house, can think of any reason why your child should have been taken. That’s my job and you can help me do it.”
Lily frowned in concentration. “I can’t think of anyone,” she said. “I really can’t.”
“Is there any member of staff that you don’t get on well with?” the inspector asked. “This is your husband’s family, isn’t it? Anyone you wouldn’t employ if you had the choice?”
“Only the nanny,” Lily said very quietly.
“Oh?”
“My husband insisted we had a nanny. I never wanted one. She knows I don’t like her. I’m sure she doesn’t like me. But she was upstairs all the time. She couldn’t have had anything to do with it.”
“Did she have proper references? D’you know where she came from?”
“Oh yes, all of that. But the children she was caring for before she came to us had died. That’s one of the reasons I don’t like her.”
“Are you saying she is negligent?”
Lily shook her head. “No. It was an accident. I just think she is . . .” She searched for the right word. “Cold,” she said. “Uncaring.”
The inspector nodded. “Was it her job to supervise the baby?”
Lily thought for a moment. “I’m not really supposed to be in the garden with him,” she said honestly. “Nanny is supposed to have him all day and I am only supposed to see him at tea time. But she knows I go out to see him, and Rory, my father-in-law, often has him brought to us so I can see him during the day, or walk with him in the afternoon.”
The inspector frowned. “You’re not supposed to see him during the day?” he repeated.
Lily looked embarrassed. “They think I spoil him,” she said. “He’s to be brought up by the nanny. I’m only allowed to see him at set times.”
“So the child was her responsibility at the time he was taken?”
“Yes,” Lily said. “Yes he was, really. She watches him from the window as she tidies the nursery.”
The inspector nodded. “I think that’s all for now then, Mrs. Winters. I would prefer it if you did not answer the phone for today, even if it is a friend asking to speak to you. If the people who have taken your son get in touch we want to make sure that we handle the phone call in the right way.”
“D’you think they might telephone to give him back?” Lily’s pale face was suddenly alive with hope.
“They might very well, or they might write a note asking for money. Either way, this should be handled by the constable or by your husband. Please let your husband open all your letters, and don’t take any phone calls today.”
Lily nodded. “I should like to speak to Charlie when he rings,” she said. Her mouth quivered slightly. “I need to speak to him.”
“Would you object to my listening to the call?”
Lily looked surprised. “No.”
“Do you expect him to telephone again today?”
“He’ll phone from London, to tell me if he gets the job.”
“When?”
“This afternoon.”
Inspector Walker nodded. “Thank you,” he said. “It’s just routine. We always monitor all telephone calls in these circumstances.”
“Does this happen often then?” Lily asked. “Someone takes a baby and then brings it back?”
“Sometimes,” the inspector said. The hope in Lily’s face made him uncomfortable.
The clock on the mantelpiece chimed twelve. Lily looked up and got to her feet, thinking of Christopher’s lunch. Then the sudden realization that he was not in the house hit her like a blow and she staggered.
“I suggest you have a lie down, Mrs. Winters,” the inspector said gently. “If you think of anything you want to tell me I shall be here all day. I will keep you in touch with whatever happens.”
“Thank you,” Lily said stiffly. She went slowly from the room, walking awkwardly, as if her feet hurt. The two men were silent until the door closed behind her.
The sergeant turned the page and looked at the inspector.
“A little list,” the inspector suggested. “Just a little provisional list, and then we’ll interview everyone else in the house.”
The sergeant waited, pen poised.
“The nanny, whom the mother dislikes. The nanny’s previous employer—whoever that is—the mother whose child died. Mrs. Stephen Winters herself—to get the nanny sacked. Mr. Charlie Smith—for interest’s sake, his name seems to come up first. Any girlfriends of Mr. Winters the husband. Any men from his platoon. Wasn’t he in some forlorn hope and got half of them killed? What about the dead men’s families? Anyone from his work. Any unhappy clients.” He paused. “That’s all I can think of, for now.”
“Not a lot of love lost between the mother-in-law and the young Mrs. Winters,” the sergeant observed.
“Not a lot of love lost between any of them,” the inspector said grimly. “But still, I wouldn’t know. Perhaps they feel it, but don’t show it. That’s what they say, isn’t it? The stiff upper lip and all that?”
The sergeant nodded. “Who next?”
“The loving mother-in-law: Mrs. Winters.”
38
MURIEL TOOK INTERROGATION as an affront. She had moved the inspector’s headquarters from the dining room to Stephen’s study, so that the dining room table could be laid for lunch; but then found she was offended at the man taking the chair behind the desk and leaving her to sit before him, like an applicant parlourmaid.
Inspector Walker took her through the short list of all her friends who regularly called at the house, and through her acquaintances among the neighbours. If he thought Muriel’s life sounded lonely and barren there was no sign of it on his face. He noted the unspoken depth of her feeling for her grandson, and her coolness towards her daughter-in-law and invalid husband. He asked her about the staff of the house and she spoke of them with unflinching confidence. Most of them had been with her since Stephen was a small boy.
“And what about Mrs. Winters’s friends?” he asked easily. “A wide circle of friends she has, I see.”
“My daughter-in-law was a professional singer before her marriage. Many of her friends still visit us,” Muriel said.
The inspector noted a slight tightening around the woman’s neck and shoulders.
“Especially Mr. Smith,” he prompted gently. “She tells me.”
Muriel stiffened. “He teaches her the piano, he is her accompanist and a friend of the family,” she said firmly. “I am not sure that your questions are relevant.”
“I’m just trying to get an overall picture of the household. Your daily routine and so on. Mrs. Winters spends every afternoon with Mr. Smith, does she not?”
Muriel looked at him frostily. “She practises her music every afternoon, yes.”
“And he is fond of the child?”
“I have no idea.”
There was a brief silence. “Mr. Winters now, Mr. Stephen Winters, does he work late?”
“My son is always home for dinner at seven.”
“He’s very close to his child, I assume? Spends a lot of time with him when he can?”
“Yes.”
“Takes him out at the weekend, pushes the pram along the seafront, that sort of thing?”
Muriel sighed and then spoke very carefully. “We have a fully trained nanny who works every day except for Thursday afternoons. There is no need for Stephen to push a pram.”
“And, forgive me, Mr. and Mrs. Winters, newly married, they’re perfectly happy, are they? No stress and strain, very common with young couples?”
“Of course not,” Muriel said, at her most icy.
The inspector nodded. Muriel’s face was pale with indignation but there was something about her eyes, the tiniest quiver at her eyelid, that made him disbelieve her. “A normal
birth, was it? Mrs. Winters had the baby at home?”
“She chose to have the baby at the hospital.”
“Mr. Winters was there, was he? He drove her in, I suppose?”
“He was away that evening. Our chauffeur and—” Muriel paused for half a guilty moment “—and I went in with her. She came out the next day.”
“The chauffeur?”
“Coventry—that’s a nickname. His proper name is James Stokes. He was my son’s batman all through the war. The men nicknamed him Coventry because he is mute, and the name has stuck.”
“He uses the car on his nights off, does he?”
Muriel blinked at the change of tack. “No. He either spends the night here in his rooms over the garage, or he goes to his home on Hayling Island.”
“Doesn’t drive down to Old Portsmouth? Down to Portsea?”
Again there was that flicker around Muriel’s eyes. “He does not have private use of the car,” she said eventually.
“So he drives Mr. Winters out in the evening, occasionally?”
“Yes.”
“And where do they go?”
Muriel rose from the chair. “You must excuse me, Inspector. I have to see my husband before luncheon. Will you and your men be requiring some sandwiches and a pot of tea, perhaps?”
The inspector rose too. “That would be very kind of you,” he said. “But we won’t inconvenience you. I’ll leave Sergeant Watts here while the constable and I go for our dinners. We’ll relieve him later. If there are any telephone calls or letters I would prefer it if you would let him answer. If the kidnappers try to contact you it will be safer for the child if the call is taken by us or by Mr. Stephen Winters.”
Muriel nodded. “Very well. The sergeant may wait in here. If the telephone rings in the hall he will hear it. Is the parlourmaid not to answer the front door?”
“No. Sergeant Watts can do it, or the constable.”
Muriel hesitated. “It will look very odd,” she said unhappily.
The inspector nodded. “Yes,” he said apologetically. “But in the circumstances . . .”
Muriel nodded grudgingly and went from the room. The inspector dropped back into the padded leather chair and beamed at the sergeant. “I’m off to my dinner,” he said. “We’ll do the staff and the neighbours when I get back.”
• • •
They drew a blank at the neighbours’ houses. No-one had seen anything unusual, no-one had been watching from the window. Inspector Walker sighed. In the poorer streets of Portsmouth the place would have been alive with gossip and speculation. People were forever leaning on their garden walls and minding each other’s affairs. Solving a crime in the backstreets was no more difficult than drinking many cups of tea and listening to the chat. At the better end of Southsea people lived on islands of snobbery alienated from each other by a thousand rules of conduct. Many people whose rooms overlooked the Winters’s garden did not even know their name.
The inspector turned his attention to the servants. First he asked to see James Stokes, the chauffeur known as Coventry. But when the man came into the room, looking grave with his chauffeur’s cap under his arm, Stephen Winters came in with him.
“He’s mute,” he said, nodding his head towards the chauffeur. “I thought I might be able to help.”
“Thank you,” the inspector said. “Stokes—do you take the car down to Portsea on your own at night?”
Coventry shook his head.
The inspector looked into the open face and the light brown eyes. “Were you born mute?” he asked.
The man looked back at him as Stephen answered for him. “It was the war,” he said. “We had a direct hit on a gun emplacement. Coventry was trapped for two days, no-one knew he was in there. He had to shout for help. When we finally got him out he had lost his voice.”
“Seen a doctor?”
Coventry smiled his slow patient smile and shook his head.
“Several,” Stephen said. “They say it’s neurasthenia. They don’t know anything.”
“The car’s been seen several times in the backstreets. Old Portsmouth, Portsea, places like that. Would that be the two of you, out on the town?”
Coventry neither nodded his head nor shook it. He stayed silent and motionless, waiting for Stephen to speak.
“We go out for a drink from time to time,” Stephen said easily. “You know how it is, Inspector. Family life at times can be a little . . .” He paused and smiled engagingly. “Especially living at home with parents. Sometimes I feel the need of a little relaxation.”
“In backstreet pubs?” the inspector asked baldly.
“Somewhere informal.”
“And you drink together, as friends?”
Stephen hesitated. “Some of these places are a bit rough,” he said. “It’s as wise to have someone to watch your back. Coventry was my batman during the war. We’ve been in worse places together.”
The inspector nodded. “I know your war record,” he said briefly. There was a slight movement from Coventry, of unease? of dissent? Inspector Walker paused but could not read the swift glance between the two men. He sensed their unity, the bond between them.
“Where were you this morning?” he asked gently.
Coventry nodded towards Stephen.
“He took me to court and then waited,” Stephen said. “I didn’t know how long I’d be, so he waited outside for me.”
“You were parked outside the court for all that time?” The inspector spoke directly to Coventry.
Coventry nodded.
“I went out at about, oh, ten, and collected some papers from the car which I needed. Then I went back into court again. My clerk came and told me there was a flap on at home at about half past ten, or a quarter to eleven, and I came straight back.”
“Anyone see you there?”
Coventry shrugged.
“You could ask,” Stephen said easily. “We parked where we always park, that little road at the side of the court. Half a dozen people must have gone past the car. Someone might remember it. But as I say, I know he was there at ten o’clock.”
“Thank you for your help,” Inspector Walker said to Stephen. “I’d like a few words with Mr. Stokes on my own.”
“Very well,” Stephen said pleasantly. “He’s not much of a hand at writing. That’s why I sat in. You may find progress is rather slow. Call me if you need translation—I shall be sitting with my father. He’s taken this rather badly.”
The door closed behind him and Coventry was alone with the inspector and the sergeant.
“Very close to Mr. Winters, aren’t you?” the inspector asked.
Coventry nodded with a little smile.
“I envy you both,” the inspector said. “It is a great thing to form a friendship like that during war and find the bonds last through peace as well. Do you like his wife also?”
He was expecting a hesitation, or some gesture which might betray jealousy, or dislike. So he was surprised by Coventry’s open-hearted smile and the vigorous nod of his head.
“Oh?” he asked.
Coventry pulled the pad towards him and took up a pencil from the holder. “Tawt her to drive,” he wrote.
“Taught her to drive?” the inspector queried.
Coventry nodded, his smile broadening. “Very good,” he wrote. “Choice her car.”
“You chose it for her?”
Coventry nodded again. “Morris,” he wrote. “Good make.”
The inspector sat back, a little baffled by the man’s sudden animation. “You’re very fond of her,” he stated.
Coventry nodded his head.
“The baby must have been a bit of a change for her, after a stage career. Must have set her back a bit?”
Coventry said nothing; his face was neutral.
Inspector Walker felt mildly irritated by having to guess at the man’s feelings. It was like a children’s game with only the clues of “hot” or “cold” to aid the seeker near the target. Lily’s p
ossible resentment of the baby was obviously “cold.”
He tried a more simple approach. “D’you have much to do with the baby?” he asked.
Coventry’s smile was unmistakably one of pride and pleasure. He nodded.
“Drive them out, do you?”
Again the smile.
“And I think Mrs. Winters said you take the pram in and out of the garden and up the steps?”
Coventry nodded and mimed pushing a pram.
“Oh, you push the pram for walks as well, do you?”
Coventry nodded and pointed to the upstairs room where Rory Winters was resting.
“With the older Mr. Winters?”
Coventry nodded.
“And the young Mrs. Winters?”
Coventry nodded again, and gestured with his hand as if to imply the existence of another.
“Mr. Stephen Winters?”
Coventry shook his head and mimed playing a piano on the smooth surface of the desk.
“Mr. Charlie Smith,” the inspector said slowly. “You all go out for walks together. You pushing Mr. Winters, and Mr. Smith pushing the pram and Mrs. Winters comes too.”
Coventry nodded confirmation.
The inspector sat back in the chair. “You took her to hospital,” he remarked idly. “When the baby was due.”
Coventry nodded, and then he leaned forward and made the piano-playing mime on the desk again.
“With Mr. Charlie Smith?” the inspector asked carefully.
Coventry nodded.
“Just the two of you?”
Coventry nodded.
“Not the older Mrs. Winters?”
Coventry shook his head.
“And not Mr. Stephen Winters?”
Coventry’s mute face closed up at that question.
“Mrs. Lily Winters must be very fond of Mr. Smith?” the inspector suggested.
Coventry looked cautious. He nodded shortly and folded his arms as if to hug secrets to himself.
“She’s lucky to have such a faithful friend,” the inspector volunteered.
Coventry nodded.
There was a short silence.
“Are they on good terms? Mr. and Mrs. Winters?” the inspector asked bluntly.
Coventry’s face was as blank as if he were deaf as well as mute. He looked as if he could not hear the question, nor comprehend it. He shrugged as if to imply that the relationship was a mystery to him.