The doorbell rang, and they fell silent, waiting for Browning to answer it. She put her head around the drawing room door and spoke to Muriel. “It’s that police inspector again,” she said. “Am I to show him into the study?”
“Yes please, Browning,” Muriel said. “Mr. Winters will come to him at once.”
Stephen got wearily to his feet. “Just a minute, old man,” Dr. Mobey said gently. “Permit the family doctor and an old friend to delay you a moment?”
Stephen smiled patiently. “Yes, Dr. Mobey?”
“Take a cup of your mother’s excellent coffee, and a drop of brandy in it, and a couple of these biscuits. The body is an engine, remember. It needs stoking if you’re going to make it overwork.”
Stephen smiled. “A superannuated boiler this morning,” he said. He rang the bell for the brandy decanter and took a generous measure in his coffee cup. He paused to eat the biscuits and then he went from the room.
At the study door he hesitated. The inspector was not alone. He could hear Lily’s high strained voice through the wood of the door. She must have seen the police car draw up and pattered downstairs and slipped into the study before Browning had even opened the front door.
“I’ve been thinking and thinking,” he heard her say. “I can’t get it straight in my head. Will you tell me again, how it happened?”
Stephen opened the door a crack, the well-oiled hinges making no sound.
“I think it was someone who knew the baby was put out at nine every day, someone like Mr. Charles Smith,” the inspector said slowly and patiently. “I think someone else, an accomplice, was waiting and watching the garden. When they saw you go in for the telephone call—or when they knew the telephone call would come—they slipped in the garden gate, they wheeled the pram out of the garden, and then they walked quickly north up the road, away from the sea. By the time you were back out in the garden, they were several roads away. By the time you had called the police and we had started searching they were in hiding.”
“I heard a car,” Lily said suddenly.
The inspector said nothing.
“I heard a car,” Lily said again.
“When was this?” His voice was suddenly sharp and interested.
“When I was in the hall. Mrs. Winters had asked me to take her into Southsea. I heard a car drawing away. The noise that a car makes in first gear. It went”—Lily gestured southwards, to the sea, with her hand—“that way.”
“Perhaps a delivery van, a baker’s van, calling at the kitchen.”
“No.” Her voice was suddenly sure. “It was a car, a car like ours. It made the same sort of noise as our Argyll. It was a limousine engine. I heard the car door slam and it drove away, it paused at the junction and drove off.”
Stephen went swiftly into the room. “Good morning again, Inspector,” he said pleasantly.
Lily turned a white face towards him. Her hair was unkempt and ragged, her eyes were rubbed and red. The navy blue cardigan was half-off one shoulder. She looked distraught, like a drunk or a madwoman.
“I heard a car,” she said.
“Just now?” Stephen asked kindly. “Yes. That was the inspector coming to see me. You heard his car and you came downstairs, didn’t you? You were quite right. That was his car.”
Lily frowned. “Not then,” she said. “When Christopher was taken. I heard a car.”
Stephen hid a little sigh and kept his face gentle. “Well, tell the inspector anything you want to, darling,” he said. “And then you’d better go back to your room. Browning was going to bring you some cinnamon milk.”
“I don’t want to sleep,” Lily said warningly. “I won’t be given anything to make me sleep.”
Stephen shook his head reassuringly. “You shall have nothing that you don’t want,” he said kindly. “Do you want to go up now? While I see what the inspector has to say?”
Lily turned again to Inspector Walker. “I did hear a car,” she said. “They took him in a car.”
The inspector nodded. “I’ll check on that, Mrs. Winters,” he promised. The sergeant made a note in his little book. “I’ll check on it without fail. No-one saw the pram and that may be why. It could have been loaded into a car. I’ll check on it, don’t worry.”
“You don’t know where he is?” Lily asked. Her eyes, fixed on the inspector, were huge and black in her pale face. “You still don’t know?”
“We still don’t know,” he said. “But I promise you we are looking all the time for him.”
Lily nodded and went from the room. Stephen watched her go up the stairs to her bedroom and then went back to the inspector and closed the door.
“I’m afraid she’s taking this very badly,” he said. Unconsciously he touched the scratch on the side of his face. “Our family doctor thinks that she should go to a convalescent home for nervous women until this is all over. He thinks we cannot care for her properly here.”
“Did you have a quarrel?” the inspector asked, thinking of Charlie Smith’s allegations that Stephen was violent to his wife.
Stephen shook his head. “Hardly!” he said. “I’m not the man to take out my worries on my wife. She got hysterical and slapped my face because I was trying to stop her telephoning every one of her friends, and every one of my mother’s friends, to interrogate them. She seems to think that we are all in a conspiracy to kidnap Christopher. She cannot accept that Charlie is responsible. My mother has told me that Lily was encouraging him. I’m afraid they were having an affair and it’s got out of hand. I think Lily cannot bear her guilt.”
“No car then?” the inspector queried.
Stephen raised his shoulders. “How can one tell? Charlie Smith doesn’t have a car, and I don’t believe he has any friends with limousines! If Lily can make herself believe she heard a big car drive off, and if she can persuade us all that the pram was loaded into a car, then she can go on believing in Charlie’s innocence. I can see that she’d rather think it was a strange kidnapper in a big car, than believe it was a friend of Charlie’s hiding and waiting, and Charlie getting her to the telephone on purpose.”
The inspector shook his head sympathetically, one eye on Stephen. “A terrible mess,” he said.
Stephen shrugged, his face bitter. “I’d be more shocked about the affair if it were not for the baby being missing,” he said. “With Christopher gone—” He broke off. “Nothing else matters right now. That’s the most important.” He shrugged. “We’re expecting another doctor to come during the morning to see Lily. An expert on nervous diseases. He won’t disturb you. He just needs to see her.”
The inspector nodded. “Are they going to certify your wife, Mr. Winters?” he asked curiously.
Stephen flushed. “No!” he exclaimed. “Of course not. Nothing like that! It’s just that you need the opinion of two doctors to send her to this rest home.”
“Will Mrs. Winters consent to go—while her baby is still missing?”
“I think she must,” Stephen said frankly. “She flew at me this morning, she insisted on having my mother’s address book. She was sleepwalking last night, and she got hysterical during the day. I think she must get some help. I’ve seen chaps in the trenches crack up, and they were in better shape than she is now. Whether she wants to go or not, I think we have to take the medical advice.”
The inspector nodded. “I am very sorry,” he said. “This must be an unbearable strain for her.”
“Yes. And since she is partly responsible . . .”
The inspector nodded. “Perhaps it would be better if she had some professional care,” he said.
• • •
The inspector had a list of Charlie’s friends and contacts in Portsmouth, and throughout the morning the police constables on the team turned in brief reports on the whereabouts of every single one for the crucial hour around ten o’clock. Inspector Walker and his sergeant sat at Stephen’s desk at number two, The Parade and classified each report into a pile of those with a foolproof al
ibi and those without. Since they were nearly all theatre or club people most of them claimed to be in bed and asleep at that time of the morning. Wearily the inspector detailed his team to go and double-check with landladies and neighbours that Charlie’s friends were indeed late risers. They worked until midday and then he heard the Argyll draw up at the back gate and turn into the garage yard.
There was a noise from upstairs. Lily was running down the stairs calling for him. “Inspector! Inspector Walker!”
He swiftly left the study, nodding to the sergeant. There was a tone of utter panic in Lily’s voice which was oddly infectious. “Get ready!” he said to the sergeant, though he did not know what to fear. He remembered the deep scratches on Stephen’s face and the doctors who thought Lily was going mad. Lily came whirling down the stairs and nearly cannoned into him, standing at the bottom.
“I heard it!” she said. Her face was alight with urgency. “It’s exactly the same. Exactly the same. It’s our car. It’s our car that took Christopher away.”
She was panting with distress. She clutched the sleeve of his jacket and shook him roughly.
“Steady on, Madam,” the sergeant said.
“It’s our car!” Lily said again. “D’you understand what I’m saying, Inspector? I just heard our car drive into the yard and I know it was the same sound. It’s our car that took Christopher away.”
The doorbell behind them pealed suddenly and Lily leaped up three steps with a gasp of fright. Browning came slowly up the back stairs and Muriel appeared wearily from the drawing room.
“That will be the doctor,” she said. “Inspector—could you?”
A discreet gesture of her head indicated that she wanted him and the burly sergeant out of the hallway.
Inspector Walker took hold of Lily, who seemed likely to run upstairs again, and drew her into Stephen’s study. The sergeant followed and stood before the window. Lily hesitated by the door, holding it half-open as if she might run at any moment.
“Sit down, Mrs. Winters,” the inspector said coaxingly. “There’s no need for you to be anxious. I’m very interested in what you have to tell me. But please don’t be overwrought.”
Leaving the door half-open, Lily came forward and sat on the chair before the desk. In the hall they could hear the murmur of voices as Stephen greeted the new doctor. Lily did not turn her head.
“I told you this morning I heard a car when Christopher was taken,” she said, speaking rapidly. “But just now I recognized the noise of the engine. It’s our car. I realize that now.”
“Wait a moment,” the inspector said. “You didn’t even remember the car at all until this morning. What makes you so sure now that it was your car now?”
Lily shook her head and took a handful of fair hair and pulled it hard, as if she would drag her memory out at the roots. The inspector watched her, warily, ready to call for help. He glanced at the sergeant to check that he was ready to catch Lily if she should run for the window and the lethal panes of thick glass.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I was so full of dread when I saw the garden empty it was like a photograph, it burned into my memory. But before the photograph is the noise of a car door slamming, and a car driving off. And just now, when I heard our car, I knew it was the same one. You must believe me, Inspector. It was our car which took Christopher.”
He nodded to placate her. “But who d’you think was driving?”
There was a long silence. It stretched and stretched as if Lily could not bear to face the logical conclusion of what she was saying. Finally she spoke. Now she had both hands gripped in her hair, the skin of her face pulled tight and painful. “It must have been Stephen,” she said in a whisper, as if she were afraid that he might hear. “Stephen or Coventry. Or both of them together.”
“But why would your husband steal his own baby?”
Lily’s eyes were black with the horror of what she was saying. “Because he’s mad,” she said in a whisper. “Because I called the baby Christopher and he hated Christopher’s name. Because I wouldn’t let him have the farm like he wanted. Because I love Christopher so much and he knows I will never love him. Because he hates me, and wants to destroy me. Because something happened in that farmhouse, in the war, that sent him mad.”
The inspector and the sergeant exchanged a brief shocked look. “You must arrest him,” Lily said, suddenly clear. “You must take him and make him tell you where he has hidden my baby. I don’t care what you do to him to make him tell. I must get Christopher back. Neither Stephen nor Coventry can care for him. Neither of them knows how. You must take Stephen to prison now! And you must force him to tell you where Christopher is.”
The door behind Lily slowly opened and a strange woman in a pale grey uniform walked in, followed by Dr. Mobey, and another man. Behind them was Stephen, his face haggard.
Lily whirled around as she saw them enter. “Who are you?”
“I’m Nurse Priors,” the woman said quietly. “I’ve come to take care of you.”
Lily screamed “No!” and went to run towards the inspector, but the woman was too quick for her. She folded her in a hard relentless embrace and nodded at the strange man. “Now! Dr. Ramsden!”
From behind his back the new doctor brought out a hypodermic needle. Lily bucked and heaved but the woman was too strong for her. Dr. Mobey supported the nurse and dragged Lily’s arm away from her body and held it steady, the pale skin of her inner arm exposed, the blue vein vulnerable.
Dr. Ramsden slipped the needle into the vein and squeezed the plunger. Within a moment Lily stopped struggling and her muscles went slack. The nurse dumped her into a chair, straightened her lolling head and took her pulse. They were silent while she counted the heartbeats and then she looked up. “Quite satisfactory,” she said. “Shall I take her to her room?”
“It’s at the top of the house,” Stephen said. “I’ll carry her, my poor darling.”
He picked her up gently. The inspector, watching his face, saw an immense tenderness. Lily’s head lolled like a sleeping child. In her drugged repose he saw the innocent prettiness that had made Stephen love her. Her bony anxious anger had melted away. She was like a sugar doll in her husband’s arms. He carried her from the room.
The three professional men exchanged looks.
“I take it that none of this is any use as evidence,” Inspector Walker said finally.
Dr. Ramsden shook his head. “In my opinion, the young lady is suffering from what we call a paranoid neurosis. She thinks the world is conspiring against her. She is especially suspicious of those who love her best—in this case, her husband. She’s young. Once this dreadful experience is over she should recover.”
Dr. Mobey shook his head. “A dreadful thing to happen,” he said. “I’ve been attending this family for all my professional life. I can hardly believe that this should occur.”
“D’you think she heard a car?” the inspector double-checked.
The two doctors shrugged. “She may have done,” Dr. Ramsden said. “I could not say that she had not. But the identification of the car as her husband’s car is a symptom of her mania. She is accusing him of kidnapping their child. She is unable to distinguish between the truth and her own worst fears.” He nodded. “If her lover has indeed stolen the baby then she has even more reason, in the logic of her madness, to believe her husband is the criminal. She wanted you to arrest him, didn’t she? And force him to confess? These are classic symptoms.”
“I’ll still check on the car,” the inspector said stubbornly.
Dr. Mobey nodded. “Whatever you think best,” he said. “The sooner the child is found the better for all concerned.”
“If it is found,” Inspector Walker said grimly. “I am very concerned for its life.”
42
WHEN LILY AWOKE she did not know at first where she was. It was dark and she was hungry, and trembling in every limb as if she had been sick with a fever. She blinked and saw that above her head was
the familiar ceiling of her bedroom, the pendant light, the bedposts. She swallowed; her throat was tight and dry, her eyes gritty. She rubbed her face and sat up in her bed.
At once she was swamped with despair so great that she nearly cried out. It was like a wave of grief hitting her as she remembered that Christopher was missing, and that no-one would look for him.
She got to her feet and staggered as the floor heaved and pitched beneath her. She leaned on her dressing table and then slumped on the pretty stool and stared at her shadowy reflection in the mirror. Slowly she was beginning to remember what had happened. She could remember going downstairs and telling the inspector that she recognized the engine note of the car. She remembered the woman in grey coming towards her. But then she had a nightmarish recollection of the strange woman throwing her arms around her and holding her, and wild terrifying dreams of hunting for Christopher and being pursued. She had dreamed she was in the trenches, in Stephen’s nightmare landscape, and somewhere, amid all the stiffening bleeding bodies, was Christopher. She could hear him crying but she had no way of knowing how to find him. She turned dying men over, she pushed corpses to one side, and scrambled over injured groaning men, calling “Christopher! Christopher!” searching for him.
She rubbed her face and stared at the mirror. She switched on the little light and saw herself. She was pale and haggard. Her drugged sleep had put lines in her face and dark bruises of shadows under her eyes. Her hair was limp and greasy, her face shiny with sweat and tears. The navy cardigan was crumpled and the skirt was creased. Lily stared at herself with unseeing eyes.
“He’s got him,” she said quietly. “The mad bastard has got him.”
She got up and went to the door, walking slowly as her muscles reluctantly obeyed her. When she turned the handle but could not open the door she thought it was stuck and that she was still too weak. But when she pulled it once, twice, she knew that they had locked her in.