The Sad Variety

by Nicholas Blake

  ‘Petrov will apply pressure. Then we’ll carry out Plan B.’

  ‘Looks like it’ll be a five-year plan at this rate. Haven’t you grasped the simple fact that we’ll soon be snowed up, and so will Wragby? It’ll be a stalemate. Or is the master-mind Petrov going to turn up with a squadron of Soviet snow-ploughs?’

  Annie Stott gave him a contemptuous look, and went out to cook some supper. Paul poured himself a second glass of whisky. He dwelt for a moment on the little girl locked in upstairs, then shook free of such uncomfortable thoughts. The repellent Annie had called him an escapist several times during the last fortnight: well, who wouldn’t try to escape from the nightmare he lived in now.

  After supper they listened to the radio. Presently the regional news came on. Annie’s knitting needles stopped clicking, Paul sat up tensely.

  ‘… Lucy Wragby, the girl of eight who disappeared from the Guest House at Downcombe last night, is still missing. It is now feared that she may have been kidnapped. Police are making inquires throughout the county, and will concentrate particularly on isolated houses within a radius of fifty miles from Downcombe. When last seen, Lucy was wearing a blue anorak and sou’wester, with a green and blue plaid dress underneath it. She has long, dark hair, a thin, pale face, grey eyes, and a surgical scar beneath her left ear. The authorities believe that attempts may have been made to alter her appearance, however. Anyone who has seen a child answering to this description or has knowledge of any new child seen in their neighbourhood whose presence cannot be accounted for, is urgently asked to communicate with the local police or with Police Headquarters at Belcaster: Belcaster 390. I will repeat that …’

  Paul Cunningham stared at Annie, trying to conceal his anxiety behind a light tone. ‘So the bluebottles will soon be buzzing round our ears. Did the infallible Petrov allow for this one?’

  Annie knitted her sallow brow. ‘I don’t quite understand it. He must have failed to convince Wragby that the child was taken to London. Still, there’s no great harm done. The Thwaites can’t possibly find out that we’ve substituted her for Evan, so there’s no child in this cottage unaccounted for.’

  ‘But if a bobby comes to search it——’

  ‘He’ll find a boy ill in bed. A sandy-haired boy who has been here for a fortnight. The Thwaites will bear that out. They have been told that Evan was delicate. Tomorrow I’ll tell them we could not send him to London after all, because he’s been taken ill again. You really mustn’t lose your nerve at this stage.’

  ‘And when the policeman finds a child in bed, with a surgical scar under the left ear, don’t you suppose he’ll be a bit suspicious?’

  ‘He won’t find a scar. The child will be doped, and I shall wrap a bandage round her neck.’

  ‘You think of everything, don’t you?’ said Paul sulkily.

  ‘Somebody has to.’

  ‘Except the child’s feelings. Have you for one moment stopped to think what she’s feeling like? And don’t give me that blah about personal feelings being unimportant compared with great political issues.’

  ‘If you’re so sensitive about it, why don’t you go and comfort the child—read to her or something?’

  ‘You know perfectly well——’

  ‘Because you’re only interested in saving your own skin, that’s why. You daren’t let her see you in case you met again somewhere and she recognised you.’

  The telephone bell shrilled in the next room. Paul started. ‘Who the hell’s ringing at this time of night?’

  When Annie Stott returned, her face was dark and her thin mouth compressed. ‘That was Petrov. He’s furious. Evan never arrived at Waterloo.’

  ‘But he must have.’

  ‘Don’t quibble. Why didn’t you see him on to the station?’

  ‘I’ve told you——’

  ‘You lost your nerve at a bit of snow. My God, what a bloody fool you are! Obviously the boy missed the train and found refuge in somebody’s house. No doubt he’s been telling them all about you and me and Smugglers’ Cottage. You’ve wrecked everything,’ she went on furiously. ‘I warned Petrov he’d be in for trouble, taking on a lily-livered queer like you.’

  ‘Don’t you dare talk to me like that, you dung-faced bitch!’ Paul’s voice rose to falsetto.

  The woman struck him violently across the cheek. He shook her roughly, then thrust her away and sent her sprawling into the arm-chair, from which she glared up at him.

  ‘I thought the Party didn’t countenance acts of individual violence,’ he said with a sneer.

  The woman stared at him, panting a little.

  ‘Never been handled by a man before, I suppose? Makes you feel quite sexy, does it?’

  ‘By a what?’

  Without another word, Annie stumped out and went up to bed.

  Next morning, Lucy was awoken at eight o’clock by the madwoman.

  ‘Put on your dressing gown and come with me.’

  Annie led her to a bedroom at the far end of the passage on the other side of the house. It was the room Evan had occupied. She pointed to a bed drawn up close to the window, whose curtains were closed. ‘Get in.’

  Lucy got in, trembling a little. She could not forget what had happened the previous morning.

  ‘The man is just coming up with the milk. When I tell you, I want you to open the curtain, put your face close to the window-pane, and call down to him. Wave to him, and say, “Hallo, Jim”. Remember, your name is—what’s your name?’

  ‘Lucy Wragby.’

  ‘Oh no. Try again.’

  ‘Sorry. Evan.’

  ‘That’s better. Jim’ll probably shout up at you “Hallo, Evan, how are you?” Something like that.’

  ‘What do I say then?’

  ‘Just smile at him and wave again. Then I’ll close the curtain. Quite an easy game, isn’t it?’

  Annie wrapped a bandage round Lucy’s throat. ‘You mustn’t say anything else. And of course no nonsense like calling for help.’

  ‘I see,’ said Lucy in a small voice.

  ‘Otherwise I should have to use this again.’ The woman took from her bag the hypodermic syringe. ‘You know that I always mean what I say?’

  ‘Yes.’ The child cowered away from her. She was frightened, but it did not stop her from thinking fast. She must try to memorise what she could see from the window when the curtain was drawn, then bring it into the story she was writing about a kidnapped child: at the back of Lucy’s mind there was a vague hope that somehow she might have this story conveyed to her father, and it would give him a clue as to where she was, and he would come to rescue her.

  In a couple of minutes she heard voices outside. ‘Aunt Annie’ drew the curtain. A man with a milk pail—that must be Jim; and another man, of whom she could only see the top of his head: he must be the one she’d heard quarrelling with Aunt Annie last night—the first time she’d realised there was more than one person in the house. There was an enormous great view from the window: snow-covered hills, one of which stood out because it had a clump of trees on top; and away to the right, a farmyard. She could not take in any more, for the woman beside her said, ‘Get on with it.’

  Lucy tapped at the window. The man Jim looked up, grinned at her, called, ‘Hallo, Evan! Sorry to hear you’re poorly again.’ Lucy smiled back and waved to him. Aunt Annie closed the curtain.

  ‘You can go back to your own room now. I’ll bring your breakfast soon.’

  ‘Did I do all right?’ Lucy had already decided that, since this potty female treated her as if she were six, she’d play up to it.

  ‘Yes, Evan. I’m glad you’re being sensible.’

  While she ate her eggs and toast in bed, Lucy jotted down on a piece of paper everything she could remember seeing in the fifteen seconds or so while the curtain was open. It was like that game of objects on a tray: at first she could recollect little, but presently even things she didn’t remember noticing at the time came into her head.

  She dressed and
got out the sheaf of foolscap paper. In Chapter I the heroine, Cinders (a nickname her father sometimes used) had been kidnapped and taken to a lonely house, inhabited exclusively by a mad woman with a mustard-coloured face. Lucy read through this opening chapter with nods of approval: it was super stuff. She took up the pencil.

  CHAPTER II. WHERE AM I?

  Next morning the madwoman, who Cinders had to call Aunt Annie, took her into a room at the front of the house. She let Cinders, who she called Evan for some loopy reason, look out of the window. Down below was a man called Jim. He had brought some milk. There was another man, but Cinders could only see the top of his head standing in the doorway. ‘I expect he lives in the house and is Annie’s keeper,’ thought Cinders. Jim waved to her, and she waved back. He had on Wellingtons, and old Army great-coat, and a red woolly hat with a bobbel on top. ‘Don’t you dare call for help,’ hissed the madwoman, ‘or I’ll stick this hipodurmic sirynge into you.’ So Cinders didn’t. She hates pricks, ever since she was so ill when she was a kid.

  The pannerama from the window was truly spectaculer. Snow-covered hills lay like frozen waves of a bumpy sea. One hill, to the left of the picture, attracted her attention: it was connical, with a clump of trees four or five of them on its top. The cottage stood on the side of a hill, at least the ground went down into a valley beneath it. Cinders’s observant eye noticed some farm buildings quite near on the right, I expect it was where the milk came from. It was the only house in sight. The window she looked out of had a sort of arched top and white wooden bars on it, which cut up the view. Cinders could see no more now, because the mainiak closed the curtain and with a fowl othe bade her begone to her own appartment. Cinders bewent, but not before she had seen a photograph of a bearded man in a cap and gown like her father wears hanging on the wall.

  Lucy started chewing her pencil. The door opened. The ‘maniac’ padded in to fetch her tray. She glanced over Lucy’s shoulder. It was a ghastly moment: Lucy repressed an impulse to cover up the paper—which would have betrayed her. The woman went out again, locking the door. Lucy hid the sheet she’d written on under the lining paper of a drawer. Then she had a better idea. She took it out, made a copy of it on another sheet, and hid this in the drawer. If Aunt Annie found the story and destroyed it, she would never guess that there was a duplicate one.

  But how could she ever send this to her father? And even if she did manage somehow, how would he know where the place was? The woman had told her it was in Buckinghamshire, about thirty miles from London—a conversation faithfully reproduced by Cinders in Chapter I. There must be millions of cone-shaped hills with trees on top all over England. Then a brilliant thought struck her: the postmark on the letter would tell her father roughly where she was. You steaming nit, she at once replied to herself, how can you send a letter? You haven’t an envelope or a stamp; and if you had, they’d never let you post it—why, they won’t even let you out of this room. But they did before breakfast. And you saw Jim. He brings the milk. If you were alone in that room when he calls, just for an instant, perhaps you could drop the sheet of paper on his head—make a paper dart of it …

  ‘What beats me is why they should go through all this rigmarole—me having to leave the information in a Post Office. I’d expect them to tell me to put it in an envelope and post it—some accommodation address in London—or just dictate it over the telephone.’

  Professor Wragby’s voice was gritty with sleeplessness. He and his wife were sitting with Nigel in the proprietor’s office after breakfast, waiting for the telephone call which they had been expecting for many hours now.

  ‘What do you think, Mrs Wragby? You know these people better than we do,’ said Nigel.

  She seemed taken aback. ‘These people? But—Oh, you mean the Communists? Of course, they do not trust one another. They can’t afford to. Perhaps that’s it.’ Elena’s thrilling contralto voice made the most banal remark sound dramatic.

  ‘What’s in your mind?’ her husband asked.

  ‘Whoever it was that spoke to you from London yesterday—he would not be the principal. His superiors may suspect him of being a double agent, or an opportunist who would sell the information to the highest bidder.’

  ‘So they couldn’t risk it going straight into his hands?’

  ‘Not so valuable a secret as Alfred’s. They would depute someone absolutely reliable to collect it and pass it on to the principals. They see to it that each agent has the minimum of contacts within the network: it is a most important rule of espionage.’

  Elena took several flowing, actress’s paces across the room, then stood against the door with her palms holding her temples as if her head was bursting.

  ‘Oh, God! I thought I’d be leaving these horrible things behind me when I escaped from my country,’ she exclaimed bitterly.

  ‘Now, love, you must try not to take it so hard. You’re not to blame for what’s happened to Lucy.’

  Elena stared at her husband, as if he was a stranger. ‘What’s the use of telling me that?’ she broke out passionately. ‘We sit about here talking, and little Lucy——’

  ‘Of course there’s another possibility,’ Nigel’s equable voice silenced Elena. ‘They might use Lucy as a bait to catch her father. You’d be even more useful to them than this particular bit of information.’

  ‘Good lord, man, are you suggesting they’d try to capture me and smuggle me out of the country?’

  ‘Induce you to leave it.’

  ‘Alfred would never go over, never betray,’ said Elena.

  ‘I believe that. But we’ve got to be prepared for any new tactic they may try. Suppose they ring you and tell you to go, alone, to a certain place where you’ll find Lucy, what’d you do?’

  ‘Go,’ said Wragby.

  ‘Walk into the trap?’

  ‘If there was the slightest chance of finding Lucy that way, getting her released, yes. I can look after myself,’

  ‘Oh, Alfred, you don’t know these people,’ Elena cried.

  ‘I’m beginning to,’ said the Professor grimly. ‘Don’t forget, I did some roughish work during the war. I still have my cyanide capsule, if the worst came to the worst.’

  The telephone bell rang. Nigel ran out to the instrument in the hall, and listened in.

  ‘I have a call for Professor Wragby from London.’

  ‘Wragby speaking.’

  ‘Go ahead, London. Your call to Downcombe.’

  ‘Is that Lucy’s father?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You failed to do what you were told yesterday. That was foolish of you. Not only did you inform the police, but you tried to double-cross us over the document. It must not happen again,’ said the rumbling voice.

  ‘But it will.’

  ‘Then your daughter is going to suffer for your obstinacy. Suffer very painfully indeed.’

  ‘I don’t believe you. I’m quite certain that Lucy is already dead, you see.’

  Nigel opened his eyes wide at this departure from the script. There was a brief silence. Then the voice said:

  ‘You are wrong there, Professor. She is in the room with me now. Lucy, come and speak to your father.’

  Another silence. Then a child’s voice came over the wire.

  ‘Hallo, Papa. It’s me, Lucy.’

  ‘God! Lucy, darling. Are you all right?’

  ‘Yes, I’m very well, and the people are being very kind to me. I have plenty to eat and a nice room with lots of books and toys.’

  ‘But where are you, love?’

  ‘No, I’m not allowed to say where I am. It’s somewhere in London. Is Elena well?’

  Before Wragby could answer, the child’s voice changed. She began to whimper. ‘No, don’t do it again! Please don’t! Not that thing! Take it away! Oh!’ She was screaming.

  Lucy’s voice died away into background whimpers. The man’s voice returned.

  ‘You see, Professor? Lucy is alive. But life can be very painful for her, and it will get wor
se the longer you remain stubborn. You will hold yourself in readiness for further instructions. Good-bye.’

  The receiver clattered from Wragby’s hand on to the table. Elena, who had been sitting by him with her ears close to it, was biting her knuckles when Nigel returned to the room.

  ‘This is a bit more than I can take,’ said the Professor at last, his face ashen. Elena stumbled out, weeping.

  ‘It was Lucy?’

  ‘Yes. Poor little pet. So she is in London after all,’ said Wragby dully.

  ‘I doubt it.’

  ‘What d’you mean? The call came from London.’

  ‘She wasn’t talking naturally.’

  ‘Who the hell would, under the circumstances?’

  ‘She doesn’t talk in that stilted way. It was more like repeating a lesson, or reading something aloud.’

  ‘For God’s sake, man, you’re not telling me that bit at the end wasn’t natural?’

  ‘No, I’m afraid that was the real thing. But didn’t you hear a faint whirring just before she started?’

  ‘I wasn’t in a state to——’

  ‘Tape-recorder. The thing was faked. Quite clearly.’

  ‘Anyway, she must be alive.’

  When they forced her to make the recording, thought Nigel: that’s all we know. He said, ‘Yes. She’s alive. Whoever’s got her would have posted the tape to London. They’re trying to break your nerve and fix in our minds that London’s the place.’

  The Professor’s brain was beginning to work again. ‘Are all the inward calls here monitored?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You know, Strangeways, I can’t imagine a man taking a tape-recorder machine into a public call-box. He’d have to hold it up to the mouthpiece and get it going. Damned awkward to manage; and he’d be calling a lot of attention to himself.’

  Nigel rang the Superintendent at Belcaster, and asked him to find out where the call had come from. In a few minutes, the Superintendent rang back. It was a number on the Acorn exchange, and not a public box.

  ‘That’s Acton way,’ said Nigel. ‘Maybe we’ve got something at last. Will you get on to that division and ask their D.D.I, to find out the address of the subscriber and investigate the place. Pronto. We’ve just been rung from there. More threats.’