The Vanished Child

by Sarah Smith

  “Oh, Mr. Daugherty, you should be very careful of using a telephone in a thunderstorm. Quite often the lightning comes right down the wires and directly into your brain.”

  “I got rubber-soled shoes,” Daugherty muttered. “Operator? Could you put me on with Anna Fen’s house…” Reisden waited for what he would say, but the conversation was only “Uh huh” and “Yup.” The phone clicked off and Daugherty came out from under the stairway.

  “She’s gone.”

  “Gone where?”

  “Gone for a visit, her maid says. Don’t know when she’ll be back.”

  Long enough to let the letter do its work. “I rather imagine she’s traceable, Daugherty.”

  Daugherty took a long look at the letter and abruptly crushed it. “It ain’t so, Reisden. You can see why it ain’t so.” Daugherty stuffed the crushed ball in his pocket.

  “That doesn’t make it go away,” Reisden said quietly.

  “She didn’t have it witnessed. I don’t want to see nothing.”

  “Richard is putting on a play for us,” Gilbert’s voice floated down from upstairs; “Mr. Daugherty, I hope you will help.”

  “Don’t,” Reisden said quietly.

  “What kind of play?” Looking around the hall, Daugherty sucked in his breath as he answered his own question.

  “I don’t know what I'm going to find.”

  Daugherty looked balefully up at Gilbert. “I’ll watch,” he muttered.

  Acting murder

  “Perdita is Richard.” Reisden assigned Perdita to her role first, because protecting her was important for Gilbert and Charlie. “Gilbert, I’m going to cast you against type; you will be your father. Charlie, you’re yourself. We need a Jay. Daugherty, can you take him?”

  Daugherty shook his head. “I’m going to watch. You?”

  “No, I’m going to direct traffic. Gilbert, you’ll still be William. Charlie, your role is over early; are you well enough to take Jay?”

  Charlie Adair looked grim, devastated, shrunken. He just nodded.

  “If you’re not, say so; we’ll stop.”

  He pitched his voice to carry. “This is a walkthrough. No one knows exactly what happened here to the Knights and to Jay French. I will walk us through what we think they did. Any of you can stop at any time, ask questions at any time.

  “We have several constraints. First, there was furniture here. It is represented by black squares. As you move around, you can’t walk through the furniture.

  “The second constraint is time. Charlie Adair was at Anna Fen’s point of land when he heard the first shot. Gilbert and Perdita did that walk again just before the rain started. It took them seven minutes, and whatever happens here can take no more.

  “The third constraint is that we know where the shots landed and that the last one came in from outside. It broke this window—” Reisden tapped the middle of the three long windows in the parlor.

  “I have some photographs of how this room looked afterward, which I won’t show around, but will use for checking what we get. Daugherty, you haven’t seen these. Would you like to do the checking?”

  Victor’s police photographs were on the hall table in a manila envelope. Daugherty took them under the gaslight to examine them. “Whew. Reisden, where’d you get these?”

  “A friend.”

  “You got strange friends.” Daugherty slid the photographs back into their envelope and mashed down the little metal tab with his thumb, holding the envelope close to his side. He sat down on the stairs in the hall and rubbed his free hand over his skull, looking from one to the other of them.

  “Right, let’s start,” said Reisden.

  He brought two chairs from the dining room to William Knight’s front room. “We are in the front parlor. William Knight is sitting in a leather-upholstered rocking chair. There’s a small tambour table next to him, and on it is a board about eighteen inches long, on which are mounted four guns. He is cleaning the guns and talking to Charlie Adair. Charlie, were you standing or sitting when you talked with him?”

  “Standing.”

  “Good. Where? Close to that chair? Good. Stand there.” Reisden placed one of the dining-room chairs there, the other where William’s rocker had been. “William, sit down.”

  Gilbert sat down in the other chair.

  “How does William look, Charlie? Is he smiling?”

  “No.”

  “Not smiling. Is he indifferent, sad, stem, or angry?”

  “Angry.” The doctor cleared his throat. “Very angry.”

  “At you? Why is he angry? What is he saying to you?”

  Charlie cleared his throat.

  “He was angry about a dog. Richard had got a puppy—”

  “Oh, surely not, ” Gilbert interrupted in a low voice. “Father didn’t believe in pets.”

  “He’d been away, Bert, and Richard found a puppy in the woods. That black-and-white dog, the one I took photographs of. The one in the painting. I knew Richard would have to give it up, but William came back unexpectedly and he was very angry.”

  “Oh.” From his tone, Gilbert knew what Father would have done when he was angry at an animal. “And he was angry at you, too, Charlie, because you had let Richard have the dog.”

  “Was that the only reason?” Reisden asked. “Is that why he’s angry at you?”

  Charlie Adair looked down at the floor. “Yes.”

  “And any other reason?” Reisden asked.

  “No,” said Adair.

  “And the dog. Is it out in the barn? Is it down in the cellar, howling?”

  Out of the comer of his eye Reisden saw Gilbert shake his head, no. Reisden held up his hand to stop Gilbert. Charlie looked from side to side and then back to Reisden.

  “The dog is dead. I buried the dog.”

  “Oh,” Perdita said in a low voice from upstairs.

  Reisden saw for a moment the picture of Richard Knight he had first seen in Gilbert’s library. Little boy in a rose garden, petting a black-and-white puppy, smiling.

  “If I had known, I wouldn’t have had that dog put in the picture,” Gilbert said, distressed. “Richard didn’t know that his dog was dead, did he, Charlie?”

  “No, of course he didn’t know. Richard was very happy that afternoon, Bert.” Reisden had moved between the two of them, so Gilbert didn’t see Charlie’s white and miserable face. Reisden did. “Richard loved his dog, though he didn’t have it long. He would have liked to be painted with it. ”

  “Who killed the dog?”

  “It had just died,” Charlie said.

  There was a little silence.

  “Did Father kill the dog, Charlie?” Gilbert asked.

  Charlie nodded.

  “Oh, dear.” Gilbert raised his hand to his mouth. “Oh, dear.”

  Reisden continued. “So the dog is dead and Richard doesn’t know. William is angry with you. Where is Jay and where is Richard?”

  “Richard is upstairs in his room.” Upstairs, Perdita felt her way silently along the wall to stand at the door of Richard’s old room. “Jay is in the upstairs office.”

  Gilbert asked a question. “Was Richard—was he well, Charlie?”

  “William hadn’t touched him,” Charlie said.

  Gilbert looked desolately surprised. “Was that unusual?” Reisden asked.

  After a long time Charlie said, “Yes.”