The Witch's Daughter

by Nina Bawden

  ‘Sit on the loot,’ Tim said. ‘Don’t spend it. Or only carefully, bit by bit. That’s what he said.’

  The policeman nodded. ‘That’s what it looked like. That’s what our people in London thought, anyway.’

  ‘Did you have a description of the stranger?’ Tim asked eagerly.

  This was, he thought, the most exciting night of his life. For a while after they got back, Janey had been the centre of attention as she deserved to be. Now, hugged and kissed and sated with admiration, she had been put to bed with a sedative, and it was Tim’s turn. Here he was, at nearly eleven o’clock, sitting with a real live plain clothes policeman who had listened gravely and courteously to all he had to say and was now telling him a marvellous story that might have come out of a newspaper or a book.

  ‘Description?’ the policeman said. ‘Not one that helps much. Medium height, medium weight, medium colouring …’

  ‘It could be Mr Smith, though?’

  ‘Or a great many other people.’ The policeman smiled at Tim. ‘Listen, young man. I’ve been very interested in what you’ve told me, don’t think I haven’t, but I’m afraid I’ll have to warn you, too. Don’t go spreading stories about Mr Smith. There’s such a thing as slander. Nor about Mr Jones, either. We’re interested to know what he’s been up to, on Skua, and it seems from what you’ve told me that he has been up to something. But only seems, mind you. We’ve no real proof he was up to anything at all …’

  ‘He came to collect his share of the loot,’ Tim said positively. ‘And he was going to fly off with it to South America.’

  ‘It’s possible. But we’ve no proof of it. On the face of it, he and Mr Campbell were on an innocent fishing trip when they got into difficulties. And when we picked him up, he’d got nothing on him.’ He grinned suddenly. ‘Just a bag of toffees! ‘We’re holding him, of course, but we can’t do that for long.’

  ‘What d’you mean?’ Mrs Hoggart’s voice was indignant. ‘He assaulted my husband.’

  ‘He admits he pushed him,’ the policeman said slowly. ‘He says he went into the wrong room by mistake and when your husband came in he was startled. He pushed past Mr Hoggart to get out of the room and then, when the accident happened, he simply lost his nerve and kept quiet about it.’ The policeman paused. ‘The way he tells it, it sounds like a—well, a regrettable accident.’

  ‘But the children!’ Mrs Hoggart cried. ‘He took those poor children into the cave and left them there. That was a terrible thing, a wicked thing …’

  The policeman sighed. ‘Well—I got on the phone to Oban while you were putting the little lass to bed. They had a word with him and rang me back. He says he met the children on the beach and played with them a bit. They did go into the cave, he says, and he was a bit worried about leaving them there, but he and Campbell were going fishing and he supposed they’d be safe enough. He assumed they had torches, he said, and though he wouldn’t have let his children wander about alone, if their parents weren’t worried, it wasn’t his business. Thoughtless, a bit casual, but not criminal, you see …’

  Tim could hardly believe his ears. He said shrilly, ‘But you don’t believe him, do you?’

  The policeman looked at him thoughtfully. ‘What I believe isn’t evidence, you know. And I’m afraid that when we find Campbell—he just walked off the ferry, we’d no reason for holding him since we’d not heard this story then—he’ll back up Mr Jones’s story. Jones seemed confident he would.’

  ‘Mr Campbell didn’t want to leave us in the cave,’ Tim said. He felt depressed and helpless. He knew what he had said was true, he had heard Toffee Papers talking in the cave, but apparently no one would believe him. It wasn’t fair, he thought childishly. Feeling miserable and sullen, he slouched back in his chair, scowling, and then became aware that the policeman was looking at him in an interested way.

  ‘Didn’t he?’ the policeman said. ‘That’s a useful thing to know …’ He looked straight in front of him and appeared to address the air. ‘If we get hold of him before he hears the children are safe, if we tell him they’re still missing … there’s just a chance we may get at the truth …’

  Tim gasped and sat bolt upright. ‘You do believe me then?’ he said. Excitement buzzed in his head.

  The policeman half-smiled.

  ‘Of course he does, Tim,’ Mrs Hoggart said, smiling too. ‘Do you think he’s been wasting his time, talking to you?’

  ‘It wouldn’t hold up in court, though,’ the policeman said regretfully. He looked at Mrs Hoggart. ‘Your son is an imaginative boy, isn’t he? I happen to believe he is also a truthful one, but it is a very highly coloured story—just the sort of story an imaginative boy might dream up. Thieves, diamonds, being abandoned in caves, stolen rubies …’

  ‘Janey knows the ruby was stolen,’ Tim said. ‘She’s certain—it was she told me.’

  The policeman was silent. It was Mrs Hoggart who said, very gently, ‘Tim darling, you and I know Janey. But no one else will believe that.’

  ‘Perdita, then,’ Tim burst out. ‘She knows, too. Not about my ruby, I mean, and she didn’t know what Mr Jones said in the cave, only what I told her, but she knows he’s a friend of Mr Smith’s. She saw him there one night and he had a box of jewels and he gave her one …’

  ‘So you said. But this girl …’ The policeman hesitated. ‘From what I hear she would not exactly be a reliable witness. Can’t read, can’t write, Mr Tarbutt says, a little wild thing, half-crazed …’

  ‘She’s not,’ Tim said stubbornly. ‘I mean, she doesn’t know where Africa is, and she didn’t know what a diamond was, and she says her mother was a witch. But she’s quite …’

  ‘Sensible,’ was what he had been going to say, but he saw the broad, involuntary grin on the policeman’s face and stopped.

  ‘I wouldn’t care to put her in the witness box,’ the policeman said. ‘But I’ll certainly have a word with her. With Mr Smith too, and maybe …’

  He stopped mid-sentence and was out of his chair and at the french windows that led into the sun parlour almost before Tim and his mother had taken in what had alerted him: a splintering crash outside the dark windows of the lounge and a sudden, frightened cry …

  The policeman moved with surprising speed for such a bulky man. By the time Tim and his mother had reached the sun parlour, he had scooped Perdita up out of the tumbled wreckage of beer crates and deck chairs, and was holding her by the arm. ‘Perdita,’ Tim cried, but her eyes were terrified, unrecognising. She twisted away from the policeman and ran for the door into the street. He caught her easily, pinioned her flailing arms to her sides and half carried her into the lounge. ‘This the little lass you were talking about?’ he asked Tim, breathlessly.

  Tim nodded silently. She looked so little, so wretchedly afraid …

  ‘What were you doing?’ the policeman asked her. She said nothing. He let her go, but moved between her and the door. She stood, trembling and hanging her head.

  Mrs Hoggart said pityingly, ‘No one’s going to hurt you, dear. Were you looking for Tim?’

  No answer.

  ‘She doesn’t like being asked questions,’ Tim said.

  Mrs Hoggart looked at the policeman who shrugged his shoulders in a helpless way. ‘You speak to her, Tim,’ she said. ‘Tell her not to be frightened.’

  He looked at her. ‘Perdita … it’s all right … don’t be scared.’

  She gave no sign of having heard him. Except for the fluttery rise and fall of her chest, she was motionless as a statue.

  Tim said, ‘They’ve caught Mr Jones. They know he’s a bad man. You know he is, too, because he left us in the cave and he stole all those jewels. He gave you one, didn’t he?’

  She remained silent and still.

  Tim drew a deep breath and glanced at the policeman. Go on, you’re doing fine, his expression said. Tim felt suddenly ashamed he wasn’t sure why. After all, it was right to help the police wasn’t it? He was sure of this, quite sure of
it, all the same, his voice was slow and reluctant. ‘He gave you that diamond, one of those he had in the box, do you remember? The night he came up to see Mr Smith …’

  She lifted her head now and looked at him with a strange, blank stare as if he were speaking in a language she didn’t understand. A little wild thing, half-crazed … Remembering what Mr Tarbutt had told the policeman, Tim thought that, at this moment, it looked pretty true. He felt, all at once, impatient with her. Why—she looked plumb daft—loony. And, in a way, that reflected on him, didn’t it? He had repeated what she had told him hadn’t he? As gospel truth. So now it looked—well, it just looked as if he was the sort of boy who would listen to any wild sort of tale from a girl who wasn’t quite right in the head. As if he was a fool, easily taken in …

  He said, ‘You did tell me all those things. Didn’t you?’ She flinched back as he advanced on her and he controlled himself. He went on, more gently, ‘It’s all right, you can tell now. There’s only my Mum here, and she’s O.K. and this man who’s a policeman so it’s all right to tell him. People ought to tell things, it’s a person’s duty.’ He hesitated and then thought of a better way to persuade her—one that would almost certainly work with Janey, and all girls were the same. Contrary. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Don’t, then. If you really don’t want to tell him, I don’t suppose it matters much. I don’t even know he’d be interested! He knows all about it, anyway. About Mr Jones being a jewel robber and … and …’ Suddenly remembering what the policeman had said earlier, he glanced at him nervously, but he responded with an almost imperceptible nod. ‘… and about Mr Smith being one, too,’ Tim finished triumphantly. ‘So you see, you needn’t bother to …’

  She gave a little, gasping cry, and ran.

  The policeman could have stopped her quite easily. Instead, he moved aside and stood with his arms folded. She went into the sun parlour and they heard the sudden howl of wind as she pulled open the door onto the street. Tim would have run after her, but the policeman said, in a voice that commanded obedience, ‘No, Tim. Let her go.’

  ‘It’s dark,’ Mrs Hoggart said, looking worried. ‘We ought to go after her. A child like that, alone …’

  ‘I wonder if she is,’ the policeman said.

  Tim turned on his mother. ‘Oh, don’t fuss. She’s all right—Skua’s not like London.’

  He made this protest automatically: his mind was occupied with something else. He looked at the policeman and said, in a voice that had suddenly gone quiet, ‘What I said—that was slander. Since you said there’s no proof he’s done anything …’

  The policeman looked at him thoughtfully, fingering the mole on his cheek.

  Tim went on, ‘If she tells Mr Smith …’ He caught his breath. ‘Can you be sent to prison for slander?’

  The policeman laughed. ‘I shouldn’t worry, Tim. An innocent man will hardly worry himself over what one child says to another. Look a fine fool if he did, wouldn’t he?’

  ‘But suppose he isn’t innocent,’ Tim said slowly.

  ‘Maybe this is one way of finding out,’ the policeman said.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  GOLF CLUBS AND LOBSTERS

  ‘I DIDN’T MEAN TO carry tales,’ Perdita said. ‘It was just that Janey didn’t run away from me, the way the others always do.’

  ‘Poor little witch,’ Mr Smith said.

  His tone was unexpectedly gentle. It was the first time he had spoken since she had stumbled back into the car to tell him what she knew—or, rather, to repeat parrot-fashion what Tim had said. In spite of Tim’s explanation in the cave, she did not really understand what Mr Smith was supposed to have done wrong. How could she? She had lived all her life on this lonely island, with only Annie MacLaren for company. She knew where the buzzards nested and how to get close to the red deer without frightening them, but she knew nothing about thieves and jewellers’ shops.

  After she had finished, Mr Smith had sat still a minute, staring straight in front of him. Then he had turned the car and driven back to Luinpool in a silence so absolute that Perdita thought he must have forgotten her. But when they reached the house, and she had opened and closed the yard gate, he had waited for her by the back door, picked her up in his arms as she stumbled with tiredness, and carried her into the kitchen. He had sent Annie to bed before he drove down to Skuaphort, telling her not to worry, he would look after the child, and the warm kitchen was dark except for one oil lamp, turned low, and the yellow light from the fire. He sat Perdita on the settle and knelt in front of her to take off her boots. She looked down at his bent head, thinking confusedly about all that had happened, and about her own part in it, and tried to say she was sorry, in the only way she knew.

  When she had spoken, he sat back on his heels. ‘Poor little witch.’ he repeated, and sighed. ‘Still, what’s done is done, there’s no mending it.’

  He spoke so drearily that although he didn’t seem angry with her, as she had been afraid he would be, a tear rolled down Perdita’s cheek.

  ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake don’t start blubbing,’ he said, on the edge of anger, and then, controlling himself, ‘Witch’s don’t cry, you know I’ve told you that before.’

  ‘I’m not a witch,’ Perdita sobbed. ‘Not anymore. I lost my Powers like you said I would.’

  ‘Pity!’ Mr Smith gave a short, unamused laugh. ‘A spot of second sight would come in useful just now.’

  He got to his feet and stood, staring into the fire, forgetting the child for the moment in thoughts of his own perilous situation. How much did the police really know? How much was bluff—or guesswork? Mr Smith was not a stupid man, and it crossed his mind as he stood there, musing, that it was possible that this was a trap—that the police knew nothing, had no real evidence against him and were hoping that he would lose his head and do something to give himself away. He frowned into the fire. It was possible, but he could not rely upon it. If Mr Jones had really been caught, red-handed with the jewels, he would certainly tell the police all he knew—turn Queen’s Evidence, perhaps, in the hope that he would get a lighter sentence. There was no honour among thieves. He would say he had not wanted to take part in the robbery, that he had been talked into it. He would say he was a weak man. Well, that was true enough, Mr Smith thought, suddenly smiling. He had watched Mr Jones for several weeks before approaching him with his proposition; watched him lunching with his cronies, shopping with his children at weekends. He was the sort of man who always stays after he has said he must go, who protests but still has a second cup of coffee or another beer, who always gives into his children when they pester him for ice-cream in the street …

  Mr Smith stopped smiling. In the circumstances, Mr Jones’s weakness of character was not really amusing.

  He looked at Perdita. She was sitting on the settle, tears running silently down her face.

  ‘Still crying?’ he said impatiently. ‘Whatever for?’

  ‘Because Annie says you’re going away.’

  His irritation left him. He had led a lonely, roaming existence all his life and no one had been sorry when he had left a place before. This thought gave him a strange feeling—strange, but not disagreeable.

  ‘Will you miss me?’ he asked.

  She looked at him with swollen eyes. ‘Are you going?’

  ‘I think a sea voyage might be good for my health at the moment.’ He watched her thoughtfully. If they had used her to trap him, he could use her too, to throw them off the scent a little. ‘Just round the islands,’ he said. ‘Maybe a little trip to Trull …’

  ‘Are you going to South America, like Mr Jones?’

  ‘Why should you think that?’ He smiled at her. ‘No, just round the islands. A bit of fishing, maybe …’

  She said, ‘Can I come too? You said I could, once.’

  He said nothing for a minute and then his face softened. He said, ‘Maybe …’ He hesitated. ‘Shut your eyes and lie down on the settle.’

  ‘Will you tell me about it? Like yo
u did before?’

  He nodded and she stretched out obediently on the cushions, half closing her eyes.

  Mr Smith said in a low, soothing voice, ‘Perhaps we’ll go further than the islands. We’ll leave on the morning tide and sail south, perhaps, on and on till we get to …’

  ‘Africa,’ she said. ‘Africa. That’s where I’d like to go.’

  ‘Africa, then. We’ll sail down the coast of Africa and sometimes we’ll stop and go ashore and buy pineapples and papayas and …’

  ‘And a parrot,’ she said with a little yawn. ‘Don’t forget the parrot …’

  ‘A green one,’ he said, ‘with purple tail feathers and a yellow patch on his head and bits of red here and there and a beak like a bill-hook. We’ll teach him to talk and he’ll live with us on the boat and we’ll teach him to tell the time so we don’t have to look at our watches when we want to know, just ask him and he’ll tell us. I never heard of a parrot could tell the time before, but I daresay we’ll be lucky and find an exceptional one. We might even train him to catch fish for us, like a heron. They do that in some parts of the world, and I don’t see why a properly brought up parrot should be less smart than an old heron. Our parrot will be a very special parrot altogether. People will send from all over the world and ask to buy him, but of course we’ll always say no. Of course, we’ll have to think of a name for him, won’t we?’ He paused. ‘Can you think of a name?’

  There was no answer. She had fallen asleep, smiling.

  He took the oil lamp and went quietly out of the room and up the stairs. When he returned a few minutes later, he was wearing an oilskin and sea boots and carrying the canvas grip he had kept packed for just this sort of emergency, as he had kept his boat ready, supplied with fuel and tinned food. He crossed the settle and stood beside the sleeping child. One hand supported her flushed cheek, the other was holding something through her dress. Mr Smith bent over her and pulled gently at the string round her neck until the diamond came into view. He held his breath while she flung her arm wide, muttering, but then she relaxed again, her fingers loosely curled over the place on her flat little chest where the stone had been hidden. He took a knife from his pocket and stayed still a minute, watching her face, before he cut the string in two places and slipped the stone in his pocket.