The Winds of Change

by Martha Grimes

  The girl said, ‘Yes, Mrs. Murchison,’ in a dead tone. She might have been sleepwalking.

  Again, Irene Murchison leaned toward him with that glittering look. ‘Rosie just came to us. She’s our little one; she’s new. You know what I mean?’

  The tall girl was back, one child on each side. The little one, who was probably five, perhaps six, looked at him curiously and stuck her thumb in her mouth. It was as if she had no inkling that the look of this man could snag her and cut her to pieces. Her look was almost expectant, as if there could be a treat for her in this transaction, that the man might have boiled sweets in his pocket.

  The girl on the other side of Samantha, eight or nine, looked scared. For her to move even closer to the tall girl, who was without sympathy, affectless, only showed Jury how frightened April was. Samantha pushed her away and told her to stand up straight, which only made the younger one more frightened still. April mashed her face into Samantha’s side. Samantha shoved her off.

  She had probably started out like these girls.

  Now she was a handler.

  Jury thought the suffering of the other girls was a consolation to her. Either that or a way to reenter their world, but this time with control. With power. She would become another Irene Murchison eventually, unless something stopped her. The poor girl was beautiful; he doubted she knew it or, if she did, didn’t care or even resented her beauty because look, after all, what it had done for her. Sod-all.

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘They seem very nice, but–’

  Mrs. Murchison nodded briefly at Samantha and the older girl led the others away. ‘You’d like to see the others, then?’

  ‘I would, yes.’

  ‘Then let’s just go round to the girls’ room; yes, that’s the easiest way.’

  Jury rose with her and they left the front room and reentered the dim hallway that led from the foyer to the back of the house.

  The long table was pulled out from the wall. The sliding sound he had first heard came from a pocket door in the wall. But it was measured and papered to look exactly like the rest of the wall and was, hence, all but invisible; that accounted for the pattern of the wallpaper. The room itself, when they’d stepped into it, was very narrow but very long. From the outside, he doubted anyone could tell this room was here, except one might wonder at the lack of a window. A person looking for a secret room might discover it.

  Otherwise, anyone on the other side of this patterned wall could languish here forever. It was like a hideous fairy tale. Well, then, he was going to be the prince, kids, like it or not.

  Jury did not know what he had expected–strident voices, unruly behavior, the place a mess? He was not prepared for this silence, this orderly, neat room. Ten little girls, including the two Samantha had returned here (she herself being gone) were either sitting on their cots, each cot looking freshly made, or standing by them. Rosie stood at the end of this room with an older girl, older merely by virtue of being ten or eleven. The girl was holding Rosie’s hand. April, the other girl brought into the lounge by Samantha, stood by the first bed. She and the other girls looked at Jury and then immediately dropped their eyes. He could tell from the tensing of their bodies they wanted to run. Fight or flight. Neither was possible here. They probably hoped that if they kept their eyes lowered, if they didn’t, look at him, he would not then look at them. They would be invisible, like the invisible line in the wallpaper on the other side.

  Where did they come from? Had they been lost? Had they been lured? Had they been sold? Abandoned? Wandering the streets? Abducted from playgrounds, public parks or paths? How many children went missing and stayed missing in this country every year?

  He looked down the row of beds and half expected to see Flora.

  Of course, Flora in the pictures he’d seen had been four. Now she would be seven, and that could have made a big change. He looked from face to face. With their shuttered eyes they reminded him of the stone effigies of children he’d seen in churches and cathedrals, the titled ones, dead at an early age, lying beside the stone duke or duchess. He remembered the two he had seen in a Hertfordshire church–little girls with their stone hands clasped. What had killed them? Disease? Fire? A stray shot? A fall from a roof or high window? What? He was reminded of this looking at the two at the back, Rosie and the older girl who had been holding her hand.

  It was Rosie who broke away and did a skipping sort of run toward him while the older girl called ‘Rosie!’ But Rosie stood there and gaily asked: ‘Can I go upstairs? Everybody gets to but me.’ He looked down at her. ‘Yes, of course.’ Then he looked at the girl who was so protective and who looked now beside herself with misery. ‘And her,’ said Jury nodding toward the one at the back.

  ‘Pansy!’ Mrs. Murchison called her.

  She came quickly, looking almost relieved that she could go with Rosie. It startled him that even in such dire circumstances as these and at danger to herself, she could still feel protective. But then hadn’t he seen instances of this in adults, too? A man rushing into a burning building to save a stranger? It was what he had faith in, he suddenly realized, glad he had faith in something.

  ‘Pansy’s been with us for two years, haven’t you, dear?’ Did the woman honestly think Pansy would look at her with affection? Pansy didn’t look at all.

  Every time this woman opened her mouth, Jury wanted to shut it by force. Every word she spoke poisoned the air around them.

  She called for Samantha again.

  Samantha gestured for Jury to precede her; she told him to take the third room on the left. It would have made more sense for her to go ahead with the two girls, but it was clear why she didn’t. Mrs. Murchison wouldn’t want to make the client uncomfortable by having him witness to any struggle, any holding back of the girls.

  Jury could hear behind him that something like that was just what was going on between Pansy and Samantha. Finally, though, they all reached the third door and Pansy had been sorted. Now she took little Rosie’s hand and they went into the bedroom. Jury followed.

  The room was large, the furniture dark and heavy, just like the furniture downstairs. Never a child’s room, but then it was not a child’s life. He remembered houses he’d seen in one investigation or another, the little girls’ rooms–pink walls, pink comforter, soft stuffed animals, white organdy–a room dressed like a ballerina.

  Never this. Before they sat down, Pansy walked stonily to a closet, opened the door and waited. For him, apparently. He walked round the foot of the bed and up to where she stood, thinking he was to hang his clothes in here. No, that wasn’t it. What he was looking at was an assortment of little clothes. Costumes was more like it. It was a walk-in closet. He walked in, shoved the hangers back and forth, saw a gingham dress with an apron and a small rolling pin hanging on a cord, a sailor suit, a bright red tiny bikini, a black evening gown. Vast differences. Pansy watched apprehensively. He looked at her and shook his head. He walked out and shut the door. He had not yet removed his coat, which was lined with fleece and warm. But he wouldn’t do it now, right this moment.

  Disrobing in any way, even removing a coat, would look like a threat.

  Rosie was humming and stomping around, playing some private game, until Pansy grabbed her hand and whispered for her to stop. Rosie stuck her thumb in her mouth again.

  At least there were a few trappings of what should have been a kid’s world: books. Several were lined up on a freestanding bookshelf of the sort one sees sitting outside a book dealer’s in good weather. Jury searched the shelf, hoping they were genuinely children’s books that didn’t hide among their pages some sort of pornography. He ran his fingers along the spines until he came to Maurice Sendak. He smiled. Maurice Sendak was surely the greatest thing to happen to children since the stamping out of smallpox.

  And Maurice Sendak’s kids did a fair amount of stamping and stomping around. Rosie would love it.

  They hadn’t moved; they still held hands. Jury held
up the book. ‘Let’s read.’

  Gravely, Pansy looked down at her flowered frock, its puffed sleeves and smocking.

  Jury shook his head. ‘No changing clothes, Pansy. We’re going to stay in the clothes we stand up in.’ He smiled. ‘We’re going to read a story, maybe two stories, and that’s all we’re going to do.’ When she saw the cover of the book, Rosie jumped up and down and broke from Pansy’s grasp. He could almost read Pansy’s mind. A trick, a trick. It had to be a trick, a new awful game, everybody taking off his clothes. It would come clear in a few moments.

  There was a bench beneath a window that faced the street and its dreary view of the terraced houses on the other side. Jury sat down and gestured to the girls to sit down. Pansy sat Rosie on the end of the bench and stationed herself between Jury and the little girl. It was the only heartening thing he’d seen in this place, Pansy protecting the new littlest girl. It could so easily have gone the other way; Pansy could so easily have turned, after two years, into another Samantha.

  Jury opened the book and showed them the first illustration.

  He read what text there was, surprised the story was about a vanished child. Maybe Sendak was better equipped to solve this case than police.

  ‘Next page.’ He wanted the girls to turn the pages. Pansy was unaware of this, afraid it was part of this awful game, or what would soon become the awful game, a game of which she hadn’t been told the rules.

  Rosie stepped closer and turned the page, mashed it back as if it were the only way of controlling it. Jury continued to read and Rosie and at last Pansy turned the pages properly, and the story, like the child, was revealed.

  Jury couldn’t have said which of the three of them was the most enthralled. He had read most of Maurice Sendak’s books, read them standing around Waterstone’s or Dillards or Hatchards.

  This artist knew more about children than any social worker he’d ever talked to.

  Rosie was extremely worried about the goblins. She did not like the goblins and was nervously looping her yellow hair round her finger. That reminded him of Lulu, only Lulu’s hair was dark and uncurlable.

  Most of the way through the book, perhaps reminded of the cold by the storm brewing in the pages, Jury felt the room was chilly. He hadn’t noticed before because of his fleece-lined coat. Looking at what might be called an ornamental fireplace, he saw a small electric heater in the grate. It had two bars, neither of them red.

  ‘Aren’t you kids cold?’

  Pansy answered. ‘I’m always cold in this house.’ Jury took off his coat and held it first for Pansy to put an arm in the right-hand sleeve, then for Rosie to put her arm through the left. Now they were joined together. Rosie giggled. Even Pansy looked pleased. They held the coat tight around themselves.

  They told Jury to finish reading the story, and he did, with Rosie standing and Pansy sitting, awkwardly maneuvering the coat between the two of them. They looked, for the first time, warm.

  The goblins brought in a baby made of ice to replace Ida’s baby sister. The ice, of course, started melting and Rosie didn’t like that at all. Pansy told her not to worry; it’d all come right in the end. It did. Ida had to go out and rescue the real baby from the goblins, which she did, and vowed that she would always take proper care of the baby from here on in.

  Pansy looked at the book after Jury finished speaking. Then she thought awhile as Rosie wavered from one foot to another as if she had to pee. Childless himself, Jury hadn’t that much experience of children, but he thought it was rare for one to sit and ponder a problem.

  Pansy said, ‘I know what happened.’

  For one starburst moment, he thought she was going to offer a solution to this case for him, tell him what had happened to Flora.

  She said, ‘The older sister was supposed to take care of the baby, but she didn’t. Probably she wanted the goblins to get the baby.’ Pansy paused. ‘It’s like Samantha, only Samantha stopped with the goblins. And stayed.’

  ‘The baby ran off.’ Rosie piped up. ‘I will, too.’

  ‘No,’ said Pansy. ‘It didn’t run off; it was stolen. And you can’t run off, anyway, Rosie, so stop thinking about it.’

  ‘I can. I can sneak into the hall when she’s not looking. Then I can open the door, like Alice did, and run. I can.’ Rosie was on the verge of tears.

  Alice. Jury felt his heart lurch. ‘What happened to Alice, then?’

  Rosie came closer, put her hand on Jury’s knee, and whispered, ‘She ran into the street and got–’

  ‘Rosie! We’re not to talk about it!’

  Pansy looked genuinely scared. No wonder.

  ‘I don’t care!’ said Rosie.

  Jury asked, ‘Was it Samantha who ran after her?’ Another child.

  Rosie nodded hard.

  Pansy clamped her hands over her ears, wanting to hear none of this.

  ‘Okay,’ said Jury. ‘We won’t talk about it.’

  Rosie nearly wept. ‘But I can, I can.’ She was still back with running away.

  He put his hand on her yellow head and ruffled the hair. ‘I know you can. I don’t think you’ll have to.’

  Pansy looked at him, puzzled.

  Rosie had picked up Where the Wild Things Are and was stuffing it into Jury’s hands.

  ‘One of my favorites,’ he said. Actually, it was. ‘Okay. Sit down.’ This time there was one child on each side (only Rosie in the coat now, looking very much like a Sendak child) and both of them were leaning against him as he read the tale of Timmy and the grotesquely funny monsters, whom Timmy set out to sea for and joined. When they all started cavorting around, Pansy and Rosie got up and imitated them. The two girls copied the expressions of the wild things, made their hands into claws and stalked each other. And nearly fell down giggling.

  ‘Now listen to me; here’s what I want you to do.’ They drew close.

  ‘In a minute we’re going downstairs, the three of us. It’s important you both look very tired and sad.’

  ‘I’m not,’ said Rosie. ‘I’m not sad.’ She picked up the first book lying on the’ bench beside Jury. ‘You could read this again. Only leave out about .the ice baby.’

  She did not want to go downstairs.

  ‘Why don’t you take it with you?’

  ‘Okay, I will. But I’m still not sad.’

  ‘Pretend,’ said Pansy. ‘He means to pretend, Rosie.’

  ‘That’s right. If you don’t look upset, Mrs. Murchison will wonder and we don’t want that. We need five minutes to get ready. What about the other girls, Pansy?’

  ‘We always have to stay in that room. There’s a telly but we mostly fight about what to watch. There’s games and stuff, but we don’t feel like playing. The only times we get to leave the room is when we eat and when we get to go out in back for fifteen minutes.’ Rosie was making a face over one of the illustrations. ‘I didn’t like breakfast. The eggs were all runny.’

  ‘We get to eat at a table in the kitchen, three of us at a time and Samantha sits with us, or Eddie. He’s horrible. They’re supposed to watch us so we don’t cause trouble. But Samantha does let us talk as long as we don’t get too loud. Only, there’s not much to talk about except–you know–bad stuff, and nobody wants to talk about that. It’s too scary.’

  It was the deepest blush Jury had ever seen. Pansy looked down at the floor, ashamed.

  Jury said, ‘It’s okay, Pansy. You’ve done nothing wrong. It’s they who’ve done it. How many girls are here now?’

  ‘There’s nine. I counted them,’ said Rosie. She was frowning at another page, probably at the ice baby.

  ‘There’s ten,’ said Pansy. ‘You left yourself out.’

  ‘I don’t like the food,’ she said again, in case they’d forgotten.

  Jury asked, ‘Does Mrs. Murchison really start the girls this early?’ He was looking at Rosie.

  ‘Yes. But Rosie’s the youngest. Me, I was seven.’ Again, Pansy’s face went hot red, like the bars of the stingy elec
tric heater.

  ‘You’ve been here two years?’ Jury tried to sound matter-of-fact; he didn’t want her feeling any more ashamed than she already did.

  Still, she looked anywhere but at Jury. Then she said, ‘Samantha’s been here five. April’s been here three. Longer than me.’

  ‘All right, listen. Rosie, listen to me.’ Rosie popped her face out of the book and pretended to. ‘After we go downstairs, I want you both to go back to your room and tell the others to put on their coats–’

  Pansy was astonished. ‘But they only let us have them when we go outside; she keeps the coats somewhere in a closet. We go out back in the garden for fifteen minutes. There’s no flowers, though. It’s got a high fence.’

  ‘Does Samantha watch you?’

  ‘Her and this man Eddie–’ She looked as if she wanted to spit. ‘Both watch us. They tell us to play, but we just sit. There’s nothing to play with and we’re too tired anyway. So we sit on the steps or stand by the fence. It’s all we do. It makes Eddie mad. I don’t know why.’

  ‘It’s all about control. Only now, we’re the ones controlling things. Do you have blankets on your beds?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Then tell the girls to bring them to wrap themselves up when they get outside.’

  Her eyes widened, this time with recognition, and although she worked her mouth, she could hardly speak. They were going out; they were leaving this place. ‘How can you.., how can we–?’

  Jury took out his warrant card. ‘I’m a policeman.’ Wide eyed, Pansy slapped her hands on her face, staring at him. Even Rosie raised her eyes from the book to look. He went on, There s another policeman in a car outside. We’re getting you girls out.

  All of you are going to leave, if you’re careful to do what I tell you.

  Rosie went back to looking at the book. Into this brief and frozen silence she said, ‘I think I’ll be an ice baby. They only melt.’ She paused and looked at Jury almost beseechingly. ‘It’s better than getting stolen.’ She was looking at Jury for confirmation of this hard decision.