“Right there!”
Not only was there a coil of rope, but it appeared to be tied, sturdily tied, to a short pole. She stuffed Richard back inside her coat (while he was still barking orders), picked up the rope and dragged it back to the part of the deck just above the rowboat. It was plenty long. She let the end down, played the rope out to the rowboat. Then she put all her weight into it and yanked hard to see if back there the rope held to the pole. Yes! Only, how was she to move the oars. She could never handle two, one on each side.
“Sure, you can.”
“Shut up, Richard! You don’t know everything!”
“Pretty much. Find something you can use for oars.”
At that moment, something in Gemma switched off and something else switched on. It was no longer a question of would she drown in the Thames, but whether she was smarter than the two women who had stuck her out here. She ran to the flat door and stumbled down the staircase. She yanked out drawers in the little kitchen and tossed stuff out-useless silverware, scissors, plastic things-things in the drawers were all anyhow-knives, bottle caps, string. She finally came to a large spatula and it made her think of the way Mrs. MacLeish made omelettes. She would draw the cooked egg back with the spatula and the uncooked would run around it. Like water around an oar. Well, it was better than nothing. Among the rest of the utensils she found a big ladle. That would have to do.
She stopped, sat down on one of the beds and chewed the inside of her cheek, thinking. Then she remembered the rolls of coins that had rolled under the bed and got down and tried to fish them out, but couldn’t reach. With her other hand she groped on top of the bed and found the ladle. With it, she got the two rolls out. Then she looked at the utensils that had landed on the floor and picked up a paring knife.
She sat up and took Richard out. “I hate to do this…”
“What? What? No knives!”
“It won’t hurt. Much. Be quiet.” She removed his clothes, turned him over and with the knife, carefully pried the stitches out along the back seam. Oh! There were protests! Then she removed half of the stuffing and replaced it with the two rolls of coins. She didn’t have anything to sew him up again, so she bound him tightly together with the string. She went over the seam again and made sure the string would hold. She shoved his clothes into one coat pocket and the stuffing into the other. Then she collected the spatula and ladle and hurried up the steps.
Sparky sneezed. It was explosive and set him down on his rump. He sneezed again and shook his head as if to render it sneeze free. He trotted over to the place in the courtyard where, in the spring, tulips grew. Whatever had been there was stone cold dead. Then he inspected a planter usually filled with primroses. It wasn’t now. He looked around but saw nothing else.
Sparky enjoyed coming to this house; he liked the forecourt. It was pleasant to sniff around in. In the distance, Big Ben sounded whatever hour it was. Sparky could count up to four. Why he could do this was a mystery to him, but for some reason the boy had taught him this trick, which had to do with the street and filling the hat with coins. You’d think he could remember the name of the boy who’d saved him from a dust bin life, but what did names matter? If you could tell you were being summoned by look and gesture, why was the name important? He wasn’t even sure what his own name was. Big Benny. Sparky loved that.
He could remember the woman, even by name. This was rare for him to do, but then she had been rare. Where had she gone? He drooped; it made him sad.
Then he sneezed.
The rope had held and Gemma was in the boat, rocking. The boat felt less substantial than it had appeared when she’d been looking down on it. She patted her coat just to make sure Richard was still there, although she knew he was from the extra weight. Slowly and carefully, Gemma turned around in the boat. She faced the land she was heading for and put the spatula in the water. Then she tried to put the ladle in and realized she couldn’t do both because her arms weren’t long enough. It didn’t work, anyway, for they were too small to push back enough water for the boat to move. “How stupid I am!” she said aloud.
“I wouldn’t disag-”
“Be quiet!”
She wrenched the oar from its lock, shoved the end against the boat and pushed the rowboat away. One oar could be managed if she used both hands; she’d never have been able to row with two of them. She tried this and found the boat wouldn’t go straight with just one, so she moved it from side to side. The boat moved forward, and though she couldn’t go fast, she could see the house over there and the dock inch closer.
If her hands had been free, Gemma would have clapped. As it was, she settled for telling Richard, “You’re not the only one that’s smart.”
His answer was muffled, but not complimentary.
Bluebells.
That was what he smelled; that was what made him sneeze. It got stronger as he sniffed his way around the side of the house. He was baffled; that smell shouldn’t be here, but back there where the girl lived with the bluebells he’d brought her. (Jimmy? Janie? Jemima?) Was she here? Had she been here?
He sniffed along the dock. He hated being this close to water. His head came up for he sensed something. Right at the end of the dock, he looked out over the river and saw a little rowboat moving his way. He paced back and forth, back and forth.
Then he saw her and barked.
Gemma could hardly believe it when she heard a dog. Why would a dog be running back and forth on the dock, pulsing with barks-?
“Sparky!”
The boat bumped against the dock and turned around. Sparky looked over the edge. The dock was too high for the girl (Jimmy? Jeanna?) to reach. In a minute, a rope tied to something landed on the dock. Was it that damned doll? It was tied to the end of the rope. He got his teeth around the doll; there was a lot of slack, but he clamped down and pulled the rope up on the dock.
Gemma thought, how would he know what to do with the rope? He was only a dog, for heaven’s sake. Yes, but a very smart one. She wanted him to wrap the rope around something, anything that would take it. One of the pilings would do it. She only needed a little purchase so she could climb up. The distance wasn’t much. As she looked at the pilings, she saw a second rowboat drifting in and out from under the dock, only this one had a motor attached to it. It wasn’t very securely tied. Gemma imagined Maisie Tynedale must have been in a big hurry to leave.
When all of the slack was taken up, Sparky still held the doll (which was pretty heavy) in his mouth and looked around. He dragged the doll and the rope over to a piling and had just enough room to maneuver the rope around and around again. After she tugged at it and it held, she started climbing.
Sparky bounced about, completely giddy when Jimmy managed to heave herself up, hand over hand, onto the dock.
“Sparky!” Gemma grabbed him and squeezed him to her chest until he could only just breathe. He could do without this part of it.
She untied Richard. Remarkably, he was still the same; he hadn’t even gotten wet. She was checking to see if the string still held, when she heard the car.
Both of them heard the car.
The car pulled into the forecourt, slammed its door, left its engine running and its headlights on. Gemma knew it was them, or one of them, either Kitty or Maisie. One of them had brought her here. She had expected it, but she was still afraid. Even if she could have jumped down into the boat, there was no time to do it.
The woman came toward them bathed in the glare of the headlights. But when she got to the dock, she stopped, stunned. It was Maisie. Her eyes, looking at Gemma, were immense. “My God! How on earth-?”
Gemma got down to Sparky’s level. “Go, Sparky!”
Sparky jumped. He had never really gone before, and now he saw his chance. He plummeted toward Maisie, grabbed her ankle and let himself be shaken and shaken, yelled at to get off, get off. Cursed. Good.
Clutching Richard, Gemma watched. “Get her down, Sparky, get her head down!” Gemma moved nearer t
o them.
Sparky let go of the ankle and sprang up to Maisie’s forearm. To dislodge the dog, she had to bend down, get her head down-
Gemma rushed at her just as Sparky had, pulled her own arm back and with every single ounce of strength left to her, brought Richard down on Maisie’s head. Giving a small exhalation of breath, Maisie slumped on the boards with a dull thud.
“Let me hit her again! Hit her again!”
That was Richard. Gemma thought he’d earned the right, so she hauled off and brought the doll down on Maisie’s head again. Then for good measure, hit her once more. Gemma would have liked to kill her, to roll her off the dock and let her drown.
But she didn’t; they left her lying there.
Fifty-two
Sparky led; Gemma followed. All she knew was this was along the Thames, but she had no idea where Swan Lane was, a name they’d just passed. He seemed to know exactly where he was going and stopped every so often to make sure she was right there behind him.
At one point a car stopped, just pulled up to the curb and the driver leaned across as far as he could and said, “Want a lift, love. I’m just on my way to-”
Gemma never found out where because Sparky hurled himself against the car door, mere inches from the nose of this person making his offer.
“Bloody hell!” the man yelled, jerking away from the window, then stalling the engine out when he tried to accelerate, and Sparky, all the while like a pole vaulter, snarling and launching himself at the car. It made Gemma laugh. The man finally got out like the devils in hell were at his heels.
Gemma skipped along as if this were a walk in Kensington Gardens. She hadn’t felt like skipping in a long time, but now she did. She wished she could throw herself, as Sparky had done, up against things and scare them and make them run away. But then she’d have to have Sparky’s bark and Sparky’s bite to do that.
By now they were coming up on the Victoria Embankment, and Waterloo Bridge, vast and black, was a short distance before them. She loved the lights across the Thames, oceans of them as if the whole of London were layered in little lights. Sparky was descending some steps, his nails clicking on the cold concrete. Gemma wondered where they were going, but didn’t mind all of this walking as she was still in a little daze over having escaped from whatever horrible plan the two women had made for her. She wondered if she had killed Maisie and allowed herself the consolation of thinking she could blame it on Richard, anyway.
“Hey, hey!”
“Oh, be quiet, Richard.” She shook him a little. He was dressed again in his black outfit. Sparky had waited patiently while she had sat on the step of a building back there and got the clothes on him and the stuffing back inside. She would sew him back up later when she had a needle and thread.
They had crossed the wide street, garnering a few curious glances from people in cars-why all this traffic?-but not curious enough to stop. They were right by Waterloo Bridge and, after descending a few more steps, right under it. Gemma was astonished to see all of these sleeping forms. People under the bridge. She thought she must be in the middle of a fairy tale. Then she wondered if these were the “homeless” she’d heard spoken of. About them she had always had a kind of shifting image of men and women wandering around dazed, looking for their houses, the places they had nearly forgotten, or been forgotten by.
The thing was, Gemma had scarcely been out in the wide world after she had first walked into Tynedale Lodge. The only person who’d have taken her out to parks and stores and films was too sick now to do it. The others most of the time didn’t seem to know she was around. But the staff did; Mr. Barkins didn’t like her, but Rachael the maid took her out to do Christmas shopping, which Gemma loved. That was how she’d found David Copperfield to give to Benny. Miss Penforwarden was just as nice as Benny said she was. She sat Gemma and Rachael down and gave them tea and some little cakes. She talked to Rachael while Gemma walked around the store, dazzled by all of the books. Mr. Tynedale had a library, it was true, but not all of these shelves with books front and back.
Christmas! It must be after midnight by now, so that meant today was Christmas Day! Sparky was rooting around one of the sleepers and when this person finally sat up Gemma was astonished to see Benny. She nearly dropped Richard. Was there no end to the astonishments of this night? Was it to be one thing right after another, horrible and wonderful in their turn?
“Benny!”
His voice was sleepy. “Gemma?” He shook his head, then looked from Sparky to Gemma and back again.
Now, faced at last with an actual person who could help her, Gemma felt a floodgate open and a squall of tears took hold of her. “Someone tried to kill me!”
Forgetting the very strange occurrence of Gemma’s appearing in the middle of the night under Waterloo Bridge, all Benny could say was, “Not again!” before he fell right back on his pallet.
Fifty-three
The knock on the door wrenched Jury from a sleep as deep and as soft as the down comforter that covered him and the Italian sheets he lay between. The knock was followed by Ruthven’s entrance, in robe and slippers, to tell the superintendent he had a phone call and to place a telephone by his bed.
Last night, Ruthven had brought him a nightcap on a silver tray and asked him if he required anything else. Looking around, Jury had said, “Only to stay in this room in my declining years.”
Ruthven had tittered and remarked that the superintendent offered no visible signs of any decline.
The room, Jury thought, as he’d looked around it, was an antidote to a life of lumpy mattresses, threadbare carpets, sprung sofas. One wall was filled with shelves of books and, at intervals along those shelves, small brass lamps were bolted, to cast light on whatever section one might want to explore. In front of the bookshelves sat a leather arm chair of a red so deep it was black in the shadows, and a table to hold one’s tea cup or one’s whiskey glass. It was an arrangement that all but begged the room’s occupant to pluck out a book and sit down. The wall opposite this was full of windows and velvet curtains. Jury had looked down at a white and crumbling statue in the rear garden by a small pool overhung with willows. All in all, this was the most romantic room Jury had ever seen, the most complete, the most becalmed. He thought, climbing into the sensuous bed the night before, that he could sleep for a year.
Instead, this telephone appeared at 3:30 A.M. with a call from the City police. It was Mickey, who told Jury what had happened-or as much as he knew-and to whom. “But she won’t tell anybody the details, except you or Ambrose. Who’s Ambrose?” asked Mickey.
“A friend. How can she be so cool about it? My God, she’s only nine.”
“Don’t forget the dog; he can’t be more than two or three.”
Jury was already standing by this time. He said, “I’ll be right there.”
“At Croft’s house. The kids are here. You apparently know these kids; they certainly know you. I’d like to get more than monosyllables out of the girl.”
“Ask the dog.”
“Very funny.”
“Miss Tynedale, a.k.a. Riordin, has been taken to hospital. Couple of bumps on the head, but nothing serious. She’s awake but not talking. The one I want to go after is her mother. What about the kids?”
“Right now I think they should go home, have some Horlick’s, go to bed. That poor little girl must be in a state.”
Mickey turned away from the phone; Jury could hear Gemma’s voice quite clearly, and clearly objecting. “She hates Horlick’s, wants a cup of black coffee. And they want to stay here until you come.”
“Okay, but tell them they’ve got to lie down somewhere in the house and get some sleep.”
Mickey laughed. “It’s obvious you don’t have kids, Richard.”
Jury felt oddly stung by that comment. But he didn’t answer, Yet it’s me they want to talk to, Mickey. All he said was good-bye.
Melrose Plant was not only awake, but dressed and with a pot of coffee when Jury got do
wnstairs. “Ruthven told me it was the police.”
“Haggerty. Thanks.” Jury drank down the coffee in one go. “Gemma Trimm was abducted-”
Melrose started up from his chair.
“-but she’s perfectly okay now. She wants to see you and me.”
Melrose collected his car keys and his coat. “Let’s go, then.” He stuck his arms into the sleeves of his black cashmere overcoat.
Jury said, “You’ve got your black clothes on again.”
“Ah! But these are different black clothes.”
“Cool. Let’s go, dude.”
They headed out into the frosty predawn morning.
The house flooded the river with light and a strong police presence in the form of a dozen or more men and women, uniformed and plain clothes, stood near the house and down on the dock.
“Where’s DCI Haggerty?”asked Jury.
“Gone to Tynedale Lodge to collect the Riordin woman,” said a detective sergeant whose name was Knobbs and who didn’t like Jury. Or, at least, didn’t like New Scotland Yard’s presence.
Jury wondered-but not aloud-if picking up Kitty Riordin was premature.
“The kids are in the library. Here, I’ll show you-”
“No need, Detective. I’ve been here before. Thanks.”
Knobbs was giving Melrose Plant a careful scrutiny. Jury didn’t bother with introductions. “He’s mine.”
“Your what?” asked Melrose, as they moved off toward the library.
When they walked in, Gemma and Benny bounced up. Gemma was flinging black looks at Jury, sweet ones at Melrose.
Benny started in: “I never heard nothing like it, Mr. Jury. How Gemma here got off that boat-”
Jury knelt down and put his hands on her arms. “What happened, love?”
Looking mad as a hornet, Gemma said, “They were going to kill me is all. They made me their prisoner and gave me bread and water.”
The Blue Last Page 36
