The Case of the Watching Boy (Andrew Tillet, Sara Wiggins & Inspector Wyatt Book 9)

by Robert Newman

  But today had been worse than usual. Partly, of course, it was because of what had happened at lunch. For the third time in two weeks, Zelescu had prepared mamaliga, that ridiculous national dish, and had gotten furious when Aristide said that, if no one minded, he would make himself an omelette instead. But most of Aristide’s irritation was due to the fact that he was making puff pastry—for which he had always been famous—and it was not coming out as it should. And why wasn’t it coming out?

  “It’s the flour,” he had explained to his wife. “A dozen times I have said to Zelescu, ‘Get me some French flour and some butter from Normandy and I will make you pastry so light it will float in the air.’ But does he? No! ‘I use what I can get here in London,’ he says. ‘And you must do the same.’”

  Muttering, Aristide folded the puff pastry dough, rolled it out, and was folding it again when he heard the door that opened on to the mews open and close.

  He turned with an angry scowl, for a draft now could make his puff pastry heavier than ever.

  “Que veux tu?” he said to the two children who stood there awkwardly and uncomfortably looking at him. “Who are you and what you want?”

  “Please, sir,” said the girl in a rather nasal voice. “We’re looking for our father.”

  “Your fahzer? He works here?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “What he do?”

  “He’s a dishwasher, sir.”

  “A dish …?” Then as she did a very creditable imitation of someone washing dishes. “Oh, un plongeur.”

  He looked at her more closely. In spite of her ragged dress, bare feet, and dirty face, there was something appealing about her. She looked at him directly with bright, intelligent eyes and her smile was charming. A for the boy with her, though his clothes were ragged and his face was dirty, too, he seemed quite sturdy and manly.

  “Eh bien,” he said. “Come, we will look for him.” He put down his rolling pin and was drying his hands on his apron when Zelescu came storming up.

  “What this?” he shouted, for he never talked in a normal voice. “Who these? Where they come from?”

  “First,” said Aristide, “please to speak like a person, not bellow like a bull!”

  “What?”

  “I ask you again, as I ask you a dozen times before, please to lower your voice when you speak to me!”

  “And I ask you again, who these are?”

  “If you have eyes, you can see that they are children!”

  “So?”

  “They are looking for their fahzer.”

  “What fahzer? Who fahzer? There is no fahzer here!” And taking the girl by the shoulder, he turned her around and pushed her toward the door.

  “Take your hands off her!” the boy said angrily.

  “You talk to me, no-good?” said Zelescu.

  “He talk to you—and I talk to you, too!” said Aristide. “I always know you are not a cook. Now I know you are not even a man! You are a monster—a barbarian without heart or feeling! How dare you so treat an innocent child?”

  “I am no cook? No cook—I, Zelescu who have cooked for kings and princes? I spit on your Frenchness!” He did. “I cut you into cutlets!” And picking up a long butcher’s knife, he advanced on Aristide, brandishing it like a cutlass.

  “Ah, you want fight?” said Aristide. “Good. We fight!”

  Reaching behind him with his left hand, he picked up the puff pastry he had been folding and with a graceful swing, slapped Zelescu in the face with it. Then he picked up his rolling pin and, as Zelescu snorted and tried to pull the sticky dough from his eyes and nose, Aristide struck him smartly across the knuckles with the rolling pin, knocking the knife from his hand.

  “You make me like a cutlet, hein? I make you flat like a crêpe!” And he was raising the rolling pin again when the other kitchen door burst open and Captain Benesh came hurrying in.

  “What’s going on here?” he said. “Denon, no! Stop!” And catching the pastry chef’s arm, he prevented him from bringing down the rolling pin with lethal force.

  “Let me go! Let me go!” said Aristide. “I crack him like a walnut!”

  “You’ll do nothing of the sort!” said Benesh. “Stop it and behave!” Then seeing the two children, “Who are they, and what are they doing here?”

  “They are looking for their fahzer,” said Aristide. “He is plongeur—dishwasher.”

  “Do any of you know these children?” said Benesh, turning to the rest of the kitchen staff—underchefs and and sauciers, kitchen boys and dishwashers—who stood around staring with varying degrees of astonishment and amusement. “Is any one of you their father?” Then, when all shook their heads, “So. You have made a mistake. Out!” he said, shooing them toward the door.

  “But that ain’t so, guv’ner,” said the girl. “I’m sure this is right. Ain’t this the Viscount Dugdale’s house?”

  “No, it’s not,” said Benesh, opening the back door. “Out with you! Go on, out!” and pushing them out into the darkness of the mews, he slammed the door.

  By picking their time carefully, moving quickly and quietly when the constables who watched the rear of the embassy were being relieved, Sara, Andrew, and Markham had been able to slip in the back door unobserved. But there was no way they could repeat that performance now. The embassy door had barely closed behind them when one of the constables was on them, taking each of them firmly by the arm.

  “Hello,” he said. “Who are you?”

  “We’re nobody,” said Sara in her best Cockney whine. “We’re just looking for our da. He works around here somewhere.”

  “Oh? Well, let me take a look at you.” And whistling to the other constable to alert him, he took Sara and Andrew along the alley toward the street where a gaslight glowed in the growing darkness.

  Meanwhile, where was Markham? The purpose of Sara and Andrew’s diversion had been to give him a chance to get inside the embassy and hide. As soon as they were inside the door—before the pastry chef noticed them—Markham had seen what they had hoped to find, a flight of stairs that led to the embassy’s upper floors.

  Tapping Sara’s arm to show her where he was going, Markham ran over to the stairs and hurried up them. He paused at the top of the first flight. He could hear raised voices in the kitchen but could not tell what was being said, what was going on. There was a door on the other side of the landing. He opened it carefully and looked out. It opened on to a corridor with doors on both sides. Was what he was looking for behind one of them?

  He hesitated. Then recalling that he, Sara, and Andrew had decided that the best procedure was to start at the top and work down, he went up another flight. There was another door there and, when he opened it, he found himself looking at another corridor, but one that looked much less elegant than the one on the floor below.

  He started to go out, then paused. His heart was pounding with fear. He had been brave enough when he had told Andrew that he wanted to be the one to go into the embassy. At least he had sounded brave. The truth was that he had been afraid then, too, but not as afraid as he was now. Because now he was in the embassy, where he had no right to be; and though no one had seen him yet, once he started opening doors and looking into rooms, wasn’t there a good chance that someone would see him? And if they did, what would they do to him? He didn’t know, and he forced himself not to think about it. Because, frightened as he was, he had to go out and look into those rooms. Knowing that the longer he waited, the harder it would be to leave the shelter of the stairwell, he opened the door all the way and stepped out into the corridor.

  He pressed his ear against the nearest door and listened. He could hear nothing. He tried the knob—the door wasn’t locked—and he pushed it open and looked in. It was a simple, severe room with one bed in it, and it was empty. He closed the door and went to the next one. That was a bedroom, too, and that was empty also. The next two were offices, but like the bedrooms, they were empty at the moment.

  In the mi
ddle of the corridor there was another stairway, an open one that must have been the main stairway. When he looked down, he saw that it rose from the entrance hall just opposite the front door.

  A footman stood just inside the front door. And from a distance came the clink of silver and china and the low buzz of voices. That was why he hadn’t seen anyone in the upper stories of the embassy. It was dinnertime, and everyone was at their evening meal in either the main dining room or in the servants’ dining room.

  Moving with more assurance, he looked in the rest of the rooms on the top floor. One was a storeroom, the rest were bedrooms, and they were all empty.

  He returned to the backstairs, went down a flight, and came out into the corridor on the floor below. There were only a few doors on this floor, and when he opened the first one, he saw why. This was a bedroom, too, but it was much larger than the ones on the floor above. It had a sofa in it as well as two beds and was probably for visiting dignitaries. Like the ones above, there was no one in it but, whereas some of the ones on the floor above had clothes scattered about, this one was completely empty.

  He went out and was about to try the next room when he heard the clink of dishes and the sound of footsteps coming up the main stairs. He returned hurriedly to the backstairs and shut the door, but not all the way. He left it open just a crack so that he could see out.

  An elderly woman in what appeared to be a nurse’s uniform, except that she did not wear a cap, appeared at the top of the stairs carrying a tray. Bracing the tray against her hip, she took out a key, unlocked the door of the room next to the one Markham had just been in, went in, and shut the door after her.

  A nurse carrying a tray. The ambassador, he recalled, was supposed to be ill—so ill that he could not be seen. Was that who was in the room? But then why was the door kept locked? Was it so that he would not be disturbed? That seemed unlikely. Besides, there did not seem to be much food on the tray—not enough for a grown man. Unless he was so ill that he could only eat sparingly. All in all, it seemed to be something that should be looked into.

  Opening the door, he listened for a moment to make sure no one else was coming up the stairs, then hurried along the corridor to the room he had just been in, went in, and closed the door.

  Going to one of the windows, he looked out. The room he was in and the one next to it were in the rear of the embassy, facing the mews rather than the street. It was not more than six or eight feet from one window to the other and, more important, there was a sturdy metal downspout between them. He had noticed that and the fact that ivy covered most of the rear wall of the embassy as he, Sara, and Andrew had waited to run into the mews and enter the embassy’s rear door. He had noticed it because he was quite a good rock climber—it was one of the things he enjoyed doing when he was at school—and it had occurred to him that if they could not get into the embassy any other way, he could climb up the downspout.

  Now, opening the window, he stepped out and stood on the window ledge. Holding on to the top of the window, he stretched out a foot and found he could easily reach one of the metal brackets that held the downspout to the brick wall. He tested it, putting more and more of his weight on it. Finding it was strong, he transferred his hand grip from the window to the downspout and swung over to the bracket. Now he stretched a foot out to the window ledge of the room he had seen the nurse go into and leaned over slowly until he could look in.

  In the darkness outside he could make out only the shapes of large objects, like the downspout. But a gaslight was burning in the room, and by its light he could see the nurse standing in front of a bed. She turned aside to take something from the tray, and when she did, he saw that she was feeding—not an old man—but young Michael Vickery.

  The boy was either very sleepy or he had been drugged, for his eyes kept closing, and the only way the woman could get him to eat was by actually putting the spoon in his mouth. But, apart from that, he seemed well.

  Releasing his hold on the side of the window, Markham swung back to the drainpipe. Now that he had found what he had hoped to find, he could not wait to tell Sara, Andrew, and anyone else who might be interested. And so, instead of going back into the empty room and leaving the way he had come in, he started down the downspout, stepping on a bracket when there was one, and sliding when there wasn’t. He went down as quickly and quietly as he could, but he must have made more noise than he realized for, as he dropped the last few feet to the cobblestones that paved the mews, a large hand reached out and took him firmly by the collar of his jacket.

  14

  Jasper Again

  Sitting at one of the desks in the writing room of the Court Street Hotel, Wyatt was going over Tucker’s notes on what had happened that afternoon. He looked up as Jasper came in, followed by his companion Daniel.

  “I’ve been expecting you,” said Wyatt. “Tucker told me you were here this afternoon and said you’d be back.”

  “Yes,” said Jasper. “Is there anything new?”

  “If you mean, do we have the boy back yet, the answer is no.”

  “I did not mean that,” said Jasper. “If you had him back, you wouldn’t be sitting there being sarcastic. I meant, have you been able to find out if he really is in the embassy?”

  “No. But I found out several other things that I think are interesting—things I would like to discuss with you, as a matter of fact.”

  “What sort of things?”

  “I think you can guess,” said Wyatt.

  “Perhaps I can,” said Jasper. “But I don’t think this is the time to go into them.”

  “No? When is the time?”

  “When you get the boy back. In the meantime—” He broke off as a constable came into the writing room with Sara and Andrew. He was holding each of them by the arm and, though he released them once they were in the room, he stood behind them to make sure they did not try to run away.

  “What’s this?” said Wyatt.

  “Caught them coming out of the embassy, sir,” said the constable. “Out the rear entrance on the mews. You said you wanted anyone coming out intercepted and brought here.”

  “Yes,” said Wyatt. He looked at them—at Sara’s bare feet and torn dress, at Andrew’s ragged shirt and pants, and at both their carefully dirtied faces—and his face became stony. “You were in the embassy?” he said in a voice he was clearly trying hard to keep quiet and level.

  “Yes,” said Andrew.

  “How did you get in?”

  “Sneaked in the back way.”

  Wyatt glanced at the constable, then at Andrew again.

  “Why?” he asked.

  “Do you trust us?” asked Sara.

  “Trust you?” said Wyatt, slamming his fist down on the desk. “I certainly don’t trust you! When we first came to London from Somerset, I told you that while Andrew and Markham had been involved in the early stages of the case—responsible, in a sense, for what happened—you were all—and by all, I meant you too, Sara—to stay out of it and not to interfere in any way! Because it was both dangerous and politically sensitive. And what do you do? From what Constable Butts tells me—and from the way you look—you’ve not only been interfering, but you’ve actually been inside the embassy, the place that is our greatest problem at the moment!”

  “If you said you did trust us,” said Sara with dignity, “then I was going to ask you please not to ask us any questions. But since you don’t trust us, even if you do ask them, we’re not going to answer them.”

  “What?” said Wyatt. “Of all the distorted, perverted reasoning I ever heard of, that takes the biscuit!”

  “If you will not answer the inspector’s questions, will you answer one for me?” said Jasper.

  “I don’t know,” said Sara. “What is it?”

  “Did you go in there—into the embassy—because you thought the missing boy might be in there?”

  Sara hesitated for a moment, looking at him. Then she nodded. “Yes,” she said.

  “And
was he there?”

  “We don’t know. We were just in the kitchen.”

  “Ah!” said Jasper. “But you think he might be in there. And if you think so, then he must think so, too.” He nodded toward Wyatt. “Even though he will not admit it. You do think so, don’t you?” he said to Wyatt.

  “I think it’s very possible,” said Wyatt.

  “Do you think he’s been hurt or harmed in any way?”

  “I hope he hasn’t been, no matter where he is.”

  “Would it make your task easier if I could guarantee that nothing will happen to the boy?”

  “How can you do that?” asked Wyatt.

  “You will see,” said Jasper. Sitting down at one of the other writing desks, he took a sheet of paper from the rack that held the hotel stationery, picked up a pen, and began to write.

  “No!” said Daniel, hurrying over to him. “Please!” He put his hand on Jasper’s arm, trying to restrain him while he spoke to him with great passion in Romany or whatever language he had spoken to him before.

  Jasper pushed him away and, when he persisted, spoke to him with such authority that Daniel drew back, stiffened, and finally bowed.

  “Is there any sealing wax here?” asked Jasper, still writing.

  “What?”

  “Sealing wax. For sealing letters.”

  “I don’t know,” said Wyatt, looking in the drawer of the desk at which he was sitting. Sara and Andrew, intrigued, looked in the drawers of the other desks, and Sara finally found a small stub of it. She brought it to Jasper, who had now finished his note and put it in an envelope.

  “Thank you,” he said. “Match,” he said to Daniel. Daniel gave him a match; Jasper struck it, heated the stick of sealing wax until it was soft, then, reaching inside his shirt, took out a ring that he wore on a string around his neck and pressed it into the wax, sealing the letter.