Seize her, imprison her, take her away.
The Monk's Tun case was, as I said, but a lark, the sort of noncase that even a dyed-in-the-wool romantic like Watson would have been hard put to whip into a thrilling narrative. The police would surely have caught Sylvester before long, and truly, thirty guineas and four hams, even in those days of chronic food shortages, were hardly the stuff of Times headlines.
Nonetheless, across all the tumultuous events of the intervening years that one case stands out in my mind, for the simple reason that it marked the first time Holmes had granted me free rein to make decisions and take action. Of course, even then I realised that, had the case been of any earthly significance whatsoever, I should have been kept firmly in my auxiliary role. Despite that, the glow of secret satisfaction it gave me lasted with a curious tenacity. A small thing, perhaps, but mine own.
Five weeks later, however, a case came upon us that put the Monk's Tun affair into its proper, childish perspective. The kidnapping of the American senator's daughter was no lark, but a matter of international import, dramatic, intense, a classic Holmes case such as I had not yet observed, much less been involved with, and certainly not as a central protagonist. The case brought into sharp focus the purpose surrounding my years of desultory training, brought forcibly home the entire raison d'être of the person Sherlock Holmes had created of himself, and moreover, brought me up against the dark side of the life Holmes led.
That single case bound us together in ways my apprenticeship never had, rather as the survivors of a natural disaster find themselves inextricably linked for the rest of their days. It made me both more certain of myself and, paradoxically, more cautious now that I had witnessed at first hand the potentially calamitous results of my uncon sidered acts. It changed Holmes, too, to see before him the living result of his years of half-frivolous, half-deliberate training. I believe it brought him up sharply, to be confronted with the fact that he had created a not inconsiderable force, that what had begun as a chance meeting had given birth to me. His reappraisal of what I had become, his judgment of my abilities under fire, as it were, profoundly influenced the decisions he was to make four months later when the heavens opened on our heads.
And yet, I very nearly missed the case altogether. Even today my spine crawls cold at the thought of December without the mutual knowledge of the preceding August, for the groundwork of trust laid down during our time in Wales made December's partnership possible. Had I missed the Simpson case, had Holmes simply disappeared into the thin summer air (as he had done with numerous other cases) and not allowed me to participate, God alone knows what we would have done when December's cold hit us, unprepared and unsupported.
Toward noon on a blistering hot day in the middle of August our haying crew reached the end of the last field and dispersed, in heavy-footed exhaustion, for our homes. This year the easy camaraderie and rude high spirits of the Land Girls had been cooled by the presence of a man amongst the crew, a silent, rigid, shell-shocked young man — a boy, really, but for the trenches — who did no great work himself and who started at every sudden noise, but who served to keep us at our work by his mere distressing presence.
Thanks to him we finished early, just before midday on the eighteenth. I trudged home, silently inhaled a vast meal in Patrick's kitchen, and, wanting only to collapse between my clean sheets for twenty hours, instead took myself to the bathroom and stripped off my filthy Land Girl's smock, sluiced off my skin's crust of dust and chaff cemented there by sweat, and, feeling physically tired but glowing with strength and well-being and marvelling in the sense of freedom following a hard job well done, I mounted my bicycle and, hair streaming damply behind me, rode off to see Holmes.
Cycling slowly up the lane to the cottage, my ears were caught by a remarkable sound, distorted by the stone walls on either side. Music, but no music I had before heard emanating from Holmes' house, a gay, dancing tune, instantly invigorating and utterly unexpected. I stood more firmly on the pedals, rode around the house to the kitchen door, and let myself in, and when I followed the sound through to the sitting room, for an instant I failed to recognise the dark-skinned, black-haired man with the violin tucked under a chin scruffy with two days of stubble. The briefest flash of apprehension passed across the familiar face, followed rapidly by a gleam of gold from his left incisor as this exotic ruffian gave me a rakish grin. I was not fooled. I had seen his original reaction to my unexpected appearance in his doorway, and my guard went instantly up.
"Holmes," I said. "Don't tell me, the rector needs a gipsy fiddler for the village fête."
"Hello, Russell," he said with studied casualness. "This is an unanticipated pleasure. I am so glad you happened to stop by, it saves me from having to write. I wanted to ask you to keep track of the plant experiment. Just for a few days, and there's nothing terribly — "
"Holmes, what is going on?" He was entirely too innocent.
"'Going on'? Nothing is 'going on'. I find I must be away for a few days, is all."
"You have a case."
"Oh, come now, Russell — "
"Why don't you want me to know about it? And don't give me some nonsense about governmental secrets."
"It is secret. I cannot tell you about it. Later, perhaps. But I truly do need you to — "
"jigger the plants, Holmes," I said angrily. "The experiment is of no importance whatsoever."
"Russell!" he said, offended. "I only leave them because I have been asked by someone I cannot refuse."
"Holmes," I said wamingly, "this is Russell you're talking to, not Watson, not Mrs. Hudson. I'm not in the least bit intimidated by you. I want to know why you were planning to sneak out without telling me."
"'Sneak out'! Russell, I said I was glad you happened by."
"Holmes, I'm not blind. You're in full disguise except for your shoes, and there's a packed bag in the corner. I repeat: What is going on?"
"Russell, I am very sorry, but I cannot include you in this case."
"Why not, Holmes?" I was becoming really very angry. So was he.
"Because, damn it, it may be dangerous!"
I stood staring across the room at him, and my voice when it came was, I was pleased to note, very quiet and even.
"My dear Holmes, I am going to pretend you did not say that. I am going to walk in your garden and admire the flowers for approximately ten minutes. When I come back in we will begin this conversation anew, and unless you wish to divorce yourself from me entirely, the idea of protecting little Mary Russell will never enter your head." I walked out, closing the door gently, and went to talk with Will and the two cats. I pulled some weeds, heard the violin start up again, this time a more classical melody, and in ten minutes I went back through the door.
"Good afternoon, Holmes. That's a natty outfit you're wearing. I should not have thought to wear an orange tie with a shirt that particular shade of red, but it is certainly distinctive. So, where are we going?"
Holmes looked at me through half-shut eyes. I stood blandly in the doorway, arms folded. Finally he snorted and thrust his violin into its disreputable case.
"Very well, Russell. I may be mad, but we shall give it a try. Have you been following the papers, the Simpson kidnapping case?"
"I saw something a few days ago. I've been helping Patrick with the hay."
"Obviously. Take a look at these while I put your persona together."
He handed me a pile of back issues of The Times, then disappeared upstairs into the laboratory.
I sorted them by date. The first, dated the tenth of August, was a small item from a back page, circled by Holmes. It concerned the American Senator Jonathan Simpson, leaving to go on holiday with his family, a wife and their six-year-old daughter, to Wales.
The next article was three days later, the central headline on the first page of the news. It read:
SENATOR'S DAUGHTER KIDNAPPED
HUGE RANSOM SOUGHT
A carefully typed ransom note had been received by the Simpsons, saying simply that she was being held, that Simpson had one week to raise £20,000, and that if he went to the police the child would die. The article did not explain how the newspaper had received the information, or how Simpson was to keep the police out after it had been on the front page. The newsworthiness of the case gradually dwindled, and today's paper, five days after the heavily leaded kidnap headlines, held a grainy photograph of two haggard-looking people on a back page: the parents.
I went and perched my shoulder against the door of the laboratory as Holmes measured and poured and stirred.
"Who called you in?"
"Apparently Mrs. Simpson insisted."
"You don't sound pleased."
He slammed down a pipette, which of course shattered.
"How could I be pleased? Half of Wales has trudged the hillside into mud, the trail is a week old, there are no prints, nobody saw anyone, the parents are hysterical, and since nobody has any idea of what to do, they decide to humour the woman and bring in old Holmes. Old Holmes the miracle worker." He stared sourly at his finger as I fastened a plaster to it.
"Reading that drivel of Watson's, a person would never know I'd had any real failures, the kind that grind away and keep one from sleeping. Russell, I know these cases, I know the feel of how they begin, and this has all the marks. It stinks of failure, and I don't want to be anywhere near Wales when they find that child's body."
"Refuse the case, then."
"I can't. There's always a chance they overlooked something, that these suspicious old eyes might see something." He gave a sharp bark of cynical laughter. "Now, there's a morsel for Watson's notes: Sherlock Holmes trusting in luck. Sit down, Russell, and let me put this muck on your face."
It was horrid, warm and black and slimy like something the dog left behind, and had to go up my nose, in my ears, and around my mouth, but I sat.
"We will be a pair of gipsies. I've arranged for a caravan in Cardiff, where we'll see the Simpsons and then make our way north. I had planned to hire a driver, but since you've been practicing on Patrick's team, you can do it. I don't suppose you've picked up any useful skills at Oxford, such as telling fortunes?"
"The girl downstairs from me there is a fiend for Tarot. I could probably imitate the jargon. And there's the juggling."
"There was a deck in the cupboard — Sit still! I told Scotland Yard I'd be in Cardiff tomorrow."
"I thought the ransom note said they had one week? What can you expect to do in two days?"
"You overlooked the agony columns in the papers," he scolded. "The deadline was as much a pro forma demand as the insistence that the police be kept out of it. Nobody takes such demands seriously, least of all kidnappers. We have until the thirtieth of August. Senator Simpson is trying to raise the money, but it will come near to breaking him," he added in a distracted voice, and smeared the repulsive goop onto my eyelids. "A senator, even a powerful one like Simpson, is not always a rich man."
"We're going to Wales. You think the child is still there?"
"It is a very remote area, no one heard an automobile after dark, and the police had every road blocked by six o'clock in the morning. The roadblocks are still up, but Scotland Yard, the Welsh police, and the American staff all think she's in London. They're busy at that end, and they've thrown us Wales as a sop to get the Simpsons out from under their feet. It does mean that we'll have a relatively free hand once we're there. Yes, I think she is still in Wales; not only that, I think she's within twenty miles of the place from which she disappeared. I said sit still!" he growled. He was rubbing the sludge into my ear, so I could not see his face.
"A cool character, if that's the case," I offered, not meaning the child.
"Cool, as you say. And careful: The notes are on cheap, common paper, in common envelopes, typed on the second most common kind of typewriter, three or four years old, and mailed in busy post offices across London. No fingerprints. The spelling, choice of words, and punctuation are consistently atrocious. The layout on the page is precise, the typist indents exactly five spaces at the beginning of each paragraph, and the pressure on the keys indicates some familiarity with typing. Other than the window dressing of illiteracy, the messages are clear and not overly violent, as these things go."
"Window dressing?"
"Window dressing," he said firmly. "There is a mind behind this, Russell, not some casual, uneducated lout." In his face and in his voice a total abhorrence of the crime itself fought a losing battle with his constitutional relish for the chase. I said nothing, and he continued to coat my hands and arms past the elbow with the awful stuff. "That is why we will take no risks, assume no weaknesses on their part. Our disguise is assumed the instant we step outside of that door over there, and not let down for a moment. If you cannot sustain it, you'd best say so now, because one slip could mean the child's life. To say nothing of the political complications that will result if we allow a valued and somewhat reluctant Ally's representative to lose his child while on our soil."
His voice was almost mild, but when he looked into my eyes I nearly quailed before him. This was no game of putting on Ratnakar Sanji's turban and a music-hall accent, where the greatest risk was being sent down; the penalty for failure in this rôle could be a child's life. Could even be our own lives. It would have been easy, then, to excuse myself from the case, but — if not now, I asked myself, when? If I refused now, would I ever find the necessary combination of courage and opportunity again? I swallowed, and nodded. He turned and put the beaker on the table, where it would sit, undisturbed, to greet our weary eyes when we returned.
"There," he said. "Let us hope it doesn't stop up the plumbing again. Go have your bath and rinse this through your hair."
I took the bottle of black, viscous dye across the corridor to the bathroom, and some time later stood looking in the mirror at a raven-haired young woman with skin the colour of milky coffee and a pair of exotic blue eyes, dressed in a multitude of voluminous skirts from Holmes' trunks, draped with colourful scarfs and a hotchpotch of heavy yellow gold and bright, cheap trinkets at my neck and wrists. I put on my spectacles to study my reflection in the glass, decided that my standard ones were too scholarly and exchanged them for a pair with heavier gold rims and lightly tinted lenses. The effect was incongruous, but oddly appropriate — a modern variation on the conspicuous wealth I already wore. I stepped back to practise a seductive, flashing smile, but only succeeded in making myself giggle.
"Fortunately, it is Mrs. Hudson's day off," was all Holmes said when I swirled into the sitting room. "Sit down, and we shall see what you can do with these cards."
We left after dark to meet the last train going east. I telephoned from the cottage to let my aunt know that I had decided to spend a few days with my friend Lady Veronica in Berkshire, her grandmother had just died and she needed the assistance of her friends, not to expect me back for a week, and I rang off in the midst of her queries and protests. I should have to deal with her anger when I returned, but at least she was not about to complicate matters by calling in the police over her missing niece.
At the station we climbed down from the wheezing omnibus and took our multiple parcels over to the ticket window. I slipped my spectacles from my nose into my pocket, lest the familiar Seaford agent think to look twice at me, but even half-blind there was no mistaking the expression of dislike on his face, held in by the thin rein of his official manners.
"Yes, sir?" he said coldly.
"First class to Bristol," Holmes muttered.
"First class? I'm sorry, there won't be anything suitable. You'll find the second class quite comfortable this time of night."
"Naow, s'got to be first class. 'S me daughter's birfday, she wants a first class."
The agent looked at me, and I smiled shyly at him (which was, I thought, a bit like schoolgirl braids on a lady of the evening, but it seemed to soften him).
"Well, perhaps, it being night we might be able to find something. You'll have to stay in your compartment, though. No wandering about, bothering the other passengers."
Holmes drew himself up and glared blackly at the man.
"If they'll not be bothering us, we'll not be bothering them. How much is it?"
Scandalised eyes looked away as we climbed colourfully aboard with our various bags and parcels (I imagined letters going off in the morning post to the editorial page of The Times, but as we were busy for the next few days I do not know if they actually appeared), and we had a compartment to ourselves for the trip. I opened the case file Holmes handed me, but the long day's work under the hot sun and the tension conspired against me. Holmes woke me at Bristol, where we found rooms in a sleazy hotel near the station and slept until morning.
The remainder of the trip to Cardiff was decidedly less luxurious than the first part, and Holmes had to help me off the train, as my leg had fallen asleep with the weight of the bags and the woman wedged in beside me. When I could walk, he put his whiskered face against my ear and spoke in a low voice.
"Now, Russell, we shall see what you can do on your own. We have an appointment with the Simpsons in the office of Chief Inspector Connor at half-twelve. It would not be the best of ideas to go in through the front door, as I told you, so we are going to be arrested. Kindly don't manhandle your persecutor too badly. His bones are old."
He picked up the two smallest bags and walked away, leaving me to deal with the remaining four. I followed him to the exit, past a uniformed constable watching the crowd — and us, closely no doubt. The crush at the door grew thick, and Holmes stopped suddenly to avoid stepping on a child. I bumped into him and dropped a parcel, and as I struggled to retrieve it it was kicked away by various feet, beginning with a pair of garish gipsy boots. By dint of elbows and shoulders I followed the parcel, and as I reached down to pick it up something suddenly slammed me against the wall, where I collapsed in a heap of skirts and baggage. A voice snarled loudly above my head.
"Aw for God's sake, can you not 'ang on t'yer bags? I shoulda brought your brother; at least he can stand up straight." A hard hand seized my arm and jerked me upright, but when it let go too soon I stumbled into a group of elegantly dressed men. Gloved hands kept me from falling, but all movement through the doors had come to an abrupt halt.
"Damn you, girl, you're worse than your mother for falling into the arms of strange men. Get over here and pick up your things," he yelled and, hauling me out of the supporting hands of my rescuers, shoved me hard towards the bags. Tears had come into my eyes with the pain of the wall's initial impact, and now I groped blindly for the handles and strings. A murmur of properly accented voices protested my mistreatment, but none moved to stop my "father."
"But Da', they was only tryin' to help me — "
I saw his hand coming towards me and moved with it, but it still connected with a crack. I cowered against the wall with my arms over my head and cried out piteously when his shoe kicked the valise beneath me.
Finally a police whistle rang out.
"Stop you that, man," cried the Welsh voice of authority. "There's shameful, there is, hurting a child."
"She's no child, and she needs some sense beat into her."
"That you will not, man. No," he shouted, and grabbed Holmes' upraised arm. "We'll not be having that. There's to the station with the both of you; we shall see if that cools your tempers." He looked at me more closely and then turned to the group of men. "Perhaps you gentlemen might care to check your pockets, see if there might be anything missing?"
To my relief there was nothing, although I would not have put it past Holmes to add that bit of verisimilitude to the proceedings. The constable made good his threat anyway, and as my voice joined with Holmes in vociferous abuse we were bundled into the back of a police van and taken away. Once inside the wagon we did not look at each other. I sniffed occasionally. It concealed the smile that kept creeping onto my lips.
At the station a PC seized Holmes' handcuffed arm and led him roughly away. My own young constable and the matronly sort he handed me over to both seemed undecided as to whether I was an innocent victim or a worse scoundrel than my father, and it required an enormous amount of effort and a tedious amount of time before I could make myself sufficient of a nuisance to be granted my request, which was a brief interview with Chief Inspector Connor. Finally, I stood outside the door that held his name on a brass plaque. The tight-lipped, over-corseted matron hissed at me to stay where I was and went to speak with a secretary. Matron glared at me, secretary raked me with scandalised eyes, but I did not care. I was there, and it was only twenty past twelve.
To my dismay, however, the secretary decided to stand firm. She shook her head, waved her hand at the closed door, and was very obviously refusing me access to the man inside. I dug out a pen and a scrap of paper from my capacious pockets and, after a moment's thought, wrote on it the name of the child whose fate brought us here. I folded it three times and walked over to hold it out deferentially to the secretary.
"I'm terribly sorry, Miss," I said. "I shouldn't think of bothering the chief inspector if I weren't absolutely certain that he would want to see me. Please, just give this to him. If he does not wish to see me after that, I shall go away quietly."
She looked at the folded scrap, but perhaps the uplifted syntax got through to her, because she took my note and went resolutely through the door. Voices from inside cut off short, then came hers in tones of apology.and then an abrupt and stifled exclamation was all the warning I had before a florid, middle-aged man with thinning red hair and an ill-fitting tweed suit stormed out of the doorway, growling magnificently in the rumble and roll of his Welsh origins.
"If the Pharaoh in Egypt had been so plagued by Moses as I have been by all the troublemakers of the world he would have delivered the children of Israel in his own carriage to the very gates of Jericho. Now look you here, Miss," he pinned me down with a pair of tired, brilliant blue eyes, "there's pitiful, there is, the sly ways of your sort, coming by here and — "
I leant into the gale of his speech and contributed two low, forceful words of my own.
"Sherlock Holmes," I pronounced. His head snapped up as if I had slapped him. He took a step back and ran his eyes over me, and I was amused to see him think that even a man famous throughout the world for his skill at disguise was not likely to be the person before him. His eyes narrowed.
"And how are you knowing about — "
He stopped, glanced at the startled woman in the doorway, went back to close his door, and then led me away into a smaller, shabbier office than the one I had caught a glimpse of — an interview room, with three doors. He closed the door behind us.
"You will explain yourself," he ordered.
"With pleasure," I said sweetly. "Would you mind awfully if I were to sit down?"
For the first time he actually looked at me, drawn up short by the thick Oxford drawl emerging from the gipsy girl, and I reflected upon the extraordinary effect gained by speech that is incongruous with one's appearance. He gestured to a chair, and I took possession of it. I sat. I waited. He sat.
"Thank you," I said. "There is a certain Romany gentleman being held in your cells — my 'father'. That is actually Sherlock Holmes. I understand that he did not wish it known that he was being called in on the Simpson case, so we chose to arrive for the appointment through the back door, shall we say, rather than the front. Your officers were very polite," I hastened to reassure him, not altogether truthfully.
"Jesus God," he swore under his breath. "Sherlock Holmes in the lockup. Donaldson!" he bellowed. A door opened behind me. "I want here the gipsy they arrested by the train station. You will bring him, yourself."
Heavy silence descended, until Connor abruptly recalled the two Americans in his office and scrambled away. His voice vibrated through the intervening space for several minutes. He then came out of his office and spoke in a low voice to his secretary.
"We will drink tea, Miss Carter, biscuits, whatever. A tray in to the Simpsons, if you please. And by here, three teas. Yes, three."
He came back into the interview room, lowered himself cautiously into the chair across from me, and folded his hands together on top of the table.
"Nah," he said, "there's funny there is. Why was I not told — " He stopped, and with an effort shook the Welsh from his tongue and put on English like a uniform. "That is to say, I did not know that there would be someone accompanying him."
"He himself did not know it until yesterday. My name is Mary Russell. I shall be his assistant on the case."
His mouth slid out of control, but he was saved from further conversation on the matter by the arrival of Donaldson and Holmes. The latter was still in handcuffs, but his eyes sparkled with amusement, and he was patently enjoying himself despite the bruise darkening the ridge of his already dusky cheek and the puffmess to the left side of his mouth. Connor looked at him aghast.
"Donaldson, what does this mean? What has happened to his face? And take those cuffs from his hands."
Holmes cut in with his roughened voice.
"Naow, cap'n, there bain't no problem. They was just doin' their job, like."
Connor looked hard at Holmes, then glanced at his sergeant.
"Mister Donaldson, you will go down into the cells and you will tell the men with the ready fists that I will have no more of that thing. I do not care what the man before me permitted or encouraged; there will be no more of it. There's bad, that is, Donaldson. Go, you."
Miss Carter came in as the sergeant slunk out and put a tray with three cups and a plate of cakes on the table, keeping her eyes to herself but positively radiating curiosity. Evidently we were not Connor's normal variety of tea guests.
The door closed behind her, and Holmes came to sit in the chair next to mine.
"You are quite to time, Russell. I trust I did not harm you?"
"A few bruises, nothing more. You managed to miss my spectacles. And you?"
"As I said, there were no problems. Chief Inspector Connor, I take it you have met Miss Russell?"
"She — introduced herself. As your 'assistant’. I ask you, Mr. Holmes, is this truly necessary?"
There were multiple layers insinuated into his question but, innocent that I was, I did not immediately read them — until I saw the way Holmes was just looking at the man, and suddenly I felt myself flush scarlet head to toe. I stood up.
"Holmes, I think you would be better off alone on this case, after all. I shall return home — "
"You will sit down." With that note in his voice, I sat. I did not look at Chief Inspector Connor.
"Miss Russell is my assistant, Chief Inspector. On this case as on others." That was all he said, but Connor sat back in his chair, cleared his throat, and shot me a brief glance that was all the apology I would have, considering that nothing had actually been said aloud.
"Your assistant. Fine."
"That is correct. Her presence makes no difference with the arrangements, however. Are the Simpsons here?"
"In the next room. I thought you and I might have a word, before."
"Quite. We shall leave the city immediately we have seen them. I assume that the roadblocks are still up but that your men are away from the area, as I specified."
"As you asked," Connor agreed, though the resentment in his voice said clearly that he had been forced to follow direct orders from above and was none too happy about it.
Holmes looked up sharply, then settled back deliberately into his chair, his long fingers laced across his stained waistcoat and a thin smile on his lips. "Perhaps we need clarify this matter, Chief Inspector. I 'asked' for nothing. I certainly did not 'ask' that this case be wished upon me. You people approached me, and I only accepted after it had been agreed by all parties that my orders take priority in regards to those few square miles of Welsh countryside. Call them requests if you like, but do not treat them as such. Furthermore, I wish to make clear that Miss Russell here is my official representative, that if she appears without me, any message or 'request' is to be honoured, immediately and without cavil. Are we quite in agreement, Chief Inspector?"
"Nah, Mr. Holmes," Connor began to bluster, the Welsh rhythm creeping back into his throat, "I can hardly think — "
"That is eminently clear, young man. Were you to pause for thought you might realise that a simple 'yes' or 'no' would suffice. If you agree, then we shall speak with the Simpsons and get on with the job. If your answer is 'no,' then you may give Miss Russell back her bags, and I in return will hand you back your case. The decision is entirely yours. Personally I should be glad to get back to my experiments and sleep in my own bed. Which shall it be?"
Cold grey eyes locked with brilliant blue ones, and after a long minute, blue wavered.
"Have no choice, do I? That woman'd have my head." He shoved back from the table, and we followed the disgruntled chief inspector through the room's third door and into his office.
The two people who looked up at our entrance wore catastrophe on their aristocratic faces, that stretched appearance of human beings who have passed the threshold of terror and exhaustion and can feel only a stunned apprehension of what will come next. Both of them were grey, unkempt.and fragile. The man did not stand when we came in, only looked past us at Connor. The tea on the desk was untouched.
"Senator, Mrs. Simpson, may I introduce Mr. Sherlock Holmes and his assistant, Miss Mary Russell."
The senator reared back like the chief mourner at a funeral confronted by a tasteless joke, and Holmes stepped forward quickly.
"I must apologise for my singular appearance," he said in his most plummy Oxbridgian. "I thought it best for the sake of your daughter's safety that I not be seen entering the station, and came in, as it were, through the servant's entrance. I assure you that Miss Russell's disguise is every bit as sham as the gold tooth I am wearing." Simpson's feathers went down, and he rose to shake Holmes' hand. Mrs. Simpson, I noticed, seemed blind to what Holmes and I looked like: From the moment Connor spoke his name her haunted eyes had latched onto Holmes like a drowning woman staring at a floating spar and followed his every move as he shifted a chair around to sit directly in front of them. I sat to one side, and Connor went around to take up his normal chair behind the desk, separated by it from the amateur and unconventional happenings before him.
"Now," said Holmes briskly, "to business. I have read your statements, seen the photographs, reviewed the physical evidence. There is little purpose served in forcing you to go through it all yet again. Perhaps I might merely state the sequence as I understand it, and you will please correct me if I stray." He then went over the information gained from the file and the newspapers: the decision to strike off into the hills of Wales with only a tent, the train to Cardiff and the car up into the hinterland, two days of peace, and the third day waking to find the child vanished from her sleeping roll.
"Did I miss anything?" The two Americans looked at each other, shook their heads. "Very well, I have only two questions. First, why did you come here?"
"I'm afraid I — insisted," said Mrs. Simpson. Her fingers were twisting furiously at a delicate lace handkerchief in her lap. "Johnny hasn't had so much as a day off in nearly two years, and I told him — I told him that if he didn't take a vacation, I was going to take Jessie and go home." Her voice broke and in an instant Holmes was before her, with that compassion and understanding for a soul in trouble that was so characteristic of him, yet which for some reason always took one by surprise. This time he went so far as to seize her hand, in order to force her to meet his gaze.
"Mrs. Simpson, listen to me. This was not an accident," he said forcibly. "Your daughter was not kidnapped because she just happened to be on that hill at the wrong time. I know kidnappers. Had she not been taken here in Wales, it would have been while out with her nurse at the park, or from her bedroom at home. This was a deliberate, carefully planned crime. It was not your fault."
She, of course, broke down completely, and it took copious supplies of handkerchiefs and a judicious application of brandy before we could return to the point.
"But why here?" Holmes persisted. "How far in advance did you plan it, and who knew?"
The senator answered. "Because we wanted to get as far from civilisation as we could. London — well, I know I'm not being diplomatic, but London's a god-awful place: The air stinks; you can't ever see stars, even with the blackout; it's always noisy; and you never know when the bombs won't start up again. Wales seemed about as far from that as a person could get. I arranged for a week off, oh, it must have been the end of May we started planning it, just after that last big bombing raid."
"Did anyone suggest this area to you?"
"Don't think so. My wife's family came originally from Aberystwyth, so we knew the country in a general sort of way. It's hilly like Colorado, where I grew up, no real mountains of course, but we thought it'd be nice to walk into the hills and tent for a few days. Nothing strenuous because Jessie was — because Jessie's so small. Just someplace quiet and out of the way."
"And the arrangements — the equipment, transportation — an automobile dropped you, did it not? and you arranged for it to meet you after five days — notifying the police and newspapers. Who did all that?"
"My personal assistant. He's English. I believe his brother knew where to hire the tent and whatnot, but you'd have to ask him for the details."
"I have that information for you, Mr. Holmes," growled Connor from his desk. "You'll have it before you leave."
"Thank you, Chief Inspector. Now, Senator, that last day. You went for a walk, bought sausages and bread from a farmhouse, cooked and ate them at five o'clock, stayed inside the tent reading after that because it began to rain. You were asleep by eleven and woke at four o'clock to find your daughter missing."
"She didn't go!" Mrs. Simpson broke in. "Jessica didn't go out of the tent by herself. The dark frightens her; she wouldn't go outside even for the horses. I know she loved those ponies that wander around wild, but she wouldn't follow them off, not my Jessie."
Holmes looked directly into her shell-shocked features.
"That brings me to my second question. How did you feel when you woke up the following morning?"
"Feel?" The senator looked at Holmes with incredulity, and I admit that for an instant I too thought the question mad. "How the hell do you think we felt? Waking up to find no sign of our daughter."
Holmes halted him with a pacifying hand.
"That's not what I meant. Naturally you felt panic and disorientation, but physically? How did you feel phys ically?"
"Perfectly normal, I guess. I don't remember." He looked at his wife.
"I remember. I felt ill. Thickheaded. The air outside felt so good, it was like breathing champagne." The great lost eyes stared at Holmes. "Were we drugged?"
"I think there's a very good chance. Chief Inspector, was anything done on the sausages?"
"Analysed, of course. Nothing there in the two that were left, or in the other food. The old couple on the farm seemed harmless. It's in the report as well."
For another half-hour Holmes continued to question both the inspector and the Simpsons, with little result. No known enemies, they'd seen no strangers the day before, the ransom money was being brought in from America, a loan from his father. At the end of it Mr. Simpson was pale and his wife shaking. Holmes thanked them.
"I deeply regret having put you through this painful ordeal. At this point in an investigation one never knows which small detail will be of vital importance. Russell, have you any questions?"
"Just one, about the child herself. I'd like to know how you think she's taking it, Mrs. Simpson. How do you think she's reacting to having been spirited away by what may well be complete strangers?" I was afraid my question would break her, but oddly enough it did not. She sat upright and looked straight at me for the first time.
"Jessica is a very self-contained, determined child. She is highly intelligent and does not panic easily. To tell you the truth, assuming she is being treated well, she is probably less upset than her mother is." A ghost of a smile flickered across her bare face. There was no more questions.
Connor saw them out and returned with a thick, bound folder.
"Here's the full report, everything we've found, copies of the prints, interviews with the locals, everything. Most of it you've seen already. I imagine you'll want to take it with you, not stop to read it now."
"Yes, I want to be away as soon as possible. Where's the caravan?"
"The north end of town, on the road to Caerphilly. Stables run by Gwilhem Andrewes. He's not what you might call a friend of the police, and I wouldn't trust him with my back turned, but he's what you wanted. Shall I have a car take you?"
"No, I don't think that would be appropriate treatment for a pair of gipsies, do you? And you'll have to have a talk with Miss Carter and Sergeant Donaldson. We do not want the whole police force to know that Senator Simpson spent an hour with two arrested gipsies, do we? No, I think we'll just carry on as if you've let us off with a warning, if you'd be so good as to arrange my release. You know where we'll be; if you need to talk with me, have one of your constables stop me. No one will think twice of a copper rousting a gipsy. But, if he needs to arrest me, have him do it gently. I do promise not to beat up my daughter in railway stations any more." Connor hesitated, then forced a laugh. Perhaps only the circumstances had rendered him humourless.
We rose to take our leave. Connor rose with us, and after a small hesitation, came around the desk and held out his hand to Holmes.
"There's sorry I am, Mr. Holmes, for what you found here in my building. I am newly come here, but I say that in explanation, not in excuse." Holmes took the hand and shook it.
"I found good men here, Mr. Connor. Young men, it is true, but I think from the look of you they will age quickly."
"They will that, Mr. Holmes. Now, I'll be wishing you Godspeed, and a good hunting to you. And to you, Miss Russell."
We were soon out on the street, carrying three bags apiece, working our way up to the outskirts of town where we soon located Andrewes Stables. Holmes left me in the office and went to find the owner. I cooled my heels by juggling for half an hour, desperate for something to read (though strictly speaking I should be barely literate) until I heard voices outside the door, and in came a shifty, greasy character followed by the marginally less disreputable figure of Holmes, smelling strongly of whisky and flashing his gold tooth. Andrewes leered at me until Holmes distracted him by holding money under his nose.
"Well, then, Mr. Andrewes, that's settled. I thanks you for holdin' my brother's wagon for me. Here's what I owes you. Come, Mary, the wagon's out in the yard."
"Just a minute, Mr. Todd, you're a shilling short here."
"Ah, terrible sorry, I must a dropped it." He laboriously counted out three pennies, a ha'penny, and six farthings. "There it is, now we're quit. Get the bags, girl," he snarled.
"Yes, Da'." I meekly followed him, laden with the four largest bags again, through the muck-slimed yard to the gipsy caravan standing in the back. A rough-coated, heavy-legged horse was being introduced between the traces. I deposited my load and went around to help with the process, blessing Patrick's tutoring as I did so, and found that though the arrangement of the harness was different from that of a plough or a hay cart, it was logical and quickly mastered. I climbed up beside Holmes on the hard wooden seat. He handed me the reins, his face a blank. I glanced at the two men standing nearby, arranged the thick straps in my hands, and slapped them hard across the broad back in front of me. The horse obligingly leant forward, and we pulled out onto the road north, on the trail of Jessica Simpson.
Let her be restored — and they will receiveher with extraordinary, pathetic welcome. — The strange hymn of rejoicing.
On the very outskirts of the town Holmes had me pull over and apply the brake.
"We need to do a thorough check on this equipment, I fear," he said. "The last time I hired one of these the wheel fell off. It would not be convenient this time. You strip the horse down, take a look under the traces, and I think you'll find a few sores. Currycomb, rags for padding, and ointment for the sores are in the calico bag." He disappeared beneath the caravan, and while I brushed and treated the puzzled horse, he tightened bolts and applied grease to dry axles. With the horse back in harness, I went around to see if I might be of help and found his long legs protruding from the back.
"Need a hand?" I called.
"No point in both of us looking like mechanics. I'm nearly finished." A minute passed, silent on my part, grunts and low imprecations on his.
"Holmes, there's something I must ask you."
"Not just now, Russell."
"I need to know. Is my presence — an embarrassment?"
"Don't be absurd."
"I mean it, Holmes. Inspector Connor today all but accused you — me — I just need to know if my presence is inconvenient."
"My dear Russell, I hope you don't flatter yourself that because you talked me into bringing you on this delightful outing, that means I am incapable of refusing you. To my considerable — Oh blast! Give me a rag, would you? Thank you. To my considerable surprise, Russell, you have proven a competent assistant and, furthermore, hold some promise for becoming an invaluable one. It is, I can even say, a new and occasionally remarkable experience to work with a person who inspires, not by vacuum, but by actual contribution. Hand me the large spanner." His next remarks were punctuated by grunts. "Connor is a fool. What he and his ilk choose to believe is no concern of mine, and thus far it has not seemed to harm you. You cannot help being a female, and I should be something of a fool as well were I to discount your talents merely because of their housing."
"I see. I think."
"Besides," he added, his voice muffled now by the undercarriage, "a renowned bachelor such as myself, you probably would be more of an embarrassment were you a boy."
There really was no possible response to that statement. In a few minutes, filthy as a miner, Holmes emerged, cleansed himself as well as he was able, and we set off up the road again.
We wobbled along north in the colourful, remarkably uncomfortable little caravan, walking up the hills and whenever the sway of the high wooden seat and the jolts to the base of the spine became too much, which was most of the time. Holmes peppered me with information, badgered me mercilessly into my rôle, criticised and corrected my walk and speech and attitude, forced Welsh vocabulary and grammar down my throat, and pontificated between times on the Welsh countryside and its inhabitants. Were it not for the constant awareness of a frightened child's life and the fraying thread that held it, the outing would have been great sport.
Up through Glamorgan we walked and rode and walked again, into Gwent and then Powys, turning west now into the hilly greensward that curled up toward the Brecon Beacons, all hill farm and bracken fern, terraces and slag heaps and sheep. The shepherds eyed us with mistrust as we rumbled past, although their thin, black, sharp-eyed, suspicious dogs, lying with bellies pressed to the ground, as alert as so many pessimistic evangelists to snatch back a straying charge, spared us not a glance. As we passed through the villages and hamlets children ran shrieking to the road, and then stood in silent wonder staring up at our red, green, and gold splendour, their fingers in their mouths and their bare feet spattered with mud.
Wherever we went, we performed. While the children watched, I juggled, pulled colourful scarves from their colourless pockets and ha'pennies from dirty ears, and when we had the attention of their mothers, Holmes would come out of the pub wiping his mouth with the back of his hand and pull out his fiddle. I told the fortunes of women who had none, read the cracked lines on their hard palms and whispered vague hints of dark strangers and unexpected wealth, and gave them stronger predictions of healthy children who would support them in their old age. In the evenings when the men were present their wives looked daggers at me, but when their ears were caught by "me Da's" ready tongue, and when they saw that we were moving on for the night, they forgave me their husbands' glances and remarks.
On the second day we passed the police roadblock, receiving only cursory abuse since we were going into the area being guarded, not coming out. On the third day we passed the Simpsons' camping site, went on a mile, and pulled off into a side track. I cooked our tea, and when Holmes remarked merely that he hadn't thought it possible to make tinned beans taste undercooked, I took it that my cooking was improving.
When the pans were clean we lit the oil lamp and closed the door against the sweet dusk, and went again through all the papers Connor had given us — the photographs and the typed notes, the interviews with the parents, statements from witnesses on the mountain and from the senator's staff in London, a glossy photograph of Jessica taken the previous spring, grinning gap-toothed in a studio with its painted backdrop of a blooming arbour of roses. Page after page of the material, and all of it served only to underline the total lack of solid evidence, and the family's coming financial emasculation, and the brutal, staring fact that all too often kidnappers who receive their money give only a dead body in return, a corpse who can tell no tales.
Holmes smoked three pipes and climbed silently into his bunk. I closed the file on the happy face and shut down the lamp, and lay awake in the darkness long after the breathing above me slowed into an even rhythm. Finally, towards the end of the short summer's night, I dropped off into sleep, and then the Dream came and tore at me with its claws of blame and terror and abandonment, the massive, shambling, monstrous inevitability of my personal hell, but this time, before its climax, just short of the final moment of exquisite horror, a sharp voice dragged me back, and I surfaced with a shuddering gasp into the simple quiet of the gipsy caravan.
"Russell? Russell, are you all right?"
I sat up, and his hand fell away.
"No. Yes, I'm all right, Holmes." I breathed into my hands and tried to steady myself. "Sorry I woke you. It was just a bad dream, worry about the child I guess. It takes me that way, sometimes. Nothing to be concerned about."
He moved over to the tiny table, scratched a match into life, and lit a candle. I turned my face away from him.
"Can I get you anything? A drink? Something hot?"
His concern raked at me.
"No! No, thank you, Holmes, I'll be fine in a minute. Go back to bed."
He stood with his back to the light, and I felt his eyes on me. I stood up abruptly and went for my spectacles and coat.
"I'll get some fresh air. Go back to sleep," I repeated fiercely, and stumbled from the caravan.
Twenty minutes down the road my steps finally slowed; ten minutes after that I stopped and went to sit on a dark shape that turned out to be a low wall. The stars were out, a relatively uncommon thing in this rainy comer of a rainy country, and the air was clean and smelt of bracken and grass and horse. I pulled great draughts of it into me and thought of Mrs. Simpson, who had called it breathing champagne. I wondered if Jessica Simpson were breathing it now.
The Dream gradually receded. Nightmare and memory, it had begun with the death of my family, a vivid recreation that haunted and hounded me and made my nights into purgatory. Tonight, though, I had Holmes to thank for interrupting it, and its aftermath was considerably lessened. After an hour, cold through, I walked back through the first light of dawn to the wagon, and to bed and a brief sleep.
In the morning neither of us mentioned the night's occurrences. I cooked porridge for breakfast, flavoured with light flecks of ash and so lumpy Mrs. Hudson would have considered it suitable only for the chickens. We then walked up towards the described campsite, taking a roundabout route and a spade to justify our presence.
The site was unattended when we arrived. The tent was still standing, slack-roped and flabby-sided, with a blackened circle and two rusting pans to one side where Mrs. Simpson had cooked her meals. The area smelt of old, wet ashes, and had the forlorn look of a child's toy left out in the rain. I shuddered at the image.
I went up to the tent door and looked in at the jumble of bedrolls and knapsacks and clothing, all abandoned in the scramble to locate the child and now compulsively preserved in situ by police custom. Holmes walked around to the back of the tent, his eyes on the trampled, rain-soaked ground.
"How long have we?" I asked him.
"Connor arranged for the constable on guard to be called away until nine o'clock. A bit under two hours. Ah."
At his expression of satisfaction I let the canvas flap fall and picked my way around to the tent's back wall, where I was met by the singular vision of an ageing gipsy stretched full out between the guy ropes with a powerful magnifying glass in his hand, prodding delicately at the tent's lower seam with his fountain pen. The pen disappeared into the interior of the tent. I turned and went back inside, and when the bedding had been pulled away I saw what Holmes had discovered: a tiny slit just at seam line, the edges pushed inward and the threads at both ends of the cut slightly strained.
"You expected that?" I asked.
"Didn't you?" I was tempted to make a face at him through the canvas, but refrained; he'd have known.
"A tube, for sleeping gas?"
"Right you be, Mary Todd," he said, and the pen retreated. I stood up, head bent beneath the soggy canvas roof, and looked at the corner where Jessica Simpson had slept. According to her parents, the only things missing from her knapsack or the tent had been her shoes. No pullover, no stockings, not even her beloved doll. Just the shoes.
The doll was still there, feet up beneath the tangle of upturned bedding, and I pulled out the much-loved figure, straightened her crumpled dress, and brushed a tangle of yarn hair from her wide painted eyes. The once-red lips smiled at me enigmatically.
"Why don't you tell me what you saw that night, eh?" I addressed her. "It would save us a great deal of troublé." "What was that?" asked Holmes' voice from a distance.
"Nothing. Would there be any objection if we took the doll with us, do you think?"
"I shouldn't think so. They only left these things here for us to see; they have their photographs."
I pushed the doll into my skirt pocket, took a last look around, and went outside. Holmes stood, back to the tent and fists on his hips, looking down the valley.
"Getting the lie of the land?" I asked.
"If you were kidnapping a child, Russell, how would you get her away?"
I chewed my lip for a few minutes and contemplated the bracken-covered hillsides.
"Personally, I should use an automobile, but no one seems to have heard one that night, and it's a goodly hike to anywhere with three and a half stone of child on one's back, even for a strong man." I studied the hill and saw the trails that wandered over and around it. "Of course. The horses. No one would notice one more set of prints with all these here. They came in on horseback, didn't they?"
"It's a sad state of affairs when, being confronted by a hillside, the modern girl thinks of an automobile. That was slow, Mary Todd. Overlooking the obvious. Theological training is proving as destructive to the reasoning abilities as I had feared."
I cringed away and whined at him.
"Aw, Da', it waren't me fault. I war lookin' a't'evidence."
"Harden your t more," he corrected absently. "So, which way?"
"Not towards the road; there'd be too much chance of being seen."
"Down the valley then, or over the hill?" he considered aloud.
"A pity we weren't here a week ago; there might have been something to see."
"If wishes were horses — "
"Detectives would ride," I finished. "I should go further away from the nearest village, I think, along the hill or over it."
"We have an hour before the guard is back. Let us see what there is to find. I'll go up the hill; you take the base of it."
We zigzagged along and up the hill in increasingly wide arcs out from the tent. Half an hour went by with nothing but aching backs and stiff necks to show for our scrutiny. Forty-five minutes, and I began to listen nervously for the Welsh equivalent of "Oy, what's this then?" from the campsite behind us. The two of us reached the furthest points in our arcs and turned back toward the middle. Something caught my eye — but it was nothing, just a gleam of bare stone where a hoof had scraped a rock. I went on, then turned back for a second look. Would an unshod hoof actually scrape into stone? On the whole I thought not.
"Hol — Uh, Da'!" I called. His head came up, and he started across the hillside at a long-legged trot, the spade bouncing on his shoulder. When he came up he was barely winded. I pointed and he dropped down with his glass to look more closely.
"Well done indeed. That excuses your lapse earlier," he said magnanimously. "Let us see how far this might take us." We continued in the direction we had come, walking slowly on either side of the clear path cut by generations of hoofs. An hour later we passed the limits of the police search.
Holmes and I spotted the white patch at the same moment. It was a small handkerchief, nearly trampled into the mud. Holmes worked it out of the soil and held it outspread. In one corner was an embroidered J.
"Was this an accident?" I wondered aloud. "Could she have been awake enough to drop it deliberately? Might a six-year-old do that? I shouldn't have thought so."
We continued, and in a few minutes my doubts were stilled, for to one side of the path a narrow strip of blue ribbon hung limply from a patch of bracken. I held it up triumphantly.
"That's my girl, Jessie. Your hair ribbon."
We walked on, but there were no further signs. Eventually the path split, one going up and over the hill, the other dropping down towards some trees. We stood looking at the two offerings expectantly, but no ribbons or signals caught our eyes.
"I'll take the uphill again."
"Wait. Down near those trees, is the ground scuffed up?" We went down, and there, in a little hollow, were indeed signs of some flurry of activity. Holmes walked around it carefully, and then bent down quickly, reaching for something invisible to me twenty feet away. He continued his scrutiny, picked up another object, and finally allowed me to approach.
"She jumped off the horse," he said, running his fingertips back and forth an inch above the trampled ground. "She had bare feet, although they had taken her shoes; they had not bothered to put them on her. Her hands were not tied. Here," he said, stabbing a finger at a clod of turf, "you see the short parallel lines? Her toes. And here, the longer lines that draw together? Her fingers made those as she gathered herself off the ground and sprinted toward those bushes." Once he had pointed out the signs I could see them, clear despite the intervening rains. He rose and followed the marks left by hoofs and heels.
"She made it this far before they caught her, by her night dress, which popped a button," he held out the object he had picked up earlier, "and by her hair, which was of course loose from having the ribbon removed." He held up several mud crusted strands of auburn hair.
"Dear God," I groaned, "I hope they didn't hurt her when they caught her."
"There's nothing on the ground that tells one way or the other," he said absently. "What was the moon doing on the twelfth of August?"
I was quite certain he did not need me to tell him, but I thought for a moment, and answered. "Three-quarters full, and it had stopped raining. She may have been able to see well enough to tell when the path split, or perhaps she was trying to make it to the trees. In either case, we know where she's come. Quite a child, our Miss Simpson. But I doubt that there will be any further signs."
"It is unlikely, but let us be thorough."
We followed the horse trail for another hour, but there were no more signs or marks of shod hoofs. At the next trail fork we stopped.
"Back to the caravan, Mary, my girl. A bite of lunch, and the gipsies will resume their itinerant musicale."
We got back to the wagon to find company, in the form of a large constable with a very dark expression on his face.
"And what might the two of you have been doing, on this hillside?" he demanded.
"Doin"? We been stayin' the night, I'd a thought that obvious," retorted Holmes, and walked past him to store the spade in its niche.
"And where have you been gone to all momin'?"
"Out diggin' for truffles." He jerked his thumb at the implement.
"What?"
"Truffles. Little roots, very expensive in the shops. The Lords and Ladies like 'em in their food. Find 'em sometimes in the hills."
"Truffles, yes, but they use pigs to find them, not spades."
"Don't need pigs if you've got the gift. My daughter here, she's got the gift of sight."
"You don't say." He looked at me with scepticism, and I smiled at him shyly. "And did this daughter of yours with the gift of truffles find any?"
"Naow, not today."
"Good. Then you'll not mind moving on. Within the hour."
"Want m'dinner first," said Holmes sulkily, though it was closer to teatime than the noon hour.
"Dinner, then. But gone in two hours, you'll be, or it's in a cell you'll find yourselves. Two hours."
He stalked off over the hill, and I sat down and giggled in relief. "Truffles? For God's sake, are there truffles in Wales?"
"I suppose so. See if you can find some food while I dig out the maps."
Holmes' maps were of the extremely large-scale topographical sort, showing the kinds of vegetation, the rights- of-way, and small black squares indicating houses. He folded the table up out of the way and chose a series of maps from a shallow drawer beneath my bunk. I handed him a sandwich and a tin mug of beer, and we walked across the paper floor-covering in our stockinged feet.
"This is our route," he pointed out. "The campsite, here, and the trail going away, roughly along this contour line." The tip of his brown finger followed the contour of the hill, dropped down into the hollow on the next map, and stopped at the Y junction on the edge of the third. "From here, where? She had to be inside, Russell, before light. In a building, or a vehicle."
"But not — under the ground?"
"I think not. Had they intended to kill her, surely they would have done so when she tried to escape, to save themselves further trouble. I saw no indication of blood there."
"Holmes!" I protested in dismay.
"What is it, Russell?"
"Oh, nothing. You just sound so — callous."
"You prefer a surgeon who weeps at the thought of the pain he is about to inflict? I should have thought you had learnt that lesson by now, Russell. Allowing the emotions to involve themselves in an investigation can only interfere with the surgeon's hand. Now, assuming the child was taken as early as midnight, and it is light by five o'clock; without an automobile, that would place the limits they could have ridden approximately here," and he drew a semicircle, using as its centre the Y where the trail had disappeared. "Within this area; a place where a telephone is to hand; a large enough village for the delivery of The Times out of London to go unremarked. You won't overlook the significance of the agony column?"
"Of course not," I hastened to reassure him.
He reached back into his sheaf of maps, withdrew half a dozen of the very largest scale, and fitted them together. We puzzled over the lines of streams and roads, footpaths and houses. I absently wiped a smear of pickle from the map and brushed off some crumbs, and thought aloud.
"There are only four small villages in that direction. Five, if we count this furthest, though it would have forced them to ride very fast. All are near enough to the road, they might have a telephone line. These two villages seem rather more scattered than the others, which might give whatever house they're in more privacy. I can't see that we'll make them all by tomorrow."
"No."
"We have only six more days before the ransom is to be paid."
"I am aware of that," he said testily. "Get the horse in the traces."
We were away before the constable returned, but it was nearly dark before we came to the first village. Holmes trudged off to the pub, which looked to be on the ground floor of someone's home, while I cared for the horse and tried to concentrate my brain on conversation with the children who inevitably appeared at our arrival. I had found that there was usually one who took responsibility for communicating with this strange visitor. In this case the representative was a very dirty girl of about ten. The others kept up a running commentary, or perhaps a simultaneous translation, in a Welsh that was much too fast and colloquial for me to grasp. I ignored them all and proceeded with my tasks.
"Are you a gipsy then, lady?"
"What do you think?" I grunted.
"My Dad says yes."
"Your Dad is wrong." Shocked silence met this heresy. After a minute she plucked up her nerve again.
"If it's not a gipsy you are, then what?"
"A Romany."
"A Romany? There's foolish, there is! They carried spears and they're all dead."
"That's a Roman. I'm Romany. Want to give this to the horse?" A small boy took the oats from me. "Is there anyone in town who'd like to sell me a couple of suppers?" My crowd silently consulted, then:
"Maddie, run you by there and ask your Mam. Go now, you." The tiny girl, torn between the desire to keep watch and the undeniable honour of providing service, reluctantly took herself down the road and disappeared into the pub.
"Have you no pan?" asked a small person of one sex or another.
"I don't like to cook," I said regally, and shocked silence, deeper than before, descended. If the other was heresy, I could be burnt for this. "Is there a telephone in town?" I asked the spokesman.
"Telephone?"
"Yes, telephone, you know, the thing you pick up and shout down? It's too dark to see any wires. Is there one in town?" The puzzled faces showed me this was the wrong village. A child piped up.
"My Da' used one once, he did, when the Gran died and he had to tell his brother by Caerphilly."
"Where did he go to use it?"
An eloquent shrug in the light of the lamps. Oh, well.
"What for do you need a telephone machine?"
"To call my stockbroker." I continued before they could ask for a définition, "You don't get many strangers through here, do you?"
"Oh, many they are. Why, only at Midsummer's, an autocar filled with English came here and stopped, and drank a glass at Maddie's mam's."
"Just coming through don't count," I asserted loftily. "I mean comin' in and eatin' and drinkin' here and stop- pin' for a time. Don't get many of them, do you?"
I could see from their faces that they didn't have any convenient group of strangers to offer me, and sighed internally. Tomorrow, perhaps. Meanwhile —
"Well, I'm here, but we're not stopping long. If you want to run home and tell your people, we'll have a show for you to watch in an hour. Unless my Da' finds the beer here too good," I added. "I tell fortunes too. Run along now."
The supper was good and plentiful, the take from the fiddling and cards poor. Before dawn the next morning we jingled off down the road.
The next village had telephone wires but few isolated buildings. Neither my small informant nor the pub inhabitants could be gently prodded into revealing any recent influx of strangers. We moved on after midday, not pausing to perform.
Our next choice started out promising. Telephone lines, several widely scattered buildings, and even response to questions about strangers caused my pulse to quicken. However, by teatime the leads had petered out, and the strangers were two old English ladies who had come to live here six years before.
We had to backtrack to reach the road to the other villages, and as dusk closed in on us I was thoroughly sick of the hard, jolting seat and the imperturbable brown rump ahead of me. We lit the wagon's side lamps and climbed down with a lantern to lead the horse. I spoke to Holmes in a low voice.
"Could the kidnappers be locals? I know it looks like outsiders, but what if it was just a couple of locals?"
"Who spotted an American senator and thought up a gas gun and letters in The Times on the spur of the moment?" he drawled sarcastically. "Use the wits God gave you, Mary Todd. Locals are almost certainly involved but are not alone."
We crept wearily into village number four, where for the first time we were not greeted by a company of children. "Too late for the little ones, I suppose," Holmes grunted, and looked at the small stone pub with loathing.
"What I would give for a decent claret," he sighed, and went off to do his duty for his king.
I settled the horse, found and heated a tin of beans over the caravan's tiny fire, and slumped at the minuscule wooden table with the Tarot deck, sourly reading my fortune: The cards gave me the Hanged Man, the enigmatic Fool, and the Tower with its air of utter disaster. Holmes was a long time in the pub, and I was beginning to consider moving over to my bunk, travel-stained clothing and all, when I heard his voice come suddenly loud into what passed for the village's high street.
" — my fiddle, and I'll play you a dancin' tune, the merriest of tunes that ever you'll hear." I jerked upright, all thought of sleepiness snatched from me and the beans turning instantly to bricks in my stomach. The caravan's door flew open and in came me old Da', several sheets to the wind. He tripped as he negotiated the narrow steps, and fell forward into my lap.
"Ah, me own sweet girlie," he continued loudly, struggling to right himself. "Have you seen what I done with me fiddle?" He reached past me to retrieve it from the shelf and whispered fiercely in my ear. "On your toes, Russell: a two-storey white house half a mile north, plane tree in front and another at the back. Hired in late June, five men living there, perhaps a sixth coming and going. Curse it!" he bellowed, "I told you to fix the bloody string," and continued as he bent over the instrument, "I'll make a distraction at the front of the house in fifty minutes. You make your way — carefully, mind you — around to the back and see what you can without getting too close. Black your skin and take your revolver, but use it only to save your life. Watch for a guard, or dogs. If you're seen, that's the end of it. Can you do it?"
"Yes, I think so, but — "
"Me sweet Mary," he bawled drunkenly in my ear, "you're all tired out, ain't you? Off t'bed wi'you naow, don't wait up for me."
"But Da', some supper — "
"Nah, Mary, wouldn't want to be spoiling all this lovely beer with food, would I? Off to dreamland now, Mary," and he slammed heavily out the door. His fiddle skittered into life and, heart pounding and hands fumbling, I made myself ready: trousers pulled on beneath my dark skirts, a length of brown silk rope around my waist, tiny binoculars, a pencil-sized torch. The gun. A smear of black from the dirty lamp-glass onto my face and hands. A final glance around before shutting down the lamps, and the rag doll caught my eye, slumped disconsolately on the shelf. On sudden impulse — for luck? — I pushed her into a pocket and slipped out silently into the shadows, away from the pub, to make my way down to the big square house that sat well off the road, the one with no neighbours.
I crept up the road with infinite care but met no one and was soon squatting down among some bushes across from the house, studying it through my binoculars. The rooms on the ground floor were lit behind thin but effective curtains, and other than the voices coming from, I thought, the corner room on the far side, there was no way of knowing what the house concealed. Upstairs the front was dark.
After ten minutes the only sign of life had been a tall man crossing the room in front of the lamp, and coming back again a minute later. There were no indications of outside watchmen or dogs, and I continued up the road, scuttled across at a crouch, and worked my way back to a ramshackle outhouse, which smelt of coal and paraffin. The house's thin curtains allowed lamplight to escape so that the ground around the house was illuminated for night- adapted eyes; ten more minutes in that spot, and nothing moved, other than a fitful breeze.
I fell back from the outhouse and picked my painstaking way through an overgrown vegetable garden, over a fence in need of mending, behind a second outhouse (this one smelling faintly of petrol) and its attached chicken coop, under the branches of a small orchard where the plums rotted underfoot, and up to a third shed whose diminutive size and location would have declared its function even if its aroma had not. It also gave me a full view of the back of the house and its yard.
There was a light on in a room upstairs. From the arrangement of windows I decided there were probably two rooms on this side, with perhaps a small windowless lumber-room between them, and it was the room on the right, away from the tree, that was lit. To my distinct pleasure the house's general decrepitude came to a climax in the curtains of this room, which were either torn or simply not adequately closed, because a shaft of yellow lamplight fell across the sill. If I could get high enough I might see into that room, and I very much wanted to know what lay inside.
I looked around. Somewhere there was sure to be a hill, but in the darkness all I could tell was that it did not tower up immediately behind the house. I looked speculatively at the building beside me. It might give enough height, and the slates looked strong enough to hold my weight. I glanced around for something to step up on, to lessen the scrabbling noises, remembered a discarded bucket among the weeds in the orchard, and went to retrieve it. The bottom had a hole in it, but the sides were sound, and upturned with a board across it the makeshift step enabled me to reach the privy's ridge. I gained the tiny roof and had just begun to congratulate myself on the minimum of noise I had made when the back door was flung open and a very large man with a terrifyingly bright lamp in his hand was revealed on the steps.
Holmes' training held. The mad urge to leap off and dash into the covering darkness washed through me leaving little more than a set of absolutely rigid muscles and a desire to mould myself into the cracks of the roof slates, but before the man was halfway across the yard my mind had notified me that although he was coming towards me, he had nothing in his other hand, and nothing on his mind other than a visit to the room beneath me. I clung there in an agony of trepidation lest the slates creak, mixed with an almost unconquerable urge to hilarity, but when he finally took himself back inside the house (Seven minutes had passed, an eternity!), the amusement faded and left me feeling queasy.
Two other things came to me, slowly. The room he came from had been the kitchen, and, much more important, there had been no reaction to his presence in the yard. Nor, I decided, had he expected there to be one.
Therefore, no dog, no guard. Probably.
The sky was lightening with the moonrise, and as I stood slowly upright I felt as exposed as an elephant on a cricket pitch, and all for naught: The angle was wrong. All my binoculars showed me was the top of the door frame on the other side of the room. I let myself silently off the building, carried the bucket and board back to their resting places, and stood looking at the window, thinking.
Without a guard, there was nothing to keep me from that tree behind the house. From its thick, leafy, concealing, and comparatively safe branches I should have a choice of viewpoints into that lighted room, and although the ground around it and the first dozen feet of trunk were exposed, it was certainly safer than stumbling about the gravel yard waiting for someone else to come outside and step on me.
However, I had first to rid myself of encumbrances. Just beyond the drive a low shape rose, which proved to be a poorly maintained privet hedge, vastly overgrown but easily breached. I deposited my boots and the several skirts behind it, tucked the doll into the back waistband of my trousers and thrust the other belongings into various pockets, and crept across the drive to the wall of the house. Just under eight minutes until Holmes appeared with his diversion, and I spent two of them with my ear against the kitchen window before I was satisfied that all the activity — a card game, by the sound of it — was in the opposite end of the house.
The tree's first branches were too far overhead to jump for, and a straight climb would make too much noise. I unwound the rope from my waist (Always carry a length of rope; it's the most useful thing in the world.) and tossed it at a branch that faced away from the house. On the second try it looped over, and I walked it up the trunk. The crackles and creaks this made sounded like shouts in the night, but when no reaction came I gathered the rope up onto the branch and monkeyed myself up the tree for a view through the curtain.
And the fates were with me, because she was there.
At first all I could see was a bed and rumpled bedclothes, and my heart sank, but when I worked my way out to the precarious end of the limb and looked again I saw against the pillow a small head with auburn brown hair gathered into a rough plait. Jessica Simpson's hair. Jessica Simpson's face.
Half of my task was fulfilled: We now knew she was here. The other half, vastly the more important, was to explore ways to get her out. Unfortunately, there was no nice thick branch leading directly to her window, a fact that even my constipated friend could not have overlooked in the choice of the prisoner's room. However, the tree was much closer to the other room, the dark one. (There came a sudden and unexpected sound from the direction of the town — men's voices raised in song, a first inkling of the kind of diversion Holmes had in mind.) I clambered over to the dark side and saw that one of the branches did indeed nearly brush the house. Suggestive. But once to the house, I considered, what then? There was no convenient ledge connecting the two windows; the guttering was too far overhead; and I did not much care for the vision of Holmes dangling like a spider from a rope wrapped around the chimney pots. No, it would probably mean a surreptitious entrance through the dark room.
Five men, and the possibility of a sixth. Four were playing cards — four voices, I corrected myself, and one wild card for certain. Downstairs? or in with the child? or, in the dark room? It hardly mattered tonight, but tomorrow, when we returned —
It was then that the idea hit me, a mad flash of derring-do that I immediately squelched, shocked at myself. This isn't a game, Russell, I told myself in disgust. Do what you were told, then go back to the caravan.
But the thought had lodged itself like a thorn, and I could not help picking at it while I squatted motionless and attentive in the tree, my eyes open and my mind worrying at this crazy thought, examining it, turning it around, pushing it away, finding it persistent and unwilling to be discarded.
What if I did not wait for Holmes to effect the rescue tomorrow?
Madness. To take a child's life into my own absurdly inexperienced hands — I shook my head as if to discourage an irritating fly and settled myself more firmly into my post of observer. My assigned post. My vital and agreed-to post. The chorus of voices was growing, soaring in almost- audible song, outside the village now and starting up the road. In a minute now the men inside would hear — I shifted, to keep a closer eye on the lit room.
In a moment the niggling idea had returned, stronger, surer. How else could we do it, if not through the dark window with a distraction out in front? There was no point in a direct show of force; a hostage with a gun to her head is even more a hostage than when in a quiet room in bed. And how could Holmes hope to reach her but across these narrow branches? Holmes, approaching sixty and becoming just the least bit hesitant about risking his bones, would have to balance his greater weight and height on this same branch — and in the few days left us before the deadline (How terribly appropriate that word sounded.), while the five men inside were becoming increasingly wrought up, to say nothing of being on their guards for a second unusual happenstance such as the one that was fast approaching on the road.
Madness. Lunacy. I couldn't possibly carry it off, couldn't even carry her off, out the window, across the branch, down the tree and away, not if she fought me, which she would. Even a "self-contained, intelligent" child might well panic at being snatched from her bed by a strange woman with lampblack smeared on her face and carried off a second time into the night.
My mind veered wildly between obedient caution and reckless insanity, between a sensible preparation for future action and the hard knowledge that we might never have the chance to use it, between carrying out Holmes' direct orders and seizing what even common sense told me might be the only chance offered us, and I wished to God that Holmes might miraculously appear beneath my feet and take the choice from me.
They were Christmas carols, I decided with the portion of my mind that was not paralysed with indecision. Somehow me Da' had raised a drunken mob in this tiny place, had summoned thick voices in song, and was driving then down the lane with the goad of his mad fiddle — a magnificent Welsh chorus, singing Christmas carols, in English, in an infinitesimal Welsh village, on a warm August night. Suddenly nothing seemed impossible, and as if the thought had loosed the house from stasis there was movement within.
A shadow moved across the slice of yellow light before me. I hung precariously out and was rewarded by the sight of a man's back. He was in shirtsleeves and a waistcoat, with a dark knitted cap that covered his head down to his wide shoulders, and he was standing at the open door next to the head of Jessica's bed. He leant out into the hallway, paused (Was that a man's voice, shouting something unintelligible above the growing tumult?), opened the door wider, and went through it.
Had it not been for the vision of the broad back going through the door, I should never have done it, never have moved towards the dark window. Even as I moved, even as I looped the silk rope over an overhead branch with muscles and mind freed so blessedly (insanely!) from indecision, a small part still offered to be sensible, made a bargain with the fates that were controlling this night that, if the window did not unlatch, I should withdraw in an instant.
A thump and a series of raucous guffaws reached my ears above the song, and I stepped with one foot from the branch to the window, balanced in a triangle of rope, branch, and sill, took out my pocket knife and (A-here we come a-wassailing among the leaves so green — ) fumbled open its thinnest blade, slid it up between the window frames, and in a brief eternity felt more than heard the latch snick open. I waited, but there was no reaction from within, so I reached down (A here we come a-wand'ring so fair to be seen — ) and eased the lower window up with barely a squeak. I stepped down onto the bare floor boards, taut for attack, but none came; the room was empty, and I let go a deep and shaky breath and moved quickly across to (Love and joy come to you — ) the door. The hallway and stairs were empty, voices raised downstairs both inside and out, the door to the corner room slightly ajar. I pulled the doll from the waistband of my trousers and stepped into the horribly bright hallway. (Arui to you your Wassail, too, and God bless — )
"Jessica!" I whispered. "Don't be frightened. There's someone here to see you." I held the doll in front of me, pushed the door open, and looked down into a very serious six-year-old face. Jessica pushed herself slowly up onto her elbows, studying my black-smeared but evidently un threatening visage, and waited.
"Jessie, your mama and papa sent me to bring you home. We have to go right now, or those men will stop us."
"I can't," she whispered.
Oh God, I thought, what now? “Why not?"
Wordlessly she sat up and pulled the covers back from her foot, revealing a metal cuff and a chain fastened to the leg of the bed.
"I tried to get away, so they put this on me."
The riot outside was coming to a climax, with a crash and the tinkle of breaking glass, followed by furious shouts and a rush of drunken laughter. In an instant they would remember, and we had to be away before then. I had to risk a noise.
"Just a minute, honey. Here, you take the doll."
Her arms went tightly around the beloved object, and I knelt to examine the chain. It was new and strong, fastened at one end to her ankle cuff — which was padded, I was glad to see — by a sturdy padlock, and at the other end to the leg of the bed, held by a bolt the size of my little finger, which seemed to have been welded to its nut. The bed was a cheap one, but the wooden leg was a good three inches thick, glued and fitted into place. I could see only one option, given the time, and could only hope that I didn't break every bone in my foot.
I hoisted up the end of the bed, balanced my weight on my left leg, drew back my right foot, and then straightened it out explosively. The angle was awkward and the jar of it did, I later found, crack one bone, but it was a small price to pay, because the bed now had only three legs. She was free. Careless of noise now, I lowered the bed to the floor, scooped up child, chain, and the stub of the bed leg, and tossed her over my shoulder like a sack of potatoes.
The key was in the lock, so I obligingly turned it as I went out and then pocketed it. Heavy boots sounded on the stairs as I ducked into the dark room. I closed the door, shot out the window, and had a bad moment when I stood balanced precariously between sill and limb and tried to close the window. I nearly dropped her, but she made no sound, just clung to my shirt with one hand and to her doll with the other. I caught up the end of the rope that I'd left hanging there and with it to support me, eased the window down with my aching foot, then half-walked, half-swung up the branch, and had just gained the trunk when the pounding came on Jessica's door. Shouts followed. I tossed the rope up into a branch so its trailing end might not give us away and prepared to drop. "Hang on really tight, Jessie," I hissed, and with her arms and legs wrapped around me we scrambled and fell down the tree, took five huge bounds to the privet hedge, and burst through, losing skin in several directions, and I just had time to place a hand across her lips when the back door slammed open.
This time the man who came out had a weapon in his hand, a massive shotgun. I pressed my fingers more firmly into the warm face and saw him walk out into the yard, under the tree that had held us ten seconds earlier, and look up at the lighted window. He shouted into the house, "She's not come out, Owen. The window's tight shut." I could not make out the answer from within, drowned out as it was by the angry shouts in the road, but the man walked towards us a few feet and peered up into the tree. The child and I breathed at each other and listened to each other's heart beat wildly, but she made no noise, and I did not move a hair for fear of rattling the chain or causing my spectacles to flash in the light from the kitchen. The man walked around for two or three minutes until a voice called at him from the house (It was quieter, I realised.) and he went inside. Immediately the door closed I snatched up child and boots, swung Jessica around piggyback, and trotted down the rough verge in my bare feet.
"You're doing fine, Jessica, just stay quiet and we'll have you out of here. Those men out in front are our friends, though they may not know it yet. We've got to hide very quietly for a little while until the police can get here, and then you'll see your parents. All right?"
I could feel her nod against my neck. I could also feel the rag doll, squashed between us. I moved rapidly ahead of the noisy mob (which was indeed beginning to break up), holding the chain and bed leg securely so as not to rattle. I kept to the blackest shadows, but when I looked back, against the glow from the house I saw an arm wave in wild salute from the midst of the carollers. Holmes had seen us; the rest was up to him. I stopped at the caravan just long enough to gather blankets and food, and took the child back along the road and up a dimly seen hill. My eyes had been in the dark long enough to distinguish vague shapes, and I stopped under a tree and let her slide to the ground. Keeping one hand in light contact with her shoulder I eased my spine, then turned to sit up against the trunk, pulling her, unresisting and unresponsive, onto my lap, blankets around us both.
The relief was overwhelming, and I could only sit, shivering with reaction and with the drying sweat that had soaked my clothes. I was struck by the sudden vision of the expressions on those men's faces when they managed to open the door, and began to giggle. Jessica stiffened, and I forced the incipient hysteria down, took a deep breath, and another, and murmured into her ear.
"You're safe now, Jessica, completely safe. Those men cannot find you now. We're just going to wait here for a while until the police come for them, and then your parents will come to take you home. Let's wrap this rug around you so you don't get cold. Are you hungry?" I felt her head shake side to side. "Right. Now, we'll have to stop talking and be still, as still as baby deer in the woods, all right, Jessica? I'll stay with you, and your doll is here now. By the way, my name is Mary."
She greeted this with silence, and I pulled the rugs around us, put my back against the tree, and waited. The thin body in my arms slowly relaxed, gradually went loose, and eventually, to my amazement, dropped off to sleep, I listened to the last sounds of the beery men returning home, and after half an hour several cars came swiftly up the road. Distant yells, two shots (the child twitched in her sleep), and then silence. An hour later came the sound of solitary footsteps on the road, and the light of a lantern through the trees.
"Russell?"
"Here, Holmes." I took the hand torch from the basket of food and flashed it. He climbed the hill and stood looking down at us. I could not read his expression.
"Holmes, I'm sorry if I — " I began, but the simple and immediate plea for understanding was not to be, for Jessica woke at my voice and cried out at the sight of Holmes in the lamplight, and I moved quickly to reassure her.
"No, Jessie, this is a friend; he's my friend and your mother's friend, and he's the friend who made all that noise so I could take you from the house. His name is Mr. Holmes, and he doesn't always look so funny; he's dressed up, like I am." This soothing prattle took the worst of the tension from her body. I bundled the rugs together and handed them to Holmes and walked down the hill with the child in my arms.
We took her to the caravan, lit a fire, and dressed her in one of my woollen shirts, which flapped around her ankles. The publican's wife produced a hot, thick mutton stew, which we wolfed and the child picked at. Holmes then put the kettle of water on the little stove, and when it was warm he washed and examined my sore foot, wrapped it securely to stop the bone ends from their tedious creaking, and finally used the rest of the water to make a pot of coffee and shave the bristle from his cheeks. Jessica watched his every move. When his face was clean he sat down and showed the child how his gold tooth came out, which was the cause for serious consideration. He then brought his ring of picklocks from his pocket and spread it on the table for her to examine, and asked if she wished him to take the chain from her leg. She cringed away from him and tucked as much of herself as she could get into my lap.
"Jessica," I said, "nobody's going to touch you if you don't want. If you like, I can take it off you, but you'll have to sit on the table — I can't do it with you on my lap." There was no response. We waited a while, and then Holmes shrugged and reached for the picklocks. She stirred, and then slowly pushed her foot towards him. Without comment he got to work and, touching her as little as possible, within two minutes had the shackles on the floor. She gave him a long, grave look, which he returned, and then gathered herself up against me again and put her thumb into her mouth.
We sat, and dozed, and waited, until finally there came another car on the road, which braked to a halt just outside the caravan. Holmes opened the door to the Simpsons, and Jessie flew into her mother's arms and glued her arms and legs around her as if she would never come free, and Mr. Simpson put an arm around both of them and led them to the car, and I found it hard to see properly, and Holmes blew his nose loudly.
Directing all things without gifting an order, receiving obedience but not recognition.
The end of a case is always long, tedious, and anticlimatic, and since this is my story I choose to save myself from having to describe the next hours of weariness and physical letdown and questions and the ugliness of confronting those men. Suffice it to say that the night ended and I crawled into my hard bunk for a few hours of collapse before a fist on the caravan door brought me into the day. Cup after cup of black coffee did not help the soggy thickness in my bones and brain, and it was with considerable sour satisfaction that later that afternoon I watched the last of the cars drive off down the narrow track. I rubbed my tired eyes and propped up my sore foot and thought vaguely of a bath but found I could not summon the energy to do anything except sit on the wagon's back step and watch the horse graze.
It must have been nearly an hour later that I became aware of Holmes, sitting on a stump and tossing his jack knife repeatedly into the tree next to him.
"Holmes?"
"Yes, Russell."
"Is it always so grey and awful at the end of a case?"
He didn't answer me for a minute, then rose abruptly and stood looking down the road towards the house with the plane trees. When he looked around at me there was a painful smile on his lips.
"Not always. Just usually."
"Hence the cocaine."
"Hence, as you say, the cocaine."
I hobbled into the caravan for more coffee and brought the lukewarm cup back into the last rays of the evening sun. The oily slick on top was slightly nauseous, and I abruptly tipped it out, watched it soak into the trampled grass, and spoke in a rush of words I had not intended to say.
"Holmes, I don't think I can sleep here tonight. I know it's late and we should barely get on the road before we had to stop, but would you mind awfully if we didn't stay here until morning? I really don't think I can bear it." My voice came out a bit shaky at the end, but I looked up to see Holmes with a genuine smile in his eyes.
"Mary, me girlie, you took the very words from me mouth. If you'll get the nag in place, I'll have these things stowed away in a minute."
It was considerably more than a minute, but the sun was still above the hills when we turned the painted wagon around and faced back up the road we had come down the day before. I began to breathe more easily, and after a couple of miles Holmes put his back against the caravan's painted door and let out a sigh.
"Holmes? Do you think they'll catch the person behind this?"
"It's possible but not, I think, likely. He's been very cautious. He was not seen — he has certainly never been here, he'd never have overlooked the tree branch, or the curtains. These five were hired and paid anonymously, had no address or telephone number, no means of contacting him other than the newspaper, and received their orders from postboxes all over London: The ones I saw were all from the same typewriter, which will soon be lying on the bottom of the Thames. The Yard may have luck with tracing the money, but something tells me they won't. However, sooner or later he'll put his head up again, and perhaps we'll see him then. Russell? Come, Russell, don't fall off under the wheels, I beg you. Hand me those reins and go to sleep. No, go on. I've been driving horses since before you were born. Get on wi'ya, Mary." So I got on.
I woke up many hours later in stillness and heard the little caravan's back door open. Boots thumped gently onto the wooden floorboards, outer clothing rustled, and Holmes climbed into his bunk. I turned over and went back to sleep.
It was a blessing that we were saddled with the caravan and horse and were forced to make our way slowly to Cardiff. If we had gone off by car and plunged immediately into officiai business and then whisked ourselves back home by train, it would have left me, and perhaps even Holmes, gasping and stunned. As it was, two long days of plodding travel forced us to put the case into its proper place. We rode and walked, Holmes alternated between pipe and gentle, lyrical violin pieces. We talked, but not of the case, or of what I had taken upon myself to do. Leaving the horse and caravan with Andrewes, we piled our assorted bags into a cab and were driven to the best hotel that the driver thought might accept us. It did. The baths were sheer sybaritic pleasure, deep and hot, and four rinses later I was again blonde, with a definite tan colour remaining on my skin. I stood in front of the mirror, tying my necktie, when two taps came at the door.
"Russell?"
"Come in, Holmes, I'm nearly ready."
He let himself in, and I saw that he too remained slightly brown, though the grey had reappeared around his ears. He sat down to wait as I pinned up my still-damp hair, and it occurred to me that he was probably the only person I knew who could simply sit nearby and watch me without one or the other of us needing to make conversation.
I finished and picked up my room key.
"Shall we go?"
The Simpsons, as might have been expected, were grateful and fragile. Mrs. Simpson kept touching her daughter gently as if to reassure herself of the child's presence. Mr. Simpson looked rested and apologised for having to rush about — his words — instead of talking, as he was needed urgently in London. In the midst of it sat Jessica. She and I greeted each other solemnly. I noticed the faint shadow of a fading bruise on her cheekbone that I hadn't seen in the dark. I asked after her doll, and she replied seriously that she was quite well, thank you, and would I like to see her hotel room? I excused myself and followed Jessica down the hallway. (The Simpsons' suite and hotel were considerably more upstage than ours.)
We sat on the bed and talked to the stuffed person, and I was introduced to a bear, two rabbits, and a jointed wooden puppet. She showed me a few books, and we spoke of literature.
"I can read them," she informed me, with the barest trace of self-satisfaction.
"I can see that."
"Miss Russell, could you read when you were six?" Oddly enough there was no overtone of pride here, just a request for information.
"Yes, I believe I could."
"I thought so." She nodded her head in prim satisfaction and smoothed the skirt of the rag doll.
"What is your doll's name?"
I was surprised at her reaction to this simple question. Her hands went still, and she concentrated on the battered face in her lap, biting her lip. Her voice when she answered was quiet.
"Her name used to be Elizabeth."
"Used to be? What is her name now?" I could see that this was important but failed to grasp just how.
"Mary." She spoke in a whisper, and after a few seconds her eyes came up to mine. Light dawned.
"Mary, is it? My name?"
"Yes, Miss Russell."
It was my turn now to look down and study my hands. Hero worship was not one of the topics Holmes had thought fit to tutor me in, and my voice was not quite steady when I spoke.
"Jessica, would you do something for me?"
"Yes, Miss Russell." No hesitation. I could ask her to throw herself from the window for me, her voice said, and she would do it. Gladly.
"Would you call me Mary?"
"But Mama said — "
"I know, mothers like good manners in their children, and that is important. But just between the two of us, I should like it very much if you were to call me Mary. I never — " There was something blocking my throat and I swallowed, hard. "I never had a sister, Jessica. I had a brother, but he died. My mother and father died, too, so I don't have much of a family any more. Would you like to be my sister, Jessica?"
The amazed adoration in her eyes was too much. I pulled her to me so I did not have to look at it. Her hair smelt musky-sweet, like chamomile. I held her, and she began to cry, weeping oddly like a woman rather than a young child, while I rocked us both gently in silence. In a few minutes she drew a shuddering breath and stopped.
"Better?"
She nodded her head against my chest. I smoothed her hair.
"That's what tears are for, you know, to wash away the fear and cool the hate."
As I suspected, that last word triggered a reaction. She drew back and looked at me, her eyes blazing.
"I do hate them. Mama says I don't, but I do. I hate them. If I had a gun I'd kill them all."
"Do you think you really would?"
She thought for a moment, and her shoulders slumped. "Maybe not. But I'd want to."
"Yes. They are hateful men, who did something horrid to you and hurt your parents. I'm glad you wouldn't shoot them, because I shouldn't want you to go to gaol, but you go ahead and hate them. No one should ever do what they did. They stole you and hit you and tied you up like a dog. I hate them too."
Her jaw dropped at so much raw emotion aired.
"Yes, I do, and you know what I hate them for most? I hate them for taking away your happiness. You don't trust people now, do you? Not like you did a few weeks ago. A six-year-old girl oughtn't to be frightened of people." The child needed help, but I was quite certain that her parents would greet the suggestion of psychiatric treatment with the standard mixture of horror and embarrassment. She would, for the present, have to settle for me. Physician, heal thyself, I thought sourly.
"Mary?"
"Yes, Jessica?"
"You took me away from those men. You and Mr. Holmes."
"We helped the police get you back, yes," I said carefully and not entirely truthfully, and wondered what was on her mind. I did not wonder for long.
"Well, sometimes when I wake up, I think I'm still in that bed. It's like — I can hear the chain rattle when I move. And even during the day, sometimes I think I'm dreaming, and that when I wake up I'll be in bed, with one of those men sitting in the chair with his mask on. I mean, I know I'm back with Mama and Papa, but I feel like I'm not. Do you know what I'm talking about?" she asked without much hope.
The experiential reality of the residual effects of a traumatic experience, I thought, in the precise Germanic tones of Dr. Leah Ginzberg, M.D., Ph.D., and then went on almost automatically as she would have, with a push for more truth.
"Oh yes, I do know that feeling, Jessica. I know it very, very well. And it gets all tied up with lots of other feelings, doesn't it? Like feeling maybe it was somehow your fault, that if you'd tried just a little harder you could have gotten away." She gaped at me as if I were conjuring half- crowns from the air. "Like even being angry at your mother and father for not rescuing you sooner." Both of those hit home, like charges at the base of a dam, and the pent-up waters came gushing out in an intense monotone.
"I almost got away, but I slipped and fell and he caught me, and then I thought maybe if I didn't eat anything they'd have to let me go, but I was so hungry, even if it meant I had to — had to use the pot, and then I couldn't get the chain off my leg, and then there was always someone there, and after all those days went by and nobody came, I thought maybe, maybe — well, that Ma- ma'd gone away home to America and Papa wouldn't want me back." This last came out in a tiny whisper, and she picked at the hem of her skirt.
"Do you talk to your Mama about it?"
"I tried to yesterday, but it made her cry. I don't like to see Mama cry."
"No," I agreed, and felt a flicker of anger at the woman's lack of control. "She's been upset, Jessie, but she'll be much better in a few days. Try again then, or talk to your father."
"I'll try," she said uncertainly. I put my hands on her shoulders and made her look at me.
"Do you trust me, Jessie?"
"Yes."
"I mean really trust me? A lot of grown-ups say things that aren't exactly true because they want to make you feel better, but will you believe me when I say I won't do that to you? Ever?"
"Yes."
"Then listen to me, Jessica Simpson. I know you've heard this before from other people, but now you're hearing it from me, your sister, Mary, and it's the truth. You did everything you possibly could, and you did it perfectly. You left your handkerchief and your hair ribbon for us to find — "
"Like Hansel and Gretel," she inserted.
"Exactly, a trail through the woods. You tried to get away, even though they hurt you for it, and then when they had you in a place where you could do nothing, you waited, you kept strong, and you didn't do anything that might make them want to hurt you. You waited for us. Even though it was boring and scary and very, very lonely, you waited. And when I came you acted like the intelligent person you are, and you kept quiet and let me carry you away over those skinny branches, and you were absolutely quiet, even when I squashed your arm coming down the tree."
"It didn't hurt much."
"You were brave, you were intelligent, you were patient. And as you say, it isn't really over yet, and you're going to have to be brave and intelligent and patient for a while longer, and wait for the anger and the fear to settle down. They will." (And the nightmares? my mind whispered.) "Not right away, and they'll never go away completely, but they'll fade. Do you believe me?"
"Yes. But I'm still very angry."
"Good. Be angry. It's right to be angry when someone hurts you for no reason. But do you think you can try not to be too afraid?"
"To be angry and — happy?" The incongruity obviously appealed to her. She savoured it for a moment and jumped to her feet. "I'm going to be angry and happy."
She ran out of the room. I followed, carrying Mary doll, and entered the sitting room as she was declaring her new philosophy of life to her bewildered mother. I caught Holmes' eye, and he rose. Mrs. Simpson made as if to stop him.
"Oh, can't you stay for tea, Mr. Holmes? Miss Russell?"
"I am sorry, Madam, but we have to go to the police station and then catch the seven o'clock train. We must be gone." Jessica hugged me, hard. I dropped down to her level and gave her the doll.
"Can you write yet, Jessie?"
"A little."
"Well, perhaps your mother might help you write me a letter sometimes. I'd love to hear from you. And remember to stay happy with your anger. Good-bye, sister Jessie."
"Good-bye, sister Mary." She whispered it so her mother shouldn't hear, and giggled.
We took our leave of an uncomfortable Chief Inspector Connor, who arranged a car to Bristol so we might catch an earlier train and be off his turf all the sooner. Again we had a compartment to ourselves, though we were no longer more disreputable than our bags. Bristol turned to fields outside our window, and Holmes reached for his pipe and tobacco pouch. Normality tugged at me, becoming more firm with each accelerating clack of the iron wheels, but there was something to be set aright between Holmes and myself before we went further.
"Holmes, you did not wish to let me join you in this case," I said. He grunted in agreement. "Do you now regret that you did so?" He knew immediately what I was talking about and did not pretend otherwise. However, he did not look at me, but took his pipe out of his mouth and examined the bowl closely, retrieved his little tool, and fussed with the tobacco for a moment before answering.
"I was indeed filled with a singular lack of enthusiasm at the prospect. I admit that. However, I hope you under stand that this was not due to any doubts concerning your abilities. I work alone. I always have. Even when Watson was with me, he functioned purely as another pair of hands, not in anything resembling true partnership. You, however — I have seen for some time that you are not the type to be content to follow directions. My hesitation was not out of fear that you might put a foot disastrously wrong, but that I might cause you to do so by misdirection and my longstanding disinclination to work in harness with another. As it happened, by hesitating to give you even the responsibility for creating the necessary diversion, I paradoxically presented you with an opportunity for independently solving the case."
"I'm sorry, Holmes, but as I was — "
"For God's sake, Russell," he interrupted impatiently, "don't apologise. I know the circumstances; you made the correct decision. You should have been quite wrong, in fact, had you let the opportunity slip through your fingers. I admit that I was severely taken aback when I saw you running down the road with the child on your back. It was something Watson could never have done, even discounting his bad leg. Watson's great strength has always been his utter, dogged dependability. His attempts at independent action tend to blow up in my face, so I have never encouraged them, but I allowed you to come in with me on this case because the step had to be taken at some time, and it was best done while I was immediately to hand at every moment. Or so I thought, not knowing that the first time I let you out of my sight you would take it into your head to perform an appallingly dangerous stunt like — " He stopped and turned again to his pipe, which seemed to be giving him considerable difficulty. When it was finally belching smoke to his satisfaction, he looked at me, and in his eye was what I can only describe as a rueful twinkle. "It was, in fact, precisely what I myself might have done, given the circumstances."
In an instant twenty pounds were lifted from my shoulders and five years added to my posture. Although the compliment was distinctly backhanded, I felt ridiculously pleased, though I hid the satisfied smile on my lips by looking out the window. After a few dozen telegraph posts my thoughts turned back to other concerns, to the child in the hotel and the struggle she faced. Holmes read my mind.
"What did you say to the child, to cheer her so? She seemed a different person when we left."
"Did she? Good." The poles flipped rhythmically past, and the steady beat of the wheels called hypnotically, and because he was Holmes I finally answered him.
"I told her some things that someone told me, when my family died. I hope they do her some good."
I sat and watched our reflections in the darkening window, and Holmes smoked his pipe, and we spoke no more until we came to Seaford.
Holmes' assessment of the case had been quite right, of course. The men in Wales had been paid — well paid — for their work and had received their orders anonymously, from a hoarse voice in London and through the post. All had been meticulously planned. They had been instructed in every detail, from the hiring of the house and the purchase of clothing in Cardiff to the construction of the gas gun, the route to take away from the tent, how to word messages in the agony column, the wearing of masks around the child (which had been a relief to me, knowing that murder was not intended) — all this within the space of a few weeks, and all without any trace of the link with London. When the men were taken, all threads snapped, and we were left with five talkative men, some untraceable money, and the knowledge that the puppet-master behind the deed had walked away scot-free.