White sweet-pea thrives not far from where he works. Herbs are separated by narrow brick-paved paths: tarragon and apple-mint and basil, sage and parsley and rosemary and thyme, chives in profusion. A twisted trunk of wistaria is as thick as a man’s thigh, its tendrils stretching for yards on either side of the archway in which, yesterday, the door was found open. It is another cloudless day.
The branches of the cherry tree that marks this corner stretch over the patch that was suitable for hens. Tidying up there, after two hours’ work, Thaddeus hears the distant crunch of car tyres and pauses in his search for the short lengths of binding wire he has used, lost somewhere in the grass. Voices carry to him. A police car has returned.
13
The detective inspector of yesterday, whose name has registered neither in the kitchen nor the drawing-room although it was repeated in both, is less dishevelled this morning. He is wearing a different tie and a clean shirt, the trousers of his brown suit pressed overnight. His name is Baker, christened Brian Keith, but known as Dusty among his friends and colleagues.
The hall door is open when he reaches it, leaving Denise Flynn on the car phone. The hall itself is empty, but the beaky-faced houseman appears, his unobtrusive tread suggesting to a detective’s trained observation a man who enjoys moving silently. Yesterday he had him down as slippery. There was a Maidment he arrested once, an unsuccessful embezzler.
‘You’ve been informed we have a description, Mr. Maidment?’ Since the opportunity is there, he feels he may as well start with this man as with anyone. He repeats the description that has come in, from a railway employee and kids playing on the towpath: a girl with a bundle, in a hurry on the towpath, nervous on the railway platform, a girl of slight build, with glasses, in a T-shirt with a musical motif on it, short blue denim skirt.
‘Ring a bell at all, Mr. Maidment?’
Hoping to hear in response, after the usual moment of blankness, that this could possibly fit a girl of the locality, the detective hears instead that this is a girl who recently came twice to the house, the first time after a nursemaid’s job that was advertised, the second in search of a ring she’d dropped.
‘When was this, Mr. Maidment?’
‘The ring was less than a week ago.’
This is confirmed when the question is put later to the father and the grandmother, who also agree that the description fits.
‘You’ll have the details, sir? Name, address? She would have passed all that on?’.
‘Ernily something, I think.’
Mrs. Iveson shakes her head. Emily was the one with frizzy black hair.
Other first names are mentioned, Kylie and Dawne, but it’s agreed that the girl in question was neither. No addresses or telephone numbers were retained, nor even known, none of the girls being suitable for the position.
‘The girl we’re talking about, would she have brought references? Would there be a name that comes back from being on a reference, sir?’
They remember a reference, passed from one to the other, then back to the girl. It hadn’t impressed them.
‘And the name on it, sir? Madam? Nothing at all comes back? Nothing jotted down, sir?’
‘It wasn’t necessary.’
‘The girl returned, I understand. A ring she lost while she was here?’
‘Yes.’ There is a pause. ‘We mentioned the girl yesterday.’
The man in the hall said the same, regretting he had not made more of this girl’s return to the house.
‘She just turned up, did she?’
‘She telephoned beforehand to ask if we’d found her ring.’
‘I understand, sir. And would she have given her name then?’
‘She may have. But I think I’d remember if she had.’
It has been a shock that the abductor is known; that shows in both their faces, his drawn and exhausted, hers nervily agitated. He remains still, motionless by the bookcases; she moves about, quite different from yesterday. He apparently was puzzled at first, when the girl was on the phone, not knowing who she was, then realizing she was one of the girls they’d interviewed.
‘You realized which girl particularly, sir?’
‘The last one who came, she said, and I remembered.’
‘I understand there have been phone calls to the house during the past few weeks. Nuisance calls.’
‘Yes.’
‘And you answered the phone yourself, sir, when the girl rang about her ring?’
‘Yes, I did.’
‘You don’t recall exactly what was said, I suppose?’
‘She asked if the ring had been found.’
‘And of course it hadn’t?’
‘No.’
‘She then suggested coming out here again?’
‘While she was still on the phone I looked where she’d been sitting. There was nothing there.’
‘Did you expect to find something, sir?’
‘There seemed no reason why the ring shouldn’t be there. I asked her if she could let me have a telephone number. So that we could contact her in case anything came to light.’
‘But you didn’t think anything would.’
‘I’d no idea.’
‘And what number did she give you, sir?’
She didn’t give a number. If she had he would remember writing it down, and Mrs. Iveson interrupts to say that none of this makes sense. Why should a girl who’s hardly known to them tell lies about a ring? Why should she steal a baby?
‘It’s what we’re endeavouring to find out, madam. We can only find out by asking questions. There is no other way.’
‘We’ve told you what we can. We’re both of us beside ourselves with worry.’
‘I do appreciate that, Mrs. Iveson.’
‘My God, I wish you did. Thaddeus — ’
‘They’re doing their best.’
‘Thank you, sir. So the girl preferred to return in person when she might have left a number? That didn’t strike you as odd, sir?’
‘I assumed she wasn’t on the phone. She mentioned looking for her ring on the drive, and on the lane she’d walked along. She was uncertain about where she’d dropped it. She said she was sorry for being a nuisance. The ring wasn’t valuable, she said, but there was some sentimental attachment.’
‘And it didn’t strike you as unusual, sir, that she should want to search your drive for an object as small as a ring? A period of time had passed, after all. Cars presumably had come and gone.’
‘A needle in a haystack, I thought. I think I said it.’
‘Which you must have said again when she arrived out here. The same day was that?’
‘No, some days later.’
‘And what precisely occurred then, Mr. Davenant?’
‘We looked together, down the sides of the sofa. We went upstairs to the nursery.’
‘Why was that, sir?’
‘Because my mother-in-law had brought the girl to the nursery when she was here before.’
‘And the ring was nowhere in the nursery?’
‘No, it wasn’t.’
‘So the girl went away then?’
‘She looked again in this room. She asked if she might, just to be sure.’
‘And there was nothing?’
‘No.’
‘And then she examined the drive and the lane she had walked along? Or had she done that already?’
‘I honestly don’t know.’
‘I don’t think she was looking for anything very much after she left the house.’ Mrs. Iveson intervenes again, calmer now.
‘You observed the girl, Mrs. Iveson?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you were…?’
‘I was where I was yesterday when Georgina was taken. In the shade of the catalpa tree.’
‘Anything about the girl, Mrs. Iveson, when you took her up to the nursery the day she came to be interviewed?’
‘Only that she wouldn’t do. The day she came to look for her ring she stood on the tarmac staring at me.’