Festival, page 2
‘I can’t ever feel relaxed again until Jo’s come back.’
‘Well, have a go, and we’ll see.’
‘You’ll be more comfortable if you undress,’ Piet said.
Sally gave in. ‘All right,’ she said.
The two men went out of the room and stood by the door until she called, ‘Ready now.’ She was in bed, her face, Piet thought, as pale as the pillows. The doctor gave her the injection, and then Piet sat on the bed beside her, holding her hand. The drug acted quickly. She lay back, sighed deeply, and closed her eyes.
*
‘Remember that you are under a heavy strain, too,’ Dr Macdonald said.
‘Oh, yes.’
‘I wish I could help.’
‘You have helped, very much indeed. How long will that drug last?’
‘She should sleep through most of the night, and she’ll be fairly soporific in the morning. I’ll come round early – around six o’clock – to see how she is.’
‘That’s nice of you. And thank you again for coming so quickly now.’
When the doctor had gone Piet returned to the garden room. One of the officers had carefully collected the tea cups, carried them into the kitchen and washed them up. All the policemen were now outside, the detective inspector examining the pram, the others looking at walls and paths for any sign of an intruder. Piet went over to the inspector. ‘Anything to tell what happened?’
‘Yes, sir. It was done in a hurry. The cat-net was dragged off roughly – the tear in that corner looks fresh. It wouldn’t have taken a moment to ease it off properly, but whoever did it was either too nervous, or in too much of a rush. And I’d think he was left-handed. There are good prints of a right forefinger and little finger on the shiny side of the pram – the right-hand side. Of course, we need Mrs Deventer’s prints to make sure that these aren’t hers, but I don’t think they can be – they look like a man’s prints to me. And it looks as if he held the side with his right hand and pulled off the net with his left. You’d expect a normally right-handed person to hold the pram with his left hand and use his right to deal with the net. It’s not conclusive, but that’s what it looks like.’
‘Good observation, Inspector.’ Piet studied the fingerprints himself – they were excellently clear on the varnished black side of the pram. ‘You’ll need my prints, too, but there’s a set already in the fingerprint department at headquarters. I know my own prints fairly well, and I’m sure these aren’t mine, though you’ll have to check. We’ll want photographs before we move the pram, to show the exact position of everything. Have you sent for a photographer?’
‘Yes, sir. He should be here any minute. I daresay that’s him now.’ There was the sound of a car in the drive, and the photographer, who had seen the group on the lawn from the side of the house, came across to them. Calling the detective sergeant, who had been studying the flower beds round the walls, Piet asked him to go over the whole pram for fingerprints, and to help the photographer. Then he asked the inspector to come back into the garden room.
‘We’ll need a local Incident room,’ he said, ‘and it might as well be here. There are facilities for whoever mans it, and it’s conveniently on the spot. There’s a phone in my study next door, but you might get someone to ring the telephone manager and ask him to install a temporary line direct to this room – they’re always ready to help us out, and they get things done quickly. Anyone can use my phone, of course, but it might be a bit awkward to use it for all the reporting, because it would tend to be engaged if someone wanted to ring me.’
‘Right, sir. I’ll ring the telephone manager straightaway.’ When he went into Piet’s study to phone, Piet himself walked slowly round the side of the house from the garden to the drive.
The house was about two miles south-west of Marlborough, on a minor road leading up to the Downs, crowned by the still visible remains of the great earthwork known as the Wansdyke. The minor road for Stable Hill and the Downs was a turning off the main road from Marlborough to Salisbury. Piet had been wholly accurate in talking to Sally when he said that they hadn’t got any near neighbours. There was one house between them and the main road, the house occupied by Colonel Wright, and that was at least a quarter of a mile away. Mrs Baldwin’s house was about the same distance from them the other way, going towards the Downs. Between Stable Hill and Colonel Wright’s place was the Stable Hill paddock, some four acres of rough grass and a few old apple trees. It was bounded by a stream running into the River Kennet. Beyond the paddock was more open land, belonging to Colonel Wright.
The wall of the Stable Hill garden was the boundary between themselves and the land of their next neighbour, Mrs Baldwin. She was a considerable landowner, and her house, a minor ‘stately home’, had lovely gardens which were open to the public. Her land running up to the Stable Hill wall was mostly woodland, famous for its bluebells, a carpet of miraculous blue in this pleasant early May. There were paths through the wood, and they could be entered by people visiting the gardens, forming a popular walk.
The lawn, and the main path round the side of Piet’s house from the front drive, was on the woodland, or Mrs Baldwin’s, side of his property. The path was wide and gravelled, wide enough to take a car, and useful to provide parking space if they had several visitors. Although the walls and flower beds round the garden were all being meticulously searched, Piet was fairly confident that whoever had taken Jo had not come over a wall – for one thing it was broad daylight, and he couldn’t be sure that no one would see him from the house, and, more important, it would have been difficult to climb back carrying a baby. Piet thought it most likely that the intruder had simply walked round the house, with a ready explanation, if seen, that he was calling at the back door. Unhappily, the gravelled path was hard and dry, and showed nothing in the way of footmarks. But there was one place where he had a piece of luck. Only last evening he had been weeding the bed that ran along the side of the house, supporting an array of beautiful climbing roses, and there was a patch on the path, a couple of yards square, where he had scattered earth during his weeding. He had meant to clear it up with a twig broom, but had been called in to the telephone and left it as it was to be dealt with later. Although dry, the earth was soft, and imprinted on it was a clear mark of the sole of a walking shoe, a newish sole, with the ridges of the pattern on it well indented. Piet laid twigs round the patch of earth, and put his handkerchief on the ground to mark the spot. Then he went to find Inspector Lovell.
The inspector had just finished making arrangements with the telephone manager. ‘All fixed up, sir,’ he said. ‘They’ve promised us a phone in a couple of hours.’
‘Good. Now I want to show you something.’ He took the inspector to the patch of earth on the path and pointed to the footmark. ‘It’s certainly not mine,’ he said. ‘The patrol sergeant and the constable who got here first may have walked round the house, but I don’t think they did. They rang the bell at the front door, and I expect Sally took them through the house. They are still here, anyway, and we can soon check their soles. Nobody else has walked round the side of the house since I came. In any case, this is the mark of a left shoe walking away from the lawn towards the drive. I agree that it doesn’t absolutely follow – he might have turned round, looking at something. But it’s more natural to suppose that it was somebody walking away. The footmark couldn’t have been here before seven o’clock last night, because I was weeding up to then. Of course it could belong to some tradesman who came this morning, but it’s Tuesday, and the milkman who comes round to collect his money comes on Fridays. Dr Macdonald has given Sally something to make her sleep so I can’t ask her whether anybody came to the back door during the morning, but I don’t think anyone did – I’m fairly sure she would have told me. But that can be confirmed later. Meanwhile, we want good photographs of the footmark, and photographs showing its position in the drive. You might try taking a plaster cast after it’s been photographed, but I think it’s rather dry for a good impression. You might also do some measuring, and make a rough scale-plan. I’m going to have a look at our policemen’s boots.’
The sergeant confirmed that he and the constable had been taken by Sally through the house, and had neither walked on the path then, nor come back to it from the lawn. A look at the soles of their boots confirmed that neither could have made the footmark. To make doubly sure Piet inspected the footwear of everyone else there, and there was no sole with a pattern in the least like that on the path. As far as he knew there had been nobody else. The police driver who had brought him and gone back with photographs of Jo had not been near the path. It seemed probable that whoever had taken Jo had stopped a car or van in the road outside the house, walked into the garden, picked her up and walked out again. He and the other officers scrutinised the road. It was too hard and dry to show tyre marks, and there had been so many cars coming and going that traces of any one vehicle were unlikely to be visible. ‘It seems almost certain that she was taken off by car or van,’ Piet said. ‘The other houses are even farther back from the road than we are, but the people there must be asked if they heard or saw anything of a strange vehicle. It’s fairly hopeless, but it’s a necessary routine.’ Two officers went off to call at the houses of Colonel Wright and Mrs Baldwin.
Inspector Lovell had a steel measuring-tape in his pocket, and he and Piet carefully measured the footmark. ‘It’s spread a bit in the rather dry earth, but I’d reckon it’s a size nine shoe, or thereabouts.’ Piet’s own shoes were size eight, and the footmark was definitely a size or so larger. ‘Yes, I should think that would be about it,’ he said.
*
Piet and Inspector Lovell went back into the house. A post office engineer was working in the garden room, so they went out again to the lawn, where Jo’s forlorn pram still stood under the big beech tree. ‘Let’s see if we can work out as near as possible the exact timing,’ Piet said. ‘It was about 12.25 when Sally telephoned me. She gives Jo her dinner fairly early, around half-past eleven or a quarter to twelve. So she would have put Jo out in her pram just about midday. Allow twenty minutes for her own lunch and tidying up in the kitchen, and it would have been about 12.20 when she went out to find Jo gone. We can check this the other way round. Sally rushed into the road to look up and down before she telephoned me. I don’t know how long that took, but it could scarcely have been more than five minutes. I remember the time of her call because I glanced at my watch when the phone rang – partly habit, partly because I was thinking of going out to lunch about a quarter to one, and I wondered how much time I’d got. Of course I didn’t know then that it was Sally, but I do know that the time was 12.25. That means that Jo was taken some time between noon, or a few minutes before noon, and 12.20. My feeling is that it was nearer noon than a quarter of an hour or twenty minutes later, because Jo wakes up much less readily when she has just dropped off to sleep. If she had woken when a stranger picked her up she’d have cried, and Sally would certainly have heard her.’
‘That seems reasonable enough, sir. The car would have got away as quickly as it could after they’d got the little girl, and as Mrs Deventer didn’t see any vehicle in the road when she went out, it probably drove away some time before 12.15. On the other hand it may have been waiting in the road for a bit of time before whoever it was went into the garden. Nobody would think anything of seeing a car parked on this road – it’s got a fine view of the Downs to one side, and of Mrs Baldwin’s bluebell wood on the other; anyone might stop for a bit to have a look. The man who took your daughter may have waited around to make sure the coast was clear. So I’d put the arrival of the car or van at any time after 11.30 or so.’
‘Yes, I agree with that. So we’re concerned with any vehicle that may have been on this road between 11.30 and 12.15. It may have got to the road well before 11.30 if it had been up to the Downs and come from that end instead of directly from the main road. This road, as you know, comes to an end on the Downs, just below the Wansdyke. People often leave cars there if they go for a walk. It would be worth sending someone up now, to see if there are any people who were on the Downs this morning, and who may have noticed a vehicle waiting up there.’
‘I’ll do that myself, sir. I think it’s very likely that the car did come down rather than drive up – it would have attracted even less attention.’
‘The only thing is, Inspector, that you haven’t had any lunch yet.’
‘No more have you, sir. All that can wait. If we’re going to get anything at the top of the road the sooner I start asking the better.’
‘Well, thank you.’
‘You’d feel just the same if it was my daughter, sir.’
*
It was getting on for six o’clock. Piet had sent away all the officers except for a detective sergeant who was manning the phone in the garden room, now the ‘Incident room’. There was nothing more to be done at Stable Hill, except the hardest task of all – to wait. Piet brought in Jo’s pram, and felt a surge of pain that it was so pitifully light. At first he put it in the passage where it normally lived, but then, not wanting Sally to see it when she came down, he took it to the garage and put it in a corner at the far end.
Sally remained mercifully asleep. It was time for news on TV. Piet switched on, and was agonised to see Jo’s cheerful face smiling at him from the screen. Well, at least that smiling face would be seen in millions of homes, and would touch millions of hearts. When the news moved on from Jo to something else Piet switched off. He was about to go to the garden room for the company of the sergeant there, when there was a ring at the front door.
‘Victor, how nice of you,’ he said. ‘Do come in – I’m feeling desperately lonely.’
Victor Norton was the deputy chief constable. He was fifteen years older than Piet and had been deputy chief under Piet’s predecessor, but he showed no hostility to the younger man for getting a job that he might reasonably have expected for himself. Piet sometimes felt a little uneasy about the situation, but from the start he’d gone out of his way to make friends with his second in command, and to bolster his authority in every way he could. Relations between them were not close – in the loneliness of Piet’s own job they could not be – but they were cordial. Victor Norton put his hand on Piet’s shoulder in a warm touch of sympathy. ‘You must be thinking it awful of me not to have come long ago,’ he said.
‘I knew you were out at Earl’s Down, and had your hands full,’ Piet said.
‘Yes, but you couldn’t know that I had to send my car to take an unconscious girl to hospital in Swindon, and so I had no radio. The meeting in the village hall lasted most of the afternoon, and it was only when it was over that I heard.’
‘It was most important that you should be at that meeting. I’m glad it wasn’t interrupted.’
‘How is Sally?’
‘The doctor has given her some stuff to make her sleep. Come and have a drink. I need one badly.’
*
‘But Piet, what conceivable motive is there for this dreadful business?’ Victor Norton asked.
‘The police make enemies, and I suppose a chief constable could be said to embody the police.’
‘That might explain an attack on you personally. This is such a damnable way of hurting totally innocent people – innocent, I mean, of anything to be held against the police.’
‘An unfashionable view, I’m afraid. Muggers don’t think about the character of the old people they attack, and when some union calls a strike it doesn’t bother about who is going to get hurt.’
‘I still don’t like it. In a way this seems a curiously personal crime. Could one or other of the art frauds you got sent down before you came here be out for vengeance? There’s even a touch of artistry – fiendish artistry – about the crime itself.’
‘It’s possible, I suppose. But mostly when criminals get caught they don’t take it out on the police. They may want revenge on some mate who shopped them, but not on the police who make the arrest.’
‘This may seem an odd question, Piet, but I’m much older than you are, and it’s a question that has got to be asked. Think hard. Have you got any personal enemies, anybody who hates you, and really wants to hurt you?’
‘I’ve asked myself that. No man can ever know completely how he stands with other people, but I can’t think of anyone who would want to hurt me, or Sally, like this.’
‘Well, we shall just have to go on thinking. Perhaps there’ll be good news in the morning. Perhaps it’s just one of these sad love-starved women who’s seen your baby and wanted her for herself. Normally in such cases the babies are looked after very well.’
*
After Victor Norton had gone Piet busied himself in getting some supper for himself and the duty man, and after that his mother arrived. Sally had next to no relations of her own, and she got on well with old Mrs Deventer, who was exceedingly fond of her. She had come at once to be with Sally when Piet couldn’t be at home. He could certainly have got compassionate leave, but he felt that it wouldn’t do any good. He would be restless and unhappy, wanting to help in directing the hunt for Jo, ashamed of letting his personal sorrow add work to already hard-pressed colleagues. He feared that his own restlessness might make Sally feel even more on edge. His mother completely understood.
The sergeant in the Incident room was relieved at ten o’clock, and after persuading his mother to go to bed, Piet took a cup of coffee to the new man on duty, Detective Sergeant Roberts. Piet had made it his job to meet members of his Force as often as he could, but there were still many, particularly those attached to outlying stations of the constabulary, whom he didn’t know at all. Roberts, who was at headquarters, he did know slightly, and had recently had cause to commend him for a good piece of work in tracking down an arsonist who had caused much trouble and severe loss by setting fire to hay barns. Piet was glad to see him. At eleven o’clock a report came in from Newcastle-on-Tyne of a woman who thought she’d seen a baby like Jo’s picture on TV in a pram outside a public house –‘Shameful to keep a baby out so late’. The Newcastle police investigated and found that the child had a mother and father who had visited the pub, and left the pram outside – undesirable, perhaps, but at least they didn’t leave the baby unattended at home. Reports of infants looking like Jo having been seen came in later from Exeter and Carlisle. The local police would investigate everything, but none of the alleged sightings seemed likely to be of much help. The reports might be useless, but Piet was touched – they showed how people wanted to help.
