Against the Light Read online

  She stopped such thoughts abruptly. Violet was saying, with a sort of hopeless resignation, ‘If that’s so, if some woman has her, then we shall never get her back.’ She fell wretchedly silent and yet, Alice thought, mixed up with the distress and shock, some other emotion was there, something watchful and wary. Defiance? Yes, of course, that was it, against the blame and criticism she felt were directed against her, neither of which Violet ever took easily.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Martens,’ Gaines began again, breaking the silence. ‘Difficult as it is, you must not let yourself think like that. It’s only been an hour or two. Lucy may have been taken away in a moment of madness, by someone who’ll think better of it. We can still hope for her return. Meanwhile—’ He cleared his throat and looked faintly embarrassed as he added, ‘I’m a family man myself and I know how painful this must be, but I’m afraid I shall have to take you in some detail through everything if we’re to get anywhere. Are you sure you can’t remember the location of the seat where you chose to sit? It might be important.’

  ‘No – well, not exactly. I suppose it might have been somewhere near the Gloucester Gate but I can’t be sure. When I found she was gone I began rushing around like a madwoman, stopping people and asking if they’d seen anything. I was at my wits’ end and quite lost my bearings.’

  Alice could understand this: the insane urge to feel that someone must surely have noticed a person wheeling a perambulator with a beautiful golden-haired baby inside. But Lucy’s bright hair wouldn’t have been visible, would it? Not even if the hinged hood was let down – and certainly not under one of the ridiculously fancy white bonnets Violet decreed for her child, with its crocheted ruffle surrounding her round, baby’s face like an elaborate pie-frill.

  ‘If anyone noticed someone unusual wheeling the pram, it would be one of those nannies,’ Emma put in suddenly.

  ‘Would they know it?’ Gaines asked. ‘From any other pram?’

  ‘It’s hard to miss.’ She described it: an old wicker baby carriage resurrected from the attics where it had reposed for many a year, ever since the last baby, Violet herself, in fact, had ceased to need it. She had thought it ‘amusing’ to use it for her own baby. In fact, it was light and easily manoeuvrable, though it was much deplored by the departed Nanny Struthers, so old-fashioned looking it was, and possibly unhygienic into the bargain. Moreover, the other nannies she met in the park on their daily excursions looked down on it because it didn’t conform to the modern, streamlined ones other fashionable mothers decreed for their own charges. ‘Everybody knows it, all the other nannies, anyway,’ she said.

  ‘We’ll talk to them,’ Gaines promised.

  Inskip commendably held his tongue as he took down their names, or rather the ones they were known to the others by, which was the name of their employer: Nannies Cavendish or Lyttleton, Ponsonby, or de Grey, as if they were family-owned. But they didn’t mind that, Emma said, meeting Inskip’s expression, rather did they see it as a source of pride. The more illustrious the name, the higher the nanny’s ranking among her contemporaries.

  ‘Did no one offer to help you in your search?’ Gaines asked, turning again to Violet. ‘These nursemaids, perhaps?’

  ‘No. In the end I did go to look for them and ask, of course, but they had all gone home. It was after four by then, you see.’ Which was self-explanatory, the immutable nursery tea time, when the park emptied of children and their keepers. The two policemen exchanged looks, eloquent of the opportunity lost by Mrs Martens in not requesting their help immediately. Violet herself, seeming only now to realize how remiss she’d been, began a hurried explanation. ‘I didn’t think of asking them until it occurred to me that one of those naughty children might have wheeled Lucinda away while my eyes were closed. To play a trick. For a … for a joke, you know,’ she finished lamely.

  ‘A joke?’ The sergeant looked incredulous, as well he might.

  But the notion of something like that wasn’t perhaps altogether so very far-fetched, thought Alice. A trick it might have been, though certainly not one played by any of those children under the eagle eyes of their nannies. Those were women not only paid by parents to look after their offspring but also to present quiet, well-behaved children to the world, and it was their mission in life and a source of pride to see this was carried out. Little imps of mischief the children might be, in the way of any normal child, at times, but they would have been kept firmly under control in public and scolded if they misbehaved. It was inconceivable that any wayward child could have escaped their constant vigilance. It was just possible though, however unlikely, that taking Lucy was indeed some malicious trick played by someone … to teach Violet not to go to sleep while looking after her baby? Or perhaps someone with a deeper grudge against her – or Ferdie – to cause them anxiety and distress before the child was returned unharmed.

  ‘It’s easy to be wise after the event, Mrs Martens,’ Gaines was saying, ‘but with hindsight, the incident should have been reported straight away. Police are always patrolling the park.’ There was no need to remind any of them what an extent that was: four hundred acres of recreation areas, paths and woodland glades, avenues of trees, and not least the boating lake. And where were they likely to find anyone who might have noticed a woman trundling an old-fashioned wicker pram through the park gates and out to those thronged pavements beyond? She might have been given a cursory glance but the sight wasn’t so remarkable as to excite curiosity.

  ‘How was I to know about the police? I never saw any,’ Violet returned petulantly. ‘After a while, I realized it was useless to look further and came home. My husband is away at the races and I don’t expect him home until later, so I telephoned my brother … Edmund Latimer.’

  She didn’t seem to feel that needed any further elucidation. Which of course it did not, thought Gaines sourly. The name having caused such a stir among the upper echelons, that was the reason he was here. Meanwhile time was sliding by, the child remained missing and with every hour that passed there was less chance of finding her. Faced with the anxiety and distress of her mother, Gaines was suddenly ashamed of his own feelings and put them determinedly to one side. Besides, he was beginning to get that intuitive sense, the indescribable tingle which told him that maybe this enquiry might well be heading in a direction far from that anticipated, adding to the mounting sense of urgency.

  But at that point Alice Latimer, who had said little so far, stepped forward to bring the questioning of Mrs Martens to a halt. She had been through enough, she said firmly. Since Gaines was inclined to agree, and in any case Violet Martens was too emotionally agitated to get much more from her, he allowed her personal maid, Newcombe, to be sent for.

  When she arrived he took the opportunity to put a few brief questions to her. After noting she’d been in her bedroom all afternoon with a severe migraine and had known nothing until Mrs Lowther came to tell her what had happened, he didn’t press her further. She was a rather sulky-looking woman with a pale face, heavy dark brows and a small mouth, and the tight little frown creasing her forehead made it evident the headache might be real, and she might still be suffering. She spoke very gently, however, to Mrs Martens, who finally, if reluctantly, gave in to his assurances that everything possible would be done to find her child and allowed herself to be persuaded away, murmuring fretfully about tonight’s dinner party engagement that must be cancelled.

  Gaines sent Inskip off with Emma Pavel to talk to the servants, or anyone else who might conceivably throw even a glimpse of retrospective light on the situation, while he talked to Alice Latimer, the one he thought likely to be a stabilizing influence in what seemed to him to be a rather oddly assorted household. She had a slender grace that gave an initial impression of delicacy, but her brisk tone as she spoke soon dispelled the notion. He suspected she was pretty tough underneath. She was, after all, trained to be calm and capable in emergencies, and she was showing admirable good sense, a welcome relief from the overwrought Mrs Martens.
At the same time, there was something else that made Gaines think twice about her. She was the child’s aunt, of course, it was natural that she should be distressed, but she was trying very hard not to show how much. He guessed she was holding herself in very tightly.

  ‘What happens next?’ she asked, giving him a direct glance through clear grey eyes. ‘Where do you start in these cases?’

  The question was not easily answered. The truth was there were no set procedures already laid down for a crime which thankfully happened rarely in this country. Children did, unhappily, disappear, and more died in suspicious circumstances – unwanted babies were a case in point, although there were enough of those, God only knew, to supply the needs of the desperately childless women who were prepared to pay to adopt them. There was no necessity to steal a child … unless, of course, you didn’t have the means to buy one.

  ‘We’ve already alerted the park police about what’s happened,’ he told her. ‘They’re familiar with everything that goes on there and they’re searching, even now. They’ll be making enquiries from all the regulars to find if anyone noticed anything. It’s quite likely the incident could have been a spontaneous action, unplanned, the work of a moment, happening too quickly for anyone to have been aware of what was going on. But rest assured, we won’t let the grass grow under our feet. Your little Lucy – any child – matters too much for that.’

  His tone, what she saw in his face, seemed to give her reassurance. ‘Thank you, I’m sure that is so.’

  ‘But patience is required, Mrs Latimer … I beg your pardon, Doctor Latimer.’

  She shook her head. ‘Mrs, if you please. My husband prefers that, and so do I, when I’m not working, that is.’ He wondered at the order in which she’d stated the preferences. ‘But as far as patience goes,’ she added wryly, ‘that’s something I’ve yet to acquire, I’m afraid.’

  ‘There’s always a chance, you know, that someone may come forward with information about the unexpected appearance of a seven-month-old baby in some neighbour’s household.’

  How slim this chance was he didn’t say, nevertheless there was one. He knew from his own experience as a father how difficult it would be to conceal the presence of a baby for long. They cried, for one thing, which this little Lucy might well be doing at some length, given the circumstances, and neighbours might hear. Or, presuming reasonable care was being taken of her, there might be washing hanging out on the line to dry, baby clothes where there had been none hung out before … drying nappies and so on before a fire was a miserable business. But it would be a very brave – or disturbed – woman who would dare to keep a baby under such circumstances and he felt increasingly certain that was not what had happened to Lucy.

  He still felt bound to caution that there was little that could be done at that precise moment. ‘If nothing turns up within the next few hours, we will, of course, have to make a public appeal for information, or for the baby’s return, but that isn’t what we need to do just now.’

  There was a lengthy pause. ‘Make no mistake, Inspector, I’m not ignorant of how dreadfully the longing for a child, or the inability to have one, can affect a woman, to the point where reason departs and she snatches a baby and keeps her hidden. But there are other possibilities why Lucy’s been taken – are there not?’

  There was no point in prevaricating with her. She had guessed what was really going through his mind. Despite what he’d said, it seemed to him more than possible this was an organized kidnap for money, and a demand in exchange for the return of the child would come sooner or later. ‘Yes,’ he admitted. ‘Yes, I think it’s quite possible a ransom note might soon be sent.’

  ‘I thought as much. That’s unfortunate, because I can assure you, whoever believes Lucy’s parents have that kind of money is very much mistaken.’ She made a poor attempt at a wry smile, though he thought she might be quite used to smiling properly, in normal circumstances, and that it would have been worth waiting for when it came.

  Wealth was of course relative, depending on your circumstances. To a large part of the general public, and especially to those at the lower end of the social scale, those who strove to earn a miserable pittance in order to exist at all – to them, it must seem that anyone able to afford living in Manessa House must lead a life of unimaginable luxury, with money to squander. Especially when the baby’s father was, after all, the son of the well-known Martens banking family, and therefore must be rich beyond the dreams of avarice. The other side of the coin, tradesmen’s bills left unpaid by the rich while they themselves ate caviare, would hardly enter into it. Luxury to one man could be penury to another.

  Mrs Latimer had an uncanny knack of picking up his thoughts. ‘Nor is the Martens Bank a philanthropic organization, Inspector,’ she said dryly.

  He took that to mean she was referring specifically to Emil Martens, the Belgian-born owner of the bank, and that he would not be an easy mark. Martens was indeed well known as the head of such a prestigious concern, but although he made a show of public benevolence in the way of charity donations she seemed to be saying that he was, despite appearances to the contrary, not one who would allow himself easily to be subjected to emotional blackmail, or to meet monetary demands which his son and his wife could not. Gaines wondered about that. Perhaps the banker was against a lifestyle he considered extravagant? Certainly everything about Violet Martens spoke of expensive tastes, even her surroundings: this room was decorated in the new style, and a deceptively simple décor like this didn’t come cheap. She was fashionably dressed and coiffured, she had servants, a personal maid, her nanny and a social life that was evidently very important to her to keep up. As for her husband … taking time off work to go racing with a crowd of other men didn’t give the impression of a responsible banker. Perhaps he was a gambler, and money went on the gee-gees. Very likely a raffish sort of fellow, anyway.

  He said to Mrs Latimer, ‘You should hold on to the fact that if it does turn out to be a case of ransom, Lucy will almost certainly be safe. She’ll be taken care of as long as there’s hope of money for her return.’

  ‘But what if —’ Her voice shook a little. ‘What if the ransom is refused? Because Ferdie can’t pay?’ She hesitated and then went on in a rush, ‘Believe me, Emil Martens is quite capable of refusing. To be brutally frank, Inspector, he’s never shown any interest whatsoever in his granddaughter. I doubt he barely remembers her name.’

  The kidnappers would not return the child if there was nothing in it for them, but the idea of Lucy’s body turning up – or not turning up at all – was too nightmarish a scenario to put into words. He would have liked to say there was a chance that if the parents showed themselves willing to cooperate with the police and indicated willingness to agree to paying a ransom, there could always be the possibility of those responsible being traced and intercepted, but that was a subject better left for the moment.

  ‘Is there nothing we can do, Inspector?’

  ‘You can make sure everyone in the household is warned to keep silent.’ Advice to concentrate on practicalities was something which often helped more than you’d think. ‘Tell them not to speak to anyone, anyone at all, about this. You understand why? It may be resolved quickly and without the press getting hold of it, but if they do and the police are known to be involved it could put Lucy in real danger.’

  Yes, of course she understood the importance of that, but all the staff, she said with certainty, were absolutely loyal people who, apart from the two youngest maids, had been with them for years and would keep the business to themselves if they were asked not to talk.

  Even so, Gaines knew it was unlikely such a happening could be kept secret for long. The gentlemen of the press would get wind of the story, probably sooner rather than later. A careless word from someone, however unintentional, to some other servant, or some acquaintance, and the cat would be out of the bag. He pitied the inhabitants of Manessa House when the news broke. And yet there was simply nothing to be done t
o hurry the kidnappers along.

  Inskip returned at that point and after further reassurances that they would keep in close touch, Mrs Latimer accompanied them to the front door. Before they could take their leave a motor drew up outside the house. From it leaped an elegant fellow whom Inskip, for one, recognized as wearing the last word in sporting fashions. He was a well set up young chap with a healthy complexion. In no time at all, he had unstrapped a valise from the luggage rack, given the car door a friendly double slap on the side and with a toot-toot from its wild-haired driver, a roar and a showy spitting of gravel the car had disappeared out of the gates. Ferdinand Martens strode cheerfully towards the house. When he saw his sister-in-law and the two policemen, and took in their grave faces, he stopped dead.

  ‘I say, is something up?’

  ‘Come into the morning room, Ferdie,’ Alice said.

  They all trooped back inside, Ferdie following uncertainly. Once in the morning room, his eyes went from Alice to the police, his senses suddenly alerted. ‘Where’s Violet?’ he asked. His voice sharpened. ‘It’s Lucy, isn’t it? Something’s happened to Lucy.’

  Alice’s look appealed to Gaines, who nodded and told Ferdie as briefly as possible what had transpired that day while he’d been away.

  All colour drained from his face. His knees buckled, he would surely have fallen if his hands hadn’t grasped the back of a chair. ‘Sit down Ferdie,’ Alice said, fearing an emergency on her hands. Lucy was the light of his life but still, she hadn’t expected quite such an extreme reaction. ‘I’ll ring for some tea. Or perhaps some brandy?’ She might as well not have spoken. ‘Ferdie?’

  He shook his head as if to clear it and waved away the suggestion. ‘Carry on, please, Inspector. I’m listening.’