The Chinese Egg (12 page)

“But you said. . . . You said the girl was looking after it.”

“Yes. And she seemed. . . .”

At this moment the telephone bell rang. Sally had flung herself at the instrument and was holding the receiver to her ear before anyone else had moved. The others heard her say, “Yes. Yes. Yes, I'm listening,” and saw her troubled eyes go to her husband's face in a sort of desperate appeal. He whispered, “Keep them talking,” and ran out of the room.

“Yes. Yes, I'm here,” Sally said again. “You have?” in a sort of gasp “. . . how is. . .? No.” There was a little pause and then she said, “How much? No, I won't. But just tell. . . .” They could all hear the vicious little click with which the receiver the other end was jammed down.

Sally was still standing there with the receiver in her hand when Andrew came back into the room. “Rang off before I got there. What did they say?”

“They've got Caroline Ann.”

“I suppose they're demanding money?”

“So she's not dead. . . .” She began to sob.

“Darling. Try to tell me. How much?”

“Two hundred. . . thousand. . . .”

“Who was it? Did they say? Did they tell you how they wanted to collect it?”

“No, nothing. Just how much. . . . And. . . .”

“And what?”

“They said. . . he. . . said. . . .”

“Try to tell me, darling.”

“He said. . . if you want. . . if you want. . . her safe back. . . .”

Andrew Wilmington said, “Bloody swine.”

“Andrew, we will, won't we? You won't say no? You wouldn't let them hurt Caroline Ann?”

“Darling, you don't know these chaps. Paying over the money's no guarantee she'll be safe.”

“But if we don't pay. . . if we say no, then they'll. . . .”

“Darling, I know it's difficult, but you've got to try to be reasonable about this. It's blackmail. It's impossible to give in to blackmail. They don't stop at the first demand. If we paid this amount now, they'd only ask for more.”

Chris, Stephen and Vicky were listening astonished. Two hundred thousand pounds! It was incredible that anyone should demand that much, even more incredible that Mr. Wilmington shouldn't even comment on the amount, but should talk about paying that and then being asked for more. To the girls it was an unreal sum. No one they knew had even one thousand pounds. Two hundred thousand was the sort of astronomical money other people occasionally won on the pools. When they said to each other, “What would you do if you had..?” it was generally a hundred pounds, sometimes a thousand. Even then they didn't know where to begin to make a hole in something so enormous. Stephen appreciated more what this meant. He realized that young Mr. Wilmington, whom he didn't much like, must be really immensely rich. Perhaps a millionaire. He felt sorry for Mrs. Wilmington. He wasn't sure that her husband really cared about the baby, but she quite obviously couldn't think of anything else.

“But Andrew! We can't risk them doing something terrible. . .” she said now.

“Sally darling, they're not going to give up this damnable game until they've got every penny they can out of us. We simply mustn't let them feel they've got the upper hand of us. It's a matter of principle. . . .”

Sally Wilmington cried out, “It's a matter of my baby!” and at the same moment Vicky said, loudly, “I can't think how you can!”

Mr. Wilmington's cold blue eyes came round to her. She went on, “It's a baby! A person! You don't know what they're doing, you don't know where she is. I don't see how you can talk about principles. That's just thinking. If it was me, and I had that much money, I wouldn't bother about anything like that, I'd go straight off and get her. I wouldn't mind how much it cost!”

There was a really horrible silence, during which Vicky, red with anger and shame, wished she were anywhere else. Then Chris—blessed Chris—said, “I think Vicky's right. If it was my baby, that's what I'd do too.”

Mr. Wilmington said, even more coldly than before, “I don't think anyone asked for your opinion.” Stephen stood up.

“Come on. Let's go,” he said to the two girls.

“But we haven't told them. . .” Chris said.

“It's no good. He's never going to believe us. Don't you see? We've got to have some sort of proof.”

“Don't let them go, Andrew,” Mrs. Wilmington said.

Stephen spoke to her, “I'm sorry. We honestly did come because we thought we might be able to help. But it isn't any good unless someone believes what we're saying. I see it's difficult.”

“I don't want you to go.”

“Let them go, Sally. As if we hadn't enough, without a gang of kids playing at second sight,” Mr. Wilmington said.

Stephen ignored him. “If there's anything at all, we'll tell you. Come on, Vicky, come on, Chris. There's no point in staying.”

He opened the door and went out, followed by Chris. Vicky took a last look back before she joined them. She stepped back for an instant to say softly and urgently to Sally Wilmington, who was sitting by the telephone, the tears running down and splashing on the smooth leather of the table, unchecked, “We shall find your baby. I know we will.” Then she too left the room and they let themselves silently out of the big house which was full of misery.

In the train going back, Stephen said to the girls, “Why don't you come back to my place?” Chris and Vicky looked at each other. Chris said, “We mustn't be home later than seven. About. If we're not, one of us'll have to go round and tell Mum, or she'll worry.”

“It's only six now. You could come in and have coffee or something.”

“That'd be nice, wouldn't it, Vicky?”

“Mm. I mean, thanks, yes, fine.”

“You won't get any cake like the one you gave me. My mother doesn't make cakes.”

“Coffee'd do for me. Anyway we don't eat that cake every day.” Mostly, however, the journey passed in silence. The afternoon had been so beyond expectation awful and upsetting, none of them wanted to talk. Only after they'd left the underground station and were going up the hill to Stephen's house, Chris said, “Thanks for not rubbing it in.”

“Not rubbing what in?”

“You said it wouldn't be any use going there. That they wouldn't believe us.”

Stephen said, “The funny thing is, now I feel as if they ought to have.”

“He was horrible. If it was just him I wouldn't mind whether he got the baby back or not.”

“I think he wouldn't have been like that if he hadn't been so worried. And I'm sure it's true, they must have had all sorts of people bothering them.”

“Well, I thought he was rotten. I liked her, though. Didn't you, Vicky?”

“Mm.”

“I was pleased you went for him like you did.”

Vicky said nothing.

“What's the matter? You still upset?”

“Mm.”

Chris looked at her face, and said no more.

The girls didn't know, but it had been a great act of courage on Stephen's part to ask them home. It was a Saturday, and his father would almost certainly be there. At first Stephen had decided against inviting them for this reason. Then he suddenly felt sick with himself for being such a coward. What sort of life was he going to have if he didn't do something perfectly reasonable—and in this case an almost necessary courtesy, considering how often he'd sat in the comfortable Stanford kitchen without any return of hospitality? So, without giving himself too much time to think, he'd asked them back. He opened the front door and followed them into the hall, then steered them into the kitchen-dining room. As he'd expected, his mother was standing by the cooker, looking pre-occupied.

Stephen said, “Hi, Mum!” and introduced Vicky and Chris. He could see from his mother's face that she was pleased he'd brought friends home, but couldn't place these two girls, and that she was worried as well as pleased. Inevitably she at once began apologizing.

“Oh dear! If only I'd known. . . . Stephen didn't say he was bringing anyone back. . . . I could have made some biscuits. . . there was a recipe yesterday in the Guardian. . . .”

“We don't want biscuits, thanks. Just coffee.”

“Oh but. . . . They sounded rather good. . . .”

Stephen said, “Don't worry, Mum. Chris and Vicky really only want coffee. Shall I get out the mugs?”

With a little pressure and reassurance, his mother was able to get round to making coffee. Vicky still looked a bit dazed. She obediently ladled sugar out of a packet into a china bowl, but it was Chris who competently found where the Rawlinson spoons were kept, who prevented Mrs. Rawlinson from starting the
coffee grinder without screwing the lid on so that all the coffee beans went all over the floor, an accident which was so common in that house that Stephen unconsciously associated the smell of coffee with grovelling about with a dustpan and brush, sweeping up a horrid mixture of grounds, beans and dusty crumbs. When the coffee was finally being poured out of the filter jug, Mrs. Rawlinson's cheeks were pink with the pleasure of being helped by Chris and with her admiration of the coffee machine. “It's super coffee, too,” Chris said appreciatively, sipping it out of her blue and green mug.

“I'm sure it's not better than your mother makes,” Stephen's mother said.

“It is though. Mum makes instant most of the time. Mind you, I like that too. Only this is really good. Like you get in that posh place up the High Street where they charge you twenty p a cup.”

“It is good, Mum,” Stephen said.

“I'm so glad. It does taste different. Perhaps it's because I don't generally put in quite so much coffee. . . .” She glanced guiltily at Stephen.

“But didn't the instructions tell you how much to put in?”

“I suppose. . . .”

“Mum! I bet you've never even read the instructions!”

“Well, it seemed such a simple thing. Just making coffee.”

“How long have you had the. . . thing? The coffee machine?” Chris asked.

“About six months, I think. Perhaps not quite that long.”

“It's nearly a year. And this is the first time you've looked at the instructions. Isn't it?” Stephen asked.

“It was me read them,” Chris said. She sounded delighted. “That's exactly like our Mum. Isn't it, Vicky? She never looks at how it tells you to do things till she's half-way through. Dad always teases her, says she thinks she knows better than anyone. He says if she had to drive a bus, she'd tell the instructor not to bother telling her how, she'd rather work it out for herself.”

Stephen had rarely seen his mother so relaxed. She looked almost as if she were enjoying having visitors. She produced a wholemeal loaf, not very stale, out of the refrigerator and they toasted it and ate it with butter and honey. “It's luscious. Must
tell Mum to get brown bread next time, it's got more taste than that white sliced stuff,” Chris said, her mouth bulging. Mrs. Rawlinson beamed. Not one of her carefully prepared continental dishes had had such appreciation.

The door of Dr. Rawlinson's study clicked shut, and he appeared in the doorway saying, before he saw Chris and Vicky, “Margaret, why didn't you tell me. . .?” He stopped at the sight of the two girls.

“Dad, this is Chris and this is Vicky. My father,” Stephen said.

Dr. Rawlinson shook hands with each of them, rather over-politely, and sat down at the table next to Chris.

“Any coffee for me?” he said to his wife.

“Of course, darling. I'll just get a cup. . . .”

“Sit still, Mum, I'll get it.” Stephen didn't want the chance that his mother might show her nervousness by some piece of clumsiness. As it was she managed to pour the coffee awkwardly, spilling a little.

“Are you just off somewhere?” Dr. Rawlinson said pleasantly to Chris and Vicky and Stephen together.

“No, back from somewhere. Vicky and me are on our way home.”

“Where from, may I ask? Or perhaps that's a question you'd all prefer not to answer?”

“I don't mind. Kensington,” Chris said.

“Kensington! The Royal Borough of. Several quite good museums. The Palace is worth a visit,” Dr. Rawlinson said.

“I don't go much for museums,” Chris said.

“Perhaps it's as a shopping centre that you find Kensington amusing?”

“Never been there to shop.”

“Perhaps you saw that there's been one of those interesting baby-snatching cases there. I always find these cases present a very stimulating problem. In most instances there seems to be no financial motive. . . .”

His voice ran on, but no one was listening, until the words “evening paper” caught Vicky's ear, and she said abruptly, “Is there something about it in the paper today?”

“About what? In which paper?” Dr. Rawlinson asked her politely.

“About the baby that was stolen.”

“I believe the police are questioning some girl. The Standard has quite a long. . . .”

“Where is the Standard?” Stephen said.

“In my study. What. . .?”

“Excuse me a minute,” Stephen said to his mother and disappeared.

“You must forgive my son's abrupt manners,” Dr. Rawlinson said to the two girls, but addressing himself particularly to Chris.

“I don't see what's wrong with them,” she said.

Stephen came back with the paper folded to show the headline “
KENSINGTON BABY SNATCH CASE
”. He showed it silently to the girls and then sat down to read it.

“Why this sudden interest in crime, Stephen?” his father asked. Stephen got out of that one by answering, “Wait a tick, I'm reading.”

“What does it say, Steve?” Chris asked.

“They're interviewing some girl. They say she's been helping them with their inquiries. Doesn't that generally mean they're suspicious of her?”