The Blue Last

Sparky jumped. He had never really gone before, and now he saw his chance. He plummeted toward Maisie, grabbed her ankle and let himself be shaken and shaken, yelled at to get off, get off. Cursed. Good.

Clutching Richard, Gemma watched. “Get her down, Sparky, get her head down!” Gemma moved nearer to them.

Sparky let go of the ankle and sprang up to Maisie’s forearm. To dislodge the dog, she had to bend down, get her head down-

Gemma rushed at her just as Sparky had, pulled her own arm back and with every single ounce of strength left to her, brought Richard down on Maisie’s head. Giving a small exhalation of breath, Maisie slumped on the boards with a dull thud.

“Let me hit her again! Hit her again!”

That was Richard. Gemma thought he’d earned the right, so she hauled off and brought the doll down on Maisie’s head again. Then for good measure, hit her once more. Gemma would have liked to kill her, to roll her off the dock and let her drown.

But she didn’t; they left her lying there.

Fifty-two

Sparky led; Gemma followed. All she knew was this was along the Thames, but she had no idea where Swan Lane was, a name they’d just passed. He seemed to know exactly where he was going and stopped every so often to make sure she was right there behind him.

At one point a car stopped, just pulled up to the curb and the driver leaned across as far as he could and said, “Want a lift, love. I’m just on my way to-”

Gemma never found out where because Sparky hurled himself against the car door, mere inches from the nose of this person making his offer.

“Bloody hell!” the man yelled, jerking away from the window, then stalling the engine out when he tried to accelerate, and Sparky, all the while like a pole vaulter, snarling and launching himself at the car. It made Gemma laugh. The man finally got out like the devils in hell were at his heels.

Gemma skipped along as if this were a walk in Kensington Gardens. She hadn’t felt like skipping in a long time, but now she did. She wished she could throw herself, as Sparky had done, up against things and scare them and make them run away. But then she’d have to have Sparky’s bark and Sparky’s bite to do that.

By now they were coming up on the Victoria Embankment, and Waterloo Bridge, vast and black, was a short distance before them. She loved the lights across the Thames, oceans of them as if the whole of London were layered in little lights. Sparky was descending some steps, his nails clicking on the cold concrete. Gemma wondered where they were going, but didn’t mind all of this walking as she was still in a little daze over having escaped from whatever horrible plan the two women had made for her. She wondered if she had killed Maisie and allowed herself the consolation of thinking she could blame it on Richard, anyway.

“Hey, hey!”

“Oh, be quiet, Richard.” She shook him a little. He was dressed again in his black outfit. Sparky had waited patiently while she had sat on the step of a building back there and got the clothes on him and the stuffing back inside. She would sew him back up later when she had a needle and thread.

They had crossed the wide street, garnering a few curious glances from people in cars-why all this traffic?-but not curious enough to stop. They were right by Waterloo Bridge and, after descending a few more steps, right under it. Gemma was astonished to see all of these sleeping forms. People under the bridge. She thought she must be in the middle of a fairy tale. Then she wondered if these were the “homeless” she’d heard spoken of. About them she had always had a kind of shifting image of men and women wandering around dazed, looking for their houses, the places they had nearly forgotten, or been forgotten by.

The thing was, Gemma had scarcely been out in the wide world after she had first walked into Tynedale Lodge. The only person who’d have taken her out to parks and stores and films was too sick now to do it. The others most of the time didn’t seem to know she was around. But the staff did; Mr. Barkins didn’t like her, but Rachael the maid took her out to do Christmas shopping, which Gemma loved. That was how she’d found David Copperfield to give to Benny. Miss Penforwarden was just as nice as Benny said she was. She sat Gemma and Rachael down and gave them tea and some little cakes. She talked to Rachael while Gemma walked around the store, dazzled by all of the books. Mr. Tynedale had a library, it was true, but not all of these shelves with books front and back.

Christmas! It must be after midnight by now, so that meant today was Christmas Day! Sparky was rooting around one of the sleepers and when this person finally sat up Gemma was astonished to see Benny. She nearly dropped Richard. Was there no end to the astonishments of this night? Was it to be one thing right after another, horrible and wonderful in their turn?

“Benny!”

His voice was sleepy. “Gemma?” He shook his head, then looked from Sparky to Gemma and back again.

Now, faced at last with an actual person who could help her, Gemma felt a floodgate open and a squall of tears took hold of her. “Someone tried to kill me!”

Forgetting the very strange occurrence of Gemma’s appearing in the middle of the night under Waterloo Bridge, all Benny could say was, “Not again!” before he fell right back on his pallet.

Fifty-three

The knock on the door wrenched Jury from a sleep as deep and as soft as the down comforter that covered him and the Italian sheets he lay between. The knock was followed by Ruthven’s entrance, in robe and slippers, to tell the superintendent he had a phone call and to place a telephone by his bed.

Last night, Ruthven had brought him a nightcap on a silver tray and asked him if he required anything else. Looking around, Jury had said, “Only to stay in this room in my declining years.”

Ruthven had tittered and remarked that the superintendent offered no visible signs of any decline.

The room, Jury thought, as he’d looked around it, was an antidote to a life of lumpy mattresses, threadbare carpets, sprung sofas. One wall was filled with shelves of books and, at intervals along those shelves, small brass lamps were bolted, to cast light on whatever section one might want to explore. In front of the bookshelves sat a leather arm chair of a red so deep it was black in the shadows, and a table to hold one’s tea cup or one’s whiskey glass. It was an arrangement that all but begged the room’s occupant to pluck out a book and sit down. The wall opposite this was full of windows and velvet curtains. Jury had looked down at a white and crumbling statue in the rear garden by a small pool overhung with willows. All in all, this was the most romantic room Jury had ever seen, the most complete, the most becalmed. He thought, climbing into the sensuous bed the night before, that he could sleep for a year.

Instead, this telephone appeared at 3:30 A.M. with a call from the City police. It was Mickey, who told Jury what had happened-or as much as he knew-and to whom. “But she won’t tell anybody the details, except you or Ambrose. Who’s Ambrose?” asked Mickey.

“A friend. How can she be so cool about it? My God, she’s only nine.”

“Don’t forget the dog; he can’t be more than two or three.”

Jury was already standing by this time. He said, “I’ll be right there.”

“At Croft’s house. The kids are here. You apparently know these kids; they certainly know you. I’d like to get more than monosyllables out of the girl.”

“Ask the dog.”

“Very funny.”

“Miss Tynedale, a.k.a. Riordin, has been taken to hospital. Couple of bumps on the head, but nothing serious. She’s awake but not talking. The one I want to go after is her mother. What about the kids?”