'We're going to Wales. You think the child is still there?'
'It is a very remote area, no one heard an automobile after dark, and the police had every road blocked by six o'clock in the morning. The roadblocks are still up, but Scotland Yard, the Welsh police, and the American staff all think she's in London. They're busy at that end, and they've thrown us Wales as a sop to get the Simpsons out from under their feet. It does mean that we'll have a relatively free hand once we're there. Yes, I think she is still in Wales; not only that, I think she's within twenty miles of the place from which she disappeared. I said sit still!' he growled. He was rubbing the sludge into my ear, so I could not see his face.
'A cool character, if that's the case,' I offered, not meaning the child.
'Cool, as you say. And careful: The notes are on cheap, common paper, in common envelopes, typed on the second most common kind of typewriter, three or four years old, and mailed in busy post offices across London. No fingerprints. The spelling, choice of words, and punctuation are consistently atrocious. The layout on the page is precise, the typist indents exactly five spaces at the beginning of each paragraph, and the pressure on the keys indicates some familiarity with typing. Other than the window dressing of illiteracy, the messages are clear and not overly violent, as these things go.'
'Window dressing?'
'Window dressing,' he said firmly. 'There is a mind behind this, Russell, not some casual, uneducated lout.' In his face and in his voice a total abhorrence of the crime itself fought a losing battle with his constitutional relish for the chase. I said nothing, and he continued to coat my hands and arms past the elbow with the awful stuff. 'That is why we will take no risks, assume no weaknesses on their part. Our disguise is assumed the instant we step outside of that door over there, and not let down for a moment. If you cannot sustain it, you'd best say so now, because one slip could mean the child's life. To say nothing of the political complications that will result if we allow a valued and somewhat reluctant Ally's representative to lose his child while on our soil.'
His voice was almost mild, but when he looked into my eyes I nearly quailed before him. This was no game of putting on Ratnakar Sanji's turban and a music-hall accent, where the greatest risk was being sent down; the penalty for failure in this rôle could be a child's life. Could even be our own lives. It would have been easy, then, to excuse myself from the case, but — if not now, I asked myself, when? If I refused now, would I ever find the necessary combination of courage and opportunity again? I swallowed, and nodded. He turned and put the beaker on the table, where it would sit, undisturbed, to greet our weary eyes when we returned.
'There,' he said. 'Let us hope it doesn't stop up the plumbing again. Go have your bath and rinse this through your hair.'
I took the bottle of black, viscous dye across the corridor to the bathroom, and some time later stood looking in the mirror at a raven-haired young woman with skin the colour of milky coffee and a pair of exotic blue eyes, dressed in a multitude of voluminous skirts from Holmes' trunks, draped with colourful scarfs and a hotchpotch of heavy yellow gold and bright, cheap trinkets at my neck and wrists. I put on my spectacles to study my reflection in the glass, decided that my standard ones were too scholarly and exchanged them for a pair with heavier gold rims and lightly tinted lenses. The effect was incongruous, but oddly appropriate — a modern variation on the conspicuous wealth I already wore. I stepped back to practise a seductive, flashing smile, but only succeeded in making myself giggle.
'Fortunately, it is Mrs. Hudson's day off,' was all Holmes said when I swirled into the sitting room. 'Sit down, and we shall see what you can do with these cards.'
We left after dark to meet the last train going east. I telephoned from the cottage to let my aunt know that I had decided to spend a few days with my friend Lady Veronica in Berkshire, her grandmother had just died and she needed the assistance of her friends, not to expect me back for a week, and I rang off in the midst of her queries and protests. I should have to deal with her anger when I returned, but at least she was not about to complicate matters by calling in the police over her missing niece.
At the station we climbed down from the wheezing omnibus and took our multiple parcels over to the ticket window. I slipped my spectacles from my nose into my pocket, lest the familiar Seaford agent think to look twice at me, but even half-blind there was no mistaking the expression of dislike on his face, held in by the thin rein of his official manners.
'Yes, sir?' he said coldly.
'First class to Bristol,' Holmes muttered.
'First class? I'm sorry, there won't be anything suitable. You'll find the second class quite comfortable this time of night.'
'Naow, s'got to be first class. 'S me daughter's birfday, she wants a first class.'
The agent looked at me, and I smiled shyly at him (which was, I thought, a bit like schoolgirl braids on a lady of the evening, but it seemed to soften him).
'Well, perhaps, it being night we might be able to find something. You'll have to stay in your compartment, though. No wandering about, bothering the other passengers.'
Holmes drew himself up and glared blackly at the man.
'If they'll not be bothering us, we'll not be bothering them. How much is it?'
Scandalised eyes looked away as we climbed colourfully aboard with our various bags and parcels (I imagined letters going off in the morning post to the editorial page of The Times, but as we were busy for the next few days I do not know if they actually appeared), and we had a compartment to ourselves for the trip. I opened the case file Holmes handed me, but the long day's work under the hot sun and the tension conspired against me. Holmes woke me at Bristol, where we found rooms in a sleazy hotel near the station and slept until morning.
The remainder of the trip to Cardiff was decidedly less luxurious than the first part, and Holmes had to help me off the train, as my leg had fallen asleep with the weight of the bags and the woman wedged in beside me. When I could walk, he put his whiskered face against my ear and spoke in a low voice.
'Now, Russell, we shall see what you can do on your own. We have an appointment with the Simpsons in the office of Chief Inspector Connor at half-twelve. It would not be the best of ideas to go in through the front door, as I told you, so we are going to be arrested. Kindly don't manhandle your persecutor too badly. His bones are old.'
He picked up the two smallest bags and walked away, leaving me to deal with the remaining four. I followed him to the exit, past a uniformed constable watching the crowd — and us, closely no doubt. The crush at the door grew thick, and Holmes stopped suddenly to avoid stepping on a child. I bumped into him and dropped a parcel, and as I struggled to retrieve it it was kicked away by various feet, beginning with a pair of garish gipsy boots. By dint of elbows and shoulders I followed the parcel, and as I reached down to pick it up something suddenly slammed me against the wall, where I collapsed in a heap of skirts and baggage. A voice snarled loudly above my head.
'Aw for God's sake, can you not 'ang on t'yer bags? I shoulda brought your brother; at least he can stand up straight.' A hard hand seized my arm and jerked me upright, but when it let go too soon I stumbled into a group of elegantly dressed men. Gloved hands kept me from falling, but all movement through the doors had come to an abrupt halt.
'Damn you, girl, you're worse than your mother for falling into the arms of strange men. Get over here and pick up your things,' he yelled and, hauling me out of the supporting hands of my rescuers, shoved me hard towards the bags. Tears had come into my eyes with the pain of the wall's initial impact, and now I groped blindly for the handles and strings. A murmur of properly accented voices protested my mistreatment, but none moved to stop my 'father.'
'But Da', they was only tryin' to help me — '
I saw his hand coming towards me and moved with it, but it still connected with a crack. I cowered against the wall with my arms over my head and cried out piteously when his shoe kicked the valise beneath me.
Finally a police whistle rang out.
'Stop you that, man,' cried the Welsh voice of authority. 'There's shameful, there is, hurting a child.'
'She's no child, and she needs some sense beat into her.'
'That you will not, man. No,' he shouted, and grabbed Holmes' upraised arm. 'We'll not be having that. There's to the station with the both of you; we shall see if that cools your tempers.' He looked at me more closely and then turned to the group of men. 'Perhaps you gentlemen might care to check your pockets, see if there might be anything missing?'
To my relief there was nothing, although I would not have put it past Holmes to add that bit of verisimilitude to the proceedings. The constable made good his threat anyway, and as my voice joined with Holmes in vociferous
