Molly Maldon was sitting, white as milk, in a deep armchair, staring into space. Henry Maldon was pacing up and down, and seemed to have been doing so for some time. They both looked up in sudden hope as Phryne came in.
‘I’m Phryne Fisher, and this is my assistant, Miss Williams. Tell me all about it.’
Hesitantly, they told her the whole story. Molly grabbed Phryne’s hand. ‘She’s only six,’ she whispered. ‘Just a little girl, and she didn’t even get her sweets!’ She exhibited the broken bag and burst into tears again.
Candida swam muzzily back into consciousness, and was immediately sick all over the car seat and the man who was holding her. He shoved her roughly aside. She had never been cruelly handled before and she was highly intelligent. She kept her mouth shut and listened intently, although she had realised that she had been stolen and all her instincts were urging her to scream and cry and kick.
‘The little brute spewed all over me,’ complained the man, in a high, unpleasant voice.
The woman in the front seat turned around, sneering. ‘You wanted to snatch her, Sidney. You put up with it. You were the one who wanted to lay hands on all that young flesh.’
Candida did not know what this meant, but she sensed that vomiting over Sidney had removed some threat. She had done something clever. Her spirits rose a little.
Sidney was wiping at his lap with an inadequate handkerchief. It made little difference. His suit was ruined. The car stank. The driver, a big man with a bald head and a blue singlet said, ‘We’re almost there. Then you can hang your suit out to dry and have a bath. How about that?’
Candida liked this man. He had a deep and soothing voice. She wondered how long they had been driving. She thought that it was no use asking and that the pose of unconsciousness might be useful. She was feeling better, but she had lost her sweets, and her daddy did not know where she was. She racked her brains. What had she read about these situ- ations? The Grimm’s fairytale method would not work. She had nothing to drop, and she could not reach the window. It began to look, she thought dismally, as though she might die like the babes in the wood, when the birds came and covered them with leaves.
The car turned off the main road. There were bumps, and the driver cursed. Then the car stopped and Candida was carried into the fresh air. Sidney was still swearing behind her.
‘Did you have the note delivered?’ asked the woman in her thin, whining voice.
‘Yair, I sent it by reliable hands with her hair-ribbon. We’ll get the dough, all right. Now carry the poor little thing inside and give her a drink and a bit of a clean-up, Ann. We’re home.’
Bert collected Phryne’s note and read it aloud to Cec.
‘She says, “Dear Bert and Cec, I have several things which I would like you to do, for the usual rates. Find the old man and the young woman who were climbing the cliff path in Studley Park at about four o’clock on the Friday of the murder. Try the local police station — the old man is probably well known in the district. The girl is a local who was swimming in the river. When you have found them, see if they remember Bill, and then take them around and see if they know him. If they do, we are more-or-less home and dried.
“Then I want you to search the bush and ground just outside the McNaughton home for a worn hemp rope. It will probably be about five or six feet long, and I’m hoping that it has blood on it.
“Next, ask around for the local head kid. Find out what their favourite game was the week before the McNaughton murder. Please also collect for me all the illustrated papers for the last three weeks. Don’t forget the
“Last of all, scour the area for a place where they are replacing the gutter. McNaughton was killed with a large bluestone pitcher, and I want to know where it came from. It looked like a gutter stone to me. I rely on your intelligence and discretion. Don’t tell anyone what you are up to if you can avoid it by any means short of prison. Best regards and get your finger out. I need this stuff as soon as I can get it. Phryne Fisher. PS. A description of the girl and the old man is attached, and here is a few quid for expenses. PF.”’
Bert shook his head. ‘Where do we start, Cec?’
‘At the beginning, mate,’ replied Cec easily. ‘At the beginning.’
The doorbell rang in the Maldon house, and Henry raced for the door. He returned with an envelope in his hand.
‘No one there,’ he said. ‘But this letter.’
‘Handle it by the edges,’ said Phryne. ‘Slit the top. We don’t want to spoil any fingerprints, do we? Good. One sheet of cheap Coles’ paper enscribed by someone who is not used to writing.
‘“Dere Mr Maldon,”’ she read, ‘“we have yore dorter. Here is her ribon. We want five thou. Leave it in the holow tree stump in the Geelong Gardens tonite. You shal have her bak tomorow. The tree stump is on the left of the path, next to the band rotunda. A frend.”’
She shook the envelope and a blue Alice band fluttered out. Henry Maldon took it into both hands as if it was the Host and kissed it gently.
‘Right, produce the money and let’s get cracking.’
‘I can’t,’ said Henry simply. ‘I don’t have any money. I’ve spent it all. I bought two houses and a plane, and an annuity. I can sell them but it will take time. And meanwhile. .’
‘Candida will be fine,’ announced Molly, refreshed by an hour in the uncomplicated company of baby Alexander. ‘About now, I bet they are wishing they hadn’t taken her.’
Henry forced a small and rusty laugh.
Candida had been washed and clothed in an old white nightgown, and had accepted some bread and milk. She was as wary as a small animal and kept as far as possible from Sidney, who now regarded her with loathing. The big man, Mike, was nicer. He had a large and commanding presence. The woman, Ann, she hated. After a small altercation about the nightgown, which was much too big for her, Ann had slapped Candida across the face. It was the insult rather than the pain which caused the child’s eyes to follow Ann round the room with a black, implacable gaze. At last, as always, the glare made itself felt.
‘Stop looking at me like that, you little toad!’ shrieked Ann.
Candida regarded her coolly. ‘How do you want me to look at you?’ she asked, imitating her mother’s most infuriatingly logical voice. ‘I shall not look at you at all, if you like,’ she went on generously.
Ann went to Mike and leaned on his shoulder. ‘Make her stop looking at me, Mike,’ she fawned. The child gave her a disapproving glare. Mike smiled.
‘If you don’t stop glaring at me, I’ll tell Mike’s spider to crawl right off his chest and come and bite you in your sleep,’ threatened Ann. Candida was interested. Her fascination with insect life had often got her into trouble. No one had let her forget about her snail collection, which she had put down by the kitchen stove so that they could be cosy in the night. The snails had had a different idea of comfort and had glided away, some of them getting as far as the baby’s room. Alexander had eaten one and Mummy had been very angry.
She got up from her seat on the hearth and disposed her nightgown around her feet. She looked up at Mike with a charming smile. ‘May I see the spider on your chest?’ she asked politely.
Mike laughed. ‘She’s got guts, anyway,’ he commented. ‘Do you like spiders?’
‘Yes. I have thirty-seven at home. Black ones,’ elaborated the child calmly.
Mike stripped off his singlet and Candida edged closer, fascinated. The spider would have covered the span of both her hands. It was impressively hairy with little red eyes. Mike took a breath and flexed his pectoral muscles, and the spider wriggled.
Candida clapped her hands. ‘Do it again,’ she chuckled. ‘Make the spider dance again!’
‘It’s time for you to go to bed,’ snapped Ann, and grabbed the child’s wrist in a grip like a handcuff. Candida resisted.
‘I have to take my asthma medicine,’ she stated. ‘And then say my prayers, and I cannot go to sleep without Bear. Where is he?’
She scanned the blank faces before her, and her temper, never under the best of control, broke. She had lost her lollies and Daddy and Mummy, and it was too much that she should have lost Bear, as well.
Mike saw her face empurple, and her body swell.
‘I want Mummy and Daddy and I want my lollies and I want Bear!’ she shrieked in a full-throated operatic soprano. She continued to scream until she began to cough, and then to choke. She doubled over, gasping, and a dreadful wheeze was forced from her lungs as she hauled in each breath.
‘She’s having an asthma attack — my sister gets them,’ said Ann. ‘If we don’t get her medicine, she could die.’
