The Chinese Egg (7 page)

“Not when she's crying.”

“No one is when they cry. Let's see the house. Golly, it's enormous. Wonder how many servants they have to keep all that clean.”

“He looks all right too,” Vicky said.

“Mm. Terribly good looking. Only I don't like those little moustaches.”

There was a pause.

“What are we going to do then?” Vicky said.

They looked at each other.

“Absolutely nothing,” Stephen said, half angrily.

“It seems so feeble, somehow,” Vicky said.

“You don't think the police. . .? It says here, the police are asking anyone who might have seen anything suspicious to come forward,” Chris said.

“They'd never believe us. Anyway, what have we got to tell them? Nothing they don't know already.”

“If you got another flash, it might help.”

“And it might not.”

“Come on. We'd better get back,” Vicky said. They left the café. In the street outside, Stephen said to Vicky, “If anything happens, you'll let me know, won't you?”

“Yes. Wait a tick. I don't know where you live.”

“Fourteen, Partlett Crescent. And the telephone number's 132-2735. Shall I write that down?”

“No, I'll remember it till I get home. Only if I get a flash and you don't, it'll mean we don't need to be anywhere near each other. Partlett Crescent's quite a way from us.”

“I suppose it would prove something though.”

“Come on. Dinner'll be cold. Hope you enjoy your lunch” Chris called out to Stephen as they separated.

The Wilmington house was full of policemen. They suddenly appeared in unexpected places, so that Paolo, one of the Spanish couple who did the cooking and the housekeeping and most of the cleaning, found men in blue uniforms on the stairs, in the hall, coming out of bedrooms, even in his own, sacred, pantry. His wife, Maria, who was quite as suspicious of the police as they could possibly be of her, retreated to their bedroom in tears, and announced that she was not coming down again until everybody had gone. Nora Hunter, the beautifully trained young nurse whose business it was to look after Caroline Ann for five and a half days a week, was red-eyed and very much less trim and confident than she usually appeared.

Mrs. Wilmington, in spite of the tranquillizers prescribed by her doctor, wandered around the house. Sometimes she was down in the library, sometimes in the hall. Sometimes she was up in Caroline Ann's nursery. Sometimes she was in her bedroom. But wherever she was, she couldn't keep still. If she sat down, it wasn't for more than a moment, she would be up again. It was as if it was only by walking that she could bear to be awake and conscious of what was happening. And while she walked, she touched. Her hand went out to books in the library, to the carved ends of the oak bookshelves; from them to the lamp on the little table, then to the curtains over the window. Moving towards the door, she touched the telephone on the desk; hesitated, then moved on again. Opened the door, and moved down the hall towards the sitting-room, but didn't go in, went, instead, upstairs. Her hand turned the handle of the nursery door, slid over the
flowers on the nursery table, over the back of a rocking-chair. The hand went on to the smooth china knob of the room next door, the night nursery, where the baby and her nurse slept. Opened the door and touched the mantelpiece with two cottage china dogs, one each end, tongues lolling, looking sentimentally out of their china eyes at the small pink and white room. Stroked the dogs' heads, then went up to Mrs. Wilmington's eyes as if to discover whether there were tears there. She had remembered taking one of the two china dogs off the mantelpiece only yesterday and holding it in front of the baby's eyes, making it jump up and down while she barked for it, “Woof! Woof!” Caroline Ann had chuckled. She had clutched at the china dog, and her mother had gently disengaged her fat baby fingers and put the dog back oh the mantelpiece. They had been laughing, she and Nora and Caroline Ann. Now the dog sat smirking on the mantelpiece, Nora was crying downstairs, she was here, in this empty room, and Caroline Ann? Where was she? Was she laughing now? Who was looking after her? Was she frightened? Lonely? Missing the people, the only people she knew and trusted? The hand gripped the side of the wooden cot to which Caroline Ann had just been promoted, and the steel supports of the dropside bit into the soft palm. Sally Wilmington held on. She wanted to be hurt. It was her fault that Caroline Ann was lost. It hadn't happened to Nora, it had happened to her, to Sally Wilmington, Caroline Ann's mother. If any pain she felt could bring Caroline Ann back, she would welcome that pain. And no pain could be worse than what she was already feeling. Presently the hand relaxed its grip and Sally Wilmington moved on. Out of the night nursery, down the stairs, back to the library, out into the hall, into the sitting-room, into the passage, the dining-room, back again to the hall. There is no rest for this sort of torment.

Everyone in the house had been interviewed, but there was nothing in anyone's statement to help. It had been such an ordinary day. Nora always had Thursday afternoon off, it was usual for Mrs. Wilmington to take the baby out. Mr. Wilmington was away on a business trip. No one had seen anything suspicious. Had any strangers been seen loitering outside the house in the past week or so? No. Had there been any unidentified telephone
calls? None. Had Nora, on her walks out with the baby, ever been approached by strangers and asked questions about her employers? Never. Had she ever had the notion that she might have been followed on these walks? No. She and the two Spaniards had impeccable references, there was no reason to suspect any of them; yet it was Nora who most interested Chief Superintendent Price. Not because she gave in any way the impression of guilt, but simply because as a young, reasonably attractive woman in a position of trust, she was, he considered, the most open to persuasion or threat. He meant to keep a very sharp eye on Miss Hunter.

The most difficult job, he'd found, was with Mrs. Wilmington herself. When he'd first seen her, on the day of the snatch, she'd been in a state of shock. Today, the morning after, she was more under control. He could see from her shadow-ringed eyes that she hadn't slept much, if at all. She was shaky, could hardly hold the coffee cup without spilling the contents, and her voice was tuned high like a fiddle string, ready to break, but she tried to sit still and to tell him what he wanted to know. She reminded him of a child who is under a strain almost too great to bear, but who is trying to be good. Yes, she said, anyone could have discovered from watching the house that Nora had a regular day off on Thursdays and that she took the baby out in the afternoon if it was fine. She often did a little shopping on the way back from the Gardens. Her husband was away a fair amount, often had to go on business trips abroad. Anyone could have known this. No, she hadn't been able to speak to her husband yet. He was in the States, should have got back to the East Coast last night. She'd booked a call to the New York office, but hadn't heard anything. “We've wired him the news, he'll know by now what's happened,” Price said, thinking that the poor girl wouldn't be very intelligible on a transatlantic call.

“Just one more thing, Mrs. Wilmington, and then I hope you'll try to get a little rest. Your nurse, Nora Hunter. I know she's got good references and all that sort of thing, but I want you to tell me, if you can, what you feel about her personally. One's own personal impressions are sometimes more valuable than any number of references. Do you like her? Get on well with her?”

“Yes, very well. She's a very nice girl.”

“Nothing you feel you don't quite understand about her? Nothing that has ever made you say to yourself that perhaps she's not exactly what she seems?”

“No. Oh no. Nothing like that.”

“You'd trust her absolutely? As you'd trust yourself to look after the baby?”

He realized directly he'd said it that the question was unfortunately put. She flushed, put her poor trembling hands to her face and tears began to run down her cheeks again, as she said, “It wasn't Nora who wasn't to be trusted with Caroline Ann. It was me.” Price could only hope that the violent storm of sobbing that followed would exhaust her so much that in spite of herself she might fall asleep when she'd gone upstairs to lie down. He had no more questions at present to ask her.

That afternoon, Stephen went to the library. He'd got two books overdue for return, and wanted another. He also surreptitiously looked through the catalogue to see if he could find anything that might enlighten him about the extraordinary thing that was happening to him. But the catalogue was unhelpful. He looked under “Occult” and found books about witches—he hadn't realized that there were still people who believed in witches—and about magic, about rites and religions of primitive tribes in remote islands, and several books on conjuring. In despair, he asked the librarian whether there were any books about seeing future events before they happened. The librarian looked at him sharply and said, “What's this? A joke?”

“No, I just want to read about it.”

“This isn't the time or the place for fooling about,” the librarian said.

“I don't know what you mean.”

“Didn't you know that you're the second person to ask for the same thing all in ten minutes?”

“I tell you, no. Is there a book then?”

The librarian said something that sounded like “Extra sensitive-preception” and pointed to a table in one of the distant bays. “There. Girl's reading it. You'll have to wait.”

It did not need any uncanny flash of knowledge to tell Stephen who the girl would be. Vicky looked up from the book as he sat down opposite her, and almost broke the strict library rule of silence. Her surprise came out in a suppressed squeak.

Since they couldn't talk, they had to communicate in dumb
show. Stephen pointed to the book and raised inquiring eyebrows. Vicky shook her head, hunched her shoulders. Stephen took the book from her and read a sentence or two. It seemed to be about people who could tell in one room which playing card was being held in front of a screen in another. Or couldn't tell. There were tables of figures and statistics. It was very boring. He pushed the book back across the table, and Vicky shut it and stood up. They went together to the counter, where Vicky formally borrowed the book. Then they went out.

“Are you really going to read it?” Stephen asked when they were free to talk out loud.

“I might. I could try anyway. There must be some bits I could understand.”

“Does it say anything about what makes people able to see those cards?”

“Dunno. I'd hardly read any of it when you came in.”

“I mean, like you said about hearing dog whistles.”

“I said, I've only read about a page.”

“Can I have a look for a minute?”

She handed him the book, and he looked at it as they walked along the pavement. Once he tripped, by stepping off the curb, once an annoyed woman found him wrapped in the lead connecting her with a small, furiously yapping dog. Vicky wished she'd got Chris's confidence. Chris would have firmly held him by the elbow and guided him in safety while he read. Vicky thought of it, decided it would be too familiar, decided that she really could and ought to, decided that after all this thinking about it she couldn't do it easily, it would somehow come out wrong. She left him to make his blundering way. She was relieved when he handed the book back.

“Did you find anything?” she asked.

“Not really. I just wanted to see what sort of a book it was.”

“What d'you mean, what sort of book?”

“Whether it's serious. I mean, scientific. Or whether it's written by cranks. You know, the sort of people who see little green men coming off flying saucers and saving the world.”

“Do they really?”

“I've never seen any.”

“I didn't mean the little men. I meant, do people really believe in them?”

“Yes. And write books about them. But it's all right. This is serious. It's scientists that did the experiments. With the cards and that.”

“I don't see how it matters,” Vicky said.

“Because I don't want to be mixed up with something stupid. It's bad enough it happening. It isn't quite so bad if there's a proper scientific explanation. Don't you see that?” Stephen asked, annoyed.

Vicky said, “Yes, I suppose I do,” rather doubtfully. Then she said, “I suppose it's because your father's that—what you said—a psychologist, makes you feel it's got to be scientific.”

“No it isn't. It's nothing to do with my father.”

“All right. You needn't jump down my throat.”

Stephen said, “Sorry,” and they walked on in silence.

“Where's your sister?” Stephen asked, after a pause.

“Gone shopping.”

“Would you like some coffee?” Stephen asked to show that he'd got over being angry and that he wasn't only interested in Chris.

“I can't! Mum's out this afternoon and I've got the door key and I said I'd be back by four o'clock to let Chris in.”

“That's a pity.”

Without giving herself time to think about it too much and get self-conscious, Vicky said, “If you'd like to come back I could make tea.”

“Thanks. I'd like that.”

Vicky felt better. Then she remembered that her Dad was on a late shift and would be getting up from a day-time sleep to go out to work in the early evening. He was never at his best directly he was woken up, and she hoped Stephen would be gone before he came down. Otherwise she could foresee trouble.

He wasn't around when she and Stephen went into the kitchen, which was a relief. She made tea, opened a packet of biscuits, and then, greatly daring, brought out a tin that had the remains of one of last Christmas's cakes. Mrs. Stanford always made two or three big cakes of incredible richness each Christmas, and they
were brought out for special occasions during the following year. Vicky wasn't sure if this counted as special enough, but she wanted to impress Stephen and show off her Mum's cooking.