The Stand-In (7 page)

He saw that she was and remembered how tired he used to be after a day's shooting.

“Now let's have it, Desmond. You're not going through with it because of me?”

“Correct. I'm just taking her back to the St. Georges, so if you'll drop us at the next corner—”

“But why? Now that you've got her, why?”

“Let us out at the corner. I'll wait for a cab. You can follow and make sure I'm not pulling a fast one. I'm just going to hand her over to the doorman and get out quick if I can.”

“You didn't kidnap her—fabulous, that—just to turn her back. What kind of game are you playing at?” He stared at the profile beside him in the wig and nurse's cap. “I see now. You're not playing
any
game with me.”

“Tennis, anyone?”

“You're not playing doubles with me again? I've had all the fun and games I'm going to have with you?”

“Correct. No more fun and games.”

Ronnie had been driving very slowly; now he turned into a mews and stopped the car. “I can't say I blame you. What small beer I am compared to you, Desmond! Cadging food and drink—I expect Cyril's told you that from time to time I do a bit of stealing. All inside the family, of course, where it's safe, and a spot of poncing—except for you that night with Boy, the hetero bit—and there's my escorting service plus some modest blackmailing, but you quietly pull off the big one! You nip in and do this!

“No, Desmond, wait. You don't have to point out the risks. I don't know what they hand down for kidnapping, but it would be a lot more of my life than I would like to spend doing my bird; still I want in, Desmond, which means I want to trust you with a big part of my life.”

“I don't trust
you
. Get that through your skull.”

“This must have been brilliantly conceived, Desmond. I don't know how you arranged it, can't imagine, but to walk out that way with the—er—precious little package announcing that you are delivering her to Lady St. Justin's—Obviously her nanny isn't expecting the child back before morning, so nobody gets the wind up. Super!”

It was great hearing Ronnie calling him brilliant in that respectful voice, but Desmond didn't say a word.

“You're still furious because of Boy, is that it? When you have Boy's peculiar tastes it comes high, and I was stony, and then I did think, well—a casting couch is a casting couch.”

“I told you I was a straight!”

“I'd forgotten you take these things so seriously, Desmond. I assure you that if I'd even suspected it would turn out that way, I wouldn't have considered it.”

“Yeah. You're a real pal.”

“Desmond, I am most frightfully sorry. I did go round to your place to apologize but you'd moved, and I have tried to see you, but Cyril's forbidden me in his shop, you must know that? I wanted to humbly apologize.”

“I bet.”

“It's true, and also to warn you. I went round and told Boy it was all my doing—hard cheese to have Boy down on you, I thought, but I couldn't move him. You did quite a job on him, you know, but once he's on his feet again—I did want to warn you. I don't understand it; surely Boy's been turned down before? Perhaps it was the beating. Perhaps you've become the symbol of his nanny. I am serious now, Desmond, he's mental about you, literally mental. Boy's become quite the Captain Ahab and you're his Moby Dick and he's prepared to hunt you down to the death. Hell hath no fury like Boy scorned!” His voice was low and serious. “Desmond, why do you think I was at St. Andrews today? Why would I, of all people, be at St. Andrews, of all places, today? Desmond, give me one conceivable reason why except to warn you! I came there because I read about Coral Reid and the filming and knowing how you felt about her, I thought you might be there. Why else, Desmond?”

He had told himself Ronnie wouldn't move his ass for any movie star.

“‘May I have your autograph, Miss Reid?' You can't think I'd be at St. Andrews for that, Desmond?”

He couldn't.

“Actually, I didn't know what to make of it when I saw you all tarted up as a nurse, Desmond. Because I was looking for you, I spotted you at once. I felt a fool because all I could think was that perhaps poor old Boy just wasn't your cup of tea and that you had your cap set for some lecherous doctor and that I'd been suffering all these agonies of regret for nothing!

“How I've misjudged you, Desmond! Not only will there be a lovely lovely lot of money, but at the same time you pay Collier off. It's simply super!”

Desmond said, “You can shove that.” But, was it good to hear!

“I've already apologized for Boy's little party but now I am humbly asking you to take me to
your
party, Desmond. Do listen; as I said, I'm fully aware that yours could turn out to be—what do they call it in Westerns?—a necktie party! I know that, but I am so impressed by the way you've managed that I want to risk it.”

“You'll
risk it? Who're you kidding? Think I don't know if I don't include you in, you'll go to the cops? Think I don't know you by now?”

“Yes, you know me, you know me, certainly you do! The point is, Desmond, that I didn't know you. I've already admitted that I was the bloody fool. Well?”

Ronnie was top drawer. From that first time they met, Desmond thought if he could have Ronnie's respect he'd have it made and … it wasn't crap about the necktie party. Wait a minute, wait a minute. “If I let you come in, Ronnie, you've got to really put yourself on the line. You still willing?”
Click, click
.

“Try me.”

“Okay. I'm taking her to your aunts' house. Ossian won't be using it until Thursday and I finished Cyril's job there and still have the keys.”

“Ideal. Perfect.”

Click, click
. Ronnie's respect was making his mind click out answers I.B.M. again. “Yes, but I must get rid of the keys. I was going to leave the kid locked up there while I went back and dropped them at Cyril's. Look, you stayed at that house a lot, you said; is there any way to get in without keys?”

“Unless you had a lock put on a small window over the potting shed, yes. I used to use that when I was sixteen. Taines, the head gardener, had a very cooperative daughter.”

“No. We didn't put any locks in, what for? That will do.”

“Then I'm in, Desmond?”

“Yes. First drive me to Cyril's shop.”

“Straightaway.”

“Have you a pen and a sheet of plain paper?” Ronnie handed over a memo book. “I'm going to tell Cyril that I'm not coming to the shop tomorrow and wrap the note around the keys and drop them through the letter slot.” He'd tell Cyril he was fed up with the movie people. Cyril could give the keys to Ossian himself and expect him when he saw him.

“What's the rest of the drill, Desmond?”

Ronnie obviously figured that Desmond had not only planned the snatch, but had every single thing worked out, and the way his mind was clicking now, he could have had. “Get going, will you? When we're out of central London stop at a road phone.”

“You've got them by the Achilles heel, old boy. They'll never call the rozzers in on this, not with that precious little neck we can wring.”

Desmond looked back at the kid. It was funny the way he kept forgetting about her. She had slid over in her sleep so that her neck was bent. Kids that age had practically no necks. Ronnie had picked up speed. “Try to drive so she doesn't wake up.”

“I'll do my best, sir.”

“I have the number at Lady St. Justin's memorized.” Ronnie knew just the phone box to use, and every back road to Stoke Newington. They made great time.

Ronnie drove up the last section of road with his lights off and told Desmond how to push the iron gate to keep the creaking down so the kid would stay asleep and not be able to describe a thing. They parked the Jag where it wouldn't be spotted and by the time Ronnie got into the house and opened the front door for him, Desmond had the feeling that he had
chosen
to use Ronnie because this had been his aunts' house. Of course Desmond knew that Ronnie had forced himself into the act, but even so he felt it had been his doing, and the way Ronnie was acting you'd really think he had been
told
to come to St. Andrews in the Jag and pick him and the kid up.

Inside Kitten woke up and yawned and asked if this was the party. He said later it would be the party, now she was going upstairs like a big girl and wait. To her, the entrance hall must have looked like any other, but Ronnie raised an eyebrow and whistled. Cyril had found some great stuff; it really was something. The bronze lamp for the newel post, a heavily draped woman holding a gas torch, was particularly good. Cyril really knew his stuff; the way he put it, the Axminster carpet was positively
vicious
. The first two flights of stairs were carpeted because they would be seen in the movie.

Desmond edged the kid around the outstretched arm of the woman with the torch, told Ronnie to wait where he was, and asked for the flashlight he had told Ronnie to take from the Jag. He let the kid walk up the first two flights but then (linoleum on the stairs here) carried her up to the small bedroom with the one high window on the top floor which Cyril had furnished for the housemaid scene.

Desmond put the kid down on the narrow iron bed, lighted the gas jet, which was too high for her to reach, and pulled off her shoes. It was cold as hell, so he left the rest of her clothes on. There was a working fireplace and a measly scuttle of coal, but of course a fire was out of the question. He tucked Daph's wool cape around her. The bed and the one chair and the wooden washstand with the chipped pitcher and basin, the sleasy towel and poisonous-looking yellow soap in the cracked plate weren't what she was used to, but he could tell what really bothered her was staying there alone. He told her to take another nap, hoping he wouldn't have to get angry, but she didn't act up; she bounced once to try the mattress (or for luck?), then stuck her thumb in her mouth and closed her eyes. Her lashes went about halfway down her round cheeks (so had his).

Ronnie had stayed put. As Desmond came downstairs the respect on that high-class upturned face warmed his guts, made him feel as if he'd drunk just enough Scotch and, as if he had thought it all out, he ticked off the reasons, one, two, three, why he'd decided to come here. Even if they did search the place, for example, and found his fingerprints, well, his fingerprints should be here. No one would connect Cyril's assistant with a nurse from St. Andrews. To a kid that age, this house with only a couple of rooms furnished, and pure 1860 at that, wouldn't seem peculiar, just a house. He told Ronnie that he had read about the party at Lady St. Justin's in some gossip column and decided tonight was the night. He said that he had depended on Ossian's reputation for getting everybody to snap to to get the kid away from her nursemaid. (Desmond had seated himself on the fifth step. Ronnie was on the first, still looking up at him.) He told Ronnie his one-man gang idea. For the first phone call it had been a man's voice, British; the second would be the nurse's voice.

“Perfect,” Ronnie said.

Then (remembering) Desmond told Ronnie that the kid could print the alphabet but couldn't read, so
she
was going to write a note which would get in the morning mail. Knowing the kid was alive, they wouldn't start anything.
Click, click
. He was going to use
Peepshow
stationery. Piles of it in the office Cyril had set up for Ossian in the old butler's pantry, and since the same stationery was used in London by practically everybody connected with the picture, they might think it was an inside job.

Ronnie nodded up at him again.

Desmond said that he got the idea of using a nurse's uniform when he read that they were shooting at St. Andrews. (Nothing about being sent there with the keys. Nothing about Coral Reid laughing at him.)

He told Ronnie why the uniform wouldn't be traced. (Ronnie couldn't see old Daph. Let him think she was a dish.) The uniform was taken care of, everything was taken care of. When Desmond remembered what Ronnie had done to him and the way he was acting now, Desmond felt super. He stretched with pleasure, as if he were stiff. It was, he said, time to get the letter written, so they could mail it when they made the next telephone call. Then he made Ronnie put on his driving gloves, which,
click, click
, he had remembered to make him bring in along with the flashlight and told him to follow him upstairs to the big bedroom Cyril had furnished. First Desmond drew the heavy red velour curtains he had hung.
(Click, click
, the brass rings went along the brass pole.) Then he lighted the gas and told Ronnie where to sit and wait.

Going downstairs, moving with the flashlight through the dark house, he felt weightless, as if he and not the flashlight was giving off light.

Using his handkerchief, he took a sheet of paper, an envelope, and a stamp which he stuck on the envelope. Then he picked up one of the ballpoint pens with
Peepshow
printed on it out of a bunch lying in a bowl. (Probably ink could be traced, too.) Ossian even had an electric razor there, and while Desmond used it, and then carefully cleaned it, he composed a note. He would ask the kid what she called her mommy and daddy. If she had some special name he'd use it; if not, he wouldn't bother with a salutation. (He told himself that the shorter the better, but the truth was he wanted to be back with Ronnie. He wanted more of that head-nodding respect.)

The kid still had her thumb in her mouth and her big eyes on the door. When he came in, she sat up asking if the party was now. Not now, he said. Now they were going to play a game. They were going to see if she really could write the alphabet.

She began, “A,B,C,D,E—”

“No, sweetie,
write
it.” There was nothing for her to lean on, so he put her on the cold linoleum floor and placed the ballpoint in her hand. “Kitten, what do you call your mommy and daddy?” She was touching the printing on the pen. “Kitten, do you have a special name for your mommy and daddy?”