I hoisted up the end of the bed, balanced my weight on my left leg, drew back my right foot, and then straightened it out explosively. The angle was awkward and the jar of it did, I later found, crack one bone, but it was a small price to pay, because the bed now had only three legs. She was free. Careless of noise now, I lowered the bed to the floor, scooped up child, chain, and the stub of the bed leg, and tossed her over my shoulder like a sack of potatoes.
The key was in the lock, so I obligingly turned it as I went out and then pocketed it. Heavy boots sounded on the stairs as I ducked into the dark room. I closed the door, shot out the window, and had a bad moment when I stood balanced precariously between sill and limb and tried to close the window. I nearly dropped her, but she made no sound, just clung to my shirt with one hand and to her doll with the other. I caught up the end of the rope that I’d left hanging there and with it to support me, eased the window down with my aching foot, then half-walked, half-swung up the branch, and had just gained the trunk when the pounding came on Jessica’s door. Shouts followed. I tossed the rope up into a branch so its trailing end might not give us away and prepared to drop. “Hang on really tight, Jessie,” I hissed, and with her arms and legs wrapped around me we scrambled and fell down the tree, took five huge bounds to the privet hedge, and burst through, losing skin in several directions, and I just had time to place a hand across her lips when the back door slammed open.
This time the man who came out had a weapon in his hand, a massive shotgun. I pressed my fingers more firmly into the warm face and saw him walk out into the yard, under the tree that had held us ten seconds earlier, and look up at the lighted window. He shouted into the house, “She’s not come out, Owen. The window’s tight shut.” I could not make out the answer from within, drowned out as it was by the angry shouts in the road, but the man walked towards us a few feet and peered up into the tree. The child and I breathed at each other and listened to each other’s heart beat wildly, but she made no noise, and I did not move a hair for fear of rattling the chain or causing my spectacles to flash in the light from the kitchen. The man walked around for two or three minutes until a voice called at him from the house (It was quieter, I realized.) and he went inside. Immediately the door closed I snatched up child and boots, swung Jessica around piggyback, and trotted down the rough verge in my bare feet.
“You’re doing fine, Jessica, just stay quiet and we’ll have you out of here. Those men out in front are our friends, though they may not know it yet. We’ve got to hide very quietly for a little while until the police can get here, and then you’ll see your parents. All right?”
I could feel her nod against my neck. I could also feel the rag doll, squashed between us. I moved rapidly ahead of the noisy mob (which was indeed beginning to break up), holding the chain and bed leg securely so as not to rattle. I kept to the blackest shadows, but when I looked back, against the glow from the house I saw an arm wave in wild salute from the midst of the carolers. Holmes had seen us; the rest was up to him.
I stopped at the caravan just long enough to gather blankets and food, and took the child back along the road and up a dimly seen hill. My eyes had been in the dark long enough to distinguish vague shapes, and I stopped under a tree and let her slide to the ground. Keeping one hand in light contact with her shoulder I eased my spine, then turned to sit up against the trunk, pulling her, unresisting and unresponsive, onto my lap, blankets around us both.
The relief was overwhelming, and I could only sit, shivering with reaction and with the drying sweat that had soaked my clothes. I was struck by the sudden vision of the expressions on those men’s faces when they managed to open the door, and began to giggle. Jessica stiffened, and I forced the incipient hysteria down, took a deep breath, and another, and murmured into her ear.
“You’re safe now, Jessica, completely safe. Those men cannot find you now. We’re just going to wait here for a while until the police come for them, and then your parents will come to take you home. Let’s wrap this rug around you so you don’t get cold. Are you hungry?” I felt her head shake side to side. “Right. Now, we’ll have to stop talking and be still, as still as baby deer in the woods, all right, Jessica? I’ll stay with you, and your doll is here now. By the way, my name is Mary.”
She greeted this with silence, and I pulled the rugs around us, put my back against the tree, and waited. The thin body in my arms slowly relaxed, gradually went loose, and eventually, to my amazement, dropped off to sleep. I listened to the last sounds of the beery men returning home, and after half an hour several cars came swiftly up the road. Distant yells, two shots (the child twitched in her sleep), and then silence. An hour later came the sound of solitary footsteps on the road, and the light of a lantern through the trees.
“Russell?”
“Here, Holmes.” I took the hand torch from the basket of food and flashed it. He climbed the hill and stood looking down at us. I could not read his expression.
“Holmes, I’m sorry if I—” I began, but the simple and immediate plea for understanding was not to be, for Jessica woke at my voice and cried out at the sight of Holmes in the lamplight, and I moved quickly to reassure her.
“No, Jessie, this is a friend; he’s my friend and your mother’s friend, and he’s the friend who made all that noise so I could take you from the house. His name is Mr. Holmes, and he doesn’t always look so funny; he’s dressed up, like I am.” This soothing prattle took the worst of the tension from her body. I bundled the rugs together and handed them to Holmes and walked down the hill with the child in my arms.
We took her to the caravan, lit a fire, and dressed her in one of my woollen shirts, which flapped around her ankles. The publican’s wife produced a hot, thick mutton stew, which we wolfed and the child picked at. Holmes then put the kettle of water on the little stove, and when it was warm he washed and examined my sore foot, wrapped it securely to stop the bone ends from their tedious creaking, and finally used the rest of the water to make a pot of coffee and shave the bristle from his cheeks. Jessica watched his every move. When his face was clean he sat down and showed the child how his gold tooth came out, which was the cause for serious consideration. He then brought his ring of picklocks from his pocket and spread it on the table for her to examine, and asked if she wished him to take the chain from her leg. She cringed away from him and tucked as much of herself as she could get into my lap.
“Jessica,” I said, “nobody’s going to touch you if you don’t want. If you like, I can take it off you, but you’ll have to sit on the table—I can’t do it with you on my lap.” There was no response. We waited a while, and then Holmes shrugged and reached for the picklocks. She stirred, and then slowly pushed her foot towards him. Without comment he got to work and, touching her as little as possible, within two minutes had the shackles on the floor. She gave him a long, grave look, which he returned, and then gathered herself up against me again and put her thumb into her mouth.
We sat, and dozed and waited, until finally there came another car on the road, which braked to a halt just outside the caravan. Holmes opened the door to the Simpsons, and Jessie flew into her mother’s arms and glued her arms and legs around her as if she would never come free, and Mr. Simpson put an arm around both of them and led them to the car, and I found it hard to see properly, and Holmes blew his nose loudly.
7
Words with Miss Simpson
…directing all things without giving an order, receiving obedience but not recognition.
THE END OF a case is always long, tedious, and anticlimactic, and since this is my story I choose to save myself from having to describe the next hours of weariness and physical letdown and questions and the ugliness of confronting those men. Suffice it to say that the night ended and I crawled into my hard bunk for a few hours of collapse before a fist on the caravan door brought me into the day. Cup after cup of black coffee did not help the soggy thickness in my bones and brain, and it was with considerable sour satisfac
tion that later that afternoon I watched the last of the cars drive off down the narrow track. I rubbed my tired eyes and propped up my sore foot and thought vaguely of a bath but found I could not summon the energy to do anything except sit on the wagon’s back step and watch the horse graze.
It must have been nearly an hour later that I became aware of Holmes, sitting on a stump and tossing his jackknife repeatedly into the tree next to him.
“Holmes?”
“Yes, Russell.”
“Is it always so grey and awful at the end of a case?”
He didn’t answer me for a minute, then rose abruptly and stood looking down the road towards the house with the plane trees. When he looked around at me there was a painful smile on his lips.
“Not always. Just usually.”
“Hence the cocaine.”
“Hence, as you say, the cocaine.”
I hobbled into the caravan for more coffee and brought the lukewarm cup back into the last rays of the evening sun. The oily slick on top was slightly nauseous, and I abruptly tipped it out, watched it soak into the trampled grass, and spoke in a rush of words I had not intended to say.
“Holmes, I don’t think I can sleep here tonight. I know it’s late and we should barely get on the road before we had to stop, but would you mind awfully if we didn’t stay here until morning? I really don’t think I can bear it.” My voice came out a bit shaky at the end, but I looked up to see Holmes with a genuine smile in his eyes.
“Mary, me girlie, you took the very words from me mouth. If you’ll get the nag in place, I’ll have these things stowed away in a minute.”
It was considerably more than a minute, but the sun was still above the hills when we turned the painted wagon around and faced back up the road we had come down the day before. I began to breathe more easily, and after a couple of miles Holmes put his back against the caravan’s painted door and let out a sigh.
“Holmes? Do you think they’ll catch the person behind this?”
“It’s possible but not, I think, likely. He’s been very cautious. He was not seen—he has certainly never been here, he’d never have overlooked the tree branch, or the curtains. These five were hired and paid anonymously, had no address or telephone number, no means of contacting him other than the newspaper, and received their orders from postboxes all over London: The ones I saw were all from the same typewriter, which will soon be lying on the bottom of the Thames. The Yard may have luck with tracing the money, but something tells me they won’t. However, sooner or later he’ll put his head up again, and perhaps we’ll see him then. Russell? Come, Russell, don’t fall off under the wheels, I beg you. Hand me those reins and go to sleep. No, go on. I’ve been driving horses since before you were born. Get on wi’ya, Mary.” So I got on.
I woke up many hours later in stillness and heard the little caravan’s back door open. Boots thumped gently onto the wooden floorboards, outer clothing rustled, and Holmes climbed into his bunk. I turned over and went back to sleep.
It was a blessing that we were saddled with the caravan and horse and were forced to make our way slowly to Cardiff. If we had gone off by car and plunged immediately into official business and then whisked ourselves back home by train, it would have left me, and perhaps even Holmes, gasping and stunned. As it was, two long days of plodding travel forced us to put the case into its proper place. We rode and walked, Holmes alternated between pipe and gentle, lyrical violin pieces. We talked, but not of the case, or of what I had taken upon myself to do.
Leaving the horse and caravan with Andrewes, we piled our assorted bags into a cab and were driven to the best hotel that the driver thought might accept us. It did. The baths were sheer sybaritic pleasure, deep and hot, and four rinses later I was again blonde, with a definite tan colour remaining on my skin. I stood in front of the mirror, tying my necktie, when two taps came at the door.
“Russell?”
“Come in, Holmes, I’m nearly ready.”
He let himself in, and I saw that he too remained slightly brown, though the grey had reappeared around his ears. He sat down to wait as I pinned up my still-damp hair, and it occurred to me that he was probably the only person I knew who could simply sit nearby and watch me without one or the other of us needing to make conversation. I finished and picked up my room key.
“Shall we go?”
The Simpsons, as might have been expected, were grateful and fragile. Mrs. Simpson kept touching her daughter gently as if to reassure herself of the child’s presence. Mr. Simpson looked rested and apologised for having to rush about—his words—instead of talking, as he was needed urgently in London. In the midst of it sat Jessica. She and I greeted each other solemnly. I noticed the faint shadow of a fading bruise on her cheekbone that I hadn’t seen in the dark. I asked after her doll, and she replied seriously that she was quite well, thank you, and would I like to see her hotel room? I excused myself and followed Jessica down the hallway. (The Simpsons’ suite and hotel were considerably more upstage than ours.)
We sat on the bed and talked to the stuffed person, and I was introduced to a bear, two rabbits, and a jointed wooden puppet. She showed me a few books, and we spoke of literature.
“I can read them,” she informed me, with the barest trace of self-satisfaction.
“I can see that.”
“Miss Russell, could you read when you were six?” Oddly enough there was no overtone of pride here, just a request for information.
“Yes, I believe I could.”
“I thought so.” She nodded her head in prim satisfaction and smoothed the skirt of the rag doll.
“What is your doll’s name?”
I was surprised at her reaction to this simple question. Her hands went still, and she concentrated on the battered face in her lap, biting her lip. Her voice when she answered was quiet.
“Her name used to be Elizabeth.”
“Used to be? What is her name now?” I could see that this was important but failed to grasp just how.
“Mary.” She spoke in a whisper, and after a few seconds her eyes came up to mine. Light dawned.
“Mary, is it? My name?”
“Yes, Miss Russell.”
It was my turn now to look down and study my hands. Hero worship was not one of the topics Holmes had thought fit to tutor me in, and my voice was not quite steady when I spoke.
“Jessica, would you do something for me?”
“Yes, Miss Russell.” No hesitation. I could ask her to throw herself from the window for me, her voice said, and she would do it. Gladly.
“Would you call me Mary?”
“But Mama said—”
“I know, mothers like good manners in their children, and that is important. But just between the two of us, I should like it very much if you were to call me Mary. I never—” There was something blocking my throat and I swallowed, hard. “I never had a sister, Jessica. I had a brother, but he died. My mother and father died, too, so I don’t have much of a family anymore. Would you like to be my sister, Jessica?”
The amazed adoration in her eyes was too much. I pulled her to me so I did not have to look at it. Her hair smelt musky-sweet, like chamomile. I held her, and she began to cry, weeping oddly like a woman rather than a young child, while I rocked us both gently in silence. In a few minutes she drew a shuddering breath and stopped.
“Better?”
She nodded her head against my chest. I smoothed her hair.
“That’s what tears are for, you know, to wash away the fear and cool the hate.”
As I suspected, that last word triggered a reaction. She drew back and looked at me, her eyes blazing.
“I do hate them. Mama says I don’t, but I do. I hate them. If I had a gun I’d kill them all.”
“Do you think you really would?”
She thought for a moment, and her shoulders slumped. “Maybe not. But I’d want to.”
“Yes. They are hateful men, who did something horrid to you and hurt your p
arents. I’m glad you wouldn’t shoot them, because I shouldn’t want you to go to gaol, but you go ahead and hate them. No one should ever do what they did. They stole you and hit you and tied you up like a dog. I hate them too.”
Her jaw dropped at so much raw emotion aired.
“Yes, I do, and you know what I hate them for most? I hate them for taking away your happiness. You don’t trust people now, do you? Not like you did a few weeks ago. A six-year-old girl oughtn’t to be frightened of people.” The child needed help, but I was quite certain that her parents would greet the suggestion of psychiatric treatment with the standard mixture of horror and embarrassment. She would, for the present, have to settle for me. Physician, heal thyself, I thought sourly.
“Mary?”
“Yes, Jessica?”
“You took me away from those men. You and Mr. Holmes.”
“We helped the police get you back, yes,” I said carefully and not entirely truthfully, and wondered what was on her mind. I did not wonder for long.
“Well, sometimes when I wake up, I think I’m still in that bed. It’s like…I can hear the chain rattle when I move. And even during the day, sometimes I think I’m dreaming, and that when I wake up I’ll be in bed, with one of those men sitting in the chair with his mask on. I mean, I know I’m back with Mama and Papa, but I feel like I’m not. Do you know what I’m talking about?” she asked without much hope.
The experiential reality of the residual effects of a traumatic experience, I thought, in the precise Germanic tones of Dr. Leah Ginzberg, M.D., Ph.D., and then went on almost automatically as she would have, with a push for more truth.
“Oh yes, I do know that feeling, Jessica. I know it very, very well. And it gets all tied up with lots of other feelings, doesn’t it? Like feeling maybe it was somehow your fault, that if you’d tried just a little harder you could have gotten away.” She gaped at me as if I were conjuring half-crowns from the air. “Like even being angry at your mother and father for not rescuing you sooner.” Both of those hit home, like charges at the base of a dam, and the pent-up waters came gushing out in an intense monotone.