N or M_ - Agatha Christie [40]
It was signed with a skull and crossbones.
Mrs Sprot was moaning faintly:
‘Betty–Betty–’
Everyone was talking at once. ‘The dirty murdering scoundrels’ from Mrs O’Rourke. ‘Brutes!’ from Sheila Perenna. ‘Fantastic, fantastic–I don’t believe a word of it. Silly practical joke’ from Mr Cayley. ‘Oh, the dear wee mite’ from Miss Minton. ‘I do not understand. It is incredible’ from Carl von Deinim. And above everyone else the stentorian voice of Major Bletchley.
‘Damned nonsense. Intimidation. We must inform the police at once. They’ll soon get to the bottom of it.’
Once more he moved towards the telephone. This time a scream of outraged motherhood from Mrs Sprot stopped him.
He shouted:
‘But my dear madam, it’s got to be done. This is only a crude device to prevent you getting on the track of these scoundrels.’
‘They’ll kill her.’
‘Nonsense. They wouldn’t dare.’
‘I won’t have it, I tell you. I’m her mother. It’s for me to say.’
‘I know. I know. That’s what they’re counting on–your feeling like that. Very natural. But you must take it from me, a soldier and an experienced man of the world, the police are what we need.’
‘No!’
Bletchley’s eyes went round seeking allies.
‘Meadowes, you agree with me?’
Slowly Tommy nodded.
‘Cayley? Look, Mrs Sprot, both Meadowes and Cayley agree.’
Mrs Sprot said with sudden energy:
‘Men! All of you! Ask the women!’
Tommy’s eyes sought Tuppence. Tuppence said, her voice low and shaken:
‘I–I agree with Mrs Sprot.’
She was thinking: ‘Deborah! Derek! If it were them, I’d feel like her. Tommy and the others are right, I’ve no doubt, but all the same I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t risk it.’
Mrs O’Rourke was saying:
‘No mother alive could risk it and that’s a fact.’
Mrs Cayley murmured:
‘I do think, you know, that–well–’ and tailed off into incoherence.
Miss Minton said tremulously:
‘Such awful things happen. We’d never forgive ourselves if anything happened to dear little Betty.’
Tuppence said sharply:
‘You haven’t said anything, Mr von Deinim?’
Carl’s blue eyes were very bright. His face was a mask. He said slowly and stiffly:
‘I am a foreigner. I do not know your English police. How competent they are–how quick.’
Someone had come into the hall. It was Mrs Perenna, her cheeks were flushed. Evidently she had been hurrying up the hill. She said:
‘What’s all this?’ And her voice was commanding, imperious, not the complaisant guesthouse hostess, but a woman of force.
They told her–a confused tale told by too many people, but she grasped it quickly.
And with her grasping of it, the whole thing seemed, in a way, to be passed up to her for judgement. She was the Supreme Court.
She held the hastily scrawled note a minute, then she handed it back. Her words came sharp and authoritative.
‘The police? They’ll be no good. You can’t risk their blundering. Take the law into your own hands. Go after the child yourselves.’
Bletchley said, shrugging his shoulders:
‘Very well. If you won’t call the police, it’s the best thing to be done.’
Tommy said:
‘They can’t have got much of a start.’
‘Half an hour, the maid said,’ Tuppence put in.
‘Haydock,’ said Bletchley. ‘Haydock’s the man to help us. He’s got a car. The woman’s unusual looking, you say? And a foreigner? Ought to leave a trail that we can follow. Come on, there’s no time to be lost. You’ll come along, Meadowes?’
Mrs Sprot got up.
‘I’m coming too.’
‘Now, my dear lady, leave it to us–’
‘I’m coming too.’
‘Oh, well–’
He gave in–murmuring something about the female of the species being deadlier than the male.
III
In the end Commander Haydock, taking in the situation with commendable Naval rapidity, drove the car, Tommy sat beside him, and behind were Bletchley, Mrs Sprot and Tuppence. Not only did Mrs Sprot cling to her, but Tuppence was the only one (with the exception of Carl von Deinim) who knew the mysterious kidnapper by sight.
The Commander was a good organiser and a