A Rather Remarkable Homecoming (28 page)

“Who did this?” I said indignantly. Jeremy shook his head.

Once inside the cottage, we noticed that Harriet had delivered the items from Grandmother Beryl’s house that we had asked for: the rocking-horse, the croquet set, the teak credenza and the beaux arts lamps.

“But what on earth happened to that rocking-horse?” I asked incredulously. One handle was broken off and lying on the floor; and the back ends of both its wooden runners were cracked and splintered.

“It looks as if some grown-up fat-ass sat on it,” Jeremy said. We just gazed at each other.

“Rollo,” I said.

“So where the hell is he?” Jeremy asked.

I didn’t have an answer to that. But a short while later, you might say that the other shoe dropped. It arrived on our doorstep in the form of a white envelope, mysteriously unmarked. No address on it, no postmark, no sign of having been delivered by the mailman or any other courier. No noise, either, so I can’t even say when it arrived.

As I picked up the envelope lying at my feet, I got a queer feeling of foreboding in my stomach. Nobody sent us mail here. People who knew us either phoned or e-mailed.

“What’s that?” Jeremy asked, observing my wary expression as I handed it to him. There was only one sheet of paper inside, and the message was made of cut-up newspaper letters, which I thought people only did in movies. It spelled out, plain and simple:

What a question.

“This must be a hoax, right?” I said nervously, handing it to Jeremy. Before he could answer, the cottage telephone rang. Jeremy picked it up on the third ring.

“Hello?” he said. Then he held the receiver out so I could hear, too.

“Jeremy?” It was Rollo. He initially sounded relieved to hear Jeremy’s voice, but then he went on, in the most sober, scared tone I’ve ever heard poor Rollo use, with a message that sounded rehearsed:

“Jeremy, old boy, did you get the ransom letter? Well, they want me to tell you it’s no joke. Listen carefully. You will receive further instructions shortly. Do not involve the police or I’m a dead man. Please talk to my mum and make her get the million pounds together for you in small bills. I assure you, these fellows mean business. You will hear from them when you hang a red kerchief on your car door handle and park it in town, to signal that you got the money. Please don’t wait to do this. There simply isn’t going to be any time to waffle about it.”

This last bit sounded pleading and desperate, and touchingly frightened. A second later, the phone went dead.

“Damn it,” Jeremy said, looking both concerned and exasperated now.

Worried as I was, I can tell you that the mind does funny things when you’re in a situation like this. While Jeremy was talking about what to do next, some part of my brain was wondering where on earth I was going to get a red kerchief on such short notice to signal the kidnappers.

“Who would want to kidnap poor old Rollo?” I wondered.

“Could be the same weasels who’ve been threatening us out here in Cornwall. Or, it could just be some gangster in London that Rollo has a gambling debt with. Doesn’t matter,” Jeremy said shortly. “We still have to deal with whoever’s got him. I can get some police advice from Denby in London, before we go back to the local coppers. Denby might know somebody out here who can be trusted to keep it quiet.”

“Rollo said not to involve the police,” I reminded him.

“Just for advice, quietly. But in any case, we’re going to have to get some money together, and at least appear to do what the kidnappers want,” Jeremy said. “It’s quite possible that we can successfully make an exchange. But that means we’re going to have to go to London today and pay a little call on Great-Aunt Dorothy. She won’t believe it unless she hears it from us in person.”

At the thought of visiting Great-Aunt Dorothy, I felt even more trepidation than facing down kidnappers. “God, no,” I said. “Not that.”

“You want to tell her we’re coming?” Jeremy said, scrolling his mobile for the number.

“If we call her, she’ll duck us,” I warned. “I say we just land on her. The element of surprise is essential.”

 

I’d been in Great-Aunt Dorothy’s apartment only once in my life, and at the time, I’d been fairly certain I’d never return voluntarily. It was when Jeremy and I first came into our inheritance. And to give you an idea of the kind of person she is, Great-Aunt Dorothy had summoned me there with the intent to convince me that Jeremy was a nefarious character trying to rob me and Rollo of our share, when, in fact, it was she and Rollo who were the ones scheming to do that very thing to me and Jeremy.

So, when I now found myself once again standing outside that slightly spooky, tall, dark apartment building with its black wrought-iron fencing that ringed it with arrow-like, spiky tops—like rows of medieval spears ready to impale us right there in the street—I think I can be forgiven for inwardly cursing Rollo for putting me in this position again.

Jeremy reached for the heavy iron handle of the front door, but apparently the building had new security, so we had to first buzz an intercom to talk to the guard in the lobby. I explained, in my most earnest Little-Red-Riding-Hood way, that I had come to surprise my old Auntie on her birthday. I made this up on the spot. Jeremy just grinned and went along with the ruse.

It worked. The ancient, wizened old doorman buzzed us in without bothering to ask Great-Aunt Dorothy if it would be all right. He must have figured that a crotchety old bird like her was lucky to have any young relatives come calling.

We entered the lobby, which smelled vaguely of mothballs, and we walked toward the very same elevator operator I’d seen last time—an elderly guy who was still dressed in his navy blue uniform with gold braid. It took all his strength and concentration to haul open those heavy wooden elevator doors and the old-fashioned iron grate, and then close them again, before the elevator lurched upward.

It is the slowest elevator in the history of the world. Upon finally alighting on Dorothy’s floor, we had to walk down a long, gloomy dark corridor where her apartment was the last one on the end.

This trek probably gave the doorman time to phone Great-Aunt Dorothy and let her know we were on our way. Which is probably why, just as we approached her door, the maid opened it before we could knock. She was that same tall, gawky woman I’d met last time, and, with her goosey neck and slightly bulging, staring eyes, she resembled a kind of greying, aging Olive Oyl from the
Popeye
cartoon.

“Hi,” I said boldly. “Penny Nichols here to see my Great-Aunt Dorothy. And of course, you remember Jeremy Laidley.”

The maid just gawked at us, but she didn’t try to detain us at the doorway, which I considered a good sign. We walked right into Great-Aunt Dorothy’s parlor, a huge, dark lair decorated in baffling, depressing tones of brown, beige and a mustardy yellow.

And there she sat in her favorite high-backed gold-and-brown chair as if it were a throne, surrounded by all those expensive islands of opulence that still couldn’t fill up such an enormous room—the antique sofas and chairs, the urns and lamps and knick-knacks and tall, potted plants. She peered at us from the shadows of this gloomy parlor, which was always kept darkened by heavy, dusty velvet curtains.

Great-Aunt Dorothy herself was a petite, birdlike lady with silver-white hair. Even at her advanced age she sat straight and rigid, dressed in a dove-grey silk dress. Her thin fingers were like little bird-claws clutching her favorite walking-stick at her side, the only evidence of her frailty when it came to getting in and out of chairs and walking about.

“It’s not my birthday,” were the first words out of her mouth as she eyed us suspiciously.

“You’re looking well, Dorothy,” Jeremy said neutrally.

“What do you want?” Her tone indicated that relatives only showed up unannounced when they wanted money. Normally she’d be wrong about us. But thanks to good old Rollo . . .

Although she did not invite us to take a seat, Jeremy calmly and easily plunked himself in one of those overstuffed armchairs. The nearest one to him was a good three feet away, and I took it, realizing that to remain standing would give the appearance of a supplicant easily dismissed.

Jeremy, who knows Great-Aunt Dorothy better than I do, must have decided that the best course of action was to be as blunt as she was, for he said unceremoniously, “Rollo has been kidnapped.”

“Bah!” Dorothy waved her bony hand in the air as if she were talking to Rollo himself and would brook none of his shenanigans. “He’s probably made the whole thing up, just to trick me into increasing his allowance. Well, when you speak to him again, tell him he’s fooling no one and I won’t fall for this deception!”

In fairness to her, I must say that her son had a definite history of periodic crises where he had to pay off loan sharks and worse. She must have grown weary of Rollo’s constant, desperate attempts to wheedle money out of her; nevertheless, Dorothy had seldom given him tuppence, which is why he would beg, borrow, or bully Grandmother Beryl and Great-Aunt Penelope into helping him. But Rollo had been trying to reform lately. Surely that counted for something.

“He’s really in trouble this time,” I said.

Jeremy explained to Dorothy that he’d quietly consulted both the London police and a local cop in Cornwall for advice. The Cornish cop made discreet inquiries, and a few eyewitnesses reported seeing Rollo outside the pub last night, where he apparently was hustled into a car with a strange man at each side. Not much more could be offered in the way of clues, except that the men escorting Rollo had worn long black raincoats and dark glasses and hats.

Jeremy concluded this recitation by looking Great-Aunt Dorothy in the eye with a firm expression and saying, “So, we do believe that Rollo is an innocent victim. We think he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time, and got picked up by some thugs out in Cornwall.”

I had been watching Dorothy’s face as she listened, and her expression remained impatient and annoyed throughout.

“The fool!” she spat out now, with, I must say, a surprising tone of triumph. “I
told
Rollo not to go visiting you there this summer. I
told
him times had changed since he was a boy. Why,
nobody
goes to the seaside anymore. There’s nothing but riffraff out there now.”

“Except for royals like Prince Charles,” I couldn’t resist saying to her. She turned to me with a beady-eyed glare.

“Exactly,” she said evenly. “His
mother
doesn’t go there any-more.”

Only my Great-Aunt Dorothy could conceive of Bonnie Prince Charles as riffraff.

“You have to listen to us!” I exclaimed. “Jeremy and I drove all the way here from Cornwall without stopping, because time is of the essence. Don’t you understand? These kidnappers are serious, and they say they’re going to kill Rollo if you don’t—”

Jeremy jumped in, apparently thinking I was heading for the breakers. “We heard him with our own ears, Dorothy. Rollo was forced by his kidnappers to plead for his life,” he said crisply. “They have instructed you to put up a million pounds in cash so that we can make a trade. For your son’s life.”

“Ridiculous,” Dorothy said. “Let your police handle it. They do this sort of thing all the time.”

“The cops advised us to bring money to make the exchange,” Jeremy replied. “Of course we’ll try to do it with the minimum of risk, and yes, the police will back us up, so that quite possibly we’ll be able to recover the money once we get Rollo back. But we still have to go through with a convincing swap, and in order to do that, we have to have the cash.”

Dorothy scowled. “This is a matter for my lawyer. He’s on vacation. Come back next week.”

“We can’t!” I interjected, totally exasperated now. “If we don’t do this within hours, Rollo will be dead.”

There was a short silence. I would like to say that Great-Aunt Dorothy finally broke down, and wept for her son, and said of course, we must do as the police advised. I would like to say that she clutched my hand with those birdlike talons and begged me to do everything in my power to see that no harm came to Rollo.

But, alas, she did none of the above. Rather, what she did was lean forward with a smile I can only describe as evil, and say to me, “Well, you two are rich now, so why don’t
you
pay it?”

Now here I must explain something that Jeremy, and our accountant, and countless other people have divulged to me over the years. When it comes to money, there are those who are luckily well-heeled, then there’s the veddy-rich, and then there’s the
veddy
-veddy-rich, which is the top of the aristocratic pyramid. On a parallel track are those whom Great-Aunt Dorothy dismissively calls “people in trade” who actually work for their money, and these are divided into the wealthy, the super-wealthy and the obscenely-wealthy.

Where do I fall in all this? They tell me that, despite my pathetically modest upbringing, my inheritance from Aunt Pen has catapulted me into being one of “the luckily well-heeled”. Jeremy’s mum’s family is veddy-rich. But Great-Aunt Dorothy, sitting here in her parlor like a spider in her web, actually falls into the
veddy
-veddy-rich category.

So imagine how hard it was to sit there that day and watch Dorothy putting on the air of an elderly pensioner who’s counting her food stamps. She actually said, rather defensively, “I’m an
old
woman, you know. I must look ahead to my last years, when I may require assisted living. I simply can’t be throwing millions about as if it were paper for the loo.”

Nice metaphor. I really didn’t know what to react to first. I mean, how much longer does she think she’s going to live? If she lived to be a hundred and thirty—perish the thought—she still couldn’t spend all she’s got. And with a butler, a driver, a maid, a doting attentive son, a cook, a hairdresser, masseuse, plus the best personal, high-end, concierge-style medical care, a slew of lawyers and accountants—how much more “assisted” does this woman plan to get?