An Embarrassment of Riches (67 page)

It was an amount so extreme as to be farcical. And Alexander would never pay it. Not for a wife from whom he had requested a legal separation. He would probably not even have paid it for Felix. Only for Stasha would he have raked together that kind of money.

Time began to have no meaning. The woman gave her bread to eat, feeding it humiliatingly to her mouthful by mouthful. When she reluctantly expressed the desire to go to the lavatory, the woman led her outside to a privy and a bucket.

She tried to make contact with the woman, to talk to her, but there was not even a monosyllabic response from her, only tight-lipped silence.

The only one of the three to make any conversation with her was the reasonable-sounding man who had first offered her water. She was intrigued by his voice, and by the voices of his companions on the rare occasions when they talked to each other. Their accents were English, not American. And although they didn't possess the plummy vowel sounds of the middle-class English, their voices were very far from being uneducated and the knowledge filled her with even more terror than if they had been illiterates. Reasonable education meant that they had thoroughly thought through what they were doing. It meant that they would allow for no mishaps. It meant that there wasn't the remotest chance of their being foolish enough to allow her to escape.

At night she was given a couple of blankets and her ankles were again tied, only this time more loosely, and cord was attached from the cord at her wrists to a heavy immovable object. She wasn't sure, but she thought it was a stove. Whatever it was, there was no chance of her dragging it after herself even if she had been left unguarded and an escape attempt had been possible.

It was impossible for her to sleep. The October night was bitterly cold and she kept thinking about Felix, wondering if he had returned home safely or if he was wandering the New York streets, shivering, lost and frightened. She kept thinking about Alexander, wondering what his reaction had been when he had received the ransom note. The sum demanded was an amount no sane person could be expected to pay. She wondered what he would do. Would he stall for time in the hope that her kidnappers could be tracked down? Would he offer to pay a much smaller amount for her safe return? And if he did, and if her kidnappers refused to accept it, what then? Would they kill her?

She shivered on the icy linoleum floor. Who would look after Felix and Natalie if she were murdered? Alexander would marry again. He would probably marry Isabel. Would Isabel be a loving mother to Felix and Natalie, or would she, too, favour Stasha?

Dawn came slowly. She was so cold and stiff that she wondered if she would ever be able to move again. Her captors began to stir. There came the sound of plates clinking together, water being boiled.

She wasn't sure when one of them left the room. The knowledge that someone had done so only came slowly. He was gone a long time and when he returned he called for the other two to join him in the yard.

She strained her ears to hear what was going on but words were not distinguishable. All that she could discern was an atmosphere of palpable urgency.

When the three of them returned they did so in a great hurry. She could hear the pages of a newspaper being shuffled and belongings being speedily collected.

‘Gag her,' the more taciturn of the two men said abruptly.

As a shadow fell over her, she heard him say to the woman: ‘Don't leave so much as a hair behind.'

Cold terror washed through her veins. They had realized the hopelessness of their demand. They were going to cut and run and they were going to kill her before doing so.

She struggled vainly against the bonds constraining her. Her shoulders were seized roughly as other hands tied a gag around her mouth. Still she struggled. Twisting and turning, the cords burned into the flesh of her wrists and ankles. ‘Stop wasting time,' the harsh voice said to his companions.

She was pushed violently, her cheek making painful contact with the linoleum. And then there was nothing. No knife in her back or between her ribs. No pistol shot. No deadly pad of ether.

All three of them left the room. Seconds later she heard the clink and rattle of a horse and cart moving off over beaten earth. The sound grew fainter. Disappeared entirely.

She struggled back into a sitting position, still attached by the cord at her wrists to the stove. How long were they going to be gone for? Had they gone for good? And if they had, how was she to free herself? How was she to reach water? How was she to survive?

She had no way of judging time. It seemed endless. By dint of rubbing her head ceaselessly against the wall she managed to eventually dislodge the blindfold. It slipped down, still fastened, around her neck. The weak October sunlight hurt her eyes.

When she could bear to focus, she saw she was in the living-kitchen of an obviously uninhabited smallholding. There were no furnishings, only an iron stove, and a sink. Wryly she realized that her captors must have been nearly as uncomfortable as she had been and as she still was.

The next bond she needed to free herself from was the gag. She needed to be able to shout for help. She needed to be able to hobble to the sink and to turn the tap with her teeth and to be able to drink.

She used the same method for the gag as she had used for the blindfold. It took a long, tedious time. Through the dusty window she could see a weak sun climbing high in the sky. It was mid-afternoon on what she assumed, but couldn't be sure, was the second day of her capture.

When she eventually wore away the knot of her gag her head was raging with pain from the effort. With her legs still hobbled, and still attached to the stove by the cord at her wrists, she reached the sink. The tap was another matter. No matter how hard she tried, even at the risk of losing every tooth she possessed, she couldn't turn it. All she could do was let intermittent drops of water fall on to her parched tongue.

Every ten minutes or so she shouted for help. There was never an answer, only a resounding silence broken occasionally by the sound of scavenging hens.

As evening approached the prospect of death by freezing or starvation seemed increasingly probable. Her captors had obviously panicked and were not going to return. She had made no headway in freeing herself from the cords binding her wrists or ankles. No-one was within earshot of her frantic calls for help.

The night that followed was the most frightening of her life. She was ravenously hungry, burning with thirst that couldn't be slaked by the drops of water she was able to obtain. There was no way that she could reach the privy in the yard because the cord attaching her to the stove was not long enough to permit her to reach the door. Helplessly she urinated where she lay, overcome with horror at the thought of eventually having to defecate.

She tried to work out how many hours it had been since her captors had so hurriedly made their departure. Surely by now it would have been possible for them anonymously to have informed the authorities of her whereabouts? Surely if help was coming it must already be on its way?

Improbably she slept. When she awoke it was to a feeling of utter hopelessness. Alexander had abandoned her. He hadn't even entered into negotiations with the kidnappers, thereby giving the authorities time to try and trace her. When she was eventually found she would be dead. She would be emaciated and lying in her own filth and …

There came the sound of distant hoofbeats. She struggled into a sitting position. It wasn't one horse but several. And drawing nearer.

‘Help!' she shouted through cracked lips.
‘Help!'

The hoofbeats thundered towards the farm and through the dusty window she saw a posse of men swirl to a halt.

She had no way of knowing if any of the men slithering out of their saddles were the men who had kidnapped her. She had no way of knowing if she was saved or if her ordeal was about to continue.

The door crashed open. A thick-set man with fair hair and a heavy blond moustache burst into the room, a half-dozen others at his heels.

‘Pinkerton!' he announced, striding towards her. ‘Have you been harmed, Mrs Karolyis? Are you hurt?'

She couldn't answer him. She couldn't speak. Tears of overwhelming relief choked her throat. She wanted to laugh and cry at the same time.

Her saviour was sawing through the cord at her wrist with a lethal-looking knife. Another of the men was offering her water from a flask. The others were swarming all over the room, looking for clues that would help lead them to the identity of her captors.

The man with the knife was saying formally as the cords fell from her wrist, ‘Allan Pinkerton at your service, ma'am.'

‘I thought no-one was going to come! I thought no-one was ever going to come!'

He smiled reassuringly, beginning to saw at the cords around her ankles. ‘It's only been thirty hours, ma'am. I've never known a kidnapping case take less time than this one to be satisfactorily concluded.'

She rubbed gingerly at her numbed wrists, saying shakily, ‘Is that because the kidnappers realized the futility of their demands? Is that why they gave up? How did they let you know where I was?'

Pinkerton had been kneeling in order to cut the cords at her ankles. Now he rocked back on his heels, his eyebrows shooting into his hair.

‘They let James Gordon Bennett know where you were being held, ma'am, because your husband paid the biggest ransom in history for your safe return. They got their hands on the money shortly after seven o'clock yesterday evening and a note saying where you were being held was delivered to Bennett at dawn today.'

The shock was so great that for a moment she thought she was going to lose consciousness.

‘Ten million dollars?' she said faintly. ‘He paid ten million dollars for me?'

‘He certainly did, ma'am, and he's on his way here now.'

She was aware of how bedraggled she looked, of the smell rising from her urine-stained skirt.

‘I need to wash … to change into clean clothes …'

Had Alexander paid the extortionate ransom because he would have felt publicly shamed if he hadn't done so? Or had he paid it because her safety mattered to him as much as his safety mattered to her?

There came the sound of galloping hoofbeats.

‘It's Mr Karolyis, Mr Pinkerton,' one of the men said from the open doorway.

She would know as soon as she saw him; as soon as she saw his face.

‘Oh God,' she whispered, brushing back her sweat-soaked hair with her hand. ‘Please, oh please …'

He stormed into the room like a tornado. For a second she barely recognized him. He had aged ten years. Deep lines gouged their way from his nose to his mouth. The hair at his temples was grey.

‘Dear Christ!' he said fiercely, striding across the room towards her, seizing hold of her and crushing her against him. ‘I thought I'd lost you, Maura! I thought I was never going to see you again!'

Uncaring of the watching Allan Pinkerton and his men, his mouth sought hers. Her arms closed around him, hugging him so tight it was a wonder either of them could continue to breathe.

‘It's all over, Maura,' he said thickly when he at last raised his head from hers. ‘No more idiocy. No more partings. I'm going to carry out a massive rehousing programme. I'm going to alter my will again and bequeath Tarna to Felix and I'm never,
ever
going to say another unkind word about Ireland or the Irish. You can have the Fifth Avenue mansion painted green if you want and have shamrocks growing on the roof. I'm going to do what you said I should have done long ago, I'm going to tell the truth about Stasha's paternity and we're all going to live together as a family. And I'm never going to be separated from you again. Not ever.'

‘I love you,' she said, smiling joyously through tears of happiness. ‘Even when I thought you wouldn't pay the ransom for me, I never stopped loving you.'

Allan Pinkerton cleared his throat. ‘With respect, Mr Karolyis, I think it's about time we transported Mrs Karolyis back to civilization. She needs a hot drink and a good square meal.'

Alexander sniffed suddenly, looking around the bare room puzzled. In horrified comprehension his eyes returned to Maura.

‘And a bath,' he said, his arm firmly around her waist as he began to walk with her towards the open door. ‘I've never smelt anything so atrocious in all my life!'

The next morning the
Herald's
front-page headline trumpeted,
‘World record ransom paid for Mrs Alexander Karolyis!'
On the inside pages were the headlines ‘
The
Herald
instrumental in securing Mrs Karolyis's release!
' and ‘
The
Herald
helps hunt down Karolyis kidnappers'.

Privy to all the inside machinations of the ransom demand and its payment, James Gordon Bennett was confident he had a front-page story that would run and run. Twenty-four hours later he jettisoned it without a moment's thought for an even more sensational scoop.
‘Alexander Karolyis acknowledges Love-Child!'

Even Henry and Charlie were rocked by Alexander's complete volte-face.

‘I think it admirable that you've decided to be honest about Stasha's paternity,' Henry said, wondering if the day would ever come when Alexander would cease taking his breath away. ‘But what on earth were you thinking of to allow Bennett to be privy to the facts? Surely you must have known how he would use such information?'

It was early evening and they were in the Chinese drawing-room. Maura had taken Charlie to the nurseries in order that she could show him how happily Stasha was settling in and how delighted Felix was at having a live-in playmate of his own age and sex. The latest edition of the
Herald
lay on an elegantly carved lion-legged table.

‘Naturally,' Alexander said with a grin. ‘And it makes things so much easier, don't you think? The whole world now knows that he's my son and that Maura and myself are going to adopt him in order to legalize his position within our family.'