Dorothy Eden (6 page)

“Find her for me!” she begged in a whisper. “Ask me questions afterwards.”

No little girl in a white frock! No little girl in a white frock! The answer seemed to come automatically from all around.

Suddenly Kate saw the man whom she had bumped into the previous night. He was still looking at her with his sly, dark gaze, but when she burst out accusingly, “Have you seen a little girl in a white dress?” he shook his head and said in bewilderment, in a broad Bradford voice, “Ee, have you lost one?”

No one with a voice like that should look so sinister. It was so unexpected that it was wildly funny. Kate thought she must be going mad. Then the train seemed to spin dizzily, and she had to grip the window ledge.

Lucian’s hand was on her elbow.

“Are you all right, Kate? You’d better come and have some coffee.”

“I can’t. Not without Francesca. She needs coffee, too.”

“We’ll be at the Gare du Nord in half an hour. Ten minutes for coffee isn’t going to affect Francesca one way or the other, but it is going to stop you from fainting.”

“Lucian, what am I to do?” she implored.

“Have coffee and we’ll talk.”

It was useless to talk, of course. She could only repeat how she had put Francesca safely to bed in the lower bunk the night before and then had had that moment of utter horror and disbelief on seeing the strange child’s face in the morning.

“Freckles! Missing teeth! And she hasn’t a word of explanation.”

“She wouldn’t have climbed in that bunk if it hadn’t been empty.”

“You mean she deliberately got in herself?”

“I should think so. Half asleep. Looking for somewhere to be comfortable. Naturally she isn’t going to admit she remembers.”

“But, Lucian—” She gave him a long look over her coffee cup. “You still don’t believe me, do you? You think it’s I who have been dreaming up things.”

“Have you Francesca’s railway ticket?”

“She wanted to keep it herself with her passport. She’s an experienced traveller. Everything was in her suitcase.” Kate pushed away her coffee cup and stood up. “What on earth am I going to tell her mother and Mrs. Dix?”

“We’re coming into the outskirts of Paris,” Lucian said. “Look.”

Kate took an anguished look at the slate-grey roofs, the amber chestnut trees, the slowly awaking streets. Clasping her doll, determined and silent, Francesca was to have made her promised ascent of the Eiffel Tower…

How
could
she have disappeared into thin air? She couldn’t. That was nonsense.

Kate stood up decisively.

“The moment we arrive, I’m getting the police.”

It was impossible, in the fuss and bustle of arrival, to see whether anyone anywhere was trying to smuggle a fat complacent child off the train. Although she hung out of the window to get a good view of the moving people, the shouting porters, the babble of several languages made her feel only baffled and confused. The two schoolmistresses, with their clutch of children anxiously shepherded, passed by. One of them looked up.

“We’re terribly sorry we can’t stay to help. But we can’t risk losing any of our own.”

“That’s all right,” Kate called.

“So sorry about all that mess up…” They were pushed out of sight. The man from Bradford, hurrying past with brief-case and raincoat, paused to give her a wink and his sidelong glance. But the business man in him was already uppermost, and he had forgotten her trouble. The train was almost empty now. It seemed useless to search the empty compartments littered only with orange skin and cigarette butts.

If Francesca were there she would be making her presence known—if she could still speak…

Suddenly, in a flash of illumination, Kate was remembering the child’s efforts last night to tell her that a strange man had talked to her. Someone interested in her, someone who had excited her, and told her something that pleased her. Her eyes had been shining.

Had he been making an irresistible bribe to her? Had he asked her to get off the train when he came for her?

Because now Kate was convinced the change-over of the children had been made while she was having dinner with Lucian.

Francesca must have been taken off the train at the last minute before it left Basle, but her abductor naturally would not want Kate to discover her absence until morning. So the sleep-drunk Annabelle, luckily to his hand, had been substituted.…

“Kate,” came Lucian’s voice, “there’s no use in waiting here.”

Kate turned slowly. “What am I to do?” she asked again.

“Call the police if you like. But I doubt if you’ll convince them a child existed. I suggest you should first put a call through to London and get your instructions from there.”

“Yes. I’d better telephone Mrs. Dix. But however am I to tell her…” She felt dazed now, with worry and exhaustion. She was temporarily content to have him lead her.

“Put your coat on. Where are your bags?”

“There’s only one. Francesca’s—” Her voice trembled. She made herself say carefully, “You’re very good to me, although you don’t really believe there is a Francesca. I’ve got some gloves somewhere—oh, look!” Her cry was chiefly one of surprise, as if she, too, had been becoming convinced that Francesca did not exist. “Here’s Francesca’s doll. It’s got pushed behind the mattress. There you are! That proves she was here!”

Triumphantly she held up the slightly shabby doll, pathetic and somehow without personality now that it lacked an owner.

“You have to believe me now,” she said.

“Any child can have a doll,” he murmured. “But, Kate dear, I’ve never disbelieved you. Come along, let’s get off this ghastly train.”

Francesca lured somewhere on a false bribe, without her promised trip to the Eiffel Tower, without her precious doll. A little girl determinedly dressed for a party that seemed to be fast becoming a tragedy… Kate resolutely swallowed the lump in her throat and followed Lucian.

They had to wait for the London call to come through. Lucian had arranged it. He had somehow got several talkative and gesticulating railway officials persuaded of the urgency of it, and had also the tired and irritable guard, who had first heard Kate’s report of the child’s disappearance, to bear witness. They all stood and watched as Kate at last got through and heard Mrs. Dix’s voice which seemed to come from infinitely far away. Yet even in that wispy sound she could hear the breathless eagerness of the “Yes! Yes! Who is it, please?” and she realized the forlorn and fantastic hope that was running through Mrs. Dix’s mind. Even after fifteen years of silence, any telephone call from abroad revived her tenacious optimism. This, perhaps this, was the one to tell her that her husband had come back from the dead…

It was cruel to shatter that expectancy, and even in this emergency Kate hesitated.

“It’s Kate here, Mrs. Dix.”

“Kate? Kate?” The disembodied voice had lost its liveliness. It sounded groping and lost, as if the transition from hope to reality was too much for its owner.

“Kate Tempest, Mrs. Dix. I went to Rome to get Francesca.”

“Oh, yes, I remember. The Italian child. What about it? Where are you speaking from? Has something gone wrong?”

“Terribly wrong, I’m afraid. Francesca’s missing. Lost. She disappeared off the train. And no one has seen her.”

They were all watching her in the dreary brown room, Lucian, the telephone operator, and the officials who had argued and protested that the whole thing was imaginary, unnecessary. Relatives had picked up the child at Basle—if there had been a child… Pouf, anyone could leave a shabby toy on a train…

“Missing! Oh, goodness me!” The flurried voice told Kate that Mrs. Dix was groping in a convenient chocolate box for sustenance.

The disappointment that the call from abroad was not from her long-lost husband after all, and now this news that Kate’s mission had gone so badly astray, would throw her off balance.

“Shall I call the police in? That’s what I must know.”

“Those foreign police—so excitable—just to find a child who’s run away. Can’t you look for her?”

“You don’t understand, Mrs. Dix. She’s been missing all night. We think she was taken from the train at Basle.”

“We?”

“The gentlemen here,” Kate said, looking placatingly at the avidly listening gentlemen. “The railway officials, and an Englishman who has been very kind.”

There were sundry strange noises coming through the receiver that may have been Mrs. Dix clucking in alarm, or merely munching a chocolate. But when she spoke again her voice was surprisingly decisive.

“Not the police yet, dear. Must get in touch with Rome, with her father. Oh, dear! What a bore! And we thought you so reliable. Miss Squires said—dear! dear! Not those dreadful foreign police, making an international incident out of it. Wait there till I call you back. What’s your number?”

“Can I get a call here?” Kate whispered frantically.

This was the signal for a great deal more arguing to go on, but finally it was agreed that if it came in a reasonable time it would be permitted. It was the best that could be done. Sitting in the stuffy office waiting for the telephone to ring, catching the hostile glances of French officials who thought her infinitely careless, to say the least, to lose a child on a journey—if there had been a child—Kate realized what the note beneath Mrs. Dix’s breathlessness and alarm had been. Not disappointment. Fear.

Or had she imagined that, too? Had she imagined everything, even the small shabby doll, Pepita, packed now in her capacious handbag?

But the second call, when it came, was complete anticlimax. Mrs. Dix’s voice bubbled over with reassurance.

“Kate dear, not to worry. Everything’s all right. Francesca’s home.”

“In Rome?” Kate gasped.

“Yes, with her father. He’s very bad and quite unscrupulous. When she had gone he suddenly decided he couldn’t bear it, or perhaps it was spite against Rosita, of course, but he telephoned some friends in Basle and had Francesca taken off the train. At a moment when you were not observing, of course.”

“But how extraordinary!” Kate gasped.

“Isn’t it?” Mrs. Dix’s voice was full of cheerfulness. “He’s nothing better than a brigand. Giving you all this worry, poor Kate. Rosita is broken-hearted, naturally. She wants you to stay in Paris for a day just in case we have any further instructions for you. Go to the Hôtel Imperial in the Rue St. Honoré. And get a rest. You must be worn out. We’ll call you there if we need you. And fly home in the morning. Miss Squires will arrange for your air ticket to be sent to the hotel.”

“Mrs. Dix, are you sure Francesca’s all right?”

“I can only tell you what that rogue has told me. And
quite
unashamedly. He thinks he’s very clever, in fact. But in case he should repent, which is unlikely, Rosita thinks you should stay until tomorrow.”

“I’ve messed it up so badly.”

“My dear, no one could have anticipated this. You said there was an Englishman?” Mrs. Dix’s voice lilted naughtily. “And you’re in Paris. Go and have fun.”

Kate put the telephone down slowly. She gathered that everyone listening had got the gist of the conversation, for there were wreathed smiles and shrugging shoulders.

“What did I tell you?” said the now affable guard. “She flew out of the window, pouf!”

“It has been a storm in a soup plate, no?”

It was only Lucian who was not smiling. He was looking at her with a long, curious, thoughtful look, neither surprised nor relieved at the solution to the small drama, but rather as if when he had persuaded her to ring London he had known exactly what the result would be. And almost as if it amused him a little.

But why should it be amusing? She herself felt remarkably far from mirth. For apart from the pathos of it—Francesca, lonely and bewildered, snatched away from her promised party, deprived of her favourite doll, and bundled back to Rome, like so much merchandise, probably to the rather grim Gianetta and the squalid little house off the via Appia—there had been that strange note of fear in Mrs. Dix’s voice.

Even during her second call, when she had bubbled over with cheerfulness, Kate had calmly and uneasily sensed the apprehension. What, in the foolish and abortive episode, would make her afraid?

T
HE GENTLE CLICK OF
the door opening aroused Kate late in the afternoon.

“Who is it?” she asked sleepily, not fully aware of where she was, or why she had been asleep when afternoon sunshine was still filtering through the windows.

There was no answer.

She sat up, blinking and looking at the closed door. But she was sure it had opened. That was what had woken her. Had someone come to the wrong room?

Or had someone been walking about softly in here, and left hastily when she stirred?

Fully awake, Kate sprang out of bed and hurried to the door. The corridor was empty. Somewhere she could hear voices speaking in rapid French, and on the ground floor she heard the lift gates shut. These were normal enough sounds in an hotel and nothing to get perturbed about.

Funny. She had been sure something had aroused her. Perhaps it had been the door of the next room opening and closing. Anyway, here was the day almost gone, and she had not yet had more than the glimpse of Paris that she had got on the brief taxi journey from the Gare du Nord to the hotel. Lucian had brought her here. He had told her to get some rest, and, if his business permitted, he would telephone her before eight o’clock that evening. He had been very kind. He had seen her through that nightmare hour when she had been searching uselessly for Francesca. But there was no reason why he should go on being responsible for her. She had realized that in the slightly withdrawn quality of his voice when he said goodbye to her. As if an unexpected duty had been safely discharged.

“Well, he had thought the whole thing a hoax, anyway. He still did not seem entirely to believe that there had ever been a child, in spite of her conversation with Mrs. Dix, and in spite of the doll, which could have belonged to one of the schoolchildren.

Kate shrugged as philosophically as possible. After all, it could be Lucian who had been the ghost. He was even more transitory than Francesca. The only record she had of him was the sketch she had done on the menu card, and that was not particularly good. She took it out of her handbag to look at it again. His remarks about it were right, she thought, as she looked at the incomplete lines. He did look haggard and grim, like someone engaged in a losing battle or a lost cause. She would tear this up and forget it. And him.