Fallen Skies Read online

  The inspector looked at Coventry’s brown eyes, which were suddenly shielded and almost opaque.

  “Did anyone see you this morning, parked outside the courtroom?” he asked.

  Coventry glanced away, as if to recall. He wrote on the pad: “Newspaper boy—bawt paper,” and pushed the note over to the inspector.

  “Thank you,” Inspector Walker said. “You’ve been very helpful.”

  The sergeant came in when Coventry left. He closed the door behind him and raised an eyebrow at his chief.

  “Well, well, well,” the inspector said thoughtfully. “We’re uncovering a scandal if not a kidnap suspect. A husband who likes to take a drink on the wrong side of the tracks, and a wife who goes out for walks with a piano player. But no motive for a kidnap.” He thought for a moment, drumming his fingers on the desk. “I’ll see the nanny,” he announced briefly.

  Nanny Janes kept him waiting, and she was stiff with disapproval when she finally entered.

  “I hope this is not an inconvenient time,” Inspector Walker said apologetically.

  “I was tidying Baby’s wardrobe,” she said icily.

  “I am sorry. I do need your help, Miss Janes.”

  She inclined her head and sank into a chair.

  “When did you last see the baby?”

  “As I have said, I glanced from the nursery window and saw his mother sitting with him and keeping him awake at about a quarter to ten.”

  “Did you see her go into the house?”

  Nanny Janes shook her head.

  “And did you look out again after that?”

  “No.” She hesitated.

  “Why not?” the inspector asked gently.

  “Mother had obviously taken charge of the child,” Nanny Janes said through compressed lips. “I had enough to do with tidying the nursery and supervising the tweeny’s cleaning.”

  “Mrs. Winters tends to interfere, does she?” the inspector prompted.

  Nanny Janes swelled a little in her chair. It was clearly a sore point. “I think the young Mrs. Winters is unaccustomed to life in a large household,” she said. “She cannot handle the servants and she does not understand how a child should be brought up.” She hesitated. “I am accustomed to a rather bigger household. In my previous employment I had my own nursery maid under my direction. Here I have to supervise the tweeny.”

  The inspector nodded sympathetically. “Why did you leave your previous employers?”

  “The children died,” Nanny Janes said unemotionally. “They were drowned in a yachting accident.”

  “Dreadful.”

  Nanny Janes nodded as if conceding that the death of twin four-year-old boys might indeed be seen as dreadful, but that she was made of sterner stuff, a professional.

  “Were the family much distressed?”

  “Mother went quite mad,” Nanny Janes said temperately. “They had to have her committed. The father was much distressed too. He had insisted on taking them sailing. I believe they closed up their house and went abroad.”

  “What was their name?”

  Nanny Janes hesitated. “I am sure they would not wish to be troubled,” she said discreetly. “It is hardly connected with them.”

  The inspector curbed his impatience. “This is a kidnap inquiry,” he said. “It could hardly be more serious. I will want to contact them.”

  “Sir Charles and Lady Harcourt, Harcourt Hall, Wisbech, Cambridge,” Nanny Janes said begrudgingly. “But I hardly think it is relevant. What possible connection could there be?”

  The inspector shrugged. “I don’t know at this stage,” he said. “I’m just checking everything. If you were doing my job—who would you think took the baby, Miss Janes?”

  She shot him a sly downcast look. “It’s not my place to speculate about my employers,” she said.

  “Mrs. Winters? Mrs. Lily Winters?”

  Nanny Janes shrugged. “An unhealthy anxiety about her child, so she can’t leave him alone for a moment. And a wide circle of friends . . . irresponsible wild people . . .” She trailed off. “Who knows what they might think of? As a joke, maybe? As a way of getting even.”

  “Even with whom?”

  She shrugged again. “With respectable people. With me, with Mr. Winters. I can’t say. But some of the visitors to this house would never be allowed beyond the tradesman’s entrance of a respectable residence. Some of Mrs. Winters’s friends are little better than gypsies. I am not surprised that something like this has happened. They are a wild set of people. A baby has to have routine: routine and no interference.”

  The inspector assumed a look of puzzled anxiety. “Do you think,” he said slowly, “do you think that Mrs. Lily Winters is so flighty, and so interfering, that she might have asked one of her friends to take the baby from the garden so that it was out of your care, and away from her husband’s rules?”

  The gleam Nanny Janes shot at him was assent. “I really couldn’t speculate,” she said primly. “It’s not my place.”

  • • •

  The inspector interviewed every member of staff. He checked and double-checked their whereabouts at the time of the kidnap, and what they had seen. Then casually, at the end of the interviews, he asked them what they knew of Lily’s friends, and in particular, Charlie Smith.

  To his surprise Charlie was a popular visitor. All the household staff liked to hear his music, they all like to hear Lily sing and welcomed the sound of her laughter when she played with her baby in the drawing room and Charlie joked with her. Nanny Janes was the sole dissenting voice.

  Browning would say nothing about the marriage of Stephen and Lily. But Sally, the tweeny, was less trained and less discreet. She confirmed that they quarrelled. She had seen Lily in tears more than once. She said the house had been as quiet as a grave since Mr. Rory Winters’s stroke, but Lily had brought a new lease of life to the whole house. Her friends were gay and fashionable and brightened the place up. In her opinion, Mr. Stephen Winters was a dry old stick who didn’t know that a bit of fun and a bit of music brightened up the place.

  None of the staff could believe that any of Lily’s friends, including Charlie Smith, could have had anything to do with the kidnap, and Sally went so far as to be impertinent to the inspector. She accused him of being blind as a bat if he couldn’t see that Charlie Smith loved Christopher like he was his own dad. The inspector nodded at that, and looked thoughtful, rather than offended.

  • • •

  Upstairs in her bedroom Lily slept in a deep drugged sleep though the afternoon sun shone brightly through the yellow curtains. Dr. Mobey, summoned by Muriel, had been shocked by Lily’s brittle calm. When he asked her what the police were doing she had used language that no lady should know, let alone use. He gave her a dose of strong opium-based sleeping powder and ordered her to rest. Muriel confirmed his diagnosis that the girl was near hysteria.

  “No self-control,” she said to him as they stood in the drawing room.

  “A terrible thing to happen to a young mother,” he offered, closing his bag.

  “The worse the event, the more one should rise to it,” Muriel said firmly. “Not collapse in a heap.”

  The doctor nodded. He had admired Muriel’s courage over the years, through her loss of her favourite son and the paralysis of her husband. She was a fine woman, the sort of woman who had held the Empire together by uncompromising standards in impossible situations.

  “You’re an example to us all,” he said gently. “If the strain starts to tell, you know where to find me.”

  Muriel smiled at him, her brave shell-hearted smile. “I shan’t need to be put to bed,” she said. “I think I’m made of sterner stuff!”

  “I know it,” he said. “They’re lucky to have you.”

  “Will you have a cup of tea?” Muriel asked, a little pink at the compliment.

  “I have to leave. Duty calls I’m afraid. If she is still distressed when she wakes she can have another dose at bedtime. It’ll be easies