Fallen Skies Read online

  “Lily, for heaven’s sake!” Stephen broke off when he realized she was not hearing him. She was speaking into the mouthpiece. “Madge,” she said abruptly. “It’s Lily. I need you to answer some questions. Do you promise to tell me the truth?”

  There was a muffled squawk.

  “I’ll tell you all about it later. Now tell me. Where were you yesterday morning between half past nine and ten o’clock? Lily made a note on the telephone message pad. “Can anyone confirm that?” She wrote, “In bed. Landlady.” “Thank you,” she said. “No, I can’t talk now. I’ll talk to you later,” and broke the connection on Madge’s insistent voice.

  She dialled another number. Stephen stepped back into the drawing room and listened to Lily speak to one friend after another in this new hard businesslike voice of hers. When they were unclear as to where they had been, or had no-one to confirm their whereabouts, she insisted that they explain to her what they were doing, and whether anyone might have seen them. She grilled them like a sergeant major, he thought resentfully. They were all suspects to Lily now.

  His mother came slowly into the room, her address book under her arm.

  “She’s going ahead,” she said, nodding to the hall.

  Stephen nodded.

  “This means everyone will know,” Muriel said. “It’ll be all over town by lunchtime.”

  “I know.”

  “Do you want me to give her my address book?”

  Stephen shrugged. “Hardly,” he said. “But how can we refuse to help her? She thinks this is the way to find Christopher.”

  “She is letting us all down,” Muriel said icily. She handed the address book to Stephen with a gesture of resignation. “She is an embarrassment.”

  Stephen took the book. “I can’t see how we can stop her,” he said. “When she finally draws a blank I suppose she will stop.”

  “That could take all day,” Muriel said. “Is she to stay there, hunched over the telephone, shrieking at my friends all day?”

  “The situation could change,” Stephen said.

  Muriel raised an eyebrow.

  “We could get some news. Or Charlie could confess.”

  “Do you think it is Charlie?” Muriel asked. “I simply cannot believe it.”

  Stephen nodded slowly. “The inspector is convinced of it. He says that Charlie had some mad idea of stealing Christopher and then persuading Lily to leave me, once Christopher was out of the way.”

  Muriel’s cold face froze yet further.

  “Did he take liberties?” Stephen asked very quietly. “While he was here supposed to be teaching her the piano? Did he take liberties?”

  “I knew he was in love with her,” Muriel said. “And I’m afraid”—she hesitated on the betrayal but Lily’s hard insistent voice from the hall forced her onwards—“I’m afraid Lily encouraged him.”

  Stephen flushed a deep red of anger. “Then all this is her own fault,” he said. “All of this distress could have been avoided if she had toed the line with that—that—that damned bounder.”

  Muriel sat down in the window seat and looked out at the grey sea and lowering sky. “She always kept him at arm’s length,” she said. “I’m certain of that.”

  Stephen swore under his breath and strode out into the hall. Muriel half-rose as if to stop him, but then let him go. “He was her choice,” she said under her breath. “They’re married now. They’ll have to work it out themselves.”

  She heard the telephone bang as Stephen snatched it from Lily and put it down on the table with a crash.

  “Before you tell all of Portsmouth that your boyfriend has kidnapped your child, there are one or two things you should know,” he said. “That the inspector, and my own mother, have both told me that Charlie Smith is in love with you, and that you’ve been making a fool of me, in my own house, behind my back.”

  “I never,” Lily said.

  “Don’t interrupt me,” Stephen said, his voice deep with rage. “Don’t think of interrupting me. My own mother tells me that you’ve encouraged him. How far has it gone? How far have you encouraged him? Is he your lover, eh? Is he perhaps Christopher’s father and you’ve palmed me and my family off with a bastard, and now his real father wants to take him back? Is that what’s happened? And is all this grief of yours, and your driving down to see the inspector and your so-called sleepwalking, all a big act, a big act from a little actress to get Charlie Smith off the hook, and yourself off the hook?

  “We all know he did it. The police, my mother, me, we all know he did it. What we don’t know is whether you were in it too? Did you open the garden gate, not shut it? Did you hand the baby over to another girl of his? Do you know exactly where Christopher is, while we’re all going out of our minds with worry!”

  “No!” Lily screamed. “No! No! No! Charlie Smith does love me, and I love him, but we were never lovers, and we never will be. Christopher is your son. You of all people should know that! It was you who forced me time after time until I conceived and had to give up the theatre. Charlie would never hurt me, he would never take my baby away from me. And I would never be parted from Christopher. You’re mad to think so! You’re mad to suggest it! All I want is to get my baby back! I want my baby back!”

  She broke into frenzied sobbing, and Stephen stepped forward, took hold of her shoulders and shook her in his anger. At once she flew at him with her hands flexed like claws, flew at his face and slapped him and scratched him, screaming: “I’ll kill you if you say such things! I’ll kill you, Stephen!” and then tore herself from his grip and rushed up the stairs. They heard her bedroom door slam.

  “Good God!” Stephen said. He pulled his handkerchief from his top pocket and held it to his face. She had drawn blood. When he took his handkerchief away and saw the red of it, he went pale.

  Muriel appeared in the drawing room doorway. “Dr. Mobey is here,” she said. “His car has just drawn up. Go to your study, Stephen, he mustn’t see you like this.”

  “He’d better see Lily,” Stephen said. “She’s hysterical. She’s out of control.”

  “I know,” Muriel said grimly. “I heard it all.”

  The doorbell rang. Stephen turned and went into his study, closing the door. Muriel stood still while Browning toiled up the back stairs, straightened her cap in the mirror, and opened the front door.

  Dr. Mobey came in with a smile. “How are you all?” he asked.

  Muriel took him into the drawing room, and ordered Browning to bring coffee. “The strain is beginning to tell,” she said. “My daughter-in-law’s friend and accompanist has been arrested for the kidnap of Christopher. But they don’t know where the baby is being held.”

  “Good God!” The doctor was genuinely shocked. “The chap who played with her, at the concert I went to? Your ‘do’ in aid of the distressed officers?”

  Muriel nodded grimly. “It appears that he thought she might leave Stephen if he had Christopher safely out of the house.”

  Dr. Mobey looked stunned. “And she?” he asked cautiously.

  Muriel’s face was haggard. “She led him on,” she said shortly. “I am speaking in confidence, Doctor.”

  “Of course, of course.”

  “My son even doubts whether Christopher is his child. The mother may even have been party to a plot.”

  Dr. Mobey reached out and took Muriel’s hand. It was icy cold. He chafed it and scanned her tired face. “What rotten luck,” he said softly. At his sympathy a little colour flowed back into Muriel’s sallow face. “What rotten luck. Shall I see her?”

  “She’s crying in her bedroom. She was sleepwalking last night, and hysterical again today. She has eaten nothing. I don’t know that we can manage her here. She just quarrelled with Stephen and she was violent.” Muriel compressed her lips into a thin line. “This whole situation is becoming quite unmanageable.”

  Dr. Mobey nodded. “I see, I see.” He paused. “Would it be your wish, if I could find a suitable place for her, for us to take h