The Cuckoo Child (32 page)
Yawning, Emma made her way towards her bedroom, knowing that she would sleep well after such unaccustomed excitement and hoping that she might dream of Nick.
At around about the time when Nick and Emma were stepping out of the swing boat, Dot was helping her aunt to get ready for bed. She had actually managed – with assistance from Sammy – to get her up the stairs, and now she was sitting on the bed whilst Dot took off her shoes, rolled down the thick woollen stocking from her uninjured leg, and checked the softly swathed bandage round the sprained ankle. ‘When your uncle comes in, tell ’im he’s got to be rare careful not to kick if he’s going to share me bed,’ Aunt Myrtle instructed as Dot began to help her out of the threadbare shawl, loopy old cardigan and high-necked blouse. Dot marvelled that her aunt could wear such a quantity of clothing in the August heat and suggested, diffidently, that the following day she might try leaving off a couple of petticoats and her thick woollen stockings. Aunt Myrtle looked shocked. ‘You won’t hear me complainin’ about the heat so don’t you go suggestin’ I walk around half naked,’ she said. ‘Mind, I’ll be a lot easier once the twins is born, that I
don’t
deny.’ She cocked her head. ‘Was that the front door? I just hope your uncle ain’t been down the boozer.’
don’t
deny.’ She cocked her head. ‘Was that the front door? I just hope your uncle ain’t been down the boozer.’
‘I shouldn’t think so. Alan said he’d gone to try and get his job back and then didn’t he say he was going along to Rathbone’s?’
‘Oh aye, you’re right. And besides, he said something about Rathbone threatening him with losing that job ’n’ all if he got sozzled again,’ her aunt said vaguely. ‘That Rathbone’s norra bad feller – well, if he were a bad feller, Mr McNamara wouldn’t have nothing to do with him ’cos a scuffer has to be careful about the company he keeps. Ah, that sounds like your uncle comin’ up the stairs now.’
It was. Uncle Rupert came into the room and took off his jacket, slinging it on to the washstand. He looked pleased with himself and even grinned at Dot before saying, triumphantly: ‘Done it! I spoke to the manager at the factory, explained fellers had been buying me drinks ’cos me wife were expectin’ twins, and after a bit he come round. He fined me half a week’s wages, which were fair enough, ’cos I’ve missed two days’ work already, and said if it ever happened again I’d be out on me ear, no question. He didn’t say ear, either, but I knows me manners before ladies.’ He gave his wife a wide gap-toothed leer, which Aunt Myrtle ignored.
‘I’m glad you got your job back because it’s reg’lar money and we’ll need that wi’ two extra mouths to feed,’ she said. ‘But old Rathbone pays well, and now you’re working for him he’ll sell me a decent bit o’ meat for half the price I’d pay as an ordinary customer, and cheap food ain’t to be sneezed at. So what happened when you went round this evening?’
‘Oh, everything went fine, just fine, though the old bugger mightn’t have been so easy if Ollie hadn’t turned up. I don’t say Ollie believed I’d not had a drop, but when I explained there were a patch of wet on the metal stairs, he told old Rathbone that anyone could fall down once. A’ course, it were none of Ollie’s business really, but he an’ Rathbone are on good terms an’ I s’pose Ollie’s used to puttin’ his oar in and bossin’ people about, ’cos scuffers is like that.’
‘Ollie? Scuffers?’ Dot said, in a dazed voice. What on earth was her uncle going on about? But before he could answer – if he meant to do so – Aunt Myrtle spoke.
‘And since when did you take to calling Mr McNamara Ollie?’ she said severely. ‘He’s Mr McNamara, or Constable McNamara to folk like you and meself, Rupert Brewster. You don’t want to go gettin’ familiar; you ain’t his pal, like old Rathbone.’
Uncle Rupert shuffled and looked self-conscious. ‘I suppose you’d rather I called him George, ’cos that’s his given name,’ he said truculently. ‘But all the scuffers at the station call him Ollie because he’s so like old Oliver Hardy – you know, Stan and Ollie, off of the fillums.’ He turned to Dot. ‘If you’ve finished helping your aunt to undress, you can just clear out,’ he said nastily. ‘Oh aye, an’ when I say clear out, I mean clear right out. Go round to that pal of yours – Fizz – an’ if his mam won’t have you it’s the nearest orphanage for you, my girl.’
Dot went to sidle past him and he raised his hand, but before she could even flinch her aunt spoke, her normally quiet voice loud and angry. ‘Leave her alone, Rupert. She’s worth her weight in gold to me. I’ve telled you an’ telled you, she’s the only one what’ll do a hand’s turn in the house. The only one what gets me messages . . .’
But Dot, fleeing down the stairs, heard no more. She was still trying to assimilate the awful fact that Mr McNamara was Ollie and it was Ollie who had killed Emma’s grandfather. Yet he was a policeman, an upholder of the law, a highly respected member of the community. Folks said you could trust Mr McNamara to take your side if you got into some sort of trouble. It was difficult to believe that the fat and friendly scuffer could deliberately hurt anyone, but then she remembered that Mr Grieves had been killed by repeated blows from what old Rathbone had called Ollie’s stick – his truncheon, of course. Dot opened the kitchen door and began, automatically, to make herself a cup of cocoa and to fetch her bedding from the dresser drawer, but as she sipped the drink and began to undress, things became clearer in her mind. Rathbone’s gate into the jigger had been unlocked and who had come in? It had been Ollie McNamara! Mr Rathbone’s eyes had widened at the sight of him, not with surprise, but with warning. And when she had turned to leave and the two men had had a chance to exchange a word or two, the butcher had tried to call her back. Yet, since Ollie was not the ferret-faced man who had collided with her in the mouth of the jigger, then how . . .
Of course! The policeman who had grabbed her as she had jumped down from Rathbone’s wall had shone a torch in her face. She had been unable to see him except as a dark, helmeted shape, but he had been able to see her, clear as clear, and he had a good reason for being in the jigger, the best reason of all, in fact. She had heard him arguing that the necklace should not be thrown away, so he must have been coming back to get it out of the bin, only he had forgotten that the gate had been locked behind him and he was far too fat and ungainly to scale the wall, as she had done. Yes, there was no doubt about it: Constable McNamara and the murdering Ollie were one and the same, and the sooner she could get to Emma and tell her what she had discovered, the better.
Dot sat up in bed, then slowly lay down again. If she went round to Emma’s now, what guarantee could she have that she would be able to make herself heard? Why, Emma might have been in bed for hours, sound asleep. There must be some way of letting her know. Restlessly, she tossed and turned for a bit, then decided there was no point in telling Emma anything right now. It was not as if the older girl could take any action at this time of night. No, she would leave it until morning and then go round before breakfast and tell Emma everything. Satisfied that she was doing the right thing, she pulled her blankets up over her head and began to try to forget her troubles in sleep.
Emma had gone to bed as soon as she reached the flat and had dropped into a deep sleep straight away, but it had been nightmare-haunted and she woke in a cold sweat from quite the nastiest dream she had ever had. It had begun pleasantly enough. She and Nick were all dressed up, Nick in an evening suit and herself in a long, pale green dress, and Nick was fastening around her neck the emeralds which had, until so recently, graced the jeweller’s window. They were standing in front of the mirror in Emma’s bedroom, so that she was able to see the necklace, brilliantly green against her white skin, and Nick’s reflected face as he smiled tenderly down at her. ‘You must wear it to get married in,’ he said, indicating the necklace. ‘After all, you were the one who found it.’ And suddenly Emma was no longer wearing the green gown but a beautiful white one and her hair was crowned with tiny rosebuds and yards and yards of veiling fell about her.
She looked the perfect bride, but even so, she was curious. ‘Found it?’ she echoed. ‘Where did I find it? How did I get it? I don’t remember . . . oh, I
can’t
remember . . .’
can’t
remember . . .’
Nick shook his head chidingly at her. ‘You thought of a way to recover your lost treasure,’ he said. ‘You asked no one for help but nobly did it alone. I would have helped if I’d known but you were too proud to ask for assistance.’ He was looking down at her and suddenly she saw that his face was sad, and there were tears in his dark eyes. ‘So of course you were killed,’ he said regretfully. ‘And I wanted to marry you . . . marry you . . . marry you . . .’
Emma glanced at her reflection in the mirror and saw, to her horror, that it was growing pale and misty. She could actually see through it. She turned her face up to Nick, feeling tears in her own eyes. ‘Did – did they kill me, as they killed my grandfather?’ she quavered. ‘I can’t remember, but I don’t want to be a ghost – I won’t be! I don’t care about the necklace. They can have it and welcome, so long as I can keep my life.’
Nick opened his mouth as if he were about to speak but Emma snatched at the necklace round her neck, trying to jerk free of it, and felt it begin to give just as the dream faded, and she woke, thoroughly frightened.
She sat up in bed, her heart still beating uncomfortably quickly, and swung her legs out on to the floor. She would go into the kitchen and get herself a hot drink and hope that when she returned to bed she would have broken the nightmare’s spell and be able to sleep dreamlessly until morning. She padded, barefoot, into the kitchen, lit the gas under the kettle and glanced at the clock. It felt like midnight but she saw it was not in fact ten o’clock. The nightmare must have come almost as soon as she had got into bed. She began to ponder the dream once more. It had been a foolish, frightening fantasy, yet she was suddenly sure that it had meant something, was reminding her of something. In the dream, Nick had said she had recovered the necklace; how had she done so? Her only idea had been to use a magnet and, as Nick had said, a magnet will not attract the noble metals. Noble metals, Emma’s mind mused. Gold, silver, and platinum. When she was small, she had owned a game of magnetic fishing, complete with tiny fishing rods from which one dangled a magnet on a piece of string over a variety of brightly coloured fish, each one with a tiny piece of metal in its mouth. The clasp! Emma knew very well that the strong clasp which opened and closed the necklace was not made of gold. The necklace had been made simply as a window display item, and originally it had had no clasp, nor needed any. But five or six years ago, her grandfather had put a metal clasp on the necklace when he had loaned it to an old friend who was going to a fancy dress ball as Queen Elizabeth. Emma was so excited that all thoughts of cocoa disappeared from her mind. Of course, there was a way to get the necklace back without tearing down any walls. She was almost sure the magnetic fishing game was still in the big cupboard in her bedroom, along with abandoned teddy bears, games of snakes and ladders and ludo and a collection of tattered children’s classics, and she was certain that the small horseshoe-shaped magnets were quite strong enough to pull up the necklace.
Losing no time, Emma shot into the bedroom and pulled open the cupboard door. The fishing game was still there. Emma picked up the four small rods and returned to the kitchen, then rooted in a drawer for some strong twine. She detached the magnets from the fishing rods and tied them as securely as she could to a doubled length of twine. Then she searched for something at least as deep as the cavity wall, for she would be quite literally fishing for the necklace and would need something long and narrow as her own particular fishing rod. Not metal; that might prove complicated since the magnets would probably cling insistently to it and refuse to do the job for which they were intended. She found a long wooden spoon and knotted the twine securely to it; no fear of its slipping off as she fished, not with the wooden bowl of the spoon at the business end.
Having tested her home-made instrument over a collection of forks, she decided that it would do the job admirably. If she went right now, surely she would be safe enough? She would wear the black dress, stockings and coat which she had worn for her grandfather’s funeral . . . or she could wear the outfit she had worn the night she had been tackled by Nick: her grandfather’s black trousers and waistcoat and the old brown jacket which had proved such a good disguise before.
Thoughtfully, Emma swung open her wardrobe door and regarded the contents, then picked out her grandfather’s clothes and began to put them on. Almost without realising it, she had decided to go now, right this moment. It would have been nice to have had a companion but not necessary, she decided, making her way back to the kitchen. She took an apple from the fruit bowl, then glanced at the kettle, which was beginning to steam. She really was thirsty and a drink would warm her right through, yet she realised she would be happier, for some reason, if her adventure took place without delay.
Having decided that she would leave at once, she turned off all the lights and made her way down the stairs and into the stockroom. She had tucked her fishing apparatus into the bosom of her jacket, and had pulled open the dresser drawer and taken out the torch she had used on her previous adventure. She had ensured that it was in good working order by flashing it around the kitchen, and had then put it into her trouser pocket, so that both her hands were free. Unlocking the back door, she went into the yard and heard a tiny tinkle as something fell from her person. Damn, Emma thought, plunging a hand into the pocket of her grandfather’s trousers. There was a small hole in the corner of the right hand pocket through which, she supposed, a silver sixpence, or possibly even a farthing, had slipped. Thanking heaven that the hole was not large enough to let her trusty torch slide through, she glanced incuriously downwards, but could see nothing in the faint light from the cloudy sky. Shrugging, she turned to relock the door behind her, being careful to place the key in the trouser pocket without the hole, before setting off across the yard.
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