For Better For Worse (39 page)

‘I’d better go and check on Lottie,’ said Sarah, rising to her feet.

‘Before you go, Sarah,’ said Bear. ‘Men like Henry are trophy hunters. I’m told that they like to keep mementoes of what they’ve done. I think it gives them a feeling of power … a sort of “I know something you don’t know.” Did Henry leave behind any strange things when he walked out on you?’

Sarah recalled Kaye’s cigarette case, the one she’d been forced to sell to feed the children. She sat back down and explained what had happened.

‘You’ve had it really tough, haven’t you,’ said Bear sympathetically.

She looked away. Bear stirred a spoon of sugar into his tea. ‘Was there anything else?’

Sarah shook her head. ‘Only an old suit of his, oh, and some baby’s booties.’ The words died on Sarah’s lips as they came out and Bear gave her a puzzled look.

‘Jenny put them on her old dolly.’ She put her hand to her lips and the colour drained from her face. ‘Do you know what, I think they belonged to her.’

‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘you’ve lost me.’

‘Those booties,’ said Sarah, her eyes filling with tears. ‘They belonged to Kaye. Now that we’re talking about them, I remember a funny look she gave Jenny when she put them on the new dolly on Christmas Day. I thought at the time it was just that the dolly already had lovely shoes and that Kaye was offended.’ She put her head in her hands again. ‘Now I’ve got a horrible feeling they had belonged to her baby. Henry left them in the wardrobe for me to find.’ Sarah looked up helplessly at Lottie. ‘Oh my Lord, how much that must have hurt her.’

‘It wasn’t your fault,’ said Bear gruffly.

‘I know,’ said Sarah, silent tears running down her cheeks, ‘but all the same …’

Bear cleared his throat noisily. ‘Did Kaye have anything belonging to another woman?’

Sarah wiped her eyes with her handkerchief. ‘She never said.’

‘What about Annie?’

‘I can ask her when she gets back home,’ said Sarah. ‘She’s at work. Mrs Mitchell has taken Edward and Lu-Lu to the beach chalet.’

Bear nodded. ‘In that case, when I’ve finished my tea, I’ll get to work in Kaye’s office.’

Once it became apparent that Edward was really gone, Annie had to be told. Her first reaction was disbelief, followed by anger and then blind panic. Mr Richardson was forced to close the shop.

Annie and her mother ran around the Steyne again, pushing the pram with Lu-Lu inside, choking back huge silent sobs as they looked from one to the other in bewilderment.

‘I never should have trusted you with him.’

‘It was only a second. Whoever did it was so quick.’

‘You shouldn’t have left him.’

‘I didn’t know it was going to take so long to get into the shop.’

The recriminations and accusations became more and more heated. When she got back to the shop empty-handed, Judith did her best to comfort her but she was distraught herself. ‘I’m so sorry, darling. I’m so sorry.’

Mrs Richardson, who had come downstairs to take charge of the unruly customers who had been squabbling before they knew Edward was missing, was doing her best to comfort Lu-Lu who by now was very distressed.

‘I’ll never let you look after him again,’ said Annie, shaking away her mother’s comforting arm.

‘It’s no good taking lumps out of each other,’ Mrs Richardson said sternly. ‘You both need to pull together if you’re going to find him. The police are on their way.’

A man in the crowd stepped forward. ‘My name is James,’ he said. ‘I work at the hospital. I’ll organise a search around the streets.’ They heard him telling some of the bystanders to ‘try Library Place and Marine Place … you go the other way. York Road and Albert Place … I’ll go along Warwick Gardens and Wyke Avenue. Ask everyone you see if they’ve seen someone carrying a baby.’ People eager to help hurried away with anxious expressions.

‘He can’t just have vanished into thin air,’ Annie wailed.

‘I’m wondering if someone took him in a car or a taxi,’ said Judith. ‘I saw a taxi outside the hotel.’

Annie’s face blanched. By the time the police arrived, the queue of people who had been waiting for sweets had largely gone, but when the constable asked the few of them left, it became apparent that because of the rumpus over Judith pushing in front of the queue, no one had actually seen the little boy being taken.

‘But he was strapped in,’ Judith sobbed. ‘Surely someone must have seen them undoing the straps.’

The constable left them to go to the nearest police box. ‘Sarge,’ he said as he called in, ‘we’ve got a major incident at the Steyne. Someone’s kidnapped a baby.’

*

Bear answered the telephone in Kaye’s hallway. As he listened, his face grew grave.

‘What is it?’ asked Sarah. ‘Have they found Henry?’

‘Edward has been snatched.’

‘Oh my Lord,’ cried Sarah. ‘He’s done it. Kaye was right, wasn’t she? He’s actually done it.’

‘Done what?’ said Lottie.

‘Kaye’s last words to me were, “Keep Henry away from Edward.” She knew he was going to do something bad and it looks like he’s kidnapped him.’

Lottie was horrified. ‘What?’

‘I have to get down to the Steyne,’ said Bear.

‘What about Lu-Lu?’ said Sarah. ‘Where’s Lu-Lu?’

‘The report was only about a baby,’ said Bear, grabbing his coat from the hallstand. ‘I have to go.’

‘I’m coming too,’ said Sarah. ‘Lu-Lu needs me.’

‘Well, I can’t stay here and do nothing,’ cried Lottie. ‘I’m coming too.’

*

When they all arrived at the shop, it was a nightmare. While everybody panicked, tried to restore calm or generally talked over one another, Sarah picked up her distraught child and crossed over the road into Steyne Gardens. She found an empty park bench and pulled Lu-Lu onto her lap. She cuddled the child, rocking her gently and stroking her hair. She felt torn because of poor Annie, but her priority was to comfort her badly frightened daughter. What had she seen? Had Henry tried to take her as well? She would have to take this slowly, one step at a time, if she was going to find out exactly what had happened. She hummed gently, her mouth on Lu-Lu’s hair, and after a while her daughter dropped off to sleep, although her body still shuddered with a deep-seated sob every now and then. She was going to take a long time to get over this.

In Sarah’s mind, it dawned on her that Edward’s kidnapper must be Henry. Hadn’t he told Annie he was coming for his son? At first, she comforted herself, if Henry had taken Edward, no harm would come to the boy, but Kaye’s revelation about what happened to her own child added a frightening dimension to everything. Of course, nobody had expected him to take the boy without Annie’s consent, but then Henry always was unpredictable.

‘Is she all right?’

Sarah looked up to find Bear standing next to her. She nodded and he lowered himself onto the bench beside her. He was close … close enough for her to feel the warmth of his body. She longed for him to put his arm around her and comfort her too, but he was ever the professional policeman.

‘Has she said anything?’ His voice was both calm and gentle.

Sarah shook her head. ‘I haven’t asked. She was too upset.’ They were talking in whispers.

He nodded. ‘It seems that there was some sort of commotion going on over the sweets in the shop and nobody saw what happened.’

‘Do you think it was Henry?’

‘Bearing in mind what Kaye said, who else?’ Bear nodded. ‘I’ve got everybody watching ports and airports and all patrol cars in Sussex will be on the lookout. We’re doing house-to-house calls in the area but it’s going to be a bit like looking for a needle in the proverbial haystack.’

‘How is Annie?’

‘The doctor is with her now,’ he said. ‘Once he’s checked her out, we’ll get her home.’

‘Oh Bear,’ said Sarah brokenly. ‘What an awful day. Poor Annie doesn’t even know about Kaye yet.’

‘If I was you I’d leave that until she asks,’ he said gently. ‘She’s got enough on her plate right now.’

She nodded. ‘What are they doing now?’ Several people had converged on the sweet shop again.

‘Some chap from the hospital organised a search of the locality, but it doesn’t look as if it’s come to much,’ said Bear. ‘Still, good of him to do it. People need to do something.’ He stood up. ‘Are you all right to get home? I’m going to be here for some time.’

Sarah nodded and managed a brave smile as he hurried back to the shop.

* * *

A car pulled up and Cllr Mitchell got out. As soon as Annie saw her father, she rushed at him, hitting his chest with her fists. ‘It was you, wasn’t it? You took him. What have you done with him? Where is he?’

Malcolm seized her wrists. ‘What is this? What are you talking about?’

‘You never wanted me to keep him, did you,’ Annie challenged. ‘What are you doing here if you didn’t have something to do with it?’

‘Do with what?’ Malcolm snapped. ‘I was on my way to the beach chalet when I saw you all standing around in the street,’

‘Edward has been kidnapped,’ Judith explained.

Annie turned to her mother. ‘Make him give Edward back,’ she sobbed. ‘I don’t want him to be adopted. I won’t sign the papers, I won’t!’

Malcolm had gone as white as a sheet. ‘Kidnapped? When? How?’

Judith gave him a brief résumé and his face blanched with fury. ‘What were you thinking about, woman? Didn’t you have him strapped in?’

‘Excuse me for saying so,’ Lottie began, ‘but this isn’t helping.’

They stared at her for a second. ‘No. No, you’re quite right,’ said Malcolm, deflating like a balloon. ‘Has anyone ordered a search of the area? Where are the press? Did anyone think to call them? Get it in the paper and whoever took my grandson will have no place to hide.’

*

Sarah sniffed back a tear. Poor Annie. What on earth was happening in their lives? When was it all going to end? Amazingly, Lottie had risen to the occasion. She could see her standing across the road with her arm around Annie’s shoulders. Dear Lottie. What enormous strides she’d made since coming to live with Kaye. Poor Annie was completely distraught. Whilst Sarah was lost in thought, Lu-Lu gulped down an enormous internal sob. Sarah tightened her grip slightly and her daughter relaxed. Sarah was searching her mind to think of a way to ask Lu-Lu what happened without upsetting her again, but then her daughter said, ‘Can I eat it now?’

‘Eat what?’

Lu-Lu opened her hand and there on her palm was a coffee crunch.

Annie refused to go home. They kept telling her that she should get some rest, but she felt compelled to stay. Judith seemed to have withdrawn into herself, the consequences of what had happened too horrible to think about, and yet her mind constantly travelled the same path. What if Henry harmed the child? What if he took him abroad? If Annie wasn’t married to him, did he have the right to do that? Had Annie put his name on Edward’s birth certificate? She stood by the pram picking at the covers and rubbing the handle as she desperately tried to remember something … anything which seemed out of the ordinary. Lottie and Mrs Richardson had organised drinks for the people searching and in the process they had struck up a bit of a friendship.

By lunchtime, it seemed that half of Worthing was out looking for the baby. Someone went to the Town Hall and brought back an official who opened up the defunct air-raid shelter. It didn’t seem to occur to anyone that if a padlock and key had to be used to open the door, then it was highly unlikely that Edward was there. But the shelter was searched anyway, along with the public toilets, including those by the pier. The beach was combed as well, but there was no clue to the whereabouts of the baby, not so much as a dropped bootie. The houses and small gardens in the immediate vicinity, the Methodist church and even the Egremont public house were all targeted by enthusiastic helpers.

‘What am I going to do?’ Annie wailed as she fell into her mother’s arms.

The police had been to the bus station, asking drivers and conductors alike if they had seen a man carrying a small baby but everywhere they drew a blank.

‘Annie, you must come home,’ said Lottie gently. ‘There’s nothing more we can do here. Come home and get some rest.’

*

There wasn’t much peace when they all got back to Copper Beeches. News had got out about Kaye’s demise and people from the world of show business were ringing with their condolences. It was another bitter blow for Annie, so much so that her parents called for the doctor again. He gave her some sedation and left them to it once Annie had calmed down and was settled in bed.

Bear came to the house at about three. As soon as they opened the front door to him, they could tell by the grim expression on his face that Edward was still missing. Lottie showed him into the sitting room and Sarah arrived back home shortly after, having just picked Jenny up from school. She took the children upstairs to their playroom and as soon as she returned downstairs they all congregated together; the Mitchells (Annie was asleep upstairs), Lottie and Sarah. Bear told them that the police believed that Henry, for reasons best known to himself, had taken Edward away from Annie and he asked everyone to rack their brains for anything, no matter how trivial, which might throw some light on the problem.

Sarah told them about the coffee crunch Lu-Lu had been holding. ‘They are his favourite sweet,’ she explained. ‘He eats them by the bucketload.’

‘I think that more or less proves that we are looking for Henry,’ said Bear. He turned to Lottie. ‘Can you think of anything, Lottie?’ His tone was gentle. ‘Something we may not know?’

Lottie shook her head. She had never met Henry, but she remembered Kaye saying how glad she had been to be free of him. She’d likened him to a spider. ‘She told me you got trapped into his web of deceit and you couldn’t get out,’ Lottie explained. ‘She said when he’d played with you and got bored, he moved on, leaving behind broken hearts and a wrecked life.’ Lottie dabbed her eyes with a handkerchief. ‘Kaye told me that if she could do something with her life after Henry, I could pick up the threads of my own life after the mental home.’ Her chin quivered and she blew her nose. Judith leaned over and rubbed Lottie’s arm comfortingly.