But the Social had, in the form of a Miss Magenta who had stood looking at Benny there in the station, measuring him up with her eyes (the way Gyp did later). You could tell she loved her job, even if she didn’t love the children who made it possible. For she didn’t care about him; he sensed this, but he didn’t take it personally. She’d have been this way around any kid, with her cheap shiny smile and her cold pebble eyes.
While the constable was making out some sort of report, Miss Magenta was tidying Benny up. She’d been to the water fountain down the hall and was wiping his face with a damp handkerchief.
Disconsolate, but holding fast to Sparky’s thin rope he used for a lead, Benny looked around and saw an elderly lady, rather thin and gray-haired, but still pretty and so richly dressed the effect was stunning. She was sitting on a bench against the wall, waiting for someone or something, and was watching the social worker washing Benny’s face with the wet handkerchief. Benny knew what his mum had meant by getting in the “clutches” of someone, for he was definitely in Miss Magenta’s. Her small hand on his shoulder felt like an armored mitten.
Her other hand kept washing his face. She said, “Cleanliness is next to-”
“Dog turds,” Benny interrupted.
She rocked back on her heels, then collected herself and once again applied the damp handkerchief to his chin.
But the old lady, Benny noticed, was laughing, and it made him feel better, as if there were someone else in this chilly room who could share his feelings. He watched her open her purse, take out what looked to be bills and then sit there, seemingly waiting.
When Miss Magenta went once again to the fountain for a good soak of cleanliness, this lady moved with surprising speed to put her back between the fountain and Benny. She stuffed some bills in his cardigan pocket and whispered, “I’ll create a diversion; as soon as I’ve got their attention, run like hell.”
“Who is that woman?” asked Miss Magenta in a rather dangerous tone, as if, once the Social got you, you were no longer free to have chance encounters. Nothing from here on in would be left to chance.
The richly dressed lady called to her, “He reminds me of my greatgrandson. I’m Irene Albright.”
As Miss Magenta was finally putting the damp handkerchief away, there came a loud moan and Irene Albright fell in a heap on the floor. The constable, the desk sergeant, Miss Magenta and two or three others rushed to her aid. Benny was alone with the door only a few steps behind him. He backed up carefully with Sparky, and they were out on the pavement, where they both turned and ran like hell.
When Benny and Sparky got to the Lodge with the packets of chops and chine, Gemma was sitting on the bench with her doll, waiting. Mrs. MacLeish, the cook, had mentioned a delivery that morning and Gemma had come, as always, to wait by the gate. She took the meat and started off to the kitchen, calling over her shoulder she’d come straight back.
Benny climbed up onto the board wedged between the branches of a silver beech and waited. True to her word, Gemma was back before a minute had passed. Breathlessly, she asked, “What’s chin? I’m not eating something’s chin.” She climbed up and sat down across from Benny in the tree seat.
“It ain’t-isn’t-‘chin’; it’s ‘c-h-i-n-e’; it’s some part of the pig, it’s between his shoulder blades… I think I’ll stop eating meat. I can’t stand it that pig is slaughtered just so we can have pork chops and chine. And I can’t hardly stand Mr. Gyp anymore.”
“I hate him. He’s covered with blood. I wonder if butchers hate animals. I wonder if that’s why they get to be butchers.”
Snowball, Katherine Riordin’s cat, had come along to annoy Sparky. Snowball hissed.
“Gyp doesn’t like Sparky. I can tell that.”
Gem shook out her black hair so that it caught a flash of sunlight. “I’m not going to eat meat anymore.” She said this as if Benny hadn’t said it first. “A policeman was here yesterday.”
“He’s the same one that came to the bookshop.”
“He didn’t have a uniform on. It was probably his day off.”
“He’s a detective. They don’t wear uniforms.”
“Well, he didn’t have a gun either.”
“They don’t carry guns.” Benny wasn’t sure this was true, but he said it as if he were. He took this line with most things he said for uncertainty never got you anywhere.
Gem was removing the doll’s bonnet and studying its head. “But if there’s a fight, they could get killed if they don’t have guns.”
“Police think carrying a gun only makes things worse, it makes the criminals more likely to shoot.” That, he thought, was a really good idea. Maybe he’d read it somewhere.
“If he doesn’t have a gun, how can he fight back if someone tries to shoot me again?”
Benny looked up through the breeze-shivered leaves of this big tree and thought further: this detective from New Scotland Yard hadn’t simply dismissed the danger Gem was in. Benny frowned, concentrating on that. But Gemma-why Gemma? Why would someone want to get rid of her? Was it because old Mr. Tynedale liked her so much? Someone was afraid he would give away most of his money to Gemma?
“Are you thinking?” Gemma climbed down. “I’m going in to get some holy water and a towel. I’ll be right back.”
Benny grunted, only half hearing. Sparky followed Gem. He seemed to want to protect her.
Could Gemma know something she didn’t know was important, and someone had to make sure she never realized it and told? Or maybe she owned something important… Benny sat up straight, recalling a film he had seen (and he hadn’t seen many) and looked at the unnamed doll. His eyes widened; maybe the doll wasn’t hollow inside. Maybe someone had opened it up to stash jewels or drugs or something and then sewn it up again. Its torso was of firmly stuffed material, even though its head and limbs were hard plastic. He took the doll up, bareheaded without its bonnet, and prodded and prodded; he put it against his ear and shook it.
“What are you doing to Richard? Put him down!” Gem dropped the towel she was carrying and climbed up to the seat and took the doll.
Benny stared from her to the doll. “Richard? Richard?”
“I ran across it when I was doing the Rs.” She leaned the doll against her shoulder and patted his back because it had been manhandled so outrageously.
Benny leaned toward her. “The Rs were things like Ruth, Rachel, Rebecca. Richard is a boy’s name!”
“I know. It is a boy. I’d never name a girl Richard. We were all wrong, you see.” Gem was not about to take the wrongness on her own shoulders.
“She can’t be a boy. Not after all this time!” Benny sloughed himself off the tree and paced around. Sparky woofed. It was too infuriating! What a thing for her to pull! He said, “Look how she’s dressed, how she’s been dressed all this time, in that long female dress!”
Reasonably, Gemma said, “It’s christening clothes. It can be either one. Look-” she raised the doll’s dress, pointed to the placidly empty space between its legs. “See? Nothing.”
Benny blushed furiously. Oh, she looked so smug.
Twenty-two
Waterloo Bridge rose out of the fog lying across the Thames, a sleeker, more stream-lined and diminished version of what it had been during the war. Benny had never seen the old Waterloo Bridge, but Mags had shown him pictures of it in old magazines. Still, it was quite a sight, rising with the lights of the South Bank behind it, and overhead, crowds of stars and an iridescent moon. He stood looking at the starry bridge until Sparky nudged his shoe, nudging him out of his daydreams so as to set about distributing what was in the packet from Mr. Gyp.