Chapter 15

A million million cars had passed her by, and now it was dark. Would the drivers be able to see her in the dark? The cars swooshed by in sequence, dazzling her with their headlights, deadening her with their utter and unanimous lack of charity. One could understand a driver being reluctant to pick up the usual sort of hitch-hiker (Miss Godwin, for instance, had always refused to) but what sort of threat could an eleven-year-old girl pose? True, this wasn't the ideal spot to be standing (a hundred feet short of the cloverleaf that fed into the tunnel beneath the Bay), but there was room for a car to pull over to the side, and the traffic wasn't so dense now that the drivers couldn't see her in time to stop. It was just another example of Prejudice.

It had been Prejudice likewise, she realised now, that had been at the root of the trouble she'd witnessed earlier that day. The men in the silk robes had been Klansmen. She hadn't recognised them then, because they hadn't been wearing their pointy hats, but when she'd seen the headlines on one of the morning newspapers (klan violence predicted for the fourth), she'd realised why the man had kicked the poor old woman (because of Prejudice) and why none of the old woman's friends had helped her (Civil Rights). Of course, it was illegal to sit in the streets and sing hymns, or even eat lunch (as she'd discovered), but it seemed probable that if the Klan had been the ones sitting in the street, they wouldn't have been arrested, much less kicked.

Another and another and another car whizzed by in the nearer lane, and out of the last of them, a convertible, somebody threw a beer bottle. It shattered on the gravelled siding inches from Alice's feet. Had they meant to hit her with it? No, it was scarcely credible.

And yet—it was equally incredible that anyone would deliberately try to run over her, and some teenagers had tried to do just that only an hour before. She'd had to throw herself into the ditch beside the road to avoid being hit. Kids were certainly different here in Norfolk from kids in Baltimore. She remembered, with an ache of sadness, the busload of butterfly-bright teenagers on the way to the beach, their radios blaring, their blonde hair streaming in the wind. It all seemed worlds away and years ago, and yet she knew that Baltimore wasn't terribly far off and that she'd been on that bus only last Saturday morning, not four full days before.

A truck approached thunderously. It hardly seemed worthwhile, but she dusted off her dress and put out her thumb. A giant tanker of milk roared past at sixty miles an hour. It had Maryland licences. She sighed. Milk and Maryland—Good Lord, she would never see either again at this rate! Maybe she should start looking for a place to spend the night.

The next vehicle began slowing before it reached her. Alice was at first uncertain whether she had a ride at last—or if it was another dirty trick. The car stopped and the right-hand door flew open. She ran towards the headlights, which had already attracted a cloud of insects, up to the open door. 'Are you going to B ...'

A hand grabbed each of her shoulders and pulled her into the car. 'Alice, my darling girl!' His lips kissed her forehead perfunctorily. 'We going home now. The nightmare is over. You're safe.'

It was her father.

At ten o'clock, after six hours of futile searching in the streets of Norfolk, Roderick had given up. He paid off Bessy and started back for Baltimore. Alice would have to turn up somewhere, sometime. And if not... Well, it wouldn't be his fault.

Alice's escape had jeopardised Bessy's position more than his own, but now Bessy and her menage were packing their bags. His own twelve-hours' absence was an embarrassment, but not unaccountable, since he had thought to establish the precedent that morning of receiving and acting under 'secret' instructions from the kidnappers. He had not performed a single action (excepting, of course, the murders) that could not be accounted for in this way, if need be.

So that when he saw the little Negro girl hitch-hiking on the highway leading into the tunnel, it was a bit of luck too good to be believed. Aside from her first astonished shriek, she hadn't said a word to him. As they drove through the neon whiteness of the tunnel, he would glance at her from time to time, curious about this well-nigh autistic silence. With her hair dyed and curled, with her so dark, he had difficulty believing she really was his daughter. Her manner had changed as much as her appearance. She, who had been so lively and full of giggling nonsense, sat immobile, eyebrows drawn together in a half-frown, pale eyes staring dully ahead at the yellow dashes flicking past down the centre of the road, the very picture of a sullen piccaninny. Bessy had certainly done her job.

'I bet you're anxious to be getting home, eh, kid?' 

Silence.

'If you don't want to talk about it, I understand. It must have been pretty bad, back there. You're safe now, thank God, but I suppose it will take a little getting used to.'

Silence.

'Your mother has been terribly upset by all this.'

Alice turned to look at him. Was it a trick of the shifting light or some effect caused by the darker pigmentation of her skin—or was there in those eyes an expression of ... what? He could not be quite sure: contempt? fear? accusation?

Hold on there, Raleigh, he told himself. Pretty soon you'll be seeing accusations in stop-lights.

'Daddy,' she said quietly (he realised that he'd been expecting her voice to have changed, to have become a piccaninny voice), 'how did you know where to find me?'

'Well, you see, my pet, the kidnappers told me to get on the train to Norfolk. I gave them the money in Baltimore, and they were going to hand you back over to me down here. But when I got here they told me you'd escaped. I was frantic. I didn't know whether or not to believe them. I was afraid that they might have ... done something to you. When I saw you out on the highway, I'd already given up searching for you; I was going back to Baltimore.'

She smiled a curious, lopsided smile, her brows still pinched together in a frown. 'How did you know that it was me on the highway? It was so dark, and I'm ... disguised.'

Roderick laughed nervously. She had an attorney's mind, the brat! 'Actually, sweetheart, I didn't know it was you until I'd stopped. I surely was surprised. As soon as we get home, we'll wash that brown stuff off you.'

'Yes, I'll bet you were surprised. I was surprised too.' Her laughter was harsh and humourless. Roderick began to wonder whether the stay at Green Pastures, brief as it had been, might not have accomplished what all the years of Mrs. Buckler had not been able to—to wit, driven his little darling mad.

'I certainly am glad to see you, Alice. You're my darlingest daughter.'

'Don't call me that. Don't call me Alice.'

What was going on in her mind? She was staring out through the windshield again, though there was nothing to be seen but the hypnotic flicker of lane markings. She had put on a pair of cheap plastic sunglasses, and with that token she resumed her former, impervious silence.

An hour passed. They left the junk architecture of drive-ins and filling stations behind. They crossed the York and Rappa-hanock Rivers. Roderick almost came to forget that Alice was in the car with him. She had fallen asleep curled up at the other end of the seat. He would have liked to be asleep now. He'd got scarcely two hours' sleep the night before. Twice he stopped the car so that he might walk about in the cool evening air and revive himself. He reviewed his alibi and tried to discover loopholes in it.

Another hour. They had crossed the Potomac on Route 301 and were in Maryland now. He had to have a coffee. He pulled over into the parking lot of Midge's All-Nite Truck-Stop Eateria. Alice woke groggily, making little animal noises of discomfort. 'Let's get something to eat, honeybunch. Okay?' He leaned over and kissed her on the cheek. All these charades of father affection! Soon, perhaps, he would leave the country; then there would be no need for such hypocrisies.

'I wish you wouldn't do that, Mr Raleigh,' she said sleepily. (It was surely Dinah who spoke; Alice would have had better sense.) 'That was a very mean trick you played on Alice. You should be ashamed.'

'What trick?'

'Having her kidnapped.'

Roderick had been about to step out of the car. Instead he pulled his feet back in and closed the door quietly. 'Now then, what's this? What kind of foolish, foolish story have you been listening to? Hm, my love?'

'I'm not your love! And I think you were a perfect beast!' She refused to look into his eyes. Now that she was wider awake, she seemed to regret having spoken.

'Whenever did you get this strange notion, darling?'

'It's not strange at all. I figured it out myself. Though it didn't take much intelligence. I heard you talking to Bessy on the phone. I knew it was you because of some things Bessy said. You talked about Donald Bogan. And how else did Bessy know to call me Dinah, if you hadn't told her to? Answer me that!'

'It's true,' Roderick said carefully, 'that I called that woman. I had to arrange your return with her. But that's surely no proof, my dear darling'—Alice's lip curled scornfully at this— 'that I assisted them.'

'Proof? There's one proof that you can't very well deny, my dear Daddy. If you aren't helping the kidnappers, how come you're driving their car?'

'But...'

He calculated rapidly what the probability of this was. Bittle had assured him that the car would be scrapped after the kidnapping. But it was a Buick, of the same vintage and colour as Bittle's.

'What a strange coincidence,' he said chillily. 'It does somewhat resemble the car that Miss Godwin described. Though it didn't occur to me till just this minute.'

'It resembles it more than I resemble Alice Raleigh. If you want more proof, I've proof right here.'

Proof, proof, proof: it was as though he had moved backwards in time, back through eons on that breakfast table where his daughter had chirruped on about the new mathematics.

Alice dug into the crevice formed by the two cushions of the seat and withdrew a crumpled wad of paper. 'That should be proof enough. When that man called Harry took me into this car, I thought I'd better leave a clue behind so that the police could trail me.' She pronounced 'clue' to rhyme with 'yew'. 'So I tore a page from my book—and stuffed it behind the cushion. And that's the page.'

He took the paper out of her hand and smoothed it flat. Even in the poor light he could recognise the Kipling illustration—the Elephant's child trying to pull away from the crocodile who had caught him by the nose. He took his cigarette lighter from his coat pocket and set fire to the paper.

'That won't do you any good, you know,' Alice counselled.

Roderick looked down at his daughter consideringly. 'You really are a clever little bitch,' he admitted. She stuck out her tongue at him. He started the motor.

'You turned the wrong way,' Alice said, when the car was back on Route 301. 'Baltimore is the other direction.'

This time it was Roderick who was obstinately silent the whole- trip. They arrived back in Norfolk at 2.15 a.m. the morning of July 4. All the lights in the Green Pastures Funeral Home were blazing.