Free Johnson-Johnson 06 – Dolly and the Nanny Bird by Dorothy Dunnett Page A

Distantly one heard, from time to time, the whoop of sirens, or bantering voices, or the music of a transistor. The house itself was very quiet; reproaching the central heating on occasion with a creak from the stairs or the floorboards, or the sounds of the rush-bottomed chair I had used when feeding Benedict.
    I had the empty bottle and teat still to wash. I remembered also that the contents of my pocket were still lying on the hall table, where I had pulled out the bundle for Rosamund. I finished the neat pile of white Viyella night gowns, the pressed matinée jackets, the feeders. I was thinking chiefly of bed as I stuck the ironing board away and went to rinse out the bottle.
    Benedict’s voice, crying, blared out of the baby alarm.
    I stood, extremely surprised. Warm, fed, dry and exhausted, the child had no reason to wake. Nor was there pain or fright in the wailing: I knew Benedict’s voice in all its limited register. Whatever had roused him, that was the grumble of boredom. It needed no urgent attention and was going to get none from me. He would be asleep before I climbed to the bedroom.
    I let him get on with it, and finished cleaning the bottle and teat and shoving them into the steriliser. Benedict continued to cry. I tidied up, with the sound following me like a persistent seagull from room to room. It didn’t stop.
    After ten minutes, the longest I would ever leave a bored baby, I went upstairs to the bedroom I shared with him and eased the door open.
    I like babies to get used to the dark, so there wasn’t a light in the room. The crying, unamplified but unabated, followed me to my own bed, where I switched on my bedlamp and turned, chanting nonsense, to Benedict’s corner.
    It was empty. In its place was a tape recorder, crying forlornly into the baby alarm.
    Then the door closed with a bang, and the main lamp came on like a searchlight.
    ‘You took your time coming,’ said Johnson.
    He was leaning on the wall, in shapeless corduroys, with his hands stuffed into the pockets. His voice was aggrieved.
    I said, ‘Where’s Benedict?’ I didn’t know it was going to come out in my nursery school bark until I saw Johnson’s eyes bat behind the bifocal glasses. He looked pained.
    ‘Asleep in his basket next door. I have put him,’ said Johnson virtuously, ‘in a draught-proof corner with the door ajar in case he wakens.’ He bent and did something to the tape recorder, and the crying ceased. He straightened. ‘And I got in by copying Rosamund’s key when she came for her portrait sitting. Really, you should never trust locks.’
    ‘Or portrait painters,’ I said. I was reviewing, very rapidly, all that I had left lying about in my room since Rosamund’s first portrait sitting, I said, ‘And the recording? That was ingenious.’
    ‘Thank you. I bugged the woolly ball I sent Benedict,’ said Johnson cheerfully. ‘And then got Rosamund to bring it with her to the portrait sitting. The monologue was a wow. Do nurses all chat up their infants?’
    ‘It compensates,’ I said, ‘for the times we keep our mouths shut. What was all that about different boards and different games? And now you’re bugging balls and breaking and entering. Why the big change in policy? What else have you done?’
    ‘Well, I searched the house while you were doing the ironing,’ said Johnson irritatingly. ‘And if the woolly ball had been in Rosamund’s room, I might have made a killing in blackmail. Tell me all about the Carl Schurz Park snatch.’
    I sat down on my bed. ‘Wait a bit. Blackmail? Rosamund isn’t having it off with anybody. Too busy with charity luncheons.’
    ‘I know Rosamund isn’t having it off,’ said Johnson patiently. ‘Although I can’t say I follow your reasoning. But Simon is. That is, on the nights he tells her he’s out on business, he tells the gallery people he’s at home. There’s a woolly ball that could have told us he wasn’t.’
    ‘Here’s a woolly nanny who can tell