Toymaker, The (6 page)

Leiter sat back in his chair and thought for a
moment. ‘Then did he give you anything to look after for him?’ he said.

This is going to be easy, thought Mathias. Because he didn’t give the paper to me.

‘No,’ he said, this time more confidently.

Again Marguerite touched the blue card.

‘Did you ever hear or see him tell anyone anything secret?’

Again when Mathias answered, the doll touched the blue card. How did she do it? he thought. But it didn’t matter because Leiter couldn’t ask him anything else, or so it seemed to Mathias.

But he was wrong.

Leiter had been about to put the doll back into its box when it seemed that, almost as an afterthought, he said, ‘Have you ever taken anything that belonged to your grandfather?’

Mathias felt the blood drain from his face. His mouth went suddenly dry. ‘What like?’ he said, but his voice was unsteady.

Leiter heard it and looked up at him with dangerous attention. ‘Just answer the question,’ he said slowly.

Mathias swallowed. ‘No,’ he said.

The word came out as little more than a whisper,
but it was loud enough for Marguerite to hear. She bent slowly forward and touched the red card.

‘Ahh,’ said Leiter in a voice like honey. ‘A liar and a thief. Tut tut. I wonder what it was you took. Do you still have it, boy?’

Mathias could feel the hard fold of paper in his fist. ‘No,’ he said.

Marguerite bent down and touched the red card.

‘Well,’ breathed Leiter. ‘You had better show it to me.’

Mathias looked from Leiter to the door as though he might try to run, but the small man stood in his way. ‘But the doll’s wrong,’ he stammered.

Leiter shook his head. ‘Marguerite is never wrong,’ he said.

Seemingly unmoved, the little doll folded her hands neatly across her lap. Then she parted her pretty lips and smiled, but all her teeth were pointed, like a row of small, sharp needles.

‘You had better give it to me,’ said Leiter, and he held out his hand, ‘or Valter will have to take it from you, and you must believe me when I tell you that you really would not want him to do that.’

Mathias looked at the small man. He had already guessed who it had to be. Valter’s eyes had taken on
a cold, unfocused glaze. It was the expression you would see on an executioner’s face if you looked at it at the very moment he let the trapdoor drop.

‘Give it to me,’ said Dr Leiter.

Katta knew whose voice it was – it was the cook’s. The kitchen was at the back of the inn. It had low dark ceilings from which hens and geese, still in their feathers, hung on hooks in the rafters, ready for the pot. Even this early in the day the place was full of steam and smoke, thick with the smell of cut vegetables and roasting meat. The cook should have been a large, smiling, fat woman with red forearms like hams, and cheeks like apples, but she wasn’t. She was a slattern who spat on the fruit to clean it. Katta had seen her lift the meat from plates already on their way to table and, just for the spite of it, lick it and put it back, laughing. Katta hated her. Once she had made Katta, without a cloth for her hand, lift a full pot that had been standing above the fire, just because Katta had been too slow pulling the feathers from a goose. She still had the marks of the burn on her fingers.

A tray of breakfast had been made ready to carry. On it was a pot of scalding coffee, sliced meats,
butter and bread.

‘Take it upstairs,’ said the cook, wiping her hands upon her dirty apron. ‘The old man, at the end above the arch.’

Katta had done as she was told. She carried the tray back up the stairs, but when she came to the top, she stopped. One way led to the old man’s room – she knew which one the cook had meant: he’d been there for three days already and always had his breakfast this way; the other led back to the room where she had left the boy. Not entirely certain in her own mind why, she turned and went that way instead. It was some unthought thing, to do with wanting to be sure that he was safe. Bad things can happen in closed rooms – she had learned that to her cost. But this wasn’t a conscious thought at all. It was just something she found she was doing. She even knew what she was going to say – that she had brought the breakfast to the wrong room. She would see that the boy was all right, and she would come away.

But it didn’t happen like that. What happened was this.

She knocked on the door and pushed it open with the tray, all in one practised movement. The tall,
moon-faced man was standing in his black silk waistcoat and white shirt sleeves with his back to her. The short coachman – she had seen him only once – had the boy gripped by the neck and was shaking him like a rat out of the open window. The boy was kicking and gasping for breath. His face was blue.

All in the same moment that she took the sight in, the man heard the sound of the door opening behind him and spun round. Katta screamed and dropped the tray with a crash. The coachman turned his face towards her and, quite deliberately, opened his hand. The boy made one wild grab at the window frame, missed it, and dropped from sight like a stone.

Mathias felt quiet and strangely warm, as though he were wrapped in the blankets of a deep, soft feather bed. He could feel the weight of them pressing down upon his chest, holding him so that he couldn’t move at all. Dimly he understood that something had happened to him, but he didn’t know what. Didn’t know, until it started to hurt. Then he opened his eyes and the world was suddenly cold and sharp and hard – and he couldn’t breathe at all. He was lying flat on his back on the frosted ground, looking up at the blue morning sky and an open window high above him. He saw a head lean out, then disappear back inside. In that instant, like dropped picture cards, he remembered everything.

Dr Leiter. The doll. The dwarf.

He knew he had to get up and run, but he couldn’t move. Every last atom of breath had slammed from him as he hit the ground. Now his lungs were crying out for air, but his chest simply would not work. All he could manage was small, teaspoon sips of breath. He pulled himself onto his side and began to crawl. He could feel bone grating
on bone in his chest and knew that something there had broken. But crawling was too slow. He knew he had to get up and run. He lifted himself onto his knees, and cried out in pain as the ends of his snapped ribs ground one against another. Then, bent double and stumbling, he tried to find somewhere to hide. If they caught him, it was very simple – they were going to kill him.

Giddy with pain, he looked around at the swimming world and tried to make sense of it. He had been dropped from a window at the back of the inn. It was a wonder the fall hadn’t killed him outright. It was only the filth and dirty straw on the ground that had saved him. There was an old barn, its door hanging open. He knew it would be the first place they looked. Behind it though was rough ground and then the edge of the forest. He could see the deep cover of trees and bracken. If he could only reach the trees. He tried to straighten up and run but his chest hurt too much. He could hear noises from the inn – people shouting. He wrapped his arms around himself and, squeezing his chest as tightly as he dared, stumbled towards the trees.

He had nearly passed the open door of the old barn when a hand reached out from it, caught hold
of his coat and snatched him in. Blindly he lashed out, felt his fist in a face, but whoever it was pulled him down and he hadn’t the strength to stop them. He cried out, and a hand went tight over his mouth to silence him. He bit it as hard as he could, heard the person whimper, but the hand pressed tighter still.

‘Sssh!’

In the half-light a face pressed close to his.

‘Sssh!’ the voice said again.

Then he saw who it was. It was the girl, Katta.

When Katta dropped the tray, Leiter and Valter had both stared at her for a moment. Then Leiter spun on his heels and leaped for the door, Valter close behind him.

‘Thief!’ Leiter shouted, and they were out of the room and down the hall, Leiter still shouting at the top of his voice. ‘Thief! Stop him!’

But Katta knew that wasn’t what she’d seen happening.

She took one quick look from the open window – it was her head that Mathias had seen: the boy was lying motionless on the ground and she thought that he must be dead. But then he moved. She
didn’t stop to think. The two men had gone the wrong way if they were going to get behind the inn before she did. She knew a much quicker way than that. She ran from the room, along the gallery and down the back stairs that led straight to the stable yard. Holding her skirts up, she tore across the yard and through a gap little wider than she was. As she squeezed through the other end, she could see the boy on his feet, stumbling towards the trees. She felt a wave of relief that he could stand. But she could hear more voices now. They were coming. He had no chance at all of reaching the wood. But if she could get to the old barn before him …

Still not thinking why she was doing it, she ran back the way she’d come, ducked through a hole in the barn wall and, pushing her way in the dark past the piled rubbish of barrels and timber, reached the doorway only seconds before Mathias did. There was just enough time to snatch hold of him and pull him down into the shadows. She barely felt him hit her or bite her hand.

‘Sssh!’ she hissed, and pushed her face close to his so that he could see who it was. Her heart was pounding. ‘Sssh!’

She saw his eyes widen in startled recognition and
took her hand from his mouth. She tried to pull him up by his arm. He moaned and she realized that he must be hurt, but there was no time for kindness. With both hands she caught hold of his collar and dragged him inside. He could hear voices, louder now, as men came round the back of the inn. They stopped momentarily beneath the window where he had fallen. It was only an instant before they saw the barn and realized that he was probably there.

Katta pulled him over the floor. The tar-soaked planks scraped against his face. He could feel her, one-handed, pulling at something that creaked, then moved. There was a draught of cold, damp air around him. She pulled him down into it as the men burst into the old building. Mathias fell heavily against soft earth. He reached out to steady himself, but his fingers found only empty air. There was a quiet thump, as though something had closed above them, and then damp, dark quiet. He could hear the sound of the girl breathing. She pressed close against him and laid a finger across his lips.

‘Sssh,’ she whispered. He found himself, with stupid clarity, wondering if it were the only sound that she could make.

He could hear other things now, the noises of the
search – voices, things being dragged about – but they were muffled, as though all that was happening in another place. Then the sounds grew suddenly close and he felt the girl tighten against him. The pain in his chest made him whimper, but he bit it back. Leiter would find him now. He could still feel Valter’s hand around his throat, see the ground far below his dangling feet. He wanted to shout out for somebody to come and help him, but the girl had her hand over his mouth again as though she’d guessed what he might do.

In the barn the men from the inn, the groom and stable lads had searched everywhere. Peered into every place. Now they had lost interest. They looked at Leiter.

‘He’s not here, sir,’ they said.

Leiter, an unasked question on his face, turned to Valter. The dwarf had taken no part in any of it. He stood indifferently in the middle of the floor, collar up, hands stuffed deep into the pockets of his thick coat. He returned Leiter’s look and gave an almost imperceptible nod of his head, barely moving it at all. But Leiter knew exactly what it meant.

‘Well,’ Leiter said, ‘it seems the young wretch has got away. It was not too much he took, I suppose.’

He put his hand into his pocket and drew out a few meagre coins. ‘This is for your trouble,’ he said, and tossed them to the men to share out amongst themselves.

As an insult it was well calculated. They’d expected more reward for their help than a few paltry coins. What little interest they had left in Leiter evaporated in an instant. One of them contemptuously spat on the coin he’d been given, but he still took it. They trailed from the barn, one or two looking back sourly. Leiter waited until they were out of sight and then turned to Valter. The dwarf still hadn’t moved.

‘He is hiding here?’ said Leiter.

Valter nodded.

Leiter smiled. ‘Then you had better find him,’ he said.

Valter got down onto his hands and knees, like a large dog. He bent forward and smelled the ground, then put his head to one side and listened. He did this several times, all the while moving closer to where a pile of barrels stood against one wall of the barn. Finally he got up and looked at Leiter.

‘Here?’ said Leiter.

Valter nodded. He began to move the heavy
barrels away, rolling each one as easily as if it had been made of paper, until there was nothing left but one barrel and the bare floor.

‘Are you sure?’ said Leiter.

Valter gripped the barrel. But it didn’t move as the others had done. He looked at it as though puzzled. Then he pushed it. With a click, it tipped backwards. Where it had stood was an open hatchway, and a darkness from which a draught of cold, damp air came. It was the place where Mathias and Katta had hidden.