Diamond Solitaire

CHAPTER SIX

One useful thing Diamond had learned in the police is that anyone with an air of authority can get admitted anywhere, with the possible exception of 10 Downing Street. The children's home was a detached Victorian house just behind the Earls Court exhibition building. The woodwork around the windows needed replacing and brickwork was visible here and there where weathering had invaded the layer of stucco. The local authority had more urgent priorities.

He rang the bell and a woman in an apron came to the door. Raising the 1940s trilby he still wore in private homage to the great detectives of past years, he said, "Morning, madam. You must be Mrs…?"

"Straw."

"Mrs. Straw, Mrs. Straw…" he said thoughtfully as if deciding whether she qualified for the holiday of a lifetime in the Caribbean.

She waited, intrigued.

He said, "You're not the head of this school?"

"No," she said, fingering her apron. "I'm the general help."

"A general! General Help." He made a gesture towards a salute.

She didn't smile. "You want Miss Musgrave."

"Miss Musgrave. Of course!" He stepped forward, compelling her to stand aside. "Peter Diamond, General Help, here to speak to Miss Musgrave."

She succeeded in saying, "You have an appointment." If she meant it to sound like a question, as she probably did, the attempt was foiled by a huge, disarming grin from Diamond. The upshot was that Mrs. Straw's utterance ended on a descending note and became a statement She added, "Miss Musgrave is very busy."

"Don't I know it!" Diamond said.

"You know Miss Musgrave?" she said with relief.

He shrugged like a Frenchman in a way that could mean everything or nothing. "She'll see me, I think." He was in the hall now and Mrs. Straw was closing the door. From the depths of the house came the cries of children. "She's not in class, is she?"

"If you'd only wait, I'll tell her you're here."

At that moment a face appeared around a door halfway up the hall. Diamond called out, "There you are, Miss Musgrave."

It wasn't a stab in the dark. The face was weighing him up with the look of a person in authority.

"Peter Diamond," he told her, advancing with his hand extended. A man of his size in motion isn't easy to stop. "Mrs. Straw here was telling me how busy you are, but perhaps you can spare me a minute. I'm not selling anything."

Miss Musgrave must have been in her thirties, tall and slim, with blonde hair drawn back to a small ponytail and tied with a black ribbon. She didn't immediately accept the handshake. She asked, "What is this about, then?"

He beamed. "It's about one of the children, the Japanese girl. I may be able to help."

"You'd better come in."

Her office evidently doubled as a classroom. There were three infants' chairs and tables. Her own desk had a lineup of painted masks made from egg boxes. The floor was spotted with paint. A menagerie of stuffed animals sat on the filing cabinet. Children's paintings ranging from competent to inept were taped to the walls. Diamond found it congenial. In the absence of a spare adult-sized chair, he perched himself on a wooden chest with a flat lid that he reckoned would take his weight.

Miss Musgrave asked if he wanted a coffee. She had a full cup on her desk.

"No thanks. I really don't mean to be a nuisance." At this stage he judged it wise to throw himself on her mercy. "I used to be in the police as a detective superintendent. Used to be. I must make it plain that I'm here in a private capacity." He explained about losing the Harrods job. "I saw the little girl that night, and I'm appalled that after-what is it? Six weeks? -her people haven't been found."

"I'm sure the police are doing their best," Miss Musgrave said.

"No question of that."

"Meanwhile we're making her as comfortable as we can. She does need specialized care. That's my province, Mr. Diamond." She sounded defensive, yet well in control. From the guarded looks she was still giving Diamond, she hadn't much cared for his steamroller tactics in gaining admittance.

"It's not easy, I imagine, when a child doesn't speak at all," he ventured.

"We deal with a variety of problems here."

"With limited resources, no doubt."

"If you're hinting that Naomi isn't being given the attention her predicament deserves, Mr. Diamond, you're mistaken. She's been the subject of the most intensive tests and inquiries."

"Naomi-you know her name?"

Miss Musgrave shook her head. "We have to call her something. One of the staff from the Japanese Embassy suggested it as a name that their people and ours have in common."

"Naomi. That's Japanese? I thought it was Old Testament."

Hosanna! His early days as a choirboy paid off. Miss Musgrave's expression softened. A man who knew his Bible couldn't be wholly disreputable. "What exactly are you here for, Mr. Diamond?"

"To help the kid find her people."

"Oh-and how will you succeed when everyone up to now has failed?"

"By being the Sherlock Holmes round here-except that I come free."

"That's fine as far as it goes, but I don't know what the police would say about it."

"The police are up shit creek without a paddle, as Sherlock used to remark to Dr. Watson."

She put her fingers to her mouth, possibly, Diamond suspected, to hide a faint smile.

He pointed to the cup and saucer on her desk. "Your coffee's getting cold."

She lowered her hand and she was definitely smiling. "It's Bovril. Is that an example of your detective skills?"

He made a pistol shape with his fingers and held them to the side of his head.

Miss Musgrave, serious again, said, "Naomi can't answer questions, so I don't see what good you can do."

"I can observe."

"And make deductions?" She mocked him with her eyes.

"You've got to admit the kid needs help."

This was a telling point with Miss Musgrave. She took a long sip of the Bovril. "If you're serious, come back at two this afternoon. I'll be taking the autistic class. In this room. You can come in and see what happens. Then perhaps you'll understand the difficulty."

An adult-sized chair had been installed just inside the door for Diamond. It wasn't possible for a man of his bulk to be unobtrusive in an office so small, but Miss Musgrave didn't mind and the children scarcely gave him a passing glance. They were shepherded in by Mrs. Straw and another woman who looked mightily relieved to be handing them over.

One of them, a boy, was screaming, as if in rage rather than pain. On entering the room he broke away from Mrs. Straw, ran to a bookcase, swept the bottom shelf clear of books and squeezed into the narrow space underneath, where he continued to scream.

"That's Clive," Miss Musgrave told Diamond above the racket. She made no move to restore the books to their places or to calm Clive. "And this is Rajinder."

Rajinder moved erratically, with a springy step, both arms flexed and his wrists limp. He went to one of the infant chairs and sat there, rocking, it seemed, in time to Clive's screaming.

"Come on, you two," the second teacher urged the rest of the class, who seemed reluctant, not without cause, to enter. "Tabitha, Naomi, we can't wait all day for you." She cupped her hand around the back of one child's head and drew her in, a pale, worried-looking girl of about seven with fine blonde hair, presumably Tabitha. She had thick plastic glasses fastened with a band around the back of her head like a tennis player's. She had scarcely taken a step into the room when Miss Musgrave remarked to the other teacher, "She needs changing. Do you mind?"

Tabitha was recalled and Naomi was ushered forward in her place. Diamond had seen the child briefly that night in Harrods, and remembered how impassive she had looked, surrounded by security guards. This morning she had the same preoccupied expression, as if her eyes saw nobody. There was clearly a level at which her mind was functioning efficiently, because she moved normally, straight to a chair and sat down, composed, indifferent to Clive's screaming and Rajinder's rocking, or to the presence of the adults. Someone had fastened a white ribbon in her hair and she was in a red corduroy dress, black tights and trainers. "She'll stay like that for as long as I let her," said Miss Musgrave. "I can get through to the others. Outwardly they appear more disturbed than Naomi, but she's inaccessible, and it isn't just the problem of language. It must be some form of autism."

Diamond had seen television programs about autistic children who appeared physically normal, but tantalizingly locked in their inner worlds. They exhibited a range of behavior that could include tantrums, grimacing, avoidance of all human contact, inappropriate emotional reactions such as laughing when someone else was hurt and, in rare cases, strange feats of memory enabling them to play music they had heard only once before, or doing complex drawings of scenes and buildings only briefly visited. From what he remembered, there was controversy about how autism should be treated. He'd watched a disturbing film of mothers forcibly embracing their struggling children until they stopped resisting, which could take hours. In some cases, the results had been encouraging.

Miss Musgrave closed the door and took a pencil and worksheet to the howling Clive. To Diamond's surprise the boy took it, went silent and started to write or draw, still in his cramped position under the bookshelves. Rajinder, also, was persuaded to take a worksheet and give it his attention, though he needed a patient explanation of what was required.

"Now see what happens with Naomi." Miss Musgrave held out a pencil. Naomi stared ahead and didn't move. Gently, Miss Musgrave took the child's right hand and positioned the small fingers around the pencil.

Diamond said, "It's not for me to interfere, but do the Japanese hold pencils like that?" He took a pen from his pocket and demonstrated. "I thought they held them upright, like this."

Miss Musgrave's first reaction was a cool stare. Then she accepted the validity of the information.

The child allowed her fingers to be repositioned. A clean sheet of paper was placed on the table in front of her. Miss Musgrave stood behind Naomi and guided the pencil, making a mark on the paper. "Now prove me totally wrong, Naomi, and draw a picture." But Naomi's eyes weren't on the paper, and as soon as Miss Musgrave stepped back, the hand was still.

"I've had mutes before," Miss Musgrave said, "and they can usually be persuaded to use a pencil."

"She's mute?"

"Silent, anyway. Not dumb. She makes little sounds if she's surprised in any way."

"That's something."

"Some autistics never learn to speak."

Rajinder seemed to take this as a challenge and started repeatedly saying, "Miss," until Miss Musgrave examined his drawing, praised it and provided him with more paper. From the bookshelves came a new sound. Clive, tiring of paperwork, had taken a toy car from his pocket and was spinning the wheels with his finger, watching them intently.

"He'll do that for the rest of the lesson if he's left. It becomes obsessive," Miss Musgrave said. "He fits the stereotype of the autistic child."

"Meaning what?"

"He shuns the company of others. Doesn't use eye contact. Refuses to be cuddled. Throws these tantrums if he feels his privacy is being invaded."

"And is Naomi like that?"

"She's the aloof type. The muteness is a symptom."

"Have you tried cuddling her?"

"She's indifferent to it. Passive. That's another kind of abnormality in these kids."

"The others, Rajinder and Tabitha-are they autistic?"

"Yes."

"Does Clive speak?"

She nodded. "But he tends to repeat things parrot fashion."

"Does he progress at all?"

"A little. Listen," she said, "if you want to try and get through to Naomi, please feel free."

The invitation was tempting, but he knew better than to accept. On first acquaintance a man his size terrified any kid if he went close. "At this stage," he told Miss Musgrave candidly, "I'd rather get through to you. That's my game plan for today."

She tensed. "What exactly do you mean?"

"I want to convince you that I won't be a nuisance. I want to come here again. And again. I can sit here and observe, or I can make myself useful, but I want to be here. I don't kid myself that I can work a miracle for Naomi. I sense that if she's going to give me any clues at all, it's going to be slow progress. How would you feel about having me here on a regular basis?"

She didn't answer at once. She went over to attend to Clive, who started screaming again at her approach. For a moment she wrestled with him for the toy car. In the struggle he bit her hand and she cried out in pain. "If I don't do this," she told Diamond, "the entire lesson is wasted. Now will you let go?" She snatched the toy from Clive and he set up a piercing wail. "You'll have it back presently. Now do me a drawing of the car. A drawing." The child subsided by stages and picked up the pencil.

Massaging her hand, Miss Musgrave returned to Diamond. "Before I say anything about this suggestion of yours, would you tell me something about yourself?"

"Whatever you want to know."

"All right, then. Why did you leave the police?"

He hesitated. "I resigned. I blew my top in front of the Assistant Chief Constable."

"What about?"

"A kid. A boy of twelve. I was accused of hitting his head against a wall."

She stared. After an interval, she said, "At least you're honest."

"Okay," he added, "I'm hardly a suitable person to invite again. Forget it." He picked up his hat.

"Sit down, Mr. Diamond," she told him firmly. "Did you do it?"

"Do what?"

"Hit the boy?"

"No, but it's academic now. He came at me and I pushed him aside. He knocked his head on the wall. I wasn't believed, so I said some things I lived to regret"

"Have you got kids of your own?"

He shook his head.

"You're married?"

"Yes."

"But you like them?"

"Kids?" He nodded.

She held out a hand. "My name is Julia."