But, above everything else, above even his anxiety for Molly and Petal and the need to get the two older women into custody, he felt so proud of Molly. She had said she was going to find Petal, and she had. She’d stuck at it like a dog with a bone, even coming to work down here because she had what he thought was a crazy idea that Cassie had lived here. How wrong was he? It was Molly who should become a detective.

Then, all at once, he heard the clanging of an ambulance bell and a police siren.

‘That’s it now, Molly,’ he said to her. ‘You’ll be in hospital in no time and I’m not leaving you.’

George sensed the detective inspector’s hostility even before he opened his mouth to speak. He was middle-aged with a military-style moustache and had introduced himself as DI Pople.

‘We got the message about this from Somerset. So why did you feel it was necessary to come?’

George gritted his teeth at the man’s arrogance and stupidity.

The ambulance men were getting Molly into the ambulance now and George was ready to follow it on his motorbike. He’d already asked them to pick up Petal as they went past the shop.

‘It was as well I did, or she might have been dead before you got here. But you must excuse me, I’m going with her and Petal.’

‘You are not. You will come back with me to fill me in on the background,’ DI Pople said briskly. Two other police cars had arrived. The younger woman had been handcuffed and led to one of them, and two policemen were trying to get some sense out of the older, injured woman while waiting for a second ambulance to arrive.

‘Sorry, sir, but my duty is to my friend, who is badly hurt, and to the little girl she risked her life to save from these two madwomen,’ George said. ‘I’ll contact you as soon as I know Molly is going to make it.’

It was midnight before George was finally assured that Molly was out of the woods.

The doctor at Hastings Hospital who came to tell him was elderly but had bright-blue eyes and a warm smile. ‘She’ll be having a few headaches for a while and she’s not going to be amused by how much hair we had to cut away to stitch her scalp, but she’ll be fine after a nice long sleep. She became unconscious not just because of the head wound but through severe dehydration and lack of food. The poor girl must have been through a terrible ordeal.’

‘And Petal?’

‘She isn’t speaking at all, but that isn’t unusual for a child after a long and frightening experience, but apparently she wolfed down scrambled eggs and three glasses of milk after she’d had a bath and then threw a tantrum until we let her go in with Miss Heywood.’

‘You’ve let her stay with Molly?’ George asked.

‘Of course. After what she’s been through, the best place for her is close to someone she trusts. As I understand it, she owes her life to Miss Heywood, so we’ve put a little bed in her room for Petal.’

‘But how is she physically?’ George asked.

The doctor frowned. ‘She’s severely undernourished – her weight’s more appropriate for a four-year-old – she has a rash, possibly an allergy to something she was given in that house, and bruises, which suggest rough handling. But I’m confident that with more food, a good night’s sleep and some loving care, by tomorrow, when she wakes up beside Miss Heywood, she’ll start to open up. Now, where are you staying, young man? I believe you rode up from Somerset on a motorbike?’

‘That’s right, sir,’ George said. ‘I’ve been offered a bed for the night at the hotel where Molly works in Rye. Mr and Mrs Bridgenorth are frantic about her, so I’d better get off there now and give them the good news. But I’ll be back tomorrow. When are visiting hours?’

‘For you, anytime. She’s in a private room, of course. That makes it easier for Petal to be in there, too.’

‘I suppose Petal will have to go into care?’ George asked, his eyes prickled at the memory of those little arms around him earlier in the day. ‘She calls Molly “Auntie” but she isn’t a real aunt unfortunately, just her mother’s closest friend.’

‘Let’s not worry about anything just now. First, both of them need to get over their ordeal. You’ve been something of a hero today, too, and I’m sure you are exhausted. I’ll see you tomorrow.’

George spent the night in Molly’s bed at the hotel.

He was exhausted, but he forced himself to stay awake long enough to savour the smell of her on the sheets, to note the tidiness and the feminine touches that were so much part of what he loved about her.

Before he came to bed he had told Mr and Mrs Bridgenorth all he knew, and Mr Bridgenorth had told him that he was going to drive up to find Charley the next morning, as he needed to be told what had happened.

It was a real blow to hear that Molly had a boyfriend and that she hadn’t told him. But, to save face, he pretended he had known and nodded as Mr Bridgenorth spoke of him.

‘We kept hoping he’d ring,’ Mrs Bridgenorth said. ‘We did send him a telegram. Clearly, he isn’t at his home or he would have responded.’

George went straight to Rye police station as soon as he’d eaten his breakfast. DI Pople hadn’t come in yet, but Sergeant Wayfield, a tall, thin man with a face like a bloodhound, was there to take his statement.

‘There isn’t much to it, really,’ said George to the sergeant. ‘I was on my way to Mulberry House when Petal ran out of the lane in distress.’ He went on to explain the rest, ending up with him following Molly’s ambulance to Hastings Hospital.

‘So how did Miss Heywood discover the child was being held at Mulberry House? And why didn’t she speak to us before she went off there?’

George went further back in the story to when Molly had found Petal’s mother dead and the child missing last June. ‘She felt the police didn’t do enough,’ he explained. ‘And I have to agree it looked that way. Anyway, Molly got it into her head that she was going to find Petal, and she didn’t divulge the small pieces of evidence she found to anyone, not even me. As far as I know, a Church Army lady who Molly had stayed with in London helped her get the job at the George, but it looks to me as if Molly must have already discovered that Cassie came from somewhere round here.

‘Anyway, a couple of days before Molly disappeared she wrote to me. She said she thought she’d tracked down Cassie’s mother, someone called Christabel Coleman, who had a daughter called Sylvia, who was the same age as Cassie, and it was rumoured she’d had a black baby. She said she was going there in the morning to see her.’

‘And how did you discover that Miss Heywood had gone missing?’

‘Mrs Bridgenorth phoned me; she found my number in Molly’s address book. She said that no one here at the nick had taken her seriously when she reported that Miss Heywood hadn’t come home, so I think she rang me in desperation. As I was on leave I came straight away, asking my mother to inform you.’

‘I sense an implication that you didn’t trust us to act immediately?’

George looked the sergeant in the eye. ‘Wouldn’t you have done the same if you were in my shoes?’

The sergeant scratched his head, but didn’t answer the question. ‘Well, it was very high-handed of you. You might have made the situation very much worse, or put yourself in danger. Thankfully, Miss Heywood was very resourceful. We found the cellar room she was kept in, and the child had been imprisoned in an attic room.’

‘All the time?’ George asked, horrified at the thought.

‘We can’t be sure one way or the other until she’s ready to talk, or one of the women does. There’s an old doctor’s surgery in the house, full of drugs and medicines, so it’s possible they gave the child something to keep her quiet. We found a pair of baby reins in the room, too, so we think they used them to walk her around the garden sometimes. She was fed sporadically but, judging by her weight, not nearly enough. As for bathing her or washing her hair, that appears not to have been done for some weeks.’