The Vanishing Children (Master Mercurius Mysteries Book 5) by Graham Brack

Author:Graham Brack [Brack, Graham]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sapere Books
Published: 2021-04-19T16:00:00+00:00

We arrived at the inn and sat ourselves at the same table as before. Locke was not there.

‘Were your enquiries fruitful, Master?’ asked Pringle.

‘I took a small step forward, I think. It became clear that the sites of the abductions are much closer together than I had imagined. But the overriding impression was that whoever did this knows his way around the district.’

‘Or her way.’

‘Her way?’

‘You’re speaking as if the kidnapper must be a male. I merely note that women are just as likely to steal a child, if not more so. For a start, they are better able to care for a small infant.’

I considered what Pringle had said. ‘Let us hope that you are right, because that implies that the intention was to keep the child rather than kill it. I take comfort from the fact that no bodies have been found.’

‘I wouldn’t take too much, Master. It would be an easy matter to put a baby in a sack with a few rocks and ensure that he did not surface from a canal.’

I blanched. Who could imagine such wickedness? ‘But who could hate little children so much that he kills three of them?’

‘Maybe he doesn’t,’ Pringle shrugged. ‘Maybe he hates the parents. Or he hates Jews.’

‘But why kill children? Surely if you hate Jews you kill adult Jews?’

‘Kill an adult Jew and there is one less Jew. Kill a few Jewish children and there will be a dozen or so fewer Jews in a generation.’

My appetite was rapidly waning. I know that I have led a sheltered life, but I have never encountered a degree of hatred of an entire people such that its proponents would harm children.

‘Why do you suppose that the abductor knows the area?’ Pringle asked.

‘The Morteira boy was stolen through the back door, but it is not easy to find that rear entrance. You’d need to know which passageway must be taken. And the kidnapper could not be idly strolling past, for that pathway is a dead end. It leads nowhere else.’

Pringle nodded his agreement. ‘That much I can follow. It tells us also that these are not opportunistic abductions. The perpetrator followed that alleyway for a purpose, and the purpose must have been to snatch a child. The question then becomes — that child, or any child?’

‘Surely that’s obvious. Given that there was probably only one option, the villain must have planned to take Daniel Morteira.’

‘You misunderstand me. It’s true that having got there he had only one choice. What I was asking is whether the intention from the outset was to snatch the individual children taken, or whether any child would have done.’

Those who have followed my memoirs from their debut will recall that in my very first mystery three children went missing, but the man responsible was actually looking for a particular child. Could that be true here?

This was patently a matter of the highest importance, so I concentrated on that very hard for a few minutes, during which I

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