The Baby-Snatcher

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The knock at the door surprised Ramsay. He received few callers at the cottage in Heppleburn and Jack Robson, who turned up occasionally to take him to the pub, knew better than to come this early. Ramsay seldom arrived home from work before eight and then he had to eat. If he arrived home at all. These days there was Prue, the woman in his life, and he was just as likely to stay at her home in Otterbridge.

He went to the door expecting to find someone collecting for good causes and on his way he looked through a pile of mail to see if there was a charity envelope he’d overlooked. It was just starting to get dark and he switched on the light in the storm porch.

He recognized the girl who waited on the step but for a moment he could not place her. Then he realized she was one of the walkers. That was how he thought of the couple who seemed to carry out most of their business on foot. There was this girl and an older woman. They walked miles. He had passed them on the roads out of Heppleburn and wondered about them. He was surprised that a teenage girl would choose to spend so much time with her mother. He assumed that the older woman was the mother. There was a family resemblance. They had the same large, unblinking eyes, and there was the walk, purposeful, long-strided, fast.

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