MIA CHANTAL IN JEOPARDY by Brian Sands
Part Five: Jigsaw Incomplete
She must have been unconscious for only a few minutes, because Mia found
that she was still bound tightly. The difference was that she now lay on
the carpet instead of swaying suspended above it. Someone was speaking, but
it took several moments before she made out the words.
'... out of your mind, Snedley? If we damage "the goods," as you describe
this delightful creature, we lose our hold on deVille. It's none of your
business, but I can tell you, you dunderhead, that a lot of money rides on
the deal we're trying to consummate. And we need deVille's silence on the
matter. Now ...'
Mia became aware that someone was kneeling beside her. Soft, pudgy fingers
gripped her chin and lifted her head. Sir Murgatroyd? Mia looked into a
pair of dull grey eyes that were slitted between layers of fat. A white
handkerchief covered the lower half of his face, a mask hastily improvised
so that she would not be able to identify the financier positively.
'Mmmpphh,' the tilting of her head backwards caused the leather gag to pull
against the corners of her mouth with excruciating pain. Tears flooded into
the young woman's eyes and she almost lost consciousness again. Murgatroyd
lowered her head to the carpet.
'You, Sarah, get that thing off her!'
Mia now felt different hands. They fluttered ineffectually about her head.
Murgatroyd's booming voice came again, 'The buckle at the back of her neck,
you stupid woman! See if you can do a better job, Snedley and earn your
keep as my minion. Only don't hurt our pretty prisoner or you'll be demoted
to car-washer.'
Snedley's familiar hard, cold hands were at Mia's neck and a shudder of
revulsion went through her. As she felt the ends of the leather strap being
gripped, she screwed up her eyes tightly and fought to control the agony
she knew was coming. The buckle had to be tightened a notch before it could
be undone, and it was already so tight that her jaws were stretched wide
apart. She tried to relax her jaws but that was impossible. Snedley used a
minimum of force, though it did not prevent a faint wail from escaping
involuntarily through Mia's gag, and a thin spill of blood began to seep
into the scarf around her face. But what followed was a blessed relief. The
silk scarf bandaging her face was the next to be removed. When Snedley
inserted his finger and thumb and clumsily extracted the wadded scarf
filling her mouth, Mia almost gagged at the taste. But the feeling of
having her mouth completely free was so wonderful that she began sobbing
helplessly with relief, ignoring the salty taste from the cut at the edge
of her lip. A thin trickle of blood ran from one corner of her mouth to her
chin.
Sir Murgatroyd grunted impatiently. 'Shut her up again, Snedley. You'll
only need one scarf for it, she's such a little thing.'
Once again the black scarf was bandaged around Mia's mouth and jaw and tied
in place at the back of her neck. But nothing was packed between her teeth.
Mia resolved yet again to play the cooperative captive. She was thankful
for the considerable mercy of having the stringent gag removed, but she
told herself to continue watching for some chance of escape. If only the
tight bonds holding her in the hogtie could be removed at her arms and
legs.
Her wish was granted. 'Get the rest of the ropes off her,' Murgatroyd
ordered. 'Leave her bound hand and foot. That's all you need to keep the
little lady secure.'
'But, Sir Murgatroyd, when she has to be transported in the car?' whined
Snedley.
'Oh yes. She'll have to be trussed so she cannot move, or see, or hear. You
should have done that from the start, and kept her that way instead of
playing your foolish bondage games. She's seen you, and Sarah, now, but
that's no cause to harm her. I'll get you both out of the country when the
business is done, and you'll be considerably richer, I assure you.' Snedley
visibly swelled with greed. 'In the meantime, leave her locked in here. How
did she get away in the first place?'
'She must have wriggled out of her bonds, a regular Houdini ... '
'Obviously,' Murgatroyd sneered.
'Then she put newspaper under the doors to get the keys,' Snedley continued.
'I trust you'll take better precautions next time.'
Mia kicked herself mentally for not having the presence of mind to hide the
newspaper and let it remain a mystery as to how she had got through the
doors. She would not be able to use that ploy again.
'When does she have to be moved, Sir?'
'Looking forward to trussing her up again are we? I'll let you know. We
need only another day. Then you, my dear,' said Murgatroyd, turning to Mia,
'will have a very uncomfortable ride, but you'll be freed soon after. Be a
good girl in the meantime, or I'll let Snedley loose on you. Do you
understand?' Mia nodded vigorously.
Murgatroyd turned and left the room with Snedley and the maid Sarah in his
wake. Sarah snatched a quick glance at Mia over her shoulder and the bound
girl thought she caught a fleeting look of sympathy on the maid's otherwise
dull face. The door closed and the key was turned. The sound of it being
removed from the lock followed immediately. Mia was alone again in her
cellar prison suite, bound hand and foot and gagged, in the looney's lair.
Pieces of the pattern were beginning to become apparent, like sections of
an incomplete jigsaw puzzle. As she tested the bonds at her wrists, Mia
went over in her mind the different parts of the puzzle that she now had in
place. Who were the players in the game? The stakes were higher than a
simple kidnap and extortion racket on Snedley's part aimed at Miles
deVille. Snedley, her captor, was merely a financier's henchman doing his
bidding. Extortion was still the name of the game, and Mia had become the
unsuspecting bait. But Sir Murgatroyd was the key to it, and he was keepng
a low profile. Mia had gained only a fleeting glimpse of his face before
she passed out, so she could not feel confident as a witness, though the
man's physical bulk was a giveaway. On the other hand, there must be many
overweight financiers in the world, the result of business dinners and no
exercise. The other person was the dim-witted maid, Sarah. Being a member
of Miles deVille's staff seemed to rank her with Snedley, but Mia could not
guess what Sarah's role might be in her kidnapping. Mia's own role as
kidnap victim was also problematic. Who was she to deVille, or deVille to
her for that matter? Their dinner in the old house and the sojourn later in
the cellar-cum-dungeon was the closest they had approached to intimacy in
the bare month they had known each other. But what an intimacy! Mia could
not control a small shiver of mixed apprehension and intrigue at the
memory. Her relationship with Miles must be strong enough from the point of
view of her captors to make her worth abducting, and it did not really
matter that they were largely mistaken. Mia was in it, whatever it was, up
to her pretty neck.
While these thoughts were going through her mind, Mia had been working
intently on her wrist bonds. They had been tied when Snedley captured her
out at the pine trees, and they were tight. But in the excitement of
capture and in his rush to get her back inside the house, Snedley had only
passed the cords three times in one direction before tying them off. This
gave Mia a little more play when twisting her hands and wrists than if the
cords had been cinched or cross-tied, and they were beginning to weaken
ever so slightly. Mia bit her lip against the pain of her skinned wrist and
continued alternately flexing and relaxing her limbs. She had got out of
her wrist bonds before when they were in a relatively simple tie, and she
determined to do it again, though she did not know what she would do after
that. How would she find a way out of the room now that the doors were
securely locked?
She was learning to be patient about her captivity, was largely succeeding
in fighting back her natural panic and revulsion against being bound and
gagged. And gradually, as before, she managed after a lot of work to slip
one wrist from its ties, and she was free again. The blood at the corner of
her mouth, soaked up by the silk bandage around her face, made the cloth
pull with a sharp brief pain as she untied and removed the gag. In a short
moment Mia had her ankles free.
What to do? The young woman looked around her. She had no idea when Snedley
would return for her but, going on what Sir Murgatroyd had said, it would
be some hours before she was to be packaged into a helpless bundle for the
long ride back, and that only if the deal, whatever it was, was completed
satisfactorily. Mia thought that perhaps she had plenty of time to explore
her prison. In the end, there was not much that she could explore that she
did not know already. The door was securely locked. There were no windows,
only narrow vents high in the walls that scarcely allowed the air to
circulate. There was no avenue of escape through the ventilation system.
Mia felt sweaty and in bad need of a shower and a change of clothes after
her flight through the woods and her recapture and retying, not to mention
being strung up and rotating from the ceiling. So to fill in time before
she was to feel the constriction of ropes and gag once more, she took the
opportunity that offered and had a glorious hot shower in the bathroom.
This time no one (meaning Snedley) had chosen what clothes she was to wear,
so Mia chose for herself, enjoying the freedom there was in doing so. Black
bra and panties, black silk stockings too were the first items. A crisp
white satin blouse with long sleeves came next - always long sleeves if one
expected to have one's arms bound, she thought wryly - and a pair of faded
jeans, the better to protect her legs from the ropes she was sure Snedley
would enjoy wrapping her in. She knotted a small pink silk neck scarf at
her throat and slipped on the flat shoes she had worn earlier. A view of
herself in the large mirror made Mia feel good. She liked the feel of the
silk stockings on her legs as they crackled sensuously against the denim of
her jeans, and the smooth texture of the blouse against the skin of her
arms and shoulders in particular made her feel very feminine. All this, of
course, was to be wasted on Snedley. Or, to put it another way, she
corrected herself realistically, Snedley would go ape over her - and
probably truss her up more tightly than ever. The only way she could look
forward to that experience was because it meant she would be closer to real
freedom, perhaps to Miles's welcoming arms.
The thought of Snedley's hands on her brought an involuntary shudder, as it
always did, and Mia began searching for a means of escape, though it looked
hopeless. She walked around the walls of the three rooms - bathroom, inner
bedroom, and outer room - her arms folded over her chest. So all this was
part of a nuclear fallout shelter. Mia inspected the door once again, but
with no real hope of finding a weakness.
Thoughts that had crossed her mind earlier flooded back as she revisited
her dilemma. Mia thought once again about her original idea of unscrewing
the door's hinges. They had looked so heavy and strong before, and her
heart sank when a second inspection seemed to bear out those first
impressions. But she looked closer. The door was held by massive hinges,
sure enough, but Mia noticed that the hinges were screwed into the door.
And what could be screwed could be unscrewed, using the proper tool. But
where would she find a screwdriver or something that would do the job just
as well? Mia decided to give it a try.
She cast around for a nail file, but her shoulder bag was nowhere in sight.
Mia could not remember whether she had dropped it during her flight or
whether Snedley had taken it. Probably the latter, she decided. Mia prided
herself on being neat and well organised, and the idea of losing her bag
was foreign to her because it violated all perceptions she had of herself.
Wearily, Mia sat down on the old mattress where she had spent so many hours
bound and gagged, and looked hopelessly at the door. If only she could find
some way of unscrewing the hinges. She lookd up at the hook in the ceiling
from which she had hung, and saw that, instead of being embedded into the
concrete as a single unit, it was fastened in place by a series of large
screws. Then an idea came to her which in its implications brought on a
shiver of distaste. Snedley's bondage drawer, in which he kept his
assortment of ball gags, tape, and cord. Would such a depository hold tools
as well, pliers, scissors ... screwdrivers? It was worth investigating.
Mia walked to the wall cupboard, opened the end door and, with a creepy
feeling that prickled the hair on the back of her neck, opened the drawer
where Snedley kept his ... things. She recognised instantly the leather
mouthpiece that had been fastened between her jaws so painfully, and what
she suspected was a ball gag of some kind. There was an assortment of
leather straps, one pair of which she recognised as straps that had held
her ankles. There were also several rolls of tape, medical white,
elastoplast of at least two kinds, gaffer's tape in a variety of colors,
and transparent tape of the sort used in post offices to secure parcels.
There, at the back of the drawer, lay a roll of heavy opaque plastic that
looked as if it might hold a tool kit. Mia took it out, closed the drawer
with a sense of relief, knelt on the floor and unrolled the pack. She held
her breath in case she oncovered another of Snedley's horrors. In it lay,
scissors, a small pair of wire cutters, and - what she was looking for - a
set of screwdrivers. Mia chose the largest of these and walked to the door.
It fitted the screws neatly so that with a little effort interrupted by
some slippage she managed to unscrew them one by one. Mia could not believe
it when the hinges at top and bottom of the door came away from the wood in
which they had been embedded. All that was keeping the door in its frame
was the lock and, when she took the door-knob and gave it a good wrench,
the whole unit fell out almost on top of her. Fortunately Mia jumped
sideways and watched as the large heavy door fell inwards with a crash that
seemed to shake the house. Mia held her breath, her body poised motionless.
There was no sound from above to suggest that anyone had been disturbed.
Maybe Snedley was out of the house again.
There was no time to lose. Snatching up her satin jacket from the chair
where she had left it, Mia bounded up the steps two at a time, assisted by
the strong light from the room which now illuminated most of the stairwell.
The chance of finding freedom once more gave her a surge of renewed energy
she did not realise she could muster. The door at the head of the steps was
locked of course, but she had the screwdriver in her hand and was prepared
to work as painstakingly on the hinges of this door as she had done on the
one that now lay on the floor of the room behind her. Mia did look through
the keyhole however, just in case, and to her surprise the large key was
still in the lock! Snedley had removed the key from the door to the room
where the girl was being held prisoner, but he had not bothered to do the
same with the second door, reasoning quite rightly that his captive would
be baulked at the first obstacle.
All I need now is some newspaper, Mia thought, and she slowly retraced her
steps, wondering whether she would be able to find some paper back in the
room. Instead, near the bottom of the steps she discovered a wad of
newspaper screwed up, lying where someone had thrown it. The opportunities
for escape were beginning to appear more than coincidental, and Mia began
wondering whether she had an ally who was secretly helping her. Could it be
the maid Sarah? she speculated, but that seemed hardly likely. Mia
shrugged. It was more likely to be due to Snedley's carelessness and
over-confidence in his power as her jailer.
Mia returned to the head of the steps, smoothed out the newspaper, slipped
it under the door and, as before, retrieved the key without mishap. Once
again she negotiated the creaking floorboards of the old house until she
was standing in the open. It was late afternoon and the shadows under the
pines were already lengthening, creating patches of darkness inside the
wood. Struggling against the ties to her wrists had taken longer than she
expected, and Mia realised that she must be very close to Snedley's time of
return - and thus closer to recapture than she cared to be.
Instead of following the overgrown track as she had done the night before,
Mia struck out directly into the wood. For the next twenty minutes, she
crossed the track twice, so frequently did it twist back on itself. After
that, she seemed to leave the track behind and found herself walking over
ground that sloped gently upwards for a long way before she came to an
equally long downward stretch. At the bottom of that ridge she almost
stepped onto a sealed road before she saw it.
By now twilight was setting in. The bitumen of the road still felt warm
through the soles of her flat-heeled shoes. By contrast, the air began to
feel cool, and Mia hugged the satin jacket more tightly around her. No
sound came from the woods on the side from which she had come. Across a
freshly ploughed field on the other side she could see a farm house, but it
was in darkness and so distant that she decided it would be better to stick
to the road. She began walking along the edge of the road, setting her feet
on the downhill route that would take her back to the coastal plan below
where eventually she would find a haven.
As it grew progressively darker, Mia became more circumspect about her
surroundings. She listened for the sound of an approaching car, watched
hard for the glow of headlights, and resolved not to hail down the first
vehicle she saw, in case it was Snedley. So it was that when a car did
approach, she slid quickly into the shadows of the trees that stood along
the upper slope and watched as it went past. It was travelling fast, but
not at the breakneck velocity characteristic of Snedley's driving skill.
That, Mia decided, would be the litmus test. Any vehicle approaching at a
rate of knots should be avoided, just in case.
It was a long time before another car passed, and Mia began to regret not
having stopped the first one. Then she heard the purring of a distant
motor. She stood just off the side of the road, listening, watching, and
when it came into sight it confirmed her expectation. The car was
travelling slowly, in fact at a speed one could only describe as sedate.
Its silhouette, moreover, was unlike that of the limousine. It was much
smaller in size. Probably it was driven by an elderly person, she guessed,
someone who could pass her on to the local police at the nearest town,
wherever that was. She did not care in which direction she went, as long as
it led to safety.
Mia stepped into the road, and when the headlights picked her out she began
waving urgently with both arms. The car drew alongside and came to a slow
halt. The window on the driver's side whirred down and a greying head
nodded into view. Mia bent to the window-sill and began the speech she had
rehearsed a few minutes earlier. She did not wish to frighten anyone with a
wild story of kidnap, binding and gagging, and incarceration.
'Thank goodness you've come,' she began. 'My car got bogged a few miles up
a side track and I need to get to a phone urgently. I don't suppose you
could ...' Then her voice trailed off and an icy chill clutched at her
heart. In the half-light Mia at last recognised the grey-haired woman. It
was Sarah, the maid! With a gasp, Mia stood, whirled, and ran straight into
Snedley's waiting arms. The chauffeur had slipped out of the door on the
passenger's side and crept around the back of the vehicle, coming up behind
the unsuspecting young woman.
If Mia had experienced Snedley's strong, rough hands before, this time it
was infinitely worse. Her arms were pinned immoveably to her body.
Snedley's hand covered not only her mouth to stop the scream she attempted,
it also covered her nose, making breathing impossible. As she fought a
losing battle against unconsciousness, Mia heard Snedley's rasping voice as
though from a great distance. He was speaking to Sarah. 'Get the tape out
of the glove-box and hand it over, quick. Then open the back door.'
Lights flashed across Mia's vision as she felt herself thrown onto the back
seat of the car. But, to do so, Snedley had removed his hand from her face
and she could breathe again. As she gratefully gulped in a lung-full of
air, Mia felt her arms drawn behind her, and the next moment her wrists
were being taped firmly together. Snedley wound the tape again and again
and again, so many times that she lost count. Then she was pulled upright
and a thick cloth was forced into her mouth. It tasted of cotton and grease
and set her teeth on edge. Mia retched against the gag, but it was held in
place by one hand until she had ceased struggling.
'That's better, Mam'selle,' Snedley whispered gleefully. 'Nothing you can
do about this, so just sit tight while I tie you tight.' Mia knew that he
meant it. There was no way she could fight free of the tape imprisoning her
wrists or the cloth filling her mouth. She closed her eyes and waited for
Snedley to do his worst.
Snedley did not bother with aesthetic principles such as requiring Mia to
close her lips together before they were sealed. Instead, he passed a
length of tape across and between Mia's jaws against the wadding. He
continued to wind it around the back of her neck, over and over her lips
and mouth until her face from just below her nose to the tip of her chin
was sealed under at least six layers of the stuff. Each time he wound the
tape, he pulled it viciously tight so that Mia felt her head would burst.
She tried to breathe through her nose as she had done when she was first
kidnapped. Later she believed that her presence of mind on that score
probably saved her.
'I'll teach you to make a fool of me!' Snedley whispered nastily into her
ear. 'Let's see how you like the trunk of this little old car of Sarah's.
You'll be packed in like a sardine, I guarantee it.'
Mia was hauled off the rear seat and dragged to the back of the car,
struggling feebly. Snedley left her standing to one side while he crouched
and wrestled with the stiff catch of the trunk and, by so doing, he made
another costly error among the trail of under-estimations of Mia's
character that Snedley had made throughout the whole affair. Because, bound
as she was, her mouth sealed painfully under layers of tape, Mia held on to
her fighting spirit. Her legs were still free and she was not going to give
in so easily.
The young woman stepped back and looked at the crouching man. In one of the
gym classes she used to attend, they had been shown how to deliver basic
kicks. Nothing as showy or as impractical as the round-house karate kick,
but something direct and simple. Bending slightly at one knee, Mia brought
her other foot up and out in a straight kick to the side of Snedley's head.
The lanky chauffeur fell sideways with a surprised huff.
Finding purpose, Mia turned and ran up the road with as much speed as her
legs could muster. Her hands were bound, and she knew she could not get
them free. Her mouth was savagely gagged, and she knew that it was only a
matter of time before lack of oxygen would bring on exhaustion. Her one
thought was to put as much distance between herself and Snedley as she
could, and then to lie low in the underbrush at the roadside and pray that
she would not be found by the searching man. Somewhere behind her she could
hear Snedley's running footsteps.