Down Under (3 page)

Elfreda wasn't frightened yet. She was puzzled, and a little bit cross, because dinner was going to be absolutely grim if Aunt Hortensia lost her temper.

She came back to Rose Anne's room, and the first faint feeling of fear came knocking at the door of her mind, because Rose Anne hadn't changed. She hadn't even begun to change. She had been going to wear one of her new dresses, a blue and silver brocade, high in the neck and long in the sleeve, in which she looked like one of the lovelier Italian angels, but the dress was on its hanger, and the silver shoes and pale grey stockings were there on the bed, just where Elfreda herself had laid them out before tea. The hot water was still in its can.

Elfreda opened her door, and the fear came in. It was past a quarter to eight, and Rose Anne hadn't come up to dress. She looked into cupboard and wardrobe. There was no sign of the clothes which Rose Anne had been wearing—blue jumper, blue tweed skirt. There was no sign either of something else, the warm tweed coat which belonged to the suit. Rose Anne hadn't been wearing the coat, but she must be wearing it now, because it was nowhere to be found, and that meant that Rose Anne had gone out.

Elfreda got as far as that, and remembered Rose Anne at the telephone saying, “I don't see how I can—it's too late,” and then, “I oughtn't to.” And had she said “but” after that—or hadn't she?

She pushed the fear out of her mind and slammed the door on it, because there was only one thing that would have made Rose Anne run out like that. Florrie Garstnet must have had one of those crying fits they had been talking about at tea, and Mrs Garstnet had had the nerve to send for Rose Anne.

Elfreda went down to the schoolroom in a boiling rage. It really was outrageous, and for the first time in her life she felt in sympathetic agreement with Aunt Hortensia. Florrie wanted slapping, and Mrs Garstnet wanted to be told where she got off. She was going to be told too—by Elfreda Moore, and no later than this very minute. She jerked the receiver from its hook, asked briskly for the Angel, and waited, spoiling for a row.

And after all there wasn't one, only Mrs Garstnet's comfortable voice saying,

“Miss Rose Anne? Oh, no, she's not here, Miss Elfreda.”

Fear tried the latch again. Anger took wing and was gone.

“You haven't seen her?”

“Oh, yes, my dear—she came down. Florrie had one of her fits, and Matthew said, ‘We can't trouble Miss Rose Anne for her, not tonight we can't.' And I said, ‘Don't you be a fool, Matthew. She'd never forgive us if Florrie was to cry herself sick and not able to come to the wedding.' So I rang up, and she said she'd come over just for a minute like, and so she did.”

“You shouldn't have asked her,” said Elfreda—“you really shouldn't. There's a drawing-room full of relations all waiting for their dinner, and Sarah probably throwing fits in the kitchen, and what Aunt Hortensia's going to say, I don't know. When did she start back?”

“Now, my dear, don't you go upsetting yourself. And it's all very well to say ‘You shouldn't,' but we couldn't do nothing with Florrie, and the minute she see Miss Rose Anne she quietened down.”

“When did Rose Anne leave?” said Elfreda in her most determined voice.

Mrs Garstnet was one of those slow, diffuse talkers who can't tell you anything unless they tell you everything. If you put her out, she just went back to the beginning and started all over again. Elfreda ought to have known this.

“Now, Miss Elfreda, don't you upset yourself. I'm sure it was heart-aching to see her. We couldn't do nothing with her—nothing at all. Matthew as good as promised her a pony. There's one he could get cheap that'd be the very thing for her—been ridden regular by Mr Jackson's little girl that's gone to boarding-school—but he couldn't get Florrie to take no manner of notice. ‘Well, Florrie,' I said, ‘if that isn't ungrateful! I'm sure either of your step-sisters 'ud have jumped out of their skins for the chance'—that's Matthew's two by his first—Fanny's married since you was here last year, but we've still got Mabel at home.”

“Mrs Garstnet, when did Rose Anne leave you?”

“Why, my dear, we didn't keep her no time. Florrie come round beautiful, and—”

“When did she leave you? Mrs Garstnet,
please
.”

“Now, now, Miss Elfreda—you don't give me time to tell you nothing. When did she leave? Now let me see—just after the half hour it was when she come in, because the bar clock was striking, and it's a minute or two slow.”

“Half past six?” It was half past six when she had seen Rose Anne at the telephone. She must have run across the road to the Angel straight away.

“Yes, half past six,” said Mrs Garstnet in her comfortable voice. “And she wasn't above ten minutes with Florrie, and then Matthew and me we arst her into the parlour for a minute just to wish her happy and to drink her health. And she wouldn't touch nothing but just my ginger wine that she always had such a fancy for, so we drank it in that, and she must have been out of the house by ten minutes to seven.”

More than an hour ago—more than an hour ago—and the Angel just across the road from the Vicarage.…

Elfreda said in a slow, cold voice, “Then where is she?”

“Oh, my dear soul—hasn't she come home?”

“No, she hasn't.”

“She must have done.”

“I've looked everywhere. They're all in the drawing-room waiting for dinner, and Rose Anne isn't anywhere at all.”

“Oh, my dear soul!” said Mrs Garstnet. She must have dropped the receiver at her end. There was a thud and a bang. Elfreda could hear her calling, “Matthew—Matthew!”

Then the schoolroom door opened and Oliver Loddon came in.

“Where's Rose Anne? They're getting a bit restive in the drawing-room. She isn't—ill?”

Elfreda turned round with the receiver in her hand. She knew that her knees were shaking, but she didn't know how pale she was. Oliver's heart stood still. Without the least warning his happiness had crashed. Like a flash of light—no, like a flash of darkness—there came the conviction that it was all over. He had lost Rose Anne. He said very quietly,

“What is it?”

“She went over to the Angel. She hasn't come back.”

A wave of relief surged up. It broke against that unreasoning conviction and fell back again. The conviction held.

“When did she go?”

“Half past six,” said Elfreda with a frightened catch in her voice. “And she hasn't come back. They sent for her because Florrie was bad, but Mrs Garstnet swears she left at ten minutes to seven.”

“She couldn't have—or if she did she's in the house. Where have you looked?”

“Everywhere.” This time the catch had become a sob.

“Ten minutes to seven—” said Oliver, still in that quiet voice.

The clock in the hall outside struck eight.

CHAPTER IV

No one at the Vicarage went to bed that night. Rose Anne had walked out of it at half past six on her wedding eve to go and see her old nurse's sick child. At that moment the Vicarage lost her. Twenty minutes later she left the Angel—Mrs Garstnet was very positive about this—and Hillick St Agnes lost her too.

It is not at all a large village. You could not lose yourself in it if you tried. Rose Anne had lived there all her life. The church, the Angel, and the Vicarage are clustered together at one end of the green. There are a number of cottages, two or three better houses, and, on the far side of the village, the entrance gates of the Hall, which has stood empty ever since old Lady Fountain died. There is a pond in the middle of the green. Hillick is the Hill Wick—the hill village. It lies in a fold of the hills, and a steepish road runs down from it to Malling. A little way off this road, and only just clear of the village, are some old lead workings, but the entrance was filled in thirty years ago after a child had strayed there and been lost for a day and a night.

Oliver drove the three miles to Malling, and got there in time to miss the 8.37. The red tail-light was all that could be seen of it as he came upon the platform. No one had got in at Malling except Dr Thorpe from Grangecot, who had been in visiting his married daughter and her new baby.

“No young lady got in?”

“Oh, no, sir. Only Dr Thorpe—and a young chap that's working for Mr Penfold.”

“No lady?”

“No, sir—only Mrs Thorpe that was with the doctor.”

In the end it did seem certain that Rose Anne had not boarded the 8.37. Oliver's heart contracted. Rose Anne running away from him—Rose Anne catching a train to escape him.… In what unimaginable nightmare had he to act as if such a thing were possible? Yet as an alternative there were worse nightmares still. If she had not gone of her own free will, how had she gone, and to what? The Angel and the Vicarage lay a bare two hundred yards apart. Within the space of those two hundred yards Rose Anne had disappeared. By mischance?… What mischance? By foul play? He shrank appalled.… Of her own free will?… It was the least dreadful possibility of the three.

If she was not on the 8.37, what other train could she have caught? Mrs Garstnet said she was out of the Angel by ten to seven. She might have reached Malling station by five-and-twenty to eight if she hurried—if she hurried to get away from him.

He asked, “When was the last train?”

“Eight thirty-seven, sir—just gone.”

“No, no, not the eight thirty-seven. What other trains have there been since half past seven?”

“Up or down, sir?” The porter was a little rosy man, most anxious to help.

“Either—it doesn't matter—anything that stops.”

“Well, there's the seven-fifteen.”

Oliver shook his head. She couldn't have walked it in the time. But she might have got a lift, and if they had to take lifts into consideration, they must go right back to seven o'clock, because Mrs Garstnet's “ten to seven” was nothing to rely on.

There had been five trains since seven o'clock—the 7.15 down, the 7.17 up, and the 7.22, also an up train but slow and stopping at every station. After that nothing till the 8.10 down, and then another gap until the 8.37. The 7.15 had put down a lot of passengers and taken none up. The porter was quite sure about this. The 7.17 hadn't taken up anyone either, but half a dozen passengers had boarded the slow local train at 7.22. Five of them were men, but the sixth was a lady. The porter hadn't seen her face, but she had on a bright green hat.

“I couldn't say nothing about the rest of her clothes, sir, and I never saw her face. The light's terrible in the booking-hall, but she went right under a lamp going out on to the platform and I took particular notice of her hat—very bright green, sir.”

Rose Anne hadn't a green hat. At least he had never seen her in one. Elfreda said there was no hat missing. Rose Anne wouldn't have worn a hat just to run over to the Angel. She might have worn one if she had meant to run away.

“She took a ticket for London,” said the porter, friendly and helpful.

No, it couldn't have been Rose Anne.

There was one more train, the 8.10 down.… The 8.10 was a complete wash-out. Nobody had got out, and nobody had got in.

Oliver tipped the porter and drove back to Hillick St Agnes. At intervals of a few hundred yards he stopped the car to stand by the side of the road, to call Rose Anne's name, to listen for some possible faint response.

Until you listen in the night for a sound that does not come, you do not know how many sounds there are. There seems to be no wind, but when you listen like that you hear the breath that moves a leaf, and the breath that stirs the grass—dry leaf, dry grass, dry whispering breath. Oliver's own throat was dry as he called, “Rose Anne!”—and his tongue dry in his mouth—and his heart dry in his body. The whisper went in the grass. Something moved, scuttering on the hill above. Something went by on an almost noiseless wing. But Rose Anne did not answer.

He came back to the Vicarage, and went out again, walking the paths, walking the road, walking the hills till the dawn. Then back to the Vicarage.

The house was full of red-eyed women. There might have been a death. Perhaps there had been a death. Perhaps Rose Anne was dead.… Something in him said “No” very insistently. Then she had left him.… Either way he had lost her.…

It was his wedding day. He ate and drank, and went down to the Angel with James Carew.

“You are sure she left you before seven, Mrs Garstnet?”

They were in the parlour of the Angel. Mrs Garstnet, dissolved in tears, sobbed out her answer.

“Oh, indeed yes, sir.”

“Please, please, Mrs Garstnet, you must control yourself,” said Mr Carew impatiently.

Oliver said nothing. He stood by the window, his clenched right hand hidden in a pocket. It was all over. He had lost her. All this was mere torture, but it must be gone through.

“She's that upset, sir,” said Matthew Garstnet in a deprecating tone. A bluff, good-natured man, Matthew, to match his comfortable wife. Ruddy of face and stout of build, with red hair turning grey, he stood with his back to the fire in frowning embarrassment. He liked jollity and good fellowship. In the presence of grief he very heartily wished himself elsewhere.

“Oh, Mr Carew, I can't say no different!” sobbed Mrs Garstnet.

Mr Carew sat up stiffly in the parlour's best plush chair. His face was grey, and a muscle in his cheek twitched perpetually. He tapped on his knee and said sharply.

“Stop crying! You've got to help us. We shall have to go to the police. You were the last person who saw her. What was she wearing?”

Mrs Garstnet dabbed at her eyes with a soaking handkerchief.

“Her blue jumper and skirt, sir—and the coat that goes with them.”

“Miss Elfreda said there was a coat. She was wearing it?”