by Cathy Ace
With such a hole in Alexander Bright’s life proving to be almost frustrating beyond words, Carol recalled something Annie had asked her to look into. Searching back through Annie’s last report, she found the name of the infant school teacher who’d died in a fire and set about finding out all she could.
Once again Carol’s fingers tapped and her brain whirred. Even as she was doing it she was aware of how very much she enjoyed her job. This was so much more interesting than what she’d done for that reinsurance company. This was real; she was digging into real people’s real lives, not trying to come up with some complex program that manipulated data about theoretically nonexistent, if massive, amounts of money.
She was elated when she found the beginning of the trail and she kept at it, until she had what she thought was the whole story, then she set about condensing the critical information from the various sources, citing them as she typed, and ended up with another neat, comprehensive report. Feeling the satisfaction of a job well done, she had, sadly, increased her own anxiety about her missing friend.
THIRTY-ONE
When she arrived at the Coach and Horses pub in Anwen-by-Wye, it was immediately clear to Christine that a Monday afternoon was a quiet time in the village and for the public house itself. Only Alexander’s car was parked in the courtyard, which she’d reached by driving under the old coaching arch of the pub. Walking out onto the street again, to get a good look at the place, Christine noted its great age, the Victorian updates and the fact that it had a considerable number of outbuildings. The hanging baskets at the front door had seen better days, but, Christine told herself, it was almost the end of September and summer annuals were going to be getting chilly at night.
The interior of the pub offered low ceilings, beams, an inglenook fireplace that wasn’t in use yet, but looked as though it could be if needed, and a long bar with a brass rail and a grumpy looking, blousy woman standing behind it.
Her arms were folded and her mouth puckered in anger. Alexander stood in front of her next to a barstool, his hands on his hips. Christine sensed a showdown.
Ignored by the woman she assumed to be Delyth James, Christine found herself to be the object of some particular curiosity for two aged men who were nursing half-pints of beer in dim corners.
‘I don’t care what you say, I don’t know who you are and I’m not tellin’ you nothin’,’ said the woman behind the bar to Alexander.
Alexander replied in tones too low for Christine to catch.
‘Not flamin’ likely,’ said the woman, her Welsh accent stronger than the one Christine had heard on the telephone earlier in the day.
Again Alexander spoke.
‘I told you he’s not here. And it’s none of your business. And if you go poking about, I’ll phone the police, I will.’
Alexander said something, then turned, catching sight of Christine. ‘We’re searching the place,’ he said in what was almost a growl. ‘Let her phone the police if she wants,’ he added so that Delyth James could hear him. ‘Come with me, Christine. At least this woman’s told me that the rooms are upstairs.’
Alexander darted up the staircase that ascended from the end of the bar. Christine followed, but he was quick on his feet and she could hear him throwing open doors ahead of her. Below her she heard Delyth shout, ‘That’s it. You’ve got no right to do that. I’m phoning the police, I am. Now!’
Christine hesitated. She knew the woman was correct, that she and Alexander could face charges if they invaded this woman’s privacy, searching her home without her permission. And that could jeopardize her investigators’ license. But Annie was missing, and it was either this approach, or bringing the police into the whole thing, which she felt might make matters worse. Always an independent soul, she knew in her heart that she wanted to get to the bottom of everything under her own steam. Or at least with the help of Alexander.
Entering what was clearly the James’s own bedroom, she saw Alexander pulling open a built-in wardrobe, but all it held was clothing.
Next they entered a small, dingy room with heavy, floral curtains. Alexander pulled open the few drawers in the flimsy chest and dressing table, then almost succeeded in hauling the aged wardrobe on top of himself as he wrenched the doors open. Save for some dismal wire hangers swinging on a rail, it was empty.
Christine checked the bedding – it hadn’t been used, but she sniffed the pillows and the covers nonetheless. ‘Annie hasn’t slept in this bed,’ she announced, ‘but I can smell her perfume on the covers. She always wears the same one, Yardley’s Lily of the Valley. Body lotion, talc, eau de toilette – the lot. There’s no mistaking it. She’s at least spent some time sitting here.’
Throwing herself to her knees, Christine peered under the bed. ‘Look!’ she said triumphantly, ‘this is her notebook.’ Frantically flicking through its pages, she made her way to the window to let more light fall on the penciled notes Annie had made on the last page.
Christine read aloud, ‘She’s scribbled, “Hoops. Too late. Cops. Tidy. Idiot. Safe. No. Yes. She. Him. Never. No. Tuesday.” I’ve no idea what any of that means and there’s nothing here to give any of it any context in any case.’
‘Something she partially overheard?’ asked Alexander.
Christine continued scanning the pages, hoping to find something more illuminating, as she muttered, ‘Possibly. Rats! Why didn’t she write more?’
Exasperated, she looked up to see Delyth James standing in the door, holding a telephone handset.
‘See? Not here, is she,’ she spat. ‘Gone, and all her stuff too. Stayed Saturday night, then off without a by-your-leave. Terrible.’
‘She didn’t sleep in that bed,’ said Christine. ‘You can tell that the sheets haven’t been disturbed at all.’
Delyth James looked taken aback, then curious. ‘She must have straightened the bedspread before she left. I … um … I haven’t got around to stripping it and making it up again yet. No one else due here till next weekend, see.’ She sounded a little less vehement and took the two steps needed to reach the bedside. Pulling back the covers, she pulled a little at the sheets, then lifted the bottom corner of the bedspread to reveal neatly tucked corners. Shrugging, she said, rather grudgingly, ‘Well, I’ll give you that. I know my own hospital corners when I see them, and that bed hasn’t been disturbed at all. You know, not by someone sleeping in it. I won’t say it hasn’t been sat on, mind you, but, no, not slept in.’
Seemingly confused by her discovery, Delyth softened, then looked blankly at Christine and said, ‘So where did she sleep that night then? I saw her up here, I did, must have been about midnight. Still dressed, but in her room. Jacko was crashing about in the bar, and her and me both came to the top of the stairs to see what was happening. That’s a bit peculiar, isn’t it?’
‘Might she have joined your husband for a late-night snifter?’ asked Christine, knowing full well that any offer of a nightcap would be happily accepted by Annie.
Delyth pouted. ‘Well, as it happens, yes, he told me he offered her one, you know, just to be hospitable, like. I went back to bed and let my tablets work. Terrible bad head I’d had that day. Couldn’t shake it at all. By the way,’ she added, waggling the telephone in front of them, ‘Jacko, my husband, wants to know exactly who you people are.’
Christine decided to take a different approach with the woman and appeal to her better nature, if she had one. ‘I’m Chrissy,’ she said, knowing that, if word of her visit to the pub reached Annie in any way, the use of the diminutive might tip her off that she wasn’t being ignored. ‘I’m a friend of Annie Parker, and it’s really not like her to disappear at all, and certainly not without paying her bill, or without letting anyone know where she’s going. If it helps, I’m quite happy to pay what she owed you, so if you just tell me what it is, I can give you cash, now. How about that?’
Delyth James seemed to soften even more when Christine handed over the amount she quoted. She visibly brightened when she
realized that Christine had added quite a large sum ‘to allow for her inconvenience’.
Now sitting on the edge of ‘Annie’s’ bed, Delyth mused, ‘She seemed tidy enough that Annie, your friend. You know, for one of them.’ She cocked her head as she spoke.
Christine felt her shoulders hunch. She hated it when people judged Annie, or anyone else for that matter, by the color of their skin. She wondered how the woman’s comment had made Alexander feel, given his obvious mixed-race background.
She knew she had to respond, because she felt that to ignore racist comments was to be complicit. ‘That’s not a very nice thing to say.’ It was about as impolite as she felt able to be, under the circumstances.
Delyth looked horrified. ‘Oh, don’t get me wrong, I didn’t mean ’cos she’s black. Well, she’s not even that black, really, is she? Bit darker than you, like—’ she smiled at Alexander – ‘and she’s got a lot of those funny black freckles they have. But she’s not shiny black, is she? No, no. I’m not a racist, me. I meant because she’s English. Of course, I know Jacko’s English, and I married him, so I s’pose I of all people should know that they aren’t all a complete waste of space. Some of them are very nice, really. So, like I said, she was quite jolly, considering.’
Accepting that, from her perspective, Delyth James clearly didn’t believe that denigrating the entire population of England was racist, Christine decided to let her comment pass.
‘But, you know, what was I to think?’ continued Delyth, unfazed. ‘It’s not nice to do what she did. I wonder why she went? And where do you think she can have gone? Jacko said she came here on the bus. There aren’t no buses at that time of night. Stop at six o’clock, they do, then the first one’s at eight in the morning. But that would have been Sunday morning, yesterday, and the first one then isn’t till ten.’ She looked even more puzzled. ‘There was another woman looking for her, by the way. On the phone this morning. Irish woman she was. Another friend of yours too, maybe? Sounded a bit twp to me, mind. But, there you are. You can’t say that Annie Parker isn’t popular, I suppose.’
‘Twp?’ queried Christine, realizing that she was the ‘Irish woman’ in question.
Delyth looked around and whispered, ‘You know, a bit soft in the head. Dim. But, there, that’s the Irish for you. All that Guinness they drink, I suppose.’
Doing her best to ignore Delyth James’s rather critical analysis of almost everyone she mentioned, Christine judged that the woman was truly at a loss as to what had happened to Annie, but didn’t want to take her into her confidence too far.
Christine shook her head and tried to squeeze out a few tears. Alexander took what he saw as his cue, and put his arm around her shoulders in a most reassuring manner. Looking down at the seated Delyth with her saddest eyes, Christine said, ‘Is there any way I might be able to speak to your husband myself? He might know something about her whereabouts, especially if they had a late-night drink together on Saturday. She might have said something?’
Delyth James shook her head sadly and passed Christine a paper serviette she pulled out of her pocket. ‘When you two came up here I phoned him, not the police. He was very angry, but he said he doesn’t know where she is, see? He said she just came back up to her room after they had a quick drink and that he didn’t even know she’d gone. Out of here himself in the early hours of Sunday, he was. He helped Tris move some stuff to London. Didn’t know where he’d gone when I got up, I didn’t, then he phoned to say he was with Tris.’
‘Tris?’ said Christine.
Delyth smiled. ‘Tristan Thomas. Owns an antique shop on the common. Jacko helps him out when he can. It’s all the barrels, see. Good at lifting stuff, is Jacko, but there’s nothing of Tris – more meat on a butcher’s pencil. Doesn’t even look like he could lift a pint, but he manages that all right, he does. It’s his van, but Jacko does the lifting and they share the driving.’
Christine said, in as pleasant a voice as possible, ‘They must be good friends, for your husband to leave home so early on a Sunday morning to help him out.’
Delyth stood up from the bed and replied, ‘Not exactly friends, but, you know, it’s a small village and we’ve been here a long time. You get to know people.’ She looked up. ‘Have to, in this line. Like them or not, they’ve got to think you love ’em to bits or they’ll go somewhere else to drink.’
In that instant, the Honorable Christine Wilson-Smythe was terribly grateful that she’d been born to a viscount and would never, hopefully, feel the resignation to a less-than-happy life that this woman obviously did. Her Mensa-sharp mind compartmentalized her emotion and snapped her back to the reality of her situation. She’d established that Jacko James had driven to London in a van on Sunday morning and that Tristan Thomas, the toothy local antiques dealer, was with him. Might Annie have been an unwilling passenger? was her next thought.
With all three of them standing in the tiny room, it seemed the right moment to Christine for her to suggest they all moved back downstairs to the bar. She didn’t think there was anything else to be found in the bedroom, but her mind was racing. How could she convince Delyth James to allow her and Alexander to hunt through all the pub’s outbuildings? Annie might have been spirited away in the night, or she might have just been dumped nearby.
‘I wonder, Delyth, do you think Annie might have wandered off, maybe a bit drunk, in the night?’ said Christine quietly as they all descended the stairs.
Reaching the bar, Delyth replied thoughtfully, ‘Well, I suppose she might have. Do you want to have a look round the back? We’ve got lots of old buildings out there – the old stables for a start and some other places that Jacko uses to store all sorts of rubbish. Always telling him he should clear stuff out, but he never does. Thinks he’s going to need everything again, he does. Make do and mend is all well and good, but when it’s broken, good and proper, you might as well get rid of it. Anyway, I’ve got to be here, in the bar – not that it’s busy, but one of these two might take it into their heads to have another, I suppose. But you go ahead, I don’t mind. I don’t think anything’s locked back there – nothing to steal.’
Christine and Alexander thanked Delyth and were already walking out of the front door when Delyth called, ‘But if that’s what happened, then has she been there all yesterday, and last night too? And where did her bag go?’ They ignored her, and kept walking.
It took about half an hour, but, by then, Christine and Alexander were both convinced that Annie Parker was nowhere on the premises of the Coach and Horses pub in Anwen-by-Wye, and there was no evidence, anywhere, that she had ever been held in any of the stables, the cellars – which were clean, brightly lit, whitewashed and well stocked with barrels – or any of the other ramshackle structures around the place that, as Delyth had told them, were all bursting with clutter.
Christine was frantic when she whispered to Alexander, ‘I’m guessing she was in that van that Tristan Thomas provided and Jacko James drove from here on Sunday morning. But, if Jacko and Tristan, for whatever reason, thought they needed to scoop Annie up, why would they then risk taking her to London – if, in fact, that’s where they’ve gone. We only have a conversation between Jacko and Delyth to suggest that and, while I think she’s telling the truth, there’s no reason to believe he would. Why wouldn’t he just keep her hidden here, somewhere?’
Alexander brushed down his clothes and gazed at Christine with what she thought was a deeply enigmatic expression.
‘We’ve just seen for ourselves that there isn’t anywhere he could keep her here. Maybe, if she was unconscious, she could have been bundled into a tiny corner of one of those buildings, but there’s so much scrap and rubbishy stuff here, there’s hardly room to squeeze in another bin-bag full, let alone keep a live person hidden.’
‘Don’t say it, Alexander,’ warned Christine, shaking. ‘Don’t you dare suggest that Annie’s not alive.’
‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to suggest that at all. Look, I say
we have another go at Delyth and, this time, let’s try to find out where Jacko might have gone in London, if that’s where he is. You know, sound her out a bit more? And, when we’ve finished with her, let’s get back to your Carol and see what she can tell us. OK?’
Christine nodded her agreement.
Alexander added, ‘If I take the lead, will you follow?’
Christine knew he meant with regard to the conversation with Delyth, but it felt as though he might have intended his question to have more depth. She barely hesitated before nodding again. ‘I’m not that good at playing Follow-my-Leader, unless I’m the leader, but I’ll try,’ she said with a smile.
Entering the pub once more, Christine and Alexander headed for the bar, where Delyth was busy dusting bottles of spirits. Alexander cleared his throat, causing Delyth to spin around, then he looked down at Christine and said warmly, ‘Thanks for that, there’s no sign of Annie. And I’m sorry we got off on such a poor footing, Mrs James. I overreacted. But if my lovely girlfriend is worried, I must act to help her. I’m sure your husband would do the same for you.’
