Down Under

by Patricia Wentworth

  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?”

  “Oh, yes, sir.”

  “I don’t notice clothes. What sort of coat would it be? I mean—” He stopped, steadied his voice, and went on again. “Would it be the sort of coat she would wear if she meant—to take a journey?”

  Oliver stood still by the window. The world stood still about him. That would be said, that would be thought—that Rose Anne had run away rather than marry him. There would be headlines in the press. What did it matter as long as she was safe? He would give his soul to know that she was safe.

  Mrs Garstnet was babbling about the coat.

  “A beautiful coat, sir, and such a lovely fur collar—one of the things she’d got for her trousseau. And I told her she didn’t rightly ought to wear it, not till she was married.”

  “What did she say when you said that?” said Oliver. His voice was better under control than James Carew’s.

  Mrs Garstnet looked at him with her face working.

  “She said, ‘It’s warm, Nannie. I had to have something warm.’”

  “You’re sure she said that?”

  “Oh, yes, sir.”

  “And it was the sort of coat she would wear for a journey?”

  “Oh, yes, sir—lovely and warm.”

  “Was she wearing a hat?” said Oliver. He forced himself to the question.

  Elfreda had said no. She said there was no hat missing. She said anyhow Rose Anne wouldn’t put on a hat to run over to the Angel. But if Elfreda was wrong, if Rose Anne had been wearing a hat, then it would mean that she had meant to go farther than the Angel. How far, no one but herself could say. The question came hardly to his lips.

  And Mrs Garstnet hesitated. She looked at Oliver with brimming eyes and said with a catch in her breath,

  “Not when she come, sir.”

  Mr Carew drummed on his knee.

  “Good gracious! What do you mean by that?”

  “She didn’t have anything on her head when she come,” said Mrs Garstnet dabbing hard. “She borrowed Florrie’s hat to go back with.”

  “Florrie’s hat? Good gracious, Mrs Garstnet, why on earth did she borrow Florrie’s hat?”

  Mrs Garstnet gulped.

  “It was one she give Florrie only a couple of days ago. As good as new it was, only she didn’t fancy herself in it so she give it to Florrie, and Florrie looked a treat in it, green being her colour as you might say.”

  Oliver broke in harshly.

  “It was a green hat?”

  “As green as grass, and Florrie was that pleased with it.”

  “And Rose Anne took it back after giving it away?” This was James Carew with a faint note of surprise in his voice.

  “We didn’t take it that way, not at the time, sir. The hat was hanging on a peg, and Miss Rose Anne she said, ‘Will you give me the loan of it, just to go back across the road? There was a drop or two of rain as I come along,’ she said, ‘and I don’t want to get my hair wet,’ she said. So I told her she was welcome, and she put on the hat and come along down for us to drink her health. And that’s the last we saw of her.”

  “I’d like to see Florrie,” said Oliver.

  Matthew Garstnet made an awkward movement of protest.

  “We don’t want Florrie drawn in. She’s not fit,” he said.

  “You won’t be able to keep her out, Garstnet,” said Mr Carew. “The police will want to see her. There’s no reason why she should be frightened. Good gracious me, I christened her! I suppose she can answer a question or two?”

  “She’s so easy upset,” said Mrs Garstnet with a sob. “I’m sure I don’t know—”

  “Will you fetch her, please,” said Oliver.

  Mrs Garstnet looked at her husband. And then, before she could speak, the door was opened and a child looked round it. She had a little peaked face and a cloud of copper hair—wonderful hair, with all the glow and colour which were lacking in the small white face. James Carew said, “Come in, Florrie,” and she slipped into the room and stood just inside the door looking from one to the other out of greenish hazel eyes.

  “Come here, my dear,” said James Carew.

  She came and stood at his knee, not shy, just waiting to know what was wanted of her.

  “So Miss Rose Anne gave you a green hat, Florrie?”

  James Carew was at his best with children. He spoke kindly and simply.

  “Yes, sir, she did.”

  “And then she borrowed it again yesterday?”

  Florrie looked at her mother.

  “She’d just quieted down and wasn’t taking much notice,” said Mrs Garstnet. “And I’m sure she’d not grudge anything, not to Miss Rose Anne—would you, Florrie?”

  Florrie had no answer.

  “And you’d be pleased for Miss Rose Anne to have your hat—”

  “I’d rather have it myself,” said Florrie.

  “Now, Florrie—I’m sure you’d not grudge anything to Miss Rose Anne that’s always been so good to you!”

  “I’d like my green hat back,” said Florrie in a little obstinate voice.

  They made no more of her. She was neither shy nor distressed. She wanted her green hat. Rose Anne had given it to her, and she wanted it. From Florrie’s view point it was the green hat that had disappeared, not Rose Anne. Children want one thing at a time, and want that one thing passionately. Florrie wanted her green hat. She was to have worn it for the wedding. Since it was not there to be worn, the wedding ceased to be of any interest. She looked Oliver straight in the face and said,

  “I want my hat. Why did she take it away?”

  CHAPTER V

  Rose Anne had gone bare-headed to the Angel at half past six. She had come away twenty minutes later having borrowed the green hat to run across the street. She had told Mrs Garstnet that it was raining and she didn’t want to get her hair wet just before the family dinner-party—quite a plausible reason if it had really been raining. But it had not rained, neither between half past six and seven o’clock that evening, nor at any time in the whole twenty-four hours.

  Hesitatingly, deprecatingly, James Carew put these po
ints forward as he and Oliver walked away from the Angel. They went past the Vicarage gate and on round the green. It was easier to keep moving, easier to be out of the house, where the women sniffed and whispered, and the telephone bell kept ringing. Guests had to be put off and arrangements cancelled, enquiries answered, the press staved off. It was women’s business, so let them get on with it.

  “I’m afraid,” said James Carew—“I’m afraid she meant to go. She wouldn’t have borrowed that hat if she hadn’t meant to go. There—there wasn’t any rain, Oliver.”

  “No,” said Oliver. He had been driving back from Malling with Russell, and there hadn’t been any rain. They had actually reached the Angel at a quarter to seven. Five minutes later and they would have met Rose Anne on her way. He said this in a hard, forced voice.

  “Well? What did you do when you got in?” said James Carew.

  “I was putting the car away. Russell came round to the garage with me. I had one or two things to see to. It must have been just on seven before we got in.”

  “I see.”

  They walked on in silence for perhaps twenty yards. Then James Carew said,

  “I suppose—you must forgive me, Oliver—I suppose you can’t in any way account for this?”

  “No.”

  “I mean there hasn’t been any—any quarrel—any difference of opinion between you?”

  “No.”

  “Girls are impulsive,” said James Carew. He was remembering that he and Rosabel had quarrelled quite bitterly on their honeymoon. He remembered the quarrel, but he couldn’t remember what it was about. It seemed quite probable now that it wasn’t about anything at all. Rosabel had walked out of the hotel and stayed away for hours. He had been off his head with anger, anxiety, remorse. And it was all about nothing at all. They had laughed about it happily that very night, and she had been so sweet, so sweet.

  “Have you found Rose Anne impulsive?” said Oliver.

  James Carew came back with a start. He had forgotten Rose Anne. He said vaguely,

  “Girls do things like that. I thought there might have been something—some quarrel—not serious—”

  “There was no quarrel,” said Oliver.

  The day dragged. The police Inspector came over from Malling. He asked a great many questions, wrote the answers down in a note book, and had some information to give in return. The police had been making their own enquiries.

  The lady in the green hat who had boarded the 7.22 had got out two stations farther up the line at Claypole. The green hat had impressed itself upon the ticket collector. The lady was young—oh yes, quite a young lady, but he couldn’t describe her at all. She kept her head down a bit, and she just pushed the ticket at him and went by. He thought she was in a hurry. She got into a car that was waiting and went off. In a considerable hurry she seemed to be, but he noticed her hat because it was just about the greenest thing he had ever seen—kind of hit you in the eye and made you stare. No, he hadn’t noticed the car at all, only just that it was there and that she got into it. And he couldn’t say which way it went, because there was a bit of a drive up from the station yard, and by the time a car got out on to the London road there’d be too much passing for anyone to tell which way it turned.

  “And that’s all he knows,” said the Inspector. “We’ve pumped him dry—there isn’t any more to be got from him. He didn’t see her face, and he didn’t notice the car, so there’s only the green hat to go on.”

  It wasn’t much. Green was the fashionable autumn colour, and there was a spate of green hats. Every shop window was full of them, every second girl was wearing one, from rifle green to viridian and jade.

  “Rose Anne got hers by artificial light,” Elfreda told Oliver. “You know how dark Jackson’s is in Malling. And when she got it home it just shrieked. Too ghastly. And she couldn’t change it, because she’d worn it that first day in a fog, so she gave it to Florrie. And I don’t believe she’d have borrowed it if she’d meant to go away, because she wouldn’t take back a present like that—she wouldn’t. And she would never, never, never have gone away anywhere in a blue coat and skirt and that flaring green hat. It must have been someone else.”

  “It might have been hundreds of people,” said Loveday Ross. “Oliver, I don’t believe she meant to go away. Why should she? She was happy—unless you quarrelled. Did you quarrel?”

  Oliver shook his head. Everyone asked him that. He said wearily,

  “No, we didn’t quarrel.”

  “Then she didn’t go away of herself. She wouldn’t go like that—without a reason. And there simply isn’t any reason.”

  They were in the garden, the same garden in which Oliver and Rose Anne had sat and talked on their wedding eve, with the sun shining on them. And now it was the wedding day, and Rose Anne was gone, no one knew where, and there was no more sunshine. The clouds hung low and promised rain, and the air was soft and mild, and there was a smell of autumn in it, the smell of damp leaves, and wet earth, and burning weeds. Giles Halliday had a bonfire, and the wind was setting from it.

  They were in the garden because, in spite of her name, Aunt Hortensia disliked gardens. She considered them damp, and associated them with rheumatism. And all three of them had had as much of Aunt Hortensia as they could bear. Aunts Agnes and Maud were with her now, and Hugo had taken Uncle Frank for a walk.

  “If I were you,” said Elfreda, “I should go and see that porter yourself—the one at Claypole. You’ve only got what the Inspector says about what he said, and you know people don’t talk to the police—not like they would to you and me. They’re either nervous or—or official. They don’t just run on. I know because of living in a village. If you want to find something out, it’s no use asking them to make a statement, you want to get them all chatty. Then it’s surprising what they’ll tell you.”

  One of the maids came hurrying down the path.

  “You’re wanted on the telephone, Miss Elfreda.”

  Elfreda ran.

  Oliver said, “That’s quite a good idea—I’ll go to Claypole. It will be something to do anyhow.”

  Loveday nodded. She could guess what it must be like for Oliver hanging round the house, waiting for the telephone bell to ring, waiting for news of Rose Anne. She opened her mouth to speak, and shut it again. It was too soon—perhaps it was too soon. Or were they wasting time—very, very precious time which would never come their way again? She stood irresolute, a pretty, friendly creature, young and eager to help.

  Something about her youth and that eager kindness stirred Oliver. He said quickly.

  “You were going to say something. What was it?”

  Loveday rushed into speech.

  “I was going to say I don’t, don’t, don’t believe she went away because she wanted to. Someone told her lies, or someone made her go. She would never have gone like this and made us so unhappy unless she was so dreadfully unhappy herself that she didn’t know what she was doing—or unless someone—made her go.” She said the last words in a whisper.

  Oliver said roughly, “I’ve thought of that. I suppose you mean by lies that she might have heard something about me—something that made her feel she couldn’t marry me. If that’s what happened, she must have had a telephone message or a note, or someone must have spoken to her. Well, there wasn’t a telephone call except the one from Mrs Garstnet asking her to go and see Florrie, and nobody took in a note, and if someone spoke to her, it must have been after she left the Vicarage. The Garstnets couldn’t possibly have any interest in telling lies about me, so we come back to the time after she left the Angel. Whoever persuaded her to go away must have been waiting for her outside the Angel.”

  “I don’t believe she was persuaded,” said Loveday. “I don’t indeed. Rose Anne wouldn’t. If someone had told her lies, she would have come to you about it. She would have wanted to hear your side. She isn’t an impulsive person, and she’s very unselfish. She would have thought about her father and all of us. She would never h
ave gone away and left us without a word.”

  Oliver turned a haggard face on her.

  “Yes—I say so too.”

  “Then—she was made to go. We don’t know how, and we’ve got to find out, and every single minute is as precious as diamonds. And oh, Oliver, won’t you please go and see Uncle Ben at once?”

  “Uncle Ben?” said Oliver. Weren’t there enough relations mixed up in this already?

  “Not really,” said Loveday, flushed and earnest. “I mean he isn’t really an uncle—at least not mine or Rose Anne’s—but Hugo’s sister Susan married his nephew, and he’s a Pet Lamb. No, Oliver, please listen. He’s a really frightfully important person, and he got Hugo and me out of the sort of jam that it gives you nightmares to remember for the rest of your life. I can’t tell you about it—at least I can’t without asking Hugo, because it was all very hush-hush, and if it hadn’t been for Uncle Ben—”

  “Who is he?” said Oliver, frowning.

  “He is Mr Benbow Collingwood Horatio Smith,* and he is a—a sort of—well, honestly, Oliver, I don’t know what he is, but the Foreign Office ask his advice, and Colonel Garratt who is the head of the Foreign Office Intelligence goes and sits at his feet.” She gave a faint giggle. “At least I believe what really happens is that Colonel Garratt snaps and growls exactly like a quarrelsome terrier, only rather a pet too, and Uncle Ben just drifts about the room and talks to Ananias. He’s got a parrot called Ananias, and they are devoted to each other, and if you listen carefully you come away with something worth having.”

  “I don’t think—” said Oliver in a voice which he tried to make polite.

  Loveday coloured high.

  “I haven’t explained a bit properly—it’s so difficult. But he really is the most marvellous person—Uncle Ben, I mean. There’s a picture that’s like him—an old Doge or something by Titian. I mean he’s immensely impressive—he really is. He knows everything and everyone. I mean he can get things done—he really can. And, Oliver, if you won’t go now, do just keep on thinking about it. And—and I’ve put his name and address on the back of one of my cards, and a message, and if you do go and see him, send it in, because he really is very fond of Susan and Hugo and me.”