by Jason Foss
In the windowless hall, one of four battered wood-effect doors carried a hand-drawn disc surmounted by the words ‘LUCY IS’. The disc offered twenty options from ‘asleep’ to ‘working too hard to be disturbed’. A mobile arrow pointed to the option reading ‘away’.
A pass key turned in the lock. The small rectangular room ended in a plate glass window, offering a fine aspect of the street below, the identical hall opposite and an oblique view into the wooded square. The room was tidy and had been swept regularly by the cleaner. Barbara went over to a ‘Castles of Wales’ wall calendar. An unvarnished nail coursed the dates. The wedding was clearly marked and other notes were scrawled reading ‘term starts’, ‘go home’, ‘fit dress’, ‘nuptials’, ‘diss in’, ‘1st Exam Ugh!’.
Flint scanned her posters: Roger Dean’s Another Time, Another Place; a low-light photo of two dolphins breaking surface; a watercolour print of the Holy Grail suspended above Glastonbury Tor; a copy of Desiderata. Absolutely standard.
Her bookshelf came next, and his fingers ran along a scattering of approved course reading and overdue library books. Amongst the latter was one of J. S. Flint’s more recent publications. Lucy’s fiction interests were clear, embracing one battered copy of The Hobbit plus several more sub-Tolkien fantasy epics and a Poe omnibus. Flint took down a rules booklet for the roleplaying game Dungeons and Dragons, turning over the pages covering spells and monsters with mild amusement.
‘She was into this stuff?’ he asked.
A faint smile came to Barbara’s lips, but she shook her head as the faintly bizarre volume of rules flicked before her eyes. It was replaced on the shelf, next to a new facsimile reprint of a Victorian tarot book. Alongside rested The Green Manifesto, one astrology book, Erich Van Daniken’s latest money-spinner, plus several heavily foxed paperbacks of eccentric, semi-occult nature. Flint flicked the pages of a book of herbal remedies. Spirits and the underworld, goblins and magic. He began to appreciate the width, if not the depth, of her interests, a ripple of disquiet running through him. He suppressed it. Students enjoy being weird.
‘Will there be anything more I can do?’ The Deputy Warden spoke from the door, but was ignored.
Lucy’s stereo-cassette player was on the wide mock-marble window ledge. She owned only two dozen or so cassettes, few of which were truly contemporary, consisting of offerings by Lindisfarne, Lennon, All About Eve, Motley Crue, Blue Oyster Cult, a little folk, one Elgar compilation and a trio of whimsical New Age tapes.
A thin paperback lay on her bedside table, a small press publication of poetry by R. Temple-Brooke, whoever he was. Flint flicked to the dedication within the front cover. ‘To Hazel at Samhain, with love, R.T.B.’
Second-hand, thought Flint. No – it was too new, so logic said that it was borrowed. ‘Has she a friend called Hazel?’
Barbara shook her head. ‘I don’t know.’
‘I’ll ask around. Has she got a regular boyfriend?’
Barbara continued shaking her head. Flint allowed a little exasperation to slip through. ‘You don’t appear to know much about your sister.’
‘She is rather younger than me. We don’t have much in common; first I went away to college, then she came up to London almost as soon as I got back. Oh, she used to come up to Mother’s once a month, but she was always full of college stories. I can’t claim to know the real her.’
Flint turned to the Deputy Warden. ‘You haven’t seen her?’
He shook his head, mouthing an almost silent no through the prophet’s beard, so Flint put the next question to Barbara. The depth of her concern had him puzzled. ‘Where does your family come from?’
‘Durring. Well, Nether Durring actually. I took up my father’s practice just before he died.’
‘And Lucy normally stays with you in the holidays?’
‘She stays with Mother; she lives about six miles from us.’
Flint returned to the search, pulling open drawers looking for clues, letters, notes, hoping for a diary. Barbara found a file of documents which included Lucy’s driving licence, birth certificate and passport. One possibility had been ruled out. They found no purse, no student railcard or union cards, no chequebook or banker’s cards. The pocket diary she had received from an aunt last Christmas was absent, Barbara commented. In her small wardrobe, each hanger was full, save two. Her navy blue suitcase was found stuffed into an otherwise useless ceiling-level cupboard over the sink.
‘Lucy might be “away”, but wherever she’s gone, it’s not far and she intends coming back,’ Flint concluded. ‘We’ve narrowed the possibilities down, at least.’
At that moment, although he felt uneasy poking into someone else’s life, he was beginning to gain a curious intellectual kick from gathering this negative evidence about Lucy’s activities. It was almost like the thrill of discovery on site when an unlikely collection of archaeological artefacts starts to build up an answer to some ancient puzzle. Archaeologists are born nosey; they share much in common with detectives.
‘We’re not going to find anything here.’ Barbara was, if anything, even more tense. ‘Can we check her post?’
‘It will be in the rack, downstairs,’ the Deputy Warden said.
Barbara gave Flint one glance then left the room. He followed then waited for the door to be locked. The trio returned to the ground floor by the concrete staircase, without bothering to wait for the lift. At the base of the stairs, behind the desk of the surly porter, hung a nest of wooden pigeonholes. Nine letters were waiting for Lucy, with postmarks scattered from late January to the previous weekend. Barbara made to open one.
‘I can’t allow you to do that.’ The Deputy Warden’s hands slipped the letters from below Barbara’s quivering finger.
‘No, we shouldn’t pry. She won’t thank you.’ Flint tried to ease away the sense of crisis in the woman.
Angry resentment flashed across her face and tinged her voice. ‘All right! Do you mind if I look around and ask if anyone has seen her?’
‘The common room is through that door,’ said the Deputy Warden, ‘and there’s another television lounge on the fifth floor.’
Barbara said nothing else and pushed her way through the swing door. Flint watched her go, then sat down on a coffee-stained easy chair by the porter’s desk and took up an abandoned Daily Mirror. Twenty minutes saw the paper read and re-read and Flint was into the adverts when Barbara returned, pale-faced and tense.
‘She’s not been seen for weeks,’ she said.
‘And you’re sure she’s not rung or written?’
‘No. I mean yes. We’ve heard nothing.’ Barbara strained at the strap of her handbag, out of ideas. ‘Four of those letters were from us – from Mother or myself.’
‘I’m sure everything is okay. I’ll ask around the department. If you’re really worried, you could always go to the police. They get paid to do this sort of thing.’
‘What sort of thing?’ Barbara seemed dazed by the thought.
‘Missing persons.’
‘Missing? God, no, I haven’t wanted to think of her as missing.’
To download the book and continue reading, click here.
