Missing From Home

by Mary Burchell

  “Why should she?” Marilyn countered quickly.

  “I don’t know! But then I begin to feel I don’t know anything about my own child.” Clare exclaimed unhappily. “It’s like trying to decide how a stranger might have acted. At one moment I cling to the idea that she must be staying away voluntarily because any other explanation is insupportable. And then I’m stunned by the thought that there is something so utterly secret in Pat’s make-up that neither her father nor I—nor even you—” she stared unhappily at her younger daughter—“can fathom it.”

  “Oh, well—” Marilyn shifted a little uneasily—“everyone has something in them that’s a mystery to everyone else. My guess is that she’ll write soon. I’m sure she will.”

  “I only hope so,” sighed Clare. And then, as her daughter glanced at the clock and then suddenly rushed to fetch a coat and scarf—“What time will you be in, Mari? And where are you going, incidentally?”

  “To see a girl in my class who—who’s in hospital. I won’t be late, Mother, I promise. You’ve enough to worry you without that. I’ll be back by six at the latest.”

  And Marilyn gave her mother such a warm, almost remorseful hug that Clare smiled and said, “It’s all right, darling. Don’t reproach yourself. I wouldn’t want you to let a sick friend down.”

  She would have been surprised to know that her child scrubbed away a guilty tear as she rushed to the lift. And still more so if she could have seen her leap into a taxi and say, “Fenchurch Street station, please, and quickly. I’ve a train to catch.”

  Fortunately the driver was co-operative and the traffic luck was with them. Marilyn arrived at the station in time to catch the Westcliff train with three minutes to spare. But, though she flung herself back in her corner seat with a sigh of relief, she did not really relax throughout the journey.

  Arrived at her journey’s end, she took another taxi, though she counted her money anxiously and muttered to herself during the short drive. But when she was finally set down before an inconspicuous-looking private hotel in a quiet side street, her colour was up and her eyes sparkling.

  “Miss Foster is expecting me,” she stated firmly at the enquiry desk. “It’s Room Fourteen, isn’t it?”

  “That’s right. You can go straight up,” she was told. And, disdaining the lift, she ran quickly up to the first floor and tapped urgently on the door of Room Fourteen.

  “Come in!” The voice which replied was both eager and anxious.

  Marilyn went in, closed the door behind her and leant against it and faced her sister.

  “It’s all much, much more difficult than we ever imagined,” she announced. And suddenly she began to cry in a rather scared way.

  “Oh, Mari—” The girl who rushed to comfort her was almost delicately blonde in colouring, but there was an air of strength and resolution about her which belied any suggestion of fragility. “I’m sorry, darling!

  It’s almost worse for you than for me in some ways. But, as you said yourself, it’s in the best of causes.”

  “I know.” Marilyn gulped and recovered herself. “But Mother’s so wretched and scared. She imagines you either cut up in pieces in a sack or eloping with the wrong sort of man. It sounded almost easy—almost a lark—when we first discussed it—”

  “I never thought of it as a lark,” Pat interrupted sombrely.

  “Well, I did,” said the younger girl a little fretfully. “I didn’t realise there would be so many hours to fill in. Waiting and telling fibs and pretending to be as anxious as Mother herself when all the time I know it’s all right. Somehow—” she sighed—“I imagined it all happening quickly, and our getting to the reconciliation point in no time.”

  “It is happening quickly. You said yourself that Dad’s agreed to come home today if he could get on a plane. What could be quicker than that?”

  “Well, that’s true.” Marilyn drew a rather quivering sigh. “And he did get a seat. He phoned from Munich to say so, after I spoke to you this morning. He should be arriving home—” she consulted her watch—“in about an hour.”

  “Well, that’s fine!” The older girl looked relieved. “They can have an emotional meeting all on their own. There’s nothing like a shared anxiety to draw people together. It makes them remember how much they have in common, and not so much about what divides them.”

  “I suppose it does,” Marilyn agreed dubiously. “But anyway, Pat, you must send a letter to Mother right away, telling her you’re safe and that there’s no need to worry.”

  “You don’t think that might send Dad back to Munich?”

  “No, of course not! Once he has come, he can’t very well go away again until the mystery’s solved. And anyway, if you don’t quiet at least some of their fears soon they’ll go to the police. I had some difficulty in stopping Mother last night.”

  “How did you do it?” asked Pat curiously.

  “Well, I was really rather smart about it.” Marilyn cheered up somewhat at the recollection. “I remembered they always say that attack is the best form of defence, so I made the suggestion myself—forestalled her, you know. But I made it in a sort of ‘I-suppose-you-wouldn’t-think-of-such-a-thing’ tone of voice. And sure enough, she decided she wouldn’t think of such a thing. Not until she had consulted Dad, anyway. That’s why she phoned him so quickly. But I’m sure I couldn’t hold them much longer.”

  “No—I see.” Pat bit her lip thoughtfully.

  “Why shouldn’t you reassure them a little, anyway?” protested Marilyn. “There’ll be plenty to keep Dad here, now that we’ve got him home. I’ll make a fuss of him, and he’ll be anxious enough about you anyway, and you’ve no idea how appealing Mother is when she’s scared. There’s nothing to take him back to Munich while all that’s happening!”

  “Unfortunately,” replied Pat, frowning, “there is.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “There’s a complication we hadn’t thought of. There’s another woman.”

  “After Dad, you mean?” Marilyn was aghast. “Oh, what a dreadful bind it is having attractive parents! Is it serious?”

  “She is. In fact, I’d say she’s hellbent on getting him and, if there’d been an actual divorce, I wouldn’t have put it past her to have nailed him by now.”

  “Then he’s fond of her too, you mean?”

  “He’s flattered. Men always are when a good-looking woman trains her sights on them,” Pat declared knowledgeably. “If she’d left him alone he probably wouldn’t have noticed her all that much. But as it is—” she broke off and shrugged.

  “What was her reaction to you when you arrived?” Marilyn enquired curiously.

  “She detested me on sight. Naturally,” said Pat with some satisfaction. “Once she was silly enough to show the fact, and that riled Dad. Which shows that she hasn’t got a full hold on him. Otherwise he’d have been wild with me. But I acted all innocent and bewildered, and so he was very curt with her.”

  “I say, you have learned a lot in three weeks, haven’t you?” Marilyn sounded half admiring, half critical.

  “Not all in the last three weeks,” her sister replied. “But there’s one thing, Mari. We can’t afford to let up on this. We’ve got stiff competition from Mrs. Curtiss.”

  “Is that her name?”

  “Yes. Linda Curtiss. She says she’s a widow,” said Pat in a tone that would have led anyone to question that. “But if we close the family ranks we ought to be a match for her. You must keep up the parental anxiety about me, Mari, even after they get my letter. We don’t want them in real misery, of course. But we do want them sharing an anxiety which forces them to see each other a lot.”

  “I’ll do my best.” Marilyn sighed. “But it isn’t easy.”

  “None of it’s easy,” retorted her sister. “It isn’t easy for me either. I’m sick of this place already.”

  “Oh, that reminds me! I’m afraid you’ll have to move,” Marilyn said. “If they start hunting around for you it will be in
the direction of the Essex coast. Mother knows you didn’t get the London train last night, and there can’t be many places you could have gone to straight from Harwich.”

  “How does Mother know I didn’t get the London train?”

  “For one thing, she met it. And it’s no good trying to convince her that you could have slipped away in a taxi without her seeing you, because she’s dug up some young man you talked to on the boat. He spoke to her at the station, and even thoughtfully left his office address with her. You seem to have made a massive impression on him. He was able to describe you right down to the colour of your eyes and the bracelet you were wearing.” Marilyn stared thoughtfully at her sister, who had flushed a delicate and extremely becoming pink.

  “Oh, I know who you mean. Jerry Someone. Nice. I’d have liked to see more of him if it had been possible. As it was, I had to be a bit off-putting, of course.”

  “Well, you didn’t put him off enough, it seems,”

  Marilyn stated candidly. “He and Mother got together this morning, and he says you brushed him off when he suggested seeing you on the train, and they’ve both now come to the conclusion that what you meant was that you wouldn’t be on the train. You can depend upon it that if a search is started it will be started somewhere around here. No, you’ll have to move.”

  “But where shall I go?” Suddenly it was Pat who looked young and bewildered. “It was so lucky that you and I could arrange on this address. It’s off the beaten track and no one could associate us with it, whereas—”

  “It’s pretty inaccessible for me,” interrupted Marilyn gloomily. “Frankly, I think you’d be just as safe in London. It’s large enough, goodness knows.”

  “But I might run into them—or someone who knows them—almost anywhere!”

  “Not if you were careful. Certainly not for a day or two, while we decide what’s best to do. Provided you don’t stand under the clock at Selfridges, or at Swan and Edgar’s corner or any place like that, you should be perfectly all right.”

  “It’s a frightful risk,” said Pat.

  “So’s everything,” retorted Marilyn crossly. “If they once get a line on a smaller place it’s much more difficult to hide, whereas if you’re in the biggest city in the world it’s pretty easy to get lost. That’s what murderers do.”

  “Well, I’m not a murderer,” said Pat, who was also getting cross. “And I don’t want—”

  “There’s no time to argue.” Marilyn glanced at her watch. “I must go if I’m to catch my train, and if I don’t they’ll have a search-party out after me. Pat, I know where you can go! You remember that private hotel where you and I went and had tea with Miss—what was her name? She was our history teacher in our second year at school, and she went to New Zealand. Mackay! That was it.”

  “Yes, I remember. In Holland Park—on a corner.” Pat had caught something of her sister’s eagerness. “It’s true it would be wonderful to be back in London—and it’s far enough away from home to be safe, surely. What was it called?”

  “I’m trying to think. Something to do with fish.”

  “Nothing whatever to do with fish. It was—Chip—Chipping—No, Chipperfield Hotel.”

  “Well, that’s what I mean,” said Marilyn illogically. “There was a big garage opposite. One can’t miss it. It couldn’t have been expensive. It wasn’t that sort of place. Which reminds me—how are you off for money?”

  “Low,” said Pat succinctly. “Have you brought me any?”

  “Ten pounds.” Marilyn counted out the notes carefully. “I’ll bring some more when I come to the Chipperfield on Wednesday. I think I should be able to manage Wednesday all right.”

  “I’ll move tomorrow.” Pat suddenly seemed almost elated at the prospect. “I’m sure you’re right, now I think it over. And that’s a good suggestion of yours. Just the right sort of place. They’d never look for me there.”

  The girls hugged each other, partly from a sense of mutual congratulation and partly from a shared need of moral support.

  “And you’ll be sure to write that letter, won’t you?” Marilyn said, as she gathered up her belongings.

  “Yes. And I’ll post it here,” replied Pat. “Because I’ll be gone by the time they read the postmark.”

  “I want them to get it first thing in the morning!”

  “They will. And I shall be gone first thing in the morning,” Pat assured her.

  “All right.” Marilyn managed to give a cheerful smile as she hurried off, but her heart felt uncomfortably heavy, for there was something very dreary about leaving Pat to the loneliness of the little hotel bedroom. Only by forcing herself to think of the meeting which must even now be taking place between her parents did she contrive to raise her spirits. For, as she reminded herself for the twentieth time, all this was in the best of causes.

  Could she have witnessed the meeting she might not have found it so entirely reassuring. For one thing, two people who have loved each other, left each other, and been brought forcibly together again by outside events are hardly likely to be at their most engaging best.

  “I look quite plain,” Clare thought, catching sight of herself in the mirror as she nervously paced the room in that last quarter of an hour before he came. “I look every day of my age. He’ll notice that. Greg always noticed things like that. He loved people to be vital and zestful and—and interesting. I don’t look in the remotest degree interesting. I look a tired, scared middle-aged woman who hasn’t slept well. Which is just what I am!”

  She went through to her bedroom. The bedroom where, even now, it sometimes gave her a sickening shock to see only the one single bed. And, sitting down at the dressing-table, she nervously rubbed a little colour into her cheeks, put on more lipstick than she usually required, and added a dusting of powder.

  “It only makes me look even more hollow-eyed,” she said aloud. “And what does it matter, anyway? Pat is missing, and here I am making up my face for a man who walked out on me nearly a year ago.” Because she had learned to be hard with herself, she saw only the absurdity of what she was doing and none of the pathos. She would disgustedly have rubbed away the results of her handiwork if the front door bell had not rung at that moment.

  Her heart gave a thump that hurt almost physically. Then, deliberately pulling herself together and forcing herself to breathe evenly, she went to open the door.

  At first she thought the Greg who stood outside had not changed at all. But as he came in, and the light was on him instead of behind him, she saw with a slight shock that there was quite a lot of grey in his hair. If anything, it gave him an even more distinguished appearance. But it was there.

  “Clare—” unexpectedly he brushed a light kiss across her cheek—“is there any more news?”

  “Nothing really specific.” There had not been a chance to return his kiss, and for this she was obscurely sorry. “I traced up the young man I mentioned. The one who talked to her on the boat. He had a few crumbs of information.”

  They had come into the sitting-room by now and he glanced round as though he recognised certain features with pleasure. And he said, irrelevantly, “You’ve changed things round a bit.”

  “Yes, of course.” That was colder and more emphatic than she had intended, but then she had been embarrassed in that moment to realise how much else had been “changed round” since last they were in that room together.

  She tried to make amends by asking quickly, “Would you like some tea, Greg, while we talk?”

  “Thanks. If it’s no trouble.”

  “We’re talking like strangers,” she thought wretchedly. But aloud she said calmly that it was no trouble at all, that the things were already on the trolley and the kettle would be boiling in a few minutes. Then she escaped into the kitchen, where she stood watching the kettle and fighting back her tears.

  She was not really what her daughters called “the weepy kind”, and she knew it was prolonged anxiety and lack of sleep which had made her so weak. B
ut she despised herself just the same and could not quite avoid the idea that it was Greg’s coming which had affected her so deeply, and that therefore she must show herself specially independent and mistress of herself.

  As she wheeled in the tea trolley he turned from the window and came across to help her.

  “It’s all right. There’s nothing to do,” she said quickly.

  “Then tell me about this young man—and Pat,” he replied rather shortly, as though quite prepared for the fact that he had come back home for one thing, and one thing only.

  As she poured out the tea, with a not entirely steady hand, she explained about her visit to Jerry Penrose’s office that morning.

  “Then you mean—” he frowned as he stirred his tea—“that she’s staying away for some purpose of her own? There’s no compulsion about it? No question of a real disappearance? Just some crazy plan of her own that you haven’t yet fathomed?”

  “I don’t know. I only know that she should have come home and that she hasn’t done so.”

  “But it’s not quite the terrifying business we thought at first. I thought, when you telephoned—”

  “If you think I’ve got you here on false pretences—” her voice was suddenly much higher than she had meant it to be—“you only have to say so and go away again.”

  “I’m not suggesting anything of the sort,” he said coldly. “And don’t get so excited about things, Clare.”

  “Excited?—excited? Have you any idea what the last twenty-two hours have been like? Why, I hardly—” She stopped, looked dazed by her own outburst and then said wearily, “I’m sorry. I didn’t sleep much last night.”