Missing From Home

by Mary Burchell

  “Nothing!” Gregory Collamore got up and walked restlessly about the room. “Go on with your story.”

  “I defended Mother, of course. But I think I let slip the fact that Pat and I had been in some silly sort of conspiracy. And then I saw that if I owned up to you at this point, Mrs. Curtiss would easily persuade you that Mother was involved too.”

  “She would never have persuaded me of such a thing!” He spoke violently. “I know your mother far too well. She’s the soul of integrity. No one could have made me think she would do anything small or petty or undignified like that.”

  “I didn’t know that,” Marilyn said diffidently. “Perhaps it was silly of me not to realise how well you knew and appreciated Mother. But Mrs. Curtiss was very—confident, and seemed to think she could influence you a lot. I was too frightened to take any risks. I could only think of getting away before I betrayed myself further. So I said something rude—”

  “Thank God for that!” exclaimed her father unexpectedly.

  “—and got away,” finished Marilyn. “But then I realised that I was still without any help for Pat. And suddenly—” she smiled wanly but as though she still savoured that moment of relief—“I remembered Jerry, and I knew he’d help me.”

  “You were more confident of him than of me?” said her father bitterly.

  “Yes, I was,” replied Marilyn simply.

  “But why, child? Why?”

  “He’s easier to understand.”

  “Easier—?” Greg Collamore caught his breath on a gasp. “Why should he be? I’m your father! You’ve known me all your life, while this young man—”

  “Knowing someone all your life doesn’t make you understand them.” Marilyn drew a sigh. “I don’t understand anything about you in the last year. You say you love Pat and me, but you were content to go away and leave us. You speak of Mother as though she’s the most wonderful woman, but you wouldn’t have come near her if Pat hadn’t disappeared. You say you’re glad I was rude to Mrs. Curtiss, but you could have snubbed her yourself any day—only you didn’t. I don’t understand any of that. What I understand about Jerry is that he’s simple and straightforward and says what he means. He told me I’d been a fool, which I knew. But that didn’t prevent his liking me and feeling he must help me when I was in trouble. That’s quite simple to understand and—Oh, I’m sorry!”

  She paused in utter dismay, for her charming, self-assured, elegant father had dropped into a chair and buried his face in his hands.

  “Dad—” She approached him timidly, but he made a slight, though unmistakable gesture of dismissal. Then she heard a sound which made her turn and flee from the room.

  “Mother—” she burst into her mother’s room, to find Clare sitting by the window, aimlessly staring out.

  “What is it?” At Marilyn’s sudden eruption into the room, Clare turned a white, anxious face upon her.

  “It’s—Dad. Please go and talk to him. I—I think I said some things I shouldn’t, and he’s upset. If I didn’t know it was impossible, I’d say he was crying—”

  “Greg!” Clare brushed past her dismayed child and went out of the room. At the sitting-room door, she hesitated a second. Then she went in. His face was no longer hidden. Indeed, his hands hung slackly between his knees as though they were useless and no longer the clever hands of which both he and she had once been proud. He was staring in front of him—as aimlessly as she had looked from her window only two minutes ago—and he looked bleak and bewildered and much older than he really was.

  “Greg dear—” she went to him and knelt down beside him. “What is it, darling?” She didn’t want to tell him Marilyn had sent her. “What is it? You look as though you’d heard or seen something horrible.”

  “I have.” His voice sounded a little rough and hoarse. “I’ve seen myself—in the mirror that my own child held up to me.” And he gave an unhappy little laugh that tore at her heart-strings.

  “Don’t talk like that!” She put her arms round him, and he rested his head against her as though it ached. “We’re worried, and unstrung, and remorseful—both of us. But you mustn’t look so despairing. Once we’ve found Pat—”

  “And if we don’t find her it’s my fault,” he said, though he gratefully returned one or two of the soft kisses she gave him.

  “No, darling. Stop tormenting yourself and taking all the blame. It’s not logical nor sensible.”

  “I don’t feel logical or sensible,” he said, but he began to look less strained.

  “We’ve both been stupid and wrong—”

  “You haven’t,” he protested almost indignantly. “You’ve been an angel.”

  “I’ve been nothing of the sort!” She actually laughed. “I’ve been a silly, inflexible, resentful woman, clinging to my dignity and nursing my small grievances until they grew out of all proportion. I’m not taking all the blame, Greg, but I won’t have you take it either. The sad, sad, stupid thing is that it’s taken us nearly a year to speak to each other like this.”

  “I know. And for long enough before that we’d—lost the way, somehow, and neither would take the other by the hand and try to find the way back. Was it pride, Clare, or resentment, or sheer stupidity—or what?”

  “Something of all those, I expect,” she said slowly. “And the inability to say what was really in our hearts, instead of the bitter, wounding things that lay so easily ready to our tongues.”

  “Saying the things we didn’t really mean,” he murmured half to himself. “She said—Mari said—she understood that young man because he was simple and straightforward and said what he really meant. She said she didn’t mind his telling her she had been a fool, because she knew it was true and yet it made no difference to the fact that he liked her and would help her when she was in trouble. He liked her. She didn’t claim that he loved her. He liked her—and apparently that was sufficient to show him what was important and unimportant where she was concerned.”

  “It’s not so easy when you love someone,” Clare told him tenderly. “Liking is such a much easier relationship than loving. That’s why one must try so much harder when one loves, I suppose. There’s so much to gain—and so much to lose.”

  “We didn’t try hard enough, my darling, did we?” He put up his hand and almost diffidently smoothed her hair.

  “Not after we first lost the way.”

  “But we could—at least—Clare!” He turned to face her and there was no assurance in his manner, only the eager pleading there had been there the first time he told her that he loved her. “Clare—” he laced his fingers in hers like a boy—“do you think we could try again?”

  “If you—want to enough.”

  “I want it more than I’ve ever wanted anything in my life before,” he said. “That’s the simple, straightforward truth. And it wasn’t a bit difficult to say!” She laughed a little unsteadily, and he kissed her on her trembling mouth.

  “I love you,” he told her, earnestly and categorically. “I love you! How could I ever let anything else blot out that all-important fact?”

  “Probably I didn’t make it sufficiently clear that I loved you too and that nothing else was important in comparison,” she told him with a smile. “But it doesn’t matter now. We need never bother about apportioning the blame again. We’ve found each other. Greg, we’ve found each other! And now all we need is to find darling Pat too.”

  “We’ll find her all right,” he asserted. And confidence and resolution flowed back into him like a tide, so that she thought,

  “This is the man I loved and married! This is my husband and the father of the girls, and the centre of all our lives.”

  “We shall hear something soon, I’m sure we shall,” he declared, as though he thought she still needed comforting. And, like the answer to his certainty, there was a ring at the bell which brought them both to their feet.

  Marilyn reached the front door before they could cross the room, and a moment later she came in, a little hesi
tantly.

  “It’s the police sergeant,” she began, unnecessarily, as that gentleman had already followed her into the room. Then she stopped, her lips parted and her eyes wide as she registered the intangible but overwhelming change which had taken place in her parents since she last saw them.

  “Yes, Sergeant?” Greg Collamore spoke eagerly.

  “We’ve traced the car owner, sir. And I’d like you and Mrs. Collamore to come along and see if you can identify him as the man you saw in the restaurant. He runs a pawnbroker’s shop in a rather tatty part of Chelsea, which does seem to suggest a possible connection.”

  “We’ll both come, of course!” Clare exclaimed.

  “And I’m coming too,” stated Marilyn determinedly.

  The sergeant looked as though a family party had not been in his scheme of things. But Marilyn said pleadingly,

  “I’ll wait in the car. I won’t interfere. I’ll do whatever you say. Only I can’t just sit here wondering and wondering what is happening.”

  “She can come in the car with us,” her father said. “Do we give you a lift too, or have you got a police car?”

  “I have a car, sir. You follow on after me, and when we get to the end of the street, I’ll point out the shop to Mrs. Collamore and get her to look in the window, or even go inside and enquire about something, so as she can see if there’s anyone there she recognises.”

  “Why can’t I do that?” Greg asked quickly.

  “You’ve already had words with him, you say. He’ll recognise you, whereas it’s unlikely that he’ll recognise your wife.”

  “Yes, I see.” Greg gave way reluctantly, and they all went downstairs to the street.

  Marilyn would have got into the back of her parents’ car, but her father said, “Why don’t you come in front with us, Mari? There’s room.”

  So she slipped in gratefully and sat between them. And when her father patted her tightly clasped hands she knew suddenly that she was forgiven for anything she had said and that, somehow, something wonderful and inexplicable had happened.

  Marilyn stole a sidelong glance at her mother and thought, “How pretty she is!” Then she looked ahead and thought, “How bright the sunshine is for some reason!”

  In places the traffic was thick, but Greg followed the police car meticulously, and when it came to a stop he drew up a few yards behind, and the sergeant came to the open window to speak to Clare.

  “Ten shops down on the other side, Mrs. Collamore, just beyond the dairy. Look in and see if you recognise anyone there. If there’s no one in sight, go in and ask the price of something in the window. Then come back to me. I’ll handle the questioning about the bracelet.”

  She got out of the car and carried out his instructions exactly, while Marilyn and her father sat side by side watching her. She seemed to take her time about examining things in the shop window. Then, without even bothering to go inside, she came back to them and reported,

  “They’re both there. Both the man and the girl who wore Pat’s bracelet. They look terribly—ordinary and harmless, in those surroundings, I must say.”

  “They probably are, Mrs. Collamore,” the sergeant said drily. “We’re not looking for any sinister implications, you know. We just want to know how those people came by that bracelet. You and your husband had better both come along with me, so that you can identify it.”

  It was all too obvious that this invitation did not include Marilyn. So reluctantly she stayed where she was, envying her parents as she saw them disappear into the shop, in the wake of the police sergeant.

  “They’re silly not to take me too,” she thought rebelliously. “I know much more about Pat and her probable movements than anyone else. They might miss something vital that I’d spot in a minute. They mightn’t see the significance of it. Whereas I—”

  She was out of the car before she had completed the arguments to herself, and quickly walked the hundred yards to the shop. Only a matter of minutes covered the time between the entrance of the first group and the moment when, with a “ting” from the door-bell, Marilyn stepped boldly into the shop, for all the world as though she had merely come in to buy something.

  “I’ve never seen this gentleman in my life, and I don’t know what you’re talking about,” was the flustered assertion the girl was making, while the man stood there, backed by an incongruous bunch of dusty bulrushes in a jar, looking glum and sullen.

  “You’ve seen us both,” Clare pleaded, though the sergeant obviously wished she would leave the talking to him. “Don’t you remember—at the Cordova the other night? You were there, weren’t you?”

  “And suppose we were, what’s that to you?” the man interrupted angrily. “People can eat where they like, I suppose? What’s all this in aid of, anyway?”

  “I’ll tell you what it’s in aid of.” Suddenly Marilyn came forward and spoke directly to the girl. “And you needn’t be frightened or apologetic. I expect you’ve just done something a bit silly that’s difficult to explain. You’re not the only one. My sister and I did something silly, and that’s what’s caused all the trouble. You see, my parents separated—”

  “Marilyn, there’s no need to go into all that!” Her father sounded angry, while the sergeant looked as though he would have liked to pop her into Holloway. But she went steadily on,

  “There is need to tell her, then she’ll understand why we want her help and not to get her into any trouble.” Then she turned back to the girl. “Pat—that’s my sister—and I hit on the idea of her disappearing, and we hoped that the anxiety would bring my parents together again. Which it did,” she added rather wonderingly.

  “If you don’t mind, miss—” interrupted the sergeant.

  “Yes, I do mind! I’ve told only half my story, and it’s important this lady should understand.”

  The “lady” whose gaze was fixed on Marilyn in a sort of wary fascination, relaxed indefinably at this form of approach, and Marilyn went on,

  “Everything was going splendidly, when it looks as though my sister’s handbag was stolen—”

  “I stole no handbag!” exclaimed the girl, while the man said angrily,

  “If you’re making any accusations and taking people’s character away—”

  “You shut up and stop being silly,” Marilyn told him without looking at him. “And no one suggests for a moment that you stole her handbag, you silly girl. But because her handbag was stolen she had to raise some money on something. And I guess she came here trying to sell or pawn her bracelet.”

  “That’s right,” the girl said unexpectedly. “She wouldn’t sell it. She said she wanted it back because it was a present from her mother, but she wanted some money just the same. So, though we don’t usually do business that way, with someone we don’t know, we let her have a couple of pounds on the bracelet.”

  Clare caught her breath on an audible gasp.

  “But you liked the bracelet, didn’t you?” Marilyn said kindly. “It was so pretty and unusual, and you were going out that night, and there wasn’t any reason why you shouldn’t borrow it.”

  “Except that goods in pawn aren’t supposed to be taken off the premises,” interjected the police sergeant.

  “Oh, don’t be silly!” Marilyn admonished the representative of the law. “What does it matter? Maybe it wasn’t exactly right of her, but it wasn’t a crime either.”

  “Within the meaning of the law—” began the sergeant.

  “This isn’t the meaning of the law. It’s my sister’s bracelet,” retorted Marilyn crushingly. “Anyway, you borrowed it, didn’t you, even though you knew you shouldn’t. And then you were dead scared when someone pretty well rose out of the ground and queried just that bracelet?”

  “It didn’t seem natural like,” the girl murmured. “Out of all London that someone should come up and ask about it.”

  “That sort of coincidence only happens in real life,” Marilyn assured her sagely. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter. Where is the br
acelet now?”

  There was an obvious struggle in the mind of the girl. She looked sullenly from the waiting police sergeant and the anxious Clare and Greg back to the eager face of the girl who was questioning her. Then she said, as though the words were forced from her, “I’ve got it at home.”

  “You mean you intended to keep it?” the police sergeant said sharply.

  There was silence.

  “But what were you going to say when my sister came back to claim it?” Even Marilyn sounded slightly shocked.

  “I wasn’t going to say anything.” The words suddenly came tumbling out. “I wasn’t going to have to say anything. Because I was pretty sure she wasn’t ever coming back.”

  CHAPTER IX

  MARILYN stared in unspeakable dismay at the girl who stood sullenly behind the crowded counter.

  “You guessed my sister wasn’t ever coming back, you say?” She tried vainly to check the chill that engulfed her. “But how could you? What makes you say that?”

  For a moment the girl looked as though she were slightly dazed at finding she had admitted so much. Then the police sergeant spoke abruptly.

  “Come along now. What did you mean by that? Those are queer words to use. What have you been up to?”

  “I haven’t been up to anything.” She looked scared suddenly. “I didn’t do anything to her.”

  “But you just said—”

  “Don’t badger her!” Once more Marilyn tried the sergeant’s patience sorely. But he let her have her way as she turned back to the girl and said pleadingly, “Tell me—please tell me. I love my sister and I feel dreadful at being partly responsible for bringing her into trouble. Tell me what happened. Help me, please! Why did you think she wouldn’t come back?”