Missing Susan

by Sharyn McCrumb

  First Bernard counted the suitcases, counted them again, and stowed them into the coach’s luggage compartment. Then Rowan Rover took a head count of the passengers, and, satisfied that all were accounted for, he ushered them onto the bus, where they took up their accustomed positions, sitting two by two in a clump at the front.

  “Good morning, ladies and Charles!” said Rowan, standing in the aisle and addressing them without benefit of microphone. “Does everyone have sweaters out? It’s a bit chillier today and we are going to do a bit of walking, as our first stop is Stonehenge. Did everyone have breakfast? I hope so, because lunch today is-as usual-on your own, which means that we’ll stop in a pub somewhere along the route.” “Aren’t there any pizza places in England?” asked Susan plaintively.

  “Not as many as in Minneapolis,” said Rowan between clinched teeth.

  “I went to Stonehenge when I was over on the archaeological dig in ’sixty-eight,” said Emma Smith. “I don’t suppose it has changed much since then.”

  From the driver’s seat came Bernard’s short laugh. “Don’t bet on it, miss!”

  An hour later Emma had to admit the truth of Bernard’s remark. The coach made its way out of the narrow streets of Winchester; from the A34 to the A303, a large modern motorway that took them across the chalk downs of Wiltshire and straight to Stonehenge. Straight to Stonehenge. As they approached the great neolithic monument, Maud Marsh said sadly, “I never pictured a highway going ten feet past the heelstone.”

  “That was there in 1968,” said Emma, studying the scene. “But the fence wasn’t.”

  “Vandals,” said Bernard over his shoulder. “Stonehenge draws loonies like a flame draws moths.”

  He pulled the coach into the paved car park across the road from the great stone circle. It was already crowded with other tour buses and dozens of private cars. They stood in the lot beside the coach, braving the chill wind, while Rowan consulted his notes. “I have a pass here to get us in as a group,” he announced. “Everyone follow me, please.”

  “They sell tickets?” asked Miriam Angel, sounding shocked and grieved. “To Stonehenge? We don’t charge people to go into the Lincoln Memorial.”

  Bernard shrugged. “Maybe the Druids need the money.” He got back on board and adjusted his radio to a rock station to while away the tour time.

  “It wasn’t built by the Druids,” Emma was explaining to her comrades as they trotted after Rowan across the parking lot. They discovered that the south end of the lot was equipped with concrete steps leading to a subterranean level, containing lavatories, a gift shop, and the ticket booth. In order to reach Stonehenge, tourists had to pass through an iron gate and walk through a tunnel built under the highway, which brought them out near the monument on the other side.

  Rowan shepherded the group through the admission gates with his British Heritage tour pass, but he lost control as soon as they were through the gate. Elizabeth MacPherson led a charge to the gift shop, followed by Kate Conway and Nancy Warren.

  “I promised a couple of the student nurses that I’d send postcards,” Kate explained to the scowling guide.

  “One of my daughters wanted a Stonehenge poster,” murmured Nancy.

  “It’s cold out there,” said Elizabeth, when Rowan attempted to round them up. “We’re just getting warm before we walk out to the monument.”

  “You have ten minutes,” said Rowan in his most authoritative voice. He then stalked off toward the lavatory.

  Twelve minutes later the renegades emerged from gift shop and ladies’ room, laden with packages and ready to inspect the great stone circle. They followed Rowan through the tunnel and up the other set of stairs.

  Fifty yards in front of them the great stones towered against a watery blue sky, but the majesty of the monument was diminished considerably by the chain-link fence surrounding it-and the paved path that encircled it, currently full of other tourists. An icy wind pushed them along toward the stone uprights.

  “The stones in the outer ring are made of a material called sarsen,” Rowan Rover shouted above the wind. “Which is a type of sandstone formed on chalk deposits in prehistoric seas. The horseshoe of uprights within the sarsen circle are called bluestones, because in dry weather there is a bluish-gray tinge to their surfaces. They are made of a crystalline rock called dolerite. Actually, though, the first circle is one that can hardly be seen. It lies beyond the path on which we are walking. If you look closely at the field, you may see traces of chalk from some of the fifty-six Aubrey holes that surround Stonehenge in a circle 288 feet in diameter.”

  “What were these holes for?” asked Kate Conway, scanning the field of scrub grass for traces of the outer ring.

  “There were bodies in them, weren’t there?” asked Emma Smith, summoning up memories from her days on the dig.

  Before Rowan Rover could find a note to cover that question, Elizabeth MacPherson, the other amateur archaeologist, said, “Yes, but they were put in after the holes were dug and refilled. Maybe not by the original builders.”

  “One theory,” said Rowan, who had found his place in the guidebook, “is that they reflect the same beliefs that caused the Greeks to dig similar pits, called bothros, in ancient times. If so, then they indicate a belief in a netherworld-like Hades-and the pits are symbolic passageways to the gods below. And the worshipers may have filled the holes with sacrifices to these gods from time to time.”

  “The Druids practiced human sacrifice, didn’t they?” asked Susan.

  “They didn’t build Stonehenge!” said Emma and Elizabeth together.

  Susan looked puzzled. “Who did?”

  Rowan Rover, who was fortunately a fast reader, flipped through page after page of his guidebook. “Good luck getting a straight answer on that one,” he said at last. “Apparently, Stonehenge was modified by a succession of prehistoric builders, so that you can’t attribute the thing to just one group. British archaeologists go on about the Windmill Hill culture, and the Beaker culture, and the Secondary Neolithic, until you scarcely remember what it was you wanted to know in the first place.”

  “They sound like Grammy nominees, don’t they?” giggled Kate Conway.

  “I wouldn’t know,” snapped Rowan. “Does anyone else have any questions? Several of the Californians are beginning to turn blue with cold.”

  “It’s not cold by Canadian standards,” said Martha Tabram, smiling. “I wanted to ask how prehistoric people could build such a huge structure.”

  “You mean the standing stones? We think they went up much later than the first circle-around 1700 B.C. I think we can assume that it was laborious work, requiring years of skill and patience.”

  “When I was on the dig in Winchester, our archaeologist lectured on Stonehenge. He said that they excavated the field next to it, and found a cemetery full of crushed skeletons.”

  “The sign of a bad construction worker,” said Rowan, eyeing the carefully balanced stones and the chain-link fence with a curious expression of regret.

  Charles Warren, sensibly attired in a red ski parka, and not shivering, said, “I saw a TV special once that claimed that Stonehenge was a prehistoric observatory, designed to tell when it was midsummer and midwinter. Something about the way the sun rose in relation to the rocks. Is there any truth to that?”

  “That’s what we were told when I was here in ’sixty-eight,” said Emma Smith.

  Rowan Rover smiled. “Like most academic theories, that one went out of fashion after a decade or so. The current one, I believe, is that the neolithic people danced here. Archaeologists have found buried surfaces that they say were compacted by the pounding of dancing feet many centuries ago. I find that theory compelling, because a number of similar local legends survive about various rings of standing stones. Tradition always says that the stones themselves are dancers forever frozen in their tracks as punishment for some sin they committed, like breaking the Sabbath.”

  “It is definitely a holy place,” said Maud M
arsh, gazing admiringly at the ring of stones. “I get the same feeling here that I got in Winchester Cathedral.”

  “I don’t doubt it,” said Rowan. “I’m sure it was a temple to its builders, whatever uses they made of it, and despite the tacky little fence and the tourists, quite a bit of that majesty survives.”

  “There is a stone circle in Scotland,” said Elizabeth. “It’s called Callanish, and it’s on the island of Lewis. Luckily, there is no fence around that one. Of course, it isn’t as famous as Stonehenge, or as accessible.”

  “Just as well,” said Rowan. “The world is too much with us late and soon.”

  Frances Coles waved her tiny automatic camera. “Just stand together, everybody, would you? I want to get a group shot with Stonehenge in the background. Everybody smile!”

  “Torquay, isn’t it?” asked Bernard, when the freezing tourists had been loaded back into the coach. “Any particular route you’d fancy?”

  Rowan Rover knelt down beside the driver’s seat and studied the road atlas. “Here we are above Salisbury,” he murmured, tracing the A303 with his finger. “And we have to get down to the Devon coast in reasonably good time. Shops tend to close at five, don’t they? Not tourist season anymore, really.”

  “We should stay on the A303 to Honiton, I should think,” said Bernard. “Lunch there? By then it ought to be about one o’clock. Then the A30, bypass Exeter, pick up the A38, and take it to the A380. That will take us straight in. We should be there by half past three, if you don’t take too long eating your lunch.”

  Rowan cast a steely eye at the shopping members of the party, who were happily engaged in comparing Stonehenge postcards, tea towels, and tiny replicas of the circle itself. “I’ll be ruthless,” he promised, reaching for the microphone. “Ladies and Charles, as you know from your schedule, you will be staying tonight in Exeter, but for this afternoon’s outing, it will be necessary for us to bypass Exeter and drive on to Torquay, where we will view the Agatha Christie exhibit in Torre Abbey. After that, it will be a drive of an hour or so to get you back to Exeter to your hotel. Any questions?”

  Charles Warren raised his hand. “Lunch?”

  “Bernard and I think that Honiton will provide a few suitable restaurants-”

  “Honiton lace,” said Martha Tabram. “Is it the same place?”

  Rowan Rover frowned. “If you wish to get to Torre Abbey before it closes, you will confine yourselves to a brief lunch stop. Are we all agreed?”

  There was a mutinous set to Elizabeth’s jaw, but it was early days yet on the tour. There would be time to shop later. The others agreed cheerfully.

  “Well then, say goodbye to the Beaker People. We’re off to the English Riviera.”

  True to their word, the group passed up a street full of inviting curio and antique shops and descended en masse into the Three Tuns Pub on the Honiton High Street, immediately outnumbering the bemused locals. They packed themselves in fours around wooden tables the size of poker chips, sharing one paper menu per table and speculating on the entrees like sharks at a swim meet. Rowan Rover explained, between sips of a pint of ale, that prawns were shrimp, cider was not synonymous with apple juice, and there were no waitresses in pubs. If they wanted to eat, they’d better join the queue at the bar.

  “Can’t you get anything nonalcoholic?” asked Susan. “I hate beer. And why are these tables so tiny? And no waitresses?”

  Rowan Rover sighed. “A far cry from the Minneapolis Burger King, I have no doubt.”

  She frowned at the menu. “What is this stuff, anyway. What are you having, Rowan?”

  “A double Scotch and three cigarettes. For my nerves.”

  Bernard, who did not appear in the crowded pub, had presumably found somewhere else to eat, because precisely forty-five minutes later, when Rowan had herded the flock back to the appointed meeting place on a corner of the high street, Bernard was already there, with the door open and classical music to aid the digestive process.

  For the next couple of hours, as they passed through Dorset, Rowan Rover confined his remarks to explaining points of interest on the landscape (“That rounded hill is believed to be the site of King Arthur’s great battle at Badon Hill, as are the Badbury Hill in Oxfordshire, and the one near Swindon in Wiltshire”) and answering questions about objects sighted by the tourists as they rode along (“That, madam, is a goat”). Several members of the party took advantage the indifferent motorway scenery and the inducement of a full stomach. They slept the untroubled sleep of the jet-lagged.

  At one point, noticing the mention of Torquay on a highway sign, Frances Coles asked, “Are we by any chance going to pass the spot where Agatha Christie staged her disappearance in the Twenties?”

  Rowan Rover, whose knowledge of English literature did not extend to the private controversies of mystery writers, met this query with a blank stare. “I know she went missing for a week or so,” he said at last. “Somebody produced a movie based on the case. I don’t know where she took off from, though. She was born in Torquay, but I don’t think she lived there as an adult.”

  “She disappeared near Guilford,” said Alice MacKenzie, who maintained that Agatha Christie’s work reached a plane of literary perfection to which Thomas Hardy could only aspire. “I’ve read two biographies of her.”

  “Oh, Guilford,” said Rowan Rover, in tones suggesting that it might as well be Hoboken. “That’s practically on the outskirts of London. We’re nowhere near it.”

  “What do you make of her disappearance?” asked Elizabeth MacPherson, grasping at this straw of a crime.

  “Amnesia under a strain isn’t all that uncommon,” Rowan suggested.

  “It’s more common if there has been a head injury,” said Kate Conway. “Personally, I’ve never seen a case.”

  “Amnesia!” said Alice MacKenzie. “Ha!”

  “I really know very little about the incident, but she was a very shy woman, wasn’t she? Hardly the sort of person to stage a publicity stunt.”

  “I don’t think it was a publicity stunt,” said Alice, leaning forward and speaking in a stage whisper, so as not to disturb the sleeping Frances. “But I do think she did it on purpose.”

  “Wasn’t her husband having an affair?” asked Kate Conway.

  “Yes! And he had gone off to spend the weekend with his girlfriend,” said Alice triumphantly. “So Agatha crashes her car into a pond, leaves her expensive fur coat on the seat, and vanishes. The police assume foul play, of course, and guess who they suspect?”

  “The husband,” sighed Rowan Rover. “They always do.”

  “Right! He gets a grilling from the authorities, and his private life and the girlfriend’s name become front page news. Hundreds of people are out combing the woods for Agatha’s body. It’s the nine days’ wonder of all of England.”

  “Where was she?” asked Charles Warren, postponing his nap.

  “In a fancy hotel in Harrogate, attending tea dances and reading newspaper accounts of her own disappearance,” Alice informed him. “If she hadn’t planned her disappearance, how did she happen to be carrying enough money for a two-week stay at an expensive hotel? And what name do you suppose she registered under?”

  “The girlfriend’s,” said Rowan with a sinking heart. His second wife was just the sort of person who would have done that.

  “Exactly! Agatha wasn’t ill. She was brilliant. She humiliated her rotten husband in front of the entire world. Serves him right!”

  “And did he give up the other woman and go back to Agatha?”

  “No!” cried Rowan, Charles, and Bernard in unison.

  Alice regarded them with the look of an entomologist who has just identified their species. “You’re right,” she said evenly. “A year later Archie Christie divorced her and married the other woman.”

  “But he probably wasn’t worth having anyway,” Kate Conway pointed out. “I know a plastic surgeon who’s just like that. He’s married two nurses so far and made them both miser
able. Archie Christie sounds rather heartless to me.”

  “True,” said Alice. “And at least Agatha made him suffer.”

  “We’re coming into Torquay now,” Bernard told Rowan. “So you’re all going to tour this sneaky lady’s museum, eh?”

  “Isn’t it thrilling,” said the guide, without any trace of enthusiasm. He was envisioning a Rowan Rover exhibit in a museum, should one be dedicated to his second wife, who, fortunately, was not famous. The Rover Husband display would feature his most unflattering portrait (the hangover one, perhaps) with concentric circles drawn around it, and a list of his faults in easily readable red letters: WEARS SAFETY PINS IN FLY.

  With a sigh of resignation, he turned to his notes on Torre Abbey.

  Because of their proximity to the Gulf Stream, Cornwall and the coast of Devon enjoy a much warmer climate than most of the rest of Britain, and the south coast’s balmy beaches and palm trees had earned it the title of English Riviera. It was evident that Torquay was the holiday spot for a goodly number of Britons, because the road into the city was lined with large houses displaying bed and breakfast signs on their well-tended lawns.

  Since the majority of people on the mystery tour were southern Californians, they were less impressed with Torquay than they might have been. Kate Conway was comparing the city to San Diego’s own island of Coronado and Elizabeth MacPherson, the representative of the other American coast, sniffed and said, “Virginia Beach.” Clearly the group preferred thatched cottages and half-timbered pubs to the twentieth-century bustle of a British seaside community, with its traffic and its commercialism.

  “This looks very familiar,” said Nancy Warren, peering out at a motel with balconies and wrought-iron railings. “Doesn’t it remind you of San Diego, Charles?”

  Her husband grunted. “Yeah, we could have seen this at home and saved six grand.”

  While Bernard navigated through the late afternoon traffic, Rowan Rover consulted a city map and called out street names to look for in order to reach the abbey. Fifteen minutes and several orbits later, Bernard pulled the bus up to the curb on Falkland Road and said, “I don’t think there’s going to be any place to park nearby. Why don’t I let you out here, and come back for you in a bit. All right?”