No Word From Winifred

by Amanda Cross

  “The point seems to be that nothing checks out. What about Cyril, for instance?”

  “I’m afraid that’s clear enough; Cyril died before he was thirty, though I have to admit the thought of his having taken someone else’s identity and come back for some reason was exciting—not that I could imagine what the reason would be, or how it would affect Winifred. It’s not even clear how much time, if any, they spent together as young adults.”

  “Reading her journal,” Kate said, “I seem to think of her only as a child, dressed in her school outfit, showing Americans around Oxford. She seems to be an eternal child, like Alice and the children in the Nesbit books.”

  “Charlie said you would get literary. I stick to records. The records are very clear on Cyril. He died of Hodgkin’s disease. Probably he thought of his childhood and Winifred when he knew he was dying. We know he remembered her, and with great affection, because he made her his beneficiary after his mother’s death. His mother, poor woman, outlived him but she’s dead now.”

  “She seemed to have outlived her life even when the children were young.”

  “Yes,” Richard said. “She was a sad one, wasn’t she?”

  “And Winifred knew it, then and when she wrote the journal. But where does that get us?”

  “Well,” Richard went on, a bit more briskly, “there are plenty of details. Of Cyril’s life, and Charlotte Stanton’s life, and even a bit on Harriet St. John Merriweather, Sinjin. Now, there’s an amazing old bag, if you don’t object to the expression. She was perfectly clear about what she’d said to Winifred, and what was to be in her will, and who was to be literary executor, and all the rest of it.”

  “Did you meet her?” Kate asked.”

  “Oh, yes. She died only a short time ago. I met George too.”

  “An inspiring experience, I’m to gather.” Kate smiled at him.

  “I had trouble at first believing he was real. His conversation filled with ‘don’t you knows’ and ‘well, never minds’ and, something else he kept saying: ‘I haven’t a clue.’ He hadn’t, either, if you ask me.”

  “Could it have possibly been an act?” Kate asked.

  “Didn’t I hope so! That’s the trouble with this case. You keep smelling a rat, thinking. This is just too good to be true, and then finding out it is true. I followed every lead there is, short of reading the books of both those lady authors. Maybe you’ll find something there. That’s the hope, I daresay, in their engaging a literary specialist.”

  “I doubt it, really,” Kate said. “Charlie has read all the books. I think what they want is a fresh mind, and one that doesn’t charge too much, or make them feel too foolish. After all, if someone as thorough and knowledgeable as you failed, where else can they go?”

  “To a lady professor, of course,” Richard said. “Do you mind if I finish up the cookies? They’re fine.”

  “Do,” Kate said. “And I shall finish the watercress sandwiches. More tea?” Richard nodded. “Let’s go over it again, if you don’t mind,” Kate said. “I’ll try not to be too tedious. Everything in Winifred’s journal checks out; you’ve seen to that. What about the Ohio people, by the way?”

  “That’s clear enough. Winifred’s school records are still there, and records of the house the family owned. The father’s dead, but the mother and the two other daughters were easily discovered. I went to see them.”

  “You have been thorough. Nothing there, I’m to assume.”

  “Nothing of great interest, though you might see it differently. Winifred left home at eighteen, and never returned. She kept decently in touch; the sisters spoke of her with what I would call modified affection—closer to awe, really. The mother just said she’d never succeeded with Winifred, hard as she had tried. I believe her. Winifred sent Christmas cards, and responded to announcements of marriages, births, that sort of thing. She was polite but uninterested. No motive anywhere that I could see.”

  “What about money? Always a motive where there’s money.”

  “When the father died he left his estate to his wife, in trust, with a third to each of his daughters on her death. When she dies, that’s how it will be. Perhaps the other two would gang up to kill Winifred for a third of a hundred thousand dollars in the future, but I don’t see it that way.”

  “It would be hard to,” Kate admitted.

  Richard put his cup down with a certain note of finality. “I guess that about covers it,” he said, “unless you can think of something else. I don’t mean to rush you.”

  “When did Winifred disappear, exactly?” Kate asked. “Charlie’s letters stop as they were about to visit Sinjin. Did they visit her, in fact?”

  “Sorry. I thought you knew all about that. Often happens in cases, I’ve noticed. Everyone assumes everyone else knows something terribly obvious, and when it’s clear they don’t, bob’s your uncle (I picked that up from George, too).”

  “It’s a neat trick in detective stories,” Kate added. “My favorite is one book in which the cast consists of musicians, mostly amateur but a few professionals, including a famous conductor, and no one gets around to telling the detective that the Mozart symphony they were playing has no part for a clarinet. It was the clarinetist did it, of course.”

  Richard smiled. “Winifred and Charlie went their separate ways after seeing Sinjin. They were supposed to meet at Paddington at two. No one, so far as we know, ever saw Winifred again.”

  “Or heard from her?”

  “No. Charlie did hear from her; a note, back at the hotel, where Charlie finally went, saying she couldn’t make it. Sorry about that. Looked as though it had been scrawled in a taxi.”

  “Do you have the note?”

  “No. Charlie says she was so upset, she just crumpled it up.”

  “Did Charlie tell you about the visit when she and Winifred last saw Sinjin?”

  “A bit. They chatted, and the old lady said how glad she was to have her will settled, and, of course, the question of Charlotte Stanton’s biography. Jolly good cheer all around: yes, George even came in at the end. Had brought a bottle of the bubbly—his phrase—to celebrate. No cloud on the horizon, not even the smallest.”

  “And I suppose you have made certain it couldn’t have been George who did away with Winifred; he’s the obvious suspect. Either he’s angry about the biography or he’s a lunatic who’s keeping her prisoner in a basement somewhere.”

  “It is the comfortable solution, and believe me, I looked into it. My report on that front is very thorough indeed. The problem is, he left Sinjin’s the day of the meeting and went off to a golf match in Scotland or Wales, I forget which, and nearly won it, and hundreds of people can testify to his presence almost every hour of the day and night. Also, when I told him Winifred had disappeared, he was obviously astonished. He’s either the world’s greatest actor or genuine. I tend toward the latter, but good luck to you. I mean it. The report on George is in my office, with all the others. Be my guest.”

  “I can see you’ve about had it,” Kate said. “And we’ve finished off all the tea. Thank you for being so patient.”

  “Not at all,” Richard said, rising. “Do call if there’s anything else. I really do mean to help you, you know. After talking for a while, I get a sense of frustration, and I have to move. But that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t be available, even without those wonderful cookies.”

  “I understand exactly,” Kate said, “and I’m doubly grateful because I do. Thank you, Mr. Fothingale—Richard.”

  They shook hands collegially at Kate’s door.

  The next day, a Saturday, Kate set out to visit Ted and Jean Wilkowski. She had thought, for a moment, of asking Leighton to accompany her: “Come Watson, the game’s afoot”—or some such drivel. Leighton certainly needed distraction from her fragmented life, torn between no acting, writer’s block (that was Kate’s guess), and the tedium
of word processing, but Kate could not but feel that two would be less likely to win the confidence of Ted and Jean than one. She would have to decide what to do about Leighton.

  Kate, as George would have said, “hadn’t a clue” what she expected to learn from Jean and Ted, if anything. She could manage to frame none but the most general questions. “Tell me,” she wanted to say, “what do you think happened?” But what could they tell her? Driving along, Kate made a mental list, as was her wont—she would commit it to paper at the first opportunity—of some of the homework she must do for this task. First, read the works of Charlotte Stanton, and review what was known of her life. Kate would have to read not only the biography mentioned in Winifred’s journal, but whatever else she could find. That was clear enough. In fact, she could pay Leighton to do the research for her: a clever idea, that. “Watson, old girl,” she could hear herself saying, “get me a copy of all the articles and books you can find on Charlotte Stanton and her work. If the books are out of print, get them copied from some library. Since Mr. Fothingale, Richard, thinks the answer may be there, we shall look.” But why, Kate asked herself, turning off the Taconic and onto Route 23, am I so certain that none of that will make any difference? She brightened up, nonetheless, at the thought of a task for Leighton. “All right,” she could hear Leighton saying, “but you’ve got to promise to keep me informed.” Kate had her answer ready: “Watson was your idea; and I beg you to remember that Watson never understood a thing till the very end, when Sherlock Holmes explained it. Be patient, my child.”

  Glad to have settled her mind on the score of Leighton, Kate felt quite cheerful all the way to Great Barrington, where she decided to park the car and have something to eat before going on to the Wilkowski farm. She found a deli on the main street, advertising health foods and looking as though it belonged on Columbus Avenue in New York. She ordered a mixture of eggplant and avocado on whole wheat pita bread—which Kate did not like, but if one is going to eat health foods, one might as well make a good job of it—and coffee. She took this to a table, and sat munching what seemed to her an extraordinary combination, and trying, without success, to plan what she would say to them at the farm. But plans were not to be hatched. She would have, as one said when preparing to lecture without sufficient preparation, to wing it. It was not an experience Kate often had, or cared for.

  And yet, when she met Ted and Jean, she knew that her instinct had been a good one. As they had with Winifred, they sized Kate up and trusted her. Why? Kate wondered, even as she talked with them, happy in that sudden sense of intimacy that only occurs if the chemistry is exactly right. One may often learn to like, even to love, people whom one has not trusted on first sight, but those for whom one feels an instant sense of bonding offer a special brand of friendship or affection. And this, God knew, was rare enough with a couple. It had been Kate’s experience that even when one liked them separately, together couples had their own dynamic that usually short-circuited any impulses of openness.

  “Is the A-frame available for viewing?” Kate asked.

  “No,” Jean said. “We’ve found another farmhand, who’s living there. But unless it’s general atmosphere you’re after, I don’t think you’ll learn much. Ted and I cleaned out everything of hers; would you like to see that? Let me get it for you, even though I don’t know what it can tell you. She had really pared life down to the essentials, Winifred had.”

  Ted went with Jean to help her, and they returned with two boxes. One, they told Kate, contained clothes and other personal items—toothbrush, toiletries; they had saved everything. “I read detective novels sometimes,” Jean smiled, “and who knows what wonderful clue you might find in her toothpaste.”

  “Mr. Fothingale didn’t find anything in her toothpaste, I gather.”

  “Nothing. Do you want to look through the clothes box?”

  “I should probably, on principle, look through both. But let’s start with the other box.”

  “Her journal’s gone, of course,” Jean said. “There didn’t seem to be many other personal papers to speak of. Some financial records, bills, that sort of thing.” As she spoke, she was helping Kate to spread papers, books, the occasional magazine, out on the table.

  “It doesn’t seem right to me,” Ted said. “I know we have to try to find out what happened to her. But she was such a private person, and I trusted her. I think she would have trusted me not to go through these things.”

  “We’ve had this out, Ted,” Jean said. “I don’t like it either. But I like her disappearing even less.” Jean, after a pause, turned to Kate. “There were a few books from the Lenox library,” she said. “I returned them; that seemed only right. But I wrote down the titles.”

  Kate took the sheet of paper, looked at it a moment—it was clear that Winifred read recent books that interested her, what caught her eye, as well as, one gathered from the Charlotte Brontë novel, some classics. Kate set the list aside, and looked at the other items. They were little enough to be left of a life. Had she a life elsewhere, then? Had she perhaps disappeared into it? Was Cyril, not dead at all, waiting for her in some cottage in darkest Wales? Despite one’s scorn of romance, one had to remember, Kate reminded herself, that life was, occasionally, romantic: think of the Ladies of Llangollen. She sorted through writing materials, orderly piles of bills and receipts, and a folder into which, it appeared, Winifred had put what did not come under some other grouping. Kate herself had such a file, labeled NEC, for “Not Elsewhere Classified.”

  These were clippings Winifred had saved, none of them, at a glance, offering much food for speculation, but Kate set them aside for further study. Turning these over, brooding, she came on a piece of folded plastic, perhaps three inches by two inches, with a safety pin on the back. “Now where,” Kate asked them, “do you suppose she got that? What is it, and why did she save it?”

  “Maybe she thought it would come in handy someday,” Ted suggested. “She wasn’t a hoarder of things, but she was thrifty.”

  “Perhaps,” Kate said. “It reminds me of something, but I can’t think what. Well, I’ll take that away too to ponder on.” The box revealed little else of interest, even to one wildly on the lookout for clues. “All we can really hope,” Kate said, returning to a chair when her search was finished, “is that a study of the works of Charlotte Stanton may reveal something. Fortunately, we have an expert on her working with us. It’s odd, really, how little Winifred left of her life, which I have the strongest sense was a rich and full one. Most of us gather so much junk in the course of living.”

  “She was a memorable person,” Ted said. (He has thought about the right word for her, Kate sensed, and has come up with that one.) “If we can help in any way, let us know. And if you find her hiding out anywhere, for any reason, tell her she’s always got a job with us, and the A-frame to go with it. The kids miss her; even the dogs miss her.”

  “We all miss her,” Jean said, as Kate got ready to leave. “You will let us know if you learn anything about her, won’t you? Anything at all?”

  Kate, taking her farewell, promised, but not with the hope of having much to report, except, perhaps, some future literary matters about a woman who was not, really, Winifred’s aunt. Kate felt intense empathy with the frustrations of Mr. Fothingale.

  Chapter Eight

  The next day, Sunday, Kate devoted to the preparation of her classes, except for an hour spent brooding over the disappearance of Winifred Ashby. At the end of this time, she went to offer her conclusions for Reed’s comments. She outlined the whole matter so far, offering him a summary of Winifred’s journal, Charlie’s letters, and Mr. Fothingale’s inconclusive investigations.

  “I don’t suppose it occurred to anyone to notify the police; they do have a missing person’s routine of moderate efficiency.”

  “Fothingale said they did tell the police,” Kate said. “Nothing has come of it. Ted, with Charlie’s con
currence, reported Winifred as missing, but the police obviously thought she’d found a better job and just cleared out. She certainly didn’t leave behind anything of value, from their point of view.”

  “I gather she left behind something of value from someone’s point of view.”

  “Now that you ask,” Kate said, smiling at him, “she left this, and it’s only worth mentioning because I can’t figure out what it is. It nudges my memory somehow, but to no practical end.” She held out the piece of folded plastic with the pin on the back.

  “If you had gone stalking white-collar crime as often as I, my love, you would recognize that: it’s a holder for a name tag of the kind used at conventions. They give you a plastic holder like this, and you put your name tag inside it and pin it on your jacket or dress, and wear it as your badge of identification.”

  “Of course,” Kate said. “How odd of me not to recognize it.”

  “Not odd at all. You are, in my experience, the champion avoider of conventions. When’s the last time you attended one, even one given by your professional organization?”

  “The MLA. Of course. Reed, you are a genius. Have I told you that lately?”

  “Have I given you an idea? What does ‘Modern’ mean, anyway, in Modern Language Association?”

  “Modern Language Association of America—‘modern’ meaning ‘not Greek and Latin.’ I wouldn’t call it an idea; the merest flicker. Have you any other marvelous suggestions?”

  “No. Since all the clues seem to point to England—and I hoped to spend your next vacation with you, here—I shall not mention that obvious fact, and I have to admit there doesn’t seem to be much else.”

  As it happened, Kate was having dinner the next evening with a friend from Hunter College, a professor of French whom Kate was inclined to consult when bewildered by the latest communications from France and that country’s provocative but dense philosophy. Susan and Kate saw each other from time to time as colleagues do, without any particular end in view, for the fun of it, and to listen to one another’s stories of academic outrage. Did men do this? Kate sometimes wondered. Her impression, hardly verified, suggested that her male colleagues either met regularly, to talk, drink, and play squash in the manner of buddies, or not at all, in the manner of male dogs on the same turf.