by Alys Clare
And then there is a gentle hand on her arm and a cheery voice says, ‘Miss Garrett! How good of you to come to our little fair, and what a beautiful bonnet!’
It is Dorothy Sullivan, and her pleasant face is rosy with the excitements of the day.
‘I am enjoying it very much,’ Lily assures her. ‘And what a lot of people!’
‘Yes, it’s quite a good turn out,’ Dorothy agrees. She leans closer and adds in a confiding whisper, ‘I do not see Mr and Mrs Stibbins, however.’ She gives a knowing nod and Lily guesses she is just longing to be asked for elucidation.
Lily willingly provides it. ‘Oh?’ she says. ‘And do you have an idea as to why they are absent?’
‘W-e-l-l,’ Dorothy replies, drawing out the word, ‘I saw her yesterday, in the late afternoon, and I thought she looked a little peaky. She was tired, she said, for she had been to Pearson and Mitchell – that’s the department store where dear Ernest has his employment – and she was carrying some large books of wallpaper samples and some paint charts. Seeing that they must surely weigh heavy, I helped her carry them for the last part of the walk to her house.’
‘Could Ernest not have brought them home?’
‘That’s what I said, dear, and Albertina was a little evasive, but I had the impression that Ernest might not be quite as keen on these home improvements as she is!’ She gives a light little laugh. ‘I know how husbands are, my dear! They become accustomed to their homes exactly as they are, and the prospect of all the upheaval and the inconvenience of altering rooms and moving walls, and repapering and painting, really doesn’t seem worth it! My dear Rodney was just the same! I had to work quite hard to convince him when it was time for even quite modest amounts of redecorating, and I understand that Albertina has rather more in mind.’
It is Lily’s turn to lean over and whisper. ‘And so you suspect that they have absented themselves from the church fair to begin on the decorating?’
But Dorothy looks faintly shocked, and it becomes apparent that she didn’t mean this at all. ‘Oh, no, dear, no! Dear Ernest is such a dependable member of our congregation, and always such a support to Mr Jellicote, that I am quite sure he would never even consider missing such an occasion as this for purely personal reasons.’
And coming to the fair would mean he could postpone beginning on the home improvements a day longer, Lily thinks cynically. ‘What is your suspicion, then?’ she asks.
Dorothy Sullivan looks at her for moment, her eyes rather bright. ‘Albertina looked a little pale on Thursday, did she not?’ Lily agrees that she did. ‘Then I am wondering if …’ Dorothy doesn’t finish her sentence, but the tiny gesture she makes towards her own plump little belly does it for her.
‘Oh, I see!’ Lily exclaims. ‘Yes indeed, perhaps you are right.’
And later, walking thoughtfully home to Hob’s Court, Lily finds herself saying a quiet little prayer: please let it be true, and Albertina really is pregnant, because perhaps something so good, so pure and positive as a baby on the way for a loving husband and wife will have the force to drive away evil.
The next day is Sunday, and Lily sets off in the afternoon for the seance. Other Circle members stand on the little path outside as she approaches, and Ernest, a slight frown on his face, is standing in the doorway, the door all but closed behind him.
‘I am so sorry to say that there will not be a gathering of Circle today,’ he says, his eyes full of anguish. ‘You have all had a wasted journey for which I deeply apologize –’ he looks very embarrassed, Lily notices – ‘and I regret the inconvenience very much.’
‘What has happened, Ernest?’ asks Mrs Sullivan in a hushed tone.
‘My dear wife—’ Ernest stops, then tries again. ‘Albertina is indisposed,’ he says.
There are various murmurs of sympathy and commiseration, and a general shuffling as the assembled Circle members bid Ernest farewell, turn and prepare to depart. The prevailing mood, Lily thinks, is a mixture of disappointment and fascinated speculation.
And it is not long before the latter gains expression.
Dorothy Sullivan hurries to Lily’s side as they stroll away. Looking back towards the Stibbins house with knowing eyes, she leans in close and says quietly, ‘They weren’t at church this morning.’ She nods, her eyes sparkling. ‘And women in a delicate condition tend to feel unwell in the mornings, do they not, Miss Garrett?’
But before Lily can reply, George Sullivan calls out – ‘Mrs Sullivan, Robert and I will happily see you home!’ – and, with obvious reluctance, she tears herself away from Lily and trots off to join the two men.
Discussing it on Monday morning, however, Lily and Felix explore the possibility that Albertina’s ‘indisposition’ may have a very different cause.
‘She’s afraid,’ Lily says flatly. ‘That’s why she couldn’t face another seance: the fear is overcoming her.’
‘I wish I could say I disagree, but I don’t,’ Felix replies. ‘Do you think that whoever is threatening her is turning up the pressure?’
Slowly Lily shakes her head. It is precisely what she fears – her mental image of poor, terrified Albertina at last Thursday’s seance is still far too vivid – but somehow putting it into words is a step too far.
After a moment, during which she can almost see Felix’s mounting anxiety, she says, ‘I’ll make us a cup of coffee. It might—’
But abruptly Felix stands up and heads towards the door.
‘Where are you going?’ Lily cries.
‘I’m going to speak to James bloody Jellicote,’ he replies.
Felix makes the journey down to the river, across Battersea Bridge and on to St Cyprian’s Church in record time, his long legs eating up the distance. The gaudy poster advertising Saturday’s fete is still there, although one corner has been torn and is flapping in the breeze. Ignoring it, Felix strides on towards the church, flings open the door and bursts inside.
James Jellicote is not there.
He’s not in the body of his church, nor in the vestry, nor the graveyard, nor, when Felix marches over to it, the vicarage. The door is opened to his thunderous knocking by a small, aproned woman with tightly curled gingery hair who says she hasn’t seen him that morning.
‘I don’t live in, see,’ she says, ‘for all that I’m his housekeeper, since he always tells me he doesn’t need more than I can provide in a day’s work. Me,’ she adds confidingly, ‘I reckon as how he likes his privacy, but then he’s a single man, dedicated to his living and his flock, so why not, I say?’
‘Quite,’ Felix says tersely. ‘Do you know where he is?’
‘Well, like I say, he wasn’t in when I got here, so I’m only guessing, see, but if you want my opinion, I’d say he’s probably out walking, which is something he often does while he works out what to say in the next week’s sermon.’
‘What time will he—’
But the garrulous housekeeper hasn’t finished. Raising her voice to drown out Felix’s interruption, she goes on, ‘He delivered ever such a good one yesterday, all about hating the sin and not the sinner. Brought in three or four references to Fallen Women –’ the capital letters are audible – ‘and not a few of the congregation didn’t like it, which you could tell from the clearing of throats and the shuffling of feet.’ She chuckles. ‘Quite carried away, he was! He—’
‘Thank you,’ Felix interrupts. ‘I’ll call again later.’
But as he walks away, his pace slower now that his urgent objective has been foiled, Felix wonders. Is it not, he thinks, a little early in the week to be working on next Sunday’s sermon?
He wonders again when he returns half an hour later and Jellicote still isn’t there. There is no answer to his knock on the door, and he has a strong suspicion that the housekeeper knows full well who it is and, in the vicar’s continued absence, has no intention of picking up the earlier conversation where it was left off.
Walking away, Felix spots a man cutting back forsythia next door to th
e vicarage. He nods to Felix and calls out, ‘After his reverence, are you?’
‘Yes,’ Felix replies.
‘He’s out,’ the man says helpfully.
‘So I observe.’ Felix tries not to sound caustic but fears he may have failed.
‘I can tell you where he is, though,’ the man goes on.
‘I’d be most grateful,’ Felix says meekly.
‘He’s gone up the East End to that charity house,’ the man says smugly, evidently proud to be the one with knowledge of the vicar’s whereabouts. ‘He’s delivering the takings from Saturday’s bazaar to that mission place he goes on about, the one for women who are no better than they should be.’ He gives an affronted little shudder, as if the very mention of such women is too much. ‘No saying how long he’ll be,’ he adds over his shoulder, going back to his forsythia. ‘Once he’s up there giving them what for, he often stays away all day.’
And, walking thoughtfully away, once again Felix wonders …
It is late on Monday afternoon.
Felix is at his desk in the front office and Lily has just gone through to the back to make a cup of tea. He can hear her chatting to Mrs Clapper.
The outer door opens and he hears a tentative footfall, and then several more. Then Ernest Stibbins’s head peers round the door to the office.
He looks ashen.
Felix rushes towards him, takes his elbow and guides him to a chair, positioning him on the opposite side of the desk. ‘Mr Stibbins,’ he says, far too loudly, for he wants to make sure that Lily realizes who their visitor is and doesn’t appear; Miss Maud Garrett has no place in the offices of the World’s End Bureau. He resumes his own seat. ‘My dear Mr Stibbins, whatever has happened?’
Ernest, who jumped slightly as Felix shouted his name, subsides into a crouching heap, his spine bent in a curve, his hands up to his face. Through them he mumbles, ‘It’s my wife, my Albertina.’
A sick feeling spreads through Felix. ‘Is she unwell?’ Please, let it be that and nothing worse than that, Felix prays. Let her be sick with something temporary and not too serious, such as the effects of the early stages of pregnancy.
But Ernest drops his hands and reveals his anguished face. Felix is horrified at his expression. ‘No, oh, no, no, no, Mr Raynor! She is not unwell, she is – oh, I can hardly bear to put it into words!’
‘You must!’ Felix urges. ‘Come on, Mr Stibbins!’
Ernest Stibbins meets his eyes. ‘Oh, Mr Raynor, she is missing!’
The last word emerges as a howl of anguish.
Felix waits, silent and still, for Ernest to recover himself. Then, opening his notebook and filling his nib with ink, he says calmly, ‘Tell me everything you can think of.’ Realizing immediately that this is far too wide a command for a man in Ernest’s highly distressed state, he breaks it down to specifics. ‘Let us begin with when you last saw her.’
Ernest frowns, the effort to concentrate and speak in words that make sense obviously costing him dear. ‘Well, let me see …’ He clears his throat, sniffs, pats his nose and eyes with an immaculate handkerchief. ‘Let me see, now. She has been feeling a little unwell over the past few days – Thursday, I believe it was, when she first complained of an unusual lassitude and a slight headache – and on Friday she somewhat unwisely insisted on struggling home from Pearson and Mitchell – that’s the department store where I work, as I believe I told you?’
‘You did indeed,’ Felix agrees.
‘Where was I?’ Ernest’s eyes fill with renewed panic.
‘Explaining that Mrs Stibbins had been to your department store,’ Felix supplies, remembering not to add the details that he already knows, Lily having reported her conversation with Dorothy Sullivan.
‘Yes, yes, yes,’ mutters Ernest, frowning in anguish. ‘I said I would bring the samples of wallpaper and curtain fabric and the cards with paint colours home with me when I returned, and not to burden herself with them when she wasn’t feeling quite herself, but she was impatient, Mr Raynor, and so excited at the prospect of brightening up our little house, and she said she could not bear to wait!’ Once more his hands come up to cover his face, and his shoulders shake as he sobs.
Sensing that a comforting word or hand would only undermine him further, Felix sits silent and still.
‘And then on Saturday we had fully intended to go to the St Cyprian’s April Bazaar. Albertina had made a very fetching hat, and I had undertaken to help Mr Jellicote by manning the second-hand book stall, but as the morning progressed it became clear to me that she really wasn’t up to it, and I persuaded her to lie down on the sofa with her feet up under a rug, and I made her a cup of tea, which she enjoyed.’ His expression as he recounts these small domestic attentions is pitiful. ‘Then on Sunday – yes, of course, Sunday was yesterday – she wanted to go to church and to see Mr Jellicote afterwards to apologize for our absence the day before, but once again she wasn’t strong enough, and we rested and I read out snippets from the local paper to her, only then she seemed to doze off, and so I tiptoed away.’ He pauses, looking down at his hands clenched together in his lap, the now-crumpled and damp handkerchief between them.
He takes a deep breath.
‘This morning I left for work at seven forty-five, as I always do,’ he continues, ‘and I was allowed to leave a little earlier than usual – in the middle of the afternoon, in fact – because I have been doing many hours of overtime recently, and my superior said I had earned a little leave. And then when I opened the door and called out, “Albertina my dear, here I am, nice and early!” there was no answer.’ His voice breaks on the words. ‘Mr Raynor, I knew she had gone, the moment I walked in!’
‘And what did you find as you hurried through the house searching for her?’ Felix asks quietly.
‘Oh …’ Ernest’s eyes focus on the far side of the room and Felix senses he is seeing the empty house again. ‘Everything was neat and tidy, just as it always is. I believe she must have been there at midday, for her plate, cutlery and glass were on the draining board, washed up, of course, but not put away. Which isn’t really like her …’ He frowns.
This is all very well, thinks Felix, and these small details may prove useful, but now it’s time to push on to the main point. ‘Mr Stibbins, you have notified the police, haven’t you?’
Ernest’s mournful eyes with their reddened lids stare at him. ‘Naturally, Mr Raynor. But—’ He cannot go on.
‘But?’ Felix prompts, controlling his impatience with some difficulty.
‘I was taken through to speak to a sergeant,’ Ernest says, ‘and he took down Albertina’s name and our address, and, like you, he asked when I had last seen her. But, Mr Raynor, it was the same man to whom I spoke when I tried to make them help me because Albertina was being threatened! I said – and I fear I may have become a little belligerent – “I told you she was in danger and you did nothing, and now she has gone missing! Now do you believe me?”’
‘And what was the response?’
Ernest sighs heavily. ‘The sergeant ordered his constable to come back to the house with me and I had to stand and watch as he went through Albertina’s chest of drawers and her cupboard, and then he said that there appeared to be garments missing, and what about a suitcase, and I had to admit that a suitcase was indeed not in its normal place on top of the wardrobe, and that some articles of clothing and some personal items such as her hairbrush and hand mirror were not in their accustomed places, and then –’ he smothers another sob – ‘and then the constable said it looked very much as if she had left of her own accord and there wasn’t anything they could do, she being over twenty-one and free to come and go as she pleased.’ He folds his arms on Felix’s desk and drops his head onto them.
It is a dreadful, stark tale. Felix can understand the reaction of the policeman – he wonders if it is Constable Bullock – but nevertheless he has enormous sympathy for Ernest Stibbins.
Again, he waits.
As Ernest straightens
up, Felix expects to see tears in his eyes. They are there, but just for an instant something else is there as well, an expression far too fleeting to pin down. All the same, it astonishes Felix, and he has the sudden thought that he wouldn’t like to be the man who has taken Albertina Stibbins – if, indeed, she has been taken – when Ernest catches him.
Such, he reflects, is the power of love.
After a moment, Felix says quietly, ‘Mr Stibbins, I suggest you go home.’
‘But I—’
‘I know that returning to your empty house is the last thing you want to do, but there is always the possibility that your wife may return,’ Felix goes on.
‘What if the police constable is right? What if she’s left me?’ Ernest mumbles, his voice breaking and cracking with pain.
But Felix, who is trying hard not to envisage something far, far worse, doesn’t know how to reply.
Eventually, when Ernest Stibbins doesn’t move, Felix gets to his feet and gently takes hold of his arm. ‘You must go home,’ he says. He wants to make wild promises, such as I’ll set out right away and start looking for her, or I have an idea who may have taken her and I’ll do for him myself if I beat you to it.
He manages to hold his peace.
Lily comes out of the kitchen when Ernest has gone. She is wide eyed. ‘Where is she?’ she whispers. ‘Oh, dear God, what’s happened? What should we do?’
‘I’m going back to St Cyprian’s and I—’ Felix begins to say.
But abruptly he stops, because Mrs Clapper, who usually remains firmly in the kitchen domain all the time, and especially when there are visitors to the Bureau, has emerged and is crouched down just inside the front door.
‘Such goings-on as I never heard!’ her voice floats back to them. ‘People going missing and packing their bags, wives leaving good husbands, grown men sitting sobbing like babies, and now this, whatever it is, on the mat!’ She is tutting, wiping at the small patch with a cloth. ‘Smells like perfume, but it’s tacky and I’ll be lucky if I ever get it off.’
