Lady Mislaid

by Claire Rayner

  The manager was still bustling about her, but now more than anything she wanted to get rid of him, to have time to think again. So, when he offered her a newspaper, she accepted it gratefully, and opened it purposefully. And to her relief, the manager took the hint, and went away.

  She ordered coffee and toast and marmalade, and while she waited for it, began to read the paper in earnest. Maybe there would be something there that would give her another precious clue to solve, some accounts of – what? – Earthquakes, fires, road accidents – anything that might explain why she found herself in a strange hotel, in an unknown place, a year later than it ought to be.

  Doggedly she read the paper from front to back. No earthquakes. No fires. Nothing that could offer any clues at all. There was one story, however, that did make her feel a sudden pricking of tears behind her lids, but even as she read it, she knew why it made her feel that way. And she also discovered that her memory was intact up until that time a week before her twenty-first birthday, which was one comfort. Cold comfort, but letter than nothing.

  It was odd, like one of those very futuristic films which jump about in time. Here she was reading a newspaper story, while unrolling in her mind was the story of a very much younger Abigail, a girl who had been bitterly unhappy.

  “The police are seeking a woman whom it is hoped will help them with investigations into the disappearance of nine year old Daniel Tenterden, her stepson.”

  A stepmother, Abigail remembered, and felt again the aching frustration of trying to love a woman who didn’t like her, didn’t want her–

  “–foul play is suspected,” she read, “since a heavy implement, on which were found traces of blood and hair, was found in the woman’s home–”

  The times I wanted to hit her till she was dead, cried young Abigail, deep inside her mind of adult Abigail. The way I hated her–

  “–the boy’s father has returned from a stay abroad to help police in their investigations into his son’s whereabouts, and it is hoped he will be able to assist them find his also missing wife–”

  If she hadn’t turned up, Daddy wouldn’t have died, young Abigail wept, beating helplessly behind the eyes of grown-up reading Abigail, making tears blur the print. If only he’d been able to come back to help me, but he never did, he never did. He was dead, poor, poor man, he was dead. Poor, poor Abigail–

  Her hands shaking a little, Abigail put down the paper, and made herself eat some of the crisp toast, drink the black sweet coffee. It’s been a long time since I remembered, she thought bleakly. A long time. Her father’s death, just a few weeks after his second marriage. Her resentment of the woman who so patently found her a drag and a bore. Her utter conviction that it was the marriage that had hastened his death – unjust as she now knew, but so deeply ingrained in her that she would never really rid herself of it.

  But – and resolutely, Abigail pulled herself back into the very real present – at least I know who I was. And that means who I still am. They can call me Mrs. Miles till they’re blue in the face, but it doesn’t alter facts. I’m Abigail Lansdon. I must be, or I wouldn’t remember so much about being me, would I?

  The childishness of the logic made her smile suddenly, and aware again of the man at the opposite table, she put her hand up to her mouth to hide the quirk of her lips. And saw again that wedding ring.

  Covertly, she rested her hand again on the table, and looked more closely. Gently, she moved the ring down her finger, twisting it to make it slip over the skin, for it was rather tight. And saw very clearly the white make where it had rested. The rest of her hand was lightly tanned, but there, encircling that fourth finger, a white mark–

  I’ve worn it – how long? she asked herself miserably. You don’t get a mark like that in five minutes, do you? Am I Mrs. Miles? Or Nurse Lansdon? She rolled the name around her mind, tasting it. Mrs. Miles, Mrs. Miles. But there was no answering frisson, no clue at all.

  Again, that sick panic climbed in her, and in an effort to control it, she got up. Physical action would help, she thought absurdly. Keep yourself moving, girl–

  Beyond the dining room she could see a pair of doors, glass doors framing greenery and the wrought iron tracing of a glazed room beyond. To get back to her room she’d have to pass the big man, now drinking coffee and again staring consideringly at her. And she couldn’t do that. She didn’t know why, but she couldn’t walk within touching distances of that big sombre figure.

  Moving a smoothly as she could, she went towards the glass doors, and slipped though them closing them behind her softly as though any noise she might make would bring that frightening watcher after her.

  The conservatory, for that it clearly was, smelled damp and hot and earthy, and she slid gratefully onto a wooden bench that was almost buried under the exuberant growth of trailing ivy that hung from the roof above it. There’s probably spiders, the voice in her mind warned. I don’t care if there are, she told the voice, returning to the silent conversation with herself she had been conducting all morning. I don’t care if there are.

  “Have you done your floor, then?” the voice sounded so close the jumped, and then shrank back amongst the trailing green, not wanting at this moment to see anybody.

  “No – I’m not going to, neither, not till gone eleven. Finish early and that creep’ll only find you something else to do. I’ve had some, I tell you. I’m not on piece work, I told him last time, and you can do what you like about it. Still, it saves a row if I don’t get finished too early–”

  Gingerly, Abigail peered through the greenery to the far side of the conservatory, but all she could see was a flash of white, there was so much vegetation filling the available space. A smell of cigarette tobacco filled the air gently, and she relaxed. Hotel staff, that was all, sneaking an illicit cigarette. Just like nurses–

  “You very busy, then?” the first voice said.

  “No – only got four. But I’ll tell you what–” the voice dropped a little. “One of ’em’s right off, I think.”

  “Off? Nutty you mean?”

  “No – listen–” and the voice dropped again, so low that Abigail could only hear snatches of what was said. Not that she wanted to, anyway. Right now, all she wanted to do was sit here in peace, and think, to continue on her private clue-hunt.

  “Go on,” the first voice said, suddenly louder. “You’re just making it up. I don’t believe a word of it. You’re always imagining things like that. Like that feller last year you said was having it off with–”

  “This isn’t like that,” the voice insisted. “I tell you, I had a real close look at her, when I took her tea. And it is her – it’s just like the picture – here, you look for yourself.”

  There was a rustle of newspaper, and then suddenly the door from the dining room opened, and the manager came hurrying through.

  Abigail took one frightened look at him, and got up, but he didn’t see her, walking rapidly to the far corner of the conservatory. She moved quickly then, her heart suddenly beating hard, her mind spinning. That woman with the newspaper had been the chambermaid, the one who had brought her tea–

  The manager’s voice was raised suddenly, shouting at the maids, and grateful for the cover the noise afforded, Abigail slipped back through the double doors into the dining room. The big man was gone; there were only a couple of waiters lazily clearing tables. She hurried across the room, out into the lobby, and out through the open door, not knowing where he was heading.

  It wasn’t the front door as she had imagined, but led to a cobbled terrace that opened on to a wide quiet garden. And along the terrace were chairs and a table, a wrought iron table, with a row of newspapers on it. One of them, one of those papers carries a clue, Abigail heard her secret voice shout at her. Go through all of them at once. One of them will be the one those women were looking at, and it has a picture in it. A picture of who?

  CHAPTER TWO

  She went through the papers with a cold deli
beration that almost surprised her. One after the other, business page, home news, cartoons, gossip diary, fashion, classifieds, sport, folding each one neatily when she had finished. It was one of the last, a tabloid, that carried it, tucked between a picture of a toothily grinning girl in a swimming suit so tight that her breasts bubbled over the top, and the announcement of a brand new contest. ‘Win Your Dream Home, worth £5000. Enter Today–’

  There looking blandly up at her, the lines a little blurred, with trees and oblivious passers-by in the background, was her own face, the same narrow grave face with the long uptilted eyes that looked back at her from her mirror so short a time ago.

  I wonder where it was taken? she thought absurdly, and peered at the anonymous background behind the slight figure that was hers, yet seemed so strange. Looks like a park – Regent’s Park, maybe. When did I have a photograph taken there? I can’t remember–

  She swallowed then, dryly, and forced herself to read the words beneath the picture. The print was big and bold, shouting blackly ‘DO YOU KNOW THIS WOMAN?’ and then running on in more subdued print, but with a breathless quality in the words.

  ‘This is the woman the police very much want to talk to, needing her help in seeking nine year old Daniel Tenterden, the quiet dark-haired schoolboy who disappeared from home leaving only an ominously blood stained marble candlestick. Is she seeking him too, or does she know what has happened to him? If she sees this, or if anyone else recognizes her, the police want to talk to her–’

  The panic rose again, higher and higher, so that the edges of her vision blackened and swirled sickeningly.

  I won’t faint, I won’t – it isn’t going to happen – but even as she began to let the words collect in her mind, she was moving, running headlong across the cropped grass of the lawn, towards its demure rim of trees and bushes. Ignoring the way branches snatched at her sweater and hair, she burst through the shrubbery and beyond, until the trees thickened, close behind her, and delivered her headlong rush into a small grassy clearing. And there she let her knees fold, let herself crouch against the rough bark of a tree, to shake helplessly, staring unseeingly into the undergrowth that wrapped the little open patch in seclusion.

  I don’t believe it. I don’t believe it. It can’t be me. Some other woman, not me. I just look like her, that’s all, it can’t be me–

  But it was, the hateful inner voice said. That was a picture of you. Even a maid who’d only seen you once spotted it. It was you.

  But was does it all mean? Abigail thought piteously. Is this child dead? And if he is, did I have anything to do with it? Is that the emotional trauma that brought on this horrible terrifying not-knowingness, that sliced a year out of your consciousness? And this husband? What about him? Can so – so violent an experience as marriage be sponged out of memory just like that? Stepmotherhood – can that too disappear so completely? What went wrong with the marriage anyway, if it did happen? Why was he abroad after all – well, it can’t be even a year of marriage. Still the honeymoon–

  “Oh, God,” she moaned softly. “Please, help me remember. Please make me remember. Give it back to me, please. I can cope with anything, if I understand, but not when I don’t know. Please –” And she closed her eyes tightly, willing her memory to come back.

  Only blackness, with faint sparkled of light in it, spinning burrs of light that enlarged and then shrank to infinity, and started to spin again, bigger and bigger. Inside her closed lids she fixed her gaze on one of the spinning burrs and it ran away into the blackness, enlarged, reddened–

  She saw then, saw as though on an incredibly, remote cinema screen, a room, big – yes big, for the corners were dark and shadowed, and there was heavy dark furniture. The screen widened and the picture came closer. A low table. A lamp, with a red fringed shade on it – she could see that with intense clarity, the way a piece of the fringe was rucked up – a pool of light spilling over onto the floor. And in the pool of light, a small figure, lying still. Dark curly hair, with a patch where the curls shone stickily in the glow from the light, and her own hand coming out, her own hand with the scar on the knuckle of the fore-finger, the scar left by that stupid parrot on children’s medical who’d pecked her. Her hand, turning the child’s head, moving him, so that the face came into the picture, blank, battered, the eyes turned up so that a rim of bluish white showed under the dark lashes – and then the burr of light, spinning into infinity, enlarging again. Only the dark redness of the closed lids to look at.

  Slowly, feeling as shaken and weak as though she had just run a mile, she let her eyes open, let the daylight come through her lashes, let her eyes stare unseeingly into the greenness – and then sharply, she focused, and felt sick terror wash over her.

  Leaning against a tree on the other side of the tiny clearing was the big dark man from the hotel. She stared at him, dumbly, unable to move or think, and he looked back at her, not moving, but with the same unblinking stare that had so perturbed her at breakfast. And then he smiled, lifting the corners of his lips.

  “Don’t look like that.” His voice was very deep, but there was a clarity in the crisp way he bit off his words. “I won’t eat you.”

  She tried to stretch her stiff lips into the semblance of an answering smile, thinking confusedly – I’ve got to put on a show – mustn’t let anyone see there’s anything wrong – and she had almost succeeded when he added, in a conversational tone. “And I won’t give you away, either, Mrs. Tenterden.”

  “No!” she almost shouted the word. “I’m not– I’m not–” she swallowed hard. “I’m Abigail Lansdon. That is, at the hotel they called me–”

  “Mrs. Miles,” he said softly. “I know. Why is that, do you suppose?”

  “I don’t know,” Abigail couldn’t keep back the awareness of her own helplessness, couldn’t stop her voice sounding pitiful. And as she spoke, the tears started, welling from her eyes, blurring her vision, making her body shake.

  The big man said nothing, standing there quietly against a tree, just watching her. And oddly, his very impassivity helped, made the tears stop coming, so that she stopped weeping, and took a deep shuddering breath.

  “I think I know why,” he said then, as she looked up sharply.

  “What?”

  “Why you signed the register as Mrs. Miles last night, when you arrived here.”

  “I–” she shook her head, trying to clear it. “I did what?”

  “Signed the register as Mrs. Miles,” he said with a heavy sort of patience that sent a twinge of irritation though her.

  “Did I?”

  “Come, my dear young lady! Surely you recall what you wrote in the register!” The scorn was back in his face, the same scorn that had so angered her earlier. And she leaned forwards, her hands flat on the ground on each side of her, and shouted at him, letting all the frustration and fear of the past couple of hours boil over into the luxury of fury.

  “No I don’t! I don’t remember a bloody thing, not one thing! I’m running around in some crazy nightmare and I can’t make any sense out of any of it, and wish I were dead, do you hear me? And why don’t you stop staring at me as though I were a moth in a bottle, and go to hell, whoever you are–”

  “In due course, I have no doubt I shall,” he said equably. “Have you quite finished that tirade? Has it made you feel better?”

  Feeling suddenly foolish, she leaned back, dusting her hands free of grass and earth in what she knew was a childish gauche gesture. And nodded sulkily. “Good,” he said. “As it I see it, you are in need of some assistance – friendship, perhaps we could call it? And since there is no one else about who seems willing to volunteer for the job – except of course the manager, whom perhaps you prefer?–”

  She made a grimace, and he smiled faintly. “Very well. You will have to settle for me. And since I appear to have some information about you that you lack, and need, I have no doubt you will see the wisdom of accepting my offer.”

  It was strange how
very much calmer she felt, how much more in command not only of herself but her situation. She settled herself more comfortably against the reassuring strength of the tree, and stared up at him, curiously. So calm, and so quietly insulting – yet with something about him that made her feel that perhaps he could be trusted, could help her find a way out of the maze.

  “Who are you?” she asked abruptly.

  He moved for the first time, sketching a mockingly ironic bow.

  “My name if Max Cantrell, Mrs. Miles.”

  Abigail flushed. “Don’t call me that! It isn’t my name.”

  “It’s as much your’s as Tenterden. Your husband’s first name is Miles, so you are usually known as Mrs. Miles Tenterden. You simply dropped the surname when you arrived here last night.”

  Anger began to stir again. “How in hell do you know so much about me? And how do I know you’re right?”

  “It’s my job to know facts. I’m a journalist.”

  “I see! This begins to make some sense. Friendship, you offered? Of course – in exchange for which you fill your paper with all the juiciest garbage you can dig out. That sort of friendship you can keep–”

  She got to her feet, shaking dead leaves from her skirt.

  “I am not entirely without self-interest, I admit,” Max said, unperturbed. “But what choice do you have? Who else will help you if I don’t? The manager? I can imagine how much help he’d be. Other guests here? The chambermaids?”

  She began to move towards the edge of the clearing and the broken gap in the shrubbery through which she had burst.

  “I’ll go to – to – the police,” and indeed there didn’t seem anything else she could do. The idea was so obvious – why hadn’t she thought of it earlier?

  “Oh certainly,” Max still hadn’t moved. “And get locked up for your pains. And then what hope of finding what happened to Daniel?”

  “Daniel!?”