by Sheila Burns
When Edna spoke, her hoarse voice seemed to be strangely subdued. ‘No, there is nothing I can do, foolish or otherwise. Nothing. I’m glad you told me about the baby. I’m glad about it for Simon too. He won’t like the idea of having a child, and it will do him an awful lot of good.’
‘Maybe you’ve got something there!’ and Lindy half laughed though there was nothing left to laugh about. She went out into the hall and up the stairs with the amber carpet to the first landing. The wind had risen and the woman was crying again. At this moment the sound of the ghost made her furious, and to have this come at a time when so much was happening angered her more. She turned to the corner whence the sound came, and she said, ‘Oh, shut up! We’ve had enough crying for one night. Stop it!’
The noise ceased.
Chapter Nineteen
Her morning tea did not come up at the usual time. Lindy rose, feeling better than she had done for a long while, and dressed and went downstairs. Davies was fiddling about in the kitchen; he came out to her in the hall, the smell of egg and bacon coming with him.
‘Have you seen Mrs. Waterford, m’Lady?’
‘No, I’ve only just come down. I never got any tea.’
‘She isn’t here. I am so glad you’ve come down, as she’s nowhere to be seen.’
‘Oh no, don’t tell me that!’
‘I went to her room, m’Lady, but it’s empty, and if you ask me she’s hopped it. I didn’t like to worry you, as you wasn’t quite the thing. Her things are there, this and that everywhere, but she isn’t here. I believe she’s run away. Did you ever!’
‘But why should she do that?’ A stupid thing to say, but all Lindy could think of.
She got the idea that perhaps Edna had gone to the hut which she had loved, and had slept there, giving herself time to think. Before she had her breakfast Lindy went down the cliffside and into the place, but it was empty, left just as she had last seen it. She stared into it, in her heart she had a vague doubt and apprehension. I’ll ring Joan, she thought, but she rang too late, for Joan had gone out.
She got down some breakfast, then because she simply must see someone, she went along to the thatched bungalow to Ronald. He was in the garden strolling around with a Siamese cat sitting on his shoulder, for he adored them.
‘Ronald?’ she called over the tamarisk hedge.
‘Hello? You’re early!’
‘Yes, I know. Last night I had a long talk with Mrs. Waterford, and she was in some trouble.’ It was difficult to tell him what had really happened. ‘Now she isn’t in the house. She has just disappeared.’
‘Disappeared? Do you mean that she has gone away?’
‘I think so, apparently she did not sleep in her bed last night, and it was after one o’clock that we said good night. The place is exactly as she left it and she does not seem to have taken a single item with her.’
‘I suppose you didn’t have a row?’
‘Not an actual row, we did have a little bit of an argument, but certainly not a row.’
He nodded. ‘She may have gone out for a walk along the cliff, and slipped somewhere. If she twisted her ankle she would not have been able to get back.’
Lindy stared at him rather helplessly. ‘What ‒ what do I do? I’m scared.’
‘She had no local friends whom she might have visited?’
‘Nobody that I know of.’
He was caressing the cat who sat on his shoulder. ‘I think you ought to let the police know that she is missing.’
Inwardly Lindy was afraid of the police, especially now when Simon was abroad, and after everything that she had learnt from Edna last night. Ronald saw her hesitation and her indecision.
‘I think you should let them know. When a person is missing you have to report it, you know.’
‘Very well.’
She felt in something of a daze as she walked back to Fiddler’s Hill, and telephoned the local police station.
The day passed horribly slowly, and when the night came there was still that grim silence as regards Edna, and a new and piercing anguish came to Lindy. She was worried to death. Last night she felt that Edna had been two people. The indignant wife who sought revenge ‒ and money ‒ and then the woman who had suddenly revealed her deep and abiding passion for children, the woman who had always wanted a baby. One could not forget the tone in which she had said it, hoarsely as was the only way she could speak, in a tragic whisper. ‘I wanted a baby more than anything else in the world. Much more.’
Within Lindy there was the burning desire to confide in Joan and tell her the truth, save that this involved too much. It could easily put them all in a terrible position, for Joan was a magistrate. Within a day or two Simon would return, and he must be the one who decided on a plan of action. So she held her peace but found it the most difficult thing to do. Joan was sympathetic, she talked a little, but when Lindy left she had broken no ice and had got nowhere. In fact the person who helped most was Davies.
He had been terribly anxious, and was well aware of everything that Lindy was feeling. In the early afternoon he had gone for a walk along the beach, which he loved doing. He knew that Mrs. Waterford liked this, too, and always believed that it was because the sands were so lonely that there she could discard those hideous dark glasses, for there would be no one to see her. She was safe there. He had today found her dark glasses lying on a table in her sitting-room, where she had apparently left them before going out last night, wherever she had gone.
Going down to the beach he took the rough path over the low earth cliffs, little more than high banks here, and on this path he found her light gauze scarf that she wore over her hair. It was pale mauve shot through with a tinsel stripe, something out of the ordinary, and he had immediately recognised it.
He brought it back to Lindy.
‘You don’t think, m’Lady, that she cleared off and made away with herself?’ he asked anxiously.
‘But why should she have done it?’
‘Moody, I’d have said. She was the sort what would think of that one. Wrapped up in herself and ever so funny when she got that way.’
‘I don’t believe it,’ and she spoke sharply for a cold horror had come over Lindy at the thought. Inwardly she panicked. She tried to hide it from Davies, dubious that already he knew more than he said, but she had got to get through this awful waiting time until Simon returned. She prayed that nothing dreadful had happened.
She sat there making a gallant attempt to calm down, and realising that at all costs the baby must not be hurt; she must put the baby first.
An hour later Fate came to her rescue. A trans-Atlantic call came on the telephone, and through to her. As she took it she felt that in this world there is some strange telepathy between people who love each other, and part of her had unknowingly sent out a desperate S.O.S. which Simon had heard. Never had she been more grateful than for this call. When they spoke to each other she had expected Simon’s voice to be far away, but he might have been in the next room to her. They talked easily.
In an agony, she said, ‘I want you, Simon, and you must come home at once, for something terrible has happened.’
‘I ought to stay for two more days for I have to trace some evidence I want to get. It is about Edna.’ He had never spoken so calmly about her.
So that was why he had gone! At different moments during the day Lindy had wondered faintly about it, now she knew. Had Simon discovered that Edna had never been in the train smash in the States, so he had gone over there to try to trace the trouble to the roots? He must have been distracted with worry. Her pity lay with him for what he must have suffered.
She said, ‘Edna has been here. She was Mrs Waterford.’
‘Never!’
‘Yes, she was, and I found out, and now she has run away. There was no row, not what you could really call a row, for I ‒ I liked her, but afterwards in the dead of night she disappeared. Come home, Simon, do come home.’
His voice changed. She h
eard him choke a little, then he spoke fast. ‘I’ll get the very next plane and send a cable when to expect me. I’ll be back as quickly as ever I can. Where do you think she has gone?’
‘I’ve no idea. Davies found her scarf on the beach path. It’s frightening.’
‘Don’t expect the worst. Sometimes it can be the best, and remember I am coming straight back to you.’
There came interruptions, strange noises, so there was no time to tell him of the baby, and nothing about herself.
Much later she got a cable telling her that Simon would be with her the following afternoon, and now all that she had to do was to wait. She turned sick again and could not eat her meal, and Davies, acting entirely on his own, phoned to Felix to come to her. She knew immediately that it had been Davies when she saw Felix calmly walking into her bedroom where she lay prostrate.
‘Now what’s been going on up here?’ he asked.
‘Mrs. Waterford has entirely disappeared.’
He almost laughed at it. ‘Oh, come now, this isn’t the first cooking trouble you have had, and seeing the way that things are today, it won’t be the last. Why does it make you ill, when there is always the Crown with a good meal when you are starving?’
‘I know,’ and she began to cry again.
He sat down beside her with that calm which comes so easily to medical men, his legs crossed, but she knew that he was watching her closely. ‘So there is a bit more to it than just that Mrs. Waterford has hopped it?’
‘Yes. Yes, there is.’
‘You wouldn’t like to tell me about it?’
‘No, Felix, because this is something which I cannot tell. Try to help me whilst you don’t know. It’s asking a lot, I realise, but try it, do.’
‘You make things a bit difficult, don’t you?’
‘I know.’
He was one of those nice understanding men who do not try to force things, for he must have realised that something was very much the matter. ‘I would suggest a good sleeping draught, you know. You look as if you could do with one, and that should ease things.’
‘Simon is flying back. He will be here tomorrow afternoon.’
‘And for the moment tomorrow afternoon seems to be a very long way off? Well, let me get you to sleep for as much of the time as I can. Try not to worry whatever you think is the matter, for you have another life to bother about, and that life can’t defend itself. Most of the big troubles pass us by sooner than we think they ever can.’
She nodded. She did exactly what he told her, went to bed early and took the sleeping draught, whilst the faithful Davies kept cave, and waited for Edna’s return. Dozing off, Lindy told herself that Davies was one of the lovely gifts the other Fiddler’s Hill had given to her, and she thanked God for him.
She slept far longer than she would have expected to do, and when she woke tomorrow’s midday sun was pouring in through the windows. Davies brought her up a belated breakfast, and when she had eaten it she got up.
She felt better but was still tired out. It was as if she had not slept at all, and now she wondered how long it would be before she could hope to see Simon. The cable had said ‘afternoon’ and it was one o’clock already. She must not be too impatient. Meanwhile there was no news at all about Edna.
A policeman called and was most prosaic. He had in the ordinary course of his duty been in touch with the coastguards, and they said that if the missing woman had put herself in the sea her body would not be washed up for three days. Bodies were taken out to the far sands first, but they always returned. He did not realise how he was setting her teeth on edge. Lindy tried to be calm and remain composed, but was thankful when he left.
It was four in the afternoon when Simon came to the house, and he came in at the run. He rushed into the drawing-room where Lindy was sitting trying to divert her attention and anxiety with some sewing. She had felt too terrible.
‘Sweetie, I’ve got back!’ he cried. ‘I’m home!’
‘Oh Simon, thank God you’ve come back!’ She was half smothered in his arms for a moment and then she began to talk, gasping it out. ‘I went into her room, for I heard the sound of her weeping there and thought there must be something wrong. She had got those awful dark glasses off, and when she turned round and looked at me I knew straight away that it was Edna. I recognised her at once, and she never tried to deny it. I suppose she couldn’t very well.’
Simon did not seem to be as surprised as she would have thought. He sat down by her on the sofa and started to talk.
‘I was getting scared stiff and did not dare tell you a thing. I know you thought I was being beastly, but what could I do?’ He had hold of her hand, almost hurting her for he held it so warmly. ‘It began soon after our marriage and it was almost the first day we were here. I told you that I knew of her death in the train crash and had written to the States for a full list of the casualties. It never came.’
‘Only the solicitor’s letters of notification?’
‘Only that. I wrote to one of the powers-that-be ‒ and when he answered, and the list came, Edna was not on it.’
‘But why didn’t you tell me, Simon? Why not have come to me with it?’
‘I didn’t want to scare you, perhaps for nothing. The Hungarian’s name was not in the cutting either.’
Lindy spoke slowly now. ‘I believe that he left her soon after the smash, and when he saw how dreadfully disfigured she was, poor thing!
‘Nothing could hurt a woman more. I am sure that it embittered her quite horribly, it would have hurt anyone, and then the idea came to her. The idea of blackmailing you. She was biding her time and thinking about it when fate played into her hand. She knew the Inkermans, and apparently had heard about us through them. Then it was one of those queer twists of fortune that we wanted a cook and the thought encouraged her. She grabbed at the chance when it came.’
‘And now she has run away?’
‘Yes.’ Lindy began to cry. When she could tell him more, she began in a weakened voice. ‘When we said good night, she appeared to be quite calm about everything, but had gone very quiet. The morning after you left I got ill, I really felt so bad that Felix had to come round to see me. He says that I ‒ I’m going to have a baby.’
He said nothing for a moment, then suddenly he made a gesture and drew her into his arms and held her close to him so that she could feel his warmth and hear his heart beating. ‘Darling,’ he said, and then after a moment, ‘my own darling.’
‘I told Edna about it, and it seemed to upset her quite a lot, and I had no idea why. She stared at me as though I were a new person, as though suddenly something had changed within herself. She just stared.’
He spoke in a very low voice. ‘Edna was always passionately fond of children. I think possibly she wanted one more than anything else in the world, but there was something wrong with her. I took her to every specialist in Harley Street, and in the end they all came to the same conclusion, and it was that she would never have a child.’
‘She did not tell me that. She just said that she had wanted a baby, and we parted good friends. I thought that she had cooled down then and did not mind my knowing, and we didn’t quarrel. I don’t know what happened but maybe she felt awful and went out for a walk or something. It was one of those lovely nights with a full moon. I went to bed because I felt quite ill and had to be careful because of the baby. She has never come back. She has just disappeared.’
Simon stared helplessly at her. When he could speak, it seemed that his voice had changed a little. ‘We have got to find her, you know, because all this must be put straight. More than ever now that the baby is coming, and we have not got an awful lot of time. We have just got to find Edna.’
‘I notified the police. I went to see Ronald, because there was nobody else I could ask. He does not know the whole thing, of course, just that she has disappeared, and he advised me to go to the police. He said I should have to do it sooner or later, and maybe it was better sooner.’
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‘He was dead right, of course. All this is bound to come out and it is going to be a nine days’ wonder in Alderson Point. My goodness, how they’ll talk! They’ll blame me, for I took what the attorney said to be correct, and married you quite confident that Edna was dead. She had always told me that when she got the chance she would go out to the States, and so I had half expected that was where she would turn up. I suppose she fixed it that way, for Edna would stop at nothing when she was in that mood.’
‘I know.’ There was a long pause, and then Lindy spoke again. ‘I don’t think either of us was really to blame. It was just one of those things.’
‘You were never to blame, sweetie, how could you have been? And we have got to stick together throughout this, even if the whole world turns on us, and it well might. We have always got each other, my darling.’
‘Always.’
He held her in his arms as though he would shut out all the rest of the world, and Lindy felt that they came closer than they had ever been before. She felt happy, so sure of him, so much part of him, and so thankful that he had returned.
Davies scraped them up a meal. When it came to it he was very much the handyman who could do most anything. Ethel stayed on late to give him a hand, and they had to admit that everyone was being very kind. It was something to be so sure of people who were for certain loyal.
Afterwards Simon went along to the police station, for he thought that he had better present himself there and try to discover if they had found anything. When he returned he was thoroughly angry with them, for the dilatoriness of the police sometimes drove him mad, he said. They had no further news.
It was a perfect evening, with a sweet light lingering for a while and throwing a reflected glory from the moon rising gently out of the sea. The darkness growing deeper, yet never deep, there were the stars shining in a maze. It was such an exquisite night that both of them felt that they wanted air, and they went out together hand in hand. They went down to the hut at first, with the estuary pale before them and the land on the far side completely blotted out with distance. Then they went back on to the headland and walked across the rough grass and down the cliffside by the path still honeyed by the eternal scent of gorse, and down on to the spreading sands.