by Ann Purser
Poor Enid. Poor little woman. But then, as Lois walked back through the wood, Bill’s doubts about the Abraham family came back to her. Was Enid really a poor little woman? Had she been taken, or had she gone freely, laughing, hiding with her brother until it was safe for them to vanish together? And why should they choose this particular time? Had they both thought that as a result of Jamie’s incursion into the inner sanctum of the mill, the police would be hotter on the trail of Edward?
And then, that recurring question: what had he done to make his escape so vital? Killing a dog, blackmailing a sick man? Neither of these seemed so desperate that Enid would have to go with him…unless she was implicated.
Lois shook her head. She didn’t know the answer, but she was still stubbornly on Enid’s side, whatever was said by Bill or Derek – or Hazel, or any of the others. Innocent until proved guilty, she thought, and smiled wryly at something so easy-sounding. She came back to the track that led to her car, and whistled the dog. He’d been distracted by a fleeing rabbit, and she turned to look, whistling again, a shrill two-fingered whistle she’d learned from the boys.
“Not bad for a woman,” said a voice behind her. She froze.
Cowgill stood there, smiling. Her heart slowed down to its normal beat and she said angrily, “So they let you out, did they!”
“That’s a very fetching hat, Lois,” was all he said, and began to walk into the wood, heading for their meeting place. “Come on,” he said, as she stood still, undecided what to do. “You’ve got things to tell me, I expect.”
The dog growled at Cowgill, and Lois patted him approvingly. She had a lot of thinking to do before revealing all she had found to Inspector Cowgill. And anyway, where was he when she was faced with a dangerous-looking cave in the dark wood?
“Stuff you,” she said, and headed for her car.
§
Derek was home early. “I finished the job,” he said, “and it wasn’t worth starting anything else. Where you bin?” he added, watching as she took off muddy shoes.
“Alibone,” she said shortly, and continued, “and yes, I met Cowgill there, and we had it off in the mud, ‘cause that’s what turns him on.”
She watched Derek’s face fall and felt very ashamed of herself. “Sorry, sorry, love,” she said, and put her arms around his neck. “It’s just that bugger really gets to me. I’ve a good mind to forget the whole thing.”
“But you won’t,” said Derek, stroking her heavy, damp hair. “Come on, now. Tell us what happened.”
Lois gave him all the details, and he whistled softly when she got to the tipped-over chair and the New Brooms pen. “Blimey, so she was there,” he said.
Lois nodded. “Sure of it,” she said, and went on to describe her meeting with Cowgill and his stupid arrogance.
“He could have had a bad day at his meeting,” said Derek tentatively.
“Whose side are you on?” said Lois.
“Enid’s, funnily enough,” he said, and hugged her more tightly. “If you think she’s a victim, that’s enough for me. And now we got to find her,” he added, as Gran came into the room and said she was glad to see love’s young dream was alive and kicking.
She smiled as she said it though, well aware that it was their kitchen, their house, and she was just a guest. But a paying guest, she thought happily, as she set the table for tea, and took out a cake she’d spent all afternoon baking.
“I suppose you were talking about Enid?” she said. Lois had gone off to change and Derek sat at the table with a cup of tea.
He nodded. “Seems she was hidden in the woods, but he’s taken her off again.”
“He, meaning Edward?” said Gran.
“Yep. Lois is convinced. But where we start, God knows,” he added. “The police still don’t seem too bothered about it…yet…”
“What d’you mean by that?” Gran looked at Derek suspiciously. Had he told her all of it? They knew she was fond of Enid Abraham, and perhaps wouldn’t want to worry her more than necessary. But she probably knew the woman better than any of them. She believed strongly that Enid had done nothing bad. She wouldn’t be capable of it. But there was this other thing…Enid’s affection for her brother, whatever he had done. She had heard it in Enid’s voice, when she spoke of their childhood together. Sibling affection could be strong, in spite of everything. And if they really were twins, well…
“I just mean,” answered Derek, “that it is possible, from what is known of that ruddy brother, that if he’s in a tight corner he could do something violent. He’s killed a dog.”
“Oh yes, somebody who’s capable of that could do anything,” said Gran. “I had a neighbour in Tresham who kept a dog so’s when her husband came in drunk, he could kick it instead of lashing out at her. When the dog died, he stopped her getting another – said it wasn’t so much fun…”
Lois had come in, followed by the kids who’d been watching television until summoned for tea. “Now,” she said, “let’s forget all about Enid Abraham and have our tea. What’s new from Tresham School?”
“Nuthin’,” chorused Josie and Douglas.
But Jamie said, “What about Miss Abraham? Why haven’t they found her? What’s happened to her, Mum? Can’t we do something?”
Thirty-Four
Enid was lying curled up on the back seat of a car. She did not know which car, as the blindfold was still on. Edward had taken her, not too roughly this time, out of the cave, leading her by the hand. He’d not answered when she had asked if it was her car, but the smell was wrong. It was unpleasantly musty, old.
“Don’t pull me too fast, dear,” she had said kindly, as they stumbled through the wood. “I can’t see where I’m going, you know.” In the long, solitary hours in the damp darkness, she had thought everything through very carefully. She knew that Edward had worked out a plan, calculated to avoid discovery of something he had done that was so bad that it had unhinged him. Temporarily, she hoped. The best thing would be to humour him, and wait for her chance. Edward had always been unreliable and unstable, and Mother had explained many times to Enid that he couldn’t help it, it was the way he was made. And so excuses had been made, cover-ups engineered. People he had cheated or annoyed had been paid off or pacified. No wonder they were so hard up at the mill! The money she had earned at New Brooms had been the first she had had to spend on herself for years.
Now they drew to a halt. The journey had been only about fifteen minutes, Enid reckoned. Edward turned off the engine, telling her to stay down until he came to fetch her. She did as she was told.
A short while later, the car door opened and her father’s voice said, “Good God! What has he done now?” She felt her blindfold being untied, and sunlight flooded in, blinding her. Then she felt gentle hands helping her out of the car, and when she finally opened her eyes, there was her father, and tears were once more running unchecked down his sunken cheeks.
“Father! You look terrible! Where’s he gone?”
Walter gestured towards the mill house. “Come on in. I’ll get you a cup of tea,” he said, and they walked across to the door hand in hand, Enid stumbling with a sudden loss of balance.
“What time is it?” she said.
“One o’clock,” said her father. They were in the kitchen now, and the old dog rushed across to greet her. The cats, too, came over and rubbed against her legs.
“Where’s Edward?” Enid said.
“Around,” said her father, and put on the kettle.
“I must ring Mrs M,” Enid said. “Explain what’s happened…well,” she added, seeing her father’s face, “I’ll make a good excuse. Then we can get back to normal.”
Walter slowly shook his head. “Fraid not, dear,” he said.
“Why not?”
“Edward’ll tell you,” he said, and poured boiling water into a teapot, swilling it round and tipping it out into the sink. The tea-making ritual was the same as ever, but nothing else was, Enid realized. In the corner of the kitchen s
tood three suitcases, bulging and ready for transit.
“Where are we going?” she said, and her voice quavered. No answer from her father.
“And what about Mother?” Enid felt panic rising. Nothing would get her mother to leave her room now, let alone leave the mill. Three suitcases? Why not four?
She looked wildly around the kitchen. “Where is he! Please tell me what’s going on, Father!” He did not look at her, but continued to fill the teapot.
Desperate now, Enid walked quickly over to the passage and into the hall. Before her father could stop her, she was knocking at her mother’s door. “Mother!” she shouted. “Let me in, please!”
“Enid! Come back here!” shouted her father.
But Enid continued to knock, hurting her knuckles, until she heard a voice from inside the room.
“It’s not locked.”
She stopped knocking, her heart pounding. Very gently she turned the doorknob and stepped gingerly into the dark interior. A figure sat at the small table where Mother wrote her notes to the outside world. Enid peered through the gloom. “Mother?” She could see the old cardigan over bent shoulders and a tousled head turned away from her.
“Mother?” she repeated.
Suddenly the figure whipped around. And laughed.
Enid screamed. From under the unkempt hair a white face with burning dark eyes looked out at her. “Edward!” screamed Enid. And then: “Where’s Mother! What have you…”
She fainted then, and between them Walter and Edward picked her up and laid her gently on her mother’s unmade and unsavoury bed.
Thirty-Five
Lois drove slowly towards Bell’s Farm. She had arranged to clean today, not Enid’s usual day but the best she could do under the circumstances. Rosie had said the afternoon was not very convenient, but in a saccharine voice had sympathized with the difficulties Lois must be having. Lois bit her tongue, and set off early, planning to stop by the bridge over the mill stream and think. It was quiet and cool there, and she could watch the moving water and try to work out what Edward Abraham would be likely to do if he needed to vanish for good.
Bright sun percolated through the newly leafed trees, and the stream, now tamed and sparkling, flowed gently under the bridge. It was a lovely place, Lois reflected. The mill, too, could have been idyllic. The Abrahams must have had high hopes when they arrived here from Edinburgh. Lois had never been to Edinburgh, but imagined it as a cold, northern, granite city, with its castle looming over the columns of bagpipers she had seen on television, marching and playing their haunting music for shivering tourists.
Why had the Abrahams chosen Cathanger? Hadn’t Enid said something about her mother coming from round here? She stared down into the water, running clear now over mossy stones, and guessed it was because Cathanger was comparatively remote. Nowhere in the middle of England was really remote, but this was a place you could certainly keep yourself to yourself. If nosy neighbours had been the problem, then Cathanger was the answer. It had obviously worked, too, for years. Stories about the Abrahams had circulated, but nothing really worrying. A spot of embezzlement, a reclusive woman and an unfriendly old man.
No, it had all gone along smoothly until Enid had decided to join New Brooms. Lois could see that clearly. The poor woman had finally made a stand, and in opening up the closed world of the Abrahams, had landed herself in this mess. Lois turned away from the bridge. Then the night of the flood came back to her, and she looked again at the stream, with its dam of thicket and undergrowth. She had been terrified that night. That rolling thing in the swollen, muddy water. That white shape so like a face flashing out into the dark and quickly disappearing. She shuddered.
Time to get going. She drove on to Bell’s Farm, scarcely glancing at the mill, certain that Enid was not there.
§
“Ah, there you are, Mrs Meade.” Rosie was bright and forgiving, relieved to see Lois. After all, she would be getting extra service from the boss. “No news of Enid?” she added.
Lois said she’d heard nothing, but asked if Rosie had seen any sign of activity at the mill, anything odd going on.
Rosie shook her head. “It’s difficult to see down there,” she said, “with all those trees and the hedges allowed to grow so high.”
“How about Anna?” Lois knew the girl took the new puppy for walks. “Is she around?” She might have seen something, without knowing it was important.
“Gone to college, I’m afraid,” Rosie said, “but I’ll ask her when she comes back. Really, I don’t know why she bothers to go to English classes. Her English is nearly perfect now.”
“Love,” said Lois flatly. She had heard through the grapevine that Anna the au pair had an Italian boyfriend from college.
“What? Did you say ‘love’!” Rosie was all ears. This would jolly up things a bit. She had always heard that au pairs were a danger in the house, seducing the husband and causing ructions, but so far Anna had seemed bloodless, uninterested in men or boys. Now this was more like it!
Lois told her what she knew, and they agreed it was a promising development. “She’s been altogether too shut in on herself. Spends hours in her room, brooding. You know the sort of thing, Mrs Meade.” Rosie went off to make a cup of tea, humming happily to herself.
Lois carried on cleaning. Upstairs, she adjusted the curtains in Rosie’s bedroom and looked out. She could see over the field and high hedges towards the mill. The roofs of house and barns were visible, but the yard and the mill pond were hidden. A dark, private place.
Then it struck her. A dark, private place, and the perfect spot to hide. A double bluff, then? She hadn’t even bothered to look down the track when driving past, sure that Enid was not there. But supposing she was, still held captive?
Lois flew downstairs, and, yelling as she passed Rosie that she’d be back shortly, she ran as she hadn’t run for years, out of the farm gate and down the lane towards the mill. As she approached the track, she slowed down. Nearly there, now. No good storming in, all guns blazing. She would make it a normal, reasonable call to enquire after Enid’s health, checking that she really did not intend to return. Yes, that would be best.
She walked briskly, and just as she was about to turn down the track, a car came up it towards her, going fast. It was a dull blue, patched clumsily here and there with paint that did not quite match.
She realized in time that it was not going to stop. Jumping on to the verge, she looked as closely as possible through the dirty windows. She was almost sure it was Mr Abraham in the passenger seat, and probably Edward driving. On the back seat she caught a brief glimpse of a woman huddled in the corner, looking out at her. It was Enid. Her expression was blank, her face dirty, and tears made tracks down her pale cheeks.
Thirty-Six
The rest of the afternoon went slowly. Lois determined not to say anything to Rosie Charrington, and invented a fairly plausible excuse for running off. She thought she saw Douglas on a bike, she said, and since he should have been at school, she had rushed out to catch him. But it hadn’t been him, and she was sorry for the interruption.
Rosie accepted this without question. She was chiefly concerned with the news that Anna had a boyfriend. At coffee time, she pestered Lois with questions that she could not answer, and in the end, Lois said why didn’t she wait until Anna returned, when she could have all the juicy details straight from the horse’s mouth? This had caused a small chill to descend, but Rosie quickly forgot, and the afternoon ground on.
At last it was time to leave, and Lois drove slowly and carefully down the mill track, pulling up outside one of the barns and looking around to make sure the car had not returned. A terrible din came from the chicken shed, and a cow contributed to the chorus from the barn opposite. Good God, thought Lois, they’ve gone off and left the animals shut up! Well, she had a remedy for that. Bill, farmer’s son, would know exactly what to do. But first, the house. After all, the whole earful might return any minute. Prepared for a confr
ontation with the reclusive old mother, who had certainly not been in the car, Lois marched across to the door. To her surprise, she found it half-open.
They’d left in a hurry. That was immediately apparent. Dirty pots and pans stood in the sink, a pile of overalls for the wash scattered around the floor. The dog growled, standing at bay and prepared to attack this intruder. The cats fled through the open door.
“Here, boy,” said Lois, holding out a friendly hand, and hoping to God it would not be bitten off. But the sheepdog crawled slowly towards her on its belly, suspicious at first, and then, this time deciding she was friend not foe, wagged its tail tentatively in greeting. First hurdle cleared, then. Lois knew the way to the mother’s room was through the hall, and walked boldly through. Take the enemy by surprise, that would be her strategy.
The first door she opened led into the dining-room Jamie had described. And there was the piano, the cause of all this trouble. She backed out. Next, the one opposite. She knocked, sure that this must be the mother’s, and then noticed that it stood ajar. There was no reply to her “Hello? Mrs Abraham?”, and so she pushed open the door and went in. The room was empty, and the smell was overpowering.
A quick glance told her, once more, that the exit had been hurried. Clothes strewn everywhere, and a tray of food left half-eaten. On a small desk she saw a pile of books tipped over, and, turning to get out as quickly as possible, caught her foot against a rucked-up rug. She looked down and saw a book, half-hidden. She picked it up and found that it was a leather-bound diary. Opening it at random, she saw handwriting so small that she was unable to read it in the gloom. She slipped it into her pocket and left the room swiftly, holding her nose. Bloody hell! – what was Enid thinking of, allowing it to get into this state?
Lois walked quickly round the rest of the house, and found nobody. She had seen a large key hanging by the back door, and, sure now that nobody was coming back, took it, locked up and went back to her car. There she phoned Bill.