by Anne Morice
“Well, that’s how my mind was working then, mind you, but it isn’t any longer. Except for going down again to meet the boys at four o’clock, I stayed indoors the whole day, so as to be near the phone, but there was only one call. It did come from the studios, as far as I could make out, only it wasn’t Mike, it was somebody wanting to speak to him. Around eleven, that must have been. It was funny really because he didn’t give his full name, just said, ‘This is Sandy speaking’, and then when I said Mike wasn’t in he rang off before I could say another word.
“Well no, now you mention it, I couldn’t swear he was anything to do with A.I.P., only the call came through a switchboard operator, so I just took it for granted. I don’t know where else he could have been calling from.
“It’s funny you should ask that because he did have some sort of accent. American, it sounded like. Anyway, after that there was only one other thing to break the monotony and that was when the man came to read the electric meter. That was the worst moment of all, in a funny way, because he came in one of those greyish sort of vans they use and it was almost the same size and colour as our old estate car. When I caught sight of it I thought for a moment that Mike had come back and I was just starting to tell myself what an old silly I’d been when I saw this man in uniform walking up the drive. I felt so awful then that I think I began to cry. I couldn’t even tell him where the meter was and, poor man, he hadn’t been to us before. He must have thought I was dotty or something. Still, I pulled myself together in the end and after that the day just sort of dragged on until it was time to meet the boys. They had their supper at the usual time and I made up some yarn about their Daddy having to fill in unexpectedly for someone on location and that he’d probably be back tomorrow or the next day, and then we’d be able to do all the things he’d promised us, but I could see that at the back of their minds they didn’t really believe me. No, they didn’t argue exactly, but they just kept changing the subject every time I mentioned it. It gave me the weirdest sensation, like trying to push a needle through a brick wall. It got so bad that after I’d put them to bed I had to go out to look at the hedge to convince myself that I hadn’t dreamt it all. It was quite a relief to find the wheelbarrow and shears still there and everything just as I’d remembered it.
“Well yes, I suppose I can account for it, if I’m honest with you. For one thing, they’d been asleep when he got home the night before, so they didn’t get a glimpse of him on Tuesday morning, but there was more to it than that. To tell you the truth, Tessa, I had a kind of breakdown a year or two back. Nothing serious, but I kept getting these migraines and dizzy spells and so on. I know Mike did his best to make them understand that it was only a passing thing, but you can never tell with kids, can you? I’m sure he meant well but I think they got it into their heads I was half cracked or something.
“Well, let’s see, where was I? Yes, that’s right, Tuesday evening. Still no word from Mike and I was so worried I didn’t go to bed at all that night. I didn’t see how I could and leave the door unlocked and I wasn’t even sure that Mike had taken his key. So I sat up and watched the T.V. until it closed down, though I couldn’t tell you the first thing about any of the programmes I saw, and then I dozed off on the sofa for an hour or two. Luckily, it gets light very early this time of year and I got up about five and made myself some tea and did a bit of cleaning up to take my mind off things, and then after I’d taken the boys down to the bus I plucked up courage to ring the studios.
“No, it wasn’t so much that he minds me phoning him there, though he’s not too keen on it, as it happens. The reason I’d put off doing it before was that it would be like throwing away my last hope. I suppose I knew in my heart of hearts that he wouldn’t be there, and then I’d really have to face up to the fact that he’d walked out on us, without even a word of explanation.
“Anyway, I didn’t ask for him personally. I spoke to the Studio Manager, Mr Ferguson. Hateful beast he is, too. And he didn’t know a thing. I felt like putting the receiver down as soon as I heard that, but I had to listen to him going on and on, pretending to be very worried about Mike, although you could tell he was revelling in it. There’s something so mean and spiteful about him and I bet the story was all round the studios in five minutes. They’ll all have been laughing their heads off about it.
“No, I suppose it doesn’t really matter, but Mike won’t be very pleased about it when he goes in to work next week, as I think he’s bound to. Even if he’s walked out on me and the boys he’ll still have his living to earn and you know as well as I do that jobs, steady ones at any rate, aren’t all that easy to come by in the film business. That’s mainly why I didn’t go to the police. I thought I’d done him enough damage already by phoning the studios. If you tell me there’s no other way, then I suppose I’ll have to bring them into it, but I do wish there was just one thing I could try first. Mike was always telling me how clever you were and I thought you might have some ideas.”
It goes without saying that this final appeal put me on my mettle and I said:
“Perhaps I can offer you a compromise. If you don’t mind, I’d like to talk to Robin about it. He’ll be home for dinner and I could sound him out. On a purely personal level, naturally. It needn’t go any further and at the very least he’ll know whether there’s anything constructive your local police could do at this stage. If not, then nothing has been lost. If he thinks there might be, then it will be up to you to decide. Is that a deal?”
“Oh, all right, if that’s the best you can think of,” she said sullenly, then took herself in hand and looking up at me smiled bleakly.
“Excuse me, Tessa, I didn’t mean to be rude. It’s all got so much on top of me that I don’t know what I’m saying half the time. It’s very good of you to bother, and I do appreciate it, truly I do. Just telling you about it has done me good. I’d better go now, though, or I’ll miss the two-fifty and it wouldn’t do for the boys to come back to an empty house. Could I give you a ring in the morning, when you’ve talked to your husband?”
“No, it might be better if I were to call you. I’m not quite sure what time I’ll be going out. Let me write down your number.”
It was quite inexplicable, but this simple request seemed to undo everything that had been built up. Brenda’s mouth sagged open and she stared at me for a moment in petrified silence, then pushed aside the plate of half-eaten scrambled eggs, sank her head down on her arms and began to sob.
Thoroughly mystified, I let her get on with it for a while and busied myself at the telephone. When I turned round again the crying was over and she was putting on her sunglasses.
“They’ll be here in ten minutes,” I told her.
“There was no need to order a cab. I could have gone by bus.”
“Not if you’re to be at Paddington in time for the two-fifty. And please don’t worry about the fare because they’ll put it on my account. After all, it’s entirely my fault that you’ve been delayed. If only I’d known where Mrs Cheeseman kept the eggs this emergency wouldn’t have arisen.”
“Well, thanks, then. It’s ever so kind of you. I am a bit short, as it happens, but I’ll let you have it back as soon as I get myself sorted out.”
“You’re not in serious difficulties about money, are you? If so, how about a loan to tide you over for a few days?”
“No, I’ll be all right, thanks. Mike and I have a joint account and there must have been quite a lot paid in last week, with all the overtime. The trouble is I haven’t been able to get down to the bank. I haven’t liked to leave the house more than I could help, in case he should try and ring. But that’s silly, I can see it now. If he does want to get in touch with me he knows better than anyone when to catch me at home. I’ll cash a cheque tomorrow as soon as they open.”
“So about getting in touch with you tomorrow?” I said hesitantly as we waited outside for her mini-cab, trusting to luck that she would not instantly collapse in a heap on the pavement. “What�
��s the best way to organise it?”
“Oh yes, you ring me,” she replied firmly. “I’m sorry for going to pieces like that when you suggested it; but you see it hardly ever rings when he’s not there, so now if I do hear the bell I think it must be him and I get so worked up I can hardly bring myself to answer it. But that’s silly too and I’ve got to get over it. Just tell me what time it’s likely to be and then I’ll know it’s you and be able to cope.”
“Shall we say lunch time, then?” I suggested as the cab drew up beside us. “As near one o’clock as I can make it. And cheer up, Brenda! I’m sure there’ll have been some news by then.”
With the black opaque lenses masking her expression, I could not tell whether these conventional phrases brought her any comfort or not, but curiously enough they turned out to be perfectly true.
CHAPTER THREE
“So, plenty of situation and character building,” I concluded, when reporting to Robin. “But so far not much plot development.”
“No,” he agreed. “And I must warn you that the plot, such as it is, is all too predictable.”
“Why so?”
“Well, the details vary from case to case, naturally, but in essence the story is no different from a thousand others.”
“Really? You mean that lots of people suddenly vanish for no reason?”
“Oh, there’s generally a reason, but that’s more or less what I mean, yes. Of course the vast majority are teenagers casting off the parental shackles, but it happens with husbands and wives too.”
“And are the husbands and wives usually traced?”
“No, very rarely. Just occasionally it’s a genuine case of amnesia or nervous breakdown and so on, which gets itself sorted out, but in the main they’re never seen again and no one ever discovers what became of them, or why they went. And that’s another thing; it may look like a sudden impulse, but to cover one’s tracks so successfully must need a certain amount of advance planning.”
“And you think that Mike Parsons is one of those?”
“Shouldn’t wonder,” Robin said, glancing sideways at the evening paper. “Did he take his passport?”
“I never thought of asking.”
“I’m afraid you’ll never make a detective, Tessa.”
“Oh yes, I will,” I retorted. “Not in your class, maybe, but one shouldn’t overlook the psychological aspects.”
He did not seem impressed. “Shouldn’t one?” he asked drawing the paper nearer to him.
“And they sometimes bring results.”
“Good! So you won’t be needing any help from me?”
“Yes, I will, and do stop trying to sneak a look at that newspaper. I have promised to tell Brenda freely and frankly whether you think there is anything to be gained by reporting it to the police.”
“Freely and frankly, no I don’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because so far as we know he hasn’t committed any crime and there’s nothing to stop him going wherever he chooses. You may despise my prosaic methods, but I think you’ll find that he either turns up in a couple of days with the hangover of the century, or else that he has taken his passport. In which case, he could be in Brazil by now. I can’t see anything to prevent his getting in touch with his wife if he wants to, so the chances are that he doesn’t and has gone to considerable lengths to keep her in the dark. If she can’t offer a clue to his whereabouts, I don’t see how you can expect the police to.”
“I don’t despise your prosaic methods at all. I just maintain that on their own they’re not always enough. Mike is an angel of kindness and no amount of statistics will make me believe that he could behave in such a cruel and callous way.”
“Ah ha! Here we go again!”
“Go where again?”
“How often have I heard words like those? More than I could count. ‘But she was such a sweet obedient girl’, ‘No, he didn’t seem depressed in any way’, ‘Oh yes, a most devoted husband, never complained’. That’s the kind of thing they all say every time. The sad truth is, Tessa, that nobody ever really knows the full story about another human being, not even husbands and wives.”
“That’s exactly what Brenda said. It depressed me at the time and it’s depressing me again now; but if you’re right why did he bother to come home at all on Monday night? Why not just have left for work in the morning and not returned? He’d been doing a lot of overtime lately, so she wouldn’t have been seriously worried until about midnight. It would have given him a good clear start.”
“I can think of several reasons, one being that he may not have made up his mind to bolt until Monday night. Perhaps he arrived home tired and hungry and looking forward to a few home comforts and found her dead drunk on the sofa. It could well have been the breaking point which made him feel he simply couldn’t take any more.”
“And leave his two children at the mercy of a confirmed alcoholic? That doesn’t sound like Mi—Oh, very well, but in that case, it wasn’t a planned escape after all? Just this sudden impulse?”
“He had all night to work on it, don’t forget. And it could have been quite a night if it began with his carting her up to bed in a drunken stupor.”
I considered this view of the matter for a while and then said: “Somehow, I don’t see it, Robin. I know from first hand experience that she has her bouts, although she covers them up with genteel euphemisms like ‘migraines’ and ‘dizzy spells’, but I doubt if there have been any recently. If ever a woman had an excuse for hitting the bottle now it’s her and yet I couldn’t get her to drink anything except a cup of tea.”
“You can’t tell. The shock may have sobered her up temporarily, but apart from that she didn’t necessarily have to be plastered when he arrived home. Supposing she’d pitched in by nagging him about the damned hedge or something? From your description she sounds quite a little whiner.”
“Yes, and probably neurotically houseproud too, with a strong dash of persecution mania thrown in. In times of stress her only recourse seems to be to plunge into another round of scrubbing and polishing, but you’d think Mike would be used to that by now. After all, they’ve been married for ten years and he’s the man who skips off home as soon as the whistle blows. In fact, I’d have said he was quite as much the little homebody as Brenda, which makes the whole thing so extremely puzzling.”
“Well, you’ve met him and I haven’t, so I’ll have to take your word for that, but perhaps you’d care to hear another suggestion as to why he came home on Monday evening?”
“Yes, very much.”
“Simply that he was forced to because when he left in the morning he forgot one vital piece of equipment; like, let us say, his passport.”
“You seem to set great store by this passport?”
“Yes, because it may be crucial in establishing whether he went off of his own free will, or under some compulsion, particularly if . . .”
“If what?”
“You’ll probably howl me down and say it’s psychologically inadmissible and all the rest of it, but I was going to add: ‘particularly if there’s another woman involved’.”
Since he had adequately expressed my protests for me there was nothing much left to say, but I was faintly piqued by his easy assumption that this was just one more case of a husband tiring of the domestic bonds and setting forth in search of pastures new, and by his still easier assumption that Brenda probably had only herself to blame. It was a slur, if ever I heard one, and apart from wanting a happy ending for the Parsons, I was keen as mustard to turn up some evidence to prove that in this instance at least Robin had misjudged the matter.
If he was secretly hoping for the opposite, we were possibly both about equally disappointed, for the ensuing twenty-four hours were to produce two fresh items, one of which strengthened his theory while the other knocked a couple of gaping holes in it.
“No passport,” I announced on Friday evening.
“So he did take it with him? I won’t pret
end that I’m altogether surprised.”
“Yes, you are, because I didn’t mean that at all. I meant, literally, no passport. He’s never had one.”
“How strange! Are you sure?”
“According to Brenda, and she ought to know.”
“But what about holidays abroad and all that?”
“They didn’t have them. Apparently he got so little time off that his idea of bliss was holidays at home, clipping the hedges and taking his family on outings on the river. They did once all go on an excursion to Holland to see the tulips, but you don’t need a real passport for that. Though speaking, mark you, from the purely psychological viewpoint, I’m willing to bet that he’d have taken his passport along with him on that occasion if he had possessed one.”
“But I thought you film lot were forever shooting off to far flung corners of the world?”
“Not sound crews, funnily enough. At least, not Mike’s variety. His job is dubbing and post synch, and that sort of thing. Strictly studio work.”
“I see. However, it doesn’t preclude the possibility of his having acquired a passport without his wife’s knowledge.”
“Just what I said to myself.”
“What? No psychological barriers?”
“None. In fact, I thought we could resolve the point in a much more positive way. I am sure it would be easy for someone like yourself to check whether a passport has been issued in his name or not. If so, it was probably fairly recent, so it shouldn’t take long.”
“Well, I’m damned! So you’re quite willing to make use of my clodhopping methods when it suits you?”
“More than willing. In fact, it’s the combination of our two methods which ought to make us invincible. I’m even prepared to do a little clodhopping myself from time to time and I can provide you with just the sort of information you will approve of.”