by Anne Morice
“Well, if you ask me, it was a funny sort of letter to be writing to someone else’s husband.”
“I know, but let us not get carried away, Brenda. We can’t be sure that she’s the same Chloe and we haven’t read the whole of it. It could have been completely innocent.”
“You think so, do you? Would you feel like that if you’d found it in your husband’s pocket?”
There were so many unanswerables in this question that I skipped them all, saying airily:
“Well, there’s one obvious way to tackle it.”
“What’s that?”
“By making a few enquiries. If it should turn out that Chloe Masters has skipped too, then you’ve got your answer.”
“And how am I to set about that, I should like to know? Not having heard of the woman until you told me about her, I wouldn’t even know where to start.”
“Alec Ferguson might know,” I said, understanding even as I spoke what is meant by putting a rod in pickle.
“Yes, he might, but I can see myself asking him! I’ve had about as much as I can stand from that one.”
Tears of self-pity welled in her eyes and watching her wipe them away I could tell, down to the last syllable, what she would say next:
“I suppose you wouldn’t . . . ?”
“Me?”
“Well, it would be different if you asked him. He wouldn’t dare be cheeky to you.”
I sighed. “It’s not really my business, Brenda.”
“No man is an island,” she answered sharply, taking me aback a little. “That’s what Mike used to say. Mind you, I always thought it was a load of rubbish. I thought if any man was an island it was him but I was wrong, wasn’t I? He wasn’t an island at all. He was one of those what do you call it . . . peninsulars, that’s right . . . and the only part I knew was the very tip at the end.”
There was a brief silence while we both meditated on this sad judgement and then she returned to the attack.
“You see, I can’t help feeling it would be such a help in tracing him if we knew for certain that he’d gone off with this Chloe person. After all, it would be much harder for two people to hide out than one on his own; but I don’t want to drag in the police and then it should turn out she’d done nothing wrong, do I? It’s not that I want Mike back if he doesn’t want to come, don’t think that. I hope I’d have more pride. Only it seems so unfair that he should get away with it scot-free, leaving us in the lurch without a penny to our names. What sort of life would it be, bringing up two boys on national assistance? We’d have to leave our home, that’s the first thing. I couldn’t afford to keep up the payments even if we were legally entitled to go on living here.”
“Couldn’t you get a job of some kind?”
“Yes, I suppose I could do that. I did go on working part time when I was first married, so I’m not all that rusty, but it would still be an awful struggle, wouldn’t it? And it’s so unfair. I think Mike ought to be made to see that he’s got to contribute something to our support. That’s not asking too much, is it?”
“Not too much,” I admitted.
“And you see, you being an actress and everything, you could easily worm it out of Mr Ferguson without him seeing what your game was.”
Nothing in this programme appealed to me very deeply, for worming things out of Alec Ferguson, still more playing games with him ranked among the principle activities I had hoped to get through life without engaging in. However, I recognised that I had brought it on myself by getting involved in the first place and there was small hope of backing out now. Furthermore, although I did not find Brenda particularly endearing, I did feel a profound pity for her and was constantly reminding myself that it was unfair to judge, without ever having had an opportunity to see her at her best.
One small incident which occurred just as I was leaving did much to harden this view, for it proved beyond any doubt that her veneer of composure was paper thin and that her new hard practicality certainly did not spring from indifference.
It happened as we were walking out to the car and the lawn at the side of the house came into view again. The boys were still there, but they had exchanged their bicycles for another form of transport. Barry was lolling back in a wheelbarrow, while his younger brother laboriously trundled him around, his small form bent double between the handles and his weedy legs splayed out behind him.
The most extraordinary transformation came over Brenda as she took in this rather comical scene. The colour left her face, her eyes stared in horror and she began to tremble as violently as when she first came to see me. Then, as the wheelbarrow completed a wobbly half-turn and made what appeared to be an involuntary plunge in our direction, she let fly:
“Put him down! Put him down this minute, do you hear me, Keith? He’s much too heavy for you.”
Keith instantly let go of his end of the barrow, which tilted sideways, so that Barry rolled out on to the grass. Scarlet with humiliation he shambled towards us.
“It’s all right, Mum, we weren’t doing any harm and it was his idea.”
“I don’t care whose idea it was, you ought to have more sense. Great boy like you, what do you think you’re doing, letting him push you around? He could do himself an injury.”
“No, he couldn’t,” Keith muttered truculently, “He was light as a feather.”
“And just look at you!” Brenda shouted, changing tactics and beating furiously at some leaves and twigs which had stuck to Barry’s jersey. “Getting yourself all filthy like that! As though I hadn’t enough to do! You ought to be ashamed of yourself!”
She was certainly making a big production of it and as the barrow was a very light weight, rubber-wheeled contraption, I concluded that it was a case of venting her own misery and frustration on the nearest victim. Fortunately the tirade soon wore itself out, subsiding to a muttered, generalised grumble, before she finally smoothed down Barry’s hair in a vaguely affectionate gesture and dismissed him:
“Now, run along, both of you and open the gate for Miss Crichton. And don’t ever let me catch you playing such tricks again, there’s good boys.”
“Sorry to fly off the handle like that,” she added, turning to me as they scampered away. “I don’t know what’s got into me, but the slightest thing seems to set me off these days.”
“I can well understand that,” I told her. “Obviously, it was seeing the wheelbarrow that upset you.”
“Yes, it was,” she answered in a muffled tone, covering her face with her hands and leaning against the bonnet in an attitude of utter despair. “How did you guess?”
“Oh well, it’s become a horrible sort of symbol for you, I daresay. The sight of it standing by the hedge last Tuesday morning was where it all began.”
She did not immediately reply, but remained almost supine over the car, only her shoulders heaving slightly and I guessed she was fighting off a fresh outburst of hysteria. She won through too, for after a short but uncomfortable silence she straightened up, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand and said in a flat voice:
“Silly of me, I know, but seeing the boys larking about with it just then touched off a nerve somewhere and I couldn’t stop myself. I ought not to snap at them, poor kids, things are bad enough without that, but it’s this strain and uncertainty which are getting me down. If only I knew where he’d gone and what made him do it, I think I could bear it better, but things just keep going round and round in my head and I never get any nearer to finding out where I went wrong and what’s to become of us now.”
“Try not to worry,” I said feebly. “The police are bound to trace him now that they’ve got the car number, and I’ll do all I can on the other front.”
“Thanks. Just have to keep hoping for the best, I suppose,” she said abruptly and then turned and walked back to the house.
If any further stiffening of the resolve to do my best for them had been needed, it was provided by the sight of puny little Keith swinging on the wrought iron gate, w
hile Barry, stern and pink in the face, guided me out on to the lane with all the cool, self-conscious authority of a policeman clearing a passage for royalty through the Piccadilly traffic.
Brenda might well be partly responsible for the mess she was landed in, but nobody, in my opinion, had the right to play such a mean trick on this pair.
CHAPTER FIVE
For all his pawky, pompous manner, Alec Ferguson did not lack shrewdness and I considered that Brenda had rather over-estimated my talents with her airy assumption that he would fail to see through any little game that presented itself on the spur of the moment for the worming process. I therefore planned my strategy well in advance.
Having fixed myself up to lunch at the studios with a coarse-grained, foul-mouthed and utterly dear old cameraman, with whom it was a pleasure as well as sound policy to remain on friendly terms, I pattered along at the end of this agreeable session and presented myself at the studio manager’s office, where I knew I should find Alec poring over breakdowns and costing schedules, of whose composition he made such heavy weather. I tapped on the door and, responding with all speed to his peremptory “Come!” entered the room just fast enough to see him slide the current crossword puzzle into the top drawer of his desk. He then gave me a long, severe and enquiring look and requested me to take a seat while he finished off a wee ticklish job he was up to his neck in.
He continued the ready reckoning for a few minutes, no doubt asking himself the purpose of my visit, and no doubt also sending back the answers as quick as a flash, so I trust that when he finally leant back in his chair and invited me to proceed, I managed to take some of the wind out of his sails.
“I have come to ask you a favour,” I explained.
“You have, have you? And what would that be?”
“Well, not so much you as your secretary.”
“Sally? Where does she come into it?”
“Everywhere, but naturally I could hardly ask her to do a little job for me without getting your permission first.”
“What job? I don’t think I follow you.”
“No, of course you don’t, but it’s like this, Alec: the week after next will be our wedding anniversary, the 29th to be precise, and Robin and I are giving a party.”
“Congratulations!”
“Thank you, and I hope you’ll be able to come. Your wife too, I need hardly say.”
“I’ll have to check on that. I don’t know of anything to prevent us, but I must clear it with Madge, you understand?”
“Oh yes, no hurry at all. I’ll be sending you a card in a day or two, but the reason I’ve come to see you is this: we thought it would be a nice idea to drum up as many as we can of the people we’ve both been working with during the past year. It’s going to be rather a funny gathering; with all Robin’s coppers from the Yard mixed up with my lot, but we thought it might be fun.”
“A curious idea of fun, in my opinion.”
“Oh, why?”
“Some people might not be too pleased to find themselves rubbing shoulders with the law. My own conscience is clear enough, but I couldn’t vouch for all my colleagues.”
“But this is to be a party, Alec. They won’t be flashing their notebooks at everyone and asking them where they’ve hidden the body and how they fudged last year’s income tax returns. In fact, if you imagine policemen don’t behave exactly like everyone else when they’re off duty, it’s really high time you met some. Besides, Robin and I are rather bored by this thing of keeping our friends in separate compartments just because they happen to work in different spheres.”
“Well, I can’t tell you whether we’ll be able to come or not. I rather feel we’ve got something on that week. In fact, I’m pretty certain Madge did mention something about it only the other day. But what had you in mind for Sally? Not sending out the invitations, I hope? If so, I’ll have to say no to that right away. We’ve both got a lot on our plates just now.”
“Oh, goodness, Alec, I wouldn’t dream of asking such a thing. Surely you know me better than that? It’s just that I’ve got three or four people on my list who present a problem. None of them appears to be working here today, otherwise I wouldn’t need to bother you.”
“What kind of problem?”
“Addresses, mainly. They’re either ex-directory or they live out of London, because I can’t find them in the book. I thought Sally would be bound to have them on her files and it wouldn’t take her a minute to look them up. Also I’ve put a tick against two of them who may be married and I thought she could probably put me right on that as well.”
“Let’s have a look at this list of yours,” Alec said, stretching out his hand.
I had been to some trouble in compiling it and was able to pass it over with barely a tremor. He perused it in silence, pursing his lips and running a finger down the side of his nose, until eventually he said:
“Well, you can save yourself the trouble, so far as two of these are concerned. You’d very likely be wasting your time.”
“Which two?”
“Parsons, for a start.”
“Oh damn! I particularly wanted to throw a little hospitality in Mike’s way.”
“You’d be ill-advised to throw too much of it in Mrs Mike’s, however. Even your off duty policemen might feel a little uncomfortable with an alcoholic at the feast.”
“Oh, but I thought she’d got over that now? Someone told me she was much better.”
“Did they now? Well, that’s not what I’ve heard, and I fancy Mike would be rather surprised to hear it too. In any case, it’s my impression they’ve split up.”
“Is that so? Well, perhaps Mike would come on his own.”
“Perhaps.”
“You’re very mysterious, Alec. Don’t you know where he is?”
“No, I must confess I don’t. He was here last Monday, finishing off a rush job and that’s the last we’ve seen of him. He asked for the day off on Tuesday but he didn’t show up on Wednesday either and he hasn’t been back since. It’s these little vagaries on the part of the staff which make it so tough for blokes like me who have to keep the wheels turning.”
“And no word of explanation?”
“Not one. And his wife’s been on the telephone to me in a fine old state. She’s no more idea than I have where he is, which gives me the idea that the worm has finally turned.”
“Oh, do you really think so, Alec? I mean, couldn’t he just have gone off somewhere quietly on his own for a few days to relax? After all, he’s been doing a lot of overtime lately . . .”
I broke off because Alec was looking at me with an expression I could not fully interpret, although there was a new alertness in it and a trace of fear as well.
“Who told you he’d been doing a lot of overtime lately?” he asked quietly.
“Can’t remember . . . yes, I can, it was someone I was talking to in the restaurant just now. Why? Isn’t it true?”
“Not so far as I know and I fancy I might have heard about it. Mind you, I’m not saying it isn’t the kind of tale his wife might have come out with, but then you couldn’t have heard it from her, could you?”
“No, of course not. Oh well, I’ll just have to put a question mark against his name and hope he turns up in time for the party. Which was the other name you said I should scrub?”
“What? Oh yes, let’s see now . . . yes, here we are, Chloe Masters.”
“Well, don’t tell me Chloe’s left home too?” I asked, hoping the merry laughter didn’t sound overdone.
“Not as far as I know.”
“Then why mustn’t I invite her?”
“Och, I didn’t say that. I don’t believe she’ll be available, that’s all.”
“Why, Alec? What’s the matter with her?”
“Nothing’s the matter with her. In fact she was working here until a week or two ago. Then she asked me to find a temporary replacement for her. It seems her brother was due to come out of hospital and she has to stay at home for a w
hile and look after him.”
“Oh, it’s her brother, is it? What’s wrong with him?”
“Some muscular complaint, I understand. He’s had it since birth.”
“Incurable?”
“So I believe. He used to be in a home for the physically handicapped, but he went into a hospital for an operation some while back. Chloe told me it hadn’t been all that successful and she’s got him on her hands for the time being.”
“Why’s that? Has she no parents?”
“I really couldn’t tell you. I’m not a wet nurse, you know, however much it may look like it sometimes. And, if you’ll excuse me now, I have work to do. I’ll ask Sally to look up the other people on your list and she’ll probably give you a ring at home. Suit you?”
“Okay,” I said, accepting my dismissal. “And thanks for your help, but please ask her to let me have Chloe’s address too. I can at least try and it may be specially important for her not to feel cut off from everyone just now.”
“Oh, you can try,” Alec said indifferently. “But for my money it won’t get you anywhere.”
Privately I agreed with him but as it happened we were both wrong, for when Sally telephoned me later that day to give me Chloe’s address, along with several others which I dutifully wrote down, it marked the first major step forward in solving the mystery of Mike’s disappearance.
CHAPTER SIX
Before this happened there had been developments from another quarter, which so far from clarifying matters had cast them into even deeper obscurity, seeming to sever the last remaining link with our quarry.
It was Robin who brought the news. He had arrived home later than usual on Monday evening in a rather disgruntled frame of mind and was not noticeably cheered up to learn that the following Sunday week was our wedding anniversary and that I had more or less committed us to celebrating it with a rather ill-assorted party.
“I thought our wedding anniversary was in October?” he asked in mild surprise.