The Disappearance of Emily Marr

by Louise Candlish

  I swore my oath in a tiny, childlike voice. I was aware of the row of pale profiles and dark shoulders to my right but forced myself to look only at the coroner. It was not just the prospect of Arthur’s face, or Nina’s, but any face, for there was no one among them who had not loved the Woodhalls – or experienced the ghastly sight of their ruptured bodies. The coroner, however, was smiling down at me, sensing my fright, and I had never been more grateful for the benefit of anyone’s doubt. He was not going to accuse me, he was not going to judge me, he was not going to blame me.

  ‘I have read your account of your conversation with Mrs Woodhall on the night of the twenty-second of July, which the police believe to be her last conversation with anyone other than her sons, save for the few words with the cashier at the supermarket. Did you make the call or did she?’

  I gulped. ‘I phoned her. I’d missed several calls from a number I didn’t recognise and that seemed unusual. I thought it might be someone from the hospital where my father is a patient, so I called back straight away.’

  ‘She’d made several attempts to reach you, then? How many exactly?’

  ‘Five, I think. I saw afterwards that they were just a few minutes apart.’

  ‘You say she did not sound drunk or under the influence of drugs during this conversation?’

  ‘No, she sounded sober.’

  ‘And had you had any alcoholic drinks yourself that evening?’

  ‘No, not at that point.’ Arthur had come back with champagne soon after and I’d drunk it, only minutes after hearing the despair in her voice, knowing I had consigned her to a night of abject misery.

  ‘Did you have a sense as the conversation proceeded that Mrs Woodhall intended returning to London soon after? In order to continue the discussion between the two of you in person, perhaps?’

  ‘No. There was no sense of that. I thought… Well, I thought she had accepted what I said as my final word and we would not speak again.’ The last of these words – would not speak again – resonated appallingly and I wished I could retract them.

  ‘You’re referring to your having declined her proposal that you should bow out of your relationship with Mr Woodhall for a period of one year, the length of time her younger son was to remain in the family home?’

  ‘Yes, that’s right.’ A year was an eternity, I wanted to explain to him. We’d only been together six months, we wanted to be together every waking moment. Arthur was almost fifty and life didn’t last for ever! Still I had not dared glance at him since I’d been in the witness box; kept my eyes fixed on the coroner, the only source of good will, of mercy. ‘But I said she needed to discuss it with him, not me. I didn’t think it was my place to make any kind of negotiation.’

  The coroner was peering at his documents. When he removed his gaze from me I felt unprotected, unsupported, as if I might slide to the floor. ‘You say you thought she accepted your decision as final: did you get the sense that this was a disappointment to her?’

  ‘It must have been. She was… she was begging me. To have me say no, it must have been disappointing, yes. She hung up on me.’

  ‘I’m interested in your remark to Mrs Woodhall, “it’s every woman for herself”…’

  I felt myself go pale: how horrible it sounded, how callous, even when recreated in those pleasant, fair-minded tones of his.

  ‘Was it your intention that she should take this as a challenge to be acted on directly?’

  ‘No,’ I protested, my voice rising, ‘not at all. I was only repeating a phrase she had used herself earlier in the conversation. It wasn’t a challenge for her to come and find me that night, or the next morning or any time soon. As I said, I assumed she would want to talk to Arthur next. It was their marriage.’

  He nodded as if in total accord, as if he couldn’t have put it better himself, and at last I began to relax. ‘Did she say when she would talk to him?’

  ‘No, but Arthur had decided to go down to see her the next afternoon, so I knew it would be then.’

  ‘She did not make reference to this?’

  ‘She wouldn’t have known yet, because Arthur left the message while she was on the phone to me. But since it was the same phone line, she would have had the voicemail waiting for her when she’d finished speaking to me.’

  ‘You did not mention it to her yourself?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And you also say you took the decision not to tell Mr Woodhall about your phone call with his wife?’

  ‘Yes.’ It was starting to sound like a farce, put like that, a comedy of disastrous errors, of missed calls and information withheld. ‘As I say, I thought they’d be having their own discussion the next day.’

  ‘Thank you,’ the coroner said. ‘If there’s nothing else, Miss Marr?’

  ‘No, nothing.’

  And that was it, that was all he wanted of me, to hear from my own lips that Sylvie had not voiced any intention to return to London either then or the following morning. That no one knew for sure whether she understood that Arthur planned to arrive in the afternoon. That it was reasonable to deduce that I was the direct cause of her drinking, if not of her drinking and driving.

  But the coroner was not dismissing me, after all; instead communication was taking place with someone in the front row: Josa, Sylvie’s sister. She had a question for me, which was perfectly permissible, though the coroner wanted to remind her that it must be an enquiry with a direct bearing on the matter at hand.

  To my discomfort, Josa rose to her feet and there was a tense moment when nobody said a word.

  ‘Perhaps the witness might show me the courtesy of looking at me,’ she said finally, with an attitude that could only be described as vicious dislike.

  Shocked, I turned to face her. Her revulsion was palpable; indeed, she was trembling with it. In my peripheral vision, I was aware of Arthur’s head bowed, eyes cast down. Josa spoke: ‘I would like to ask you to explain further why you did not tell Mr Woodhall about such an important phone call.’ The words finished there but the remainder of the message, and the accusation it contained, was as clear as if she’d stated it aloud: ‘Had you told him, they would all still be alive now.’ Of course Arthur would have acted on the news that his wife had phoned his mistress – or vice versa: it would have constituted a crisis point even to the world’s coolest-headed adulterer. He would have got in his car and driven straight down to her and the boys. He would have reached them by ten or eleven, several crucial hours before they began their own doomed journey. He would have found Sylvie either drinking or passed out and he would have made sure she got nowhere near her car until he was satisfied she was sober. The next day, Nina would have arrived, ready to offer all the strength she needed.

  Even if the worst had happened and she had tried to harm herself afterwards, the boys would not have been involved, the boys would have survived.

  I took a deep breath and tried to keep my eye contact with her steady, if not confident. ‘I suppose I must have been in shock. To have had this conversation with her completely out of the blue… She and I didn’t know each other at all, I didn’t recognise the true significance of it. And, as I say, the two of them were going to see each other the following day and so I honestly didn’t think it would make any difference to tell him.’

  But it wasn’t the whole story and I could see in Josa’s face that she knew this. The abhorrent truth was that I didn’t want Arthur to leave that night. I wanted him to stay. I was elated and I was frightened and both emotions carried an invincible desire to be with him. I had deliberately kept him in ignorance and any thought I’d spared for the consequences of the phone call had been purely with regard to my own self. Would Sylvie come tearing back that night, I’d fretted, and, if she did, what would happen to me? Arthur and me. What was it I’d thought that night? Maybe it would be better if she found us together. Maybe it would be better.

  Josa did not acknowledge my answer as satisfactory, but merely indicated to the coroner that she
was finished. Now he said I could go.

  Arthur was called next. The sight of him raising himself, moving with reluctance to the spot I had vacated, placing himself in front of us grey and diminished, it caused painful lurches in my gut. He emanated the same air of disgrace that I supposed I must have myself and, like me, he kept his head angled towards the coroner, his eyes not once straying to his enemies. Seeing the tragic line of his profile, his features downturned, untouched even by the memory of a smile, I was revisited as perhaps others in the room were by that adjective Nina had used, ‘euphoric’, and struck with the certainty that this was a man who could never experience that state of being again.

  Or even cast a glance towards the source of that erstwhile euphoria.

  ‘I have, as you have heard, questioned Mrs Meeks, Mrs Buxton and Dr Hanrahan,’ the coroner told him, ‘each of whom knew your wife well and are in agreement that she displayed no signs of considering taking her own life or those of your sons. Is that an impression you would agree with?’

  ‘Yes,’ Arthur said. ‘She wasn’t suicidal and never had been. I think she wasn’t thinking straight, she was panicking.’ Hearing his dipped, sorrowful voice brought a further assault of pain. I had never seen him cry, I realised.

  ‘You received no word from her that she was on her way back to the family home?’

  ‘No, but I wouldn’t have heard her call, in any case. My phone was in another part of the house. After I left her a message I put it in my study to charge. I think I explained in my statement that I have a mobile line especially for family and it was this one she would have used.’

  I watched the sequence of his actions in my mind’s eye – leave house, make phone call, buy champagne, return home, plug in phone, pick up champagne flutes, bound up the stairs to the guest bedroom, to me – and the images were reduced, blurred, as if delivered on damaged film from a century ago. For the first time, it struck me that Arthur might have deliberately kept his phone out of earshot; he’d had his own compulsion to prolong our joyful, precious night, perhaps even his own thoughts of things being better this way.

  ‘But you were in a position to see after the event whether she had tried to phone you?’

  ‘Yes, and she hadn’t. Only Hugo had phoned me, on the morning of the accident.’ Arthur’s right hand strayed to his face, touched the bridge of his nose, fell once more to his side. I saw the fingers clench.

  ‘The voicemail you received from your son that morning, you say you did not hear this until after the accident?’

  ‘That’s right. I found I had missed two calls from him, but there was only one voicemail, the one he must have left soon before the car went off the road.’

  The coroner nodded in grave agreement. ‘This is the voicemail recorded at eight-twenty-six a.m., only twenty-two minutes before the time of death was given. I have had the opportunity of hearing a recording of this message myself and I do not wish to distress you by playing it during these open proceedings, but would you agree that the gist of the message is that your son wanted you to speak urgently with your wife?’

  ‘Yes. I’m guessing he wanted me to talk her into pulling over or stopping for a break. She must have been driving erratically and it was worrying him enough to want me to intervene.’

  ‘And could you confirm that the voice in the background is that of your wife?’

  ‘Yes. She was shouting at Hugo not to speak to me, to get off the phone. She sounded distraught. Too distraught to be able to continue driving.’

  ‘What is your opinion of the reason she wanted your son to end the call?’

  ‘Maybe she didn’t want him to tell me that they were on their way back to London. She wanted to catch me by surprise, not give me any warning that she was coming.’

  ‘Even though you had let her know you would be driving down yourself later that day?’

  ‘Yes. Perhaps she hadn’t picked up that message, or maybe she didn’t want to wait until the afternoon. In the past when I’d joined them, I was sometimes later than I’d estimated.’ There was a pause then in which I, and perhaps others in the room, imagined untold latenesses and let-downs on Arthur’s part. ‘Or perhaps she thought she would catch me in the act. I know now that she knew Emily was with me in the house and it’s possible she expected to find us together. I don’t know what she was thinking, but I imagine, whatever it was, her judgement was obscured by the alcohol and sedatives in her system.’

  ‘Would you say that it was typical for her to drive at the speeds we have heard discussed today?’

  ‘Absolutely not. She never speeded, not with the boys in the car. I would agree with the investigator that she must have fallen asleep, had her foot on the accelerator. By the time the boys noticed she’d passed out, the car was going too fast for them to be able to take control. Alex tried, but he couldn’t save them in time. I don’t know if anyone could have succeeded in a car moving at that speed.’

  ‘Thank you, Mr Woodhall. I know it must be very painful for you to have to return to the events of that day, and I think we can leave it there.’

  No sooner had Arthur returned to his seat than the coroner announced that he was going to adjourn proceedings for the day and ask the remaining two witnesses to return in the morning. ‘That will give me time to consider the evidence, including the very helpful information from Miss Marr.’

  I knew there would not be a person in the room (perhaps those two local reporters) who wasn’t thinking then, There’s nothing helpful in what she’s done.

  By the time I could decide whether to leave the room first or last, after him or before, most people had departed and the decision had been made for me. In the lobby I could see him some distance ahead, on his own, hastening towards the main doors, about to leave the building. I drew two conclusions from this: one, he had not waited to speak to anyone, including me, and therefore wanted no company or conversation; two, without entourage or protection, he could be easily approached. As I grappled with the dilemma, I sensed the scrutiny of someone close by, the same unmasked disgust I’d provoked in Josa. But not Josa this time: Nina, who stood with her husband Ed in a group by the front desk.

  She took a sudden step towards me. I took one back, as if in a dance. Her lips parted and for a moment I thought she might be about to spit at me, or loudly insult me, but instead she spoke in a tone that was sinister in its mildness. ‘If I were you, Emily, I would think seriously about disappearing.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You heard me.’

  ‘Is that some sort of threat?’ I asked.

  ‘Not at all, I wouldn’t dream of threatening you. I’m just telling you what I would do if I were in your shoes.’ And she looked down at mine, blood-red court shoes with bows, the kind of cute Betty Boop shoes that Arthur had once loved to see me in, the kind of shoes I should not have worn to the inquest into the death of his wife and sons.

  Turning my back on her, on the mute loathing of her supporters, I hurried out of the door, my mind made up: I would speak to Arthur whether he wanted it or not. I would not go unacknowledged. Already half panicking about those seconds lost to Nina, I scanned the car park and nearby roads for him. My heart bounced. There he was, at the driver’s door of his Mercedes. Rushing towards him between the rows of parked cars, I had the wild idea that I would drive with him back to London or wherever he was staying, we would talk and comfort one another. We would reconcile. We might never again experience the bliss of our beginning, but we might at least make life tolerable again.

  ‘Arthur, Arthur, please wait!’

  He turned, closed the car door with reluctance, even locking it as if he feared I’d try to climb in uninvited, and stood with his back to it, staring in my direction. Before, when he’d looked at me, it had been with an unblinking rapture I’d found spellbinding. Now it was gone, extinguished, and his eyes narrowed slightly as if to minimise the sight of me.

  I hesitated. ‘We haven’t had the chance to speak since everything happened.’ I mad
e this sound as if we were the victims of a series of cancelled arrangements, missing each other by bad luck, not design, and in my mind an image rose of a broken woman sobbing in the corridors of St Barnabas’ while staff threatened to call Security. I reached for him then, the fingers of my right hand making contact with the fabric of his left sleeve. I did not dare grip the wrist beneath. ‘I need to explain… Could we… do you have time to get a coffee somewhere?’

  He removed his arm from my touch. I could tell by the glance he shot over my shoulder towards the building that our reunion was being observed, but I could also tell that he was acting of his own accord, not for anyone else. ‘I’m afraid I have to get back to London for a meeting this evening.’

  ‘You’re not staying overnight?’

  Only when he looked at me with a revolted expression did I hear how my question might have sounded, like an invitation to spend the night together (in his holiday home, perhaps – was that where he lived now? Extraordinarily, the possibility had not occurred to me until then). ‘I mean, I thought you would want to stay to hear the verdicts in the morning?’