The Disappearance of Emily Marr

by Louise Candlish

  ‘Remember this is not today’s paper,’ he said, passing it to Tabby. ‘They sell the British papers a day in arrears, so it’s from yesterday, Thursday.’

  Tabby looked at the feature in horror, not least because it included a picture of the front of the very house in which they now stood. In it, the door was ajar, the figure of Emmie caught in the shadow of the passageway within. It was captioned Emily Marr at the house in western France where she has been in hiding since April.

  ‘What is this?’ she asked Ray and Kerry, but they gestured for her to read for herself.

  The article was headed MARR FOUND IN FRENCH HIDEAWAY and began:

  One of the media’s most tantalising mysteries of recent times was apparently solved this week when this newspaper received a tip-off as to the whereabouts of Emily Marr. For those with short memories, Marr was the young woman at the centre of the storm that erupted after the Press revealed the sordid and adulterous circumstances surrounding the deaths of the wife and children of famous eye surgeon Arthur Woodhall. Marr’s sudden disappearance soon after led to the sort of conspiracy theories we haven’t seen since the flight of Lord Lucan, but unlike the murderous aristocrat this fugitive has now been located, if not officially identified.

  Though rumours have centred of late on the north of England, where Woodhall is thought to have relocated with a new, younger partner, this whisper came from the Atlantic coast of France. I flew to the chi-chi Ile de Ré, where Marr has reportedly been living incognito in the picturesque fortified village of Saint-Martin-de-Ré.

  The woman I encountered was a far cry from the glamorous siren of the original scandal. Dishevelled, lank-haired, barefoot, she was a very sorry sight indeed. It was impossible to believe this was the same woman whose sexy style once won words of admiration from the likes of Karl Lagerfeld, no less. Agitated and evasive, she refused to answer my questions. ‘You are Emily Marr, aren’t you?’ I asked her. She made the expected denial before admitting she goes by the name of Emmie Mason these days.

  ‘Where is Arthur?’ she asked repeatedly, before becoming incoherent and closing the door in my face.

  This is the latest sad instalment in a dark and doomed affair, and an indictment, perhaps, of the press intrusion that caused Marr to flee her homeland in the first place. Above all, the discovery of this troubled wreck is a cruel reminder that while some young women hunger for celebrity, others do not have the stomach for it.

  Tabby looked up, aghast. ‘“Press intrusion”? What does he think he’s doing, with articles like this?’ Her indignation was reflected in the two faces looking back at her. ‘Oh, I wish I’d been here. When he came I could have got rid of him before Emmie saw him. This must be why she’s gone.’

  ‘I’m calling the Press offices,’ Ray said. He checked the time. ‘It’s eight o’clock in the UK; will anyone answer the phone this early?’

  ‘Someone will eventually. I’ll put coffee on,’ Tabby said. As the machine gurgled, a thought struck and she turned to Ray and Kerry. ‘You know the tip-off didn’t come from me, right?’

  ‘Of course not,’ Kerry said. ‘You know she’s not Emily.’

  ‘But I didn’t until two days ago, did I? For this to be in the paper yesterday, the journalist must have written it on Wednesday or even earlier.’ Who, then? Not Emily or Arthur, surely, for the information must also have come before they knew that the Newbury stalker had been living in France as Emily – not that Tabby would have suspected them of colluding with the press in any case. Nor did she imagine they had been aware of the feature themselves, for it was likely they did not read the papers any longer, particularly not the Press. Still, if it was true that rumours had circulated about Arthur having relocated in the north of England, it would be no bad thing for Emily and him for any remaining fans or foes to be sent so decisively off the scent.

  ‘It could have been anyone,’ Ray said. ‘That night you told us about, when she went out in the clothes she stole from Emily, someone might have seen her then and thought it was Marr.’

  Tabby’s mind was turning, updating timelines, bringing events into focus. ‘But what about Emmie – I mean Eve? She must have thought it was me. No one else knew her “true” identity. It would fit: she confesses to me, I disappear off without much of an explanation, and then a couple of days later a reporter turns up. No wonder she left.’

  Ray raised his palm. ‘Hang on, I’m through…’ Having managed to connect to someone in the editorial department of the Press, he did not take long to discover that the journalist in question was a freelance. With the promise of additional information, he extracted the phone number, which he dialled at once. ‘Voicemail,’ he said, disconnecting. ‘It’s too early. I’ll try again in half an hour.’

  ‘Where is she, Ray?’ Kerry said, in a forlorn voice that broke Tabby’s heart. ‘Where’s Eve gone?’

  ‘I don’t know, love. But horrible though this article is, it might help us get closer to finding her.’

  They drank their coffee, Ray keyed up and restless, Kerry close to tears, Tabby absorbed once more by regrets of her own miscalculations, but all three surely picturing the same image: Eve alone and in distress, resting by the roadside, wandering a town (shoeless, perhaps?), hitching on the autoroute, lost in a place where no one knew her or could help. Then Ray tried the number again and this time the reporter picked up, ending their interlude of tense helplessness. After introducing himself, Ray put his mobile on speakerphone so Kerry and Tabby could hear the conversation.

  ‘I’m calling because I saw your report in yesterday’s Press. I believe the woman you met is not Emily Marr but my daughter, who’s been missing since March.’

  ‘This was Marr, all right,’ the reporter replied. ‘Pretty unrecognisable, but definitely her. As I said in my piece, she’s Emmie Mason now.’

  ‘Emmie Mason is our daughter,’ Ray said.

  ‘She’s called Emmie Mason as well?’

  ‘No, neither of them is called Emmie Mason.’

  ‘You’ve lost me, mate.’ The reporter sounded bored, irreverent. Had he been in the room, Tabby would have slapped him.

  ‘Let’s start this again,’ Ray said, with admirable forbearance. ‘Please listen carefully to me. My name is Ray Barron and I am working with the police and a missing-persons organisation to locate my mentally ill daughter. The police will undoubtedly be getting in touch with you separately since you are possibly the last person to have spoken to the missing woman, but in the interests of urgency, please forget all about who she may or may not be and tell me whatever else you can remember about her.’

  There was a startled pause, before the journalist spoke again, his tone altered. ‘What do you need to know?’

  ‘How bad a way was she in? You say she was incoherent?’

  ‘She was in a terrible state, to be frank. She was rambling, asking for Arthur over and over. That’s how I knew it was really her, because she looked so different from before.’

  ‘Was she dressed? It’s hard to tell from your photo.’

  ‘I think so, she was in black sweatpants, a T-shirt, maybe. It could have been dark pyjamas, I suppose. No shoes. At first I thought I must have woken her up, but then I saw how unhealthy she looked, like she hadn’t left the place in weeks. She didn’t smell great, either. Then when she spoke I realised she was… not all there. And she turned extremely hostile – it wasn’t much fun.’

  Tabby wanted to call out, ‘What did you expect? People like you and Nina Meeks destroyed her life!’ But then, as with every thought now, she had to remind herself that the woman she had befriended was not Emily. Eve’s life had not been destroyed by journalists.

  ‘You didn’t think to help her?’ Ray was asking. ‘If you thought she was in such a worrying state?’

  ‘I asked her if she had someone with her and she said yes. Then she slammed the door in my face and refused to open up again. She was shouting obscenities at me from the other side.’

  ‘You didn’t go back la
ter?’

  ‘I had another try the next morning before I left town, but there was no answer. Then I got a call to go to Paris on another story. I’m back in London now.’ Tabby imagined him sitting in an inquest, another lost life he was able to reduce to a few sentences, another stranger he was happy to condemn. She knew that was unfair, he was simply doing his job, but she couldn’t help it.

  ‘You didn’t see her leave the house after that?’ Ray asked. ‘Or the island?’

  ‘No. I would have approached her if I’d seen her again.’

  ‘Can you tell us which day it was that you spoke to her?’

  ‘I saw her on Tuesday evening. So it was Wednesday when I went back and she wasn’t there.’

  Ray and Kerry exchanged looks: if she’d left on Wednesday, or even late on Tuesday, perhaps rattled by the visit, then she’d had at least two days’ advantage – she could be halfway across the continent by now.

  Tabby could contain herself no longer. ‘Who tipped you off?’ she asked the journalist. ‘How did you know the house?’

  ‘I’m not able to tell you that.’

  ‘But this person just called the paper out of the blue, saying they knew where Emily Marr was?’

  ‘Something like that, sure. It happens a lot. Not just her – other public figures, faces in the news.’

  ‘But you’re a freelance, how did you get the story? Are you based in France?’

  ‘I’ve got relatives there. I do a lot of stuff in Paris and the south.’

  ‘Did your source want money for the information?’

  But he would not say, of course, and as Ray ended the conversation with admirable courtesy, Tabby rechecked the by-line in the newspaper. John Spreadbury. The name wasn’t familiar, but she had an idea it might illicit a flicker of recognition when she used it.

  ‘Can you handle meeting the police without me?’ she asked the Barrons. ‘There’s someone I need to talk to.’

  She used Emily’s bike to cycle to La Flotte, flying down the rougher coastal path that she’d always preferred to the congested roadside lanes. It was mid-morning and there was no one in the office above the immobilier she’d first visited when saved by Emmie from homelessness. Knowing the Barrons might be some time with the police, she decided to wait, and was rewarded thirty minutes later by the sight of Moira parking her car in a bay down the way.

  ‘Tabby,’ she said as she approached, her voice flat with lack of delight.

  ‘Moira. Can I have a quick word?’

  ‘I’m rather busy, actually. Can it wait?’

  ‘No, it can’t. Two minutes, that’s all.’

  ‘If we must.’ Upstairs, Moira didn’t invite her to sit, but stood in front of her in the small entrance hall, as if barring further access, her expression resistant. ‘What can I do for you?’ Her tone made it clear she thought the possibilities severely limited.

  ‘Emmie has disappeared,’ Tabby said baldly.

  ‘Oh?’ To Moira’s credit, she did look faintly alarmed. ‘What do you mean? She’s gone back to Britain without telling you?’

  ‘We don’t know where she’s gone. She could be anywhere. She could be in danger.’

  Obviously Moira sensed the note of accusation because her next reply was defensive. ‘Well, I have no idea where she is. I haven’t seen her since the morning you two came here together.’ The unspoken suffix was that she had rather hoped she’d seen the back of them on that occasion. ‘So I’m not quite sure how I can help you.’

  ‘You can’t,’ Tabby said, staring her in the eye. ‘We’re in touch with the police about it. I’m here because I wanted to ask you why.’

  Moira blinked. ‘Why? Why I had to fire her? I think I made that quite clear in our meeting.’

  ‘No, I mean why you decided to tell a British newspaper she was here? And not just any paper but the same one that made her life a misery before?’ There was no point in putting Moira right on the matter of ‘Emmie’s’ identity; she did not deserve the truth, and since she would only divulge it to others, Tabby considered her best left in the dark.

  Moira flushed, which undermined her reply somewhat. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘Or perhaps you know the journalist, John Spreadbury? He’s a friend of a friend, is he? Maybe a relative? I know he’s got family here in France. Come on, Moira, it’s obvious it was you, there is no one else. Emmie didn’t know a soul here except for you and me.’

  Moira shook her head. ‘What about the new boyfriend she talked about?’

  ‘He didn’t exist. She was just covering for me.’

  ‘You’ll have to forgive me if I’m still a little unclear on that score.’

  ‘Rubbish. You heard her call him Arthur as clearly as I did. You know who Arthur is, don’t you?’

  Moira sighed, in concession if not capitulation. ‘Yes, I know who he is. But the fact is anyone could have recognised her and phoned the tabloids. You, for instance, Tabby, you need the money, don’t you? You told me yourself you were penniless when you came here.’

  Tabby glared at her. ‘So it was for money, then? They paid you for the address?’

  ‘Look, I took a big hit when the rue du Rempart clients ended their contract. I was lucky not to be sued.’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ Tabby cried. ‘The house was left in a bit of a mess, that’s all. It’s not as if there was a dead body in there.’

  ‘It’s all relative,’ Moira said sourly.

  ‘OK, then how does not finishing a cleaning job on time weigh up against not paying proper taxes?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You paid Emmie and me in cash all summer, didn’t you? I’m guessing that’s more of a crime in the eyes of the French authorities than anything we did.’

  Moira did not reply. Remembering the invoices she’d seen, the lucrative commission rate her former employer had charged, Tabby returned to the point: ‘Whatever payment the paper promised you couldn’t possibly have made up the difference in lost earnings.’

  ‘You’re right there.’

  So it had been bitterness then; petty revenge.

  ‘How did you know who she was?’ Tabby asked.

  ‘Because I’m not an idiot, that’s how. I suspected from the moment I met her. An English woman appears out of the blue, nothing like the people who usually come here, behaving almost comically as if she’s on the run. She wouldn’t even tell me her name.’

  ‘But the scandal wasn’t in the French media.’

  ‘I’d followed it online. It was all over the English news sites. She’d changed her appearance, obviously, but I made an educated guess.’

  ‘Did you ever ask her about it?’

  ‘Of course not. I respected her privacy.’

  ‘You’ve got a strange way of showing it.’ Tabby felt suddenly extremely weary, not sure now what it was she’d hoped to achieve by this confrontation. Without the skills of a Nina Meeks, she had always been destined to leave empty-handed. ‘Anyway, it’s too late now. I have to get back. Her parents are waiting for me in Saint-Martin.’

  ‘Her parents?’ said Moira. ‘I thought they were dead?’ This incensed Tabby afresh, for if Moira remembered enough of the Marr case to know this, then she must also know Emily’s father had passed away recently – and yet still she had sought to sabotage her attempts to escape the spotlight. No matter that none of this actually applied to the woman under discussion; it was the principle of it that offended Tabby.

  ‘You know nothing,’ she told Moira rudely. ‘And since that’s the case, it would be better if you said nothing as well.’

  ‘Oh, go away,’ Moira said, turning from her in anger. ‘And don’t come here again, either of you. You’re as bad as each other.’

  ‘That’s where you’re wrong,’ Tabby said. ‘Neither of us is bad.’

  Moira looked back at her with an expression of raw contempt. ‘I’m afraid I disagree. You’ve been nothing but trouble, both of you, and I’ll be damned if it’s my job to a
id and abet a pair of low-life sluts.’

  Startled, Tabby could not stop the gasp rising to her lips. It was a taste of what Emily had had to deal with, she thought as she left, recognising for the first time the role played in this affair by spite – plain and simple and, invariably, female: Moira’s, Nina Meeks’, Sarah Laing’s, perhaps Sylvie Woodhall’s too.

  She was not sorry to close the door behind her in the knowledge that she would never lay eyes on the woman again.

  At the house, she said nothing about her unedifying errand, letting the Barrons update her on their meetings with the gendarmerie and the police. Eve had been reported missing and the authorities would soon be conducting a search on the ground across the whole island, as well as alerting colleagues on the mainland. Airports and ferry ports were to be contacted and a photograph circulated. It was nothing, Ray and Kerry admitted, that they had not been through before in the UK.