Without a Trace

by Lesley Pearse

  She spotted a brass handbell sitting on the sink. Maybe Miss Gribble and Mrs Coleman were deaf, but perhaps they would still be able to hear it.

  Drawing on all her courage, Molly stepped inside, went over to the sink, picked up the bell and rang it loudly.

  On the second ring – and it had been a very loud, long one – the white-haired woman she’d glimpsed through the window appeared.

  ‘If the door bell isn’t answered, it means we don’t want visitors,’ she barked at Molly.

  Molly was scared but stood her ground. She was fairly certain that this was Miss Gribble, not Mrs Coleman. She was perhaps sixty, her face was deeply lined and weather-beaten, but she looked strong, with broad shoulders and thick, muscular forearms, revealed by a faded, short-sleeved blouse. She looked like a formidable woman, and the way she was glowering at Molly was frightening.

  ‘I’m sorry to intrude, but I have something very important to ask Mrs Coleman,’ she said, trying to keep her voice from shaking with fright. ‘If it hadn’t been so important I wouldn’t have been impertinent enough to come in uninvited. So will you please fetch her and let me get this over and done with?’

  ‘You can talk to me. Mrs Coleman isn’t well,’ she said.

  ‘No. In a matter like this, it is important to speak to the right person,’ Molly insisted. ‘It’s about her daughter.’

  ‘We have nothing to do with her,’ Miss Gribble snapped, drawing herself up very straight, as if doing her best to intimidate Molly.

  ‘I know that, and the reasons for it are none of my business. But I am not leaving here until I’ve spoken face to face with Mrs Coleman.’

  The door through to the house opened slowly, and another woman came in. She was very dishevelled, with long hair the colour of dirty straw, and her shapeless maroon dress did her no favours, yet, even so, Molly could see Cassie’s face in hers, and it shook her. The same speedwell-blue eyes, the pointed chin and an expression of disdain which she’d seen Cassie flash many a time at people when they were mean to her.

  ‘What do you mean by coming here and demanding to speak to me?’ she asked. ‘Who are you, girl?’

  The tone was so scathing, Molly suddenly felt almost happy to give her bad news. She pulled the photograph of Cassie out of her skirt pocket.

  ‘My name is Molly Heywood, and I came to ask you to look at this picture and tell me if this is your daughter, Sylvia.’

  She knew straight off that Sylvia and Cassie were one and the same person, just by the way the woman’s expression changed as she glanced at the picture. Clear recognition, yet it was mixed with fear, perhaps foreboding, as if she were already anticipating tragedy.

  ‘It is her, isn’t it, Mrs Coleman?’ she asked. ‘I know her as Cassie. She was my best friend.’

  The woman’s expression changed to one of confusion, and she looked at the older woman as if seeking guidance.

  ‘I’m very sorry to be the bearer of bad news,’ Molly said, now wishing she were anywhere but here in this grubby kitchen with these two weird women. ‘Sylvia was murdered last year, and her daughter, Petal – your granddaughter – was taken, presumably by the killer. I would’ve liked to sit down with you and talk about this, but it seems that isn’t going to happen. So I’d better go to the police and let them investigate.’

  ‘Why go to the police?’ Mrs Coleman asked. Now, her voice wasn’t quite so harsh. In fact, Molly thought she sounded scared.

  ‘Because this is a murder inquiry. The police have been looking for family members and now I’ve found you they need to talk to you.’

  She saw alarm jump into those blue eyes that were so much like Cassie’s and, just as she was about to ask a question, she felt a heavy blow to the back of her head. She reeled and saw both of the women in triplicate before everything went black.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Evelyn Bridgenorth popped her head around the door of the hotel bar. There were only about six or seven people there and Ernest was busying himself polishing glasses. As always, he looked very dapper in a dinner jacket and bow tie, his still-dark hair slicked back with Brylcreem. He’d been working at the George for fifteen years now, except for a gap of six years when he was called up. Evelyn often wondered how they’d manage if he retired or found another job, as he was a great barman and totally reliable.

  ‘Ernest, have you seen Molly this evening?’ she asked him.

  He stopped polishing for a moment. ‘No. Why? Is she missing?’

  ‘Yes. It’s odd, she’s normally in the kitchen at this time of day, having a bite to eat before going up to turn the beds down.’

  ‘Maybe she met a friend this afternoon and got chatting. She’ll be back any minute – she’s very conscientious,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, of course. And it doesn’t matter if the beds aren’t turned down right now. It was just that I wanted to talk to her about the Beauchamps’ wedding next week, a few little wrinkles that need ironing out.’

  ‘She went out on a bike, so she won’t want to be riding it in the dark,’ Ernest said. ‘Of course, she could’ve got a puncture and had to walk back.’

  ‘Oh, I do hope not.’ Mrs Bridgenorth looked anxious. ‘She’s such a dear girl.’

  By nine thirty, when Molly still hadn’t returned although it had been dark for some time, Mrs Bridgenorth began to get really worried, and consulted her husband, who was doing some paperwork in his office up on the third floor. She explained that Molly hadn’t returned for her evening shift. ‘She isn’t the kind to forget she had a job to do, Ted,’ she said. ‘If something unexpected had cropped up this afternoon, she would have found a phone box and telephoned us.’

  Ted put down his pen and turned his chair round to give his wife his full attention. ‘What about that boyfriend of hers?’ he asked. ‘Could he have turned up and whisked her off somewhere?’

  ‘I doubt that very much, because she borrowed a bicycle. And I saw her minutes before she left. She was plainly dressed in a skirt and twinset, didn’t even have lipstick on, so she wasn’t meeting anyone, and especially not him.’

  ‘Didn’t she tell you or someone else where she was going?’

  ‘She said she was just going for a ride to explore. I did tell her the other day that it was a nice easy ride to Lydd, because it’s all flat. But Lydd hasn’t got much to keep you there for long.’

  ‘There’s the army camp,’ Ted reminded her. ‘Maybe a soldier picked her up.’

  ‘Oh, Ted, she’s not the kind of girl to allow herself to be picked up by a soldier, or any man, for that matter. She’s too smitten with Charley.’

  ‘Calm down, dear,’ he said. ‘It’s not the first time we’ve had a girl go missing for the evening, is it?’

  ‘No, of course not!’ she snapped at him. ‘But all those other girls had family close by; they swanned off because of some disagreement with someone. Molly hasn’t got anyone near here. Neither has she fallen out with anyone. Now tell me, should I phone the police?’

  Ted realized then his wife was very anxious about Molly and got up from his chair to give her a hug. ‘And say what, Evelyn? She’s twenty-six, not fifteen. They only consider someone a missing person when they’ve been gone for forty-eight hours or more. Let it go for now. I’ve got no doubt she’ll come bursting in before long with some perfectly good reason for being late back. You’ll see.’

  Evelyn agreed to wait until the next day but, as she passed the narrow staircase which led to the attic rooms, including Molly’s, on an impulse she ran up the flight of stairs to see if there was anything in her room which might indicate where she was.

  Molly kept her room very neat and tidy, but the little oak bureau which stood under the window had a writing pad, envelopes and a small diary left out on the drop-down flap, as if she’d been halfway through writing some letters.

  Evelyn hesitated before opening it, as it seemed a terrible invasion of her privacy, but she didn’t feel quite so guilty when she discovered Molly had only begun the diary sin
ce she had come to work at the George, and only used it to enter the duties she was doing each week and her day off. But, right at the back of the diary, Molly had written a few addresses.

  Most of them were back in her home town in Somerset. The name George Walsh caught her eye, and she vaguely remembered overhearing Molly telling Trudy that she’d had a letter from George, an old schoolfriend who was now a policeman.

  There were a few addresses in Whitechapel and Bethnal Green, Charley Sanderson’s amongst them. If Molly had put a telephone number down for him, she’d have been tempted to ring him, but there was none. There was an address and a telephone number for Mr and Mrs Heywood but, as worried as she was, she knew she couldn’t ring Molly’s parents, not yet: it would only make them frantic.

  Then she saw the name Dilys Porter and remembered Molly asking how much it cost to stay a night in the hotel, as she’d like to invite her friend Dilys down. Evelyn had said if Dilys shared her room there would be no charge, and Molly had lit up like a Christmas tree.

  Reluctantly, she put the diary back. Common sense told her she was over-reacting and that she should wait to see if Molly came back later that night before ringing anyone.

  Molly wasn’t going to be coming back that evening.

  She found herself lying on a stone floor with a pain in the back of her head. She touched it gingerly, and felt a big lump, but she didn’t know how she’d done it, or where she was.

  She lay still for a little while, trying to remember, but the last thing she recalled was riding past orchards and seeing pink-and-white blossom. Had she had an accident on her bike? But if she had, where was she now? The room was quite dark, like a cellar, and it smelled musty. All she could see was a small window high up on the wall. If she’d come off the bike, surely she’d be either at the side of a road or in someone’s house?

  Trying to sit up, her hands touched her pleated skirt and that triggered a memory of standing in front of a mirror checking to see if she looked mature and sensible.

  All at once it came back to her. She had come out to Mulberry House for the second time to see Cassie’s mother. Miss Gribble had been fierce and defensive and Christabel Coleman hadn’t wanted to talk to her.

  She had a ghost of a memory of a blow to the back of her head and, presumably, she had been knocked out, as she had no memory of being moved from the kitchen to wherever she was now.

  As the last thing she remembered was facing Mrs Coleman, it must have been Miss Gribble who hit her. But why?

  It was like reading a book and suddenly finding that a couple of pages had been torn out. She could remember the two women, even what their kitchen looked like, but she couldn’t quite put together what had led up to being hit.

  Whether she could remember or not, though, the fact remained that she was in danger. No one knocked you out and put you in a cellar by mistake. Those two women were either stark staring mad or they wanted to shut her up. Or perhaps both.

  She got to her feet and nearly keeled over with dizziness, probably a side effect of being hit. She stood still till it passed then made her way to the door. As she expected, it was locked, and she turned, leaned against it and surveyed her prison. How could she get out?

  Some meagre daylight came in from a small, barred window high up on the wall, enough to see a collection of empty boxes for storing apples, some wooden crates piled up in the right-hand corner of the room and a workbench along the wall to her left. When the dizziness eased, Molly moved over to the bench, hoping to find a screwdriver or some other tool, but there was nothing, only thick dust, which showed this room was rarely used.

  It was also cold and damp, but if the two women could dump someone in here with a head injury, they weren’t going to be concerned about her comfort.

  She could feel hysteria welling up inside her; the temptation to scream and bang on the door was almost overwhelming. But she tried to control herself and think things through. Why had the women attacked and imprisoned her?

  It was possible they were so batty that they were prepared to do the same to anyone who had the cheek to enter their home uninvited, but she thought that was very unlikely. Shouting, threatening or brandishing a weapon was enough to eject an unwanted visitor. So it had to be to do with Sylvia, or Cassie. But why would Molly informing them she was dead provoke such a reaction?

  Christabel obviously didn’t have any normal maternal feelings, not if she felt her daughter had totally disgraced her by producing a mixed race, illegitimate baby and decided to throw her out. Yet although news of her daughter’s death and the child’s disappearance might make her feel guilty, remorseful or ashamed, surely it wouldn’t make her aggressive towards the messenger?

  Of course, it could have been a panic reaction on Miss Gribble’s part. Perhaps she had lashed out involuntarily because she was afraid of scandal. The two women might have dragged her into the cellar while they considered what to do with her.

  Molly decided she was going to believe that this was the case for the moment, and she turned to the door and started banging on it.

  ‘Please let me out!’ she shouted. ‘I know you didn’t mean to hurt me, but I have to get back to my work, or they’ll call the police. Just let me go and I’ll forget this ever happened.’

  She felt like screaming that the first thing she’d do when she got out would be to get a doctor to certify them and have them put into an asylum. But she knew that wouldn’t help her cause.

  There was no reply, and when she put her ear to the door Molly couldn’t hear anything at all. It was possible, of course, that this cellar was just one of several underground rooms, and had such thick walls that sound from here couldn’t penetrate up the stairs into the house.

  She took off her shoe and began banging on the door as loudly as she was able. She did this for around five minutes, paused to shout out the same message as before, then returned to banging again.

  After repeating this sequence around twenty times, her arm ached and her throat hurt; also, the foot without a shoe had become like a block of ice on the stone floor. She put the shoe back on and, picking up one of the wooden crates, used it to batter the door until it fell apart in her hands. Still no one came.

  There were plenty more crates, but Molly’s head hurt and she felt exhausted. She sank down on to the floor and sobbed.

  She hadn’t told anyone where she was going, so no one would know where to come looking for her. She’d told George in her letter that she had a lead on Cassie’s mother, who lived in Brookland, and that she was going to see her, but that wouldn’t alarm him, not unless he was told she hadn’t come back. And who was going to tell him that?

  Eventually, if she didn’t turn up, Mrs Bridgenorth would alert the police. They would contact Charley, and when he told them she’d been determined to find Cassie’s mother and thought she lived in a nearby village, the police might end up here.

  But how long would that take? At the very least, it would be days. The thought of spending even one night in such a cold, damp place without food, water or a blanket was terrifying.

  The cold floor was striking up through her skirt to her bottom now, and the light coming through the small window was fading. She had to make a plan for when total darkness fell.

  Getting to her feet, she went over to the workbench. The top of it was wood – far warmer to sit or lie on than the floor. She pushed the apple boxes to one side and found a piece of rag. She wiped the dust off the bench, then pushed all the crates away, hoping to find anything – rags or sacks – to keep her a bit warmer, or a tool to pick at the door lock. But there was nothing.

  She prowled round the cellar then, looking for anything useful, but there was nothing other than cobwebs.

  She picked up a crate, intending to start banging on the door again, and something dropped to the floor with a slight tinkle. She couldn’t see what it was, as the light was so bad, but she groped around with her hand and eventually found it.

  It was a hair slide – just a little r
ed circle like a Polo mint, with a metal clasp across the back. It looked familiar, but maybe that was just because she had worn such hair slides when she was little.

  Grabbing a box, she began to bang and shout again. It made her feel warmer, even if it did no good. She thought she would do it in the middle of the night, too; with luck, it might annoy them so much they would come down.

  Once complete darkness fell, Molly was unable to maintain her calm. She wanted to relieve herself; she was cold, hungry and thirsty, and very frightened. It seemed to her as she lay hunched up on the workbench that if a person could knock you out and drag you to a cellar, they were capable of leaving you there for ever. Compared with that, her fear of spiders seemed silly, but still she kept imagining them creeping towards her in the dark.

  She couldn’t see her wristwatch now, but it couldn’t be more than nine at night, as it hadn’t been dark for that long. She wished she could fall asleep, but it was too cold for that.

  She thought of Constance and how much she’d believed in the power of prayer.

  ‘Not a sparrow can fall from its nest without Him knowing,’ she’d said, on many an occasion.

  ‘If you know about the sparrows, what about me?’ Molly asked God. ‘I haven’t done anything bad, I was trying to put things right, so please help me. Make someone work out where I am.’

  All at once, almost as if God had heard her prayer, she remembered why the red hair slide looked familiar. Petal had always worn two of them in her hair, one on either side.

  It could, of course, be pure coincidence that a hair slide like Petal’s had been dropped here. But she didn’t believe it was. She just knew Petal had been here.

  At four o’clock in the morning, while Molly was shivering uncontrollably and thinking she just might die of it, Evelyn Bridgenorth was lying awake, worrying. She had stayed up till after twelve in the hope that Molly would turn up or telephone, then, as all the guests were now in bed, she finally locked the hotel door and went up herself.

  Ted was already asleep, and she didn’t want to disturb him by putting the light on and reading. So she just lay there, waiting for sleep to overtake her, but it didn’t; her mind was racing too fast.