Strange Recompense

by Catherine Airlie

  “Anna had arranged a holiday in North Wales for just before the wedding,” he went on doggedly now that he seemed determined to get it all off his mind by repeating it, “and the day before she set out on her holiday she got a letter, addressed to her at Alnborough. It had a Swansea postmark, and Anna was always one of the confiding sort where her family were concerned, but she would not show them that letter or tell them what was in it. She was all cut-up about it, though, and she left Alnborough the next day with a Judas kiss for Jess when she was going! I’m not saying that I know all the details, but I know that the old man took it hard, and so did Jess. It seems that she found the letter half burned in her sister’s bedroom grate, and it was from Ned Armstrong.”

  Bill paused dramatically, and Sara felt that he must surely be able to hear the quickened beating of her own heart as she waited with held breath for him to go on with his story.

  “Do you mean that—the sister and Ned went away together?” she asked when she could wait no longer. “Anna Marrick went off and married her sister’s fiancée?”

  “I expect so,” Bill admitted miserably. “Anyway, that’s what Jess believes happened, and the old man thinks so, too. They’ve never heard from the other two from that day to this—never wanted to hear from them, either, I should think. Old Marrick won’t have Anna’s name mentioned in the house any more.”

  “I don’t suppose Jess Marrick ever told anyone what was in that letter she found,” Sara suggested. “The half-burned one, I mean.”

  “There seems to have been a missing page,” Bill Cranston admitted, rising to the carefully-placed bait. “Ned had written to Anna to say that he must see her at once. It was imperative, he said. He was no longer happy about his forthcoming marriage. Jess read all that, and then she came to the missing page, but it wasn’t difficult to guess what had been on it or why Anna had taken it with her. It would be the instructions about their meeting, no doubt, and he ended the letter by saying that he couldn’t go on pretending any more to Jess, and begged Anna not to fail him. He said he was keeping her to her promise, and that was the dreadful bit for Jess, I warren.”

  He lapsed into silence, wondering if he had already said too much to a stranger, but Sara was quick to reassure him on that point.

  “Thanks for being so frank with me, Mr. Cranston,” she said charmingly. “The Marricks were so very kind to me yesterday when I was caught in that thunderstorm that I feel as if I know them quite well now. By a rather strange coincidence, too,” she added deliberately, “I also believe I may have run up against Anna Marrick. Bill,” she said familiarly, “can you keep a secret?”

  “Sure,” he said. “I’ve kept plenty in my time. I don’t know why I’ve talked to you like I have about the Marricks today, but I suppose it sort of had to come out.”

  “Yes, Bill,” Sara said, “I’m sure it had. I believe Anna Marrick is in Wales at this very moment suffering from loss of memory, but I can’t be sure. No one can be sure until this girl’s identity is proved beyond a shadow of a doubt,” she added, “but I believe that she married Ned Armstrong and there was some sort of accident afterwards. We’ll have to get together and check up on dates.”

  Sara’s heart misgave her for a moment. Supposing—just supposing there had been no time for a wedding ceremony? That would leave Anna free! She realized that her primary interest in Anna Marrick’s case hinged upon whether she had married Ned Armstrong or not, and now it would seem that a few hours might be about to defeat her.

  “First of all I must get in touch with the hospital where I work,” she explained to the bewildered Bill. “I’m a nurse, but perhaps you have already realized that,” she added egotistically.

  “No,” he answered vaguely, “I guess I’m not very quick about things—placing people and the like.”

  “Oh, well,” Sara said. “Never mind that now. The point is that I have come across a girl whom I firmly believe to be Anna Marrick, but just in case I should prove wrong, I want you to promise that you won’t say a word at Alnborough until you hear from me in a day or two.”

  She watched her companion as she spoke and saw him struggling with his sense of loyalty to the Marricks and his own desire to do the right thing.

  “Suppose this is Anna,” he said, at last. “This girl, you say, has lost her memory. Does it mean that she wants to come back here—that Ned Armstrong and she have split up?”

  It was obvious that he viewed the possibility of Anna’s return to Alnborough from a personal angle now, wondering if Ned might yet effect a reconciliation with Jess. If so, his own hopes of finally winning her would be gone, and Bill Cranston looked the type who did not abandon hope easily. The way he lived, the constant struggle for survival against the elements in that exposed hill country, had bred in him a tenacity far above the average, yet he had seen how deep Jess Marrick’s love had gone and how terribly she had been afflicted by her lover’s treachery.

  The fact remained, however, that Anna and Ned were married. Nothing could alter that, Sara thought, and she herself held the key to the whole situation. She even believed that she could detect a faint resemblance between Anna and Jessica Marrick.

  “Were the Marrick girls very much alike?” she asked as they drew near her destination. “Jess is very much like her father—the same sturdy build and coloring, and the same eyes.”

  “And Anna was the exact opposite,” he said. “She took after her mother. Mrs. Marrick was small and a bit frail-looking, and she had red-brown hair the same as Anna’s when she was a younger woman.”

  He drew the car up in the middle of the broad market place, bumping to a standstill before the local saddler’s, where he had several purchases to make and Sara got out.

  “I mean to travel south tomorrow morning,” she said. “I’ve been most interested in this case right from the beginning. The doctor who has it in hand is—well, a particular friend of mine.”

  She smiled at Bill, satisfied that he appeared to read her exact meaning into the words and conscious of a strange form of elation derived from a mere insinuation, which was as near as she dared come to claiming Noel Melford’s affections at the moment.

  “Maybe you’d like to take something to eat with me,” Bill offered awkwardly, not really wanting to spend any more time in her company but feeling that it might be expected of him.

  “I’d love to—some other time, Bill,” Sara assured him pleasantly. “I may be this way again, very soon.”

  “Would you bring Anna back?” he asked, surprised.

  “Quite conceivably,” Sara answered with a look in her eyes that was almost triumphant.

  She had still almost a week of her leave to take and she would offer her services to Noel in whatever capacity he cared to use them, and if he had been appointed to the job in Bristol it might very well mean that she would bring Anna north. Noel could not be expected to go dashing off across the length and breadth of the country even on so definite a clue as this appeared to be, and she could quite easily relieve him of the responsibility. In so doing she would wind up all this wretched business of Anna Marrick, and the girl could be forgotten with the utmost speed.

  The prospect lent speed to Sara’s plans and she travelled overnight from Newcastle-on-Tyne, arriving at Glynmareth half an hour after Noel came in from Bristol.

  He was still discussing her message with Ruth when Sara came to the door, having paid off her taxi at the villa gate instead of taking it round to the nurses’ home, as might have been expected.

  Ruth saw her approaching through the window and her fine lips set a fraction of an inch more firmly.

  “Good heavens, here’s Sara herself!” she exclaimed. “I wonder what can have gone wrong?”

  Noel wheeled round and went to meet Sara at the door.

  “Hullo, Noel!” she greeted him with the assurance of one who holds all the trump cards, “I’m sorry to land on you like this with, I’m afraid, a great deal of trouble on my hands, but no doubt we can work it out from here toget
her.”

  He stood aside to let her pass into the room where Ruth was waiting, making no comment, but Sara was not to be intimidated by silence. She greeted Ruth effusively.

  “My dear,” she declared, “I really have missed you these past few days! I’ve got so much to tell you both, too, that I didn’t wait to go over to the Home first.”

  “Have you found out anything about Anna?” Noel asked almost coldly.

  “Anything!” Sara permitted herself a thin smile. “My dear Noel, I hope I have found out everything!”

  “Perhaps you would like some tea,” Ruth suggested. “I had it ready for Noel.”

  “I’m gasping for a cup,” Sara declared,, so much on the old friendly footing again that Ruth wondered if she had misjudged her.

  “Sara,” Noel said irritably, “what have you to tell us?”

  She gave him a long, direct look, full of subtle meaning.

  “Nothing very pleasant, I’m afraid. Where is she, by the way? Not gone?”

  “She’s still working at the hospital—helping Dennis,” Ruth said. “But the sooner we can relieve her of this dreadful bondage of forgetfulness the better. What have you found, Sara? Is it really important?”

  “It’s not a particularly pretty tale,” Sara warned as she sat down at the tea table which Ruth had set just inside the french window. “It began some time ago, apparently, when a girl called Jess Marrick became engaged to her seagoing boy friend and her sister, Anna, had designs on him, too.”

  Without looking directly at Noel she could see his every movement, the small pulse beating rapidly in his cheek and the color fading slowly out of his face. Of course, she realized that she must hurt him by telling him all this, but far better that he should be hurt now, she decided, than afterwards when his affections might be completely involved. No one could possibly remain in love with a girl once they had heard the story she had to tell!

  “Anna Marrick!” Noel repeated, as if he had heard very little else but the name.

  “Anna Marrick that was,” Sara pointed out briefly. “She’s been married since then. She wore a ring, remember, when she first came here. Well, apparently the sister and her fiancé had settled on a day for their wedding and everything was arranged. They were to be married after Ned Armstrong’s next trip abroad and Anna Marrick had arranged an early holiday for herself so that she might remain with her father when her sister had gone off on her honeymoon.”

  Noel was still on his feet, standing rigidly beside the mantelpiece where he had put his untouched cup of tea and staring down into the empty grate. He was waiting for Sara to finish her story with his jaw set in a hard line and his muscles taut, and when she spoke again it was with a certain amount of misgiving.

  “There’s no doubt about it that we have Anna Marrick here, Noel,” she continued in an effort to justify her rather dramatised version of the story. “The two girls are more or less alike,” she lied easily, “and the farm where these Marricks live is called Alnborough. What more could we want? It’s quite a distance from our pied-a-terre at Alnmouth, but it hangs together with your first clue, doesn’t it?”

  Noel did not contradict her. He seemed to be seeing beyond Sara’s story to a dark country of his own imagining, but she could not tell from his expression what he thought.

  “Please go on,” he commanded her.

  “Seemingly, after her sister had gone, Jess Marrick found a letter written to Anna by Ned Armstrong and delivered at Alnborough the day before in which he begged Anna to meet him from her holiday resort in Wales! It was undoubtedly a love letter, and in it he declared that he could not go on with his marriage to Jess. Anna Marrick believed that she had burned that letter, but Jess found part of it in her sister’s bedroom fireplace, charred but still readable.”

  Sara paused, but neither Ruth nor Noel spoke, and she was forced to continue a trifle uncertainly:

  “Anna Marrick went away and did not return. Perhaps she did not even check in at the hotel where she had booked a room for a week, and as far as the Marricks are concerned she ran away with her sister’s fiancé and married him. They never want to see her again or hear her name mentioned at Alnborough!”

  “That, of course, needn’t account for the silence on the part of this Ned Armstrong,” Ruth pointed out unhappily.

  “Perhaps he was too ashamed to go back to Alnborough and just went off to sea again after his marriage to Anna,” Sara suggested.

  Noel said suddenly: “I don’t believe in this marriage!”

  “Could one ask why?” Sara said after she had drawn breath.

  “Simply because I don’t believe there was time. If Anna had checked in at her holiday hotel her luggage would have been there and her disappearance would have been reported to the police when she didn’t return.”

  “She may have had no intention of checking in at that particular hotel,” Sara pointed out. “She could quite easily have written or telephoned to cancel her reservation.”

  She saw that her argument had struck home. Noel’s face was now so drawn and colorless under its tan that she actually felt sorry for him, yet she could still recognize the need to drive home her advantage.

  “It was rather a shock to me, too, as you can very well imagine,” she told them. “One doesn’t exactly expect this sort of thing, but I suppose I should be hardened to odd life histories by this time. These sort of stories keep cropping up, don’t they? It must have been pretty hard on Jess Marrick, though.”

  Noel looked at her as if he had not heard.

  “The Marricks must be brought down here,” he said. “A meeting with her family may revive Anna’s memory in a second or two.”

  Sara smiled.

  “You’re going to have plenty of trouble convincing Abraham Marrick that he should accept his daughter again,” she said.

  Noel regarded her coldly.

  “Whatever you believe Anna has done, Sara,” he said, “you will admit that it is still our duty to see her through this and to enlist all the help that is necessary.”

  “I can’t believe Anna would do what you say!” Ruth declared stoutly. “She wouldn’t do a thing like that—she’s not capable of hurting a fly!”

  “You must both be quite mad!” Sara exclaimed, unable to curb her anger any longer. “How can you go on trusting a girl like that? Or are you both so completely blinded by her charm that you just won’t see!”

  Ruth rose to her feet.

  “I don’t think we are so easily blinded as all that, Sara,” she said stiffly.

  Sara turned in Noel’s direction, ignoring the girl she had called her friend.

  “What do you intend to do?” she asked.

  “See Anna Marrick through this—to the best of my ability,” he answered as he strode past her through the open window and out into the garden.

  “I wouldn’t have believed Noel could have been such a fool!” Sara exclaimed, anger having the upper hand now. “He’s running right into trouble by trusting that girl in the way he does!”

  Ruth’s hands were trembling as she began to gather up the untouched tea-things.

  “It’s not a question of trust, Sara,” she said, keeping her voice from rising on a note of angry contempt by a tremendous effort: “Noel must look at this entirely from the medical angle now, and his one clear duty is to follow up this clue of yours and restore Anna’s memory by returning her to her people.”

  “Noel can try to bring old Marrick down here if he likes,” Sara sneered, “but he’ll be a master of persuasion if he succeeds! From what I saw of him he was a man who would not easily be swayed once his mind had been made up, and he certainly had no use for his younger daughter. If Anna proves to be that daughter—and I fail to see how even the most biased mind could have believed otherwise now!—she will have a good deal of explaining to do all round.”

  “We can hardly sit in judgment,” Ruth said briefly. “Somehow, Sara, I still have the utmost confidence in that girl.”

  Nonplussed by this
unexpected attitude, Sara turned angrily away, finding nothing to say in the face of Ruth’s continuing trust, but trying to console herself with the belief that they would emerge doubly disappointed in the end. For every gesture of faith there would be a detail of Anna Marrick’s past to counteract it, and the beginning would be Abraham Marrick’s refusal to accept his daughter into his home again.

  Sara went off to the nurses home in high dudgeon, although her curiosity would not allow her to stay there for long.

  From one of the top windows overlooking the garden she saw Noel leave the villa twenty minutes later and go in the direction of the hospital and, her heart pounding heavily with unsuppressed jealousy, she imagined him going straight to Anna.

  Noel did seek Anna out, but with far less confidence than Sara had given him credit for. Shaken by the story he had just heard, he was far from accepting it in detail, yet it held much of the elements of truth in so far as names were linked and Alnborough could well be the incompleted word of Anna’s painful efforts at remembrance. With fine contempt he discounted the greater part of Sara’s story as a jumble of inconsequential facts. The main point remained to establish contact between these people and the girl he loved, and to do it with the least possible hurt to Anna herself.

  He found her struggling with the intricacies of the typewriter keyboard, which she had set out to master while he was away, and she jumped up in surprise at sight of him, the swift color mounting to her cheeks as their eyes met.

  “You’ve got the job!” she said, her confidence in him as sure as Sara’s had been but infinitely more pleasing to his ears. “I knew you would. Oh, Noel! I’m so glad, and Ruth will be so very proud!”

  “I suppose so,” he smiled. “How has Tranby been treating you while I’ve been away?”

  The impulse to take her in his arms was almost more than he could withstand, and he fumbled for his pipe and filled it while he glanced at the accumulated letters on his desk.