The Vanishing Woman

by Fiorella De Maria

  “Agnes . . .”

  “She came to haunt me. She knew it was because I hated her; the moment she died she must have come to haunt me!”

  “Agnes, my dear, now you really are being irrational,” said Gabriel. “When you saw your mother at the window, she was alive. There is no other explanation; you saw your mother alive. How on earth she got to the place where she was killed is a mystery we are going to have to work out together. But the figure you saw on that path was a living, breathing woman.”

  Agnes glanced at Gabriel beneath lowered, swollen eyelids. “You do believe me then, Father? You do believe I saw her?”

  “Naturally. That is what I needed you to know, because the next few days are going to be very hard for you. I thought it would be easier for you to hang on to your convictions if you knew you had an ally.”

  “Thank you.” Agnes looked up at him as though anticipating a question. “Was that all you came to tell me?”

  “Of course,” answered Gabriel, standing up to leave. “Now don’t fight the urge to sleep. Let it come; you need to rest.”

  Gabriel hesitated in the doorway, listening as Agnes’ breathing became slower and more regular; then he stepped out onto the landing into Inspector Applegate’s waiting arms.

  “You might have made your presence known!” hissed Gabriel, directing Applegate towards the stairs. “It’s pretty bad form to go eavesdropping on a conversation like that.”

  “You weren’t hearing her confession, were you?” asked Applegate dryly.

  “As a matter of fact, no, I wasn’t. Nor have you any right to ask me that.”

  “Just checking that nothing I heard was protected by the seal, that’s all.”

  Gabriel winced. “And what exactly did you hear?”

  “Practically nothing, I’m afraid. You two don’t half mumble. Nothing of any use except—” he cleared his throat theatrically. “ ‘I might have killed her with my own bare hands!’ ”

  “Might!” enunciated Gabriel. “She said might! That’s a different matter altogether. Surely you don’t really believe that counts as evidence?”

  “Not evidence, no. Something resembling an admission of guilt perhaps.”

  “Oh, don’t be ridiculous! The girl was distressed, nothing more. She has just lost her mother.” Gabriel became aware of Dr Whitehead standing at the foot of the stairs, listening solicitously to the argument.

  “Quite right, Father,” Dr Whitehead put in. “May I ask what you were doing, Inspector? I said I required five minutes to get ready. Was there any particular reason for you to wander upstairs?”

  Inspector Applegate looked unusually embarrassed. “Forgive me, Doctor, but I had more than one reason to call on you today, I’m afraid. I need to take Agnes Jennings in for questioning.”

  “Out of the question,” answered Dr Whitehead with the calm authority of a man used to deference. “I have just given Agnes a sedative. She will be of no earthly use to anyone for at least eight hours.” Dr Whitehead turned to Gabriel. “I have agreed to identify the body on behalf of the family.” He glanced back at Applegate with a dismissive nod. “It’s quite all right, Inspector, I know my own way to Port Shaston—I assume she’s in the mortuary at Queen Alexandra’s?”

  “She is.”

  “Well then,” said Dr Whitehead, picking up his hat as though closing the conversation, “I shall drive there directly. I do not require an escort.”

  Gabriel felt a guilty sense of schadenfreude, watching Applegate hesitating to argue with the doctor even though it meant losing face. The case was hopeless. Applegate gave a slight bow and saw himself out of the house. He took three or four steps in the direction of the gate, beyond which his car was no doubt parked, before adding: “If you could please come and see me as soon as you have finished at the mortuary, I would be most obliged.”

  Dr Whitehead gave the smile he reserved for agitated male patients desperately attempting to cling to their dignity in embarrassing situations. “I shall not fail to do so, Inspector,” he promised.

  As soon as he was sure Applegate was definitely out of earshot this time, Gabriel turned to Dr Whitehead. “I hope this doesn’t sound presumptuous, Doctor, but I wonder if I might accompany you to the mortuary?”

  Dr Whitehead looked a little taken aback. “Why ever would you want to do that, Father?” he asked. “You barely knew her.”

  “Well, she was a Catholic, albeit devoutly lapsed. I should like to anoint her if it’s all the same to you.”

  Dr Whitehead shrugged his shoulders amiably. “I don’t suppose it can matter much now. As it happens, I should like to talk to you anyway. Hop in, we’ll drive over together.”

  Gabriel could not help feeling a boyish sense of excitement to be in the passenger seat of Dr Whitehead’s splendid little motor. The doctor was as careful a driver as Gabriel had imagined he would be, navigating sharp corners and uneven surfaces with the ease of a man who has travelled these roads for many years. Within minutes, the cottages of the town gave way to the breathtaking beauty of the Wiltshire countryside, and Gabriel began to relax. The sight of the expansive green fields, divided here and there by brackish hedgerows and sad, bare trees, brought him in mind of the abbey and his brothers there, snug inside secure stone walls.

  “Dear me, not a good sign at all,” joked Dr Whitehead, indicating a field full of Friesian cows, almost all of which were lying down in the damp, long grass. “We shall have rain.”

  “Thank you for looking after Agnes,” said Gabriel. “With Douglas so busy, I’m sure it’s a relief to him to know that she’s being cared for.”

  “It’s no trouble at all, Father,” Dr Whitehead replied. “She’s practically family. Best friends with my daughter for years. I can’t pretend I’m not extremely worried about her. That was rather why I wanted to speak with you. That lout Applegate thinks she did it. That was why he came to speak with me earlier today. It had nothing to do with identifying the body; I volunteered to do that myself.”

  “I see. Why?”

  “Hmm?”

  “Why are you identifying the body? Shouldn’t that be Douglas? He’s the next of kin.”

  Dr Whitehead sighed. “Do you know how Douglas’ father died?”

  “Killed at Dunkirk, wasn’t he?”

  “Yes, in a manner of speaking. He drowned on the way home. The fishing vessel carrying him capsized. Applegate said Enid Jennings had drowned, and I thought Douglas really oughtn’t to be viewing bloated corpses. He appears far stronger than his sister, but he’s been a nervous wreck since the war. I wanted to spare him the misery.”

  “I suppose he must have felt the need to be strong when his father died. Man of the house and everything.”

  “Indeed. I’m sorry you never knew Harry Jennings. The family was destroyed without him. Never really recovered; Agnes seemed to come off worst.”

  “Would you mind if I asked a delicate question?” asked Gabriel, after a judicious pause.

  “I’ve a feeling you’ll ask it anyway,” answered Dr Whitehead wryly. “Well?”

  “In your professional opinion, how sane would you say Agnes is?”

  Dr Whitehead smiled reassuringly. “Father, she is as sane as you or I, but she has been through a great deal more than you know, and I’m afraid it takes its toll on a person. I have given her story some thought, as it happens.”

  “Yes?”

  “Well, it occurred to me that people have disappeared before in these parts—without there being an abductor or a killer, I mean. I daresay Douglas has told you about the time Agnes went missing, but there was another occasion when I was a boy.”

  “A disappearance?”

  “Yes. It sprang to mind as soon as Agnes told me what had happened. A farmer was out walking with his six-year-old son, a little boy called Archie. They were running across a common, not far out of town, and the child ran ahead and disappeared. The father thought nothing of it, since the ground is so uneven in these parts. He assumed the little one ha
d just stepped into a dip in the land; but he walked and walked, and there was no sign of Archie anywhere. There was nothing but grass and little hills all around; no trees, no hedgerows where he could be hiding, but he was gone.”

  “What on earth happened?”

  “Well, fortunately Archie’s father was a sensible chap; he knew there must be some reasonable explanation. He ran back to his farm, gathered together his labourers and they went back to the place where Archie had disappeared. They formed a column and walked slowly across the ground, looking for any way in which Archie could have vanished from sight. Finally, the men stumbled upon a fissure in the ground, completely concealed by the long grass. It was too narrow for a man to fall through and would be noticeable only if one stepped into it, but of course it was wide enough for a small child, and that was what had happened. When they parted the long grass and shone a torch down there, there was Archie wedged in between the two walls of earth. He’d knocked himself unconscious as he fell, which was why he hadn’t called for help. The men got him out and carried him home. Sometime later, he came round with no recollection of what had happened and no ill effects. Just an amusing story to tell in the pub years later.”

  “How extraordinary! Is that what happened to Agnes?”

  Dr Whitehead gave him a sidelong glance, and Gabriel had the sense that he was encroaching upon forbidden territory. “I’m afraid not, Father. No one knows what really happened to Agnes that day—even her, apparently. The point is, there are many underground caverns in this part of the world, but people generally know about them. Cheddar Gorge, Wookey Hole. The adventurous go exploring down there. And if one were to fall through a gap in the earth as Archie did, one wouldn’t get out without help. Agnes would not have got out without assistance, and why on earth would anyone rescue a child like that and then just leave her to wander home alone? Someone would have said something.”

  “I suppose so. And presumably she would have been filthy.”

  “Precisely. I wondered in Mrs Jennings’ case, wondered just for a moment about it, simply because of that story from long ago. But the fact is, Agnes’ story simply doesn’t make sense. If there were a hole in the ground large enough to swallow a grown woman, it would be difficult to hide. She may well not have even been alive when Agnes claims to have seen her. And if she was, how the devil did she end up where she was found, when the Jennings’ cottage is so far away from anything, even water?”

  Gabriel sighed, trying not to sound dissatisfied. “It feels like the problem of a reliable girl versus an impossible situation. My every instinct tells me she’s telling the truth.”

  “I’m not calling her a liar, Father,” Dr Whitehead assured him. “She’s a good girl; make no mistake about that. The fact is, she was petrified of her mother and with good reason. I know one should not speak ill of the dead, but you cannot begin to imagine what a monstrous tyrant that woman was. One does not have to be mad for one’s mind to play tricks on itself from time to time. I suspect that all that happened was that Agnes was anxious about her mother’s arrival because she had had a friend round for lunch whom she knew her mother despised; she was so caught up imagining her mother’s appearance that, for a moment, she truly thought she had seen her. A moment later, the madness passed.”

  “It’s plausible,” admitted Gabriel. “I’m afraid I’m more at home with the mysteries of the human soul than the mind.”

  Dr Whitehead smiled indulgently. “And so you should be, Father. But speaking as a doctor, I honestly cannot think of another explanation, and I won’t have the police harassing her. Agnes is like a daughter to me; I won’t see her come to harm over this.”

  “I understand.”

  “And incidentally, Father, you are a hopeless liar,” added Dr Whitehead cheerfully. “I do know my catechism, and I know perfectly well you priests do not anoint the dead.”

  Gabriel felt himself blushing. “Well, I’m glad you know your catechism,” he tried, embarrassed. “Look here, I’m not trying to incriminate Agnes. I too believe her to be innocent, but I shan’t be able to help her without evidence. I need only a quick glance at the body, I swear, and I’ll leave you in peace.”

  “That’s quite all right, Father. Take as long as you need.”

  Gabriel sat back in the passenger seat and distracted himself with looking out at the avenue of beech trees they were driving through. Dr Whitehead is no fool, he thought, and he wanted me to know it.

  8

  Gabriel had very rarely entered a mortuary; his business was largely with the living. His last sight of a person tended to be in those final sacred minutes at the deathbed, before the person’s cadaver was put through the indignity of being transferred, labelled and, in some cases, submitted to a postmortem. Everything about the ghastly building rankled with him. In this unnatural time between death and the solemn farewell of the Requiem, a body became a piece of meat to be looked at or stored away. There was something so municipal about it all, the chill ambient temperature; the cold, spartan room in which the body lay; the indifference of the mortuary attendant, who had somehow found himself stuck with a job he could never speak about at dinner parties.

  A young man with the face of a medieval hangman led Gabriel and Dr Whitehead to the shrouded figure, gave them both a perfunctory glance as though attempting to acknowledge the distressing nature of their task, then took hold of the sheet and pulled it back. To Gabriel’s mortification, he found himself closing his eyes as the sheet fluttered back to avoid the first shock of seeing a dead body and opening them two or three seconds later to find Dr Whitehead already shaking his head. “That’s her all right,” he said calmly. “That is Enid Jennings.”

  The mortuary attendant nodded and stepped back. “Would you like a few minutes?” he asked.

  “Yes please. We shan’t be long. The priest here would like to pay his respects—in private.”

  The attendant nodded again, turned on his heel and left. Dr Whitehead glanced towards the door as it swung shut before turning back to Gabriel, “I could hardly contain my shock,” he half whispered. “This is not what I expected at all!”

  Gabriel moved towards the body and took a closer look. It was definitely Enid Jennings; her face was unmistakable even in death. Gabriel had often found that as soon as someone died, the person’s skin seemed to unfold as the muscles relaxed, giving a look of peace and tranquillity, almost youthfulness in the old ones as the lines of anxiety smoothed out. Everyone looked like an innocent in death, except apparently Enid Jennings, who still managed to have a slight scowl on her face. It was as though she maintained an intense disapproval of the world and everyone in it, all the more so now that it held no place for her. “What a terrible thing,” he said without thinking, “to die with all that anger.”

  “Father, I wasn’t referring to her facial expression. Look at her!” Gabriel looked again, wincing slightly as Dr Whitehead removed the sheet altogether so that he could get a full view of her body. Enid Jennings’ clothes had turned something like the colour of dishwater from being soaked in the muddy river for hours; she wore no jewellery except her wedding band—an almost sentimental gesture for a hard-bitten widow. Her hair had become unpinned as she was dragged along the river, and the hat she had almost certainly been wearing must have disappeared without trace in the water. It felt strange to see her without a hat, almost intrusive. She had lost a shoe as well, and her naked foot had a badly grazed heel from scraping along the stony riverbed. “Father, can’t you see?” called a voice from far away.

  “Her fingernails are a terrible mess,” commented Gabriel, looking from one of her hands to the other. Both sets of nails were ragged and had dirt buried deeply underneath them. “Poor grooming for a woman as fastidious as Mrs Jennings.”

  “What are you wittering away about, Father?” came the impatient response. “The point is, she’s not bloated.”

  Gabriel winced again. Dr Whitehead was right, of course. “She didn’t drown,” Gabriel stated matter-of-factl
y. “She was dead before she landed in the water. The river’s so fast-flowing at the moment, her body must have been carried along by the powerful current and tangled up in something before it could sink.” He glanced up at Dr Whitehead for support. “So what was the cause of death?”

  “The postmortem will tell us that,” said Dr Whitehead finally, respectfully recovering the body with the sheet. “The only thing I can say with any certainty is that she didn’t drown. We may not even be looking at murder here.” Dr Whitehead shook his head again. It was the first time Gabriel had ever seen him looking unsettled or even uncertain of himself, but he clearly did not know how to proceed. “Let’s get out of here, Father,” he said finally, making for the door without looking back to see if his companion were following. “I don’t know what to make of any of this now.”

  Back in the car, the two men sat in silence as Dr Whitehead slipped the key into the ignition and brought the engine to life after three or four attempts. It was Gabriel who spoke first. “May I look at that list of her personal effects?” he asked, if nothing else to divert the conversation from the enormous elephant in the vehicle.

  Dr Whitehead slipped his hand into his pocket and pulled out a piece of paper folded twice. “Nothing much to read there, Father,” he remarked, releasing the hand brake and sending them cruising down the road. “I should think the contents of Enid Jennings’ salvaged handbag will prove to be the least mysterious part of all of this.”

  “Possibly,” said Gabriel, casting his eye down a list of predictably mundane objects: a black leather purse containing a water-damaged ten-shilling note and a punched train ticket, a door key, a yellow pocket comb, a white cotton handkerchief and a fragment of water-damaged paper, possibly a shopping list. “I like to have as much information as possible.”

  “I’m not given to existential experiences, Father,” remarked Dr Whitehead, “but I feel as though I’ve walked into some strange dream. I suppose at least there’s a possibility now that the woman did not meet a violent end, even if the mystery has thickened a little. There’s quite some comfort in that, I suppose.”