The Vanishing Woman

by Fiorella De Maria

  Gabriel looked George steadily in the eye. “And could you have done it? Could you really have lured a child to her death like that, for any reason?”

  George was the first to break eye contact. “It would have been quick and painless. A bullet to the back of the head is not such a terrible way to go. And the Allies killed a good many children in much crueller ways, in Berlin, in Tokyo, in Hiroshima . . .”

  “That is not what I asked you.”

  George made a sound that might almost have been a whimper coming from anyone else, and Gabriel realised, to his astonishment, that the man was in tears. “I don’t know. I don’t know if it would even have come to that. Perhaps, perhaps I could have been convinced that she really had forgotten that she’d seen the place. Perhaps I could have found some way of spiriting her away to somewhere safe until it was all over. I’m simply grateful that I was never forced to make a decision. But then I think there are a great many of us who were relieved the occupation never came, not just because of what it would have meant for the country but because of the choices we would have had to make.”

  George collapsed into the rocking chair, causing it to creak backwards a little too violently and knock against the edge of one of the bookshelves. The collision made a crack so loud, he instinctively threw his head into his hands, bracing for an explosion. Gabriel stepped towards him and put a hand on his shoulder. “Thank you,” said Gabriel. “I know it was very hard for you to tell me all that, and I will not share it unless I absolutely have to. You are not responsible for what Enid Jennings did to Agnes that day, but I think you have always known the terrible harm her encounter with you had on her life.”

  “If I could have stopped her finding out, if I could go back in time and pick up that bloody cigarette end . . .” Gabriel did not need to hear any more. The room felt suddenly oppressive. Gabriel was aware of the distant murmur of people coming and going on the pavement outside the shop and the frittering away of valuable minutes.

  “Mr Smithson,” said Gabriel finally, “I am sorry to ask this of you, but Agnes’ life may well be in danger again. If you let her hang for a crime she did not commit or be imprisoned in an asylum for the rest of her life because the authorities believe her to be mad, you will be accountable for her life as surely as if you had shot her that day. I need to ask you a few more questions. Nothing to do with you or your life or even your guilt, but I do need your help.”

  George refused to move for several minutes, but Gabriel’s patience had the effect of unnerving him, and he eventually sat up. “You’re not going to go away, are you?”

  “No, I’m not. It’s all right; this is the easy bit. I need to know about this bunker. Could Enid Jennings also have known about it?”

  “No. If Agnes did not tell her, then I can’t see how she could have known.”

  “Are you sure?”

  George looked up at Gabriel in exasperation. “Father, Mrs Jennings was a nasty, cantankerous old schoolmistress. That is all she was. If you think she was killed because she was up to her scrawny old neck in some conspiracy, please put it out of your mind. Whoever killed her probably did so for quite trivial reasons. Hate can get out of control quite quickly in a person, I have discovered, and she was hated by many, many people in this town.”

  “Do the police know about the bunker?” George shook his head. “Then why didn’t you tell them about it? It would have saved a great deal of confusion if you had.”

  “It’s not my job to tell the Bobbies how to do theirs,” George answered contemptuously. “It’s been almost amusing watching them scratching their wooden heads, trying to puzzle it all out.”

  Gabriel felt his temper stirring again. “Mr Smithson, if you had told the police how Enid Jennings came to disappear under her daughter’s nose, you might have saved Agnes a great deal of suffering. She would not have had her sanity called into question, and she is unlikely to have been labelled a suspect.”

  George stood up, with what was almost sulkiness. “What do you want?”

  “I want you to take me down there. Now, before Douglas Jennings goes home.”

  11

  It was already dark by the time the two men had descended the hill, and even the powerful beam of George’s torch gave Gabriel little reassurance. “Imagine coming this way every evening throughout the winter,” he whispered to George. “One would lose the will to live.”

  “Not afraid of ghosts, are you, Father?” George teased, and Gabriel had a nasty sense that the other man was quite enjoying watching him sweat. On the move, in the company of a man who was less sure of himself than he was, George was in his element, the spectres of the past hour temporarily banished.

  “No, I’m not afraid of ghosts,” Gabriel snapped, betraying his nerves. “I am, however, distinctly nervous of the living, particularly at a murder scene. If we could just get on with it . . .”

  “I doubt what you are about to see was the murder scene,” George answered, and Gabriel noticed him concentrating on the ground below him as they edged their way along the path. Gabriel was aware of the old dead tree and the paving stones of the path he had rather foolishly hoped to lift up earlier in the investigation. George got down on his knees, handing Gabriel the torch. “Shine the beam directly on this patch of grass,” he instructed, and Gabriel watched in astonishment as George ran his fingers along the edge of the path and rolled back a section of grass that looked as lush and natural as all the rest. In the pale circle of light, Gabriel could see what would have passed as natural stone to an onlooker if, by some mishap, the grass covering had moved or been allowed to wear away.

  “Well I’m dashed!” was all he could say, as George very carefully began to prise open the trap door. “It’s indistinguishable from the outside!”

  “We’re quite clever chaps when we have to be,” George answered, pulling open the door to reveal a vast, empty black space beneath them. “People think of pulling up paving stones, but no one ever imagines that humble grass might be covering anything. Would you like me to lead the way?”

  “I’d be delighted,” muttered Gabriel, shrinking from the prospect of the earth swallowing him like that. “How on earth did you get in and out without anybody noticing?”

  “As a matter of fact, Father,” George answered, seating himself at the edge of the hole so that he could feel the steps under his feet before he began scrambling down, taking the torch with him. “Are you coming?” Gabriel braced himself and followed, hoping against all hope that his hypothesis about George Smithson was correct. “As a matter of fact, we rarely used this entrance. In spite of all our precautions, we generally preferred the other way in. We tended to come in and out this way only between certain hours when we had the added cover of darkness.”

  Gabriel was aware that he was being led down a short, extremely steep set of stairs before he found himself on the flat again. George waited until he had settled before brushing past him, ascending the stairs again very quickly and closing off the entrance. Gabriel felt a terrifying sense that he was being buried alive as the door closed with a thud; he wondered what must have gone through little Agnes’ mind when she found herself in the hands of hostile strangers, being dragged deeper and deeper into this vast grave. He whispered a quiet Paternoster to himself to steady his nerves.

  “Put these on,” said George, pressing a pair of leather gloves into Gabriel’s hands. “It’s best not to leave any fingerprints. Now, if you’ll follow me, I’ll show you what I think you need to see. How fit are you?”

  “Fit enough, I hope.” Gabriel felt unnerved again, this time by the damp acoustic which seemed to stifle everything they said as soon as it was out of their mouths. “Why do you ask?”

  “Because it’s a good mile to the other end of the bunker.”

  “One mile!”

  “Yes, it comes out at the river. Waterways were very useful for . . .” He trailed off, aware of Gabriel glaring daggers at him through the darkness. “Yes, I know. There was never any mystery ab
out how Enid Jennings’ body came to be washed up at Port Shaston, having disappeared here. Someone who knew about the bunker lured her and dragged her down here against her will. The question is whether she died immediately and her body was carried all the way to the river or she was forced to walk there and was killed at the other end.”

  “It rather mitigates against my hope that she was not murdered at all.”

  “I thought that much was obvious.”

  Gabriel rounded on George, determined not to be distracted. “Mr Smithson, I hope you feel the smallest modicum of shame about what you have done. You knew Agnes’ story made perfect sense. All of it. You knew she had nothing to do with this. You could have spared her so much misery!”

  “Look here, if I had told the police everything, I would have fallen under suspicion myself,” George explained matter-of-factly. “Who else knows about the existence of this place? Who else could have killed her? Frankly, Father, you’re taking a hell of a risk coming down here with me when you know I am the most likely person to have killed her in such a way.”

  “I know you may have done it,” Gabriel said, “but I suspect that you have been trained to commit murder and make it look like an accident. If you wanted to kill me, you would find a way to do it wherever I was, even perhaps in the abbey. So, it makes very little odds that I choose to come to a deserted place like this with you.”

  “You’re a brave man,” was all George could find to say, handing Gabriel back the torch as though to indicate that he meant him no harm. “I’m not sure I trust the battery on that torch to last out as long as we need, and we need more light anyway to make a proper search. Wait a moment while I get the lights on.”

  Gabriel stood stock-still, pointing the torch in George’s direction as the man removed a panel in the wall and, after some creaking and fumbling, threw a switch that flooded the tunnel with light. “I didn’t realise there was electricity down here,” commented Gabriel, his eyes screwed tightly shut. The light from the overhead bulbs was hardly dazzling, but after the near darkness of the past few minutes, it startled him with its intensity.

  “This bunker was quite well equipped once,” answered George, taking the torch from Gabriel’s shaking hands, “though I am a little surprised the wiring still works. We had better not stay down here too long. By the time we have walked to the other side and back, Douglas may well be home, and I’d rather not meet him, if it’s all the same to you.”

  “I thought this place was well concealed?”

  “It is! How many times do I have to tell you? It may not have occurred to you, however, that if Douglas sees the two of us walking around in the vicinity at this hour, he will expect an explanation, and I’d rather not have to deal with all of that.”

  Gabriel shrugged with the resignation of a man who knows perfectly well he is not being told the truth and got down to the business of looking around him. “Smithson, I want you to tell me if you see anything amiss, any sign that the bunker has been used for anything other than its intended purpose. I dare say you were the last person to live down here.”

  George nodded and set to work, leaving Gabriel looking around indecisively. Everything about the bunker felt chillingly hostile, not just the fact that it had been built underground in time of war but the whole uninhabited feel of the place. It had been built as a refuge in time of national crisis, meant to hide a group of hardy young patriots prepared to risk torture and death in defence of their country. Every detail of the main chamber looked like a monument to the darkest moments of a nation’s darkest hour. The chamber was high enough for a man as tall as George Smithson to stand up comfortably with some six inches above his head; there was a table and several chairs stacked to one side but little else in the way of furnishings. What looked like several oblong boxes rested at either end, and Gabriel instinctively moved towards them.

  “You won’t find anything in there,” said George, reading Gabriel’s mind. “They’re not for storage. If we had to sleep down here, they could be used as makeshift beds. It’s not very healthy to lie flat on the floor when one is this far down. Aha!”

  Gabriel looked in the direction George was pointing, where something small and metallic glistened in a corner. Gabriel stepped forward and bent down, picking up a good-quality penknife, the main blade partially opened. “Douglas will be pleased,” he said dryly, but the more he looked at the blade, the more innocuous it looked.

  “Why? Was he hoping to hide the murder weapon?”

  “I knew when I came down here that Enid Jennings was not stabbed,” said Gabriel, kneeling back down on the floor, which until recently had been covered in an undisturbed film of dust. He was distracted for a moment by movement he saw out of the corner of his eye and almost fell over backwards at the sight of a large spider spinning in a corner. He swallowed his queasiness and looked back at the floor. “How many pairs of footprints do you suppose?”

  George glanced at the mess of footprints on top of footprints on top of more footprints. When the two men turned to look behind them, the many sets of prints petered out and were replaced by a bizarre-looking path that stretched away into the darkness beyond their sight, as though someone had attempted to clean the floor and done a very slapdash job of it. “Besides us, I’d say that only two people came down here, one of them unwillingly, and that perhaps someone has attempted to cover their tracks. Do you really want to walk all the way along, Father? I’ll not try to stop you, but it might be easier to come back tomorrow, early, while there are a good few hours of daylight left.”

  Gabriel ignored George and turned to look at the wall opposite the table. In spite of the grime and the cobwebs that had accumulated, Gabriel could just make out a small chink in the stone. “Is that where you shot at Agnes?” he asked tonelessly.

  George bristled in the dour light. “If you have quite finished playing Sherlock Holmes, Father, I would quite like to get out of here.”

  Gabriel nodded. “Let’s. I’m fairly sure that any evidence at the other end would have been washed away by now, and in any case, I have seen everything I needed to see. The real drama happened here, not at the river.”

  “I do wish you wouldn’t talk in riddles,” George complained, switching the torch back on. “Here, take the torch. I’ll turn out the lights now, if you don’t mind. Time to go.” He stepped back in the direction of the panel, unconsciously avoiding stepping on the footprints as though afraid of contaminating the evidence.

  “There is something else that puzzles me.”

  “Oh yes? And what might that be?”

  “How has Agnes never recognised you?”

  George turned back to face him in the weak light. “She never saw my face, Father. Our faces were partially covered, and we turned out the main lights so that she could never get a good look at us. And I’m very good at disguising my voice. It comes from speaking other languages. I needed to be sure I could never be identified.”

  “That whole ordeal took place in virtual darkness? Poor little thing; it gets worse and worse.”

  “I think you have made your point.”

  Gabriel hesitated. “There was one other thing. Did you retire from your profession or were you thrown out for overstepping the mark too many times? I don’t believe you were ordered to threaten that poor—”

  George turned on him, his temper finally snapping. “Why can’t you mind your own bloody business? My change of profession has nothing to do with anything!”

  A split second later, the men were startled by the sound of footsteps near them and froze.

  “Were we followed?” mouthed Gabriel, not daring to look behind him.

  George put a finger to his lips and, with a razor-sharp reflexive movement, grabbed Gabriel’s arm and threw him in the direction of the table. “Take cover!” he hissed, as he grabbed the torch—switching it off—and held it out in front of him. Gabriel crouched behind the table, grateful for its heaviness, then looked up in time to see a figure flying at George. The assailant was
powerfully built and in a terrible rage, but George had the advantage and slammed the torch against the side of the man’s head, knocking him down. Gabriel stood up and saw Douglas Jennings struggling to his feet, white-faced and trembling with anger. Signs of blood appeared across his temple. He swung an expert punch at George’s face, but George took hold of his wrist and twisted his arm into a half nelson, forcing him onto his knees. “What the devil do you think you’re playing at?” snarled George, and there was something infinitely more frightening about George Smithson’s quiet rage than a raised voice would have been. “I could have broken your neck!”

  It would not take much, thought Gabriel as he stepped slowly towards the two men, Douglas still struggling to free himself in spite of the helplessness of his position. It would not take much to turn either of you into killers. He said, “It’s all right, Smithson. Let him stand up. I don’t think he means either of us any harm.”

  George loosened his grip on Douglas with the utmost reluctance, but stood over him in such a threatening way that Douglas hesitated before attempting to stand, as though half expecting to be knocked down again. “I knew there had to be something here,” said Douglas, looking accusingly at George. “When Agnes got herself into a state just off the path, I knew she must be remembering something. Even she didn’t realise what was happening, but I knew. It’s happened to me since the war, that sudden feeling as though one is back there again, exactly where the worst thing happened.”

  “A flashback?” ventured Gabriel.

  Douglas did not look in Gabriel’s direction. “I couldn’t find anything, but I came home from work early today and saw the two of you walking this way.”

  “In that case, you should have made yourself known to us,” said Gabriel, but Douglas was not even looking at him.

  “It was your baby, wasn’t it?” he demanded, grabbing at George’s lapels and to Gabriel’s surprise, George made no attempt at throwing him off. “You used to bring her down here, didn’t you? I knew something terrible had happened to her that day, but she wouldn’t talk to me, and by the time our mother had finished on her, she wouldn’t talk to anyone. Then, before I knew it, I was in uniform, halfway to Italy.”