The Vanishment

by Jonathan Aycliffe

  "It now seems that Mr. Medawar chose to ignore those instructions in order to take the rent for himself. Obviously, we shall have to place the matter in the hands of the police. In the meantime, we will be more than happy to repay you in full. Should any question of compensation arise—"

  He stopped, visibly unhappy at the thought of legal action, glancing from Raleigh to myself as if trying to determine which of us represented the greater threat. I reassured him that I had not come in search of compensation. I had, after all, received what I had paid for.

  Still apologizing profusely, Nesbitt stood and made for the door. He stood outside for a moment, his back visible through the frosted glass. I heard the sound of a matchbox being opened, then the scrape as he struck a light.

  "We really are sorry about this," said Pentreath, resuming his seat. "If anything has happened as a result of this swindle . . . What is it exactly that you came for?"

  "We want to know about Petherick House," said Raleigh. "Ownership, past and present. Inheritances, purchases—whatever you can tell us."

  The solicitor went to a filing cabinet at the rear of the room and from it took an armful of files of assorted sizes, all tied with pink ribbon. Papers spilled from some. The computer and its mixed blessings had not reached Pentreath, Single, and Nesbitt. I wondered to myself what manner of man was Single.

  "Most of these old files should have been sent to storage long ago," said Pentreath, dropping the heap onto his desk. "Now, if you will give me a few more minutes in which to remind myself of the facts."

  He scanned the top layer of files, taking each one in his hands and bringing its contents close to his face: he was evidently shortsighted. He grunted and nodded amiably as he did so, glancing up from time to time at Raleigh or myself in order to flash a reassuring smile. It was a look of feigned complicity, as though to say he shared in our dismay at such a mass of paperwork. The nameless subordinate he ignored.

  "Well," he said at last, sinking back in his seat, "all seems to be in order. Where would you like me to begin?"

  "You can start by telling me more about this Mr. Adderstone."

  "Yes, of course. As Mr. Nesbitt explained, he is the current owner of Petherick House. His full name is Richard Adderstone. From time to time we transact business on his behalf down here. Mr. Adderstone lives in Yorkshire and visits Cornwall only rarely. It is such a long journey, and he is getting on in years. But he is a Cornishman by birth, and I believe he lived in these parts until he was thirty or thereabouts. Petherick House has remained empty since then. We look after it for him. See that it's kept in a reasonable state of repair and so on. Mr. Clare here is the first person to have stayed in the property in all this time."

  He paused and opened a slim file.

  "I believe the house was left to Mr. Adderstone by a great aunt who died in—let me see . . ."

  Pentreath leafed through a thick pile of yellowing papers in the file, then pulled out what he had been looking for.

  "Nineteen fifty-three. July 1953."

  Raleigh looked at me. I did not move a muscle. "What was her name?" Raleigh asked. I could feel the tension in his voice.

  "Trevorrow," Pentreath said. "Miss Agnes Trevorrow."

  Raleigh looked at me again. He showed no sign of surprise. A deep silence followed. I shivered in spite of myself. Pentreath looked at each of us in turn, puzzled by our reaction.

  When he spoke again, Raleigh's voice was measured, as though he feared what an unguarded question might uncover.

  "And this Miss Trevorrow lived at Petherick House right up to the time of her death?"

  Pentreath shook his head.

  "Not entirely," he said. "She had lived there for a very long time. I understand she was quite elderly when she passed away. We still have a copy of her will to hand, and other papers relating to the house. But she also owned a smaller property in Truro. I believe she went there to live from time to time, but in the end she always went back to Petherick House. She died there, and she was buried in the churchyard at Tredannack. The house in Truro was sold by us and the proceeds put into her estate. Since Mr. Adderstone was by then her only surviving relative, her will left everything to him. The sale of the Truro property was carried out on his instructions. But there was an entail which prevented—and still prevents—him from putting Petherick House on the market. The upkeep is quite a drain on his resources, but he is obliged to spend a certain amount every year on it."

  "This house in Truro. The address wouldn't have been ninety-seven Lemon Street, would it?"

  "Yes, that's quite right. How did you know?"

  "No matter. I'd like to get back to this Mr. Adderstone. I'd like his address and telephone."

  "I'm not sure that. . ."

  Raleigh said nothing, but the look that passed between him and Pentreath was enough. The solicitor wrote the details on a slip of paper and passed them across the desk. As he did so I turned to him.

  "There's something I'd like to know," I said. "Do you have any idea why your Mr. Adderstone refused to let anybody rent the house? Or why he never lived there himself?"

  He did not answer at once. Perhaps he was trying to remember a standard reply, perhaps he was trying to invent something of his own. But in the end he just told the truth, what he knew of it.

  "He lived there briefly," he said. "With his first wife. She . . ." He hesitated. "She disappeared there one night and was never seen again. He shut the place up after that and never went back."

  Chapter 11

  The next day I drove over to Tredannack. The parish church and its grounds lay on the northern edge of the village, with a magnificent view across fields to the sea. I passed through a low lych-gate and found myself on a winding gravel path. It led to an arched door set in a wide porch. On either side flowers grew, well tended and laid in carefully arranged patterns: monbretias, primulas, columbines, cyclamens. The church was medieval, built of rough gray stone and bearing a tower typical of the region: tall and square, with a pointed pinnacle at each of its four corners.

  I skirted the edge of the building, coming on a much narrower path into the churchyard proper. The graves were well looked after, carpeted with grass and summer flowers set in small clumps by a skilled hand. There was some of the beauty of St. Just, but none of the exoticism or the lushness. The newer graves boasted vases, many of them filled with cut flowers. Farther back lay older stones, weathered and leaning at curious angles. I was looking for one dating no farther back than 1953.

  It took me longer than I had expected. By guesswork, I stumbled at last on a patch of graves dating back to the right period. Their headstones were stained and discolored, and patched with moss. Tredannack was a small place, and burials in any year were few in number, so I thought I would stumble on Miss Trevorrow quickly enough. In fact, she had not been laid to rest with her friends, if friends she had had. I found her tucked away, single, in a spare corner, far from the other graves, and nearer the old dead than the new. There were no flowers on it, neither planted nor set in a vase. I read the brief inscription.

  AGNES TREVORROW

  19 December 1869-16 July 1953

  "Thou hast removed my soul far off from peace"

  The quotation was familiar: it had been taken from the book of Lamentations. He hath led me, and brought me into darkness, but not into light. . . . He hath set me in dark places, as they that be dead of old. . . . He hath filled me with bitterness, he hath made me drunken with wormwood. . . . And thou hast removed my soul far off from peace.

  It had grown cold. The tall churchyard trees cast deep shadows over the graves, and there was no sunshine where I stood. Far away from me, the sea rippled in a light of its own, but I was not buoyed up by it. I could hear the preacher's voice in my father's church, a voice from my childhood: He hath led me, and brought me into darkness.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I caught sight of a swift movement, a twisting or a turning as of someone moving suddenly in shadow. I looked around, thinking to ca
tch sight of someone watching me, but there was no one. I was quite alone among the quiet graves. But I was sure I had seen a flash of black clothing, a white face. I left the old grave and turned back to the path.

  All that night there were muffled sounds outside my room in Marazion.

  The next day I returned to London. Raleigh said he had no further use for me at that point. What, after all, had we accomplished? We had discovered that Sarah had either been in touch with or intended getting in touch with a woman who had been dead for nearly forty years. That made no sense, at least not the sort of sense that would help the police track down a missing person. Or pursue a murder inquiry, if that was what this had become.

  Raleigh had latched onto the idea that someone had been playing games with Sarah, using the name Trevorrow and the address of a house in which the real Agnes Trevorrow had lived at different times. Perhaps it was someone who knew of Sarah's fear of Petherick House, someone who thought they could have some fun or make some money by scaring her further. But who this prankster could be or what their real motive may have been were matters not even Raleigh could begin to guess at.

  The information about Adderstone and his wife had made an impression on the chief inspector, and he told me that he had asked the Yorkshire police to make inquiries. It was rather too much to expect that Adderstone himself had been involved in Sarah's disappearance; for one thing, young Medawar had been careful to keep our presence at the house a dark secret. He was in custody now, but he had nothing to tell the police that was not banal or self-justifying.

  I did not think that for me to stay on in Cornwall would be of material help in the search for Sarah. If she was still alive, I doubted very much that she would have stayed on in the county. A few weeks of rural life, and Sarah would have hared back to her old haunts in the city. She was a city girl at heart. So I headed for London.

  After so long on my own, it was a relief to see Tim and Susan. We had a tearful reunion followed by dinner and plenty to drink. They put me to bed afterward, and in the morning Susan said I could stay with them for a while if it would help. I said no and went home shortly afterward.

  The flat was just as I had left it. As we had left it. There was no sign anywhere of Sarah's having returned even briefly. Without her, the place felt alien and unwelcoming. The familiar rooms had become hostile to my presence. I found myself looking over my shoulder, or listening for sounds in another part of the flat.

  I got out the box containing the typed pages I had brought back with me from Cornwall. There were more than enough stories to send to Alan Furst, my editor at Klein Morrow. I added a letter and took the packet to the post office in the next street. While waiting in the line, I again had that uncomfortable feeling that I was being watched, but when I looked around, the little office was empty.

  The evening passed tediously and a little unpleasantly. I could not shake off the sense that all was not well in the flat. Since living in Cornwall, I had become jumpy. The mere absence of Sarah made the flat seem queer and inhospitable. All the time, wherever I was, I felt sure that the door of whatever room I was in would open and she would walk in. In a sense, the whole place was already haunted by her, by her sounds and smells, by her having been there for so long and with such intensity.

  I slept on my side of the bed, feeling the lack of Sarah more than ever that night. Sleep arrived after much difficulty and was accompanied by dreams. I woke at 3:00 a.m., screaming. For a long time afterward, I lay awake, waiting for something that did not come. Not that night.

  Next morning I rang Susan and asked if I could move in after all. Just for a few days, I said, until I could settle down.

  "Only if you make yourself useful," she said. "There are to be no artistic tantrums or alcoholic blackouts. You are to arrive home at a reasonable hour. There is to be no typing in your room after midnight. And you will help me with my daughter. Those are my conditions. They are not negotiable."

  "I don't have blackouts."

  "You come close. The night before last was not the first time."

  "You were both drunk as well."

  "But not plastered. You were the one that had to be put to bed. You were not a pretty sight."

  I caved in. I needed her trust after all. We both knew that. I had no room for negotiation.

  "Very well," I said. "I agree. It's only for a few days anyway. Until. . ."

  I trailed off.

  "Yes, Peter? Until what?"

  What had I been on the verge of saying? "Until Sarah comes back?" Did I still believe that?

  "Until I can face this place on my own," I stumbled. "That's all."

  Susan and I went back a long way. Sometimes it seemed like forever. We had met at university, had even been lovers briefly. Tim knew all about our short, repressed affair. He had not known Susan then, nor I Sarah. Tim had supplanted me, and I had gone on to a succession of short-lived arrangements with other women until Sarah entered my life.

  We had met on some dreadful Arts Council committee, a half-baked scheme to combine the talents of painters, writers, and morris dancers, if I remember. I was a teacher then, and had been appointed to the committee by my local education authority to coordinate work in schools. Sarah became my only reason for attending meetings after the first disastrous get-together. The committee fell apart at its third or fourth session, but by then I had taken steps to insure continuity for Sarah and myself. We were, I think, the only real alliance that ever came out of that dreary experiment.

  For some reason, the four of us—Susan and Tim, Sarah and I—had become firm friends. I had never quite given up on Susan. I don't mean as a lover—she had long since made clear to me her feelings on that score—but as a friend and counselor. She put up with me and became a close ally of Sarah, especially after Catherine's death. Their friendship and understanding had helped us survive that tragedy.

  Tim and I were not really very alike, but soon after our first meeting we discovered a mutual interest in French realist chansons of the twenties and thirties. We would sit and play recordings of Mistinguett and Lucienne Boyer long into the night. Our favorite song was Boyer's "Parlez-moi d'Amour." We would put it on the turntable, light thin cigarettes, and close our eyes. Later, when things were not so good, I would talk about Sarah and what was going wrong with my life. As often as not, Sarah would be upstairs with Susan, doing much the same. He helped me write my first book. In a way, he helped me find myself.

  "I'll be there in half an hour," I said, and put the phone down.

  Now it is time to mention Rachel, Susan's daughter. Rachel was four years old, quick-witted, unspoiled, beautiful in a way that caught in my throat. Some children are like kittens or puppies: half-formed, lisping creatures with large eyes, overzealous to please. Rachel was already something complete. Not a small adult, never precocious; just complete in and of herself. We knew it was a temporary state, that she might never keep the charm we now enjoyed in her. But while it lasted who could pass Rachel by without stopping heart in mouth, without being altered? She turned heads, and when she was older, she would turn them again. It was not mere prettiness or even beauty, though I would have said she was the most beautiful child I had ever seen: it was because she was present to the onlooker, a whole, undiminished thing.

  I spent most of that day in the park with Rachel. Susan was grateful to have a little time alone. She had a piece to write, something about neofascists in Manchester or Hull. It frightened me a little how easily Rachel took my mind off all that happened in Cornwall. We had told her that Sarah was staying down there a little longer, and she had accepted it as children will. She was crazy with energy, I could not take my eyes off her for a moment. Now on the swings, now on the slide, now on the merry-go-round: she made the day sing.

  In the afternoon, I took her for tea. Well, tea for me, cake and orange juice for her. We talked and talked. Her conversational skills were limited, but what she lacked in vocabulary or knowledge of the world, she more than made up for with enthusiasm
. I remember nothing now of what we talked about. There were no tantrums, no displays of greed or spite. People looked in our direction, smiling; they thought Rachel was my daughter, and I was content for them to think so.

  That night, after Rachel was put to bed, Tim and I talked. Susan was out at a political meeting of some sort, part of the research for her series on the British right in the nineties. I told Tim everything, all the details I had left out the night before. There was beer, but I did not touch it, I knew I needed to stay sober for what I had to say. Tim listened; he had always been a good listener. I told him about Margaret Trebarvah and the things she had said to Sarah and, later, to me; about the sounds in the house, Sarah’s hat torn to shreds, the child on the tape, the deepening mystery that surrounded Agnes Trevorrow and the house in which she had once lived. Tim listened in silence, pausing only to drink at times from the glass of beer in front of him.

  There was already an understanding, I think, that Susan should know nothing of this. She had a hatred of things supernatural that was born in part of her innate skepticism, and in part of fear. Once, when we were sleeping together, I had offered to take her to see The Exorcist and she had refused. She pretended not to take such matters seriously, but I suspected that quite the opposite was true, that she had once seen or heard something that had left her fearful.

  Before going to bed, I looked in on Rachel. She was fast asleep. A toy monkey lay on the pillow beside her. His name was Morris. Sarah and I had bought it for her before leaving for Cornwall. I kissed her on the cheek and went to my room.

  Later, I was wakened by the muffled sound of Tim and Sarah making love. I turned over and tried to regain sleep, but I could not. I felt alone and confused.