The Lady Vanished

by GRETTA MULROONEY

  He toured back through the downstairs rooms but could find nothing of interest among the magazines and figurines. He opened a walnut cabinet in the dining room that was closely packed with bottles of all shapes and sizes; sherry, gin, vermouths, brandy and whisky, various liqueurs. He noticed that a bottle of Southern Comfort at the front had a misaligned top and guessed that this was Ronnie’s current tipple. This Aladdin’s cave of assorted alcohol would be a major temptation to a drinker.

  He stood, looking at a particularly unattractive and no doubt valuable china shepherdess perched on top of the cabinet, her bonnet tied demurely. He thought of Carmen’s private space and how his aunt used to tuck important keepsakes into the lid of her writing box. Ronnie had Johnny Cash playing in the kitchen, bemoaning his fate for killing a man. He went back upstairs and into the box room. He lifted the case of the sewing machine, examined the smooth interior and the base, finding nothing. He sat in Carmen’s chair and picked up her cloth bag. Inside was a piece of knitting in progress, in blue and yellow stripes. The pattern enclosing it, published by a cat charity, indicated that it was going to be a toy mouse. He thought that claws would make a quick killing of a woollen mouse but perhaps that was the point. There were several pairs of needles in the bag and two balls of the wool in use. Swift took everything out and laid the contents on the carpet. A side pocket on the outside of the bag held scissors and a retractable tape measure. Swift unzipped an inside pocket and took out some folded papers. There was a pattern for a dog’s body warmer, another for a cat’s snuggle and one for hats for donkeys. Swift was fascinated by this whole world of animal fashion he had been ignorant of. He riffled through the papers. Inside the cat’s snuggle pattern was a folded letter headed the Pryce Hospice, with an address in Shepherd’s Bush. Swift smoothed it out and read the well-formed, sloping handwriting:

  My name is William Pennington, date of birth 4.9.1942. I am writing this to state that I am the biological father of Rupert Langborne. My son does not know this and neither did his father, Neville Langborne. I had a relationship with Penny, Neville Langborne’s first wife, before they met. We had known each other since school days; I suppose you could say we had been classroom sweethearts. I went away to try my luck in Australia when I left school but I was homesick and I returned to London in 1966 and trained as a librarian.

  I met Penny again by chance. She had been married for about a year and was not happy in her marriage. I will make no excuses for what followed. I had an affair with Penny and she became pregnant. She was convinced that the child was mine; I believe women have a way of working these things out. Rupert certainly looked very like me as a child and even more so as he grew up. Neville Langborne had no reason to suspect that Rupert was not his son. Penny broke off our relationship while she was pregnant but she sent me photos of Rupert over the years. I subsequently married but had no children. When Penny was dying of cancer, she contacted me. It seemed important to her that there should be proof, if it was needed at any time, that I am Rupert’s father. We did a DNA test; Penny used some of Rupert’s hair. This test proved positive. Penny did not wish to tell Rupert about this before she died but she gave me the written DNA outcome, entrusting it to me to use if I ever felt I wanted to tell my son that I am his father.

  This has been a heavy burden to me. When I met Mrs Langborne here at the hospice and realised that she is Neville Langborne’s widow and Rupert’s stepmother, I finally shared that burden. I have cancer and not long to live and I suppose a reckoning is due. Mrs Langborne has been kind and understanding. It is her strong belief that Rupert should be told of his parentage and she has offered to discuss this with him initially, and find out if he wishes to meet me.

  I have written this down so that Mrs Langborne can keep it safely and show it to Rupert, to my son. I will understand if he does not want to meet me but at least he will be able to read the truth from my own hand.

  The letter was signed and the date added underneath, December 2, 2014. Swift read it through again. What had Carmen been doing at the hospice? She must have been a visitor of some kind but no one had mentioned she had any interest in ailing humanity as well as animals. He had no idea how this could have contributed to her disappearance. If she had told Rupert and he had been angered at receiving the information and at her interference, things might have turned ugly. Would this affect his prospects of inheriting? To go from being the son of a Lord Justice to that of a librarian would be a decline in social status that Rupert was unlikely to welcome or want made public. At last here was a possible motive for wishing Carmen ill. Swift felt a surge of energy, He heard Ronnie’s footsteps on the stairs and quickly tucked the letter in his pocket and replaced the contents of the knitting bag.

  ‘Ah, here you are,’ she said, appearing in the doorway with a mop and bucket. ‘She likes this little den, does Mrs L, spends evenings up here knitting away. Find anything?’

  ‘Nothing. Still, worth having another look. Were there any other charities that you haven’t mentioned before that Mrs Langborne was involved in?’

  Ronnie shook her head. ‘No, I don’t think so. I didn’t know about everything she did, mind, she could be close with her information, as I’ve said. I’ve left you a wee bit of cake on the kitchen table, wrapped in foil.’

  Swift fetched the cake on his way out. Ronnie’s long-handled bag was open on the table, on top of her cream mac. He saw a whisky bottle inside, beside the huge bunch of keys she carried.

  * * *

  He decided to go straight to the hospice and was there within an hour. It was in the kind of building he had expected Lilac Grange to be; a sturdy, tall Victorian property, set within large gardens. Inside it was light and airy, painted in pastels and white. At the reception desk, Swift explained who he was and asked to speak to whoever was in charge. The grey-haired woman behind the desk, who wore a badge telling him she was Lettys, spoke on the phone, then smiled at him.

  ‘Mike, our manager, has asked me to take you to the little café we have. He’ll meet you in there. Would you like to just sign the visitors’ book and follow me? We do ask all our visitors to keep their voices low in the public areas.’

  She called to another woman in an office to take over the desk and walked before him, taking him through double doors to a small lounge area bordered on one side by a garden with a veranda. Mozart was playing quietly; there was a small counter where hot drinks and snacks were available and grouped armchairs surrounded by bookcases and plants. Swift could appreciate the effort that had been made to make it homely and welcoming. Lettys left him and he examined the books which were a wide-ranging collection; various classics including George Elliot and Wilkie Collins, spy stories, historical romances, blockbusters involving international financiers and a sprinkling of chick lit. There was a sad lack of pulp fiction. A notice said, you are welcome to borrow a book but please return it or replace with an alternative. He wondered what he would want as reading material if he knew he had a limited amount of time left; he visualised a small stack which would include Graham Greene, Beryl Bainbridge, Barbara Vine, Seamus Heaney, some Dan Turner — Hollywood Detective, and Shakespeare’s sonnets.

  He bought a coffee and stepped through the open patio doors on to the veranda as he sipped it. The garden was lush and riotous with blossom. In the centre was a pond with a water feature. He closed his eyes for a moment, listening to the soothing splashes. A woman with a mobile drip in her arm was sitting on a gardening stool, deadheading flowers.

  ‘Mr Swift? I’m Mike Farrell. How can I help you?’ A tall, thin man, with a boyish smile and eager manner appeared behind him.

  They sat, Mike Farrell with a bottle of water and Swift explained about Carmen’s disappearance and his role.

  ‘Today I was at her home again and found out that she used to come here. No one seems to have known about it. Was she a volunteer here?’

  ‘No, although she visited several times. Mrs Langborne was a regular contributor to collections for us through her ch
urch; her husband received some support from us during his final illness. We had a little social gathering last October for people who assist us in any way; cheese and wine, that kind of thing. Mrs Langborne chatted with some of the residents. She became friendly with one in particular and visited him a few times.’

  ‘Would that have been William Pennington?’

  ‘That’s right.’ Farrell had a habit of nodding eagerly when he spoke, as if to confirm his words.

  ‘So you didn’t notice that she had stopped coming here?’

  Farrell shook his head. ‘She wasn’t a regular visitor, you understand, so she wasn’t expected. And of course our residents have their privacy about visitors.’

  ‘Would you be able to check when she last came, in the visitors’ book?’

  ‘Yes, I can do that.’

  Swift finished his coffee, which was surprisingly good for an institution. ‘I saw a letter this morning, concerning Mr Pennington. I need to try and find out if it has anything to do with Mrs Langborne’s disappearance. I would like to speak to him.’ Swift was hoping not to hear of his demise.

  Farrell cracked his fingers. ‘He’s not here at present, he’s at home. Mr Pennington comes in for a week or two at intervals for support and pain control.’

  ‘I do need to contact him. Would you be able to phone him and ask if I can visit him?’

  ‘Well . . . it’s a bit unusual. It’s not as if you’re the police.’

  ‘No, and I understand about data protection and privacy. However, there is a woman who has vanished and who might be in great trouble or danger. If you could phone him and say that I’m here and that I have seen a letter he wrote, he might agree to allow me to visit.’

  Farrell scratched the side of his neck. ‘What if he says no?’

  ‘Then I’ll respect that he has said that through you. There are other ways of tracing people, it wouldn’t be too difficult for me and I have a job to do.’

  ‘He’s a very sick man.’

  ‘I understand that. I think he might be happy to talk to me.’

  Farrell asked him to wait. Swift checked his phone and saw that he had a missed call from Nora Morrow. He listened to the message she had left, saying that they had released Lomar for now but would want to question him again; he says he was at home on the thirty-first with a bad cold but no one to corroborate. We rang ahead to tell Mrs Lomar he was on his way home. Social services don’t know them but he’s got two previous — for robbery involving knives and a common assault. I’ve asked a community support officer to call there later. How’s the sweet Thames?

  He knew that Nora was going through the motions with Lomar. He thought of Charisse gloomily as he looked up Rupert’s address in Berkshire and found it listed under his wife; it was a place called Holly End, a few miles from Cookham.

  Mike Farrell returned with a sheet of paper.

  ‘I spoke to Mr Pennington and he’s happy for you to call him. This is his number and address. Mrs Langborne last visited here on January the eighth.’

  ‘Many thanks.’ He stood and nodded to Farrell. ‘This is a pleasant arrangement you have here, people must appreciate it.’

  Farrell looked delighted. ‘Well, that’s kind of you. We do our best and we have loyal helpers.’

  On the way back out, Swift saw a donations box. He found a tenner and stuffed it in, glad that others were generous and robust enough to run such a sanctuary and inspired by the trace of guilt always experienced by the healthy in the presence of the dying.

  * * *

  It was mid-afternoon and his stomach had long forgotten Ronnie Farley’s fruitcake. He called at a mini supermarket for a ham sandwich and bottle of water and phoned William Pennington. He answered immediately, speaking hoarsely, with pauses for breath. Swift kept it short, surrounded by the roar of traffic and asked if he could visit within the hour. Pennington agreed and gave him a code for the front door. Swift caught a bus towards Acton and sat on the top deck eating his sandwich and checking directions to Pennington’s address. At one stop the bus filled up with boys streaming wildly out of school, hysterical with freedom, bickering their way up the stairs, slapping and taunting each other and generally saturating the air with testosterone. Swift plugged in his earphones and listened to Elvis Costello.

  Pennington’s flat was in the basement of a four-storey house in a narrow terraced street. Swift negotiated his way past a cluster of bins and down steep concrete steps. He rang the bell, then entered the security code and stepped inside. He found himself in a gloomy hallway filled with shoes, coats and walking sticks and followed the croaky voice that called to him to come through, stumbling over a shopping trolley and righting it against the wall. William Pennington was sitting in a recliner chair in a dark navy tracksuit, his feet bare. Under him was a fleecy white blanket. The phone, a radio, a covered jug of water and a walking frame were beside him and the TV remote was on an adjustable tray poised over his lap. He was extremely thin, his yellowish skin was fine and translucent, his look detached; Swift knew that expression; he had seen it in his mother. Pennington’s light was dying.

  ‘Thank you for agreeing to see me,’ he said. ‘I’ll try to be brief.’

  ‘I don’t have many visitors. Do sit down. Do you want to open the blinds a little more? I like this twilight world but the nurse tells me off about it.’

  ‘No, this is fine.’ He moved a stack of newspapers from a chair and sat. The room smelled fusty, like a burrow. It was small and lined with crammed bookshelves which combined with the clutter and dimness made it oppressive. An empty foil meal container was on the floor, congealed with gravy, bits of unrecognisable meat glued to it. Despite the warmth of the day there was a gas fire on low.

  ‘Let’s deal with the elephant in the room first.’ Pennington gave him a tired, sweet smile. ‘I have lung cancer and a matter of weeks to live. Just to save any embarrassment.’

  ‘Thank you. But I’m not embarrassed. I’ve come here because Carmen Langborne went missing at the end of January and her stepdaughter has asked me to find her. I found a letter you wrote about your son, Rupert, when I was looking around her home.’

  Pennington raised a beaker of water to his lips with a shaky hand and took several small sips. It was hard to see his emaciated features clearly in the gloom but his heavy-lidded eyes and high domed forehead reminded Swift of Rupert Langborne.

  ‘I wondered why Carmen hadn’t been back in touch,’ Pennington said finally. ‘I don’t have much energy left for fretting; I thought perhaps she had had second thoughts about involving herself in my affairs. That I could understand.’

  ‘You didn’t try to contact her?’

  ‘I have no contact details for her. I saw her only at the hospice.’

  ‘You met her last October, the day she attended the social function?’

  ‘That’s correct. I heard her name and recalled that Neville Langborne had remarried. We got talking. She was an interesting woman; no false sympathy, no fussing, very direct. I liked that.’

  He paused and held a hand over his chest. Swift waited. The gas fire was sucking the oxygen from the room.

  ‘She came back to see me, and on that visit I told her about Rupert. I needed to tell someone and as his stepmother, it seemed somehow as if she had been sent. I’m not a religious man but I do believe that certain things are meant. Do you think that?’

  ‘I believe in coincidence,’ Swift told him.

  ‘Ah, a rationalist. Carmen asked me to write down what I had told her. She said that she would have to consider it carefully, but she thought that Rupert should be told. She had very clear ideas about right and wrong; her view was that Rupert was entitled to know, even if he didn’t want to meet me.’ He swallowed, his voice roughening.

  ‘Do you want to meet him?’

  ‘To be honest, I’m not sure. I think it would have to be his decision anyway. Could you pour some more water for me? I tend to spill it.’

  Swift rose and poured water from the jug,
placing the blue plastic beaker back on the tray.

  ‘Thank you. You know you’re on the way out when you can’t be trusted with a glass and the carers insist on nursery ware. When I was a child, I had a similar drinking vessel with Peter Rabbit on it.’ Pennington laughed, then coughed.

  ‘You have no family?’

  ‘No; my wife died some time ago. I have kind ladies and nurses who come in every day and give me orders. What do you think has happened to Carmen? I didn’t know her for long but I enjoyed her company and find that I miss her. I’ve never been a sociable man, you see.’

  Swift wondered if Carmen had been his only visitor. ‘No trace of her has been found. The police have had no success to date. Did she ever indicate to you that she was going away anywhere or had a new relationship?’

  ‘No. We never talked for long; I get tired easily and Rupert was our only real subject of conversation. I enjoyed hearing about him from her; how his life is now, et cetera.’

  Pennington closed his eyes. Swift looked at him, then away; it seemed cruel that Carmen had appeared in his life and offered him company and a chance to be heard, then left him without warning. His hopes for a meeting with his son must have been raised. His solitary suffering and lack of self-pity moved Swift intensely. He stood to look at a photograph on one of the bookshelves; Pennington as a young man with his bride. There was no doubt that he was Rupert’s father; the build was slighter, but facially there was a clear resemblance.

  He looked around and saw that Pennington was watching him. ‘Rupert looks like you.’

  ‘You’ve met him?’

  ‘Yes, just recently. We had a lunch and discussed his stepmother.’

  ‘You see that shelf, by the window? There’s an album at one end. Take a look.’