The Girl in the Cellar (The Miss Silver Mysteries Book 32)

by Patricia Wentworth

  ‘I hope you slept well. Sometimes one does after a journey, and sometimes one doesn’t. My old nurse always said that what comes in your sleep the first night you’re in a house sets the pattern, but of course that’s all nonsense.’

  They crossed the hall and went into the dining-room. There was porridge and a jug of milk, and tea in a fat old-fashioned teapot with a huge strawberry on the lid.

  ‘I don’t know what you have for breakfast. We just take porridge, but I believe the maids have eggs and bacon, so if you would like to ring, Thomasina will get you what you want. And then don’t you think we should do something about finding your luggage? Where did you have it last?’

  ‘I don’t know—’

  Lilian looked up from the careful ladling of porridge.

  ‘There – that’s yours. And the milk – we get very good milk here. And the sugar – do you take sugar?’

  ‘No, thank you.’

  ‘Salt then – just by you. What were we talking about? Oh, yes, your luggage. Where did you have it last?’

  ‘I don’t – really know—’

  Harriet came into the room, sat down opposite Anne, handled the letters, picked out two and opened one of them, becoming immediately absorbed in it.

  Lilian prattled on.

  ‘I always think it’s a mistake to read letters at breakfast. My father never cared about our doing so. Of course he belonged to the generation that had the post brought in and put down in front of them, and no one expected to get their letters until he had gone through them. Now what was I saying when Harriet came in? Oh, yes, it was about your things – your luggage. What did you say happened to them?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Well, we must find out. When did you have them last?’

  Anne felt a curious giddiness. She said, ‘I don’t know—’

  Lilian’s tone sharpened.

  ‘My dear, you must know when you last saw your own luggage!’

  Harriet looked up from her letter and said, ‘Lucinda says everything is astonishingly dear.’

  This time Lilian took no notice of her. She repeated what she had said before.

  ‘You must know when you saw your luggage last!’

  ‘I – I’m afraid I don’t.’

  ‘You got it off the boat?’

  Nothing came to Anne’s mind about getting her luggage off the boat. Nothing came to her about the boat, the voyage, her fellow travellers. She said humbly, ‘I don’t seem to know anything at all.’

  Lilian looked at her in an odd way.

  ‘How very singular. I don’t think I should go about saying that to people. I don’t know what you mean by it.’

  Anne said, ‘I don’t know what I mean by it myself. I – I’ve lost my memory.’

  Harriet had lifted her head from her letter. A dark pale face with a startled look, her eyes oddly light.

  ‘What do you mean?’ she said.

  Anne answered her.

  ‘I don’t remember anything before yesterday. I don’t know why I have come here. I don’t know who I am.’

  They were both looking at her now. There was something curious in the way of it. Lilian said slowly, ‘You don’t know who you are?’

  ‘No, I don’t.’

  ‘Then how did you come by the bag and my letter?’

  There was something in the tone, in the way that Lilian looked at her, that gave her pause. She opened her lips to reply and something struck them dumb again. Fear, doubt, caution – she didn’t know which of these restrained her. Or was it something deeper? Something she didn’t know about now – that she had known, and perhaps would know again? She didn’t know it now. She put it away and said with an added firmness that surprised herself, ‘They were in my hand when I was walking down the street.’

  ‘And you don’t know that you are Anne Fancourt?’

  She shook her head and was silent for a moment. Then she said, ‘I’m Anne. I don’t know about the Fancourt.’

  She could have said nothing more arresting. What Lilian knew, what Harriet knew, came to their minds. It was Harriet who said, ‘Don’t you remember Jim?’

  She shook her head. It was full of whirling thoughts.

  ‘No – no—’

  It was Harriet who spoke again.

  ‘Why, he’s your husband!’

  She felt herself in a strange place with an icy wind blowing. It went round, and round – round, and round. And then she was back in the room with Lilian and Harriet looking at her. She said, ‘I ought to have known that.’

  And Lilian said sharply, ‘Of course you ought! You had much better be quiet and try to remember!’

  SEVEN

  JIM FANCOURT LOOKED out of the window and saw with his eyes the grey poplars and a flat monotony of fields, but he was not really aware of them. He was too busy with his thoughts, and they were too busy with the problem he had set them. He hoped Anne was all right. There wasn’t any way of finding out short of running a risk, and there weren’t going to be any more risks than he could help about this business. There had been too many already. He wondered how long they would have to wait for a divorce, and for the hundredth time wondered crossly how on earth he came to give way to Borrowdale. And then he was looking back, seeing Borrowdale’s face with the desperate look on it and hearing his voice almost extinct, almost gone, ‘Get her – out of here – get her – away. For God’s sake – do it – do it – do it.’

  Well, he had done it, and that was that. Borrowdale was dead, and Anne was alive and his wife – at least he supposed she was. He’d been a fool and he’d have to pay for it. Borrowdale was dead, and he’d made himself responsible for Anne. He could hardly remember her face. He could see the flat terror on it better than he could see the features. She hadn’t made a fuss, but she had been terrified all right. And then Borrowdale had died, and the American plane had come down and he had got Anne on to it and it had got away. They would take her to London, and then she’d be all right.

  Lilian and Harriet were not the most enlivening companions, but she’d be all right at Chantreys until he got there. He had given her a letter to post in town and told her where to go, and she ought to have been all right with Mrs Birdstock. She would have been all right in any case. What was he worrying about? He’d been a fool to concern himself with her at all. He pushed her into the back of his mind and began to think about Leamington. He would have to see him the minute he got to town, because he’d have to decide on the line they were going to take. It was immensely important. Anne came into that too. They could either scrap her altogether, leaving him to pick her up at Chantreys, or they could feature her – no, he didn’t like that. He’d be hanged if he did. And it wouldn’t fit in with the divorce. The whole thing made a properly straightforward story without her. Cut her out, keep her out – that was the way of it. Now as regards Leamington—

  In about five minutes he was looking back at Anne and not remembering what she looked like. The picture came up in his mind. A little creature, brown eyes wild with fright, brown hair, a voice trembling with terror – and Borrowdale choking away his life. ‘Get her away – oh, my God – get her away—’

  Nonsense! What was he at? He had got her away, hadn’t he? If Borrowdale had had another day’s life in him he might have known a little more about it. But it wasn’t so hard to make up a story of what he did know. She was Borrowdale’s daughter – like enough to him for that to pass. And if, as he strongly suspected, her mother was Russian and there had never been a marriage, or not one that the Russians would admit – well, the rest followed easily enough. A Russian’s daughter was a Russian, no matter whether she had an English father or not. That was their rule even where there had been a marriage, and it was ten to one there had been none in this case.

  Looking back on it, he really didn’t see why he had got himself into the mess. It had all been so hurried. Borrowdale gasping his life away after the rock had fallen, and the girl shaking with fright. A feeling of revulsion swept o
ver him. What had it got to do with him after all? Marriage? Nonsense! It wouldn’t hold water – not in England. He’d have to see a lawyer about it when he got home. The plane wouldn’t have taken her if she hadn’t sworn she was his wife.

  He switched his mind to Leamington. What was he going to say to Leamington?

  EIGHT

  LIFE WENT ON for Anne. She had been for a week at Chantreys. Her memory had not come back. It began in the cellar of that house. It began with the murdered girl. For murdered she had been, of that she was quite sure. It was on the second day that the dreadful thought came to her. ‘Who murdered her? Was it I?’ She didn’t know the answer to that.

  She went out and walked in the garden up and down the untidy autumn flower-beds, not seeing the Michaelmas daisies so nearly over, or the dahlias with their leaves crisped and blackened by the frost but the heads of them still shaggy and decorative, pink and yellow, crimson and white. She walked up and down, her hands clasped together as if they held something which if she let it go would be gone for ever, her thoughts trying to break through the curtain of fog which hung across the path. She tried it every way. She was Anne. She didn’t know her surname. She didn’t know what she had been doing, or why she was in town, or who the dead girl was. She didn’t know what she had been doing all her life until now. She didn’t know who she was. It always came round to that.

  She tried again. She was Anne. That was the only thing she felt sure about. She wasn’t sure about being Anne Fancourt. But she was Anne, she did know that. She didn’t know who the dead girl was. She didn’t know whom the bag belonged to – was it hers, or was it the dead girl’s? She didn’t know whose it was. If it was hers, she was Anne Fancourt – she was Mrs James Fancourt. Could you be married and have no recollection, not the slightest, faintest gleam? You wouldn’t think so. You wouldn’t think it would be possible to forget being married. Coldly and deliberately her own mind answered her. It had happened again, and again, and again. She didn’t know how she knew that, but she did know it. A shock – she must have had a shock. That was what made you lose your memory – a shock, or a blow on the head. She didn’t think she had had a blow. But a shock – anyone can have a shock. You read about people in the papers who had some kind of shock and who forgot who they were.

  She stood quite still, and the clasp of her hands tightened. Had she left father and mother, a family, brothers, sisters, to become – she didn’t know what or who? No, she mustn’t think that way. Could you forget a family as easily as that? She didn’t think so – she wouldn’t think so. Deep down in her, almost unknown, was something very strong. If she had had father, mother, brothers, sisters, she wouldn’t have forgotten them. She couldn’t have had them. It was like brushing against something incalcuable, uncertain. Gone in a moment of time, but even as it went, it left her strengthened, though she didn’t know why.

  She began to walk again, and the thoughts went on and on. They beat against the fog and came back to her. Who was she? She was Anne. Anne who? She didn’t know. The more she thought of it, the less she knew. She stopped thinking then.

  But if you stop thinking, you are really dead. She turned round. She wasn’t dead, she was alive. She had got to think this thing out. She started again. She was Anne – that was the one thing to be sure of. According to the evidence of the handbag she was Anne Fancourt, and she was married to Jim Fancourt. She hadn’t the slightest recollection of being married. But she had no recollection of the past at all. Her life began, her conscious life began, when she stood on the cellar steps and looked down on a girl’s dead body. She had not then any idea who the girl might be. She only knew that she must get away from her. And then the second thought that had come – ‘You can’t go away like that. Oh, no, you can’t!’ and she had taken the torch out of the bag and gone down and looked. There was the wound in the head. At the memory of it she turned cold and sick. No one with a wound like that could be alive – but she had stooped to the ungloved hand – and the hand was cold. She could not control the violent shudder that shook her as she remembered the cold and clammy feeling of that dead hand.

  She remembered everything from there – how she had put out the light and listened, and how there had been no sound, and how she had come up the steps into the dark entrance hall, and so out into the street, and along it until she had come to the bus. Miss Silver wasn’t on the bus when she got on to it. She could see the bus quite clearly. It had stopped and she had got on to it, and then it had gone on again. She had shut her eyes, and when she opened them Miss Silver was there, sitting opposite to her in a neat shabby black coat and a much newer hat with a half-wreath of red roses on one side and an odd trimming of black chiffon rosettes on the other. The rosettes and the flowers grew smaller as they drew together in front of the hat.

  She pulled herself up sharply. What was the good of thinking about Miss Silver’s hat? She was never likely to see it or her again. If she was to think, let her for goodness’ sake think about something or someone useful.

  She must think about Jim Fancourt. She must think about the man who might be her husband. If she was Anne Fancourt, that was what he was. It lay between her and the dead girl at the foot of the stairs. The bag with the letter to Anne Fancourt in it had been on a level with her, and she had been some steps up. She had had to open the bag to get out the torch by which she had seen the dead girl. How did she know there was a torch there if it wasn’t her bag? The letter from Lilian was in her bag. If the bag was hers, she was Anne Fancourt, Jim Fancourt’s wife, and a niece of Lilian and Harriet. If it wasn’t hers, but the dead girl’s, then it was that dead girl who was Anne Fancourt.

  Up and down, to and fro, endlessly, timelessly. The light changed, deepened, turned to grey. A little shudder went over her. It was no good going on thinking.

  She turned and went back to the house.

  NINE

  IT WAS TWO days later that she spoke to Lilian.

  ‘You said you had a letter about me from Jim. Might I see it?’

  Lilian stared at her, a little offended as it seemed.

  ‘Well, I don’t know. Yes, I suppose so – if you really want to. I think I kept it.’

  Something like a half-struck match went off in the darkness of Anne’s mind. There wasn’t time for her to see anything by the light of it, but there was something there to be seen, she was sure about that. It was gone in a flash, but it had been there. She said, ‘It might help me to remember, if you don’t mind.’

  Lilian had gone over to her writing-table. She opened a drawer and began to fuss over the papers that were in it.

  ‘Miss Porson … dear, dear, I must remember to write. And Mary Jacks … One really ought not to put letters away, one forgets them so dreadfully. Now where did I … Oh, here’s the recipe for that very good apple-chutney we had at Miss Maule’s. I am pleased about that. I’ll leave it out and give it to Mattie. She’s so much better at remembering things than I am. Now what was it I was looking for … Oh, yes, Jim’s letter about your coming. Now you wouldn’t think I would have thrown that away, would you? I wonder if it wasn’t in this drawer at all. What do you think? Shall I finish this drawer and then go on to the one underneath it, where it is really much more likely to be, and I can’t think why I didn’t look there first. What do you think?’

  Anne said, ‘I don’t know. I think I should finish one drawer at a time.’

  Lilian sat back and looked at her.

  ‘Ah, that is the way the ordinary person looks for anything, but if you are guided by intuition it is all so much simpler, and intuition tells me – now what does it tell me?’

  Anne said, ‘I don’t know. I wish I did.’

  Miss Lilian bundled all the papers from her lap back into the drawer.

  ‘My intuition tells me that this next drawer may be the one.’ She began to take out the papers and put them in piles. ‘Three catalogues of garden seeds. Now how did these get in here? I can’t think. And really, you know, we never have got garden see
ds from anyone but Hodgson. I think I must tear these up. Or perhaps not … Oh, there’s Ramsbottom’s bill! My dear, you are doing me quite a good turn! I’ve been looking for that, and it’s really got no business in this drawer. I can’t think how I came to put it there. Let me see – what were we looking for? Jim’s last letter – yes, yes, I must keep hold of that and not let myself be distracted. Jim’s letter – oh, yes, here it is! You wanted to see it, didn’t you?’ She held out a sheet of paper and then drew it back again. ‘I don’t know whether I ought to show it to you. You can’t be too careful. My friend Mrs Kesteven knew someone who showed a letter to her daughter-in-law, and it wasn’t from her husband at all. No, I think I’ve got that wrong, but it doesn’t matter, because the principle remains the same – never show letters. Not that there is anything in this one, so perhaps you had better read it.’ She held the letter out again and Anne took it from her.

  It felt strange in her hand. It shouldn’t do that. Everything about it was strange. Utterly strange. The handwriting nice. Clear. Firm. But she had never seen it before. As she looked down at it she felt quite sure about that. But that might be true, and yet the man who had written it might be her husband, because hidden behind a wall of mist in her mind was all the story of her marriage.

  For a moment everything seemed to press on her. She felt giddy, and looked round for a chair. When she had found one she sank on to it, passed her hand across her eyes, pressing on them hard. After a moment they cleared. She was aware of Lilian looking at her. She couldn’t tell with what expression, but it came to her afterwards that it was curiosity, suspicion, she didn’t know what. She made her eyes focus on the paper and read:

  Dear Lilian

  I think I shall be home almost as soon as this gets to you, which it will do by means of my wife. I have married rather suddenly, and have taken the opportunity of shipping her off by an American plane which came down here. Better not talk about this, as it’s a bit of a job. They came down for temporary repairs, and were good enough to take Anne along. I calculate I should be home by the end of the month. Everything when we meet.