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  Oliver took the proffered card and put it away in his pocket-book. And then Elfreda came running down the path again.

  “That was Cousin Catherine, and why she didn’t get herself called to the Bar instead of marrying a parson in Peckham, I can’t think. She’s been cross-examining my head off and not believing a single word I said, and when she’d finished, Aunt Hortensia wanted to know who was calling up, and we had it all over again. I do wish all our relations were dead!”

  * Fool Errant, Danger Calling, Walk with Care, Dead or Alive.

  CHAPTER VI

  Claypole is quite a small village. There is a church, an inn called the Hand and Glove, and a couple of rows of cottages. There are two or three fair sized farms in the offing, and Mr Burdock at Little Clay breeds pigs, and takes prizes with them at the County shows.

  Everybody in the village knew that Miss Rose Anne Carew had run away from Hillick St Agnes on the night before her wedding. Every woman knew that she had run away in a blue coat and skirt and a bright green hat, and that Inspector Robins had been over to ask George Abbott about the young lady in the green hat who had got off the 7.48 from Malling. And of course George didn’t know nothing. George wouldn’t—too much taken up with Ellen Wilks to so much as see what any other girl looked like, and goodness knew why, because though it was plain enough that Ellen thought the world of herself, Claypole—feminine Claypole at any rate—didn’t consider her anything to write home about—“Lipstick and rouge, and heels as high as stilts! Well, the sooner she gets herself another place the better for her pore old father, and the better for Claypole, and much the better for George Abbott.”

  Peter Wilks was Mr Burdock’s head pig-keeper and a highly respected citizen. Pigs had no secrets from him, but he couldn’t manage his daughter Ellen. It was whispered in the village that she now spelled her name Elayne, and required George to pronounce it in that manner.

  Oliver found George Abbott digging pig-manure into the garden which he fondly hoped he would one day persuade Ellen to share with him. The trouble was that he had his mother to keep and he was a good son, and Ellen was set against sharing a house with any mother-in-law in the world. Quite enough matter here to make a young man inattentive to passing females whose tickets it was his duty to collect. He had his troubles had George, what with his mother bursting into tears two or three times a day, and offering to go to the institute, and Ellen stamping her foot at him no longer ago than teatime yesterday and saying if he didn’t care for her enough to say her name the way she liked it said, she’d take the morning bus into Malling and put down her name at the registry office and go for a lady’s maid—“And if it’s foreign parts, so much the better, George Abbott, for I’m sick sore and weary of living in a village and hearing about nothing but pigs.”

  George spread manure gloomily. If Ellen went off to foreign parts, he shouldn’t wonder if he never saw her again. This stuff ought to do the ground good. What call had Ellen got to go off foreign when all was said and done? His mother had lived with her mother-in-law, and as happy as happy—or so she said now. What was the matter with women that two of ’em couldn’t live happily in a house? And plenty of room too—three as good bedrooms as anyone could wish for. Why, she ought to be glad of the company when he was out. As for the new-fangled way of saying her name, he was hanged if he could remember it from one time to the next, for all he’d got it written down. He looked up with a jerk of his head when Oliver spoke his name.

  “Good afternoon. Are you George Abbott?”

  George admitted it. He was a pleasant-faced, rosy young man with big shoulders and big hands. He wanted to get on with his digging.

  Oliver came through the gate and shut it after him. He had left his car some twenty yards up the street outside the Hand and Glove. He said,

  “My name is Loddon—Captain Loddon. You won’t know it of course.”

  On the contrary, every soul in Claypole knew all about Captain Oliver Loddon whose young lady had run away from him. George Abbott looked at him with a kind of gloomy sympathy, because if Ellen went off foreign, he’d be in Captain Loddon’s shoes himself, or as good as.

  He said, “Yes, sir,” and then had the feeling that he hadn’t said the right thing. That was Ellen, that was—always keeping on about the way he spoke, as if plain words weren’t good enough for anyone. He had missed something because Captain Loddon was saying,

  “I think you took her ticket.”

  George got hot behind the ears. He must have missed quite a piece. Right down absent-minded that was what he was, and it was all Ellen’s fault. He said in an abashed voice,

  “I beg your pardon, sir—”

  “I think you told the Inspector—”

  George recovered himself. The young lady with the green hat—that was what he was after. Everyone was making sure now that she must have been Miss Carew.

  “Oh, yes, sir—I took her ticket.”

  Oliver produced a ten shilling note.

  “Look here, I’m taking up your time—”

  George said, “Oh no, sir,” and, “Thank you very, I’m sure.” The ten shilling note went into his trouser pocket.

  Oliver watched his rather deliberate movements with an intolerable sense of strain. Since Rose Anne disappeared he had the feeling that everything had slowed down. It was like being part of a slow motion picture—thought, speech, action, all dragging intolerably—moments lengthened into hours—time stretching, sagging—

  He said, “Will you tell me exactly what happened—anything you saw—anything you noticed—every single thing you can remember.”

  George scratched his head, and then remembered that this was one of the things which offended Ellen. He said hastily,

  “Well, sir, I didn’t notice much, that’s the truth.”

  “She got out of the train?”

  “Well, I didn’t see her get out, but she must ha’ done, because she come along the platform.”

  “Where were you standing?”

  “By the booking-office door.”

  “You mean the door between the platform and the booking office?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “So you could see along the platform?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “How far away was she when you saw her?”

  George put up his hand to scratch again, but desisted in time.

  “Well, sir, I couldn’t say. I wasn’t taking notice, and that’s the truth.”

  “Was she the only passenger who got off?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Well, when did you notice her?” said Oliver. “You told the Inspector you noticed the green hat.”

  George leaned on his fork.

  “Well, sir, it was this way. First of all I didn’t think there was anyone getting off, and I began thinking about something else. And then there was the young lady as if she was going to push past without giving up her ticket, so I said, ‘Ticket please,’ and she turned round to get the light and started rummaging in her bag.”

  “Wait a minute,” said Oliver. “You say she turned round to get the light. What light was that, and where was it?”

  “The lamp out on the platform, sir.”

  “Show me how you were standing, and where the lamp would be.”

  George showed him, sticking his fork upright in the ground and retreating half a dozen yards.

  “That’d be the lamp, and this ’ud be me, and she turned around like that.” He described a curve with his arm.

  “So when she turned round she would be between you and the lamp? Is that it?”

  “That’s right, sir. It’s not a very strong light, sir—lots of complaints about it one way and another.”

  “So you didn’t see her face?”

  “No, sir—I told the Inspector I didn’t.”

  “Did you see the colour of her hair?”

  George took time to think about that. Then he said,

  “I didn’t notice it, sir.”

  “You say she wa
s rummaging in her bag. What happened then?”

  “She found her ticket, and pushed it at me, and went on quick.”

  “Where did she go?”

  “Right across and out at the other door, and got into the car that was waiting there and drove off.”

  “Do you mean she drove the car herself?”

  “Oh, no, sir—there was a gentleman in the car.”

  “Did you see him?”

  “Oh, no, sir.”

  “Then how—?”

  “I didn’t see him no more than just to know there was someone opened the door of the car, and the young lady got in and slammed it and they went off. That’s all I saw.”

  “Then what’s all this about a green hat? Where did you see it?”

  George was on perfectly firm ground. The hat had struck him all of a heap. He liked a good bright bit of colour. Perhaps that was why he liked Ellen.

  “Oh, that was when she was going out, sir—the brightest green hat I ever seen—right under the booking-office light and no mistake about it. I didn’t see her face, because she was going away from me, but I see her hat all right.”

  There was a pause. George’s hand went down into his trouser pocket. The ten shilling note felt pleasantly crisp. His fingers slid past it, touched a piece of paper folded over on itself. Ellen—Elayne—E-l-a-y-n-e. A lot of damned tomfoolery, but if she fancied her name that way, he supposed he’d got to humour her—E-l-a.… He pulled out the piece of paper all ready to take a look at it when Captain Loddon should be gone. And Captain Loddon was saying,

  “Isn’t there anything else at all, Abbott?”

  George turned the paper in his hand, and suddenly there it was, staring up at him, a name on a piece of paper—a name on a torn envelope. Not “Ellen,” nor “Elayne,” but “Miss Rose Anne Carew.” He held it out to Oliver, and said in a dazed voice,

  “She dropped it, sir.”

  Oliver said, “What?”

  “She dropped it when she was looking for her ticket.”

  Oliver stared at the name. The writing was his own—“Miss Rose Anne Carew.” There was just the name, on a torn piece of an envelope. The address was gone and the flaps. There was just a straight torn piece with Rose Anne’s name on it. He turned it over mechanically, and saw on the back what George Abbott had written there laboriously with a smudgy pencil—“E-l-a-y-n-e.”

  “But, Abbott—”

  George was all hot and bothered.

  “I didn’t know there was any writing on it. I wanted a bit of paper and I picked it up. My young lady’s got a fancy to spell her name different, and I can’t get used to it, not anyhow.”

  Oliver said nothing. He turned the paper again and stood looking down at the name he had written three days ago.—Or was it four.… Time had stopped. He had written the name, and thought when he wrote it that it was the last time. “Next time I write I shall be writing to my wife.” It was the last time, there wasn’t going to be any next time. He stared at the torn envelope, and at the name on it:

  “Miss Rose Anne Carew.”

  CHAPTER VII

  Mr Smith was in his library. He was, in fact, searching the top shelf for an interesting pamphlet on the Art of Malediction as Practised in the Near East. The pamphlet was fifty years old and extremely rare, and as Mr Benbow Collingwood Horatio Smith never mislaid anything, he was beginning to entertain a regretful suspicion about the learned Roumanian professor to whom he had shown it some six months previously. He turned, looked over his shoulder, and addressed the grey and rose coloured parrot who occupied a handsome perch at the far end of the room.

  “Not always a very honest world, Ananias?”

  Ananias blinked morosely. Of all things in the world, he disliked seeing his master climb the book-ladder and stand there taking out one book after another. He opened his beak and emitted a slight hiss of protest.

  “All right, Ananias, I am coming down. I am afraid—I am very much afraid—that our pamphlet has returned to the Near East.”

  Ananias said “Awk,” and the front door bell rang.

  Mr Smith came down from the ladder and drifted over to the hearth. There was a pleasant glow from the fire. A dark afternoon—a very dark afternoon. It would really be more cheerful with the curtains drawn. Ananias liked plenty of light. He put out his hand to a switch, and the bowl in the ceiling sprang into brilliance. Miller came into the room carrying a salver with a card upon it and an envelope. Mr Smith picked up the card and read:

  Captain Oliver Loddon, R.A.

  Junior Naval and Military Club.

  The name was quite unknown to him. He lifted the envelope, which was addressed to himself, and said vaguely,

  “Er—the curtains, Miller—I think Ananias would prefer them drawn.”

  The envelope was addressed in a strange hand. Good writing—yes, quite good writing. Inside the envelope one of Loveday Ross’s cards—Mrs Hugo Ross—and, written all across it in pencil, “Darling Uncle Ben, please, please do everything you can.”

  He gazed abstractedly at the words.

  Miller finished drawing the curtains and came back. Ananias, gratified, stretched a wing and, rising upon his toes, began to chant a forbidden ditty of the sea.

  “No, Ananias—certainly not!”

  “The gentleman is waiting, sir,” said Miller.

  There came into the room Oliver Loddon who had not slept for a week. That was actually the first thing Mr Smith perceived. His absent-minded gaze, which appeared to go past a guest, informed him that here was a man who had come to the end of his tether.

  Oliver himself received a most curious impression. He had come here because it was a week since Rose Anne had disappeared and there was still no news—because he had done everything else that he could think of—because it was easier to do something than to do nothing. The impression he received was one which he could not have put into words—a handsome, dignified room, an almost incredibly distinguished looking old gentleman with an absent, courteous manner. All this was on the surface, and touched only the surface of his mind, but there was something else, something undefined and indefinable, which entered his mood and changed it. He had forced himself to come, but he did not have to force himself to stay. He got no nearer to it than that. The grey parrot on the perch by the window looked over its shoulder and fixed him with a long, unwinking stare.

  “If you will sit down, Captain Loddon, and tell me—er—what I can do for you—”

  Oliver sat down on the edge of a deep leather armchair. He would have preferred to stand.

  Mr Smith sank into the companion chair.

  “Loveday Ross,” he said—“you come from Loveday Ross?”

  Ananias lost interest in his toilet at the sound of Loveday’s name. He turned quite round and began to execute a kind of solemn dance, two steps this way and two steps that, with an arching claw and wings half spread. He said, “Loveday—Loveday—Loveday!” on a loud squawking note.

  “No, Ananias!”

  Ananias dropped to a crooning whisper. An attentive listener might still have caught Loveday’s name.

  Oliver Loddon had no attention to spare. For a whole week now, night and day, his thoughts had turned and swung, now slow, now fast, about the central fact of Rose Anne’s disappearance, the same thoughts going round and round like some infernal gramophone record which he had no power to check or change. He said in a hard, strained voice,

  “I’m taking up your time. I came because of Loveday, but I’ve no right to be troubling you, sir.”

  Mr Smith was leaning back. The long fingers of his right hand lay pale upon the arm of the chair. The hand lifted for a moment and fell again.

  “If you would—er—tell me why Loveday sent you to me—”

  “It’s no use,” said Oliver. “I don’t see what you can do—what anyone can do.”

  Mr Smith began to remember a headline in one of the papers which he did not read. Garratt had brought it in and dropped it—and there had been a headline.…
“Vanishing Bride”—yes, that was it—and a photograph, an incredibly bad photograph of the young man who was staring at him now. It had been labelled “Deserted Bridegroom.” He said in his pleasant, cultured voice,

  “I really think it would be better if you would tell me what has brought you here.”

  “I thought you would have seen it in the papers,” said Oliver bitterly.

  Mr Smith looked past him.

  “I—er—read The Times. You had better, I think, assume that I—er—know nothing of your affairs.”

  Something clicked in Oliver’s mind. “He does know something then. Why did I come? What’s the good of it anyhow? She’s gone.”

  “Yes, Captain Loddon?”

  “I was to have been married a week ago today—to Loveday’s cousin, Rose Anne Carew. The night before—she walked out of the house and disappeared.”

  “Er—what time was that?”

  “I’ll sing you a song of the fish of the sea,” said Ananias brightly.

  “Hush, Ananias!”

  Ananias said “Oh Rio!” in a tone of protest and subsided.

  “Yes?” said Mr Smith. “What time did you say?”

  “Half past six,” said Oliver. “Her old nurse lives just across the road—she’s married to the man who keeps the village inn. She’s got a delicate child, and she rang up at half past six to ask Rose Anne to go over. The child has had some kind of fright, and gets all worked up. Rose Anne is the only person who can quiet her.”

  “She—er—went over?”

  “Yes, she went over. It’s only just across the street—not fifty yards. She put on the coat that belonged to a dress she was wearing and ran over. She hadn’t any hat. She stayed about twenty minutes at the Angel—they say she left at ten to seven. But they say she borrowed a hat. It was one she had given the child a few days before.”

  Mr Smith looked vaguely at the fire.

  “She borrowed a hat?”