“Thanks. If it’s no trouble.”
“We’re talking like strangers,” she thought wretchedly. But aloud she said calmly that it was no trouble at all, that the things were already on the trolley and the kettle would be boiling in a few minutes. Then she escaped into the kitchen, where she stood watching the kettle and fighting back her tears.
She was not really what her daughters called “the weepy kind”, and she knew it was prolonged anxiety and lack of sleep which had made her so weak. But she despised herself just the same and could not quite avoid the idea that it was Greg’s coming which had affected her so deeply, and that therefore she must show herself specially independent and mistress of herself.
As she wheeled in the tea trolley he turned from the window and came across to help her.
“It’s all right. There’s nothing to do,” she said quickly.
“Then tell me about this young man—and Pat,” he replied rather shortly, as though quite prepared for the fact that he had come back home for one thing, and one thing only.
As she poured out the tea, with a not entirely steady hand, she explained about her visit to Jerry Penrose’s office that morning.
“Then you mean—” he frowned as he stirred his tea—“that she’s staying away for some purpose of her own? There’s no compulsion about it? No question of a real disappearance? Just some crazy plan of her own that you haven’t yet fathomed?”
“I don’t know. I only know that she should have come home and that she hasn’t done so.”
“But it’s not quite the terrifying business we thought at first. I thought, when you telephoned—”
“If you think I’ve got you here on false pretences—” her voice was suddenly much higher than she had meant it to be—“you only have to say so and go away again.”
“I’m not suggesting anything of the sort,” he said coldly. “And don’t get so excited about things, Clare.”
“Excited?
—
excited?
Have you any idea what the last twenty-two hours have been like? Why, I hardly—” She stopped, looked dazed by her own outburst and then said wearily, “I’m sorry. I didn’t sleep much last night.”
“I don’t expect you did.
I’m
sorry,” he said in his turn. “It’s been tough for you on your own, except for Marilyn. Where is she, by the way?”
“She went to visit a sick friend in hospital. She should be here any minute now.”
“Is she very much upset about all this?”
“She’s tried very hard to keep up her own spirits and mine.” Clare gave a pale little smile. “She keeps on saying, without any foundation, that it will be all right in the end. But she’s just as mystified as I am.”
“It seems impossible!” He got up and began to walk up and down the room. “Is there not a single hint that either of you can recall which might explain Pat’s action
?
”
“Nothing, Greg! There’s no—no undesirable attachment so far as I know. She’s always brought her friends home here without question. She seemed perfectly satisfied with her life here. People don’t just walk out of their home like that for—”
She stopped, and they both looked at each other for a moment in profound and ridiculous embarrassment. Then she muttered, “Unless there’s a good reason, I mean.”
In the short silence which followed that she realised that perhaps it would have been better not to add even those few explanatory words. And then, with a relief that almost hurt, she heard the sound of a key in the door, and a moment later Marilyn came into the room.
“Why,” she exclaimed, “it was all so quiet I thought Dad hadn’t arrived!” She went over and kissed her father, who held her at arms’ length after embracing her and smiled at her with delighted approval.
“Mari, how you’ve grown up! You and Pat are almost young women.”
“Not quite.” Marilyn smiled back at him in her impish way, and Clare noticed sadly that there was not a trace of the stiff self-consciousness between them which had marred her own meeting with Greg.
Perhaps that was to be expected. But as the conversation immediately exploded into the quick, casual give-and-take which exists only between those who love and are very much at home with each other, she felt as though a door closed—and she was the wrong side of it.
CHAPTER I
II
IT was not in Clare to be jealous of her own child. So, although the easy relationship between Marilyn and Greg gave her a feeling of sad isolation, she was glad that at least someone seemed able to welcome him home with uninhibited warmth. In addition, it did not escape her notice that her daughter’s spirits seemed to have risen with a bound.
“No more news about Pat, I suppose?”
Marilyn sounded almost cheerfully resigned about that, and it was her father who replied,
“No. We’re still desperately worried about her. But, just as you came in, your mother and I were trying to decide if she had ever given the slightest hint of some side of her life that might be secret from us
—
or you. Think, Marilyn! Sisters often tell each other things they don’t necessarily tell their parents. You and she were very close, weren’t you?”
“Yes, of course.” Marilyn went over to the trolley and helped herself to a sandwich. At the same time she accepted a cup of tea from her mother with a companionable sort of smile which warmed Clare’s heart. “But I hadn’t seen her for three weeks, remember. You’re the one who last saw her, Dad. What did she say to
you
that might have a bearing on things
?
”
“To me?” Greg looked somehow startled. Mostly, Clare thought, because of Marilyn’s casual way of immediately re-involving him in the family web. “Why should she talk to me about her innermost thoughts and feelings?”
“Well, you’re her father,” Marilyn pointed out in a matter-of-fact tone of voice. “Girls do confide in their fathers. And there were just the two of you on your own. I thought you might have had some heart
-
to-heart talks together.”
“No.” Greg, who had sat down again, shifted slightly in his chair. “We didn’t do that.”
“Pity,” replied Marilyn with slightly impertinent good-humour. “You wasted an opportunity.”
Then, before anyone could add anything to that, the telephone rang and Marilyn, who was beside it, picked up the receiver.
Clare watched anxiously, with hope in her eyes. But this died away to the familiar disappointment as she heard her daughter say, “Yes, he’s here. Just a moment.”
Then, to her utter amazement, Marilyn turned to her father and, still in that rather cheeky tone, remarked,
“A call for you from Munich. It’s a woman’s voice. Let’s hope it’s not Mrs. Curtiss following you up here.”
If there was surprise in Clare’s face, it was nothing to the dark flush of angry astonishment which swept into her husband’s face, and he took the receiver from Marilyn with something less than gentleness.
At the same time, Clare saw an extraordinary expression come over Marilyn’s face—as though she had over-reached herself in some way and was wondering how on earth to get back again.”
Mostly to avoid overhearing the telephone conversation,
C
lare said quietly to her daughter, “Who is Mrs. Curtiss? I don’t seem to remember—”
“It’s all right. A slip of the tongue,” Marilyn assured her airily. “It’s nice to have Dad home, isn’t it?”
Clare said, “Yes,” because it was impossible to say, “No,” and in any case, she
was
glad to have him home, however briefly, even though so far his coming seemed to have brought as much pain as pleasure.
Greg was still speaking on the telephone as she wheeled out the tea-trolley into the kitchen, but when she came back a few minutes later he was putting down the receiver.
“That was from my place in Munich. I asked the landlady to phone me if any letter came for me from England. There was one an hour ago, but I’ve established that it had nothing to do with Pat. And now, young lady—” he turned grimly on his younger daughter—“exactly what did you mean by that remark as you handed me the phone
?
”
“Oh—” Marilyn was still trying to be airily nonchalant, Clare saw—“it was just a bit of daughterly cheek.”
“With an impertinent sting in it, if I’m not mistaken. I’d like to know what you were hinting about Mrs. Curtiss.”
“Who,” asked Clare mildly, “is Mrs. Curtiss?” With a very nice sense of timing, Marilyn left her
father to answer that one. Then, just as he drew breath to do so, she said,
“No one at all important, Mother. Just one of those pretty, rather boringly designing widows who run after attractive men like Dad. Pat was rather amusing about her.”
“When?” demanded her parents in unison.
“In the last letter she wrote from Munich.”
“I never saw any letter she wrote from Munich
!”
exclaimed Clare. “I thought she wrote only postcards.”
“She wrote one letter to me, about a week ago. I didn’t show it to you. It was just a gossipy sort of letter between her and me. I don’t always show you my letters.” Marilyn looked suddenly on the defensive.
“No, of course not. I wouldn’t expect you to,” Clare said quickly. “But in the circumstances,
any
letter from Pat might contain an important clue. Don’t you think we—you should look at it again?”
“I threw it away.”
“Oh, Mari!”
“It had nothing of any importance in it, I assure you.”
“Except some vulgar gossip about me, I gather.” Greg had recovered from a good deal of momentary embarrassment, Clare saw, and was now looking as grim as she had ever seen him.
“Not at all. Don’t make such heavy weather of it, Dad!” Clare almost envied her child for her casual way of handling Greg. “As a matter of fact, Pat rather admired your evasive actions. With such attractive parents, she and I have grown used to watching people make passes at you both. We’re intrigued by the fact that you’re hardly ever taken in.”
“Har—?” began her father. Then he said stiffly, “What an extraordinary way of regarding your parents, surely?”
“Oh, not really,” Marilyn assured him. “
Modern
daughters see a lot more than parents realise.”
“Well, if you’ve seen anyone making passes at me, you’ve certainly seen more than I have,” Clare remarked, and she laughed for the first time since Greg had come into the flat. “You’re an absurd child!”
“But you love me just the same, Mum, don’t you
?
” Marilyn hugged her suddenly.
“Very much indeed.” As Clare returned the hug she looked past Marilyn’s dark head and saw, with some astonishment, that this time it was Greg who felt shut out. And, because she was essentially generous, she added immediately, “And so does your father.”
“Yes, of course.” Marilyn flashed him an affectionate glance. “That’s what is meant by family solidarity.”
It was not, of course, and the moment or two of silence which followed this remark testified to the sad lack of solidarity now existing in this particular family. Then Greg cleared his throat and said, with an air of returning to essentials,
“So there was nothing—in this letter or anything else—to suggest any side of Pat’s life which you didn’t know about
?
”
“Nothing at all.” Marilyn shook her head. “But my guess still is that there’ll be a letter in the morning.”
“Why in the morning?” her mother asked with a sigh. “Why not a phone call tonight, or a message of some sort at any other time? You keep on speaking of hearing in the morning, as though
—
almost as though you had some reason for thinking it.”
“Oh, Mother
!”
Marilyn sounded reproachful. “It’s just that tomorrow is the first moment you
could
hear by letter, isn’t it? I mean, even if she wrote last night as soon as she reached—wherever she was going, you wouldn’t have got the letter today. Tomorrow is the first moment news could reach you by post.”
“I suppose you’re right.”
“You seem to have worked it out in quite exact detail.” Her father looked hard at her, but Marilyn withstood his glance admirably.
“I just use my intelligence,” she explained. “That’s why I think it would be a mistake to do anything like going to the police until after the post comes tomorrow.—I’ll wash up, shall I? and you two can have a talk.”
And on this she went out into the kitchen, leaving a pregnant silence behind her. Then finally, Clare said, “You don’t think she knows something she doesn’t want to tell us, do you
?
”
“No. No, of course not. You mustn’t be so suspicious, Clare. You’re always inclined to be.”
“I wasn’t suspicious about Mrs. Curtiss,” retorted Clare, and suddenly she smiled mischievously in a way that gave her a fleeting likeness to her younger daughter.
He looked startled for a moment. Then he laughed too.
“And I wasn’t suspicious about those men she says make passes at you,” he returned almost gaily.
“It’s the most ridiculous thing! I don’t know what she was talking about,” Clare declared.
“Kid’s do get funny ideas,” he agreed tolerantly. And suddenly she realised that at last they were talking like people with intimate ties, and not like strangers.
Perhaps he felt it too, for after a moment he said, with a reflective smile,
“
I
didn’t know they rated us as attractive, did you
?
”
“Not really—no. I did know they thought the world of you. And I know they’re extremely fond of me, as part of a background they value. But as attractive individuals—”
“With a good technique for fending off admirers,” he finished, and they both laughed then.
“As a matter of fact, of course, you
are
tremendously attractive still, Clare,” he said suddenly. “You don’t look a day older and—”
“Oh, I look a
hag
!
”
she exclaimed. “Just before you came I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror and I thought how drab and middle-aged and dreary I looked and—”
“You didn’t look at all like that to me when I came in.”
“No?” She smiled and felt indescribably cheered. “Well, I’d had time to put on a touch of make-up by then.”
“For me?” he enquired unexpectedly, a little as though the thought touched him.
“For my own morale too, I expect,” she returned frankly. “I didn’t want to look my very worst for a
—
a difficult meeting.”
“It was difficult, wasn’t it?” he agreed with a slight grimace. “And yet, now it’s been forced upon us, I’m glad to have made some sort of contact again.”
“So am I,” she said, and swallowed.
“It’s rather ridiculous, really, for two people to keep hundreds of miles between them just because they feel they can’t actually live together any more.”
“Yes,” said Clare, as though she too had had something to do with putting such a distance between them.
“I mean—in a civilised society people get divorced and still go on being friendly even after they marry someone else.”
Clare wanted to say that this had never struck her as one of the most engaging or most sensible aspects of civilised society. But she refrained. Instead, she murmured, “Yes, of course.”
“In fact—though perhaps it isn’t quite the time to talk about it—if you ever wanted to divorce me for—”
“I don’t,” said Clare, wondering what had happened to the warm and intimate note they had struck such a few minutes ago. “I mean—do you have to talk about such a thing at this moment
?
”
“No—no.” He looked put out. “The idea just occurred to me.”
Silence fell upon them again and lasted until Marilyn came back from the kitchen. She seemed not to notice it, however. At any rate, she quite coolly asked her father the question which Clare simply could not bring herself to ask.
“Are you staying here while you’re in London
?
”
“Certainly not!” He seemed to have no doubt about that. “I’m staying at the Gloria.”
“You could have Pat’s room until she comes back, you know,” Marilyn explained.
“Thank you. But I hope Pat will very soon be occupying her own room herself.”
“Of course. But until she does—
“Mari—” In the interests of both of them, Clare came coolly to the rescue. “It may sound silly, but there’s a technical point involved. If your father or I ever wanted a divorce it would be best for him not to have been staying here.”
“Oh, I see. I hadn’t thought of anyone wanting to
get a divorce,” said Marilyn flatly.
“Nor had I!” thought Clare. But, like Greg, she said nothing.
He stayed quite a while longer, discussing every other thin possibility of a line on Pat’s movements. But they always came back to the same point—that what evidence there was suggested some sort of intention on her part and, that being so, it seemed wiser to wait at least to see what the morning’s post might bring before doing anything “drastic” as Clare put it.
“And by drastic you mean going to the police,” Greg said.
“Or to an enquiry agent.”
“No. The police have much wider powers for investigation. In fact, I’d feel a good deal happier if we had them on the job already. We’ve had enough delay, it seems to me.”
“It’s only twenty-four hours, though it feels like days,” Clare reminded him. “I’m inclined to think Marilyn is right and that we should give it until morning. Pat wouldn’t thank us for stirring up a lot of unnecessary publicity.”
“I wasn’t thinking of what Pat would tha
nk
us for,” her husband retorted grimly. “After such monkeying with all our nerves, she must take the consequences.”
“If she really
has
gone of her own accord,” said Marilyn softly. And as the shadow of a terrible alternative fell across them again she saw her father’s anger retreat.
“If she hasn’t we ought to be at the nearest police station now,” he declared shortly. But in the end he agreed to wait until the first post in the morning. “Though not ten minutes longer,” he added.
“I’ll phone you as soon as the post has come,” Clare promised. And then he went away.
“I thought he might have stayed to dinner,” observed Marilyn in a slightly dispirited voice.
Clare had rather thought it too. She had even made the sweet he specially liked, in hopeful anticipation. But aloud she said,