The Vanishment Page 5

  "She hasn't walked out," I insisted. "She would have taken her things."

  "Yes, I understand that, sir. That's why I think we may have to take a closer look. I'll get in touch with headquarters at Camborne. If the super agrees, he'll send someone out this afternoon to take a look around. They'll want to see if there's anything you've missed."

  I looked at her, not knowing what to say or do. My name had meant nothing to her. I was a stranger. Just a man whose wife had walked away into darkness.

  Small movements in the half shadows frighten me, and the voices of small children.

  Two constables came and searched the house. One of them took a walk through the grounds. Birds were singing.

  "Did you have a fight?" his colleague asked, back in the house, in the library. I had been writing, and papers were strewn across the table.

  "No," I said. "Not a fight."

  I tried to explain, to make him understand.

  "The house, you say? She was afraid of it?"

  "Yes. It's an old house. It has memories. She thought something had happened here, something unpleasant."

  "This woman, the one in the pub. What did you say her name was?"

  "Trebarvah. Margaret Trebarvah. But you can ask any of the locals. They all know about the house."

  He jotted down the name in his notebook.

  "I daresay. But it's your wife I'm interested in at present."

  He was young, with a fair mustache. For all his pleasant manner, I could see the seeds of suspicion.

  Perhaps, he was thinking, I am sure of it, perhaps the terrible thing had happened more recently. Perhaps I had done away with Sarah and was now attempting to put the police off my track. I am sure that was what was going through his mind. Or something very like it.

  The constable shivered.

  "It's cold in here," he said.

  I said nothing.

  On damp days my bones swell. I can smell the sea, even if I am far inland. And with the smell come other things, unbidden. The sound of the sea is merciless and repetitive. And there are other sounds I fear. I pretend I do not hear them, but they are there.

  That evening I went to Tredannack, to the Green Dragon. Ted was there behind the bar as usual, and Doreen, his wife, in a green dress. He served me a pint of Old Cornish. As I lifted it he asked after Sarah.

  "Isn't your wife with you tonight, Mr. Clare?"

  I thought of lying, but I had no strength for subterfuge.

  "She's missing," I said. "She hasn't been to Tredannack by any chance, has she?"

  He shook his head, looking at me oddly.

  "I've not seen her myself. What do you mean 'missing'?"

  I explained as best I could.

  "It was the house," I said. "It chased her away."

  "I reckon so."

  "Tell me, is Margaret Trebarvah here tonight?"

  He shook his head.

  "She may be in later," he said. "Depends what's on the telly. Margaret's a great one for that."

  "I'd like to speak to her. Let me know if she comes in."

  He nodded, and turned to serve his next customer. I was ignored as usual. By force of habit, I took my glass to a corner table. A few eyes followed me.

  It was near closing time when I looked up and saw Ted Bickleigh standing next to me.

  "Margaret Trebarvah's just come in," he said. "Doreen's serving her now. She sometimes has a pint before bedtime. I reckon it's her excuse to keep out of the way till Bill's fast asleep. If you catch my meaning. She's never been the same since the kiddie disappeared.”

  "The kiddie?"

  "Didn't you know? They had a little girl. Three or four, she was. It happened about five years ago. Went out to play one day and never come back. Police looked everywhere, but they never found a body. Reckon one'll turn up in time, though. They always do."

  Had that been what drew Sarah to Margaret Trebarvah? I wondered. Would Sarah "turn up" one day, a small, sad corpse in someone's woodland?

  Margaret Trebarvah was a small, ruined woman in her midthirties. She had never been pretty, never been happy. Her eyes were watery and furtive. Whenever I tried to hold them, they would shift away, now to this corner, now to that. She sat before me, arms crossed defensively, mouth set, as though pinned to her seat. I could tell that her husband beat her. Where it would not show. His grief for the child would have been turned on her.

  "Would you like a drink, Margaret?" I asked.

  "Got a drink," she muttered, looking away.

  "Let me get you another one. There's still a bit before Ted calls time. What would you like?"

  "Got all I want."

  "All right, then. Do you mind if I sit down? I'd like a word with you."

  She shifted, as though thinking of standing up and leaving. I noticed we were being watched.

  "I saw you here three nights ago," I said. "My wife said you'd had a little chat, you and her. It upset her, but she wouldn't tell me what it was about. I thought maybe you'd tell me. Seeing as it concerns me."

  She looked up from her drink—a pint of bitter— then let her eyes slide away.

  "She'll tell herself if you ask," she mumbled. "No reason not to."

  "I can't ask her. She’s gone. Vanished."

  That got her attention. There was no mistaking the look of sheer terror that crossed her face. Then, drawing herself in—as she was no doubt well accustomed to doing when Bill lashed out—she took a mouthful from her glass.

  "Gone back to London, has she?"

  "I don't know. I was hoping you might give me a clue. You told her something about our house. You frightened her. Later that night she got out of bed and walked off. Why? What was she thinking of? I think you know. Or can guess."

  She looked up, raising her head very slowly. People were still stealing glances. It would soon be closing time.

  "What makes you think she's gone?"

  "What?"

  "Maybe she hasn't gone. Maybe she's still there. Have you thought of that? Have you?"

  "What happened there? Why won't you tell me?"

  She gave me a wretched look, like someone who feels sick.

  "And have it happen over again? We've enough troubles, mister, without the likes of you coming here and stirring up what you don't understand."

  She drained her glass. Her eyes were full of some sort of pain. She stood.

  "Margaret, please. What happened? I have to know."

  She leaned across the table.

  "There was a woman," she said. "A young woman. This was in the days before the road. There was just a lane then, mud and that. She lived in Petherick House with her father. He'd a black temper, a man's temper. Got her pregnant, so they say. Or maybe not, maybe there was another man, I don't know. But he'd never let her out after that. Something was done to the baby; they say she killed it. God knows. But he kept her locked up in one room for a year or more after. And then she died. Of a broken heart, they say. Or he killed her."

  She stopped. She had come to the end of her story.

  "That's all there is?"

  "She's there still. She won't let go, doesn't know how to. Trapped."

  "What age? What age of woman was she?"

  "Don't know. This is all handed down, I've never seen a photograph or nothing. She was young, they say. Twenty-five or so."

  She got to her feet. Heads turned.

  'What else?" I asked. I knew there was more. But she went out without answering.

  On returning, I went up to the bedroom. I had been stupid, I had not checked the most obvious thing, because it had not occurred to me to do so. If Sarah had gotten out of bed and gone out, she must have changed into outdoor wear of some kind. But when I looked through the room again, I could not think of anything that was missing. Except for one thing: her nightgown.

  In my dream that night, I climbed to the first landing. It was dark, very dark. When I woke, the house all around me was still. But I felt sure, I do not know why, I felt sure that if I had wakened just moments e
arlier, I would have heard something.

  Chapter 8

  The next day I was visited by the detective chief inspector from Camborne Division, a man called Raleigh. With him was an assistant, a much younger man whose name I forgot then and have never since remembered. Raleigh held all my attention during that visit. He was a coarse man, ill-bred and ill-mannered, yet he was astonishingly aware of these and other deficiencies, and I sensed how powerful an effort he exerted at all times to correct himself, to modify by a word here or a gesture there the impression of boorishness or rudeness he knew he must be making. Later, on examining his behavior and going back over his questions in my mind, I realized that he was, in fact, a highly intelligent man, a man who had come far by much effort, but who would, he knew, go no further in life. His manner held him back, his primitiveness, the curse of roughness that his parents had so unwittingly laid upon him at birth.

  "Is your name Clare?"

  "Peter Clare, yes." I was standing in the doorway, dressed in an open-necked shirt and light trousers. I had been in the garden at the back when the car drew up.

  "I'd like to have a word with you."

  He was standing on the doorstep with the air of a man who will not be sent away.

  "Well, I. . . I don't know. Who exactly . . . ?"

  He handed me a card. Half a dozen steps behind him, his colleague lurked, embarrassed or just diffident.

  "Well, Chief Inspector," I went on, handing the card back to him. "I don't really know. I've given all the details I know to the policewoman who interviewed me in St. Ives. I wasn't planning—"

  "I don't have all day, you know. Are you going to leave us standing here or what?"

  I could see there was no getting rid of him. I could hardly have shut the door in his face.

  "You'd better come on in, then."

  He turned and spoke gruffly to the younger man. "Don't stand there gawping."

  I took them to the drawing room.

  "Can I get you anything? Tea? Coffee?"

  "Don't drink either. Sit down. I'd like to get this over with."

  He had already taken a chair and was pointing me toward one facing it. His assistant shifted for himself, bringing a hard chair from the back of the room and setting it near us. I noticed him take a tape recorder from his pocket.

  "Is that necessary?" I asked. "It's not as if—"

  "Saves time. You can have it off if you like. But I'd prefer it on." He hesitated. "If you don't mind."

  "Very well, if you like. I take it you've come to talk about Sarah."

  "Sarah, yes. Your wife."

  The underling switched the machine on and placed it gently on the table beside me. I wondered if it would pick up the low growl of the sea outside.

  "Your parents-in-law have been in touch with their local police, Mr. Clare. They're worried about your wife, what's become of her. They don't seem to have much faith in your efforts to find her. I'd call that interfering, but it's not my place to say. What about you? Do you reckon that's a fair line for them to take?"

  The information startled me into denial.

  "No. No, I don't. It is interference, you're quite right. I don't see what the hell they can be thinking about, poking their noses in like this. I've done what I can. I've been frantic, worried sick. They're not even here, they don't know what's been going on."

  But they did not need to, I thought. I did not doubt that they could come up with all sorts of possibilities, enough possibilities to prompt a detective chief inspector to come down here to see for himself.

  "And what exactly has been going on, Mr. Clare?"

  He took a cigarette from a packet of Benson and Hedges and lit it. He neither asked permission nor offered one to me. I dislike cigarette smoke. I was asthmatic as a child. Smoke still provokes a cough in me. From time to time I use an inhaler. And in the nights, in winter, my breathing is sometimes uneven. In the nights. In winter.

  "You know what's been going on. I gave a statement in St. Ives."

  "I know, but I'd like it from you. Horse's mouth, as it were. In your own words. You're a writer, I believe. I don't read much myself. Don't have the time. But I expect you've got a way with words."

  I related yet again the events of the past few days. Without drama, in what I believed were flat and neutral tones, or the nearest to those that I could approximate.

  Raleigh listened attentively, sucking absently yet quite fiercely on his cigarette. When it came to an end, he lit a second cigarette from the butt before crushing it between his fingers and putting it in his pocket.

  I finished my account. Raleigh sat for a while without speaking, smoking his cigarette, watching me.

  "Mr. Clare," he said finally, "exactly what do you take me for?"

  "I'm sorry?"

  "Your story doesn't even begin to hang together. You now say your wife went out in her night attire—"

  It was a curious phrase for him to use. Archaic.

  "Probably."

  "—without any money that you're aware of. And all because some woman in the pub takes it into her head to spin a yarn about a haunted house. They're two-a-penny 'round here, haunted houses. Then it takes you over two days to report your good lady missing."

  "Well, I'm sorry, but that is what happened."

  "You'll excuse me if I say I don't frigging believe you. Pardon my French."

  He dropped the half-smoked cigarette onto the carpet and stubbed it out with his heel.

  "Well, thank you, Mr. Clare," he said, standing. “I can't say but that I'm disappointed, what with you being a writer and all. I'd thought you writers were clever at telling tales. Or is that it? You think a tale that makes no sense, something nobody would think for a moment could be convincing, that a tale like that might take me in? What is it the French call that? Faux naif? You're a sight too complicated for the likes of me, Mr. Clare. Still, I daresay you'll tell me the truth when you've a mind to.

  "In the meantime, I'll have them send over some dogs from Penzance. They're good dogs, they've got good noses. They could smell a fart behind glass in a force-ten gale, if you'll excuse the expression. We'll see if they can't pick up your wife's trail. The sergeant here will hang on till they come. Maybe he'll have that cup of tea you were telling me about earlier. He drinks Earl Grey, if you have any. If not, Lapsang will do nicely."

  He glanced down at the carpet.

  "Sorry about the mess," he said. "Filthy habit."

  But he did not bend to pick up the butt.

  As he made to go he glanced down at the table. A copy of The Times was lying open at the crossword. I had completed most of it, but got stuck at 7 across, a word of ten letters with an apparently straightforward clue: Room can supply wine.

  "Chambertin," he said, and left.

  Why hadn't I thought of that?

  The dogs found nothing. I gave them items from Sarah's wardrobe, and they picked up trails everywhere, all of them leading to her usual places inside the house or in the gardens. But there was no trail that led very far, and none at all on the path to the main gate: we had always gone that way by car, never on foot. Had a car come for her after all that night, unnoticed by me?

  When they had finished, Raleigh returned, a cigarette in his mouth.

  "Seems your wife didn't leave Petherick House after all, Mr. Clare," he said. "Leastwise, not on foot."

  "But she had to," I insisted. "I would have seen a car. Or heard it. She didn't fly out."

  "She might have swum," he said, glancing away toward the cliff. "We'll keep looking."

  There were men in the woods, fanning out and thrashing their way through the undergrowth, a long file of them, and two dogs. They took all that afternoon and the best part of the evening. Shortly before dark, they came back empty-handed.

  "This is absurd," I said for the hundredth time that day. "She's in London by now, or somewhere else. But not here. You're wasting your time. Your bloody dogs are mistaken."

  "They're good dogs, Mr. Clare. The best. I'd not s
ay a word against them dogs, not if I was you."

  "What now?" I asked.

  "I'd like to search the house, Mr. Clare. If you've no objection."

  "The house? What on earth for?"

  He shook his head.

  "I don't know, to tell you the truth. But I'd like a proper look-round. While we're here."

  "There's nothing," I said. "Sarah isn't here."

  "Yes, I know that, Mr. Clare. But it's best to look at everything. You'll admit that's best, won't you?"

  I let them look. They went through everything, into every room, but it did not take long. I thought they were going to leave empty-handed, but at the last moment Raleigh came down the stairs. There was something in his hand.

  "Can you tell me how this got upstairs?" he asked.

  It was Sarah's hat, or what was left of it. I must have left it in the room on the top floor where I had found it. Raleigh held it in both hands now.

  "I don't know," I stumbled. "It . . . it was there on Monday night. Torn up, just like that. Sarah must have put it there herself."

  "Mr. Clare, I'd like you to come to the station with me. You don't have to, not at the moment, but I'm worried about some things, and it would be a help to me if you came. We could clear some things up."

  * * *

  I went with him reluctantly. He did not say so, but I knew he suspected me of something, of doing away with Sarah perhaps. Possibly my in-laws had told him things, voicing old feelings, slandering me. I answered his questions as best I could. He had nothing to hold me on, of course: just a shredded hat and some inconsistencies in my story. The questioning went on until well after midnight, sometimes gentle, sometimes harsh, but it got us nowhere. We were both exhausted by then. He told me I could go home. But as I made for the door it opened and his assistant came in, the one whose name I cannot remember.

  He looked nervous. In one hand he was holding something. A tape.

  "I'd like you to hear this, sir," he said. "You, too, Mr. Clare," he went on, looking at me.

  I sat down again. We were in an interview room, pale green walls and a smell of old sweat. A plain table held the center space. The nameless policeman put his tape into the machine on the tabletop.