Missing From Home (13 page)

“I can’t understand it!” All Marilyn’s smiling confidence had drained away from her, leaving her puzzled and scared again. “It’s just possible that she left it until today, I suppose. Though I’d have thought—” She broke off. Then, aware that the man was looking at her curiously, she made an effort to seem cheerfully normal. “Well, she might come along any time now. I’ll wait about a bit. I might go and have a coffee at that place over there.”

“That’s right. You do.” A customer who evidently thought the world was run for him began to honk his horn impatiently and, losing interest in Marilyn, the man turned away.

Slowly she made her way to the small cafe across the road, and there she ordered a coffee and sat at a table in the window, watching the garage opposite and longing, as she had never longed for anything in her life before, to see the familiar figure of her sister coming along the street.

“
Why
didn’t she leave a message at the first opportunity? Either yesterday or early today? She had absolutely nothing else to do, and it must have seemed to her of the utmost urgency,” thought Marilyn, trying to resist the panic which threatened to swamp her. “She must have been hoping against hope that I’d come early rather than late. Why on earth should she delay? Unless of course—” irresistibly the possibility forced its way into Marilyn’s mind—“unless of course,
she was stopped
in some way.”

The moment the idea had formed in words Marilyn felt quite sick with dismay. She nervously pushed away the cup of weak coffee, which seemed to her now even more nauseating than it really was. And she thought of the policeman last night saying that Pat’s handbag, rifled of any contents of value, had been found on the river towpath.

“I must have been mad not to tell Mother—or Dad—at the first possible moment!” She was overwhelmed with remorse for her fatuous complacency. “I should have
known
something must have been terribly wrong. Why, for all I knew, someone might have snatched her bag and then just pushed her—”

But, as the frightened tears gathered, she forced them back with the reassuring reflection that no one who has pushed someone else into the river then lingers to examine the contents of a handbag—still less leaves the bag on the scene for easy identification. No, wherever Pat had been when her bag was lost or stolen it had not been by the river.

Then why, why was there no news of her
?

“She’s just—vanished
!”
Marilyn told herself in unspeakable dismay. “No word from her. No sign of her existence. Except—”

And then, as a fresh wave of chill engulfed her, Marilyn suddenly remembered the incident of the girl her mother had described wearing Pat’s bracelet.

How had she come by that bracelet?

When Marilyn first heard the story from her mother she had smugly taken it as no more than confirmation of her theory that Pat had sold what she could in order to bridge a difficult twenty-four hours. Now, however, in view of Pat’s genuine disappearance, the incident became suddenly sinister and terrifying. So terrifying that, for the very first time, Marilyn began to understand, with personal, poignant intensity, the anguish which she and Pat had inflicted on their parents.

“It wasn’t really a good plan, after all,” she thought remorsefully. “However good the cause, we shouldn’t have done that to
anyone.
We should have found some other way of getting them together. Mother must have gone through agonies before that first letter came. She must have felt as I’m feeling now! Oh, Pat, why don’t you come
?
Why didn’t you leave a message?”

She bent her head to conceal her distress from anyone at the neighbouring tables, and a few tears fell into the coffee, making it even weaker and less appetising. It was no good pretending to herself any longer. She was utterly at a loss, and quite unable to think what she could do next. And, like the smallest child, all she wanted to do was to run to her parents and unload her desperate troubles on to their more capable shoulders.

“If I told Mother now—”

But then she recalled her mother’s happy look when she had come in the previous evening, and she flinched from the very thought of transforming that expression into one of fresh horror and anxiety.

“She’s had enough,” Marilyn muttered unhappily. “I don’t think she could take any more.” And then, after a long pause—“That leaves Dad.”

It was not going to be easy, owning up to her father. Most of Marilyn’s cheerful self-assurance wilted at the very thought. On the other hand, if Pat were in some real danger or difficulty, her father, rather than her mother, might be the right person to deal with it.

One thing was quite certain, she herself could no longer tackle the situation alone. And, having come to that unpalatable conclusion, she got up, paid for her undrunk coffee and slowly left the place.

Just once more she went to speak to her friend at the garage, to make absolutely cert
ain
that no message had come in by telephone while she had been sitting in the cafe. Then she said with some resolution,

“If my sister does come, will you tell her to telephone home without fail? Tell her—it’s all right. Nothing matters but that she should phone home.”

“All right.” The man looked at her curiously. Then he added, “I wonder just what you’re up to. You’re a funny kid, I must say!”

Marilyn grinned feebly at him as she turned away. But she didn’t feel a funny kid at all. She felt about seventy-five and quite unfunny.

CHAPTER
VI
I

ALL the way to the Gloria Hotel, Marilyn was trying to decide how she was going to tell her story to her father. At first she even flattered herself that she might get away with only a partial confession. But irresistibly the conviction grew upon her that the moment had come to make a clean breast of things. Pat had genuinely disappeared, and all help must be mobilised.

“He’ll be terribly mad with us both, of course,” she reflected resignedly, as she entered the great foyer of the Gloria. “But if he thinks Pat is in real danger he’ll probably put that before every other consideration.”

Even so, she was trembling slightly and her voice was nervously sharp and uneven as she enquired at the desk for Mr. Collamore.

The desk clerk peered at a row of pigeonholes, clinked a key in one of them and replied, “He’s out.”

“Out
?
” Somehow, Marilyn had not thought of that possibility. She needed him so badly that it seemed to her he surely must be there. “You—you don’t know when he might return
?
”

“No. I’m sorry. Would you like to leave a message
?
”

“No, thank you.” She shook her head. No message was going to put him in the picture. Only a long,
painful talk, involving a full confession, would suffice now.

As she turned away, lost in dismay and confusion, a good-looking, well-dressed woman came up to her and said with a smile,

“I heard you asking for Greg Collamore. You must be his daughter. I don’t think he’ll be long. Why don’t you come and sit over here with me and wait for him
?
”

The self-reliant Marilyn was usually quick in her reactions and seldom did she need anyone to tell her what to do. But at this moment she felt stunned and bewildered. She was almost glad to have some course of action
—any
course of action—suggested to her, and wordlessly she did what she was told. Then, even before she could collect herself sufficiently to ask who the stranger was, the woman said, pleasantly enough, “I know your father very well.” A sort of nervous awareness of danger suddenly prickled all over Marilyn. “My name is Mrs. Curtiss—Linda Curtiss. I met your sister when she was in Munich, and I feel sure you are Marilyn.”

“Yes,” Marilyn spoke warily, “I am. Pat told me about you. What makes you think my father will be back soon?”

“He told me he wouldn’t be long.” Mrs. Curtiss spoke with an air of having an intimate knowledge of his movements. “I’m staying at the Gloria too, you know. We see a good deal of each other.”

Marilyn, who had a certain talent for saying nothing rather offensively, said nothing at that moment and just stared thoughtfully at the other woman.

Then, after a few moments, she said, “Oh?” And it was quite remarkable how much scepticism, scorn and private amusement she managed to express in that one syllable.

Linda Curtiss, who prided herself on her ability to handle people and situations, actually flushed, and her genuinely beautiful violet eyes narrowed slightly. In her turn she allowed a slight silence to supervene. Then she said drily,

“Although you’re the younger, I should think you’re the ringleader in any mischief you two get into, aren’t you
?
”

“We’re a little past the ‘mischief’ stage,” replied Marilyn coolly. “But we’re both pretty determined about what we want and how we’re going to get it.”

“And sometimes what you want is to make trouble
?
” suggested Mrs. Curtiss, taking out a slender but handsome gold cigarette case. “Do you smoke
?
”

“No, thank you. And I don’t think my mother would describe either of us as trouble-makers.”

“But then she might be something of a troublemaker herself, I suppose? And if you were all in it together, you’d naturally back each other up.”

“What on earth do you mean by that?” Marilyn was stung into sharp anger.

“Oh, really, my dear!” Linda Curtiss laughed slightly as she selected a cigarette from her case and lit it. “Do you suppose I haven’t guessed what you two and your mother are up to? Some sort of clumsy plot to try to lure poor Greg back home. This absurd business about your sister disappearing! It couldn’t be more obvious to another woman. Only a man would be taken in by it. You all banked on Greg’s natural good nature, I suppose, and that vague sense of parental guilt which he has. You thought you’d frighten him back into the family fold by the disappearance of Pat, and then your mother could get her hooks on him again. Too silly and naive!”

“How dare you use such an expression of Mother! And she had nothing whatever to do with it.”

“To do with what
?
” came the quick response, and Marilyn caught her breath. But she recovered immediately and said coldly,

“There was no sort of plot, as you put it.
You’re
just trying to make mischief!”

“No, my dear. I’m simply an amused spectator. I told your father from the beginning that this business of your sister’s disappearance was a put-up job.”

“My sister is really missing,” said Marilyn stonily, unhappily aware that this was now nothing less than the truth.

Mrs. Curtiss smiled with infuriating disbelief.

“And now your mother has sent
you
to stir up Greg’s anxieties afresh?” she suggested. “It’s really very clumsy, you know. I shall tell him so. It’s too bad that he should be victimised by you three.”

“My mother has
not
sent me here. I came of my own accord.”

“For what purpose?” the older woman shrugged. Marilyn opened her lips to say with angry desperation that she had come for her father’s help because Pat really had disappeared. But then, with gathering dismay, she saw that the story she had come to tell would merely provide fresh ammunition for this clever, ill-wishing woman. With a sceptical laugh, she would describe the frightening development as just a fresh move in a clumsy game—and she would make Marilyn’s father see it that way too. With her clever gift for insinuation, Mrs. Curtiss would have little difficulty in extending the real guilt of the two girls to embrace their entirely innocent mother too.

“I would be handing her the victory on a silver plate
!”
thought Marilyn in a terrified flash of comprehension. And, with a speed and skill bo
rn
of sheer desperation, she retreated from the position which had so suddenly become a trap.

“What I do, or why I do it, is no business of yours,” she said drily, getting to her feet. “I didn’t really mean to be offensive until you started it. But you may as well know that Pat told me about the way you chased poor old Dad, and she was a good deal amused to see him taking evasive action. But frankly, I’d only find it a bore. After all, it
is
rather old hat, isn’t it? So I won’t wait any longer. I’ll talk to him on my own some time later. Good hunting! But not, I think, in
our
family field.”

And with her head high, Marilyn marched out of the lounge and out of the Gloria Hotel.

Her mood of angry elation lasted until she found herself on the pavement
.
But then a perfect wave of frustration and misery engulfed her. She might have won a verbal battle with Linda Curtiss. But so far as practical help for Pat was concerned, she was as far from her goal as ever. It looked as though she would have to tell her mother, after all, and heap fresh anxieties upon her. For there was no one else with whom she could even discuss the position. Unless—Suddenly a faint gleam of hope showed on the horizon and, with a warmth of feeling amounting almost to affection in that moment, she recalled the existence of Jerry Penrose.
He
knew all about the real situation and would require only the minimum of explanation. Also he had Pat’s interests very much at heart. And, most blessed thought of all, he was both resourceful and sensible.

She must find him immediately, Marilyn decided. And, by standing quite still on the pavement—to the annoyance of an old gentleman just behind her
—
and concentrating fiercely, she remembered the name of the firm for which he worked.

“Morgan & Petersfield
!”
she exclaimed aloud in her relief. And, rushing to the nearest telephone booth, she riffled through the pages of the directory until she found the address.

Then, since it was already perilously near what might well be his lunchtime, she allowed herself a taxi to the City, found her way to the top of the big block of offices which her mother had described, and presented herself at the same enquiry desk before which Clare had trembled in almost equal agitation only a few days before.

“I want to see Mr. Jeremy Penrose, please,” she exclaimed breathlessly. But, before the girl at the desk could even reply, the swing doors into the main office opened, and out came Jeremy Penrose.

He stopped dead and said, “Hello! What are you doing here
?
”

“Jerry!” She greeted him with the warmth and
fervour of a long-lost and dearly-loved relation. “I’m so glad to see you. I had to come. Pat’s disappeared
!”

“Well, I know.” He looked slightly wary, as one who had gone through this curious experience before. “What’s new about that?”

“But she’s really disappeared this time. Don’t you see
?
It’s not pretence any longer. It’s the real thing. I haven’t the faintest idea where she is, and something’s terribly wrong.”

The reality of the crisis was so unspeakably plain to her that she could hardly forgive him for the way he hesitated and the sceptical glance with which he surveyed her.

“Look, Marilyn—” he began. But then he stopped. Because, without much effort this time, she had made her eyes fill with tears, and she was looking at him as though he were her last hope. Which indeed, in a sense, he was.

“All right,” he said curtly. “You’d better come with me and have some lunch.” And he grimly ushered Marilyn towards the lift once more, hoping that the interested blonde at the enquiry desk would not have the story half-way round the office by the time he returned.

“I’m sorry t-to be such a nuisance,” stammered Marilyn humbly in the lift. “But I couldn’t get Dad to myself. That Curtiss woman was floating around making mischief. And I just can’t bear to unload all this fresh anxiety on to Mother alone. She’s had about all she can stand. It—it was like a light in the darkness when I remembered you.”

Few young men are proof against the flattering thought of being a light in the darkness to an attractive girl, and Jerry Penrose softened visibly.

“So long as you’re not just playing everyone up again,” he said, but more kindly.

“No, I’m not! It’s all the truth this time, I promise you. Something quite unforeseen has happened, and I’m frightened.”

“Very well. You shall tell me all about it, and I’ll see what can be done,” he told her, in a marvellously reassuring tone. “We’ll go in here. It’s near and will save time.”

In the crowded, rather steamy help-yourself just opposite his office block they were lucky enough to find a small table to themselves. And here, over a meal for which she had little appetite, Marilyn rapidly outlined the story of the last twenty-four hours.

He listened in almost complete silence to the end. And then, with considerable authority, he said, “My dear girl, there’s only one possible course. You simply must tell both your parents everything, and get the police on to the business of finding Pat. We’ve all played the fool quite long enough.”

In some obscure way, she was faintly comforted by his use of “we” instead of “you”. But she was still so much under the influence of her conversation with Mrs. Curtiss that she exclaimed anxiously,

“If that woman has half a chance to give
him
her
interpretation of things, Dad will be bound to suspect that Mother too was in the original plot.”

“Not if you make your confession to both your parents at the same time. Your father will see perfectly well from your mother’s reactions that she didn’t know a thing about it.”

“Ye-es, that’s true.” Marilyn blanched slightly at the thought of taking on both her mother’s reproaches and her father’s anger at one and the same time. But her fears for Pat were now so acute that she was prepared to face almost any ordeal. “H-how can I make sure of getting them together, though
?
”

“I think I’d better phone your father first.” Jerry seemed to have taken command quite naturally. “He should be back at the Gloria by now. I’ll tell him I have news about Pat for him and Mrs. Collamore, and that you and I would like to tell them together. Can he arrange to be at the flat in half an hour’s time
?
Then I’ll just check that your mother is there.”

“D-did you say
—you
were coming too?” Marilyn’s lips were suddenly trembling.

“Yes, of course. You’d find it tough on your own, wouldn’t you
?
”