Anna, Where Are You? (17 page)

As they walked the short distance to the converted stables, Miss Elaine remarked with some acerbity that she thought Augustus should have had enough sense to come away when they did, instead of settling down on Miranda with his everlasting embroidery. Upon which the sisters started an argument as to whether Miranda would have preferred him to leave, and whether it was really true that he spent every evening there and did not go away until after midnight. Nothing but Thomasina’s youth and innocence prevented either or both of them from adding, “If then.”

Thomasina went up to her room and began to take off her things. When she had unfastened her coat she slipped a hand into the pocket, because she knew she had put a handkerchief there and she remembered about the sandwiches. She didn’t want it stained to the bone with Miranda’s horrid filling. Her hand went down, and came up again all clammy. The sandwiches were there, and the handkerchief wasn’t. She opened the window, threw them out, and wiped her hand, all rather vigorously.

And then she remembered having the handkerchief before she put the sandwiches in her pocket, because a drop of that horrid green tea had fallen on her dress, right in front where the coat opened, and from the way it tasted she thought it might leave one of those lingering stains, so she had got out her handkerchief and dabbed it. And then—what had she done with the handkerchief? There was no pocket in her dress, and it wasn’t in the coat. She must have just left it lying in her lap and forgotten it when they got up to go. She did up the buttons of her coat again and ran downstairs.

Neither of the Miss Tremletts was in the sitting-room. She would be able to run along the path to Miranda’s and get her handkerchief without having to explain how she had come to leave it there. Elaine and Gwyneth were pets, but they did love to talk anything to shreds, and the sandwiches made it all a bit delicate. She shut the door softly behind her and melted into the dark.

As soon as her eyes were accustomed to it she could see quite well. There was a light in Miranda’s sitting-room. The curtains didn’t quite meet, and a long bright streak showed between them. She came up to the door and found it ajar. That would be Miss Elaine, who never managed to latch a door. She held on to the handle too long, and Miss Gwyneth was always telling her about it.

In ordinary circumstances Thomasina would not have walked into anybody’s house without knocking. But they had only just left. Miranda was there, and the door was open. She came inside the little hall and was going to call out that she had come back for her handkerchief, when the sitting-room door moved. Someone was opening it. It moved a couple of inches and stopped, as if the person who was coming out had turned back for something.

It was Augustus Remington, and he had turned back to say, “You really did that very well, Miranda. You got it across all right.”

With a little more practice in eavesdropping Thomasina might have done better than she did—she might have heard what Miranda said in reply. She didn’t hear anything at all. The blood drummed in her ears, and she found that she was out of the house and running away as fast as her feet would take her. Some instinct kept her on the grass. There was a path, and there was a rough grass verge. She found that she was running on the grass. Even if someone came to the door and listened, they wouldn’t hear her now.

When she got back to the Miss Tremletts’ the sitting-room was still empty. She had only been a few minutes away, and no one would ever know that she had been away at all. She went up to her room, locked the door, and sat down on the edge of the bed. She had no doubt at all as to the meaning of what she had heard Augustus Remington say. The whole scene with the crystal was a fake. Miranda had done her part well, and Augustus Remington was commending her. The two of them had played a scene, and Miranda had “got it across all right.” That the words could have any other meaning just never entered her head.

But she herself had seen Anna’s face in the crystal.

A bright ball with the light shining on it—that was one way of hypnotizing people. She had felt her thought slipping as she looked at the swirling light. It didn’t really swirl of course. She just saw it like that because she was slipping into a dream.

And then she saw Anna’s face.

She saw it because someone wanted her to see it. Someone was trying to hypnotize her, and to make her see Anna’s face in the crystal. A burning anger came up among her thoughts. She was to see Anna’s face, and then there was to be a fake message. “Anna, where are you?… A long way off… I don’t want her to know… No good to cling to the past— broken links cannot be replaced—this is final.” The short sentences stood out black and clear against the anger. It burned steadily.

It showed her quite a lot of things. Someone wanted to get her away from here. Someone wanted to stop her looking for Anna. Why? The answer stood out too. She was to be got away because Anna was here, in this place. Or if not Anna herself, something that would give her a clue as to what had happened to Anna. Somebody was afraid, somebody wanted her to be gone. Somebody wanted her to think that Anna had made this break deliberately—that she didn’t want to have anything more to do with her. If Thomasina believed that, she would go away and not give any more trouble. And this meant that her being here was a trouble to somebody.

She threw up her head with a jerk.

What was the good of all this “somebody”? She knew perfectly well that it was Miranda who had just played a trick on her. And Augustus Remington had told her that she had done it very well and got it across all right. If she hadn’t gone back for her handkerchief and heard what he said, it might almost have been true. Almost, but not quite, because of one little thing. She had seen it, noticed it, and put it away to think about. She hadn’t had time to do that thinking, because of missing her handkerchief and having to go back. But now she had the time, she thought even that one little thing would have told her she had been tricked—even if she hadn’t heard what Augustus Remington said.

It really was a very little thing. Just a smear of powder on the front of Miranda’s violet robe, high up towards the shoulder. A little smudge of powder showing up against the purple when the lights came on—just ordinary face-powder with a greenish tinge. Anyone might have a smudge of powder on their dress. But it hadn’t been there when Miranda held both her hands in that exuberant welcome. And it wasn’t there when she plied her with those sandwiches and the savoury cake at tea, or when she laid the black velvet square on the table after it had been cleared and set the ebony stand and the crystal ball upon it. Thomasina was prepared to swear to that, and to seeing Miranda put up her hand to her head when she was pretending to wake from that faked trance. She had looked so ghastly when the lights came on—quite green—and it had all added to the effect. And of course too easy to look green if you have a pad or some cotton wool in your hand with the right powder on it. She remembered exactly how Miranda had brought up her hand in a kind of sweeping movement right across her face, her eyes, her brow. And of course it looked absolutely natural, because it is just what you do when you are sleepy, or have a headache, or when you first wake up. But Miranda was getting that greenish powder on to her face, and a little of it had dropped and marked her dress.

Thomasina’s hot anger had burned down to a steady flame. When you are too angry you can’t think, and she needed to think.

After she had been thinking for some time she felt quite clear in her mind. They wanted her to go. They had taken the very words of her advertisement, “Anna, where are you?” She had used only Anna’s Christian name, and she had signed only “Thomasina.” Someone who read the advertisement had known that “Anna” was Anna Ball, and that “Thomasina” was Thomasina Elliot. It looked as if that someone must be Anna herself. By what means had they made Anna tell them what she knew? There were terrible ways of making people speak. Her own words, said on the spur of the moment when she was quarrelling with Peter, came back to her—“Those old houses have cellars.” Suppose Anna was there, locked up in one of those cellars. Anger sets a match to your thoughts. The words had just flashed into her mind because she was angry. Now they came up in quite a different way—a slow, cold, considering way which was much more frightening.

Suppose it was really true. There must be some strong reason for the trick that had been played on her. If Anna really was shut up in the ruined part of Deepe House or in the cellars under it, that would be a reason. If she was there, would she be still alive? Or was she dead and buried under one of those ruined floors? If she was alive, every moment must be like an hour. How was it possible to eat and drink, to lie down at night and get up in the morning, and not know whether all those minutes or hours were not dragging by with a torturing slowness for Anna Ball?

She went on thinking.

If the Miss Tremletts had been less conversational themselves they might have observed that Thomasina had very little to say for the rest of the evening, but they always had so much to say, and were in such close competition for the opportunity of saying it, that it really was just as well that she had nothing to contribute. Nothing could have suited them better than a guest who sat in attentive silence.

First of all they naturally desired to discuss Miranda’s trance and the enigmatic communication which it had produced. They had not liked Anna Ball—“Not that we really knew her, and she had a very rebuffing manner, but one would not like to think that anything had happened to her—”

“And if anything had, why should she wish to communicate with us?” said Miss Elaine.

“Very puzzling indeed,” said Miss Gwyneth. “Because she couldn’t possibly have met you, my dear Ina, and since she said her—‘I don’t want her to know’—the message couldn’t have been intended for Augustus.”

“So that only leaves myself and Gwyneth.”

“And really, as I said, we hardly knew her.”

“But these communications do so often seem to be quite irrelevant. Now I knew a case where a Miss Brown—or was it Jones—I can’t remember which, but she was a niece, or a cousin, or a friend of a Mrs. Hawkins who was at Wyshmere when your aunt was there. She went to a medium in London because a young man she was half engaged to had stopped writing a month or two after going to South America and she was afraid something had happened to him. She told the medium all about it, and she looked in the crystal and said she saw a ship coming into a foreign port—and of course that was quite all right, because he wrote once or twice after he got there. And then she said there was a dark woman, and a kind of a cloud. And right at the end she said she saw a funeral. Well, of course Miss Jones— if it was Jones and not Brown, and I really can’t remember which it was—well, naturally she was very much upset and made up her mind the young man was dead. But he wasn’t, because she heard quite a long time after that he had married a Chilean and they had four children. So you see the crystal was quite right about there being a dark girl, but the only thing the funeral could possibly have referred to was that old Mrs. Pondleby who lived over the way from them did die about three weeks later. But she was well over ninety and had been an invalid for a great many years, so that it wasn’t a surprise to anyone. And, as I said, it just shows—”

She did not explain what it showed, because the moment she stopped to take breath Miss Gwyneth broke in with the story of a young man who was connected by marriage with that very charming Mrs. Hughes who was a connection of Lord Dumbleton’s. It appeared he had dreamt three times that he saw a grey horse win the Derby, and in the dream he knew the horse’s name and the jockey’s colours, but when he woke up they had gone.

“And all he knew was that he had seen a grey horse win the Derby. So he went to a medium who was being a good deal talked about just then, and the first thing she wanted to know was whether there was a grey horse running, and of course it was most unfortunate, there were two. So she looked at his hand, and she said he was on the threshold of a great opportunity and everything would depend on what he did next. And that was quite true, because he had to decide whether he would go out to South Africa and join the Cape Mounted Police or take a post in a Birmingham bank—and of course if he was going to win a lot of money on the Derby he wouldn’t do either. So she looked in the crystal, and she saw a grey horse all right, but it wasn’t winning the race that she could see. It was just galloping along with a lot of other horses, and it was gone in a flash, and she couldn’t see the jockey’s colours, or what he was like, or anything, only she had a strong impression of the letter H. And as soon as she said that, Mrs. Hughes’ nephew got quite excited and said he had that too. But it didn’t really help them, because one of the grey horses in the race was Humboldt, and the other Herring’s Eyes, so she tried again, and she couldn’t see anything but a cloud of dust. And in the end one of the grey horses was disqualified, and the other came in last but one. So the poor young man went out to South Africa, and I never heard what happened to him, because Mrs. Hughes left Wyshmere for the Channel Islands.”

They went on telling stories like this for a couple of hours. Thomasina didn’t mind as long as they kept away from the subject of Anna Ball. She had only to look attentive and make a kind of murmuring sound every now and then. None of the stories seemed to prove anything very much except the readiness with which people will believe whatever they wish to believe.

At ten o’clock they all drank tea and went to bed. That is to say, the Miss Tremletts went to bed. Thomasina did not. She turned her light low and sat down to wait, and to count the strokes when the wall-clock in the living-room chimed the quarters. She had made up her mind to wait until half past eleven, and it seemed a long, long time. It grew cold, and colder. The house gathered its silence about it like a cloak. Every time the clock struck, the sound was more startling. Thomasina found herself waiting for it and dreading it. It was like expecting the sudden flare of a magnesium light.

The time dragged unbelievably as quarter followed quarter on the old wall-clock in the living-room below—half past ten—a quarter to eleven—eleven o’clock—a quarter past— She put on her coat and made sure that the battery in her torch was all right.

As the two strokes of the half hour came upon the air, she opened her door and went softly down the stair.