Down Under (6 page)

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?”

“A bright green hat,” said Oliver.

Ananias broke into song:

“Away love, away.

Way down Rio.

So fare ye well, my pretty young gel,

For we're bound for the Rio Grande.”

“No, Ananias!” He repeated the words, “A bright green hat—”

“She left the Angel at ten minutes to seven, and she never reached the Vicarage. There was to be a family dinner. Most of us were staying at the Angel—I was myself, but I had driven into Malling to meet Russell who was going to be my best man.”

Ananias said, “Way down Rio,” in a tentative manner, and was again rebuked.

“She wasn't missed till a quarter to eight—we just thought she was late. We were out all night looking for her. Someone in a green hat got into the 7.22 at Malling—that's the nearest station—it's three miles away. Next day after we'd gone to the police they found that the ticket-collector at Claypole, which is the next stop but one, had seen a girl in a green hat get off there at 7.48. Well, I've seen the Malling porter, and I went over to see the fellow at Claypole, and they'd both noticed that bright green hat, but they couldn't give any other description. The Claypole man says she went straight through the booking office and got into a car that was waiting outside. He says the door was opened from inside and she got in and drove away. And she dropped this when she was looking for her ticket.” He leaned forward with a jerky movement and pushed a torn scrap of paper at Mr Smith. “It's got her name on it. It's a bit of the envelope of the last letter I sent her.”

Mr Smith looked down at the scrap of paper. He held it a long way off, and then produced a pair of spectacles from a battered shagreen case and looked at it more closely.

“The writing on the back isn't anything,” said Oliver—“just the porter trying to get his girl's name right.”

“Pretty young gel,” said Ananias softly—“pretty young gel—way down Rio—”

“Ananias—
no!
” said Mr Smith.

“There's been no news since,” said Oliver abruptly.

Mr Smith gazed into the fire. Several thousand people disappeared every year. Most of these disappearances were voluntary. The disappearance of Rose Anne Carew had a most voluntary sound. The story of the girl who runs away on her wedding eve is one of the oldest stories in the world. The girl very seldom runs alone. Really, Loveday was very impulsive—a dear child, but impulsive. This poor jilted young man would have to do what other jilted young men have done throughout the ages—he would have to get over it somehow, and presently find consolation. He said gently, “She has not—er—communicated with her family?”

“No.”

“And the police, Captain Loddon—what is their—er—view?”

Oliver got up—walked to the fire—stood looking down at it with his back to the room.

“They are quite sure that she went because she wanted to go. They think—she went away—with someone else.”

There was a painful pause. Ananias lifted an untuneful voice and sang:

“So good-bye to Sally, and good-bye to Sue.

Oh, Rio.

And you who are listening, good-bye to you.

For we're bound for the Rio Grande.”

Mr Smith got out of his chair and went down the room, walking a little more quickly than was his wont. Having cuffed Ananias, he came back at his usual drifting pace and leaned against the mantelshelf. He had a view of Oliver Loddon's profile like a mask set sideways, stiff and pale. The case seemed plain enough. The girl had eloped, and had probably gone abroad. Presently she would write. Or perhaps she wouldn't write. There seemed to be no very strong family ties, and modern youth was casual enough.

Oliver turned on him suddenly, haggard but controlled.

“I don't believe it, you know, sir. I—I've got to the point where I would rather believe it, because it would mean she was—safe. But I don't believe it—I can't.”

“Ah,” said Mr Smith gently—“you don't believe it. May I ask why?”

“Yes—I want to tell you. I want to thresh it out—get it into words—if you don't mind, sir. It keeps going round in my head.”

“I do not mind in the least. Will you—er—give me your reason for being unable to accept what is, I gather, the theory of the police?”

Oliver gave a short, hard laugh.

“It's more than theory—it's solid conviction. But I don't accept it, because Rose Anne is quite incapable of doing a thing like that. You see, she—cared for me.” He used the past tense, as if Rose Anne were dead. There had been times in the last week when he would have given his right hand to be quite sure that she was dead.

Mr Smith looked down into the fire.

“It is difficult to be sure on such a point.”

“I
am
sure,” said Oliver Loddon. “But we will set that aside. I want to tell you what she was like. A police report takes no account of character, but you can't leave it out—it's got to be reckoned with. I'm going to tell you about Rose Anne. She wasn't impulsive—she wasn't what you'd call modern. She was very unselfish, very considerate and—and gentle.” The last word could only just be heard. It was the thought of Rose Anne's gentleness which stabbed more deeply than anything else.

Mr Smith said, “I see—”

Oliver got his voice again.

“I must make you see. She always thought about other people. If she had been—different, she wouldn't have gone over to the Angel that evening. It simply isn't in her character to go away and leave us all this time without a word. It is a thing she couldn't do—if she was a free agent. Even, if she didn't care for me, even if she cared for someone else, it isn't in her to torture us like this.”

Mr Smith said, still looking into the fire.

“Human nature is a very strange thing—very—incalculable.”

Oliver straightened up.

“There's another thing. If she left the Angel at ten minutes to seven, I don't see how she could have caught the 7.22 at Malling. It's three miles and a rough road, and it was a pitch dark night. Once she got into lighted streets she couldn't have run without attracting attention. I don't say it couldn't be done, but I say Rose Anne couldn't do it.”

“And the police?”

“They think there was a car. They think it was all planned. But look here, sir, if she was picked up by a car outside the Angel, why should she touch Malling at all? Why should she go by train to Claypole, which is only six miles from Hillick St Agnes, and be picked up there by another car? It doesn't make sense.”

Mr Smith stooped down and put a log on the fire. There was an uprush of sparks, brilliant and wayward. He said,

“She was—er—seen at Malling and at Claypole?”

“It doesn't make sense,” said Oliver.

Mr Smith stood up and dusted his hands with a white silk handkerchief.

“Might there not be a mistake as to the time she left the inn?”

“I suppose there might, but there's not much margin. You see, Elfreda—that's one of the cousins—heard her at the telephone answering the call from the Angel: Elfreda was on her way upstairs, and the clock struck half past six as she came through the hall. Rose Anne had to get her coat—she wasn't wearing it—and go across the road. She would be a little time with Florrie, getting her quiet. Then there was the business of borrowing the hat, and then they wanted to drink her health, so they asked her into their parlour. Mrs Garstnet says—”

Mr Smith was in the act of returning the white silk handkerchief to its appropriate pocket. His hand stopped in mid air. A sense of soundless shock checked Oliver on the first two words of his sentence. He forgot what he was going to say next. He forgot everything, because Mr Smith was looking at him fair and square for the first time. He also felt as if Mr Smith were looking right through him. The sense of shock still tingled. It was as if he had blundered into an electric wire. He had no idea what had happened, and stood dumbfounded.