The Vanishment (11 page)

One fragment of fresh information did emerge, however. In one of the police files, Raleigh had discovered a short report appended to the coroner's summary. It had been written by James Curry, the parish constable at Tredannack. According to Curry, local gossip had it that Susannah Trevorrow had given birth to a girl child four years earlier and that, as far as anyone knew, this child had still been alive and living at Petherick House until the time of her mother's disappearance. People said her name was Catherine or Katy—no one knew for certain. I remembered with a shudder the voice I had heard in Petherick House, calling that same name.

A second rumor maintained that the child's father had been none other than Jeremiah Trevorrow, Susannah's father. Curry was inclined to dismiss the rumors about the father as malicious. Jeremiah Trevorrow had not been a popular man. He was notorious for underpaying his farm laborers, and abrupt dismissals for small misdemeanors had always been the rule on his lands. The policeman visited the house himself and was shown around by Agnes, but there had been no sign of a child or a child's belongings in any of the rooms he had entered.

Sarah's parents came down to pay me a visit on the nineteenth. We had a tense meeting that all but ended in accusations of my having done away with Sarah, and I found it hard to restrain myself from striking her father. He was the same sniveling little brute he had always been. I had never learned to love, much less to respect him. Her mother, whom I still called Mrs. Trevor to her face, wore her sour, saintly expression throughout, wringing her thin hands and muttering platitudes. She left in tears. I had no comfort for them. Sarah was missing, probably dead: that was all I knew.

I did not tell them anything about Petherick House or any of the things that had happened there. To have done so would only have served to confirm their suspicions. I imagine they would have demanded that Raleigh be taken off the case, just when I needed him most.

He wrote to me again, a week after that first letter. There was no fresh information, he said. All his trails had dried up, he was beginning to lose hope again. The Yorkshire police had drawn a blank with Richard Adderstone. He had been unable to tell them anything of value. Raleigh wondered if I thought it worthwhile for him to travel north in order to interview Adderstone in person.

The letter was strange, written in a crabbed, obsessive hand, with tall, fencelike letters strangely spaced.

I go to Petherick House every day now [he wrote] though I never enter. It is very quiet there. The leaves have started to fall in the garden. The house is sad, and at times angry. I walk down to the cliff top and look out across the sea. Sometimes wind crosses it. There are gulls in the garden, and at times their crying reminds me of a child in tears. When I look back at the house from there, I can see rows of windows. Sometimes I think I am being watched.

Last night I dreamed of your wife, Sarah. She has been in my dreams for seven weeks now, almost every night. I recognize her from the photograph you left. She never speaks to me. She is constantly silent, and she stares at me with dreaming eyes. If she spoke to me, what would she say? Do you know? Can you guess?

No, I could not guess. We had never been that close, Sarah and I. We had loved one another, but I had never learned what was in her heart, I had never penetrated that deeply. And now it was too late. One thing, however, I did not understand. It made me bitter. Why Raleigh? Why not me?

Dreams were not enough. Work was not enough. The long dead weeks dragged unbearably. Autumn came like a weight. I had no focus for my life or thoughts, no way of closing what was past. My one consolation was Rachel. During those early-autumn weeks, Susan was much preoccupied with work. There had been riots in Birmingham and Bradford, followed by exchanges on the floor of the House on the need to clamp down harder on the extreme right. An antifascist demonstration in Manchester had ended in the death of a student. His killers were still at large. One of the national dailies asked Susan to do a short series, then a major Sunday asked her to travel around the riot scenes with a photographer. Rachel became my exclusive charge for days at a time.

We watched television together. Postman Pat, Juniper Jungle, Jackanory. I told her about the programs I had watched when I was a child. My favorites had been Bill and Ben, the Flowerpot Men. Rachel fell about laughing when I did my voices for Weed or for Bill speaking to Slowcoach the Tortoise: "Huddo, Sluggalug.” I made her breakfast, lunch, and late tea, which we ate together in the kitchen. When I needed to work, she would play silently with her dolls or watch a video. I tried teaching her to read, and found to my amazement that she could pick up simple words with ease. Writing proved more difficult, for she still lacked the coordination needed to manipulate a pen correctly; but with a little help she was nevertheless able to write short notes to Susan, telling her her news. We put the notes in impressive envelopes and, took them to the mailbox at the end of the road, where I lifted Rachel while she posted them.

As far as possible, however, I avoided venturing outdoors. On several occasions—once near the swings in the park, twice on the High Street, once in the supermarket—I had caught a glimpse of a figure dressed in black, watching us. Each time it had been gone when I looked again, but I did not think I had been mistaken.

"I don't like it when Mummy goes away," said Rachel one day as she sat beside me, drawing with crayons I had just bought for her.

"But she'll be back tomorrow," I said. "And Daddy will be home early tonight."

She shook her head.

"I don't have a daddy," she said, quite matter-of-factly.

"Nonsense. You have a very nice daddy."

She frowned, as though uncertain of something.

"Well," she said finally, "I didn't before."

"Before?" I smiled. "What do you mean?"

"Before I was born," she said. She was still frowning, creasing her eyes as though in an effort to make sense of something, or to remember.

"I don't understand," I said.

"Before," she said. "Before I was Rachel. When I lived in a big house."

"When was this?" I asked. "I thought you'd always lived here."

"No," she said, shaking her head. Her little face was quite tense, the expression on it wholly serious. I could see that it would hurt if I made fun of her. And for some reason I did not want to, not even gently.

"Where did you live then?"

"I told you. In a big old house. Not like this one at all. It had a garden all 'round it. A garden with trees, like in the park. And if you went through the garden, you could see the sea."

I felt my skin go cold.

"Rachel," I said, "you're making this up, aren't you?"

"Don't call me that," she said. "That's not my name."

"But of course it is," I said. "You've always been Rachel."

But inside I was feeling terribly afraid.

She shook her head slowly.

"No," she said. "I can't remember very well, but I wasn't called Rachel when I lived in the big house."

"What were you called? Can you remember?"

"You know," she said. "You know what I was called."

My breath was tight in my chest. I scarcely dared speak.

"No," I said. "I don't know. Why don't you tell me?"

She looked directly at me. She had such big eyes, such haunted eyes.

"Catherine," she said. "I was called Catherine. And I lived in a big house near the sea. The house had a name, too."

"Can you remember what it was called?"

"It was a long name," she said. "I'm not sure. Maybe it was Peter House. Like your name."

"Peter?"

I could feel the pool of horror stirring in me. They were still clutching out from their past.

"Something like that," she said. 'Longer than that."

"Petherick?" I asked, sick. "Was that it, Rachel? Was it Petherick?"

A smile lit her face, then a half-frightened look crossed it.

"Yes," she said, half in a whisper. "That was what we called it. I had a kitten then."

* * *

Early the next day I had a call from Raleigh. They had found a body. At the foot of steep cliffs to the west of St. Ives. The body of a woman, long-drowned.

I scarcely listened. I was tired. All the night before, Rachel had been screaming.

By the time I left for St. Ives, Rachel seemed herself again. I was anxious for her, but I felt there was nothing I could say to Tim about what I knew. If I were to voice my suspicions, he would have little choice but to ask me to leave for good. Far better I stayed there, where I could keep an eye on her. After breakfast I talked with Rachel, explaining that I had to go away, without saying why. I did not refer to our conversation of the previous day: she needed to sleep without dreams.

I took the midmorning train to Penzance. All the way down I watched through a rain-spattered window as the autumn fields rattled past. I could neither read nor write. All I could think about was Sarah lying disfigured in a cold mortuary, or Sarah floating, faceless, in the vast ocean. All around me people were talking or reading, living their lives in the limbo that lay between departure and arrival. Depending on class and taste, they read
The Sun
or
Hello!
or the latest Booker Prize winner. They had left loved ones behind, or would be met by others at the station. I was different. My wife had been washed up on the seashore like just another piece of jetsam. I would never speak to her again.

Sarah's disappearance had cast me into a limbo of my own. But now I was coming down to earth. At last, I thought, it would all end. I looked out on newly harvested farmlands, at the long, sealike expanse of the sky. Then the sea itself lay on my left, and we were pulling into Penzance. My journey was almost over.

Raleigh himself was waiting for me at the station. He had changed. Something vital had gone out of him. I thought he looked ill.

"I've got a car waiting outside," he said. "They're expecting us at the coroner's office."

"You haven't asked me how I am," I said.

"I've not time for that. Let’s get this thing over."

"It is her?" I asked. "You're sure of that?"

He said nothing, turning and going ahead of me, not even looking to see if I was following. His sergeant had not come with him. I tossed my overnight bag into the back. Raleigh wanted me to stay down for the inquest. He took the wheel and nipped out into the traffic.

We had been driving for about a minute when he turned to me.

"Who else could it be?" he asked.

"I don't understand."

"Mr. Clare, your wife went missing in July. In the period between then and now, no female bodies have been found in this region. The body at Zawn Quoits is the first. It's not in good condition, and you won't be asked to look at it."

"Then why have you brought me down?"

"It's a formality. We are sure it's your wife. If you agree, you'll be given legal charge of her remains, for burial or cremation."

"I can get Sarah's dental records," I said. "If that would help."

He did not answer at once. I noticed that his hands were tight on the wheel, that his knuckles were white. We were driving along the promenade, with the sea on our left, cold and driven.

"No," he said. "They'd be no help. The face was . . . badly disfigured. The lower jaw is completely gone. And the top . . . Better not think of it."

But I could not help thinking of it. I had once kissed her, after all. His corpse had been my lover.

"There was a little hair," he said, "at the back of the skull. We had some strands of your wife's hair that we took from her pillow. I had them compared. The forensic lab says they're satisfied the strands are identical." He paused. "There's just one thing."

"What's that?"

"It'll wait," he said. "We're nearly there."

We turned right onto Lidden Road. Moments later we drew up outside the coroner's office. They were waiting for us. The assistant coroner, a man called Hawkes, greeted us morosely. He shook my hand.

"This is just a formality, you understand, Mr. Clare. The remains we believe to be your wife's are being kept in the mortuary at West Cornwall Hospital here in Penzance, where they were brought by Coastguard Cliff Rescue. Since they are badly decomposed, we do not expect you to view them. Perhaps Chief Inspector Raleigh has explained. . .."

His voice trailed away, as though trained to do so. He was a tidy man with watery blue eyes and pale, aching skin. Something beneath the surface threatened to break out. He was a churchgoer, perhaps, or a frequenter of pornographic cinemas. I sensed something furtive and inwardly angry about him.

"Yes," I said. "He's told me all about it."

"Good," he muttered, "very good. Now, the inquest itself will be tomorrow. As the chief inspector will have explained, we have decided to hold it in St. Ives rather than here or Camborne. This is in case anyone should wish to visit the spot where your wife is thought to have fallen to her death or the place where the remains were found, although I have to say that I think neither is very likely."

He paused.

"I have some papers I'd like you to sign. Why don't you step inside and sit down while we go through all this?"

I followed him. Raleigh had gone ahead of us. Photographs of the hair strands were shown to me, together with wooden descriptions of the laboratory analysis that had found them identical. It seemed enough. I declared myself satisfied.

"There's one thing more," said Hawkes. I saw Raleigh watching me. His face was expressionless.

Hawkes reached into a drawer and took from it a small white cardboard box. He removed the lid and reached inside.

"Tell me, Mr. Clare," he said, "do you recognize this?"

In his hand he held a bracelet. A black bracelet carved with little flowers. I guessed that it was made of jet. It reminded me of something.

I shook my head.

"No," I said. "I've never seen it before."

"You're sure it did not belong to your wife? You never saw her wearing it?"