32 The Girl in the Cellar by Patricia Wentworth

Author:Patricia Wentworth [Wentworth, Patricia]
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

TWENTY-SIX

JIM RANG UP Chantreys about an hour later.

‘I’d like to speak to Anne.’

There was a curious effect. He couldn’t make out what it was. The nearest he got to it was dismay. It was Lilian who had answered. First she didn’t say anything at all, then she said, ‘Anne—’

‘Yes.’

‘Well—’

‘I want to speak to her.’

Lilian didn’t know what to do. She temporized.

‘I don’t know that you can.’

‘Why?’

‘She – she isn’t here.’

‘You mean she’s out?’

‘Well—’

‘Lilian, do you mind telling me what you mean?’

There was a pause. She was greatly tempted to hang up. She could pretend they had been cut off. Her mind, twisting this way and that, boggled at a decision.

‘Jim – something has happened.’

It was a relief to tell him. He would have to be told. Much better to tell the truth – really—

‘What has happened?’

‘She – she’s gone.’

‘Lilian, what do you mean?’

‘She – she’s gone. I couldn’t stop her. I didn’t know she was going.’

‘Do you mean that Anne has gone?’

Lilian’s voice became more and more agitated.

‘Yes – yes. And it’s no use your asking me why, for I don’t know any more about it than you do. When we got up this morning she wasn’t here, that’s all – she just wasn’t here. And it’s no good asking why she went off like that, because I don’t know. No one here knows. I said good-night to her, and she went up to bed, and that’s the last I saw of her – the very last.’

Lilian was quite pleased with herself by now. She had got over the worst of it. Jim couldn’t really say anything. He had deceived her shamefully. She didn’t know whether to say anything about that to him or not. Perhaps better not. What was it that man had said last night – ‘Least said, soonest mended.’ Yes, that was what she had got to remember. When you hadn’t said anything you could always put in a word here and there just as it might be convenient. She became aware of Jim’s voice, very hard and cold – ‘I’m coming down at once.’ And then the click of the receiver being replaced.

By the time that Jim arrived Lilian was quite persuaded that she could carry everything off just as she wanted to. She was one of those people who can work out a fine plan if there is no one else to call the tune, but with Jim facing her it wasn’t so easy. To begin with, she had never seen him like this before. She had not seen very much of him. He had been brought up by his mother’s family, and on his visits he had been at first the boy and then the rather silent young man. Then he had vanished for three years – they really didn’t know what he had been doing. It was nonsense to think of his embarrassing them, and she certainly wasn’t going to stand it.

And then when he came down everything seemed to have changed. He was a man now, he wasn’t a boy any longer.

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