Vine Barbara by A Dark-Adapted Eye

Author:A Dark-Adapted Eye [Eye, A Dark-Adapted]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Julius Durham, now sixty-six years old, remembers nothing of that day. He was only three. His brother, Edward, eighteen months his senior, recalls details of that morning, though he admits that much of what he "remembers" may be derived from what he was later told.

"May's cat scratched me on the hand. I suppose it was the first real pain I had ever felt. I don't remember blood, only May hugging me and telling me to be brave. Of course I was bawling and screaming. May tied her handkerchief round my hand and then I think we all started looking for Sunny, but as you know, we couldn't find her."

May seems not to have been too worried. She thought the child had gone back to the house on her own, rather a curious conclusion for her to have come to, considering Sunny was only just two and seldom walked any distance without being carried. And when May got back to the house with the boys, she made no enquiries about Sunny. The reason she gave the police for not doing so was that, in the distance, in the lane which linked the stableyard with that part of the grounds where the gardener's and gamekeeper's cottages were, she saw Bessie Stonebridge, the undernurse, talking to a woman and with them was a small girl she took for Sunny. In fact, this child was not a girl but a boy, nephew of the gamekeeper, and the woman was his mother. May Durham was shortsighted and it was vanity that stopped her wearing glasses.

It was therefore more than an hour later that Sunny was missed. The Durhams were giving a tennis party that afternoon to which the young people of the neighborhood were invited to play and their parents to watch. Pritchard had freshly marked out the court and May was with him checking the height of the net (one tennis racket's vertical height plus the measurement of the head held horizontally) when the nurse, Sarah Keringle, came to her to say it was time for Miss Sunny's luncheon. May, aghast, admitted she thought the child was with Bessie, but Bessie, for the past halfhour, had been in the nursery with the two little boys.

A search for Sunny was mounted, the searchers initially being Charles Durham, John Williams, and Arthur Bailey. They were later joined by Mrs. Durham and May. The first guest to arrive for the party-no one at Theiston Hall except Edward and Julius had had any lunch-was Thierry Watkin, and he too joined in the search. Sunny, however, could not be found and Charles Durham phoned the local police. To Thierry Watkin fell the unenviable task of turning away the party guests as they came.

The police arrived promptly enough, a village constable and later a sergeant from Norwich. They set about interviewing everyone who might have seen Sunny, beginning with the indoor and outdoor servants at Theiston Hall and proceeding to Theiston Kirby village. No one admitted to having seen her since eleven that morning.

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