The Shivering Sands

7

I shall never forget the rising tension in the house as the hours passed and Edith did not appear. Napier was composed—the most calm of us all. He said that there must have been an accident and the sooner we discovered what the better.

He arranged a search party consisting of himself and five of the menservants and they went off in separate directions in three parties of two. We searched the house—the great cellars, the butteries, pantries, the outhouses which I had had no idea existed before. With Alice and Allegra I went through the attics; dusty cobwebs clung to our clothes and even our faces, while spiders scuttled out of sight alarmed and disturbed by the unexpected intrusion.

Alice held the candle high and her face thus illuminated had an ethereal quality; Allegra’s dark eyes were enormous with excitement.

“Do you think she’s hiding in one of the trunks?” suggested Alice.

“Hiding? From what?”

“From whom?” said Allegra on a note of hysteria.

We opened the trunks. The smell of mothballs; old-fashioned garments: gowns, shoes, hats; but no Edith.

From the top to the bottom of the house, down to the cellars where Sir William’s wine was racked in order of its age and excellence. More cobwebs—an occasional cockroach scuttled across the stone flags, but still no Edith.

We were all gathered in the hall, a strange and silent company; the maids wide-eyed, their caps askew. Nothing like this could have happened since the day when they brought Lady Stacy in from the copse…and a short while before that when beautiful Beau had lain dying by his brother’s hand.

But no one was going to accept this as such a tragedy yet. Edith was lost—nothing more. She had, said Mrs. Lincroft, gone for a walk, had tripped and hurt her ankle. She was lying somewhere. The searchers would find her.

But the search parties came back one by one, and none of them had found Edith.

All night we waited. The searchers went out again. I heard them calling her name; it sounded uncanny on the night air.

Mrs. Lincroft had made some coffee which she insisted the searchers drink on their return before they went out once more to look. Practical as ever, she was determined to keep up our spirits. Edith would be found, she insisted; and she went on assuring us that this would be so.

“Shouldn’t the girls go to bed?” I asked.

With a nod she directed my gaze in their direction. Alice and Allegra were sitting in a window seat, leaning against each other, fast asleep.

“Better not to disturb them,” she said.

So we left them and talked in whispers of what we could do next.

Sir William sat back in the chair which Mrs. Lincroft had padded with cushions. She said to him: “Do you think, Sir William, that we should inform the police?”

“Not yet. Not yet,” he said fiercely. “They’ll find her. They must.”

And we sat and waited; and when Napier came back without her I could not take my eyes from his face; but I could not read what was written there.

Edith had gone and no one knew where. It was the great mystery of Lovat Mill. Nothing else was talked of.

It was certain now that she was not in the neighborhood for a thorough search had been made and there was no trace of her. Yet her personal maid had gone through her wardrobe, and nothing seemed to be missing but the clothes she had worn on that day.

As the next day wore on and there was no news of her Sir William agreed that the police must be informed. Police Constable Jack Withers, who lived next door to the small constabulary, came to see us. He asked questions such as when had we last seen her and had she been in the habit of taking lonely walks. When it was revealed that she was an expectant mother Jack looked very wise and said that ladies in such conditions often got odd notions into their heads. That was the answer to the mystery. Mrs. Stacy would turn up, he was sure of it. She had merely got an odd notion into her head.

Sir William was inclined to favor this view, because—I felt sure—he wanted it to be so.

The next day he was less well and Mrs. Lincroft was occupied in looking after him. The doctor came and said that shocks like this were not good for a man in his state of health.

“If only Edith would come back,” fretted Mrs. Lincroft, “he would be better immediately.”

I walked out looking for Edith. I did not believe she had gone off on an odd fancy. I could only guess that she had gone for a walk and had had an accident.

How like this it must have been when Roma disappeared. And what an uncanny coincidence that two women should have disappeared in the same spot!

I was afraid, afraid of something shadowy and intangible, for fragments of thoughts kept coming and going in my mind.

My footsteps led me to the copse where in the ruined chapel Edith had gone to meet her lover. I stood here—those eerie walls about me; through that gap the light had shown. Had it been Edith’s lover signaling to her? No. They were such a simple, uncomplicated pair. They should never have found themselves in such a position; they should have met in happier circumstances, fallen in love and married. Edith would have made a good clergyman’s wife—gentle, kind; she would have listened sympathetically to the troubles of her husband’s parishioners, but instead of that she had been forced into a tragedy which was too much for her.

“Edith!” I whispered. “Roma. Where are you?”

Fearful thoughts came into my mind. Napier’s face close to mine touched with passion. “There must be a way,” he had said.

And Roma…what of Roma? What had Roma to do with Edith?

Something, I insisted. It must be something. Two people could not disappear…in this very place. Napier could have had no interest in Roma.

There I had admitted it. Did I really believe that Napier knew something about the disappearance of Edith? It was absurd. Edith had had an accident. She was lying somewhere.

“Edith!” My voice sounded thin and weedy. “Where are you, Edith?”

No answer…only the echo of my own voice.

I walked away from the copse. It was an evil place. Horrible thoughts had come to me in the copse. I walked across the gardens, out to the road to the Roman remains and the empty cottage where I had lived with Roma. What if Edith had gone there? Why not? Suppose Jeremy Brown had come to see her there? Suppose he had come back to see her before he left England, had said good-bye to her, and when he had gone she had fallen down the stairs and was lying there feebly calling for help? Those stairs were dangerous.

I was making up the tale to fit my wishes. Anything but that Napier…

I opened the door of the cottage. “Edith…Edith, are you here?”

There was no answer. No crumpled body at the foot of the stairs. I ran up them. Through the little bedroom to the other. Empty.

On the way back to the house I passed the little shop. Mrs. Bury was at the door.

She nodded a greeting.

“A terrible thing this,” she said. “Mrs. Stacy now…”

“Yes,” I said.

She was peering at me in a manner which made me feel uncomfortable.

“Where on earth can she have got to? They’re saying she’s had an accident and is lying somewhere.”

“It seems the most likely explanation.”

She nodded. “Funny thing. It reminds me of that Miss er…what’s ’er name.” She jerked her head in the direction of the Roman remains. “I reckon it’s a very funny thing. She walked out, didn’t she…and we never heard where she got to. Now it’s Mrs. Stacy. Do you know what? I don’t reckon it’s right…disturbing things like that.” She jerked her head once more. “I reckon it’s asking for trouble.”

“Do you think so?”

“Mind you, it was good for business. Then there’s the people who come down to look at it. We have more people here now than we did before. I reckon there’s a real old to-do up there at Lovat Stacy.”

I nodded.

“Do you know, I could swear I’ve seen you before.”

“So you said.”

“And with her…too. Came in with her. You wouldn’t forget her in a hurry. A bouncy type, you know. Full of herself. I’ll have this and I’ll have that…as though we all ought to go down on our bended knees because she’d come here to tell us we’d had Romans here.”

I smiled.

“Oh yes, I could have sworn it.”

“We all have doubles they say.”

“You have, my dear. You have.”

I started to move away and she said, “Nice little thing, that Miss Edith. Always felt sorry for her, somehow. Hope she’s all right.”

“I hope so.”

I felt her eyes on me as I went down the road.

As I passed under the gate house Sybil Stacy came toward me. She was wearing a big blue straw hat trimmed with marguerites and blue ribbons.

“Oh, Mrs. Verlaine,” she cried, “what do you think of this?”

“I don’t know what to think.”

She chuckled grimly. “I do. I know.”

“You know?”

She nodded, like a little girl who has a secret which she knows she won’t be able to keep.

“They thought they were going to replace Beau. As if anyone could ever replace him. He wouldn’t have it.” Her face flushed pink; she stamped her feet as she placed them slightly apart and stood before me, bellicose for a moment. “Of course we couldn’t have that. They would have called the child Beaumont. There’s only one Beau. He would see to that…and so would I.”

“So would you?”

She was pouting, the little girl again. “They could have named him Beaumont but he would never have been Beau to me. I would have called him Nap. Nap. Nap. Nap.” Her face crumpled. “It’s never been the same since Beau went…and it never will.”

I felt too disturbed to listen to her and made as though to move toward the house, but she caught my arm. Her tiny hands were like claws; I felt them burning through the stuff of my sleeve.

“She won’t come back,” she said. “She’s gone forever.”

I turned to her almost fiercely. “How can you know?”

She looked at me slyly and brought her face closer to mine so that the wrinkles were more obvious, the simpering more sinister. “Because I do know,” she said.

I drew a little away from her. “If you know something you should tell the police or Sir William or—”

She shook her head. “They wouldn’t believe me.”

“Do you mean you really know where Edith is?”

She nodded smiling.

“Where? Please tell me…Where?”

“She’s not here. She’ll never be here. She’s gone—forever.”

“You do know something!”

Again that wise nod, that sly smile. “I know she’s not here. I know she never will be. I know this because…I know such things. I feel it. Edith has gone. We shall never see her again.”

I felt impatient because I had temporarily believed she had some tangible information.

I murmured some excuse and went into the house.

Later that day there was a startling development. Mrs. Rendall arrived at Lovat Stacy dragging Sylvia with her. The girl was tearful and obviously reluctant and alarmed; Mrs. Rendall was her usual militant self.

I was with Mrs. Lincroft in the hall and we were talking of Edith as everyone was at that time, and wondering what else could be done to solve the mystery. It was two days since her disappearance. Jack Withers had asked a great many questions of the household and was of the opinion that since he could discover nothing he should pass on the case to a higher authority, but Sir William was against it.

Mrs. Lincroft was explaining this to me: “He cannot bear the resultant publicity. The old case of Beau will be remembered and the story that there is a curse on the house will be revived. He believes Edith will come home sooner or later and he wants to give her the opportunity to do so quietly. The less fuss the sooner the whole affair will be forgotten…once she is back.”

It was then that Mrs. Rendall burst in upon us, pushing Sylvia before her.

“A most distressing and alarming thing. I came over at once. I thought you should know without delay. Take me to Sir William immediately.”

“Sir William has been so upset by this affair, Mrs. Rendall, that I have had to send for Dr. Smithers,” Mrs. Lincroft reminded her. “Sir William is now sleeping under sedative, and Dr. Smithers’s orders are that his rest should not be disturbed at such times.”

Mrs. Rendall pursed her lips and looked haughtily at Mrs. Lincroft, who received this attitude with fortitude. I guessed she was used to it.

“Then I will wait,” said the vicar’s wife. “For this is of the utmost importance. It’s about Mrs. Edith Stacy.”

“Perhaps you should tell me in that case…or Jack Withers.”

“I wish to tell Sir William.”

Mrs. Lincroft said: “He is a sick man, Mrs. Rendall, and if you will please tell me…”

“If it is of vital importance—” I began, but Mrs. Rendall cut me short; she was not going to be dictated to by a housekeeper and a music teacher, her manner implied; yet at the same time she was longing to tell what she had discovered.

“Very well,” she said at length. “Sylvia has come to me with a most shocking story. I must say I would never have believed it, not of her. But him…Of course he did leave the vicar in the lurch, and anyone who could do that—after all we’ve done for him—so I’m not surprised. But who would have thought we could have had such wickedness…such vice…in our midst.”

Mrs. Lincroft said: “You mean the curate, Mr. Brown? What has he done?”

Mrs. Rendall turned to her daughter and taking the girl by the arm shook her. “You tell—you tell them what you told me.”

Sylvia swallowed and said: “They used to meet, and she wished she was married to him.”

She paused and looked appealingly at her mother.

“Go on, go on, child.”

“They used to go and meet at night…and she was frightened when—”

Sylvia looked appealingly at her mother, who said: “In all my years as wife to the vicar, in all the parishes in which I have served, I never heard of such wanton wickedness. And that it should have been a curate of ours! Mind you, I never liked him. I said to the vicar—and the vicar will tell you this is true—I said: ‘I don’t trust him.’ And when he went off as he said…to teach the heathens he said…and all the time it was to go off with another man’s wife! I wonder the heavens don’t open. I wonder he’s not struck dead.”

Mrs. Lincroft had grown pale. She stammered: “Do you mean that Edith and Mr. Brown had run away together…eloped?”

“That’s exactly what I do mean. And Sylvia knew…” Her eyes narrowed; she surveyed her daughter menacingly and I have never seen a girl so frightened as Sylvia. What did this woman do, I wondered fleetingly, to inspire such terror? “Sylvia knew and she said nothing…nothing…”

“I didn’t think I should,” cried Sylvia, clenching and unclenching her hands. She put her fingers to her lips and bit her nails.

“Stop that,” said Mrs. Rendall firmly. “You should have come to me at once.”

“I—I thought it was telling tales.” Sylvia was looking appealingly at me, and I said quickly: “I think you did what you thought was right, Sylvia. You didn’t want to tell tales and now you have come and told what you knew. That was right.”

Mrs. Rendall was regarding me with some astonishment: the music teacher taking the authority she had over her daughter out of her hands? But I was conscious of Sylvia’s gratitude and I made up my mind that if I had an opportunity to help the girl, I would do so. Such a mother could warp a young person’s character, I felt sure. Poor Sylvia! Her problem was no less acute than Allegra’s.

Mrs. Rendall cast her basilisk glare in my direction. “You have not heard everything. Go on, Sylvia!”

“She was going to have a baby…and…she was frightened because…”

“Come along Sylvia, because what?”

“Because,” said Sylvia looking at me and then suddenly lowering her eyes. “Because…it was Mr. Brown’s baby and everyone thought…it wasn’t.”

“She told you this?” said Mrs. Lincroft incredulously. Sylvia nodded. “You? And not the other girls?”

Sylvia shook her head. “It was the day before she ran away. Alice was writing an essay and Allegra was having her piano lesson, and we were alone, and suddenly she started crying and told me. She said she wasn’t going to stay here. She was going to run away with…”

“With that scoundrel!” cried Mrs. Rendall.

“So,” went on Mrs. Lincroft, “she just walked out of the house taking nothing with her. Where did she go? How did she get to the station?”

Sylvia swallowed hard and stared beyond us to the window. “She said he was waiting for her. They were going right away and she didn’t want them to look for her because she wasn’t ever coming back. She said not to tell them. She made me swear not to tell anyone until two days and I swore on the Bible not to and I didn’t because the time is up and I couldn’t keep it to myself any longer.”

She gabbled the last part of her speech expressionlessly almost as though she had learned it off by heart—which she probably had, for if this was true it must have been a strain for the poor girl to harbor such a secret in the face of all the questioning which had been going on.

I who had heard the lovers in the ruined temple, who had noticed their attitude together readily accepted Sylvia’s story. It was credible.

Mrs. Lincroft seemed to think so too. Looking very worried she said: “I will go to Sir William at once and see if he is awake. If so I do think he should see you and Sylvia immediately, Mrs. Rendall.”

It was shocking; it was scandalous; but scandalous things had happened in the neighborhood before.

Yet it was the most plausible explanation. Young married women did not walk out of their homes and simply disappear without leaving any trace. They had to be somewhere. And Edith had actually confessed to the vicar’s daughter that she was planning to elope with her lover.

Who would have believed it! Young Mrs. Stacy and the curate! The curate of all people. Well, these things were known to happen.

“The quiet ones are the worst,” said Mrs. Bury to me. She had formed a habit of miraculously appearing at her door every time I passed; and almost on every occasion she would shake her head at me and tell me that I was the spitting image of one of those digger people. She never forgot a face.

“And married to him,” she said. “I feel sorry for her. Nice little girl, Miss Edith was. No hoity-toity about her…not like Miss Allegra. There’s one who wants a good spanking if ever anyone did. But Miss Edith and Miss Alice—always polite and well mannered, the both of them. I was sorry for her, marrying her off like that. It was the money. Well, money’s not everything, is it? If she hadn’t been a little heiress they wouldn’t have married her off to that Mr. Nap…and she could have fallen in love and married Mr. Brown all nice and respectable.”

It was the view of the village. They were all sorry for poor little Edith, and Mr. Brown had, they remembered, been such a nice young man, more approachable than the vicar and never prying into their affairs and giving them unwanted advice like Mrs. Vicar.

Sir William was deeply affected by the news. I did not see him for I did not go to play for him during this period.

Mrs. Lincroft confided in me: “He’s taken this badly. The thought of a grandchild did wonders for him, gave him a new interest, and now she’s gone and it seems the grandchild might not have been his after all. It’s changed him; he says he’ll never have her in this house again. He doesn’t want to find her and he doesn’t want a lot more talk. He wants to forget about it. He wants it to be as though Edith was never here. He doesn’t want her name mentioned and he wants enquiries stopped.”

“But,” I protested, “it’s not possible to behave as though something as important as that never happened. Napier is here and his purpose in coming was to marry Edith.”

“It is what Sir William wishes,” said Mrs. Lincroft, as though that explained everything.

Sylvia’s revelation brought a decided change. The matter in the minds of most people was neatly settled. Edith had done what others had done before her when trapped into an undesirable marriage; she had run away with her lover.

No one knew on what ship Mr. Brown had left for Africa.

“I never questioned him,” declared Mrs. Rendall. “I wanted to have no part in his harebrained schemes. And it seems that he must have left the church, for, my goodness, if we are going to let those sort of people stay in what are we coming to?”

Napier went to London and spent a week there trying to discover some news of Jeremy Brown’s whereabouts; and after a week or so he came back with the news that a Mr. and Mrs. Brown had sailed for Africa on the S.S. Cloverine, but whether this was Jeremy and Edith was not certain. It might be possible to learn more when the ship arrived. Then they could discover through the Missionary Society whether Jeremy had arrived at his destination.

So Napier came back little wiser than he had gone and I avoided him and was relieved because he seemed to avoid me too. There were times when I thought the wisest thing for me to have done would have been to slip quietly away while he was in London and disappear as irrevocably as Edith and Roma appeared to have done.

Yet the very next minute I was reminding myself that I had come to solve the riddle of Roma’s disappearance, and Edith’s made me all the more determined to do so. I was in no danger from Napier Stacy, I assured myself—nor from any man. Of course if the reason for Edith’s disappearance was her flight with a lover, it was in no way connected with Roma’s; but it was still an odd coincidence that two women should have vanished in the same place.

The belief in the cause of the trouble was strengthened when Alice and Allegra made their confessions to Mrs. Lincroft.

Allegra admitted that she had seen the lovers meeting on more than one occasion. She had said nothing to anyone because she thought it would have been telling tales. Alice admitted to once carrying a note from Edith to Mr. Brown.

So Edith had gone. Everyone was ready to believe that she had gone off with her lover. But I was not altogether sure; I kept thinking of Roma.