The Vanishing Woman Read online

  Gabriel’s only nasty moment came when a young novice opened the door to let him in. He must have entered in the months of Gabriel’s absence, because Gabriel could not place his face at all. “Good afternoon,” said Gabriel, dismissing from his mind the image he had had of rapturous greetings from Gerard or Dominic. “I’m here to see the abbot.”

  “Do you have an appointment?” asked the young man.

  Gabriel tried hard not to flinch. “No, but I’m sure he’ll see me.”

  The young man looked extremely doubtful but noted his clerical dress and let him in anyway. “Whom shall I say is calling?”

  “Dom Gabriel,” he answered with emphasis. “Please tell him it’s urgent.”

  As they walked up to Abbot Ambrose’s room, Gabriel looked around hopefully for a friendly face, but everyone seemed to be hiding. He noticed a familiar fluttering of nerves in his chest as they walked up the stairs and approached the door; it was out of character for Gabriel to be knocking on Abbot Ambrose’s door voluntarily and through his mind flashed all the awkward moments, mistakes, complaints and reprimands he had experienced over the years. It was best not to think too hard about such things, but Gabriel was really not sure how Abbot Ambrose would feel about his sudden appearance on an errand he might well regard as frivolous.

  Gabriel’s fears dissipated as soon as he was escorted into the room. Before his guide could announce him, Abbot Ambrose looked up from his desk and gave a rare smile. “Good Heavens!” he exclaimed, putting down his pen. “Isn’t that strange? I was just thinking about you.” He turned to the novice. “Thank you.”

  As soon as they were alone, Gabriel said, “Forgive me for intruding like this without an appointment, but I didn’t think it prudent to speak over the telephone.”

  “The Soviets have not taken over yet,” answered Abbot Ambrose dryly, “but sit down anyway. I’ve heard about this vanishing woman, and I couldn’t help fearing you have got yourself caught up in it all.”

  “It was rather difficult to avoid, I’m afraid,” said Gabriel, seating himself awkwardly at the edge of the chair. “It’s a small town, and I’m acquainted with most of the suspects. Enid Jennings was a lapsed Catholic, and I’m afraid she’s not the vanishing woman anymore either. She’s dead; they found the body.”

  Abbot Ambrose was well versed in the art of being inscrutable, and his face did not flicker before he responded: “What a dreadful business. I’m afraid I rather assumed she was dead, but one always has a little hope that a missing person may return unharmed.” He narrowed his eyes in Gabriel’s direction. “Don’t tell me: the police are baffled, and you have taken it upon yourself to investigate.”

  “Well yes, the police are baffled, and I’m not getting very far with investigating. I am, however, trying to help a young woman in rather a bad way. That was what I wanted to consult you about.”

  Abbot Ambrose leant forward. “Go on.”

  “The dead woman lived with her two adult children in an isolated cottage. The woman’s daughter, Agnes, claims that she saw her mother walking up the path to the house when she suddenly disappeared into thin air. No sign of her was found in the vicinity. At first it was treated as a missing-person enquiry—no one really believed the poor girl’s story, but Enid Jennings was definitely missing. Then, in case the daughter’s claim were not absurd enough, her mother’s body was found all the way in Port Shaston. The swollen, fast-flowing river will have dragged the body many miles, but it still doesn’t explain how the body came to be anywhere near water in the first place or how Agnes could have seen her mother through the window at around the time or possibly even after the time of death.”

  Every time Gabriel retold the story, it sounded a little more fanciful, but Abbot Ambrose glanced impassively at his folded hands until Gabriel had stopped talking. “The woman was mistaken about what she saw,” suggested Abbot Ambrose. “It was a trick of the lights, the result of an overly fertile imagination. Dare I suggest it might even be a lie?”

  “I know, all those possibilities sound quite sane compared with what I’m about to suggest,” said Gabriel awkwardly, already anticipating the response he was going to get. “For all sorts of reasons I will not go into at the moment, I’m fairly convinced that Agnes did see something out of that window, in fact I’m pretty sure she did see her mother and she saw her mother alive. She’s refused to back down, even though she’s being labelled a lunatic or even possibly a criminal.”

  Abbot Ambrose gave the sigh of the worldly wise. “I was once called upon to speak with a perfectly nice gentleman who was convinced that he was Abraham, the patriarch. I tried every possible line of argument to convince him otherwise, but he could not be convinced. He was adamant that he was Abraham and was able to cite all kinds of perfectly logical arguments to back up his claim.”

  “I know what you mean, Father Abbot,” Gabriel conceded, feeling himself shrinking physically at every word, “but there is no other suggestion that Agnes is insane. She is a very troubled young woman, certainly, but besides this story, she shows every sign of being in possession of her mental faculties. It stands to reason that if she is not lying and she is not mad—”

  “Yes, thank you, Dom Gabriel,” Abbot Ambrose cut in. “I too have read some Aquinas. I assume you have a little hypothesis you wish to share?”

  Gabriel sat up as tall as he could. “As a matter of fact, I do. There is one other possibility that keeps coming back into my mind. She might have fallen into an underground cavern—”

  The sound that distracted Gabriel began as a wheezing, rasping noise reminiscence of an ancient accordion being played by an amateur musician. Then Abbot Ambrose’s cadaverous face cracked open, and he roared with laughter.

  “Does it really sound so ridiculous?” asked Gabriel, but he could feel himself reddening with the shame of it. “I know it sounds mad . . .”

  “That is because it is entirely barking mad,” said Abbot Ambrose, when he had collected himself. “If there were a phenomenon like that practically on the lady’s doorstep, it would be very visible and everyone would know about it. The opening would have to be large enough for a grown woman to fall through. And even with heavy rain, it’s highly unlikely that a hole that huge would suddenly open up without giving the woman time to escape.”

  “I wouldn’t even have considered the possibility,” said Gabriel with the persistence of a man walking through torrential rain only because he is already too drenched to bother seeking shelter, “but her daughter also disappeared years ago, though she came back unhurt. It seems to be too much of a coincidence that two people from the same family should vanish into thin air like that. I cannot help thinking there must be a connection.”

  Abbot Ambrose’s usual funereal countenance had returned. “Now that is a little more interesting,” he admitted, which gave Gabriel some hope. “Do you know in which year the girl disappeared?”

  “Yes, more or less. Her brother said it was shortly after their father was killed at Dunkirk, which dates it quite clearly.” Gabriel waited for the abbot to answer, but he was staring into the far corner, contemplating what he had just heard. “That’s why I wondered, since the first disappearance occurred during the early years of the war, when there was still the serious threat of an invasion . . .” He cleared his throat. “Father Abbot, were there manmade underground chambers dug out during the war? There were air-raid shelters of course, but one would not find a structure like that in such a remote area; there were no bombing raids down there, even stray ones. It just occurred to me that a man-made structure would have been built to be invisible, even soundproof. And secret, of course. You see, Agnes wouldn’t tell a soul where she’d been when she was recovered, even when her mother became violent. Her brother, Douglas, thought perhaps that she had concussion or something like that, because she was behaving very strangely. I thought that, well—”

  “—that if a child were too frightened to tell anyone where she’d been, even under threat of violence, she must
have seen something she was never meant to see and could not risk repeating.”

  “Exactly. And, like her mother, she really did disappear; nobody could find her all day. It’s a small town; if she had been out in the open, somebody would have noticed unless she had taken it upon herself to go deep into the countryside.”

  Abbot Ambrose fell into one of those deep, impenetrable silences Gabriel remembered so well. Gabriel watched as the old man closed his eyes, resting his chin on his hands as he mulled over the problem, thinking through the many possibilities. Gabriel was aware of the distant patter of footsteps on the lower corridor and the rumbling of his empty stomach, which seemed as loud as an earthquake in such a silent place, but he dared not make any attempt at interruption. He had just let his gaze drift over to the leaded window in the far wall, where he could make out a swathe of dank sky and the smallest square of green in the lowest corner, when he heard the sound of Abbot Ambrose sitting up. “I’m afraid there is very little I can do to help you with this, my son,” he said slowly, “I’m afraid I was—well, abroad for much of the war and have little knowledge of operations here. If there were a man-made underground structure, a remote area would be the place to hide it, but the presence of a nearby dwelling complicates matters somehow. The likelihood of a child stumbling upon something would be quite a risk, I would have thought.”

  “The cottage is the only one in the area, and I think that during the early years of the war there were a lot more trees in the way. It would have been much easier to conceal. And someone put a rumour about, something about a marauding ghost. Children were always too frightened to play there.”

  “The rumour makes me almost more suspicious,” he said. “It’s just the sort of thing one might say to keep nosy little urchins off one’s back. And of course, if there were any noises or other strange movements, a casual passerby might be convinced something frightening was going on and run away. There’s no doubt it would have to be extremely carefully concealed, particularly if the police have raked over the area and not found it.”

  “To be honest, the police did not do much of a job of looking. The body was found miles away, and no one really took Agnes’ story seriously from the start. The fact is, though, I really did look, and I couldn’t see anything.”

  Abbot Ambrose tapped his fingertips against the desk one at a time as though silently counting. “It would have to be carefully concealed, but you see, if such a structure were built at all, it would have been built to be completely secret, impossible to see even if a person were looking for it. They know what they’re doing. Incidentally, did the young woman claim that her mother vanished under her very nose or was she looking away at the actual moment?”

  “She was looking away. It was only for a moment; she heard the kettle whistling.”

  “Hmm. I would think that by the time she had moved away from the window to the stove, removed the kettle and switched off the gas, and poured water into a teapot, that would give between twenty and thirty seconds. That’s not a negligible amount of time.”

  Gabriel dared to let his spirits rise. “So do you think, perhaps, I might be going the right way with this?”

  Abbot Ambrose looked him calmly in the eye. “I think you may, though you could, of course, be completely wrong. If there is any truth in your suspicion, however, I think you should perhaps be cautious about pursuing this any further. These are very deep waters. Everything you have said makes me uneasy.”

  “I know,” said Gabriel. He considered telling the abbot about Applegate’s veiled threat and then decided against it.

  “I am simply telling you to be careful, that’s all. Two disappearances may not be enough for some.” With that, Abbot Ambrose seemed to relax, and he looked in Gabriel’s direction with what was almost amusement. “Your stomach rumbles so loudly, I could have heard it from the cloister. Why don’t I ask Brother Gerard to fetch you something to eat in the refectory?”

  Gabriel could hardly hide his relief as he stood up to leave. “Thank you. I am rather hungry.” He added hopefully, “Fr Foley is improving slowly.”

  “I’m delighted to hear it,” Abbot Ambrose replied without missing a beat. “Come and visit us again soon, won’t you?”

  10

  “It’s not that bad, is it?” asked Brother Gerard, as they hurtled around the corner, the left-hand wheels of the car screeching horribly as they drove too fast through a puddle. “I always thought parish life must be quite a laugh, really,” he added when Gabriel failed to respond. “All that freedom. No bells. Never one day the same as the next.”

  “I’ll swap you whenever you like. Ever heard of the grass is always greener?” responded Gabriel, clinging helplessly to the sides of his seat. In Dr Whitehead’s car he had felt like a privileged passenger being gently guided through a tour of the Wiltshire countryside; with Gerard behind the wheel of the clapped-out monastic motor, Gabriel was left with the sensation that he was being put through some kind of mediaeval ordeal to test his faith in the mercy of the Almighty. If he screamed, he had failed.

  “Aw, come on, enjoy it while you can. Before you know it, you’ll be back. D’ya have a light?”

  “Eh? I don’t. You know I don’t smoke. Anyway, you shouldn’t be lighting up when you’re driving. You’re enough of a motoring nightmare with both hands on the wheel.” Gabriel closed his eyes and tried to relax. “I hope you’re right, anyway. It’s a nice enough parish when people aren’t being bumped off all over the place.”

  “Not that we can throw too many stones in that direction,” Gerard reminded him. “That cottage still gives me the heebie-jeebies to this day.”

  “Yes, I’m sorry I got you caught up in that dreadful business now . . .” he trailed off for a moment before sitting bolt upright as though someone had kicked him in the shins. “That’s the problem with all this!” Gabriel almost shouted, causing Gerard to swerve. “There are too many things that don’t make sense! Give me a straight case of somebody clobbering somebody else over the head with a spanner, and I’d be perfectly happy!”

  “Nicely put from a man of the cloth,” squeaked Gerard. “Now I really need a ciggy.”

  “You know what I mean; I need something to focus on. But as it is, absolutely nothing makes any sense at all. What the girl saw doesn’t make any sense; the location of the body doesn’t make any sense. Since absolutely everyone hated the victim, with one or two notable exceptions, everyone’s a suspect, and pretty much everyone might have had a motive. Come to think of that, it’s not even clear that we are talking about a murder, since the cause of death seems so vague and the postmortem results are taking an age to be released. And if we’re not talking about murder, then what exactly is the crime we’re talking about?”

  “Stop! You’re making my head swim!” pleaded Gerard mockingly. “I’d forgotten how much talking to you feels like being thrown off a roundabout.”

  “My head’s been swimming from the start, if it’s any consolation.”

  “You know what Father Abbot would say. Write it all down in a long list. Start with the suspects.”

  “Practically everyone.”

  “Narrow it down.”

  “Let’s exclude Dr Milton’s sweet little girl and the doctor’s infant grandchild.”

  “Well, it’s a start. Clues?”

  “An eyewitness account that makes no sense, the body of a woman who ought to have drowned but apparently didn’t, and a missing shoe that probably means nothing because it would have been dragged off in the water. Missing penknife, equally possibly lost in the water and, since she wasn’t knifed, is probably not relevant either. Her fingernails were a bit of a mess, and there are all sorts of reasons that might be the case.”

  “Anything else?”

  Gabriel shuffled in his seat. “Agnes had a nasty injury to her face dating from around the time of her mother’s death, but she and her brother say it was an accident.”

  Gerard took his eyes off the road to stare at him. “How many time
s has a woman said it was an accident when some bloke’s obviously thumped her?”

  “Tractor!” shouted Gabriel, giving Gerard just enough time to get the car back on the proper side of the road. The tractor trundled past them like a gigantic, man-eating insect. “I suppose I should say that the victim was overheard arguing with and threatening Dr Milton before she died.”

  “Sounds as though you’re getting somewhere,” he said. “Perhaps it’s like one of them crazy modern paintings that you have to stare at until your eyes start to water, then suddenly you see what it’s meant to be.”

  “Thanks. It’s good to talk again.”

  They were starting to pass rows of houses on either side, and Gabriel noticed Gerard slowing down as they entered the town, a little more aware of the need for safety where there were people about. “Shall I drop you off at the presbytery?” he asked, turning to look at Gabriel again.

  “Woman on bike,” stated Gabriel, bracing himself whilst Gerard straightened the course again. “Would you mind dropping me off at the bookshop?”

  “Please yourself.”

  “The bookshop is a little farther down the high street, on the left-hand side.”

  As Gerard pulled over, bumping up onto the curb accidentally as he did so, Gabriel felt a sudden reluctance to let him go. “Are you in a hurry to get back?” he asked hopefully. “I shan’t be long in the bookshop. I could get you a cup of tea at the presbytery before you make the journey back. It’s a long way to go without any refreshment.”

  Gerard’s boyish face broke into a grin. “It’s not far at all, you clot! I’ll hardly die of thirst before I get home, and I’d best be back before dark.” He noted how deflated Gabriel looked and patted his arm. “Chin up, mate, you’ll be back with us before the year’s out, driving us all mad.”