The Vanishing Woman Read online

  PC Stevens looked up from his work and gave Gabriel a half smile. “She’s much better, Father. Thank you for asking. The doctor says she should make a full recovery.”

  “Thank God for that. You had a nasty scare.”

  Stevens nodded, allowing himself to be drawn fully into the conversation. “Aye, we had, and others were not so lucky. You heard about the Morgans, I suppose? They say little Tommy will never walk again. Why ever did God make polio, eh?”

  Gabriel was about to proffer an answer when he became aware of heavy footsteps approaching him from behind, and he turned to face Inspector Applegate. “Not trying to ingratiate your way into my office by any chance, were you?” he asked wryly, turning to Stevens. “Watch out for this man. He will be wheedling information out of you before you know it. Or interfering with crime scenes, or tampering with evidence . . .”

  Stevens and Gabriel began to answer at the same time. Then both stopped talking to allow the other man to speak. In the ensuing awkward silence, Gabriel said, “Inspector, I wonder if we might have a word?”

  Applegate brushed past Gabriel in the direction of his temporary office without making an answer. Gabriel suspected that the whole point was to belittle him into trotting behind him without any acknowledgement of his presence, but it was not the first time he had had to swallow his pride with Applegate. He followed him into the office. “As a matter of fact, I’m rather busy this morning,” Applegate began, sitting at his desk in his coat. The room was very cold indeed, and Gabriel noticed a pair of hand-knitted fingerless gloves on Applegate’s filing tray.

  “Not busy spreading rumours about innocent men, were you?” asked Gabriel.

  Applegate rolled his eyes. “All right, I overstepped the mark. I shouldn’t have threatened you like that, but you really are a nuisance when you want to be.”

  “Consider it forgotten. What were you doing this morning then?”

  “I was investigating a rather clever crime scene, since you ask.”

  “Yes, I know exactly where you were,” answered Gabriel. He should have liked to have sat down, but Applegate did not offer him a chair, and he decided against riling the man by making himself too at home. “I told Douglas Jennings to inform you of the discovery. I asked George Smithson to take me down there last night as soon as I realised what had happened.”

  Applegate grimaced. “I suppose that’s your way of telling me I owe you something, isn’t it? What do you want?”

  “I should like to take a look at the postmortem results, if you don’t mind. Having seen the interior of the bunker, I’m fairly sure now how Enid Jennings died, but I should like to be certain.”

  Applegate smiled in spite of himself. He opened a drawer and pulled out a brown cardboard folder, which looked as though it contained only a couple of sheets of paper and possibly some photographs of the body. “You know you’ve no business asking to look at this before I’ve had a chance to read it through myself, don’t you?” Gabriel did not respond. “It’s quite all right, Father. I knew perfectly well it was you who had worked it out. How about telling me how you found an invisible bunker if even I did not know about it? Then, perhaps you could tell me how you think Enid Jennings died. I’ll take a look at the postmortem results, and we’ll see if you’re right.”

  Gabriel nodded. He knew that Applegate was deliberately patronising him, but it was the closest to cooperation he was going to get from the man, and he went along with it. “Very well, and if I’m right, you can buy me a pint.”

  “We’ll see about that.”

  Gabriel gave up waiting to be invited to sit down and pulled up a chair, using the distraction to avoid thinking about the lives that would be ruined by the time the case closed. It was never just the guilty who suffered, and he was beginning to discover that sometimes even the guilty did not deserve to, but justice systems were not devised by people like him. “I believed that Agnes was telling the truth, and I could not accept that she was mad when there was simply no evidence to suggest it. That was really all there was to it. If she were telling the truth, then there had to be a rational explanation. Since there was absolutely no evidence in the area to back up her story, I concluded that the evidence must be hidden away somewhere very carefully. When Enid turned up dead where she did, I tried to ignore quite how far away she was found and simply thought of the nearest access to water, knowing that the river would have done the rest of the work itself. I know as well as you do that the war has left this country full of secrets—secret lives, hidden identities—so why not secret places too?”

  “It was unwise to rumble George Smithson like that,” suggested Applegate, determined not to offer Gabriel any encouragement whatsoever. “If he’s guilty, he could find ways to disappear that even we can’t get around. People like that tend to have—connections, shall we say?”

  “If George Smithson is guilty, I suspect he is too clever to cut and run. His friends will protect him wherever he is,” said Gabriel. He thought he would have to try to persuade Smithson to give himself up if it came to it, as there would be plenty of people to pull strings on his behalf and ensure that he was never arrested. That sort of invincibility made a man dangerous; it opened so many doors to temptation.

  “Come along, Father, how did she die then?” prompted Applegate, throwing Gabriel’s line of thought off-balance. Applegate had the file open and was trying unsuccessfully to hide his dissatisfaction with what he was reading. “Let’s hear it from you.”

  Gabriel settled himself into his chair. “To start with, we may surmise that Enid Jennings knew her attacker. I think that has been clear from the start, but most victims know their attackers. Whoever abducted her—let’s say ‘abducted’ for the moment—knew about the bunker, perhaps had always known about it. We are talking about an intelligent person who was capable of planning the perfect crime in tiny detail. This person—man or woman—entered the bunker from the opposite end, the river end, to avoid any chance of being seen in the vicinity of the house. The person then lay in wait by the open entrance, knowing that Enid Jennings would pass that way.” Gabriel looked across at Applegate to see if the inspector was still listening. “But something was happening to Enid Jennings that her attacker had not anticipated. Agnes mentioned almost in passing that her mother seemed to be walking rather more slowly than usual. It is my belief, having observed Fr Foley recovering from a heart attack, that at the moment she was abducted, Mrs Jennings was already dying. As she walked along that path, she was suffering a heart attack, which left her out of breath and weak. It would have been even more straightforward than the attacker could have hoped to pull her through the hole, down the steps and into the main chamber.”

  “Father, the entrance would have been—”

  “I’m coming to that, Inspector. I found her penknife partially opened on the floor of the bunker, and I couldn’t help thinking it would be quite difficult for a woman to rummage in her handbag, take this thing out, and even partially open it, especially if she were feeling very unwell, very frightened and searching for it in virtual darkness. I don’t imagine the assailant would have risked trying to get the lights on or pointed his torch in Mrs Jennings’ direction to make things easier for her. It suggested to me that the attacker was sufficiently confident and clearheaded, that he quickly mounted the stairs and covered over the entrance before returning to her. If he knew what he was doing, it would have taken under a minute, but it would have been long enough for Mrs Jennings to get the knife out.”

  “But not quite long enough, since there’s no evidence she actually used it. Her attacker reached her before she got the weapon open. Not that it would have been of much use to stab anyone, I suspect.”

  “The attacker did not stop her. Her heart did,” Gabriel ventured. “A severe heart attack can kill a person almost instantly. In her case, she was given a few minutes. The shock of being snatched like that may well have finished her off. Let’s face it, even a healthy person might faint if something so frightening h
appened to him. The would-be killer was spared the horror of committing murder but was left with a dead body. It could have been left where it was, but that had never been the plan, and our killer is a person who likes everything to tie up nicely. The killer had meant to force Mrs Jennings to walk the length of the bunker and drown her at the other end. It was obviously important that she not be found anywhere near her home to keep suspicion away from the family.”

  “Was it a member of the family?”

  Gabriel ignored him. He had not finished answering his first question yet. “Unfortunately, very clever people do sometimes commit the stupidity of refusing to change their plans. It might well have been safer simply to leave the body where it was and hope that nobody would enter the bunker, or to take the body back out into the open and hope that when it was found, the assumption would be that she had collapsed as she walked home, but the attacker may well have felt it was already too late for that or feared that he might have been seen. So, the body was dragged the length of the bunker and dumped into the river, where any evidence could be washed away and it might even look as though she had drowned accidentally.”

  Applegate was staring piercingly at Gabriel over the top of the file as though Gabriel had personally choreographed the entire plan himself with the precise intention of annoying the police. “Well,” he said after a judicious pause, “I can’t vouch for your suppositions, but it says here that Enid Jennings did indeed die of a heart attack. She had no medical history of heart problems, but at her age, I suppose, anyone can suffer a heart attack. She did not drown, and there is no evidence of any injuries to suggest she met a violent end. The only suspicious observations are—”

  “The grazed heel,” interrupted Gabriel. “Yes, that would be consistent with the idea that she was dragged along the floor. I suspect you will find a shoe somewhere along that passageway. We didn’t go all the way down—”

  “You have viewed the body?”

  “Yes. And the residual dirt under the fingernails, I thought that was a little odd when she was otherwise very well groomed. Well, I suspect she probably clawed the ground as she was dragged down the hole. There would have been a lot more dirt under her fingernails, but the river—”

  Applegate threw down the file, stopping Gabriel in his tracks. “If you had already inveigled your way into the mortuary, why on earth did you need to see the postmortem results at all?”

  “Well, I’m hardly an expert. I wanted to see the official findings. Why are you looking at me like that?”

  Applegate had a nasty habit during interviews of standing up and leaning across the desk with his two fists bearing much of his weight, the intention being to intimidate the suspect sitting in the chair opposite him without actually touching him. Gabriel could have been convinced for a moment, with Applegate bearing down on him, that he was a suspect and was only minutes away from being charged. “Get out of my office,” was all Applegate had to say to him, enunciating each word in a slow staccato. “You have led me to the crime scene. I have told you what you wanted. I think we’re quits.”

  It was impossible for Gabriel to stand up without risking bumping heads with Applegate; he stretched out one hand to indicate that he wanted Applegate to step back, which he did as slowly and grudgingly as humanly possible. “Inspector, I merely accompanied Dr Whitehead to identify the body. I touched nothing; I interfered with nothing. I fail to see why—”

  Applegate dropped back into his chair with a groan of frustration. “Look here, Father, it makes no difference either way. Since it looks quite clear that we are no longer dealing with a murder investigation, I am likely to be taken off the case altogether. My guess is that we are now looking at a kidnap charge, possibly with failure to allow proper burial of a body. It’s unlikely we could even press a charge of manslaughter if she was already in the process of stuffing it when she was snatched, though that is not for me to decide. Whatever sort of crime this is, however, it is no longer murder.”

  “Isn’t that a good thing?” asked Gabriel, staggering to his feet. “I feel quite relieved that there is no one in our vicinity with that crime on her conscience. Even if she had already committed murder in her heart, I suppose.”

  “She?”

  Gabriel shook his head, making for the door. “Don’t read too much into it. I get these feelings sometimes.” He hesitated: “You must sense it every so often, Inspector, that feeling that the most important detail is not what one can see but what one cannot see.”

  Applegate shook his head impatiently. “Unless the person is missing, then no, Father, I’m afraid that’s where we part company. What are you talking about?”

  “I mean the body. If a person were abducted like that, the person who snatched her would have had good reason to believe that she would resist, even if not immediately. The attacker, of course, did not realise that Mrs Jennings was ill and unlikely to put up much of a struggle, but there were no cuts and grazes on the body to suggest rough handling. When Agnes was snatched, years ago—”

  “What?”

  “Sorry, Inspector, you don’t know about that yet, do you?” asked Gabriel. “You’ll have to ask Agnes. But you see, she was only a child, not capable of much resistance either, but her arms were marked from being held. The man who dragged her away held on to her tightly enough to be absolutely sure she could not escape.”

  Applegate held up a hand as though directing the traffic. “I wonder if we could pause a moment. Are you telling me that Agnes Jennings was also abducted? Years ago?”

  “Yes,” answered Gabriel absently. He rattled the door handle, but he appeared to be locked in. “Oh dear, I’m not sure I was supposed to pass that on to you. Oh well, never mind—anyway, what I meant was that whoever snatched Enid Jennings acted quite gently by comparison. Almost as though the abductor really didn’t want to hurt her.”

  “The abductor was going to kill her, Father.”

  “But there was some impulse there, some instinct that stopped the person from hurting her. It would not have been easy to drag a grown woman down those steps without grazing or hurting her at all. I suppose that’s why I keep thinking of a woman, though I daresay I may be being naive.”

  “You’re being shamelessly naive, Father,” Applegate agreed, moving purposefully towards the door with the key. “The most vicious attack I have ever received when arresting a suspect came from a woman who scratched my face like a wildcat, kneed me in the short and painfuls and attempted to remove my right ear. There never was such a thing as the gentle sex, I can assure you. Frankly, from the rumours I’ve heard about Enid Jennings, the victim herself rather proved that point.”

  Gabriel walked back to the presbytery with the feeling of having lost a vital match point against Applegate. That Mrs Jennings had been capable of serious violence was hardly news to him and was probably not news to any child who had ever entered her classroom, but a troubling thought ran through his head as he walked past the row of cottages, pausing at the cemetery gate to make the Sign of the Cross. Was it really the apparent gentleness of the abduction that made him think the attacker was a woman? It was only when Applegate had described that attack on his person that the thought had occurred to Gabriel: Enid Jennings’ violence seemed to have been directed solely at other females, principally younger ones. Douglas had told him that his mother had never once struck him, not once. He had clearly feared her, and he had witnessed some impressive scenes of rage, such as when he had attempted to hide his father’s things, but that was not quite the same. The thought had barely registered with Gabriel at the time. Douglas was older than Agnes, and Gabriel had assumed that any discipline he had experienced in the house would have come from his father. Mrs Jennings hated other women, he thought. It was hardly an unusual situation, sadly, but hatred had a nasty tendency to become reciprocal. Agnes, Pamela—Therese perhaps?—there must have been others who might have been driven to return hate with hate or violence with violence. Pamela was so obviously not revealing everything she
knew—could he really believe that Mrs Jennings had sent Pamela packing without harming or humiliating her at all? Would she really have been satisfied simply by expelling her?

  Gabriel gazed through the bars of the graveyard at the rows of tombstones, glistening with the first frost in a way he would have thought magical as a child. At the far end, he could see old Mr Blewett praying at his wife’s grave, the way he did every Friday without fail. She had died of influenza five years before, during the miserable December of ’42, and Mr Blewett had admitted to Gabriel once that he still laid out her place for dinner every evening. In spite of his weekly visits to her grave, he still liked to think that it might all be an unfortunate mistake and she would walk into the dining room at seven o’clock one evening to take up her place at the table. He said it was sheer force of habit that made him check that there was a clean handkerchief under her pillow when he retired at night because she had a tendency to wake up sneezing, thanks perhaps to being a little sensitive to the down.

  It struck Gabriel as he glanced at the frost-dusted flowers on Mrs Olson’s grave that he could ask Mr Blewett the identity of the anonymous well-wisher, since their visits to the cemetery might have coincided. It was strange to need to know, but somehow Gabriel wanted to thank the man or woman for the thoughtfulness, that little reminder that even the loneliest souls are never forgotten. He waited until Mr Blewett had finished his devotions and waved in his direction. Mr Blewett waved back before moving towards Gabriel. “Good day, Father!”

  “Good morning, Mr Blewett. Isn’t it cold?”

  “Cold enough for snow, I’ll warrant.” Mr Blewett was freezing, thought Gabriel. His coat was looking threadbare in places, and his fingertips protruded through the many holes in his gloves; there was no one at home now to knit him a new pair to see him through the winter. Gabriel made a mental note to ask Mrs Whitehead if she could knit him a pair for Christmas. “Mr Blewett, I wonder if you know who placed those flowers on Mrs Olson’s grave? I was curious.”