The Vanishing Woman Page 7

  The cold was to be the least of his problems. Dr Whitehead was standing on the steps talking to Detective Inspector Applegate. They broke off the conversation as soon as they saw him, but Gabriel knew at once what had happened. “Good morning, Inspector,” greeted Gabriel warily. “I wish I could say what a pleasure it is to see you again, but I doubt you are here for a happy reason. Has she been found?”

  Applegate nodded in acknowledgement. Like most members of the police force, he had very little time for amateur detectives. He was still smarting from his last encounter with Gabriel, but this was not the time for old grievances to emerge. “The drowned body of Enid Jennings was discovered at first light by anglers down at Port Shaston. I have been transferred here to take charge of the murder enquiry.”

  Gabriel could not hide his confusion. “Forgive me, but I thought Port Shaston was—”

  “Yes, about fifty miles away, but her body may have been adrift for several days. The river has powerful currents at the best of times, but heavy rain at this time of year will have hastened it along, no doubt.”

  “It’s a nasty business,” Dr Whitehead put in, as though not wishing to be forgotten. “Coming so close to Christmas as well. I don’t know how Aggie and Douglas are going to take this.”

  “I presume Agnes does not know yet,” asked Gabriel. “She looks terrible, but—”

  “We are on our way in to break the news now, Father,” Applegate explained. “Dr Whitehead here is an old friend of the family, and he has agreed to accompany me. He fears Agnes may require his assistance when she hears the news.”

  “If he needs me to—”

  “No thank you, Father. I’m sure we’ll manage. I’ve had to break bad news once or twice before.”

  Gabriel watched the two men enter the church, Dr Whitehead walking ramrod straight, Applegate hunched very slightly about the shoulders like an inconveniently tall man used to stooping to speak to others. He felt grateful for Dr Whitehead’s presence in Agnes’ hour of need. Applegate might be an excellent policeman, but Gabriel thought that he would rather have heard bad news from virtually anyone else. He walked with undue slowness across the courtyard to the front door of the presbytery, listening for any indication that the news had been broken, but there was deathly silence from within the church.

  Inside the presbytery, Fr Foley was eating breakfast without much enthusiasm.

  “They’ve found the body,” said Gabriel, grateful to have someone to whom he could pass the news.

  “Enid Jennings?”

  “Yes, fifty miles away, at Port Shaston.” Fr Foley immediately put down his toast and crossed himself, making Gabriel realise that that should have been his first reaction too. A woman was dead—she almost certainly died a sudden, violent, unprovided-for death—and rather than pray for her soul, his first thought had been: But how on earth had she died there? How on earth did she die like that? He was still caught up in the madness of it all as Fr Foley crossed himself a second time, indicating that he had finished praying. “It doesn’t make any sense, Father,” sighed Gabriel, sitting down at the table. “It all makes even less sense now.”

  “I’m not sure murder ever makes a great deal of sense,” remarked Fr Foley, getting up to find his friend a cup and saucer. “Would you like some tea?”

  “I mean the whole thing makes no sense. Agnes really couldn’t have seen her mother from that window. Even if she did not die at Port Shaston, she cannot possibly have died anywhere near that house. When Agnes claimed to have seen her, she might already have been dead.”

  Fr Foley made no response until he had placed Gabriel’s tea in front of him. “If you’ll forgive me for saying so, you do seem to be unreasonably determined to prove that Agnes is telling the truth here. I know that she told you she saw her mother disappear under her nose—the whole town is talking about her story—but you’ve had only her word for it from the first. She was obviously wrong, I’m afraid.”

  Gabriel shook his head. “You’ll think me frightfully bloody-minded, but you wouldn’t say that if you had heard her.”

  Fr Foley gave a reproachful smile. “You’d best listen to me before you go on some wild goose chase. I’ve known Agnes for years, and she was always a bit touched. You know perfectly well that old battleaxes do not just vanish into thin air, unless you think Enid Jennings bilocated at the hour of her death?”

  “When you put it like that, it all sounds so ridiculous.”

  “Indeed.”

  “It’s no good, Father, I am going to have to see Agnes,” declared Gabriel, stepping towards the door with the air of a man snatching a bottle of whiskey from the back of the cupboard after promising faithfully to kick the habit. His long black coat and his hat hung on the coat stand, inviting him to step outside again. “I shall run mad if I can’t work this one out, and I have a nasty feeling Inspector Applegate has more plans this morning than breaking bad news to the poor girl. A constable could have performed that task.”

  “You think she’ll be arrested?”

  Gabriel sighed. “It will hardly be the first time Applegate has locked up the wrong person.”

  By the time Gabriel had left the house again, Applegate was standing alone outside the church, scribbling into a notebook. Gabriel could just make out the figures of Dr Whitehead and Agnes disappearing down the street, Dr Whitehead supporting Agnes as she dragged her feet every step of the way. Applegate glanced up at Gabriel. “I thought you wouldn’t be able to resist a good gawp,” he said, smiling thinly. “Before you ask, you nosy parker, the doctor is taking Agnes back to his house so she doesn’t have to go back to that mausoleum she lives in. She’s under strict instructions not to leave his house without informing me.”

  “Is she going to stay there for the time being? It would make sense.”

  “No,” answered Applegate, tipping his hat more to close the conversation than as a gesture of respect. “I fully expect her to spend some time enjoying His Majesty’s hospitality before the day is out, but I’m not quite ready to make an arrest this minute.”

  Gabriel froze, watching as Applegate turned away and began the walk back to the police station. “You can’t mean that?” he demanded, hurrying after him. “Surely you don’t believe she’s mad as well, do you?”

  Applegate did not ease his pace for a moment. “Oh no, Father, I don’t believe she’s mad in the slightest. I know that her curious little story is a very clever distraction.”

  “How so? How can you possibly—”

  Applegate had an unpleasant habit, Gabriel remembered, of stopping abruptly and wheeling round to glare at his opponent when he had begun to tire of the conversation. “Really, Father, whatever else was it going to be? You never really believed she watched a woman vanish in a puff of smoke, did you?”

  “I don’t recall there being any puffs of smoke,” Gabriel retorted, finding Applegate’s tone as jarring as ever. “It does seem a rather peculiar story to invent. I’m inclined to believe that when a story is too improbable to be true, it is quite likely to be true. There are so many eminently more sensible things she could have said.”

  Applegate rolled his eyes, quickening his pace with the precise intention of discomfiting Gabriel. “A woman claims to have seen her mother walking along a path when she may already have been dead. Enid Jennings could not have gone anywhere near that house; she was murdered miles away. Yes, the story is ludicrous, but it’s not my problem if the suspect is a bad liar.”

  “Do we have a cause of death?”

  Applegate seemed relieved at the change of subject. “Not confirmed yet, but she drowned.”

  “I don’t suppose there’s any chance it was an accident, perhaps? I always like to give humanity the benefit of the doubt.”

  “Don’t bother, Father. I stopped doing that years ago. I don’t need the coroner’s report; I can smell foul play a mile away.”

  “I suppose . . .”

  Applegate smiled with what was almost fondness. “If you found the smoking
gun in a killer’s hand, you would try to find some way it could have arrived there by accident and fired itself. What else could have happened? An elderly widow vanishes into thin air, reappears in some scenic spot miles away, takes a little stroll along the water’s edge and gets swept to her death by a freak wave?”

  Gabriel shrugged, miserably. “It is a puzzle indeed, Inspector.”

  7

  Gabriel wondered—as he desperately tried to be interested in the blow-by-blow account of his companion’s burst appendix and the complexities of having it removed in the nick of time—if it were a sin to be bored witless by pastoral work such as this. He hardly ever enjoyed the over-seventies lunch club, which met every week, but it was one of his less exacting duties, and some of the men and women who turned up regularly had very interesting stories. They had a certain gravitas by nature of being Victorians—proper Victorians, unlike a Johnny-come-lately like him—individuals who remembered the old queen’s jubilee and Jack the Ripper and Gordon of Khartoum.

  It was just that the puzzle of a disappearing woman was preying on his mind, and he was desperate to find a reason to stroll over to Dr Whitehead’s house and talk to Agnes before Applegate got it into his head to arrest her. He could sense that the inspector was desperate to drag her down to the station—to appear to be on the ball, if nothing else—and once she had been arrested and formally charged, it would be more difficult to speak with her alone. Worse than that, when a person was accused in such a formal way, he tended to close up and refuse to trust anyone, even a person trying to help him. All in all, it would be much easier if he could spend five minutes with her in the safety and welcome of the good doctor’s house.

  Gabriel was suddenly aware of the silence and realised the old man had stopped talking and was awaiting some kind of response. “Yes,” he said emphatically and hoped that this was what was demanded of him.

  “Splendid!” said old Mr Cork. “That’s very kind of you, Father, really most decent. I know how busy you are, but with all your coming and going I was sure you would find time somehow or other.”

  Gabriel blenched. He could have just agreed to lead a pilgrimage to Walsingham, to sell himself into slavery to raise money for the roof-repair fund or to hear the man’s confession. He had no idea what was so splendid about his answer. “Yes,” he said again, fishing for more information to put him out of his misery.

  “It will save me a walk,” continued Mr Cork, “and Lord knows I was slow enough before the operation. Now this church is about as far as I can manage, and then it’s only about fifty yards from my front door. Did I ever tell you I used to run cross-country for the county? Hard to imagine it now, eh?”

  Mr Cork had indeed told Gabriel on many occasions that he had been a champion cross-country runner once, but Gabriel was still none the wiser as to the task he had agreed to perform, other than that he seemed to have agreed to go on some errand, which was a good deal better than a life of servitude. Well, that depended, of course, on where on earth he was supposed to be going. “Indeed,” said Gabriel desperately.

  “Righto, let me pass this to you now then, or I’ll no doubt forget all about it.” He rummaged in his jacket pocket and pulled out a white envelope. “If you could drop it into the hospital this afternoon, that would be splendid. I’d post it, but it’s already a little late as it is.”

  Gabriel suppressed a groan. It would have been too simple for the letter to require delivery to the cottage hospital at the other end of town. Mr Cork meant the much bigger hospital ten miles away along hilly, winding roads. He suspected that Mr Cork—a farmhand in his younger days and as strong as an ox—would once have thought nothing of walking that distance, but he probably imagined that Gabriel could drive a car and had a special supply of petrol coupons. “Yes,” said Gabriel, putting the letter away. “Consider it delivered.”

  As soon as Gabriel had said a prayer of thanksgiving, he got up to leave, citing urgent parish business (it was certainly urgent and definitely had something to do with the parish). He felt a pang of guilt at leaving two or three worthy ladies to do all the clearing away; not to mention the sad gaggle of hangers-on who could not face dispersing to their solitary homes just yet and were prolonging the lunch by standing in a little group chatting.

  I really ought to invest in a bicycle, thought Gabriel, as he marched off in the direction of the doctor’s house. He could not drive, and with the persisting petrol shortages, it felt wrong to run a car unless he absolutely had to. In any case, there was something about being seen walking about the town that he hoped made him approachable. People knew that they could walk alongside him and engage him in conversation if they needed to speak with him without having to make a formal appointment. Gabriel had used the tactic to great effect when he was at the abbey, but today he walked with his head down and only just acknowledged the waves and greetings of passersby as he went.

  He knew perfectly well it would inconvenience the doctor to be handed a letter to deliver at a hospital he barely ever attended, but Dr Whitehead did have a car, and Gabriel convinced himself that he was discharging his duty to Mr Cork by handing it to the doctor instead of going ten miles out of his way to shorten the arrival of a letter by twenty-four hours or so. He suspected the missive was just a thank-you letter to the hospital staff who had looked after him, since Mr Cork had managed to get ill on his one journey away from home in months and had been treated there. The request to deliver the letter, however, did at least give Gabriel a tenuous reason to visit Dr Whitehead that did not directly involve Agnes.

  “Good afternoon, Father,” greeted Mrs Gilbert, Dr Whitehead’s frighteningly efficient housekeeper. “You must have come to visit Agnes.”

  Gabriel felt his shoulders drooping as he stepped inside the house and removed his hat and coat. “Actually, I was hoping to catch Dr Whitehead if he’s not too busy.”

  Mrs Gilbert shook her head in a mildly irritating way. “He’s in the surgery; he won’t be finished for at least another couple of hours. If you’re unwell, of course . . .”

  “No, it’s quite all right. I simply had a message to pass on to him from one of my parishioners.” Gabriel pressed Mr Cork’s letter into Mrs Gilbert’s reluctant hand. “Perhaps you could pass this on to Dr Whitehead when you get the chance? The parishioner asked for it to be delivered to the hospital, but I’m afraid I don’t have a car.” He gave a judicious pause as Mrs Gilbert glanced suspiciously at the address before slipping the envelope into her apron pocket. “Since I’m here, it would be a good idea for me to see Agnes. How is she? I was terribly worried about the state she was in this morning.”

  “Well, it’s hardly a surprise that the poor girl’s in a state,” replied Mrs Gilbert, leading him upstairs. She was a tall woman with the build of a cottage loaf, which caused her to walk with an odd, swinging gait as though struggling to transfer her weight from one foot to the other. Gabriel could hear the suppressed wail of a woman weeping before they had reached the landing. “Between you and me,” Mrs Gilbert added, pausing for breath at the top of the stairs, “this is bad even for Agnes. The doctor’s just given her a sedative, but it hasn’t taken effect yet.” She rapped sharply on the door and opened it a little before calling, “Agnes, dear, I have a visitor for you. Someone to cheer you up.”

  With that, Mrs Gilbert pushed the door open and signalled to Gabriel to go in without entering herself. “Thank you,” he said, stepping past her. “I shan’t be long.”

  “You won’t have long,” answered Mrs Gilbert bluntly. “If the doctor’s done his job properly, Agnes should be fast asleep in about ten minutes. Whatever you’ve got to say, you’d better make it quick.”

  Gabriel stood in the doorway and let his eyes become accustomed to the dim light. Mrs Gilbert had closed the floral curtains, which darkened the room considerably. It was a comfortable spare room, well aired and spotlessly clean with a homely feel to it, thanks to the soft furnishings and yellow and white striped wallpaper. With a little more light,
it might even be quite cheerful. Agnes lay curled up on one side in the bed, half buried in the layers of pastel bedclothes.

  “Agnes.”

  Agnes turned in Gabriel’s direction at the sound of her name being gently called. She had always had a pale complexion, but the prolonged, perhaps quite hysterical crying had turned her face an alarming shade of scarlet, the skin mottled and damp like that of a woman battling a severe fever. “Have you come to hear my confession?” She whimpered, turning away again, which was almost a relief.

  Gabriel moved cautiously towards her bedside and sat down in the armchair by the wall, which put enough distance between them to prevent her from becoming alarmed but left them close enough to be able to speak without the risk of being overheard. “I came to see how you were bearing up,” said Gabriel, “but if you wish me to hear your confession—”

  Agnes let out a groan that startled him, and for a moment he was unsure what it meant. “It’s far too late for that, Father,” she said.

  “You know that’s not true, Agnes, why don’t you let me—”

  “Don’t!” she snapped, as he opened his bag to take out his stole. “I don’t even know if I want to be forgiven. This is a judgement, Father.”

  Gabriel dropped his bag at his feet and attempted to make eye contact with her, but Agnes had closed her eyes. “Agnes, I know you’ve been given drugs to help you to sleep, and any moment now you will fall asleep. Please tell me what you mean by that. We might not get another chance to speak.”

  Agnes crushed the edges of the bedclothes in her fists. “I detested her, Father. I wanted her to disappear. I wanted her dead, and now she is. What sort of person hates her own mother enough to want her dead?”

  Gabriel drew a deep breath. “Agnes, nobody dies because someone simply wants him to.”

  “I might have killed her with my own bare hands, Father!” she shouted suddenly, but her words, though very loud, had a rasping tone to them that warned him the drugs were indeed taking effect.