Читать книгу Anna, Where Are You? - Dora Amy Elles - Страница 6

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A couple of days had passed when Miss Silver looked up from the letter she was writing and lifted the receiver of the table telephone. Inspector Abbott’s voice greeted her by name.

“Hullo! Here we are! Marvellous and beneficent instrument the telephone—except when it wakes you in the middle of the night and you wish that the progress of science had stopped short at rubbing two sticks together to make a fire. But, as you are about to remark, that isn’t what I rang you up to talk about. ‘Hail, vain deluding joys!’ and all the rest of it. Business before pleasure.”

“My dear Frank!”

“I know—I’m getting there. In the matter of Thomasina Elliot—”

Miss Silver said,

“You are not speaking from Scotland Yard.”

A suspicion of a laugh came to her along the wire.

“How right you are! The official style is more restrained. I am in a call-box. In the matter of Thomasina we appear to have got to a dead end. To start with, there isn’t any evidence that the girl Anna really has disappeared, and no clue as to where to begin to look for her. In fact, as I said, a dead end. There were just two chances. One, that an advertisement would produce something. Well, Thomasina has advertised, and we have had a wireless appeal put out. We had to strain a point there, but a string or two was pulled and we got it done. No response. The second chance was that Mrs. Dugdale, the last employer, or someone in her household might know something. A girl who is going to a new job is practically bound to say something about it to somebody. She asks for a reference—she leaves an address for letters to be forwarded. Well, according to Mrs. Dugdale and her household Anna didn’t do any of these things. Hobson went round to see them, and he says they were most unco-operative. Mrs. Dugdale appeared to be threatened with a nervous collapse every time she was asked to remember anything. He opined that it really was nerves, and not a guilty conscience. He said he had an aunt who was just the same, and she fairly wore everyone out. Getting sense out of her was like trying to get water out of an empty well—no matter how often you sent the bucket down it would always come up dry. From which you may deduce that our Sergeant Hobson grew up in a village which still pumped its water from its native springs.”

“And Mrs. Dugdale’s household?”

“Impenetrability, as Humpty Dumpty remarked! There is a personal maid who sounds like a cross between a steel trap and an oyster. The other two—there really are two more—are both elderly, and wouldn’t demean themselves by getting mixed up with the police. Hobson opined they didn’t know anything but wouldn’t have talked if they did. And that is where you come in.”

Miss Silver said in a deprecatory manner,

“May I ask in what capacity?”

She heard him laugh.

“Oh, strictly professional. Thomasina is coming to see you. She has come in for quite a lot of money from an aunt, and no expense is to be spared. I told her that if anyone could charm an oyster into speech, it was you. Seriously, you know, someone in that Dugdale lot must know something. Thumbscrews being out of date, there doesn’t seem to be any way of making them talk. Anna left them alive and in her right mind—”

“How did she go?”

“By bus, with a single suit-case which was all she brought with her. She had only been there a month, you know. She sent a box to Thomasina in Scotland and said she would write for it later. Well, she didn’t write.”

Miss Silver asked a pertinent question.

“Where was the bus going to?”

“That’s just what nobody knows. Anna walked to the end of the road and took a bus. Six buses pass there. No one knows which one of them Anna took. Nice simple little problem, isn’t it? She could have gone to King’s Cross, Waterloo, Victoria, Baker Street, Holborn, or the Tottenham Court Road. She could have got off her bus and travelled by tube. She could have gone to Scotland by motor coach. She could have taken a taxi and driven down to the docks. Anybody’s guess is as good as anybody else’s.”

Miss Silver said, “Dear me!”

An hour or two later Thomasina Elliot sat in one of the curly walnut chairs and gazed at Miss Silver. She had been sitting there for not more than twenty-five minutes, but she had already told this dowdy little ex-governess quite a number of things which she had not seen fit to impart to Peter Brandon or to Detective Inspector Abbott.

Things about Anna Ball—“She depended on me. People oughtn’t to depend on each other like that. I did my best to stop her, but it wasn’t any use, and she just hadn’t got anyone else. That is how I am quite sure she didn’t just get bored and stop writing. She hasn’t got any family, and she hasn’t got any friends. She hasn’t got anyone except me. I’ve got to find her.”

Things about herself—“Aunt Barbara left me quite a lot of money. I’m twenty-two, and I can do anything I like with it. It really is quite a lot, because she had a frightfully rich godmother—rather queer but very kind. She was about a hundred, and she left everything to Aunt Barbara, and Aunt Barbara left half to me and half to Peter. I used to be taken to see her.” Thomasina’s gaze became one of artless interest. “She had curly chairs just like yours, and the exact twin of your bookcase. You don’t mind my saying that, do you? It made me feel as if I knew you the minute I came in.”

She received the smile with which Miss Silver had won not only the confidence but the affection of many clients. It prompted Thomasina to discourse about Peter Brandon.

“Aunt Barbara married his uncle. He is about ten years older than I am. Aunt Barbara wanted me to marry him, but she didn’t put it in her will. He asks me every now and then, but I don’t suppose he really wants me to. You see, he knows all my faults and I know his, and it might be dull not having anything to find out about each other. Of course one would know the worst—”

Miss Silver looked at her kindly.

“There is much to be said for a steady affection as a foundation for marriage.”

Thomasina sighed.

“That is what Aunt Barbara used to say.” She sighed again. “Peter has a very domineering disposition. He writes books, you know. I suppose when you get accustomed to pushing characters about just the way you want to, it makes you think you can do the same thing with real people. Peter is being very domineering about poor Anna. He keeps saying, ‘Let her alone and she will turn up.’ ”

Miss Silver knitted in silence for a moment. Then she said,

“That last letter you spoke of—I should like to see it.”

Thomasina opened her bag.

“Inspector Abbott said you would. It’s very short. Here it is.”

A folded sheet was handed over—notepaper with an embossed heading, 5 Lenister Street, S.W., and a telephone number, obviously Mrs. Dugdale’s. Under the heading a few lines in a scrawled downward-sloping hand with no set beginning:

“I shall be out of here by the time you get this, and thank goodness!” Heavy underlining. “How I have borne it! I shan’t tell you about my new job until I get there—no time—all very sudden. I’m sending you a box of things to keep for me in case I don’t stay.

Love,

Anna.”

Miss Silver handed the letter back.

“Have you seen this Mrs. Dugdale, Anna Ball’s late employer?”

Thomasina’s eyes kindled.

“If you can call it seeing!” she said in an indignant voice. “Flat on a sofa in a dressing-gown, with all the blinds down and a bottle of smelling-salts in her hand! And all she would say was, Anna didn’t leave an address and she didn’t know anything about her, and please would I go away, because her head was too bad to talk. And a most frightful prison wardress sort of maid gave me a look and told me to go. Oh, Miss Silver—you will do something about it, won’t you? Inspector Abbott said if anyone could get something out of her, it would be you.”