‘I don’t,’ said George simply. ‘Nor do I believe that your parents or Kenyon here have accepted it, never for a moment. Your missing five days were spent somewhere. As you very well know. I think, though I may be wrong, that you also know very well where, in every detail. I strongly advise you to think again, and tell me the truth, as in the end you’ll have to.’
Her father was at her side by this time, feebly fumbling her cold hand. Her mother was close on her left, gripping the arm of the chair.
‘Mr Felse, you must allow for the possibility of – of— More things in heaven and earth, you know— How can we presume to know everything?’ Beck was tearing sentences to shreds in his nervousness, and dropping the tatters wherever they fell.
‘She’s been utterly consistent,’ Tom pointed out, trampling the pieces ruthlessly. Someone had to sound sane, and put the more possible theories. ‘I don’t argue that you should believe in fairies – but you’ll notice that Annet hasn’t asked you to. She’s made no claim at all that anything supernatural ever happened to her. She says she doesn’t remember anything between going over the crest of the Hallowmount and coming to herself to realise it had grown dark, and then hurrying towards home. There’s nothing fantastic about that. It doesn’t happen often, but it happens, you know of cases as well as I do. Of course those five days were spent somewhere, we know that. But it may very well be true that Annet doesn’t know where.’
‘Amnesia,’ said Mrs Beck, too strenuously, and recoiled from the theatrical impact of the word, and said no more.
Why were they arguing like this, what was it they were trying to ward off? What did the police care about a truant week-end, provided no laws had been broken?’
‘It was a fine, dry week-end,’ said George reasonably, ‘About ten per cent of the Black Country must have been roaming the border hills on Saturday and Sunday, and the odds are pretty good that a fair porportion of them were on the Hallowmount. They couldn’t all miss a wandering, distressed girl. If any locals had seen her they’d have spoken to her. Everyone knows her. And did she reappear tired, hungry, anxious or grimy? Apparently not. She came down to you completely self-possessed, neat, tidy and fresh, asking pertinent questions. From fairyland, yes, perhaps. From amnesia one’s return would, I fancy, be less coherent and coordinated.’
He hitched his chair a little nearer to Annet, he reached and took her hands, compelling her attention.
‘I don’t doubt the happiness, Annet,’ he said gently. ‘In a way I think you’ve told me a kind of truth, a partial truth. Now tell me the rest while you can. You were no nearer the underworld than, say – Birmingham. Were you?’
Hard on the heels of the brief, blank silence Beck said, in a high, hysterical voice: ‘But what does it mean? What if she actually was in Birmingham? That’s not a crime, however wrong it may be to lie to one’s family. What are all these questions
‘Perhaps I should. Unless Annet wants to alter her story first?’
‘I can’t,’ said Annet. Braced and intent, she watched him, and whether it was incomprehension he saw in her face or the impenetrable resolution to cover and contain what she understood all too well, he still could not determine.
‘Very well. You want to know what the questions are about. Last Saturday night, around shop-closing time,’ said George, ‘a young girl was seen, by two witnesses independently, standing on the corner of a minor – and at that hour an almost deserted – street in Birmingham. She was idling about as though waiting for someone, about forty yards from a small jeweller’s shop. The first witness, an old woman who lives in the street, gave a fair description of a girl who answers very well to Annet’s general appearance. The second one, a young man, gave a much more detailed account. He spoke to her, you see, wasted five minutes or so trying to pick her up. He described her minutely. Girls like Annet can’t, I suppose, hope to escape the notice of young men.’
‘But however good a description you had,’ protested Tom, ‘why a girl from Comerford, of all places, when this was in Birmingham?’
‘A good question, I’m coming to that.’
‘I suppose your son told you Annet was missing during the week-end,’ said Tom, bitterly and unwisely.
George gave him a long, thoughtful glance from under raised brows.
‘No, Dominic’s told me nothing – but thanks for the tip. No, the Birmingham police came to us because this girl, according to her unwelcome cavalier, was filling in the time while she waited, as one does, by fishing the forgotten bits out of her pockets. Everyone has an end of pencil, or a loose lucky farthing, or a hair-grip, or something, lost in the fluff at the seam. This girl had a bus ticket. She was playing with it when he accosted her, and she was nervous. That amused him. He paid particular attention to the way she was folding it up into a tiny fan — you know? — narrow folds across in alternate directions, then fold the whole thing in the middle. When he was too pressing – though of course he doesn’t admit that – she drew back from him hastily, twisted the fan in her fingers and threw it down. He says he left her alone then. If she didn’t want him, he could do without her. But when they took him back to the corner next day he knew where the ticket had lodged, close under the wall, in a cranny of the paving stones. And sure enough, they found it there, and he identified it positively.
‘It turned out,’ said George flatly, ‘to be a one-and-fourpenny by Egertons’ service between Comerbourne and Comerford. With that and the description it wasn’t so hard to settle upon Annet, once they came to us. Unfortunately no one saw the person for whom she was waiting. She told the youngster who accosted her she was waiting for her boyfriend, and he was an amateur boxer. So he didn’t hang around to put it to the test.’
‘But what of it?’ persisted Beck feverishly. ‘Why are they hunting for this girl – whoever she may be?’
‘Because, around midnight that night, when a policeman on the beat came along, he saw that the steel mesh gate over the jeweller’s doorway wasn’t quite closed. All the lights in the shop were off, the gate was drawn into position, but when he tried it he found it wasn’t secured. And naturally he investigated. He found the till cleared of cash, and several glass cases emptied, too, apparently of small jewellery. The loss is estimated at about two thousand pounds, mostly in good rings.
‘And the proprietor – he was an old, solitary man, who lived over his shop – he was in his own workroom at the back. His head had been battered in with a heavy silver candlestick,’ said George, his voice suddenly hard, deliberate and cold. ‘He was dead.’
The gasp of realisation and horror that stiffened them all jerked Annet for the first time out of her changeling calm, and out of her chair. She was torn erect, rigid, her face convulsed, her hands clutching at the empty air before her. The great eyes dilated, fixed and blank with shock. The contorted mouth screamed: ‘No – no, –
