'Oh, nonsense!' I exclaimed. 'What would gypsies be doing in my grounds? Anyhow, which of the girls is it?'
'It's the young lady which, as you know, madam, come in a car with three other young ladies and was not in her party dress, madam, and the car is still here, madam. Besides, Mr Nigel says you couldn't get one of them horrible costumes into a car because you couldn't sit down in it, and she couldn't hardly have took it off, madam, because Miss Amabel says as her clothes is still here, like I said, and I knows for a fact as the young ladies was all stripped down to their undies, madam. She wouldn't have took the fancy costume off without coming back to the house, madam, and that's what her friends say she certainly has not done, madam.'
'Oh, dear! How very tiresome people are! I suppose I had better go down,' I said.
She helped me to dress and down I went, not in the best of tempers at this disturbance of my night's rest. Except for one young man who was sitting on the floor with his head against the wall, obviously in a drunken slumber, the guests who were left looked sober and anxious enough.
Nigel came up to me. Doctor Tassall was with him.
'Sorry about this, darling,' he said. 'You go back to bed. Tassall and I will cope. I'm organising a search-party. Ten to one the silly wench has gone and twisted her ankle or something of that sort. Not to worry. Maybe somebody ought to have gone looking for her sooner, but some of them were a trifle under the influence and I suppose they were all enjoying themselves, so I don't think anybody noticed she was missing until about half-an-hour ago. I've had the house pretty well combed, but she isn't here.'
'I shall wait up until your search-party returns,' I said. 'I cannot imagine what the foolish girl was thinking of, to go wandering away at this hour of the morning.'
'I'm afraid people have been very remiss, darling,' he said. 'It wasn't "this hour of the morning" when she stepped out. She's been missing since about eleven o'clock. If only that damned photographer had turned up, we should have realised she wasn't with us, but, of course, he didn't show up, although I waited for an hour in Broad Street, where I'd arranged to meet him.'
'Photographer?' I said. 'Oh, yes, of course. Amabel wanted photographs, didn't she? Did he not appear?'
'Not even his astral body. I suppose they kept him so long at that County Councillors' dinner, or whatever his other assignment was, that he thought it was too late to meet me and come on here. It wasn't until the other three girls decided it was time to pile into their car and go home, that they realised their driver was missing.'
'I can't think why they did not realise it much earlier,' I said. 'They knew, I suppose, that she had left the house.'
'I understand that, after the charades, most people went on to the terrace to cool off,' said young Doctor Tassall.
'That's right,' said another young man. 'Amabel wouldn't let us take off the lendings because of the photographer. Most of us went outside for a breath of air, so she wouldn't have been missed for a bit. Then people sort of drifted in again and hung about because, I mean, you couldn't dance in those fancy outfits, and after that I'm afraid there was a bit of hunting in couples and people sneaked away upstairs and took the costumes off, don't you know, and so forth. You couldn't really say, at any given time, where anybody was, and that's the strength of it, so she wouldn't really have been missed at all, you see.'
'I cannot understand what Harlow and Esmé were thinking about, to walk away from the party the way they did, and go off without a thought for their responsibilities. After all, Amabel is their daughter,' I said angrily.
'Well, darling,' said Nigel, with an unpalatable degree of truth, 'isn't that a case of the pot calling the kettle black? It's your house, after all, and you walked out and left the revellers to it, just as they did. It's a great pity that Tassall and I both had to be out of the house at the same time. As for that damned photographer, I could wish him at Jericho and Tassall's expectant mother, too! Anyway, we're going to search the grounds. The wretched girl can't be all that far away!'
Chapter 9
Letters
Mrs Kempson's Letter Continued
From this point onwards, my dear Mrs Bradley, my letter may appear somewhat incoherent, but I will be as lucid as I can. Some of the remaining men claimed that they must escort their sisters or female friends home and would therefore be unavailable as members of a search-party. This seemed to me reasonable enough at that hour of the morning, so, in the end, the searchers were reduced to three: my son-in-law Harlow Conyers, my beloved Nigel and Amabel's friend, young Doctor Tassall, who immediately and rightly stated that, if the girl had suffered an injury, he would be of more use than anybody else.
They were about to leave the house with the only two electric torches we could muster, when Lionel came down in his pyjamas and dressing-gown and wanted to know what was happening. He demanded to be allowed to join the search-party,
