The Girl in the Cellar

CHAPTER 11

They came back towards the house. There was no more said. She had a curious feeling of relief. She hadn’t to think any more, or plan, or be troubled. It was his business, and he was fully able for it.

When they were still some way from the house he stopped her, his right hand on her arm.

‘Wait a minute-we’ve got to say the same thing.’

Those clear eyes of hers looked up at him. When he saw that she wasn’t going to speak, he said, ‘We’ve got to say the same thing. I had to send you here-that is, I had to send Anne-’

‘If I’m not Anne, you didn’t send me.’ The words came out a mere statement of fact. Behind the calmness of her tone there was a dreadful void feeling. If she wasn’t Anne, who was she? The answer to that came fast and breathless, ‘I am Anne.’ There must be thousands and thousands of Annes in the world. She was one of them, if she wasn’t Anne Fancourt.

He said, ‘Look here-’ He stopped, and then began all over again. ‘You haven’t said anything about this to Lilian and Harriet?’

She went on looking at him with those clear eyes. She said, ‘No,’ and then, after a pause, ‘I didn’t know-I didn’t remember. I thought perhaps I might remember-’ Her voice faded out.

He said, ‘Then I think it would be best just to go on in the same way. I shan’t be staying, so it won’t be difficult for you. I must try and find out what has happened to her.’

She said, still looking at him.

‘She was dead-she was really dead.’

‘Don’t you see I must prove that? If she was dead, who killed her and why, poor girl?’

She said, ‘Will you tell me about her? Who was she?’

He frowned suddenly.

‘She was Anne Borrowdale. She was with her father in-’ He paused and said, ‘I’d better not say where. We had no business to be there really. No, I don’t know that I can tell you any more-I think better not. Her father was killed accidentally, and right on that an American plane came down-and you’d better not say anything about that either, because they’d got no business there. Bad weather, and they were a hundred miles off their course. They came down, put her right, and got off again. They took Anne with them, as my wife. There-that’s the story. And you keep mum about it until I tell you! Do you see?’

‘Yes.’

The curious thing was that her one word carried such conviction. He went on.

‘I’ve got to try and trace her.’

‘What will you do?’

He was wondering about that, but as soon as she spoke he knew.

‘I shall see Miss Silver.’

She made a little doubtful movement of her head.

‘I don’t know that that will help. What can she do?’

‘She can tell me where she got on the bus.’

‘Yes-she can do that. But would that help?’

‘I don’t know. It might.’

They walked along in silence. It wasn’t the strained, awkward silence that it might have been. Each thought of that. It was more like the companionable silence of two people who do not speak because there is no need to speak, because they have confidence in one another. Neither of them knew that the other had this feeling. Each had it so strongly that it sufficed without words.

They came down out of the garden and across a spread of lawn to where he had left his car before he. spoke again. Then he said, ‘Will you tell them I couldn’t wait? They’ll think it odd, but no odder than most of the things I’ve done in the last ten years.’

She said, ‘I’ll tell them,’ and stood to see him get in and drive away.

When he was almost out of sight, Lilian came out of the house.

‘He’s not gone? Oh, he can’t be gone! You haven’t let him go!’

Anne came back from a long way off to say gravely and simply, ‘He had to go.’

‘But why? I don’t understand at all-why has he gone?’

Anne said, ‘I don’t know. He didn’t tell me.’

She got a sharp look for that.

‘Have you quarrelled?’

‘Oh, no!’

There was genuine surprise in her voice. There hadn’t been time for them to quarrel. She had the feeling as she spoke that, with all the time in the world, there would be no time for them to quarrel in.

Lilian had come close up to her.

‘I don’t understand you at all, Anne. Your husband comes down here. We are expecting him, naturally. I tell him you are in the garden, and he says he will go out and find you. And now you tell me he has gone! I don’t understand it at all!’

Anne roused herself. It was all rather like a dream. But she mustn’t let Lilian be angry if she could help it-she wasn’t sure that she could help it. She said, ‘He asked me things. When I told him, he said he had better see about them at once. He said to tell you.’

‘Things!’ said Lilian angrily. ‘I can’t imagine what you mean! I can’t imagine what he means! It all sounds nonsense to me-perfect nonsense!’