The Counsellor Page 10

  Whitgift, obviously, The Counsellor surmised from what he himself had already gathered.

  “Do you know anything about where she’s gone?” demanded the housekeeper, anxiously.

  “Afraid I don’t,” The Counsellor confessed. “But from what you say about her, she’s not likely to leave you in the dark much longer. Just one more question. Do you know if she carried her driving-licence in the car always?”

  “I couldn’t say about always, but I know she often had it in the door-pocket next the driving seat. Once or twice she’s sent me out to fetch things from that pocket, little odds and ends that she’s bought in the village and so on, and I do remember seeing her licence and her insurance form when I was hunting through the pocket for the bit of ribbon or whatever it was she’d forgotten to bring into the house with her.”

  “She was going to a tennis party at the house of some people Trulock on the day she went away, wasn’t she? What sort of people are they?”

  “Oh, very nice.” Evidently the housekeeper was one of those people who have the good fortune never to meet anyone who isn’t “nice” or “very nice”. “They were very fond of Miss Treverton. She liked children and she used to bring their two over here and give them picnics in the garden. And Dr. and Mrs. Trulock were often here to play tennis. Mrs. Trulock isn’t much older than Miss Treverton—a matter of three or four years or so—so they got on together very well. They’re both terribly cut up about Miss Treverton going off like this, for in a kind of a way they seem to feel responsible for it, seeing she was going to their tennis party that afternoon. They ring up every day and ask if there’s any news, most anxious about it they are.”

  The Counsellor, fearing that he might be given more information than he wanted if he lingered, bade the housekeeper good day and went out to his car. Just before parting, he asked if Whitgift was on the premises, and was told that he was occupied.

  “It’s one of his busy spells,” the housekeeper explained. “There’s times when he shuts himself up behind locked doors in that workshop of his, and it’s as much as your life’s worth to disturb him. So unless you’re wanting him very particular, I don’t think I’d bother him to-day. He always leaves strict orders that he’s not to be interrupted.”

  “Oh, don’t trouble him, then,” The Counsellor said, indifferently. “I’ve really nothing to say to him.”

  “It was him that was the last of us to see Miss Treverton, sir, but likely he’s told you about that,” the housekeeper went on. “I heard her car go off down the avenue and just then I found I wanted to ask her about some little thing or other, and when Mr. Whitgift came in, a minute or two later, I asked him—just to make sure—if he’d seen her driving out. And sure enough she’d passed him in the avenue. I didn’t ask him any more, for he was in a hurry to get to that room of his and get on with his work. He’s a hard worker, is Mr. Whitgift. I heard his machinery turning and him walking about the best part of the afternoon after that.”

  The Counsellor nodded indifferently and was turning away when an idea crossed his mind and he put a final question:

  “Was Mr. Treverton a friend of the Trulocks, or were they only friends of Miss Treverton?”

  “Mr. Treverton took very little to do with them,” the housekeeper explained. “You see, they were more of an age with Miss Treverton. A bit young for Mr. Treverton; and besides, he’s not very sociable; he doesn’t care much about going about and seeing people and having them to the house here. He never bothered about Dr. and Mrs. Trulock when they came to pay Miss Treverton a visit, hardly ever looked near them. And when they ring up now, they just ask me if I’ve any news about Miss Treverton and don’t bother him at all.”

  Chapter Seven

  The Board of Directors

  THE housekeeper’s answer cleared one difficulty out of The Counsellor’s path. He had been casting about for some method of forcing himself on Dr. Trulock without seeming to do so. Now the way seemed open. If he posed as a friend of Treverton, anxious for information, it was most unlikely that Trulock would think of asking Treverton about him. Treverton’s bad manners and worse temper would be sufficient deterrents to a mere acquaintance such as Trulock obviously was.

  This time, The Counsellor presented his private card. He had no wish at the moment to disclose his profession. He was shown into a pleasant drawing-room with a french window opening on a terrace below which was a tennis court. Knowing that the house was merely rented furnished, The Counsellor wasted no time in drawing any inferences from his surroundings; and in a minute or two Dr. Trulock came into the room.

  He was one of those men who make an immediate good impression. The Counsellor put him at forty; for his prematurely-grey hair had the curious effect of making him seem young rather than old, and his only lines were the crow’s-feet at the eye-corners. He had humorous blue eyes and a pleasant smile. His figure, in his grey flannels, was well-filled-out without suggesting stoutness, and he moved with a light step. As he entered, he glanced at the card in his hand as if to refresh his memory.

  “Mr. . . . Brand? Well, we’re strangers, but that’s no reason why we shouldn’t get better acquainted. Sit you down.”

  He offered a silver box with cigarettes to his visitor, and fitted one into a long holder with a gold and a silver band. When they got their cigarettes alight, he gave The Counsellor a shrewd glance and waited for him to make the next move.

  “I’ve just been calling at Longstoke House,” The Counsellor volunteered. “Treverton told me about his niece’s disappearance. You know Treverton, I suppose? Difficult to get a plain tale out of him. (I’ve known him long enough to say that). So his story left me a bit puzzled, and a shade worried about the girl. I thought, perhaps, you’d be able to throw some light on the business and relieve my mind about her. She’d arranged to come over here for tennis? And she hasn’t turned up since? A curious business.”

  He ended with just the right note of perplexity in his voice. To his relief, Dr. Trulock seemed to accept him as an old friend of the family. The grey brows knitted slightly; two vertical lines appeared between them; and the mouth-corners drooped a little, as though The Counsellor had broached a subject which caused anxiety.

  “It’s worrying,” Trulock admitted. “It’s very worrying. My wife’s very uneasy about it, and naturally enough, for she was very fond of Helen Treverton. And the fact that Helen was due here that afternoon makes us both feel. . . . Well, not responsible, exactly, but. . . . You know what I mean,” he ended, giving up the attempt to find the precise words for it.

  “They’ve had no word of her, up to this afternoon,” said The Counsellor. “Now this occurs to me. Was that party of yours arranged long before, or was it a scratch affair got up by ’phone at the last moment?”

  “It was quite an informal affair,” Trulock explained. “Just a few friends who often come here for tennis. It’s an understood thing that we’re at home on Thursday afternoons, and people drop in without invitation if they feel inclined. If they don’t care to come, they’d stay away and we don’t expect them to notify us. So naturally we didn’t pay any attention when Miss Treverton didn’t turn up. We’d a dozen or more people that afternoon, quite enough to make up all the sets we needed. So she wasn’t missed as she might have been if it had been a formally-arranged affair.”

  He was interrupted by the entrance of a young woman whom The Counsellor guessed was Mrs. Trulock. She was a shade under average height, fair-haired, good-looking, and evidently an artist in make-up. She hesitated for a moment on the threshold and then, in response to a glance from Trulock, came forward into the room.

  “This is Mr. Brand, Meriel,” explained Trulock. “He’s a friend of the Trevertons and naturally he’s anxious about Miss Treverton.”

  Mrs. Trulock acknowledged the introduction with a friendly smile.

  “It’s dreadfully worrying,” she said, while an expression of disquietude flitted over her face. “I don’t know what to make of it. I’m very fond of Helen,
you know, Mr. Brand, and I can’t bear to think of anything happening to her. And it is such an incomprehensible business, no matter how you look at it.”

  “Mr. Trulock’s just been telling me that your tennis-party was an informal affair. No invitations, just come if you can,” said The Counsellor. “I suppose your guests just drifted in, so to speak. You didn’t receive them individually?”

  “Oh, no. They all knew their way about the premises. If any of them wanted to change into tennis things, they knew what bedrooms to go to without asking anyone; and they just joined the rest of us in the garden when it suited them. We run a sort of Liberty Hall in that matter.”

  The Counsellor considered for a moment or two.

  “It doesn’t get us much further, but suppose this happened,” he suggested. “She would arrive and walk into the house without any maid seeing her. Suppose she turned sick suddenly. She might have gone to some room to lie down for a while. She was enough at home here to do that without making any fuss or ringing for a maid?”

  “Oh, yes,” Mrs. Trulock admitted at once. “That’s just possible. But the whole house is open to our guests. They wander all over the place. Someone would have come across her and told us she wasn’t well. My husband’s a doctor, you know, and he’d have been called at once if anyone had found her in that state.”

  “I’m merely putting it as possible, not probable,” said The Counsellor with a deprecatory gesture. “Then she might have pulled herself together and slipped away without anyone noticing her.”

  “That doesn’t get us much further forward, does it?” asked Dr. Trulock. “You’ve still got to explain what happened to her when she went away. Why didn’t she go straight home, if she wasn’t well? No, I’ll give you my theory for what it’s worth. Amnesia’s the only explanation.”

  “Sudden loss of memory, you mean?” said The Counsellor thoughtfully. “I hadn’t hit on that idea, I confess, but now you’ve suggested it, the thing’s possible. Let’s see. Your notion is that she left home in her car, meaning to come here. . . . By the way, are you sure that she did intend to come here that afternoon?”

  “Oh, quite,” Mrs. Trulock broke in. “She promised to come, at the beginning of the week. And on Thursday morning I ran across her in the bank at Grendon St. Giles and asked if she was coming that afternoon, and she said she’d be here. So unless she changed her mind suddenly, she did mean to come.”

  “Then Dr. Trulock’s view is that she left home in her car, lost her memory completely en route, and drove off into the unknown somewhere. But in that case surely she’ll come to her senses in due course and come back home again?”

  “You never can tell how long these attacks may last,” Trulock answered rather gloomily. “Sometimes they last for years. I’m no expert in that field but it’s all mixed up with dual personalities and things of that kind. For all we can tell, she may have settled down into a completely fresh existence and forgotten everything about her past life.”

  “Oh, don’t talk like that, Joe,” his wife protested nervously. “It makes my flesh creep to think that anything of that sort could have happened to Helen.”

  “Well, it’s possible, my dear, though not probable, as Mr. Brand says. The thing’s incomprehensible on any normal basis, so far as I can see, from what we knew of the girl.”

  “Well, she may have gone off with somebody,” Meriel Trulock suggested. “That’s not probable either, but it’s more probable than these horrors of yours. I’m certain of one thing. She didn’t come here. It’s quite impossible that she could have come, without someone noticing her. Everyone knew her quite well.”

  The Counsellor nodded, as though conceding this. When he spoke again, he seemed to have dismissed the main subject.

  “Got some curious neighbours, Dr. Trulock, haven’t you?”

  Trulock frowned as the question was put. Obviously he caught The Counsellor’s meaning at once and apparently Pagnell’s “monkery” was not much to his taste.

  “Oh, that crew!” he said contemptuously. “It’s amazing how some people will swallow any kind of Mumbo-Jumbo business. We’ve no dealings with them, I can assure you.”

  “I wish they hadn’t come here,” his wife added vehemently. “I know nothing about them, really, but one hears stories about them. And when one has children, one doesn’t want neighbours of that sort. Luckily Hugo and Inez are too young to understand anything they hear; and I’ve warned Nannie not to encourage any questions about the place, if they did happen to ask. I wish they’d chosen some other spot to settle down in.”

  “I shouldn’t worry,” Trulock said. “One can’t swallow all one hears. My impression is that they’re just a pack of fools looking for a fresh sensation or two.”

  Evidently, The Counsellor reflected, he had secured all the information he was likely to get from the Trulocks; and he took his leave. As he walked out to his car, he passed two children—the young Trulocks, he surmised—in charge of a fair-haired nurse. She wore a light-blue uniform with a conspicuous badge embroidered on it, apparently an indication of some special training institution. At the first glance, something faintly familiar about her appearance struck The Counsellor; but when he looked again, he failed to recognise the girl. Closer inspection seemed to dispel the idea that he had ever seen her before. A little puzzled by this, he got into his car and ordered the chauffeur to take him back to his office.

  He reached it shortly before closing-time, went up to his room, and summoned Sandra Rainham and Standish. Then, from the Records Department he obtained a medical directory and an Ordnance map of the Grendon St. Giles district.

  “This is how it is,” he began, addressing his two assistants. “You were quite right, Sandra. I inquired from the housekeeper at Longstoke House about that girl’s clothes. She went off with her tennis-things and no other spares of any sort. So that pins it down to an unpremeditated bolt, I think. She was popular amongst the people round about. There’s one exception—her uncle. He seems to be suffering badly from some grievance or other against her. Not that that matters much, really. He’s a cross-grained old brute at the best, I judge, with no good word for anyone. Then I went on to the Trulock’s place: Fairlawns. The man’s a medical. Let’s look him up.”

  He turned over the pages of the medical directory for a second or two, then read an entry.

  “Qualified, London University, 1920. No distinctions of any sort. Five years in a Welsh practice. Went to South America after that. Then came home again, apparently, with enough cash to drop practice. At least, he isn’t practising now, I gathered. The oldest kid’s not more than five. Probably he married when he came back here, for his wife’s obviously English. Not much in that.”

  He closed the book.

  “Affable cove, I found him, with a steady eye and a trick of hunting in his vest-pocket for something that isn’t there. They’re both a bit upset over the girl’s disappearance, naturally. It’s pretty plain that she never got the length of Fairlawns, that afternoon. I didn’t leak any information over them, just posed as a friend of the family. But Trulock had a theory for the case: amnesia—loss of memory. He suggested that she’d just driven off in her car and might not wake up into normal life again for months.”

  “Rubbish!” interjected Standish. “That wouldn’t account for Master Querrin being with her.”

  “Why not?” Sandra broke in in her turn. “Suppose her memory of the last few months was blotted out. That wouldn’t cover the time when she knew him before. She may have driven to meet him, quite mechanically, and then her mind would take up round about when she last saw him, and they may have gone off together on the spur of the moment.”

  “Pigs might fly,” commented Standish, acidly.

  “Well, pigs could fly, nowadays, if anyone bothered to take them up in a plane,” Sandra retorted.

  “No good,” was The Counsellor’s verdict. “Possible, of course, Sandra; but then most things are possible except three-sided squares and a few odds and ends of that
kind. It doesn’t sound probable which is the main thing, so far as I’m concerned. Let’s get down to something more like brass tacks.”

  He unfolded the Ordnance map on the desk before him and took up a pencil.

  “Here’s Grendon St. Giles,” he explained, pointing to it on the map, while the others bent over to examine the lie of the land. “Two miles out, you come to Longstoke House on the right. Three miles further on, a road goes off to the left towards the village of Witton Underhill, about two miles away. Then a couple of miles further along, you come to another road branching off to the right. That leads to the Great North Road, and EZ 1113 may have gone that way. Half a mile further on, another road branches to the right and leads to Amblesham village, a mile off the road. Then a mile further on, on the left hand, you come to Grendon Manor. That’s a big gaunt-looking shop with an avenue approach, and it seems to be the headquarters of some fancy religion or other. A quarter of a mile on, on the other side of the road, is Fairlawns, the Trulocks’ place, where the Treverton girl was supposed to be going that afternoon. A mile past Fairlawns, you come to Little Salten village cross-roads. Down here, to the left, is a piece of ground where they hold fairs. It seems they had one running on the day that girl disappeared. You know the thing: circuses, sideshows, shooting-galleries, swing-boats, and so forth. They even had somebody with an old plane offering five-bob flights. I see there’s a pub marked there, nice and handy for the thirsty pleasure-seekers. If you turn at the cross-roads, you can get on to the Great North Road, but it’s a longer way than if you turned off earlier.”

  “Wooded country, to some extent,” commented Standish. “The road seems to run through spinneys here and there. Is there much traffic?”

  “Not much, so far as I saw in passing,” explained The Counsellor. “It’s mostly pasture country. There’s a bus service that runs once an hour along the route, each way. So they told me at the hotel I stopped at for luncheon. But it’s off the main routes altogether, as you can see from the map.”