George sat silent, studying her thoughtfully for a moment. Nothing of belief or disbelief, wonder or suspicion, showed in his face; he might have been listening to a morning’s trivialities from Mrs Dale. Annet knew how to be silent, too. She looked back at him and added nothing; she waited, her hands quite still in her lap.
‘You met no one on the hill? Or along by the brook?’ It was hardly likely on a rainy Thursday afternoon, but there was always the possibility.
‘No.’
‘Mr Kenyon saw her,’ said Mr Beck quickly.
‘I was driving back along the lane about four,’ confirmed Tom, ‘on my way home for the week-end, and I happened to look up at the Hallowmount just as the sun came out on it. I saw her climbing towards the crest, just as she says.’
‘Could you be sure it was Annet, at that distance?’
‘I’d seen her go out, I knew just what she was wearing.’ Carefully he suppressed the aching truth that he would have known her in whatever clothes, by the gait, by the carriage of her head, by all the shape and movement that made her Annet, and no other person. ‘I was sure. Then, when I got back here on Tuesday evening, and found she’s been missing all that time, I told Mr and Mrs Beck about it, and we went there on the off-chance of picking up any traces. We didn’t expect anything. But we found her.’
‘She was surprised to see us,’ said Beck eagerly. ‘She asked what we were doing there, and if anything was the matter. She said she knew she was very late, but surely we didn’t have to send out a search party.’
‘She was particularly surprised to see me,’ added Tom. ‘She said she thought I should have been home by then, and surely I didn’t stay behind because we were worried about her.’
They were all joining in now, anxiously proffering details of the search for her, of her return, of the terrible consistency of her attitude since, which had never wavered. George listened with unshakable patience, but it was Annet he watched. And when he had everything, all but those tyre-tracks of which her parents knew nothing, and which Tom must mention only privately if he mentioned them at all, it was still to Annet that he spoke.
‘So you went up the Hallowmount,’ he said, ‘and vanished out of time and place, like Tabitha Blount in the seventeenth century. And came back, also like Tabby, sure you’d been there no more than an hour or two, and never strayed out of this world. She never could give any account of her fairyland. Can you do any better?’
‘I know I was happy,’ said Annet, disregarding all but what she wished to hear; and suddenly the blue eyes deepened and warmed into such a passion of triumph and anguished joy that George was startled and moved. ‘Happy’ was a large word, but not too large for the blaze that lit her for a moment.
‘There’s nothing more you wish to tell me? And nothing you want to amend? It’s up to you, Annet.’
‘There’s nothing else I can tell you,’ she said. ‘I told you that before I began. Ask them if I’ve changed anything. I told you they didn’t believe me. I can’t help it if you don’t believe me, either.’
‘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 about? I think you should tell us.’
‘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.