“It wasn’t your fault,” Rosemary said again, with curious emphasis. “It was all our faults. Especially mine.”
“Yours?” said Alastair sharply.
“Of course,” said Rosemary. “I begged Henry to drop the whole thing. I did everything I could to divert him—”
“Because you were afraid,” said Henry.
“Yes.” It was no more than a whisper.
“Because you knew that—”
“He told me.”
Alastair was looking from one to the other in bewilderment. “What on earth is all this about?” he demanded.
“It’s none of your business,” said Rosemary tersely. She had gone very white.
“It certainly is my business,” Alastair retorted angrily. “You’re my wife, and—”
“That,” said Rosemary, “is a fact which you only seem to remember when it’s convenient.” She stood up. “Excuse me please, Henry. I don’t feel very well. I’m going back on board.”
“And how am I expected to get back to the boat?” said Alastair. “Don’t be a fool, Rosemary.”
“It’s rather too late to say that now,” said Rosemary. She walked out of the bar and into the sunshine. Alastair half-rose, then sat down again.
“Women,” he said, bitterly. “As if things weren’t bad enough already. I suppose I should go after her, but—”
“How long,” said Henry, “did you say you two had been married?”
“Six years. Sometimes it feels like a hundred.”
“When Emmy and I had been married six years, and there were still no children,” said Henry, in deep embarrassment, “I started to think I was in love with—well it doesn’t matter who. A nice girl. Emmy guessed it, and retaliated, as any person of spirit would. Things had got pretty desperate before we both realized what fools we were making of ourselves.”
Alastair was concentrating on the inside of his beer mug. “It’s possible to go on being a fool for years,” he said.
“You’re telling me,” said Henry, guiltily. “But there’s no need to be a damn fool. The ordinary foolishness of the human animal, who is naturally polygamous, is—thank God—generally weaker than his capacity for commonsense. But damn foolishness gets you nowhere—except out in the cold, with a bad conscience. I came to my senses just in time. Some people don’t.”
There was a long and uneasy pause. Then Henry said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t intend to tell you the story of my life.”
“It’s not a very original story,” said Alastair.
“I know,” said Henry. “It’s commonplace and boring. Let’s talk about something else. Like lunch, for instance.”
“I don’t feel like eating today,” said Alastair.
“Nor do I. But Emmy and I always...by the way, where is Emmy?”
“Emmy? Haven’t seen her since early this morning.”
Henry felt a tiny pang of apprehension. “Surely Old George must be back by now,” he said. “What time did Sir Simon leave?”
“About half past one, I suppose.” Alastair looked up at the big, white-faced clock over the bar. “It’s half past two now. Still, I wouldn’t worry. She’s probably stayed to have lunch with Sir Simon.”
Henry stood up. “I think I’ll just go and see...” he said, vaguely, and walked out into the yard.
With an increasing sense of uneasiness, Henry walked up the lane towards Old George’s cottage. When he saw the black Lanchester standing like a monument in the open-doored garage, it was no more than he had expected. He quickened his pace, pushed between tall hollyhocks to the back door, and knocked. Old George opened the door.
Trying to keep his voice light and matter-of-fact, Henry said, “I’m sorry to disturb you. I was looking for my wife.”
“Wife?” Old George glanced behind him, as though half-expecting Emmy to materialize in the kitchen.
“The lady you drove out to Berry Hall this morning,” said Henry patiently. “You brought her back again, didn’t you?”
“That I didn’t,” said Old George. “Left, she had.”
“What do you mean?”
“What I say,” said Old George, a shade truculently. “Waste of a journey. Sir Simon had me drive him back special to pick up the lady. Some people don’t have no consideration.”
“And she’d already left when you got there?” It sounded to Henry as though his own voice were coming from a long way away. “How very strange. Can you tell me just what happened?”
Old George shot him a suspicious look. “Nothing happened,” he said. “I parks in the drive behind the Daimler, and Sir Simon goes into the house. He says for me to wait. A minute or so after, he comes out and says as how the lady’s left, and I’m to go back. Anything wrong in that?”
“No, no,” said Henry. “Nothing at all. Thank you.”
He almost ran back to The Berry Bush, only to find that Alastair had left. Hurrying down the hard, Henry was just in time to see him clambering aboard Ariadne from Hamish’s dinghy, which now bobbed astern side by side with the Bensons’ own. Henry shouted and waved. Alastair waved back cheerfully. It wasn’t until Henry had nearly dislocated his shoulder making exaggerated movements of beckoning that Alastair understood that his presence was required ashore. He nodded encouragingly, and disappeared below for what felt to Henry like an hour, but was in fact about three minutes. When he emerged into the cockpit again, Rosemary was with him. They took a dinghy apiece and pulled for the hard again.
Alastair was first ashore. “What’s up, Henry?” he asked.
“It’s Emmy,” said Henry. “She’s disappeared.”
“Disappeared?”
“Old George says sheލ
d already left Berry Hall when Sir Simon got back. That’s impossible. She had no form of transport.”
“She might have walked,” put in Rosemary, who had pulled in alongside and was tying up her painter.
“If she’d walked,” said Henry, “Old George would have met her on the way, or else she’d be back by now. Anyhow, she wouldn’t have walked. I don’t know what’s happened to her and, frankly, I’m frightened.”
“Oh, really, Henry,” said Rosemary. “She probably decided to cut across the fields, or—well, after all, Emmy’s not a child. She can cope.”
“I’m sorry to sound melodramatic,” said Henry, abashed, “but I don’t think you quite understand. I feel like a man in a fog. We’re dealing with somebody desperate and not entirely sane. I’ve got to be terribly careful.”
There was a pause, and then Alastair said, “What do you want us to do?”
“I don’t really know,” said Henry. “Let’s get into the car and drive slowly up the lane, while I think.”
In the car, Rosemary said, “She might be anywhere.”
“No,” said Henry abstractedly. “Not far away. No time.” Even as he said it, he remembered that the Aston Martin was not in its garage, but he put the thought firmly to one side. “Berry Hall is the obvious place to start. We’ll go there.”
“Perhaps if we were to ask Sir Simon—” Alastair began.
“No,” said Henry. “Nobody. Not even him. Don’t talk to anybody about it. It’s too dangerous.”
Alastair looked sceptical, but all he said was, “What shall we do then?”
“Is it possible,” Henry asked, suddenly, “to drive a car right down to the Berry Hall boathouse?”
“Yes,” said Alastair. “There’s a drive that goes round the back of the house and down to the river. But we can’t very well just take the car down there without a word of—”
“I don’t want you to take the car down,” said Henry. “I want you to drop me off just before we get to Berry Hall, and go on up to the house yourselves. Pretend it’s an ordinary social call—”
“At three o’clock on a sunny afternoon?” said Rosemary. “Sir Simon will think we’re—”
“Say you’ve come to collect Emmy. That you didn’t know about the arrangement with Old George. Don’t be perturbed when you hear she left earlier. Just say she’s probably gone for a walk. Try to keep an eye on Riddle, and keep everybody away from the window of the Blue Drawing Room if you can.”