Patricia Wentworth: The Girl in the Cellar

‘And you don’t know that you are Anne Fancourt?’

She shook her head and was silent for a moment. Then she said, ‘I’m Anne. I don’t know about the Fancourt.’

She could have said nothing more arresting. What Lilian knew, what Harriet knew, came to their minds. It was Harriet who said, ‘Don’t you remember Jim?’

She shook her head. It was full of whirling thoughts.

‘No-no-’

It was Harriet who spoke again.

‘Why, he’s your husband!’

She felt herself in a strange place with an icy wind blowing. It went round, and round-round, and round. And then she was back in the room with Lilian and Harriet looking at her. She said, ‘I ought to have known that.’

And Lilian said sharply, ‘Of course you ought! You had much better be quiet and try to remember!’

Jim Fancourt looked out of the window and saw with his eyes the grey poplars and a flat monotony of fields, but he was not really aware of them. He was too busy with his thoughts, and they were too busy with the problem he had set them. He hoped Anne was all right. There wasn’t any way of finding out short of running a risk, and there weren’t going to be any more risks than he could help about this business.

There had been too many already. He wondered how long they would have to wait for a divorce, and for the hundredth time wondered crossly how on earth he came to give way to Borrowdale. And then he was looking back, seeing Borrowdale’s face with the desperate look on it and hearing his voice almost extinct, almost gone, ‘Get her-out of here-get her- away. For God’s sake-do it-do it-do it.’

Well, he had done it, and that was that. Borrowdale was dead, and Anne was alive and his wife-at least he supposed she was. He’d been a fool and he’d have to pay for it. Borrowdale was dead, and he’d made himself responsible for Anne. He could hardly remember her face. He could see the flat terror on it better than he could see the features. She hadn’t made a fuss, but she had been terrified all right. And then Borrowdale had died, and the American plane had come down and he had got Anne on to it and it had got away. They would take her to London, and then she’d be all right.

Lilian and Harriet were not the most enlivening companions, but she’d be all right at Chantreys until he got there. He had given her a letter to post in town and told her where to go; and she ought to have been all right with Mrs Birdstock. She would have been all right in any case. What was he worrying about? He’d been a fool to concern himself with her at all. He pushed her into the back of his mind and began to think about Leamington. He would have to see him the minute he got to town, because he’d have to decide on the line they were going to take. It was immensely important. Anne came into that too. They could either scrap her altogether, leaving him to pick her up at Chantreys, or they could feature her-no, he didn’t like that. He’d be hanged if he did. And it wouldn’t fit in with the divorce. The whole thing made a properly straightforward story without her. Cut her out, keep her out-that was the way of it. Now as regards Leamington -

In about five minutes he was looking back at Anne and not remembering what she looked like. The picture came up in his mind. A little creature, brown eyes wild with fright, brown hair, a voice trembling with terror-and Borrowdale choking away his life. ‘Get her away-oh, my God-get her away-’

Nonsense! What was he at? He had got her away, hadn’t he? If Borrowdale had had another day’s life in him he might have known a little more about it. But it wasn’t so hard to make up a story of what he did know. She was Borrowdale’s daughter- like enough to him for that to pass. And if, as he strongly suspected, her mother was Russian and there had never been a marriage, or not one that the Russians would admit-well the rest followed easily enough. A Russian’s daughter was a Russian, no matter whether she had an English father or not. That was their rule even where there had been a marriage, and it was ten to one there had been none in this case.

Looking back on it, he really didn’t see why he had got himself into the mess. It had all been so hurried. Borrowdale gasping his life away after the rock had fallen, and the girl shaking with fright. A feeling of revulsion swept over him. What had it got to do with him after all? Marriage? Nonsense! It wouldn’t hold water-not in England. He’d have to see a lawyer about it when he got home. The plane wouldn’t have taken her if she hadn’t sworn she was his wife.

He switched his mind to Leamington. What was he going to say to Leamington?

Life went on for Anne. She had been for a week at Chantreys. Her memory had not come back. It began in the cellar of that house. It began with the murdered girl. For murdered she had been, of that she was quite sure. It was on the second day that the dreadful thought came to her. ‘Who murdered her? Was it I?’ She didn’t know the answer to that.

She went out and walked in the garden up and down the untidy autumn flower-beds, not seeing the Michaelmas daisies so nearly over, or the dahlias with their leaves crisped and blackened by the frost but the heads of them still shaggy and decorative, pink and yellow, crimson and white. She walked up and down, her hands clasped together as if they held something which if she let it go would be gone for ever, her thoughts trying to break through the curtain of fog which hung across the path. She tried it every way. She was Anne. She didn’t know her surname. She didn’t know what she had been doing, or why she was in town, or who the dead girl was. She didn’t know what she had been doing all her life until now. She didn’t know who she was. It always came round to that.

She tried again. She was Anne. That was the only thing she felt sure about. She wasn’t sure about being Anne Fancourt. But she was Anne, she did know that. She didn’t know who the dead girl was. She didn’t know whom the bag belonged to-was it hers, or was it the dead girl’s? She didn’t know whose it was. If it was hers, she was Anne Fancourt-she was Mrs James Fancourt. Could you be married and have no recollection, not the slightest, faintest gleam? You wouldn’t think so. You wouldn’t think it would be possible to forget being married. Coldly and deliberately her own mind answered her. It had happened again, and again, and again. She didn’t know how she knew that, but she did know it. A shock-she must have had a shock. That was what made you lose your memory-a shock, or a blow on the head. She didn’t think she had had a blow. But a shock-anyone can have a shock. You read about people in the papers who had some kind of shock and who forgot who they were.

She stood quite still, and the clasp of her hands tightened. Had she left father and mother, a family, brothers, sisters, to become-she didn’t know what or who? No, she mustn’t think that way. Could you forget a family as easily as that? She didn’t think so-she wouldn’t think so. Deep down in her, almost unknown, was something very strong. If she had had father, mother, brothers, sisters, she wouldn’t have forgotten them. She couldn’t have had them. It was like brushing against something incalculable, uncertain. Gone in a moment of time, but even as it went, it left her strengthened, though she didn’t know why.

She began to walk again, and the thoughts went on and on. They beat against the fog and came back to her. Who was she? She was Anne. Anne who? She didn’t know. The more she thought of it, the less she knew. She stopped thinking then.

But if you stop thinking, you are really dead. She turned round. She wasn’t dead, she was alive. She had got to think this thing out. She started again. She was Anne-that was the one thing to be sure of. According to the evidence of the handbag she was Anne Fancourt, and she was married to Jim Fancourt. She hadn’t the slightest recollection of being married. But she had no recollection of the past at all. Her life began, her conscious life began, when she stood on the cellar steps and looked down on a girl’s dead body. She had not then any idea who the girl might be. She only knew that she must get away from her. And then the second thought that had come-‘You can’t go away like that. Oh, no, you can’t!’ and she had taken the torch out of the bag and gone down and looked. There was the wound in the head. At the memory of it she turned cold and sick. No one with a wound like that could be alive-but she had stooped to the ungloved hand-and the hand was cold. She could not control the violent shudder that shook her as she remembered the cold and clammy feeling of that dead hand.