‘Yes, of course. And it doesn’t matter if the beds aren’t turned down right now. It was just that I wanted to talk to her about the Beauchamps’ wedding next week, a few little wrinkles that need ironing out.’
‘She went out on a bike, so she won’t want to be riding it in the dark,’ Ernest said. ‘Of course, she could’ve got a puncture and had to walk back.’
‘Oh, I do hope not.’ Mrs Bridgenorth looked anxious. ‘She’s such a dear girl.’
By nine thirty, when Molly still hadn’t returned although it had been dark for some time, Mrs Bridgenorth began to get really worried, and consulted her husband, who was doing some paperwork in his office up on the third floor. She explained that Molly hadn’t returned for her evening shift. ‘She isn’t the kind to forget she had a job to do, Ted,’ she said. ‘If something unexpected had cropped up this afternoon, she would have found a phone box and telephoned us.’
Ted put down his pen and turned his chair round to give his wife his full attention. ‘What about that boyfriend of hers?’ he asked. ‘Could he have turned up and whisked her off somewhere?’
‘I doubt that very much, because she borrowed a bicycle. And I saw her minutes before she left. She was plainly dressed in a skirt and twinset, didn’t even have lipstick on, so she wasn’t meeting anyone, and especially not him.’
‘Didn’t she tell you or someone else where she was going?’
‘She said she was just going for a ride to explore. I did tell her the other day that it was a nice easy ride to Lydd, because it’s all flat. But Lydd hasn’t got much to keep you there for long.’
‘There’s the army camp,’ Ted reminded her. ‘Maybe a soldier picked her up.’
‘Oh, Ted, she’s not the kind of girl to allow herself to be picked up by a soldier, or any man, for that matter. She’s too smitten with Charley.’
‘Calm down, dear,’ he said. ‘It’s not the first time we’ve had a girl go missing for the evening, is it?’
‘No, of course not!’ she snapped at him. ‘But all those other girls had family close by; they swanned off because of some disagreement with someone. Molly hasn’t got anyone near here. Neither has she fallen out with anyone. Now tell me, should I phone the police?’
Ted realized then his wife was very anxious about Molly and got up from his chair to give her a hug. ‘And say what, Evelyn? She’s twenty-six, not fifteen. They only consider someone a missing person when they’ve been gone for forty-eight hours or more. Let it go for now. I’ve got no doubt she’ll come bursting in before long with some perfectly good reason for being late back. You’ll see.’
Evelyn agreed to wait until the next day but, as she passed the narrow staircase which led to the attic rooms, including Molly’s, on an impulse she ran up the flight of stairs to see if there was anything in her room which might indicate where she was.
Molly kept her room very neat and tidy, but the little oak bureau which stood under the window had a writing pad, envelopes and a small diary left out on the drop-down flap, as if she’d been halfway through writing some letters.
Evelyn hesitated before opening it, as it seemed a terrible invasion of her privacy, but she didn’t feel quite so guilty when she discovered Molly had only begun the diary since she had come to work at the George, and only used it to enter the duties she was doing each week and her day off. But, right at the back of the diary, Molly had written a few addresses.
Most of them were back in her home town in Somerset. The name George Walsh caught her eye, and she vaguely remembered overhearing Molly telling Trudy that she’d had a letter from George, an old schoolfriend who was now a policeman.
There were a few addresses in Whitechapel and Bethnal Green, Charley Sanderson’s amongst them. If Molly had put a telephone number down for him, she’d have been tempted to ring him, but there was none. There was an address and a telephone number for Mr and Mrs Heywood but, as worried as she was, she knew she couldn’t ring Molly’s parents, not yet: it would only make them frantic.
Then she saw the name Dilys Porter and remembered Molly asking how much it cost to stay a night in the hotel, as she’d like to invite her friend Dilys down. Evelyn had said if Dilys shared her room there would be no charge, and Molly had lit up like a Christmas tree.
Reluctantly, she put the diary back. Common sense told her she was over-reacting and that she should wait to see if Molly came back later that night before ringing anyone.
Molly wasn’t going to be coming back that evening.
She found herself lying on a stone floor with a pain in the back of her head. She touched it gingerly, and felt a big lump, but she didn’t know how she’d done it, or where she was.
She lay still for a little while, trying to remember, but the last thing she recalled was riding past orchards and seeing pink-and-white blossom. Had she had an accident on her bike? But if she had, where was she now? The room was quite dark, like a cellar, and it smelled musty. All she could see was a small window high up on the wall. If she’d come off the bike, surely she’d be either at the side of a road or in someone’s house?
Trying to sit up, her hands touched her pleated skirt and that triggered a memory of standing in front of a mirror checking to see if she looked mature and sensible.
All at once it came back to her. She had come out to Mulberry House for the second time to see Cassie’s mother. Miss Gribble had been fierce and defensive and Christabel Coleman hadn’t wanted to talk to her.
She had a ghost of a memory of a blow to the back of her head and, presumably, she had been knocked out, as she had no memory of being moved from the kitchen to wherever she was now.
As the last thing she remembered was facing Mrs Coleman, it must have been Miss Gribble who hit her. But why?
It was like reading a book and suddenly finding that a couple of pages had been torn out. She could remember the two women, even what their kitchen looked like, but she couldn’t quite put together what had led up to being hit.
Whether she could remember or not, though, the fact remained that she was in danger. No one knocked you out and put you in a cellar by mistake. Those two women were either stark staring mad or they wanted to shut her up. Or perhaps both.
She got to her feet and nearly keeled over with dizziness, probably a side effect of being hit. She stood still till it passed then made her way to the door. As she expected, it was locked, and she turned, leaned against it and surveyed her prison. How could she get out?
Some meagre daylight came in from a small, barred window high up on the wall, enough to see a collection of empty boxes for storing apples, some wooden crates piled up in the right-hand corner of the room and a workbench along the wall to her left. When the dizziness eased, Molly moved over to the bench, hoping to find a screwdriver or some other tool, but there was nothing, only thick dust, which showed this room was rarely used.
It was also cold and damp, but if the two women could dump someone in here with a head injury, they weren’t going to be concerned about her comfort.
She could feel hysteria welling up inside her; the temptation to scream and bang on the door was almost overwhelming. But she tried to control herself and think things through. Why had the women attacked and imprisoned her?
It was possible they were so batty that they were prepared to do the same to anyone who had the cheek to enter their home uninvited, but she thought that was very unlikely. Shouting, threatening or brandishing a weapon was enough to eject an unwanted visitor. So it had to be to do with Sylvia, or Cassie. But why would Molly informing them she was dead provoke such a reaction?
Christabel obviously didn’t have any normal maternal feelings, not if she felt her daughter had totally disgraced her by producing a mixed race, illegitimate baby and decided to throw her out. Yet although news of her daughter’s death and the child’s disappearance might make her feel guilty, remorseful or ashamed, surely it wouldn’t make her aggressive towards the messenger?