Without a Trace

  George put his hand over hers. ‘Of course I will, and if you send me your address when you’re settled, I’ll write and tell you all the gossip. I think it’s the best thing for you, Molly, but I’m going to miss you, all the same. Have you decided where you’ll go?’

  Molly looked at his big hand over hers and thought how nice it felt. ‘London seems the best bet,’ she said. ‘Maybe I could get a job in one of the big shops? I believe Selfridges and Harrods are both very special.’

  ‘You’ve always been a bit special to me,’ George suddenly blurted out, his face flushing a bright pink.

  Molly was surprised at him saying such a thing, but touched, too. ‘What brought that confession on?’ she asked.

  He shrugged. ‘I was just suddenly aware that I’ll really miss you. But if you do go and you want to come back and see your mum sometimes, without having to face your dad, you can come and stay with my folks. They would love to have you.’

  ‘That’s such a kind thought,’ said Molly, moved to find George so empathetic. She’d already wondered how she could see her mother away from her father. ‘I might very well take you up on that.’

  George smiled. ‘I’ll be hoping!’

  ‘Not many people here are there?’ George said in a whisper as he and Molly took a pew in the church for Cassie’s funeral.

  Molly glanced round and saw there were around twelve mourners in all, including Simon and Enoch Flowers, Cassie’s landlord.

  ‘I’m relieved to see this many,’ she whispered back. ‘I thought it might be just you, me and Simon, especially as it’s raining so hard.’

  It had been warm and dry for several days, but at seven this morning the heavens had opened and the rain hadn’t let up since.

  Molly’s mind had been all over the place since her long chat with Simon. One minute she could think of nothing but moving to London and working in a smart department store, the next she was plunged back into mourning for Cassie and feeling desperately afraid for Petal. She was finding it hard to dance attendance on the customers in the shop the way she used to, and she often forgot to order items they were low on. On top of this she kept slipping into little romantic fantasies about Simon.

  He was so much more mature and articulate than the boys she’d grown up with. Most of them could barely string a sentence together, let alone talk coherently about the situation in Europe or equality for women. She knew, of course, that the attention he paid her was just his gentlemanly way, but she couldn’t help but wish it was more.

  Looking across the nave at him now, he looked so handsome in his dark, well-cut suit. She wondered what a kiss from him would be like, or even to be naked beneath the sheets with him, his slim body pressed against hers.

  She pulled herself back from that titillating thought. It was entirely inappropriate in a church. She glanced sideways at George beside her, almost afraid he’d read her mind, but he was looking off into space. She wondered if he ever had such thoughts about her.

  The organ wheezed and sighed before one of the Bach Preludes began. Reverend Masters has asked Molly what music Cassie would like, but that was just another thing Molly didn’t know about her friend. Cassie hadn’t even had a wireless, so the subject had never come up. But Molly had chosen ‘All Things Bright and Beautiful’ as the hymn, because she’d heard Petal singing it once, and, even though Cassie had claimed to be an agnostic, she would like that, just because of her daughter.

  The responses to the prayers were muted, the hymn was sung only marginally louder, and Reverend Masters’ eulogy could have fitted almost any average housewife. He mentioned Cassie’s love of books and gardening, but not her indomitable spirit, her sense of humour or her intelligence – all things Molly thought she had impressed on him. He mentioned Petal being missing still almost as an afterthought, and didn’t even speak out to tell the congregation that, if they knew anything at all about where she was, they should go straight to the police.

  It was exactly the kind of funeral Molly had expected, yet she had hoped she would be pleasantly surprised and uplifted. As it was, she felt that, once again, she’d been slapped in the face with the knowledge that no one apart from her and Simon had liked Cassie. Even George hardly knew her. She guessed the other people here, with the exception of Enoch Flowers, had only come to the funeral to make themselves look good.

  The second Cassie’s coffin was in the grave and the last prayer intoned, they all scuttled off. Even Simon went, though, to be fair to him, as he’d seen her and George arrive together, perhaps he thought it inappropriate to hang around when no one else was.

  Molly stood silently in the rain, looking down at the casket, which she knew had been paid for from church funds, and cried. It wasn’t right that such a memorable, bright and fascinating woman should have such a weak and meaningless send-off.

  George let her cry for a few minutes, holding his umbrella over her without saying a word. Finally, he touched her shoulder. ‘Let’s go and have a drink. Not here, where people will talk, but in Midsomer Norton.’

  Molly smiled weakly at him, touched that he’d sensed that she really needed someone, or something, to delay her return home. It was bad enough having to say her last farewell to Cassie, but she was also anticipating a great deal of ridicule and sarcasm from her father when she got back.

  There had been an atmosphere ever since he’d hit her. He hadn’t apologized, not even when her eye was black and swollen and she had weals on her cheek and neck, but he had let her stay upstairs until the swelling went down without saying anything nasty again. It was tempting to think he felt bad about attacking her as, even when she went back to work, he restocked the shelves in the shop, a job he normally left to her, and unpacked several deliveries, too – he hadn’t even admonished her when she’d forgotten some orders, but she thought it was more likely he was just brooding and waiting for an excuse to pounce again.

  ‘I’ve borrowed Dad’s car,’ George said, pointing out the green Austin A40 Devon which was parked by the churchyard gates. ‘He said if I scratch it he’ll wring my neck.’

  Molly smiled. Very few ordinary people in the village had cars yet, and she’d often seen people admiring Mr Walsh’s when he parked it outside the pub or the post office. She felt quite honoured to be getting a ride in it.

  ‘We’ll have lunch at the pub I’m taking you to,’ George said as he drove away from the high street. ‘I always think that after something distressing you need food to lift your spirits.’

  Molly half smiled. George was always making rather odd remarks and she rarely knew how to respond to them. ‘Did you find the funeral distressing, then?’ she asked.

  ‘In as much as there were no family there to mourn Cassie,’ he said. ‘I hardly knew her, unlike you, but it is tragic for someone so young, with so much to live for, to lose their life in such an awful way. As for all the sadness and mystery about Petal, that’s really getting to me. I know you don’t believe we’re doing anything about it down the nick, but I promise you I’ll be keeping it in the forefront of everyone’s mind.’

  ‘So what would be your plan?’

  ‘Well, it seems to me that one thing I could do is to try and find out what Cassie’s real name was. I’ve already spoken to Miss Goddard, the headmistress, and asked her if she saw Petal’s birth certificate when she enrolled her at the school. But she didn’t. Miss Goddard said she asked Cassie to bring it in, but she said she had mislaid it. Unfortunately, Miss Goddard didn’t chase it up. I’d say Cassie had made up both their names, and she’d only do that if she was running from something or someone.’

  ‘What do you mean, “from something”? Something illegal?’

  ‘Possibly, or maybe she got involved with villains and found out stuff they didn’t want her to know. But I have other questions, too. What did she live on? Do you know?’

  ‘No, I don’t. She might have got some national assistance, I suppose, but she always struck me as too proud for that, and as the kind of person who manag
es on very little.’

  George glanced round at her. ‘However careful she was, she’d still need some money. I think she got it on her weekly trip to Bristol.’

  ‘Out of a bank, you mean?’

  ‘No, Molly, from some kind of work. But what kind of job only requires you to be there one day a week?’

  ‘She did cleaning.’

  ‘I don’t think that would pay enough to keep herself and Petal.’

  ‘So how do you think she got by?’

  ‘Prostitution?’

  Molly was shocked and surprised by him. ‘No, she wouldn’t do that,’ she said indignantly.

  ‘You’re being a bit illogical, not to say naïve,’ he said with a shrug. ‘You told me about Cassie’s lovers, and that she had very liberal ideas, compared with most women. You even said she had sex with a man she’d just met in the library.’

  ‘Yes, but she wouldn’t do it for money.’

  ‘Why wouldn’t she?’

  Molly thought about that for a little while. She had never seen a prostitute, but she had always imagined them as raddled-looking women with tight clothes and too much make-up standing on street corners in slum areas of the cities.

  ‘Cassie just wasn’t the type to do that,’ she said at length.

  George chuckled. ‘Molly, all kinds of women over the years have turned to it when they have no money and children to feed,’ he said. ‘It’s the oldest profession, as I’m sure you know. But maybe Cassie had just one man who paid her and that’s where she went every Thursday. Is that any different, really, to having a lover who is a married man and buys you a dress or gives you jewellery?’

  ‘Put like that, I suppose it isn’t,’ Molly said reluctantly. ‘But Cassie was so independent.’

  ‘It is very hard for any woman to be truly independent,’ George said reprovingly. ‘They don’t get paid the same as men, most have problems getting childcare, and there’s very little sympathy for an unmarried mother.’

  ‘That’s very modern of you,’ said Molly with a touch of sarcasm. ‘I never expected a boy I went to school with in Sawbridge to have sympathies with women’s problems.’

  He smirked. ‘I’m not brave enough to voice them in the pub, though, so that makes me look like a knight in rusty armour.’

  After the sadness of the funeral and the bad feeling at home, Molly was glad to put it all aside and just enjoy being with George. Despite knowing him all her life, she hadn’t realized that he’d seen action in Germany after he was called up in 1944. She remembered, of course, him leaving the village, bound for an army camp to train, along with a couple of other local boys who were eighteen, too, and all called up together. For some reason she’d imagined he spent his time working in stores or something, because he never said a word about his experiences when he returned after the war was over. It pleased her that he was so modest, never seeking glory or feeling the need to boast. She realized she had underestimated her old schoolfriend.

  ‘Then I joined the police force after I was demobbed,’ he said. ‘That snotty friend of yours, Simon, said it was because I needed to follow orders, like I was some half-wit, but at least I’m doing something worthwhile, not just sitting at a desk scribbling like him.’

  ‘He’s rubbed you up the wrong way,’ Molly said with a smile. ‘Don’t tell me you’ve become, like so many around here, suspicious of strangers?’

  ‘I’ve got nothing against strangers, or even writers. I just don’t like the way he brags,’ George said. ‘He was holding forth in the pub about how he got wounded in Normandy, then when he recovered he went out to India to teach English. He spoke as if none of us had done anything and never been anywhere.’

  ‘I haven’t found him like that,’ she said, but, in truth, Simon had been a bit dismissive of some of the locals. ‘But you kept it very quiet about being in Germany. I didn’t know that.’

  ‘Everyone was doing something during the war,’ he said. ‘I don’t think many of us knew what our old friends were up to.’

  ‘I’d have written to you if I’d known,’ she said. ‘I suppose I thought you were stuck out at Aldershot or somewhere.’

  George grinned. ‘The night before I left there was a dance in the village. You were with John Partridge all evening – I couldn’t even get one dance with you. I expected you to be married to him by the time I got home again.’

  ‘John Partridge!’ Molly exclaimed. ‘He had goofy teeth and sticking-out ears! I only danced with him that night because I felt sorry for him. And I’m glad I did, because the poor man was killed by a V2 in early 1945. He was only in London for an interview.’

  George’s smile vanished. ‘Gosh, yes, I’d forgotten about that. What bad luck! My mother wrote and told me. He was going to become a priest, wasn’t he?’

  ‘That’s what he wanted to do, but he’d already been turned down by both Oxford and Cambridge, so that interview he was going for was for some far lesser college or training place.’

  ‘Fate is a strange thing,’ George said thoughtfully. ‘We could be driving back to Sawbridge this afternoon and die in a car crash. Or I could get shot by some hoodlum tonight when I go on duty. You just never know what’s in store for you.’

  ‘A cheerful thought,’ Molly said. ‘But if I don’t get home soon I know what will be in store for me. Dad will be on the war path.’

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Four days after the funeral Enoch Flowers came into the shop. Molly had been surprised to see him at Cassie’s funeral. He hadn’t spoken to her there, not even a nod, but that wasn’t unusual, as he was famously silent.

  Molly thought he looked like a gnome: short and tubby with a slightly too large head and deep creases in his face, like an apple that has been kept too long. No one knew exactly how old he was, but it was generally thought he was in his seventies. Yet he still ran his farm alone, milking over thirty cows a day, along with all the other chores.

  As usual, he was wearing a very worn tweed jacket with leather patches on the elbows, moleskin trousers held in at the ankles with gaiters and a grubby neckerchief of indeterminate colour. He brought into the shop with him a farmyard smell, and Mrs Parsons, who was getting Molly to slice some bacon rashers, wrinkled her nose in disgust.

  ‘Good to see you, Mr Flowers,’ Molly said. ‘I’ll be with you in a minute.’

  Mrs Parson normally lingered to gossip after paying for her groceries, but the smell got too much for her and she hurried out, still with a wrinkled nose.

  ‘I come to see if you want to go up to Stone Cottage and go through the young lass’s things, take anything you’ve got a mind to?’ Mr Flowers growled at Molly in his strong Somerset accent.

  Molly almost asked him to repeat what he’d said. She couldn’t really believe she’d heard right.

  ‘That’s very thoughtful of you,’ she said cautiously, wondering if there was some kind of catch to his offer.

  ‘Well, you were the only pal she did have, and I knows she appreciated your kindness. There ain’t nothing there of value, but it struck me you was the kind to want a keepsake.’

  Molly was astounded that he could be so sensitive, and that he’d obviously had a soft spot for Cassie. ‘I’d like that. I really miss her,’ she said. ‘And maybe I could take a few of Petal’s things, just in case the police find her?’

  ‘I don’t hold out much hope of that,’ he said. ‘Pretty little thing she were, too, a credit to her ma. I miss ’em both; they used to come up to the farm for milk and eggs. Always smiling, the littl’un. Her ma was a good’un an’all. She’d have made a fine farmer’s wife.’

  Such warmth from a man who normally communicated in grunts was astounding, and it made Molly glow to hear her friend praised.

  ‘I wish everyone in this village was as kind about her. I find it very sad that they can’t even say something nice now she’s dead, or even show concern for Petal.’

  ‘Most folks is like that,’ he said. ‘I’ve had plenty said about me. Anyways, Miss March cam
e here to hide away from someone. I reckon he tracked her down. He’ll have killed Petal now and buried her someplace,’ he said.

  ‘I’m really hoping that isn’t the case.’

  Flowers grimaced. ‘I don’t reckon he knew she had a kid till he got to the cottage. What else could he do with her? You can’t let a kid tag along with you when you’ve just killed her ma.’

  ‘Cassie never told me she was hiding from someone,’ Molly said.

  ‘Nor me, but I’ve been around long enough to recognize the signs. Any road, I gotta go now. I’ve left the key under a stone by the pump. You take what you want and I’ll get rid of the rest.’

  After Mr Flowers had left Molly went outside the shop to arrange the fruit and vegetables more neatly, and to let his smell disperse through the open door. She wondered what would be a good keepsake. As far as she remembered, Cassie didn’t have anything remarkable.

  She was just picking over the vegetables and taking out anything which looked past its best when her father came out of the shop. He stood in the doorway, puffing on his pipe and watching her. ‘Your mother will make some soup with that lot,’ he said curtly, looking down at the basket she was putting the rejected vegetables in.

  ‘Okay,’ she said, though no response was really needed, because her mother always made soup with anything they took up to her.

  ‘Were you off with that writer fellow after the funeral?’ he asked.

  ‘No, I wasn’t,’ she said. ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘In case you go making a fool of yourself over him,’ he said. ‘He’s married.’

  That was news to Molly, Simon had implied he was single. It was so typical of her father to try and humiliate her. He must have heard some gossip that she and Simon were friendly and decided to put a spanner in the works. The most annoying thing about it was that it stung. She had daydreamed about the man and, even though she knew she wasn’t the kind of girl he’d go for, if he’d asked her out, she would’ve gone.