The Shortest Journey (6 page)

‘Oh, Mrs Malory, I’m so glad you’ve come – I’ve been
trying to get hold of you for several days now.’

‘I’ve been away,’ I explained. ‘Why, whatever’s
happened?’

‘Have you heard from Mrs Rossiter at all?’

‘Mrs Rossiter? No – I’ve just called in today to see
her. And Mrs Jankiewicz, too; my usual round, in fact.’

She dismissed my little pleasantry impatiently.

‘She’s not here. She went off on Tuesday and hasn’t
come back.’

‘Tuesday – but that’s three days ago!’

‘You can imagine how worried we are.’

‘What happened.’

An elderly man leaning heavily on his walking frame
came shuffling towards us.

‘We can’t talk about it here.’ Mrs Wilmot said. ‘Come
into my office.’

Mrs Wilmot’s office was not so much a place of
business as a replica of an Edwardian drawing room with white
panelled walls, gilt-framed watercolours, glass-fronted cabinets
full of china and a general impression of chintz-covered chairs and
tiny rosewood tables. The idea, I suppose, was to create an
illusion of gracious living for the relatives of prospective
residents. She waved me to a seat on one of the sofas and sat down
herself in a high-backed winged armchair, giving a despairing
sigh.

‘Oh dear, if you haven’t heard anything ... You were
my last hope.’

‘But how did it happen? I mean, how did she go?’

‘It was Tuesday, my busiest day. Dr Randall comes
that day to see some of his patients and you know how difficult –
that is, how fussy he can be! And it’s the laundry day and the day
the chiropodist comes too. Well, as you can imagine I was on the go
all morning, so I didn’t actually see her leave. I knew she was
going to take a taxi into Taunton and do some shopping that day –
she does sometimes, you know, it makes a nice little break for her.
I mean, she’s really quite active for her age and quite capable of
a little trip like that, whatever her daughter may say.’

She sounded defensive and I imagined that Thelma must
have been very forthright indeed about her lack of supervision of
Mrs Rossiter, so I said soothingly, ‘Oh, yes, she is. Mrs Rossiter
is perfectly all right on her own, and she does enjoy little
outings like that so much.’

Mrs Wilmot was apparently heartened by this support.
‘It seems she couldn’t get her usual taxi (she rang through
herself) but Ivy recognised the man – I think she said his name was
Ed Cooper – when she went to see Mrs Rossiter off.’

‘Oh, she actually saw her go?’

‘Oh, yes. And she had just her handbag and shopping
bag, nothing else. She said to Ivy that she’d probably be back for
tea and that was the last any of us saw of her.’

‘Good heavens! What an extraordinary thing.’

‘Of course, when she hadn’t come back for dinner –
the residents have their dinner at six o’clock sharp – Ivy came and
told me and I rang round all the hospitals. I really was quite
dreadfully worried. Then, when the time went on, at about eight
o’clock, I telephoned the police.’

‘And what did they say?’

‘Well, what could they say! They were as baffled as I
was. We rang Mrs Douglas – you can imagine how upset she was – but
Mrs Rossiter wasn’t with her.’

‘Have you tried Annie Fisher? She used to work for
Mrs Rossiter and often came to visit her here.’

‘Mrs Douglas suggested that and gave me her address –
one of those council flats down by the marshes – and I’ve
telephoned several times but there’s no reply, so she must be away.
So that’s no good.’

We sat in silence as I tried to gather my thoughts. I
simply couldn’t believe that Mrs Rossiter had gone. And without
telling anyone. It was totally unlike her; she was so punctilious
in her dealings with other people, she would never have simply gone
off without letting anyone know where she was. I couldn’t think of
anything to say, so I just sat there and looked about me. Was that
rather splendid silhouette of a Regency gentleman with a pronounced
Roman nose one of Mrs Wilmot’s ancestors, I wondered? Or was he
part of the carefully arranged decor? I suspected the latter. Mrs
Wilmot was the sort of person whom it was impossible to imagine as
a child or, indeed, with a family of any kind; she seemed to exist
only at the particular moment and in the particular place where one
was accustomed to see her. I had the feeling that if I saw her away
from West Lodge I wouldn’t even recognise her.

‘Well,’ I said at last, ‘it certainly is very
strange.’

Mrs Wilmot seized upon this rather fatuous remark as
if I had said something quite original.

‘Yes, it is, very strange. Quite inexplicable, in
fact.’

I suddenly thought of something.

‘Her sister, up in Scotland, is very ill. Surely she
must have gone up there to see her!’

‘Mrs Douglas telephoned them. They’ve had no word
either. Well, there was a letter to her sister a few weeks ago,
just a short note. and that’s all.’

‘Oh.’ I felt deflated. ‘Have the police put her on
their missing persons list? Are they looking for her?’

‘Well, of course, in view of her age they have to
take it seriously. But, as the Inspector pointed out, she did go
off of her own volition, nobody
kidnapped
her or anything.
And it isn’t as if she’s senile. I mean, she’s perfectly aware of
what she’s doing and if, as he said, she chooses to go away, that’s
her business. It’s all very awkward. She could have lost her memory
or anything.’

‘I suppose people do,’ I said doubtfully, ‘though
I’ve never actually come across anyone who has.’

‘Anyway,’ Mrs Wilmot continued, ‘after her most
recent check-up Dr Hughes said that she was quite
fit
.’

‘Thelma seemed to think that her angina was serious,’
I said.

‘Oh dear me, no. Just a slight murmur, he said. I was
surprised that Mrs Douglas made so much of it. A lot of our
residents lead quite active lives with much worse heart
conditions.’

‘If she had been taken ill you or the police would
certainly have heard by now. But it really is unlike her to have
gone off without telling you.’

‘That’s what I told the Inspector. Such a considerate
person Mrs Rossiter always was.’

I noticed that Mrs Wilmot was speaking of her in the
past tense.

‘I’m sure there must be some perfectly rational
explanation of it all,’ I said. ‘Elderly ladies don’t just
disappear into thin air!’

‘Well, Mrs Rossiter certainly seems to have done so,’
Mrs Wilmot said sharply and I realised what a difficult situation
it must be for her.

‘Have the police seen the taxi driver, Ed Cooper?’ I
asked. ‘I know him quite well, actually. He’s a very nice man – he
does some driving for the hospital service.’

‘Well, I dare say he’s perfectly respectable, but it
was unfortunate that she couldn’t get Mr Simpson; such a reliable
man, we always use him when we can. But all this man Cooper could
tell them was that he took Mrs Rossiter into Taunton and dropped
her off in Church Square. He asked if she wanted him to wait for
her, to take her back, but she said that she’d get the bus. She
often did that – she said she liked the ride. The bus goes the long
way, round through the villages and she used to say she enjoyed
seeing places she used to know. I must say I can’t stand bus
journeys myself, all that stopping and starting. But Mrs Rossiter
had some funny little ways.’

There was a tap on the door and Ivy came in.

‘Please, Mrs Wilmot, Mr Palgrave has had one of his
turns again and Lily thinks you ought to call Dr Randall.’

Mrs Wilmot gave an exclamation of annoyance. ‘As if I
hadn’t got enough to cope with at the moment!’

I got up to go. ‘Please do let me know the minute
there’s any news.’

‘Yes, of course.’

She was already at the telephone and spoke
absently.

I went along to Mrs Jankiewicz’s room, eager to hear
what she had to say. But she was in a difficult mood, irritable and
disinclined to discuss the matter.

‘A great upheaval – everything is disorganised since
Tuesday. Police everywhere talking to people, poking and prying
into her life. Is her own affair.’

‘But something awful may have happened to her.’

‘Perhaps – perhaps not.’

She continued to complain about various minor
disruptions and I saw that she didn’t want to talk. I was used to
her moods and I thought that it might be one of the days when she
was in a lot of pain. It also occurred to me that she must be upset
and missing Mrs Rossiter, who was her only friend at West Lodge,
very badly.

‘I won’t stay now,’ I said, ‘but I’ll pop back
tomorrow and see if there’s any news.’ Mrs Jankiewicz smiled
grimly. ‘I will be here.’ she said.

Outside in the corridor a sudden thought crossed my
mind and I went up the stairs to Mrs Rossiter’s room. I looked up
and down the passage but there was no one about. The staff no doubt
were all busy with poor Mr Palgrave and his nasty turn. Rather
nervously I tried the door, found it was unlocked and slipped into
the room, closing it cautiously behind me. The room looked just as
it always did; nothing seemed to have been moved. I went over to
the desk and pulled open the top drawer. There was no cache of
sleeping tablets. I tried all the other drawers but they weren’t
anywhere. On an impulse I went over to the wardrobe and looked
inside. As far as I could tell all her clothes were there.

I heard a movement in the passage outside and froze,
but the footsteps passed. Thoroughly unnerved, I opened the door
slightly and saw a figure with two walking sticks at the end of the
corridor. Feeling like someone in a thriller, I slipped out of the
room, down the stairs and into the street, where I stood trembling
slightly with mixed feelings of guilt and exhilaration.

I went and leaned on the harbour wall to get my
breath back (I felt as if I had been holding it for the last five
minutes) and considered what I had found. Or, rather, not found.
Had Mrs Rossiter thrown the tablets away? This seemed unlikely in
view of the fact that she had kept them so carefully for what must
have been several weeks. But if she had taken them with her? Then
the implications were dreadful.

The tide was out and the small sailing dinghies and
larger motor boats leaned sideways in the mud of the harbour. Early
holiday-makers sat on benches outside the Pier public house, or sat
on the sea wall eating ice-creams. Everything looked so normal – it
seemed impossible to think that somewhere Mrs Rossiter was dead.
But that’s nonsense, I told myself. If she had taken the sleeping
tablets, her body would have been found by now. And yet ... she
could have bought a bottle of whisky in Taunton, taken a bus to one
of the villages and walked up through the woods. She knew the area
well. Parts of the Quantocks are very remote; a body could remain
undiscovered for a long time.

A family group, a young mother, father and small
child, passed me, the child scampering in front of his parents who
chased him, laughing. Why would she kill herself? She had seemed
sad when I saw her last, depressed, perhaps after her flu. It might
have been that she saw no point in going on, living at West Lodge,
gradually sinking into helplessness and dependency like the other
old people there. Whatever affection she might have had for Thelma
had been gradually eroded by her daughter’s selfishness and
indifference; her son was far away, her sister dying. Wouldn’t it
be better to go while one still had one’s faculties, before old age
took away the final pleasures that made life bearable? Had Mrs
Rossiter made the ultimate choice?

It occurred to me that Mrs Jankiewicz must have made
the same deductions. She knew about the sleeping tablets; she knew
that Mrs Rossiter had been depressed. Perhaps that was why she had
been so moody today, hardly liking to voice such terrible thoughts,
even to me. I simply didn’t know what to do. If she had already
taken the tablets then nothing I could tell anyone would do any
good. But suppose she was still making up her mind, sitting in some
hotel room, screwing up her courage – what then?

I stood there for a long time, seeing but not seeing
the life going on around me. Eventually I left the harbour and
walked back along the promenade. All her life Mrs Rossiter had been
subject to the will of other people. It seemed only right that she
should make this final decision for herself.

After a few days of cold and rain I woke up one
morning to brilliant sunshine and decided that I could put off no
longer the tiresome business of bathing the dogs. Tris, my West
Highland terrier, actively dislikes water so I do him first while I
still feel quite strong. Tessa, as befits a spaniel, enjoys the
water but thinks the whole thing is a delightful game and usually
contrives to soak me and everything else within reach. I had just
managed to get them both more or less rubbed down when the doorbell
rang. The dogs, half dry, broke away and rushed out from the
kitchen into the hall, barking excitedly and scattering water-drops
as they went. I pushed them to one side and half-opened the door as
best I could. Thelma was standing on the doorstep.

I seized the dogs by their scruffs and bundled them
back into the kitchen and then came back to find Thelma standing in
the hall. One glimpse of my reflection in the hall mirror made me
wish I could shut myself in the kitchen with the dogs. I was
wearing a dreadful old blouse and skirt that I keep for doing messy
jobs. As well as being old and unappealing, they were now heavily
splashed with water and dog shampoo. I had no make-up on and my
hair was hanging damply (and lankly) round my red and shiny
face.

‘I’m so sorry,’ I said rather breathlessly, ‘I was
washing the dogs.’

‘Oh yes, you always did have animals.’

She made it sound like some awful disease.