Read Online Missing From Home by Mary Burchell - Free Book Online

should give it until morning. Pat wouldn’t thank us for stirring up a lot of unnecessary publicity.”
    “I wasn’t thinking of what Pat would tha nk us for,” her husband retorted grimly. “After such monkeying with all our nerves, she must take the consequences.”
    “If she really has gone of her own accord,” said Marilyn softly. And as the shadow of a terrible alternative fell across them again she saw her father’s anger retreat.
    “If she hasn’t we ought to be at the nearest police station now,” he declared shortly. But in the end he agreed to wait until the first post in the morning. “Though not ten minutes longer,” he added.
    “I’ll phone you as soon as the post has come,” Clare promised. And then he went away.
    “I thought he might have stayed to dinner,” observed Marilyn in a slightly dispirited voice.
    Clare had rather thought it too. She had even made the sweet he specially liked, in hopeful anticipation. But aloud she said,
    “It’s not easy for him, Mari.”
    “It’s not easy for any of us,” retorted Marilyn Then, as she remembered almost exactly the same exchange of words between herself and her sister, her double responsibility seemed to weigh heavily upon her.
    Her instinctive sigh was not lost on her mother, who put it down to a touching need of parental support and was extra tender to her in consequence. This only made Marilyn feel guilty, however, and she was nervously glad when the telephone rang again.
    On the principle that she must check everything she could, Marilyn seized the phone a moment before her mother could. But a pleasant masculine voice asked firmly for Mrs. Collamore, and she relinquished it reluctantly.
    “Yes?” Clare’s tone was both anxious and hopeful. “This is Mrs. Collamore.”
    “And this is Jerry Penrose,” was the reply. “Don’t raise your hopes too high, but I think I have a line on Pat.”
    “Oh, Jerry! —Mr. Penrose, I mean—”
    “Jerry will do. I looked up timetables after you had gone, and it struck me that unless she was very well informed about the train and bus situation, the most natural thing for her to do was to hire a car. So when I left the office I went down to Harwich—”
    “You went down to Harwich?—personally? But how terribly kind of you to take so much trouble !”
    “Not at all. You’re the kind of person one likes to help, if I may say so, Mrs. Collamore. And anyway, I wanted to back my hunch.”
    “Well, go on—” Clare’s eyes were sparkling with hope, and she said in a quick aside to Marilyn, “It’s that nice Jerry Penrose. He thinks he has a line on Pat.”
    “O—oh—” Marilyn swallowed nervously, and looked less than grateful for the intervention of the nice Jerry Penrose.
    “At first I drew a blank. But then I found a car - hire firm where the office clerk was quite bright. He says one of their men drove a pretty blonde girl in a white coat to West cliff last night and—”
    “Whereabouts in Westcliff?” cried Clare, too absorbed to notice that her younger daughter jumped like a shot rabbit.
    “That’s just it. They can’t let us know until tomorrow. The driver had his day off today, and although the clerk tried to get him on the phone, his wife said he wouldn’t be back until very late. But when he does come he should be able to say exactly where he took her.”
    “Oh, my dear boy—” Clare’s voice quivered with grateful emotion—“you don’t know how grateful I am! It was a wonderful idea of yours. And so very, very kind of you to follow it up like that. My husband and I will go down first thing in the morning. — Where did you say?—Yes—yes, I have a pencil. Yes, I’m writing it down now. I do thank you so much. And I’ll let you know what happens. Bless you! I’ll sleep much better tonight for this.
    “Just imagine—” she replaced the receiver and turned to Marilyn eagerly—“he went down to Harwich, backed his hunch that she probably hired a car, and found