Anna, Where Are You?

Patricia Wentworth

A

Also published as: Death at Deep End

Miss Silver – #20, 1953

PROLOGUE

At half past two on a dark September afternoon A

Agnes went down into the basement kitchen and told Mrs. Harrison, the cook, that Miss Ball had gone, and a good riddance. Mrs. Harrison looked round from the kettle which she was taking off the fire.

“I didn’t hear any taxi.”

“She didn’t have one-just went off down the road with her suit-case.”

Mrs. Harrison began to pour boiling water into a squat brown teapot.

“She’ll be catching a bus. Well, it’s the last of her, and thank goodness for that!”

A

She came to the end of the street and waited for a Hammersmith bus. At this time of the day there was really nothing you could call a queue. She set her suit-case down on the pavement, and was glad that she had not to carry it any farther.

As she stood there behind a stout woman in navy blue and a poking old woman in black, no one would have given her a second glance. Her dark grey coat and skirt was not so much shabby as badly cut and badly worn. She had no looks, no style, no special height or breadth to mark her out from the thousands of other young women who have their living to earn. She might have been of any age between twenty and thirty. She was, in fact, singularly well qualified to pass u

When the bus stopped the two other women got on to it, and she followed them. It is safe to assume that neither of them would have known her again. The stout woman was on her way to spend the afternoon and evening with a married daughter. She was taken up with how pleased the children were going to be when they saw what she had brought them. Ernie’s birthday, and such a big boy. But you couldn’t leave little Glad out-she had to have her present too.

The old woman was crouched forward over her knees. Ten years now since she had had any place she could call her own. Three months with Henry, and three with James, three with A

A

At the first stop beyond the Broadway she got out and stood waiting by the kerb. Presently a car drew in, stopped briefly, and picked her up. The door shut on her and her suit-case. The car slid into the line of traffic and was gone.

CHAPTER I

It is a truism that dangers and difficulties do not always present themselves in that guise. A violent thunderstorm may be heralded by a cloud so small and distant as to arise unseen. When Miss Maud Silver took up her Times on a January morning and, having perused the Births, Marriages and Deaths, turned with interest to those personal and private messages in what is known as the Agony Column, she had no idea that she was about to make her first contact with one of her most disturbing and dangerous cases. It was now many years since she had abandoned what she herself called the Scholastic Profession in favour of a career as a private detective. It was this career which had provided her with her flat in Montague Mansions and the modest comfort with which she was now surrounded. There had been years when she had hoped for nothing more than a life in other people’s houses, and in the end a bare existence on such sparse savings as could be wrung from her salary. She had only to look about her to be filled with feelings of devout gratitude to the Providence which, as she most firmly believed, had directed her energies into other cha

Miss Silver herself completed the scene in a garment of sage green fastened at the neck with a heavy gold brooch which displayed in high relief the entwined initials of her parents and contained the treasured locks of their hair. She had neat, small features, a clear skin, and a good deal of mouse-coloured hair worn in a plait behind and a formal fringe in front, the whole very strictly confined by a net. Her trim ankles and small feet were encased in black woollen stockings and rather worn black slippers with beaded toes. She might have stepped out of a group in any family album and been instantly identified as governess or spinster aunt.

She allowed her eyes to travel slowly down the Agony Column:-

“Lady wishes to be received as guest in comfortable home. Social amenities. Slight help in return. No rough work, no cooking.”

She reflected that a great many people still appeared to think that they could get something for nothing. A further illustration of this fact presented itself a little way down:-

“Most comfortable home offered to gentlewoman. Share household duties. Cat lover. Should be able to drive car. Fond of gardening. Some knowledge of bee-keeping. Early riser.”