Changeling

“No place in Cabinet for M.P. whose wife has mysteriously disappeared. Mr. Benedict Lansdon, the M.P. for whom all seemed set fair for a high post in the Cabinet, has been passed over. Police intimate they may have an answer to the riddle shortly.”

How subtly cruel they were in linking up his being passed over with his wife’s disappearance. We all knew it was the reason why his hopes had been blighted, but to stress it seemed unnecessary. It was almost like pronouncing Benedict guilty of killing his wife, which was of course what they were suggesting.

Benedict had taken the papers to his study. I was very sad at the thought of his reading those cruel words and a sudden impulse came to me. I knocked at his door.

“Come in,” he said.

I went in. He was sitting at his desk with the newspapers spread out before him.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

He knew what I meant for he replied: “It was inevitable.”

I advanced into the room and slipped into the chair facing him.

“It can’t go on,” I said. “There has to be news soon.”

He shrugged his shoulders.

“Benedict … do you mind if I call you Benedict? I can’t call you Mr. Lansdon and …”

He smiled wryly. “It seems a strange matter to worry about at such a time. You can’t bring yourself to call me father or stepfather … I always understood that. Call me Benedict. Why not? It makes us more friendly. Perhaps that was one of the reasons why you wouldn’t accept me. You couldn’t find a name for me.”

He laughed but it was mirthless laughter. I knew he was desperately upset and worried.

“What is going to happen?” I asked.

“That is something I cannot tell. Where can she be, Rebecca? Have you any idea?”

“Where should she go … just as she was? She has taken nothing … her handbag … she is without money.”

“It looks as though something happened to her. The police think she is dead, Rebecca.”

“How can you be sure?”

“You must have heard. They have dug up Three Acre Field. Why should they do that? Because they expected they would find her there.”

“Oh no!”

“I am sure they suspect murder.”

Of course, he had been through something like this before when his first wife had died of an overdose of laudanum. It had made him acutely aware of the hints and innuendoes, just as it had made him doubly open to suspicion.

“But who …?” I began.

“In these cases the husband is the first suspect.”

“Oh no. How could it be? You were not here.”

“What was to stop my coming to the house, letting myself in … going to the room we shared … taking a pillow … pressing it over her face and then … getting rid of the body?”

I stared at him in horror.

“I didn’t do it, Rebecca. I knew nothing of her disappearance until I received your message. Do you believe me?”

“Of course I believe you.”

“I really think you mean that.”

“I can’t understand how you could think for a moment that I could believe anything else.”

“Thank you. It’s a very sorry business. Where will it end?”

“Perhaps she will come back.”

“Do you think she will?”

“Yes … I do. I think she will.”

“But where from … and why? There’s no sense in it … no reason.”

“Mysteries are always like that until they are solved.”

“I’ve gone over and over it in my mind. Possible solutions … but I can find none good enough to believe. Oh, it’s a wearying subject, and I am to blame, Rebecca. I am responsible for this as surely as if I had smothered her with a pillow.”

“You must stop talking like this. It’s not true.”

“You know it is true. You know I have made her unhappy, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Did she confide in you?”

“A little.”

“You see … whatever she has done … I am responsible. I should have tried harder.”

“It’s hard to try at love.”

“I should never have married her, but I thought it might work. It was foolish of me to try to replace Angelet.”

“No one could. But you could have found some happiness with her. She loved you absolutely.”

“She was too demanding. Perhaps if she had been less so I could have managed better. But there is no excuse. I have suffered something like this before, Rebecca. If I thought I had killed her with my indifference … with my love for Angelet … I could not live very easily with the knowledge. How could life have been so cruel? I thought I had everything I wanted in life … we both wanted that child … she did very, very much … and then it was all snatched from me. Why? And all for… Belinda. Why am I telling you all this?”

“Because we are now friends … because I can now call you Benedict.”

A faint smile played about his lips. Then he said: “But what of you, Rebecca? You are not happy. Before all this … I noticed it.”

“You noticed?”

“I wanted to ask what had happened. But we were so withdrawn, weren’t we? There was no friendship between us. We were like potential enemies ready to go to war with each other at the slightest provocation.”

“Yes,” I agreed, “we were like that.”

“I have let you see right into the heart of me,” he said. “What about you, Rebecca?”

“I have been very unhappy.”

“A love affair, was it?”

“Yes.”

“My poor child, how can I help?”

“Nobody can help.”

“Couldn’t you tell me?”

I hesitated.