A Year Less a Day (26 page)

“I didn't expect to be here all day,” Minnie explains quickly, at the sight of Bliss's raised eyebrows. “Or I would have come prepared with a change of clothes.”

“I'm just going to have another look in Daphne's room,” says Bliss, finding Minnie's Daphne-esque appearance more than a little disconcerting.

She still hasn't asked me if there is any news of Daphne,
Bliss thinks as he climbs the stairs, although he can't help feeling that he is being uncharitable, and that he should be grateful to have someone to talk to.
Of course she didn't ask
, he chides himself.
You've phoned her at least twenty times today. What's the point of rubbing it in? She knows there is no news
.

Establishing the precise location and time that the subject was last known to be alive, “the starting point,” is the primary goal for any detective attempting to locate a missing person; but, in Daphne's case, it doesn't seem to help. None of her friends or acquaintances has admitted seeing or speaking to her since Bliss had left her in front of the television the night before last. “I think I'll stay up a little while longer,” she'd said, when he'd told her that he was going to bed. Then she had jabbed slyly, “I don't have to get up as early as you in the morning, David. I'm not going to Liverpool again tomorrow.”

“Oh, Daphne,” he'd sighed. “I told you you could come if you really wanted to.”

But Daphne had sloughed it off. “No, David. You're probably right. I'll find something to amuse myself, don't you worry.”

Had she meant it?
Bliss has questioned himself a hundred times since her disappearance. Or was she so ticked off with him that she'd simply booked herself into a hotel or spa somewhere, and will pop up as innocently as a snowdrop in a few days, saying, “I would have told you I was treating myself to a little holiday, but you were in Liverpool.”

She wouldn't do that
, Bliss tells himself.
She would-n't have left the kitten to starve
. However, he checks and re-checks Daphne's suitcases on top of her wardrobe until he is almost convinced that one is missing; then he finally convinces himself that it's not. Daphne's “Beatles” bag is still by her bed and it brings a lump to his throat as he recalls the last time she carried it—like a teenybopper strutting down Penny Lane—as they'd walked the streets of Liverpool.

Nothing has changed in Daphne's bedroom since he discovered her disappearance the previous night—an ancient hairless teddy still sits on her nightgown atop the pillow of the tightly made little bed; a regimented row of creams, powders, and lipsticks march across the dressing table; her toothbrush, denture cream, and eye drops line the sink. Everything is still in exactly the same spot she would have left them if she were just popping over to the butcher's or the baker's. The neatness and completeness of her personal toiletries mean only one thing to Bliss—she had not planned on vanishing. However, that conclusion leaves him little choice but to accept the worst-case scenario, and he prays that her wartime survival training
had taught her to build an igloo for shelter and a fire for warmth.

The only other clue to Daphne's whereabouts may lie in her writing cabinet in the sitting room, although the thought of trawling through Daphne's personal papers with Minnie breathing down his neck adds to Bliss's anxiety.
I'll wait until she's asleep,
he thinks, as he is drawn by interesting aromas back down to the dining room.

“Would you like a drink while I serve dinner, Dave?” asks Minnie as she polishes off Daphne's sherry and reaches for the Dubonnet. Bliss is inclined to stop her, finding a certain sacrilege in raiding the missing woman's liquor cabinet, but consoles himself with the thought that he will happily buy Daphne an entire hogshead if she returns.

“I'll just have a small scotch, please,” he says, but he is beginning to feel distinctly uneasy at the way that Minnie has so readily slipped into Daphne's shoes, and the liberties she is taking with her friend's provisions—almost as if she is enjoying it; almost as if she had planned for it. That troubled thought brings Bliss up with a start and he quickly questions, “When did you last see Daphne, Minnie?”

“Christmas Day,” she replies crisply as she heads back to the kitchen. “When she snapped my head off every time I tried talking to you.”

Bliss stiffens at the words. The possibility that he could have been the cause of a jealous spat between aging friends bothers him, but the thought that Minnie could have been involved in Daphne's disappearance is so improbable that it is hardly worth considering. Yet he does consider it; considers the evident acrimony between the two women; the swiftness with which Minnie had arrived on Daphne's doorstep in the early hours—as if she had been already dressed and expecting a call; the
speed with which she has made herself at home without considering the hullabaloo that will occur if Daphne walks in.
What if she's not bothered because she knows Daphne can't walk in?
he wonders.

Samantha phones, as she has several times during the day, and breaks into Bliss's musings. “I'd come down and help,” she tells her father, “but all the roads are blocked and the trains aren't running.”

“I don't think there's anything you could do anyway,” says Bliss, downhearted. “I don't think there's anything anyone can do now ... If only I'd taken her to Liverpool with me.”

“Dad, don't blame yourself,” jumps in Samantha. “And don't leap to conclusions either. She might just have gone away for a few days and forgot to mention it.”

“Without her toothbrush and flannelette nightgown?” he questions, though he recalls the numerous times he'd tried to mollify petrified parents in similar situations, when their fifteen-year-olds hadn't shown up at the breakfast table. “Probably staying over with friends and forgot to phone,” he'd said, and had generally been proven right. But Daphne isn't fifteen, and if she has any more friends than the ones who have been contacted, no one knows of them.

“That's the worst thing about getting old,” Daphne had told him one evening, referring to everyone but herself, “their friends gradually die off until they're the only ones left.”

“The bell-curve of social interaction,” Bliss had mused knowingly, and wondered if he had already hit the mid-life peak and would soon start sliding down the other side while the Grim Reaper picked off his friends one at a time.

Bliss's unease at Minnie's apparent lack of reverence is further heightened by the fact that she has set the table
using Daphne's finest Wedgwood and her gilt silverware. She has even buffed up the candelabra and the napkin rings and has crafted a centrepiece from maraschino cherries, a couple of tangerines, and a bunch of greenery that looks suspiciously like clippings from Daphne's perennial Christmas tree.

“I'm not sure we should be using Daphne's best stuff,” murmurs Bliss, terrified that his hostess is going to walk through the door and throw a fit at him for letting Minnie take over the house, but Minnie has no such qualms and has rummaged through Daphne's fridge and freezer to concoct a four-course extravaganza.

“I'm trying to watch the weight ...” Bliss begins, using his stomach as an excuse as Minnie brings in the salmon pâté appetizer.

“I know exactly what you mean, Dave,” says Minnie as she tightens her bum, sucks in her gut, and sticks out her chest. “As Shakespeare said—If you can keep your figure when all about you are losing theirs.” Then she sits, closes her eyes, and puts her hands together. “May the dear Lord take care of our friend Daphne, and may she quickly return to the fold.”

“Amen,” echoes Bliss with a skeptical eye on the sprightly septuagenarian. “So, what do you think has happened to Daphne?” he asks conversationally as they start eating.

“She didn't take any clothes or anything with her,” says Minnie, then she shakes her head. “I don't want to sound pessimistic, but in truth I only cooked enough for two. I expect she got caught in the storm.”

Bliss is fishing, and he's careful to keep his hook lightly baited as he replies, “Yes. That's what I think. But where could she have been?”

“Well. You know Daphne, Dave. She could have gone anywhere.”

Not without leaving a note for me and feeding the kitten
, he thinks as the pheasant soup follows the salmon. But it is the fact that she had disappeared hours before the start of the storm that really concerns him, and especially the fact that Minnie doesn't seem to understand the relevance of that detail. “So,” he probes, “what time did you go to bed last night, Minnie?”

“That's a saucy thing to ask, Inspector,” says Minnie with a girly giggle and Bliss rips into her.

“Minnie, this is very serious. Do you know anything about Daphne's disappearance at all?”

“No. Of course not. I'm as worried about her as you are,” says Minnie and she bursts into a flood of tears.

Bliss is at her side and comforting her in a flash. “Sorry,” he says, realizing that in his paranoia he's probably gone overboard, and he puts his arms around her as she sobs, “Daphne is the only friend I've got.”

“It's OK, Minnie,” consoles Bliss. “I'm just so frustrated that I can't do anything to find her.”

Superintendent Donaldson phones mid-evening with some good news. “The army is lending us two hundred men and some snowmobiles first thing tomorrow.” The bad news is that another six inches of snow will be on the ground by then. “Dave, I hate to keep saying this, but if she is outside it's already far too late.”

“I know,” agrees Bliss, and with all the evidence pointing to her intention of returning home, he is left with little hope—although he is willing to consider anything, even the bizarre notion that she's been caught up in some Christian Fundamentalist scenario—God reaching down to pluck his favourites off the earth while disbelievers are left behind to suffer in abject misery—but sanity prevails and, as Minnie washes up, he
begins phoning Daphne's friends with the news that the search will resume in the morning.

“I want you to think of anywhere she could possibly have gone,” he tells each of her friends in turn, but none offers anything constructive, other than Mavis Longbottom mentioning that if she had gone to a hotel she would have needed money.

Superintendent Donaldson had thought of that. “We had someone give all the banks a bell while you were asleep in my office this morning,” says Donaldson when Bliss phones back. “She hasn't taken out any cash in the last few days, and if she'd been mugged for her plastic or cheques, nothing has shown up yet.”

“She would have put up a struggle,” says Bliss unhesitatingly. “She would have given 'em a good going-over if she had a chance. Have we checked the hospital for any dodgy characters with gouged eyes or swollen bollocks?”

“Dave, be serious. What villain's going to admit being done-over by a raging granny?”

“Just a thought. We've got to be missing something.”

“What about the time of disappearance?” asks Donaldson. “Have we got a better handle on that yet?”

The unlit fire nails down Daphne's departure to somewhere before five in the afternoon, assuming she had followed her daily routine of cleaning out the grate in the morning and making a tepee of newspaper and kindling ready for lighting at sundown.

“I think it's time to lower the flag and stoke up the fire, Chief Inspector,” she would pronounce in the manner of a regimental colonel each evening as the room dimmed in the twilight.

Daphne's insistence on elevating Detective Inspector Bliss to a higher plane was based purely on his appearance. “You look like a chief inspector to me,” she had
told him firmly the first time they'd met, and she had never altered her opinion.

“Nothing new on that front, guv,” says Bliss, answering the superintendent's question. “As far as I know she was still in her bed at six when I left for Liverpool, and she obviously planned on being home before dark or she would have left the front porch light on like she usually did.”

Daphne makes the highlights of the BBC's nine o'clock news. “Today's blizzard has claimed at least six lives,” says the bubbly anchor, voicing over a montage of bleak scenes. “And there is growing concern over the fate of one elderly Hampshire pensioner who has been listed as missing since the early hours,” she continues, before throwing to the meteorologist who warns that the back edge of the storm is still way off the radar screen.

Elderly and pensioner are words that Bliss simply cannot associate with his Daphne, but the news anchor had given no name, no details, no description, and Bliss feels a sense of disconnection as he seriously wonders if they are talking about some other person.
In which case
, he asks himself,
precisely where is Daphne?

With the dishes washed and put away, Minnie pours herself a shot of Daphne's brandy, settles into Daphne's favourite fireside chair and declares herself almost ready for bed—Daphne's bed.

“It's only a bed, David,” Minnie complains when Bliss shakes his head, saying, “No. No. No.”

“If Daphne comes back I'll be up like a shot.”

“I said no, Minnie. Absolutely not.”

“That's just silly,” she says, struck by the illogicality of the situation, but Bliss digs in his heels.

“You are not sleeping in Daphne's bed,” he says, but he knows that Minnie cannot be expected to go home. It had taken him more than half an hour to slog through the snow from the nearest main road in daylight. Minnie would never make it in the dark. “You can have my room,” he tells her. “I'll stay down here. I don't expect I'll sleep much anyway.”

Minnie has no choice but to agree, and Bliss is halfway up the stairs to tidy his room and remove his personal belongings when the phone rings.