Caught in the Light (13 page)

"Until she disappeared, you mean."

"Yes. I misjudged the situation. Believe me, I've reproached myself for that since. Many times. I thought the problem was under control, but it wasn't. Not nearly."

"Who are you saying I met in Vienna? Eris or Eris-as-Marian?"

"I'm saying you met Eris in a fugue state. The likeliest explanation for her disappearance is profound amnesia consequent on that episode."

"You mean she doesn't remember me?"

"It's possible."

"My God, I never thought..."

"I can't be sure," said Daphne, suddenly anxious, it seemed, to reassure me. "She's probably very confused as well as very sick. That's why it's imperative we find her. And that's the reason I've breached confidentiality to the extent I have. I need your help, Ian. So does Eris. The woman you knew in Vienna where do you think she might have gone?"

"I don't know," I snapped, my voice rising. "If I did, I'd have tracked her down by now, wouldn't I?" I felt Daphne's unruffled gaze rest on me. No doubt she was used to this kind of thing.

"I realize it's difficult. I guess we're both clutching at straws."

"Well, there is more to clutch at than that. What about Saffron House?"

"I checked. Eris hasn't been seen there since Milo Esguard's death. She certainly didn't imagine that, by the way. The Royal United Hospital, Bath, last April. Milo Coningsby Esguard, aged eighty-five, heart failure. His nephew Niall registered the death."

"I'll start with him, then."

Daphne looked at me in silent scrutiny, then said, "I can't stop you, of course. I don't want to prevent you doing anything that might shed some light on Eris's whereabouts. But remember this. Marian Esguard certainly existed. But Eris's depiction of her her projection of her is a fantasy. That's why I haven't spoken to Niall Esguard. He isn't the man she describes, Ian. He's just a figure in her dreamscape. He isn't pursuing Eris. He's never threatened her."

"Can you be sure of that?"

"What I'm saying is don't get caught up in her delusions. We're looking for Eris Moberly, not Marian Esguard. There aren't any pre-Fox Talbot negatives locked in a Piccadilly bank vault. There's no conspiracy at work. The only danger she's in stems from her own disturbed psyche."

"Didn't you ever ask her to show you the negatives?" I turned to look at Daphne as I spoke, letting her see I meant to weigh her answer carefully. She knew the insides of people's heads better than I did, but Eris's fugues hadn't sounded like fantasies to me. They were too concrete, too specific in time and space, so much closer to memories than dreams. And the memory of the woman I'd fallen in love with was stronger than the scepticism I'd normally have brought to bear. Part of me was determined to believe every word she'd said in Vienna and on the tape. "I mean, that would have nailed the delusion once and for all, wouldn't it?"

"If I'd asked, she'd have found some reason to refuse. She'd also have interpreted my curiosity on the point as proof that the negatives existed."

"Don't you harbour even the smallest suspicion that they might?"

"In my line of work I can't afford to harbour such suspicions, however slight."

"I'll take that as a yes."

"You shouldn't."

"Let me listen to the other tapes, Daphne."

"No."

"They might hold some vital clue."

"They don't."

"Has it occurred to you that Niall Esguard might have something to do with her disappearance?"

"Absolutely not. We're dealing with an entirely self-generated psychosis. Eris visited Milo Esguard at Saffron House. And she probably met his nephew at the hospital. But what was said won't have been anything like her account of the conversation."

"How can you be certain, since you haven't spoken to Niall Esguard?"

"The same way I can be certain you'll say he's lying if he doesn't confirm Eris's version of events." Daphne frowned at me. "Don't go down this road, Ian. It doesn't lead anywhere."

"I'll believe that when I reach the end."

"I'm beginning to regret letting you listen to the tape."

"Don't. I'll only be doing what you, as a respectable professional psychotherapist, can't afford to do."

"And what is that, exactly?"

"Turning over as many stones as I have to. Until I find the truth. Don't worry." I forced a grin. "I'll keep your name out of it. And whatever I learn I'll share with you. Doesn't that sound like a good deal?"

"All right." She stood up and gazed out across the wind-stippled water. "Since the need to find Eris by whatever means is something we have in common, I'm not even going to try to stand in your way."

"What about those other tapes?"

She looked down at me. "Prove you need to hear them. Then I'll consider it." And with that she strode briskly away.

Two hours later, I was in Bath.

I knew the city reasonably well from an assignment for an architectural picture book a couple of years before. It's freighted with its own past more heavily than most places, on account of the massed terraces and crescents of Georgian town housing fixed in the pale local stone that can look as mellow and golden in the sunshine as it can seem drab and grey in the rain. I'd been back more recently in search of Marian, but found nothing. That seemed reason enough in my mind to suspect Niall Esguard of being up to no good.

Bentinck Place was as Eris had described it, a smart eighteenth-century terrace gone to twentieth-century seed, the design as impressive and the panoramic views as stunning as ever, but the structure well overdue for care and attention, with blackened frontages, rotting windows and rusting area railings.

I tried the only bell at number six that didn't have a name listed beside it, but got no answer. Niall Esguard didn't seem to be at home. These places usually have mews to the rear, however, and Bentinck Place was no exception. A high-walled cobbled lane plunged away down one side of the terrace, and I decided to check it before settling for the waiting game. It was just as well I did. Number six boasted a garage, the doors of which stood open to reveal a stylish old red Porsche with its bonnet up and its owner tinkering away while he sang along huskily to a country and western number on the radio.

I saw at once why Eris would have felt threatened by him. Even in an oil-smeared boiler suit he looked intimidating, cold hard eyes and a lean muscular frame conveying the unmistakable impression of somebody whose instinctive response to a problem was physical. Whether I posed a problem to him we were about to find out.

"Niall Esguard?"

"Who wants to know?" The stare was what did it. That and the squaring of his shoulders. He wasn't a man to be messed around and he believed in proclaiming the fact.

"My name's Ian Jarrett."

"So?"

"I'm a friend of Eris Moberly."

He stared at me for a second, then leaned into the car to turn off the radio. The silence seemed to deepen his deliberation as he stood erect and looked me up and down.

"I believe you met her at the time of your uncle's death last year."

"Moberly?" he growled.

"That's right."

"Yes." He snapped his fingers. "I remember. The woman who took to visiting Uncle Milo just before the end. I ran into her at the hospital the night he died. Friend of yours, you say?"

"She is, yes."

"Mm." Niall took a pack of Camels from his breast-pocket and lifted one out with his teeth, then added, "I'd choose them less highly strung if I were you."

"Would you really?"

"Not that He broke off to light the cigarette and savour the first drag. "Well, I never knew what her game was. Maybe you do."

"She's missing."

"Is that a fact?"

"You haven't seen her since, by any chance?"

"No. She didn't show up at the funeral. The hospital was it. Bit of a surprise, really. I had no idea Uncle Milo got such glamorous visitors out at Saffron House."

"Didn't they tell you about her?"

"No. She told me herself. Otherwise I wouldn't have known."

"But you knew her name."

"She introduced herself. Like a lot of women do when they meet me."

"You and she don't seem to tell it quite the same way."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means she told me what you said to her. About your uncle's historical researches. And the in advisability of giving him a helping hand."

"She told you wrong."

"I don't think so."

"Pity we can't check with her, then." He gave me a level stare. "That would settle it."

"What do you know about photographic history, Mr. Esguard?"

"What do you know about it?"

"A little. Some original Fox Talbot negatives were auctioned recently. They fetched about ten thousand pounds each. For a genuine pre-Fox Talbot negative, you could be looking at ten times that."

"Bit of a downer there aren't any, then. Fox Talbot started it all, didn't he? That I do know."

"I have the impression your uncle thought otherwise."

"He thought otherwise about most things. A contrary bugger, old Milo. Liked people to think he had aces up his sleeve, even when it was empty. Specially when it was empty, now I look back. As big a con artist as he was a piss artist. I probably tried to warn your friend not to take him seriously. Maybe she misunderstood. Not that it matters now, with the old boy dead and gone. But he could spin a yarn, no question. He could spin one with the best."

"A yarn about your ancestor, Marian Esguard?"

Niall took a long deliberative drag on his cigarette, then said, "Never heard of her."

"Didn't your uncle ever mention her?"

"Might have. But it would have been in one ear and out the other." He shrugged. "I try not to store useless information."

"A cache of negatives left by a previously unknown photographer active twenty years before Fox Talbot could be worth hundreds of thousands of pounds, Mr. Esguard, possibly more. I wouldn't call that useless information."

"I would." He stepped closer and leaned against the end of a ladder hung horizontally along the garage wall, lowering his voice and cocking his head mock-confidentially. "Unless I had the negatives, of course."

"Which you don't?"

"How could I when they don't exist?"

"Are you sure you haven't seen Eris Moberly since the night you met at the hospital?"

"Not really. I might have passed her in the street without recognizing her for all I know." He grinned. "You just can't say, can you?"

"I think you can."

"Are you threatening me, Mr. ... Jarrett?" He was still grinning. "Or am I making the same mistake as Mrs. Moberly?"

"What mistake would that be?"

"Reading too much into the things people say."

"I mean to find her. You can read as much as you like into that."

"But I don't read much, see. I prefer..." He pushed himself away from the ladder and glanced approvingly at the Porsche. "Getting my hands dirty."

"Dirty hands leave marks where they've been."

"Unless the marks are washed off." He looked at me through a plume of cigarette smoke, smiling faintly. "Look, I don't want to be unhelpful. If Mrs. Moberly is missing and you're trying to find her, well, that's ..." The smile broadened. "That's admirable, I suppose. The trouble is, I haven't a clue what she wanted out of Uncle Milo. And as for whether it has anything to do with her disappearance, well, your guess is as good as mine."

"Not quite, I suspect."

"Tell you what, though," he went on, unabashed. "If you're so sure Uncle Milo comes into it, I could put you on to somebody who knew him a sight better than I did. Somebody who actually listened to the crazy stuff he used to churn out. Somebody your friend might have spoken to, come to that, if she was as interested in my family as you seem to think."

"Oh yes?" I said, my curiosity undeniably aroused. "And who might that be?"

Montagu Quisden-Neve was the proprietor of a shabby genteel second-hand bookshop called Bibliomaufry. It formed the cramped bookend of a terrace of army-surplus stores, launderettes and tattoo parlours, overshadowed by the retaining wall and soaring six-storey house-backs of one of Bath's bulkier Georgian crescents. According to Niall Esguard, Quisden-Neve had hung on every contradictory word of his uncle's photo-historical theories, before and after his move to Saffron House. He fancied himself as some sort of historian in his own right, apparently. So Niall had said, anyway. But I was aware that his priority might have been getting me off his back. I walked into Bibliomaufry that afternoon half expecting to find I'd been sent on a fool's errand.

The place was a dusty maze of books, shelved, stacked, boxed and piled. A plump, red-faced fellow in the trousers and waistcoat of a three-piece tweed suit, set off by a custard-yellow shirt and blancmange-pink bow tie, was bundling some old copies of Punch in coarse string at a desk somewhere near the middle of the maze. He had thick grey hair, worn long, which made him look like the ageing roue he quite possibly was.

"MrQuisden-Neve?"

"The very same," he replied, reddening still further as he fastened a knot in the string. "The genuine article, indeed."

"Niall Esguard said you might be able to help me."

"Really? With what? A leather-bound set of the novels of Sir Walter Scott, perhaps?"

"I'm afraid not. It concerns his uncle."

"There you have the advantage of me. Who was Scott's uncle?"

"I'm talking about Milo Esguard."

"Ah. Poor Milo. I'm sorry." He pushed the Punch bundle to one side and grew suddenly solemn. "Not funny. I so often think I am, you know. But I find people seldom agree with me."

"A friend of mine's gone missing. Her name's Eris Moberly. She visited Milo Esguard several times during the weeks before his death."

"As did I."

"Anything you know might be valuable."

"Eris Moberly?" He puffed at his cheeks thoughtfully, then slowly shook his head. "I really don't think .. ."

"Let me describe her." He listened patiently as I did so, but recognition didn't seem to dawn. "Her friends are very worried about her," I concluded. "We fear she may have come to some harm."