Caught in the Light (8 page)

Which rendered Marian's reference to her husband's ancestral home all the more tantalizing. There couldn't be another. This was the right place. The postcard proved that. But it was all gone, long ago. The Esguards had moved on, if they'd survived at all, leaving only their dead behind.

Yet there was more to it than that. There had to be. If only because I wasn't the only one looking for them. Daphne Sanger's interest, professional or otherwise, was clearly more than historical curiosity. She'd been sufficiently eager for news to add her home telephone number to the card she'd left with Appleyard. Which meant I didn't have to wait till Monday to find out what was driving her in the same direction as me.

"Hello."

"Is that Daphne Sanger?"

"Yes. Who's calling?"

"My name's Jarrett, Miss Sanger. Ian Jarrett. We haven't met. But it seems we both know Marian Esguard."

"How did you get this number?"

"From Derek Appleyard. You visited him last month."

"Yes, but '

"Do you know Marian, Miss Sanger?"

"Know her? What do you mean?"

"It's simple enough. I'm looking for Marian, and it seems you may be looking for her, too. Is that correct?"

"No. Of course not. If you know anything about Marian Esguard, Mr. Jarrett, you'll know how ridiculous that suggestion is."

"I met her in January. I think she may be in some sort of trouble. If there's anything you meed?

"Where?"

"Yes. In Vienna, two months ago. How did you come to meet her, Miss Sanger? Is she a patient of yours? Or a friend?"

"This is ridiculous. I don't know what you're talking about."

"You must. Why else were you in Tollard Rising last month?"

"I'm not sure that's any of your business."

"You asked Appleyard to alert you if anyone came enquiring after the Esguards. Well, I came. And I'm prepared to tell you what brought me. In return for as much as you can tell me."

"It's really not as She broke off, as if to think. Then she said, "The woman you met in Vienna, Mr. Jarrett. Could you describe her to me?"

"Marian? Well, if you insist."

"I do."

"All right. She's in her late twenties or early thirties. Medium height, slim build, short dark hair, pale complexion. She has a slightly flattened nose, large eyes, striking looks. Likes to wear red. Is that close enough?"

"Yes. Too close to be any kind of mistake." She sounded mollified, but also puzzled. "Very well, Mr. Jarrett. I think we should meet."

Jack Straw's Castle, Hampstead Heath, was Daphne Sanger's choice of rendezvous, not mine. It was predictably crammed with the younger Hampstead set at lunchtime on a Sunday, but maybe their noisy self-absorption was just the camouflage my companion required. She was waiting for me at a corner table when I arrived shortly after opening time, a neat, solemn-faced woman in her forties, dressed expensively but discreetly, with plainly cut ash-blond hair, gold-rimmed spectacles and startlingly long slender fingers, currently caressing a slim cigar.

"Sorry it isn't quieter," she said. "But crowds have their advantages."

"Safety in numbers, you mean?"

"Safety is an issue, Mr. Jarrett. Perhaps you've already realized that."

"Marian's safety is uppermost in my mind."

"Ah, yes. Marian. Of course. It's very strange to hear her called that."

"Why?"

"Because it isn't her name. Not, at all events, the name she gave me."

"But you recognized it well enough over the telephone."

"Yes. Confusing, isn't it? If you'll forgive me for saying so, Mr. Jarrett, you do look confused. And a little .. . how shall I say? .. . harassed."

"I've had a rough time lately."

"Personal or professional?"

"Both."

"And what is your profession?"

"Photographer."

I'd never have expected such an apparently self-possessed woman to register shock so transparently. Her jaw fell and her eyes widened. I thought for a moment she was going to drop her cigar in her gin and tonic. "Photographer?"

"Yes. What's so remarkable about that?"

"Don't you know?"

"No. Should I?"

"No," she said after a moment's deliberation. "I suppose, after all, you probably shouldn't. Tell me how you met.. . Marian."

"Tell me her real name first."

"Her real name? I have cause to doubt either of us knows that. Eris Moberly was the one she gave me. I took her on as a client last summer."

"What kind of client?"

"I'm not sure I can disclose that. I'm a psychotherapist, Mr. Jarrett. Just about the most confidential branch of medicine there is."

"Why are you disclosing anything, then?"

"Because Eris Moberly is missing. Has been since early January."

"You mean .. . since before I met her?"

"It seems so."

"When you say "missing" .. ."

"I mean I can't find her. When she broke several appointments after Christmas I tried to contact her. She'd never given my secretary a telephone number, however, and her address .. . turns out not to exist. Louth Street, Mayfair. Sounds real enough, doesn't it? But a fiction nonetheless."

"Are we sure we're talking about the same person? I've no reason to believe Marian deceived me about her identity."

"Haven't you? What did she tell you about herself?"

"Not a great deal. We didn't have long enough to ... become familiar with each other's pasts."

"What did you have long enough for?"

"Look, we met in Vienna in January, by chance. There was .. . immediate attraction. We became .. . emotionally involved."

"You became lovers?"

"If it's any of your business, yes."

"I wish it weren't. Regrettably, I have to tell you that the woman you're "emotionally involved" with has a profound psychological problem. It wasn't a chance meeting. Let me ask you this. Did she know you were a photographer before introducing herself?"

"No. That is ... Well, yes, in a sense. What of it?"

"It's why she chose you, Mr. Jarrett. And why she used the name Marian Esguard."

"What do you mean by that?"

"I'm not sure I'm at liberty to explain."

"Not at liberty? I love this woman, Miss Sanger, and she loves me. We agreed to leave our spouses for each other when we came back from Vienna. And I went through with it. I left my wife for her. Then ... something went wrong."

"She vanished?"

"Yes."

"Leaving you with no clues to her whereabouts?"

"None. Except... her husband's name: Jose. And an implication that they lived in some sort of ancestral country residence."

"Gaunt's Chase?"

"She never identified it. I was led to Tollard Rising by a postcard of the church, sent to me anonymously. By Marian, I think."

"Do you have the envelope?"

"Yes." I took it out of my pocket and showed it to her. "I can't be sure. I've never seen her handwriting."

"But I have." Daphne Sanger nodded slowly in recognition. "I'd say that was almost certainly written by Eris Moberly."

"You see. She wants me to find her, Miss Sanger. She needs me to find her."

"Possibly." An afterthought seemed to occur to her. "Jose is short for Joslyn, of course. Surely that satisfies you Esguard is an assumed name."

"I'm not sure it does."

"Then let me tell you this. My enquiries haven't been restricted to Tollard Rising. I've traced a marriage certificate for Joslyn Esguard and a birth certificate for his bride. Marian Juliana Freeman. She was born in Chichester in 1787. She married Joslyn Esguard, a man eleven years her senior, in 1809. The marriage seems to have been childless, assuming they lived throughout it at Tollard Rising; there's no record of a birth there. Nor is there any record of the original Marian Esguard's death. But I'm sure you can see what it all implies. Eris may have sent you the postcard simply to show you where she obtained her alias. In other words, to put an end to your search."

"Why such an elaborate charade?"

"Because elaboration upon reality is at the root of her psychological difficulties."

"So you say. For reasons you're not free to share with me. Well, if you can't discuss your patient sorry, client with me, what about her husband?"

"I know nothing about him beyond his supposed name, Conrad Moberly, and Eris's description of him as wealthy and emotionally detached."

"Could he be a descendant of Joslyn Esguard?"

"He could be. Theoretically. But if you're suggesting Eris is using the relationship between Marian and Joslyn, whatever kind of relationship it was, as some sort of convoluted code for her feelings about her husband ..."

"What if I am?"

"Then I have to tell you you're wide of the mark."

I took a deep breath, letting her see how frustrated I felt. "Do you have any idea where Eris Moberly is now, Miss Sanger?"

"None."

"Do you think she may be in danger?"

Daphne Sanger hesitated a long time before replying. "It's possible. There are .. . worrying ramifications to her case."

"I want to help her. Don't you?"

"Of course."

"Then don't you think we should .. . pool our resources?"

She frowned. "To do so would involve a gross breach of confidence on my part."

I shrugged, trying to imply I might walk away from the problem unless she gave me a good reason not to. "Until you tell me more than you have so far, I don't see how we can make any progress. Do you?"

"No. I suppose not."

"Then what do you suggest we do?"

She clunked the ice cubes round in her glass to make the tonic fizz, stared thoughtfully down into it for a moment, then looked up and said, "I suggest we meet again in a day or two at my practice. I'll have made up my mind by then as to whether it would be appropriate, in all the circumstances, to explain to you what this is really all about."

"And how will you make up your mind?"

"That's the bit you're not going to like, Mr. Jarrett." She shaped a cautious smile. "I'm afraid you're going to have to win my trust. And I'm not a naturally trusting person."

Daphne Sanger's method for assessing my trustworthiness was to call in a couple of references: a friend to verify my account of myself as far as he could, for which role Tim was tailor-made; and my wife to confirm I really had run out on her, which Faith naturally wasn't going to deny, especially when asked by a psychotherapist, the sort of person whose help she'd more or less told me I badly needed.

I warned Tim to expect a call from Miss Sanger and let him believe I was consulting her for the sake of my mental well-being. I left Faith to make what she liked of it, then sat back and waited for the results. My visit to Harley Street was fixed for Wednesday afternoon, which gave me two clear days to check Miss Sanger's credentials they proved to be impeccable and drive down to Tollard Rising again.

Nothing had changed at St. Andrew's Church, or at the sloping swathe of farmland that had once been the deer park and landscaped vistas of Gaunt's Chase. For an idea of what the place had looked like I had to call at the local-studies library in Dorchester and leaf through various old county histories until I came across a reproduction of an oil painting by Canaletto, no less, of the house as it had appeared in 1753. A four-square, red-brick construction, faced in pale stone, with tall chimneys springing from a broad-hipped roof, it sat starkly in a strangely empty park, with only the rolling hills in the background to remind me that it was the same corner of Cranborne Chase where I'd seen nothing but fields and barns and fences. The county histories were principally interested in its architecture 'restrained Dutch Palladian of the 1690s, possibly the work of William Talman' and the circumstances surrounding Canaletto's commission to paint it a flirtation with the role of patron of the arts by Nathaniel Esguard, grandfather of Joslyn. The Esguards' money was airily attributed to substantial holdings in the East India Company. Their eventual decline and fall along with that of Gaunt's Chase was undocumented, apart from the terse caption to Canaletto's depiction of the house. "Destroyed by fire, 1838." Canaletto's original was evidently in the hands of a private collector in Texas. Everything, it seemed, was either long ago or far away. And of no obvious concern to me. Except that Daphne Sanger's Eris Moberly and my Marian Esguard had decided that it should be.

"Take a seat, Mr. Jarrett," said Daphne Sanger as I entered her ground-floor consulting room in Harley Street. It was furnished and decorated in soothing shades of green, blending with the shadows of an overcast late afternoon. "It doesn't have to be the couch. I only have one because so many people expect me to." Her self-assurance seemed magnified in this, her particular domain. It was warm and comfortable, yet oddly impersonal odd because the lack of clutter, the lightness of her presence, somehow contrived to lower my de fences As no doubt it was meant to. "May I call you Ian?"

"By all means."

"And what will you call me?"

"What did Eris Moberly settle for?"

"Daphne."

"Daphne it is, then. How did the positive vetting go?"

"Positively. Tim Sadler made all the right noises. And your wife .. . seemed pleased to hear you were coming to see me."

"She thinks I'm mad. Or says she does."

"From her point of view, your recent behaviour hardly looks ... rational."

"What about from your point of view, Daphne?"

"I have the advantage of knowing rather more of the background."

"And am I to share that advantage?"

"Yes. I've decided to set my ethical reservations to one side."

"I'm glad to hear it," I said, exerting some effort not to look it. "Where do we begin?"

"With any doubts you may have that Marian Esguard and Eris Moberly are in fact the same person. Listen to this." She pressed the play button on a tape recorder stationed on the desk in front of her, and a voice that made me start with surprise floated into the room between us. "My name is Eris Moberly." It could have been Marian whispering to me in the darkness in Vienna. Daphne must have been able to read the startled recognition in my face even as she switched the machine off and looked across at me. "Those doubts, if there were any, are now, I trust, dispelled?"