they knew, Julie was happy in her job, had settled down well at Honeysuckle Cottage, liked her landlady, a Miss Audrey Tysoe.
The Eardlows had celebrated their golden wedding in the first week of June. Julie had long known about the planned gathering of friends. She had definitely told them she would be there. Not only would she attend the party but she would stay with them for a night or two. This had been settled months ago and had been referred to on both sides more than once since then.
‘We were very disappointed when she didn’t come.’ Mrs Eardlow looked on the verge of tears. ‘Very surprised, too. She didn’t even write or phone.’ They had thought at first that the date had somehow slipped her mind, but she would remember after a day or two and they would hear from her.
But the days went by and they didn’t hear. They began to wonder if she was ill, or had met with some accident. In the end Mrs Eardlow rang Honeysuckle Cottage, not without misgivings. The Eardlows came of a generation who had grown up without telephones. It was only in very recent years, since their health had grown frail, that they had had a phone installed. They regarded it as an instrument to be used in emergencies and with due respect for the cost of calls. Nor had they any wish to appear to be prying into Julie’s life.
It was the first time Mrs Eardlow had spoken to Miss Tysoe; she had found her pleasant enough. Miss Tysoe told her Julie wasn’t there, she hadn’t been there for some time, she was on indefinite leave from her job at the Advertiser. She had gone for a holiday to Calcott House in May. Miss Tysoe didn’t know her present whereabouts but she wasn’t anxious; she was confident Julie would turn up again when it suited her.
The Eardlows were at first reassured by this but after mulling it over for a day or two their uneasiness surfaced again. Why should Julie have decided to go on indefinite leave? Had there been difficulties at work? And what about the money side of it? How was she managing?
So they finally rang the Millbourne Advertiser and spoke to the proprietor, Mr Fielding. He told them Julie had not been in touch with the office since going on leave in May. She had given no reasons for wishing to take extended leave and she had not been pressed on the matter. She had always been a good worker and the Advertiser was happy to accommodate her in this instance. They were sure she would return when she had resolved whatever it was that had made her ask for leave. Her job would certainly be waiting for her; the Eardlows need have no worries on that score. Fielding had no idea of her present whereabouts.
Again, when the call was over, the Eardlows felt reassured to some extent, but again, after a day or two, their anxieties sprang up as strongly as ever.
This time they phoned Calcott House and spoke to Mrs Marchant. She told them Miss Dawson had stayed at the hotel from May 10th to May 16th. There had been no trouble or upset of any kind during her stay; she paid her bill on the day she left. The only address the hotel had any note of was her Millbourne address, Honeysuckle Cottage, but Mrs Marchant seemed to remember that Miss Dawson had said something on leaving about going to a caravan. No, Mrs Marchant had no idea where the caravan might be. She couldn’t even be certain she was correct in associating that remark with Miss Dawson; it could have been some other guest. No, the hotel had had no communication from Miss Dawson after she left; there had been no mail or phone calls for her since then. Nor had anyone come to the hotel asking to see her.
By now the Eardlows found themselves very far from reassured. They talked it over for another couple of days, arguing back and forth. Probably there was nothing at all amiss – but if it later turned out that there was, they would never forgive themselves if they had just let the matter go.
In the end they decided with a good deal of trepidation to write to the Cannonbridge police and leave it up to them to judge if any inquiries were necessary.
Lambert told them he would report back to his Chief. ‘I’ll let you know what’s decided,’ he added as he stood up to leave. ‘In the meantime, try not to worry. Young women can be very impulsive. Julie could turn up any day, astonished to hear you’ve been so anxious about her.’
‘I dare say you’re right,’ Eardlow agreed. ‘We’re not able to get about much these days, we do tend to sit and chew things over. I suppose we’re inclined to get things out of proportion.’
They thanked the sergeant profusely for coming over to see them. They insisted on going with him to the door, shaking his hand on the threshold. Mrs Eardlow looked up into Lambert’s face as he took her frail old fingers into his strong, warm clasp.
‘I’m still not happy in my mind,’ she told him earnestly. ‘Whatever kind of sudden notion Julie may have taken into her head, she’d never have forgotten our anniversary.’ She shook her head with feeble force. ‘Not Julie. Never in a million years.’
Chief Inspector Kelsey was about to drag himself off to a conference for a few days and wasn’t looking forward to the prospect. He certainly wasn’t disposed to feel overmuch concern for Miss Julie Dawson. ‘Skittish young females,’ he said to Lambert on a note of trenchant censure. Over the years he had come across many of the ilk, light-minded creatures who woke up one bright morning and took it into their heads to skedaddle without a word to relatives or friends – to give those same relatives and friends a good fright, as often as not, or merely to gain attention. Or indulging themselves in a fit of the sulks after a few cross words. Or scarpered with the latest boyfriend. Or simply decided to cut loose for a while. Needless work for the police, needless worry for the family. ‘All it takes is a postcard,’ he said sourly. ‘Or a phone call. Never enters their silly heads.’ No doubt Miss Julie Dawson would stroll blithely in where she belonged when she’d had enough of the sulks or the boyfriend.
He was strongly minded to do nothing whatever in the matter. But there were the Eardlows, old, frail, anxious. ‘Better look into it,’ he told Lambert grudgingly. ‘But don’t go making a big production number out of it, just fit it in with everything else.’ Lambert knew the form well enough, he’d been over this kind of ground often before. He knew precisely how much time to spend, how much to do, just enough to be able to reassure the relatives the police were reasonably certain the girl had come to no harm. And that was what he set about over the next few days. His first step was to discover via a series of phone calls which estate agents in the area handled holiday lettings of caravans. He found three and went off to visit them all. He was in luck. At his first call, an office in the centre of Cannonbridge, the manager produced records which showed that a caravan had indeed been rented by a Miss Julie Dawson, giving the Honeysuckle Cottage address. She had taken the caravan from Tuesday, May 16th, to Saturday, May 27th. She had paid in full, in advance, by cheque, on Monday, May 15th. He could supply no further details himself, he didn’t attend to such bookings, but he passed Lambert on to the female clerk who had dealt with Miss Dawson. The woman did recall the matter. Two details in particular stood out in her memory: Miss Dawson’s unusually beautiful hair and her insistence on the cheapest possible let. She didn’t mind where the caravan was or how basic its amenities but she wanted to move in as soon as possible. The clerk was able to suit Miss Dawson immediately with the cheapest caravan on their books. It was old, isolated, furnished and equipped to a bare minimum, and in consequence difficult to let. It belonged to a fishing enthusiast, a bachelor, who kept it principally for his own use, whenever he could get away from his city job to fish the local streams. It was vacant at the time Miss Dawson made her inquiry; the next booking was for May 27th. Miss Dawson took it for the whole of the interim.
The caravan stood on a small farm a few miles from Calcott village. The clerk gave Miss Dawson directions for finding the farm; the keys were kept at the farmhouse. ‘Something else, I remember,’ she threw in suddenly. ‘Miss Dawson didn’t stay quite the full time at the caravan. And she didn’t
