Vanishing Point by Patricia Wentworth

night.
    Florrie came in with the news at eight o’clock on Monday morning. She set a tray down on the table by Mrs. Merridew’s bed and said in her gloomiest tones,
    “Miss Holiday never come home last night, nor her bed wasn’t slept in.”
    Mrs. Merridew blinked.
    “Florrie, what do you mean?” Florrie swished the curtains back, and Mrs. Merridew blinked again, at the light this time. Very cold and grey, and not at all the sort of thing you wanted to look at if something unpleasant had happened. That cold light showed Florrie in a flowered overall very clean but a good deal faded. Even though the colours were not as bright as they had been, they did not go at all well with what was by no means a shining morning face. Lank black hair drawn back above sallow bony features, pale thin lips, and a set expression, were not flattered by the pinks and blues and greens of what had once been a gay summery pattern. There were four curtains, and it wasn’t till they had all been drawn that Florrie repeated what she had said.
    “She didn’t come home, and she didn’t sleep in her bed. Mrs. Maple is in a terrible taking. Says she’s never known her to be out of her usual before—and that would be nine o’clock if it wasn’t for the evenings she’d go over to Melbury for the pictures and come back on the last bus, and then she’d always let her know beforehand and Mrs. Maple would let her have the key so as not to be kept about.”
    There was at this juncture a slight tap upon the half open door. It was followed by the entrance of Miss Silver in the warm bright blue dressing-gown which had replaced the crimson one long worn and only parted with when it had begun to show serious signs of dilapidation. The hand-made crochet trimming with which it had been adorned had been very successfully transferred to the new gown, and her niece Dorothy’s gift of a pair of black felt slippers trimmed with blue pompoms completed a most comfortable outfit. Her hair, neatly coiled, was confined by a strong silk net. Her expression was one of concern.
    “My dear Marian—has anything happened? I was on my way to the bathroom, and I could not help hearing—”
    Florrie’s usual reserve had been shaken. She repeated her story for the third time and with some added details.
    “Mrs. Maple she thought she was in—” she addressed herself to Miss Silver—“she’s that deaf she wouldn’t hear, and it being gone half past ten, she never thought anything but that Miss Holiday had come in and gone up without speaking, which is what she’s done time and again, it being a job to make Mrs. Maple hear and nothing particular to say except goodnight. Anyway, it’s all of ten years Miss Holiday has been lodging there, and that’s how it’s been. But come this morning when Mrs. Maple gets up and there isn’t any sign of her she goes knocking on her door, and when that doesn’t fetch her out she turns the handle and goes in, and there’s the bed not slept in, and not a sign of Miss Holiday having been near it.”
    Mrs. Merridew said,
    “Oh dear!” And then, “Oh, Florrie—she can’t just have disappeared!”
    Florrie said what she wouldn’t have dreamed of saying if she hadn’t been shaken out of her usual discretion.
    “That’s what everyone said about Maggie, isn’t it? And where is she? Walked out of the house no later than eight o’clock in the evening a year ago and never come back.”
    Mrs. Merridew found herself explaining to Miss Silver.
    “She was Florrie’s cousin, Maggie Bell, and it was just as she says. She lived with her parents in the cottage with the rose arch over the gate, and she worked by the day for Lucy Cunningham. And she went out one evening and never came back. She had been ironing, and she said she wanted a breath of air.”
    Florrie tossed her head.
    “And that was just a manner of speaking! The old people were that jealous of her going anywhere, she’d be obliged to have something to say like that.