Lady Mislaid Read online

  CLAIRE RAYNER

  Lady Mislaid

  Claire’s eighth novel; from 1968.

  e-book ISBN 978-1-84982-032-5

  Published in e-book by M P Publishing Limited 2012.

  M P Publishing Limited,

  12 Strathallan Crescent

  Douglas, Isle of Man,

  IM2 4NR, British Isles

  Copyright © 1968 Claire Rayner

  Copyright © 2012 M P Publishing Limited

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  Rayner, Claire / Lady Mislaid

  A novel in 11 chapters

  e-book— SGH; 2012-01-30

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  About this book

  Her name was Abigail Tenterden – at least that’s what the newspapers said. They also said that she was wanted in connexion with the disappearance of her stepson.

  But Abigail couldn’t remember her stepson – she couldn’t even remember being married. And so began a search to find the missing pieces of her life … and the reason why she had lost her memory.

  When she awoke, she was in an hotel— bet how did she get there? And who was she? Alone, frightened, and suffering from amnesia, Abigail tried to find answers to her questions.

  A chance encounter with a handsome journalist, Max Cantrell, helped to solve some of her problems—

  but even he could not help her when she learned that the police were searching for her in connexion with a boy, missing, believed dead …

  Originally published in England in 1968; priced at 3/6!

  This is the last of Claire Rayner’s books to be e-published by M P Publishing; bringing to 50 the total number available.

  About the author:

  Claire Rayner was a Londoner born and bred, though she spent three years in Canada, supporting herself in a variety of odd jobs: waitress, summer stock, jewellery saleswoman, untrained aide in the Toronto Hospital for Sick Children. She trained at the Royal Northern Hospital, Holloway, and has worked at Guy’s, the Royal Free, and at the Whittington Hospital, Highgate in the Children’s Unit. She was awarded the hospital Gold Medal for outstanding achievement.

  She married an advertising executive, [Des], and with the birth of their first child — they had three — she reluctantly gave up nursing. By that time, however, she had begun to write. She has published innumerable articles, a book for adults titled MOTHERS AND MIDWIVES, and a non-fiction account for children of WHAT HAPPENS IN HOSPITAL. She has broadcast, both on sound and television, and has been active in Youth Clubs.

  Claire Rayner has written several books under the pseudonym, Shiela Brandon; these have now been e-published by MPP under her own name: include Doctors of Downlands, The Final Year, the Cottage Hospital.

  Thanks from MPP to Gloria Knecht, Maria Smith, and especially to Des Rayner.

  Claire Rayner died in 2010, in her eightieth year; she is survived by her husband, Des, her three children Amanda, Adam and Jay, and four grand-children.

  Contents

  chapter 1

  chapter 2

  chapter 3

  chapter 4

  chapter 5

  chapter 6

  chapter 7

  chapter 8

  chapter 9

  chapter 10

  chapter 11

  Lady Mislaid

  a novel by

  Claire Rayner

  CHAPTER ONE

  It had been years since she had played this game with herself. She lay still, cocooned in the warmth of her bed, holding back the moment when awareness would come to flood her with thoughts of the day to come. Memories of the yesterday now lost in the past. She had been able as a child to lie suspended in time in the orange coloured blankness behind her closed lids, knowing that the morning sun was shining, but not knowing where she was, or why she was, or even who she was. And she could still do it.

  But outside things began to creep in, as they always used to. There were birds singing somewhere, quite near. And the windows must be wide open, because there was a smell of lilac and fresh cut grass.

  Lilac. Lilac? She let thought spread wider. Why a smell of lilac? There wasn’t any lilac—

  And then a sound cut across, a knock at a door, and her eyes snapped open, to stare round at the room in which her bed was. A pretty room, with flowered wallpaper and sprigged cotton curtains stirring at an open window, but with a certain impersonal quality about it. The only evidence of occupation were some clothes lying across a chair, and an open suitcase and a brown leather handbag on the otherwise empty dressing table.

  The tape came again, and automatically, she called “Come in–”. A young woman in the neat white coat of a servant pushed open the door, a tray balanced on one hand. “Good morning, Mrs. Miles,” she said brightly. “A lovely morning, isn’t it? Your tea and paper. I hope you slept well?”

  She put the tray down on the little table beside the bed, and the girl in it lay and stared at her, blankly. And the white coated woman nodded at her, put the newspaper on the pillow and went away, closing the door quietly behind her.

  The girl in the bed sat up, and shook her head with sudden irritation. The time for the game was over now. Her eyes were open, so it was time for the thought of the days to come, the memories of yesterday—

  But they didn’t come. Awareness was there, but no memory. The pretty impersonal room as completely strange. The smell of lilac was completely strange. Everything was completely strange. And what had the woman in the white coat said? “Good morning, Mrs. Miles–”

  But I’m not Mrs. anybody, the girl in the bed thought wildly. I’m Abigail Lansdon, and I’m not married! She looked around at the room again, and moved sharply, swinging her legs over the side of the bed. The newspaper on the pillow slithered to the floor, and automatically, she bent to pick it up. It was folded so that the date showed clearly. Tuesday, the ninth of May, she read almost without thinking. The ninth of May – 1967.

  “But this is mad –” she said aloud. “Mad – Next week is my birthday – next week.” She clung to this memory gratefully. “Next week on the eighteenth of May I’ll be twenty-one” – she began to do sums in the head. “I was born in nineteen forty-five. Just at the end of the war. Right?” Right, her mind answered. “Which means that next week, when it’s my birthday, it will be nineteen sixty-six. But the paper says May, sixty-seven. So what on earth is going on?”

  For a sickening moment, the room seemed to swirl around her, so that she leaned back again against the pillows. “Think,” she murmured aloud, “Think properly–”

  Remember your training, Nurse Landson, and be logical. Start at the beginning. You have just finished your State Registration course. Next week – after you birthday – you’ll be admitted to the Registrar. I mean, you were admitted to the Registrar once you were twenty-one, and when was that? Anyway, you’ve had a good nursing training, so think. What does it mean? If this newspaper is right, and there is no logical reason why it should not be, you are now in nineteen sixty-seven – so you’ve lost a year somewhere. Which is ridiculous because people don’t go around mislaying chunks of the calendar in this foolish fashion. So,
there must be something wrong with you, and not the calendar.

  She opened her eyes again, and the tea tray beside her seemed to offer something real to hold onto in an unreal world. The tea tasted good, hot and fragrant, and she sipped it gratefully, staring unseeingly over the edge of the cup as she went on trying to put her thoughts into some sort of reasonable order.

  All right. You are the out-of-gear one, not the paper and its date, so, what are the possibilities?

  Amnesia, came the prompt reply, as prompt as an answer to an examination question. And then she laughed, almost spluttering over the tea.

  Amnesia – that’s silly. It doesn’t happen to people just like that – does it? Types of amnesia, her mind said busily, collecting facts from the store house her training had built up. Retrograde, following head injuries. Hysterical, due to intense emotional stress, with which the patient is unable to cope. Malingered amnesia, very useful for people in trouble, but which doesn’t really work when they meet a good psychiatrist–

  Well, this certainly isn’t malingered, she told herself with wry amusement. Retrograde? Possibly. Hysterical? I don’t feel very hysterical. A bit scared, maybe. Worried, but not all that much. And anyway, what emotional stress have I had lately to trigger of that sort of amnesia?

  Ass, her mind retorted. If you could remember that, you wouldn’t be amnesic, would you? That’s the whole point of this sort of amnesia – to forget the stress that caused it.

  Be practical, she told herself firmly. Practical. So you’ve got amnesia of some kind or another, which is a laugh of a sick sort, but sitting here laughing won’t get you anywhere. Get yourself going, Abigail Lansdon, and go look for your lost memory. End of problem.

  “But it isn’t –” she spoke aloud again. Of course if isn’t, the voice in her mind retorted. But it’s as far as you can go with it at the moment. So get going.

  Now I know what they mean in books when they talk about people doing things in a dream, she thought, getting out of bed. I’m in a dreamlike state too, cleaning my teeth, washing, dressing, all in a dream.

  The clothes lying on the chair, obviously once worn, were undoubtedly hers. They fitted her so well – and the girdle and bra and stocking still held some of her own shape in their fabric. But they were so much nicer, so much more expensive than anything she’d ever worn before. The underwear, lacy and good, the neat tweed skirt, the soft cashmere sweater in exactly the same honey colour as the tweed, the brownish suede shoes with their neat stacked polished wood heels. There was expensive makeup in the handbag on the reading table and hopefully, she rummaged through the bag for some evidence of her ownership of it. But all she found was the makeup, a small wallet holding twenty-five pounds in crisp new notes (at least I’m not broke, she thought) and some loose change, a handkerchief, and a Yale key on a ring. A most impersonal collection.

  She looked at the suitcase, then. There were more good clothes – a dress made of a silky green fabric, a suit in crisp black barathea, a white guipure lace blouse, a change of underwear. Very lush, she thought approvingly. Just what I’d choose myself if I could afford it. And then she laughed again. I probably did choose them!

  There was a watch lying on the dressing table, too, a small gold one on a black ribbon bracelet, and hesitantly, she put it on. Why not? It must be mine, after all. And then, for the first time, she noticed her own hands, her left hand in particular, as she fastened the watch on her wrist. A wedding ring, a broad smooth gold band, circled her fourth finger.

  She stared at it, her own pinkly varnished nails, longer than she usually wore them, and the sense of strangeness that had hovered around her from the moment she first woke suddenly overwhelmed her in great waves of panic. My hand – no, her hand – a hand, somebody’s hand, whose hand?

  It took every scrap of will she had to make herself stop shaking, to bring back the mood of cool calm common sense her thinking had created. But bring it back she had to, if she wasn’t to run screaming with fear from this cruelly sunshiny beflowered room. And screaming never helped anyone–

  It was almost as though she were a member of an audience watching a play at the same time as being one of the actors on the stage. She watched herself brush her hair. That was the same, anyway, still hanging in smooth leaf-brown curtains beside her narrow fair skinned face, still cut in a square fringe about her long amber coloured eyes. Watched herself put lipstick on her pale mouth and then walk to the door beyond which lay – what?

  And then she stopped being audience, and became just the bewildered actor, moving hesitantly in an unrehearsed play, improving as she went along. The Method, she thought, and giggled. This is a hell of a time to start thinking about methods of acting, for pity’s sake?

  Outside there was a wide corridor, lined with doors, each of which had a number on it. At the far end there was the start of a flight of stairs, and she stood hesitantly outside her own door, her head up, trying to take in all the information she could.

  A nurse’s home, like the one at the Royal where she had trained? No – it doesn’t feel right for that. And the smells – they weren’t right for a nurse’s home either. She lifted her head, almost like a hunting dog sniffing the wind. Floor polish – yes, that was the nurses’ home-ish. So was the faint smell of soap and talcum powder, that hint of bathrooms. But there were other smells. Cooking. Bacon. Coffee. They’d be right for a nurses’ home, but what was the other odour that made it feel so foreign? And then she knew that it was. The smell of relaxation, of parties. Cigar smoke and cocktails, gin and potato crisps, and, well, parties.

  Suddenly, it all clicked into place, the numbered doors, the white coated woman who had brought tea, the smell of gin and tobacco. An hotel. A small hotel – no chrome here, no lifts, no air of discreet richness. A country hotel – those singing birds and lilac and new-cut grass outside the bedroom window.

  She felt enormously elated suddenly, as though she had been doing a very difficult crossword puzzle, and the most complicated clue had yielded up its answer. There was fun in this mad situation, the fun of finding clues, and then solving them. At this rate she’d have all the answers in no time.

  Her optimism carried her forwards almost gaily, to the staircase and halfway down it. And she stopped again.

  Below her, in the square hallway, was the evidence that her deduction was right. A reception desk, a notice board, a rack of keys, another of letters. A porter in a short white jacket, rubbing lackadaisically at the brass knob on the wide open door. A swathe of sunlit cobblestones beyond.

  She became aware of two other figures. There was a big dark man, with his back to her, staring at the notice board with its litter of coloured posters. Another man, also dark but slighter in build, standing behind the desk, his head bent over some papers. She stared hard at them both, hoping to find in the way they looked some other clue to this mad situation, but they offered no triggers to her memory at all.

  Almost as though he felt her eyes on him, the man at the desk looked up, smiled widely, showing his lower teeth as well as his upper ones, on a curiously false bonhomie. The manager, her mind said at once, and she felt a list of elation again, Clues, clues, more of them!

  “Good morning, Mrs. Miles!” the manager said loudly, yet with a sort of caressing softness in his voice that she found rather unpleasant. “I hope you were quite comfortable last night?”

  “Er-yes, thank you,” she said, and began to move again, towards the bottom of the stairs. She felt rather than saw the big man at the notice board turn round sharply and look at her.

  “Good!” the manager said, filling the word with an enthusiasm that was very overdone. If I’d said the place like Buckingham Palace, he could hardly sound more gratified, Abigail thought rather irritably.

  “Well, I hope your whole stay with us will be just as comfortable! We’ll certainly do out very best to make it so!” He bustled towards her, and smiled his disagreeable smile again. “And if there is anything I can
do – personally,” – his voice dropped to a confidential level – “just say the word. I’d be more than delighted to show so charming a guest around the many lovely beauty spots we have here – more than delighted. Indeed, if I may say so, the company of so – attractive a lady as yourself would make my lot a very happy one indeed.”

  Her flesh crawled, almost, so sleek did the man look and sound. They say women staying alone in hotels get passes made at them, she thought, irritable again. They aren’t joking.

  She opened her mouth to say something that would, without sounding too unpleasant, make it clear that she didn’t want the manager’s personal attentions, and caught the eye of the man by the notice board, now leaning against it with his hands in his pockets, staring unashamedly at her. And the look – what was it – scorn yes, scorn, on his face made her flush suddenly, made her speak more sharply than she had meant to.

  “That won’t be necessary, thank you,” and with her head up, she marched past the manager, who had stepped back, towards the door.

  “Well, just say the word–” the manager, said, recovering from this rebuff, and following her. “In the meantime, where will you take breakfast? Here in the dining room” – one hand pointed vaguely towards the left hand side of the hallway – “or on the terrace?”

  “The dining room will do very well, thank you,” Abigail said, and a little ashamed of her irritability, smiled at the manager who, smirking a little, promptly held the dining room door open for her. Without turning round, she knew the big man had followed her, was still starting at her, and annoyed and embarrassed turned what she knew was a beaming smile on the manager. I’ll give that great staring idiot something to stare at, she thought unreasonably, and let the manager settle her at a table with much flurrying of table napkins and beckoning of waiters.

  The big man sat down at a table directly opposite her, and for the first time dropped his eyes from their steady stare at her, reading the menu card propped up before him.