Free The Girl In The Cellar by Patricia Wentworth

there are some orders for you. You’ll not tell anyone you’ve seen me, or what I’ve said! And when you get your orders you’ll do what you’re told right away—no niminy piminy nonsense! Do you understand?’ He paused, said, ‘You’d better,’ and turned round and went away without a single backward look.
    When he had gone she went down on her knees by the border and began to turn the earth. She was planting bulbs. The ground had to be cleared for them. You can’t put tulips in on the waste patches of mignonette and snapdragon and the blue, blue flax that looks like seawater. You can’t put anything in on the wrecks of last summer’s planting. You must clear the ground for the bulbs, or else they won’t grow.
    She went on kneeling there, but her hands were idle. The tears were streaming from her eyes. After a time she groped for a handkerchief and dried them. And went on planting the bulbs for the next spring.
    CHAPTER 15
    Detective Inspector Frank Abbott looked up.
    ‘Well, that’s that,’ he said in a tone of heartfelt satisfaction. He was about to pack up and be off, when a card was brought to him. He looked at it, said ‘Jim Fancourt—’ half to himself, and got to his feet.
    ‘Where is he? Show him in. No, wait a minute—I’ll come.’
    Ten minutes later he was back in his room, with Jim Fancourt saying, ‘That’s about all I can tell you. The last I saw of her was getting on board the plane. And that’s all, until I got here and went down to my aunt’s house, and there’s another girl, a complete and total stranger who has turned up instead of Anne. She’s Anne too. What do you make of it?’
    ‘Funny business,’ said Frank slowly.
    Jim nodded.
    ‘This Anne’s lost her memory. The first thing she remembers is being on the cellar steps in the dark. She says she was giddy and sat down. There was this bag she speaks of, and when she got over being giddy she picked it up, and there was an electric torch inside.’
    ‘Did your Anne have an electric torch?’
    ‘I don’t know—I don’t think so. I don’t know what she had. She came out ready to go with a little bundle of things. I don’t know what was in it, but I’m sure she didn’t have the bag, because when I gave her ten pounds English money she put it in the front of her dress. She must have got the bag later, after she got home.’
    ‘You think it was hers?’
    Jim nodded.
    ‘I think so. The other Anne thinks so too. She didn’t know anything about it—not about the money or anything. There was about ten pounds left—-’
    ‘Go on.’
    ‘Well, this is what Anne says. She put on the light, and she saw a dead girl lying at the foot of the steps.’
    ‘How does she know she was dead?’
    ‘Head injuries—very extensive. And she was cold. She went down the steps and felt for a pulse. There wasn’t any— she’s quite clear about that—and she was quite sure the girl was dead. She began to think about getting away. She put out the torch and waited until her sight cleared. Then she came up the steps into the hall of the house. The door was ajar and she let herself out into the street and shut it behind her. Then she walked down the street until she came out on to the main thoroughfare, where she got on a bus. Two streets along Miss Silver got on to the same bus.’
    Frank cocked an eyebrow.
    ‘Miss Silver?’
    ‘Miss Maud Silver. She noticed the girl. She got out with her at Victoria and spoke to her. She gave her tea, and she got in return this extraordinary story.’
    ‘And what does Miss Silver say to it?’
    ‘Miss Silver thinks it’s true. By the time they’d had tea together she had made up her mind and told Anne what to do. She was to go down to Haleycott to my aunts and wait till I arrived, or till her memory came back. I got in this morning and went down there. My aunts are’—he made a face—‘well, they’re old-maidish.’
    Frank held up a hand.
    ‘Wait a minute,’ he said, ‘you’re going too