That was all he would say. Further questions should be put to Mrs. Crane. No, Hillyard had no idea where to find her. Was she not at home? Mr. Crane then.
For Friday evening, Harris had a supper engagement he could not decently get out of. After leaving Hillyard, he found he didn’t want to. He craved a few hours’ relaxation. Last Saturday’s laughter and polkas seemed to belong to a summer long past.
The MacFarlanes’ up on Queen Street West was a household with artistic aspirations. Singing rather than cards accordingly followed the meal. Harris had the voice of a crow but could sight read at the piano well enough to be a useful accompanist. Well enough, but not perfectly. The twelve-year-old daughter of the house broke into such fits of giggles when he hit a wrong note that he began making mistakes deliberately just to provoke her. Elsie’s mother was the most provoked, however, and the two clowns were driven from the pianoforte in disgrace.
Elsie took this opportunity to corner Harris and show him her sketch book. Managing the crinoline cage her voluminous dress required was plainly giving her the difficulty of a novice helmsman on a broad-beamed steamer, and Harris barely managed to catch a cherrywood teapoy toppled by her passage.
“The thing I don’t like about these skirts,” she said, patting the wire-supported dome of pink taffeta below her waist, “is you can’t sit in armchairs.”
“And the thing you do like?” Harris took the book from her hands.
“Is you can’t be ignored. You must start at the beginning now and not just go flipping through.”
A sprightly child but very earnest too, Harris realized as he turned the pages and found one excruciatingly literal drawing after another. The birds seemed to be sketched from a taxidermy shop. The houses might have been of great use to a builder. Then there were parts of a cat that, even in sleep, moved around too much ever to have its portrait completed.
It was high time Harris made an appreciative remark. “You know, Elsie, I like these bits. They leave something to your imagination.”
Then he turned the page and saw a cloud of cat, a sketch so furious and unconsidered it might all have been done in five seconds. It wasn’t what Harris thought of as artistic. The pencilled swirls better suited a storm at sea than a dozing pet. He wondered if Elsie, frustrated by her own caution, had swung to the opposite extreme.
“That’s not mine,” she said.
“Whose is it then?”
“Mrs. Crane’s . . .”
Elsie had Harris’s full attention. Here was a connection he had not guessed at.
“She said that unless I was illustrating an anatomy textbook, I should not worry so much about the details. I do like her. Do you think she will be found?”
A quick, false yes would not do. If Elsie’s parents had trusted her with news of the disappearance, rather than pretending Theresa was out of town on some cosy visit, then Harris didn’t want to spew easy reassurance either. At the same time, he honestly could not imagine living the rest of his life with this mystery unresolved.
“I think she will,” he said slowly. “Did you ever sketch her?”
“I surely did.” The girl’s long face brightened. “Don’t skip now. You’ll come to it.”
“Come on back, Mr. Harris,” some one called from the piano. “It seems we can’t do without you.”
“In a moment,” he answered.
Elsie’s drawings, still highly detailed, did become looser and livelier. Theresa’s portrait was easily the best thing in the book. Affection for the sitter must have helped, on top of which Theresa had given Elsie a pose it would have been hard to make static. Her head was turning as if her attention had just been caught by the glimpse of a person long absent, and her lips were parting as if she were about to speak. The drawing was dated the first of the current month.
“What do you think? Am I improving?” Elsie wanted to know.
“You are indeed. Could I borrow this and make a tracing?”
“I should want it back. Do you really think it’s good?”
Harris’s musical services were again being called for.
“I do, but remember I’m not an art critic, Elsie, just a banker.”
“And a dazzling pianist,” she reminded him merrily.
“Plug your ears,” he warned her on his way back to the keyboard.
After a sufficiency of Mendelssohn and Schubert, the music party broke up for refreshments. Harris watched his chance to get a word with Elsie’s mother, who but for darker eyes and a stronger chin greatly resembled her contemporary the Queen. Kate MacFarlane was for some time occupied ordering staff and guests about in a quick, sharp voice. Her folded fan pointed directions. Harris had never seen her wear anything but tartan—a general fad since the completion of the royal residence at Balmoral. Her timber-baron husband—an older man, very tall and substantial—left to her the duties of general hospitality, while he remained towering in the background in conversation with the comeliest of the young sopranos.
Harris had only recently been introduced to the family, which explained his not knowing of their acquaintance with Theresa. And yet he felt quickly at ease. Mrs. MacFarlane’s brusqueness had a way of breaking down reserve.
Speak to her? Certainly. Making sure he had a plate of cakes, she drew him out through French doors onto a vaulted loggia overlooking the garden. Gothic arches added to the picturesque appeal of this villa scaled like a castle. Theresa Crane, said the chatelaine, disliked large gatherings and would have wiggled out of this one even if she had been in town. And what did Harris think had become of her anyway?
He said he intended to find out—but confessed he had lost touch with her. He lacked current information regarding her interests, character and friends.
Mrs. MacFarlane stared out at the shadowy carpet of grass. “That’s not a good start,” she said softly.
“Do you know any old schoolmates she went on nature rambles with?”
“Not one. She may have mentioned a name or two, but as they married, those friendships seemed to wither . . .”
“What current friends do you know of?” asked Harris.
“I couldn’t see that she had any, or family either apart from her father and husband.”
Other guests were coming out to escape the heat of the lamps, but remained beyond earshot.
Harris dropped his voice anyway. “Was there discord between her and Mr. Crane?”
It was too dark to read Mrs. MacFarlane’s face. When she didn’t speak, he repeated the question.
“I’m not sure I should tell you if I had noticed anything of the sort, but the fact is I didn’t.”
“How often did you see her?” Perhaps, thought Harris, not often enough to tell.
“Once a week or so. She made quite a friend of Elsie.”
Harris said he understood. “And when did you see her last?”
“Sunday morning at church,” replied his hostess, “at the Cathedral.”
“Two hours at most before her disappearance!” Harris exclaimed. “Did she say anything that casts light on that event?”
“Well, she—her father had died just the night before, remember. You could tell it affected her deeply. You’ll want to know when she first came here. I believe it was soon after her marriage. Our husbands had business dealings—to do with ships or trains, I suppose. Isn’t it always one or the other? Or telegraphs.” The mistress of the house was back in stride, one thought briskly pulling