Krysalis: Krysalis by John Tranhaile Page A

not?
    He rested his head against the door frame and closed his eyes. Usually he kept his imagination well in check, but today it seemed that the rooms were smirking at him, as if they’d witnessed some scene which had left behind this extraordinarily unpleasant atmosphere.
    Maybe Anna had collapsed and was incapable of speech, a stroke…. He cursed himself for stupidity, for not thinking of that before. It took less than five minutes to hunt through every room, look under bed, check closets. Then he knew for certain that she was not in the house.
    He sat at her desk in the first-floor study, and stared down at the blotter while he tried to work out what to do. But it was impossible. Visions of Anna stretched out like a corpse, Anna maimed, kept thrusting their way into the front of his brain, obscuring thought.
    At last he squeezed his hands into fists and banged them down on the desk. This was no way to go on. Stop fretting, start
thinking.
    First: what did he know?
    He found it hard to take seriously her passing mention of going to Paris: too unlike her. But… why had she left just as he arrived home, and without saying a word? He felt sure he’d heard a door close somewhere in the house and that must have been her; it couldn’t have been anyone else.
    Yes, it could. Maybe when he’d got home the burglar was still in the house….
    Yes, good, now you ‘re using your brains … don’t lose your grip again.
    The police would ask questions. He ought to come prepared. He drew up a list of names on Anna’s scratch pad, and frantically started to dial. He misdialed the last digit, slammed down the phone, tried again.
    “Hello … David Lescombe here, I’d like to speak to my wife, please. Yes, it’s still early, but could you just … of course, I’ll hold … she’s not in? Yes, I knew she was due to take a few days off, I just wondered if she’d been into chambers, or contacted you…. No, I see. Thank you.”
    Now he knew something: Anna hadn’t gone to work that day and she hadn’t phoned her chambers. Next: Anna’s parents.
    Mrs. Elwell answered with her usual note of querulous aggression. “Hello … hello, who is this?”
    “Uh … me, David. I’m so glad to find you in, Lydia.”
    “We
never go anywhere.”
    David recognized this as the prelude to a critical résumé of his and Anna’s most recent holidays, with overtones of extravagance and want of application, and he had no time for it. “I was wondering if Anna had been in touch,” he said, more brusquely than necessary.
    “We haven’t heard from her in ages.”
    “You’re not expecting her, then?”
    “Certainly not. Why—don’t you know where your own wife is?”
    David’s heart gave a thump. He’d gone too far too fast and now would have to give some explanation. Buthow to do it without complicating a situation that was already labyrinthine? “You may dig a hole for your minister,” they used to teach, tongue in cheek, at Civil Service College, “as long as you cart away enough soil to ensure that he can’t be buried.” David had no idea of his hole’s dimensions.
    “David? David, are you still there?”
    “Yes, oh Lord, I see what’s happened. I got onto the junior clerk at Anna’s chambers and he must have scrambled two messages. It looked as though she was going to her mother’s, he said.”
    “I don’t know how Anna copes with her staff. They’d never have put up with it in my day. How is she?”
    “Fine, thank you. Look, someone’s pushing a message under my nose and I’ve got to rush….”
    “Oh, mustn’t hold up running the country.”
    Sometimes when David talked to Lydia Elwell he wanted to explode, but now was not the moment. “No, well, nice to talk to you.” He put down the receiver while she was still in the middle of the string of polite codes you were supposed to use when terminating a conversation.
    Where was she?
Where had Anna gone?
    He looked at the scratch pad. Who to phone next? His civil