Tom stood in the library doorway watching her. She was sitting on a chair in front of an almost-empty bookshelf, piles of books arranged on the floor around her. Her hair was in a messy ponytail, her big square glasses perched on her nose. She was examining a row of thin volumes one by one, peeping into the pages then stacking them on her lap. When the pile became too high, she arranged the books beside her on the floor. She must have been deep in thought not to have heard his crutches creaking along the hall, but what was she looking for?
It was ten o’clock. Night pressed its dusky fingers against the library windows, smudging the corners of the room with shadows. The chandelier burned overhead, a constellation of winking, glittering crystal stars.
Tom shifted his weight. His bones had been complaining loudly since dinner, but rather than drug himself to the gills he had decided to see if Abby wanted to join him watching a DVD. He had followed the faint glow of light along the hall to the library, but the moment he’d seen the books piled everywhere and half the bookcases empty, he’d known she was up to something. If she was hoping to discover a juicy scandal about him among those dusty pages, then she was going to be disappointed.
‘Lost something, have you?’
She jerked around. A black book dropped from her hands, hitting the floor in a puff of dust. ‘Oh, it’s you.’
‘Expecting someone else?’
As she got to her feet, her knee knocked a book tower. She made a wild grab for it, but the books slithered onto the floorboards with an almighty crash.
Brushing dust off her jeans, she frowned across at him. ‘I was after a book.’
As if to verify this, she picked up one of the fallen volumes, smoothed her hand over it, and pushed it onto a shelf. It sat there for a moment like a pigeon on a perch. Then, as if realising the pointlessness of the situation, it fell onto its side with a noisy bang.
‘Do you always demolish the entire library when you’re looking for something to read?’
Abby pushed her glasses onto her head, displacing a loop of hair over her ear. ‘Guess I got carried away.’
Tom frowned. Typical journalist, unable to stop herself snooping. She was clearly looking for something – but for the life of him, he couldn’t imagine what. The books weren’t his, they had come with the house. He wanted to tell her that searching among them for secrets he might have stowed there was a waste of time. But he was too busy fighting the urge to reach out and tuck that stray lock of hair back where it belonged.
He sighed. She’d be gone soon, out of his life. Once she finished her damn interview, she’d hightail it back to town, forget him. Well, good riddance. He turned away and started shuffling along the hall. His body felt hollow. He needed to fill the sudden emptiness with something. Anything. A drink, maybe. He remembered the half-full bottle of brandy he kept for emergencies. This wasn’t quite an emergency, but close enough.
‘Wait, Tom.’
He looked around.
She reached into her back pocket and unfolded a small sheet of paper. It was yellowed with age and covered in writing. ‘It’s a page torn out of the book I was looking for – a girl’s diary. I found it upstairs in a hidden room.’
‘Hidden room?’
‘It might turn out to be nothing, a hoax or a dead end. But I’ve got a hunch it’s for real.’
He took the page and scanned the top few lines. ‘ “Praying for a miracle”,’ he read aloud, then looked back at Abby. He was intrigued by the prospect of reading a diary from 1949. Old letters and journals gave an authentic flavour to his research. But what intrigued him more was the hot flush in Abby’s cheeks, the brightness in her eyes.
‘Why does it matter so much to you?’
‘Just read it, Tom. You’ll see why it matters.’
• • •
Two hours later, Tom sat at the big table in the library, poring over the book about the Chinese emperor and the nightingale. Abby had described the upstairs room where she’d found it – going into detail about the tiny barred window and cramped bathroom, and the steel door with no handle on the inside. But when she’d told him about the bed – with its black leathery stain that she felt certain was blood – Tom had actually shivered. He’d already read the torn-out diary page twenty times, the first time with scepticism. But halfway through the second reading, his thoughts began to race. Abby was right. This was a story that mattered. A story he could use. The type of story that would not only thrill him to write but would, if handled correctly, skyrocket him straight back into the limelight. Hello again New York Times bestseller list, and maybe even hello to another movie or miniseries. He hadn’t felt so fired up in years.
‘Hey, Tom?’ Abby held up a large photo album with tattered corners. It was black with a gold embossed pattern on the spine, and as she brought it over to the table and settled on the chair beside him, he caught a whiff of old leather and paper dust. She opened it and began flipping through. ‘It’s a scrapbook.’
Its pages were filled with articles and photos cut from newspapers. The same faces appeared over and over. The younger girl was prim and sweet faced, her fair hair styled in a short bob. In contrast, her dark-haired sister scowled at the camera, arms crossed tightly over her chest, her wild locks cascading unrestrained over her shoulders.
Abby tapped her fingers on a faded headline, WIGMORE SISTERS STILL MISSING. She scanned the page then turned and looked at him, her face flushed, her eyes bright. ‘Their names, their ages, the dates. It matches everything in the diary page. It’s them, Tom. It’s Frankie and Lilly.’
• • •
We sat side by side at the table, poring over the well-thumbed scrapbook. Whoever had collated the newspaper clippings had gone to a lot of trouble to follow the Wigmore case. For three years, any article mentioning the sisters – and for the first year there were a lot – had been cut out and pasted in.
The last article was from 1950, a single sentence, almost an afterthought, a quote from one of the investigating officers stating that the girls were almost certainly dead. We read them all, and then returned to the beginning and started going through them again.
The Sydney Morning Herald
Wednesday, 31st March 1948
SISTERS MISSING
Police are investigating the disappearance of two girls believed missing since Good Friday. Nine-year-old Lilly Wigmore and her sister Frances, 11, were last seen outside their home on Stanley Street, Concord, on Friday morning. Their mother, Mrs L Wigmore, widowed since 1942 when her husband was killed in North Africa, is a laundress at the Repatriation General Hospital. Mrs Wigmore left home at 6 am that day for her early shift. She last saw the girls when they lingered at the fence to wave her goodbye.
‘They insisted on wearing their best frocks that day, and seemed very chirpy,’ Mrs Wigmore told police. ‘Which was unusual, as Easter is traditionally a sad time for us. It’s when the girls lost their father.’
Lilly is described as tall for her age at 5 ft. 3 in., solid build, with mousy hair cut short with a fringe, and blue eyes. Frances is slim with long brown hair and hazel eyes, and is of average height. Police urge anyone with information regarding the girls to come forward.
The Sydney Morning Herald
Thursday, 23rd September 1948
LITTLE HOPE FOR SISTERS
Six months after the disappearance of nine-year-old Lilly Wigmore and her sister Frances Wigmore, 12, little hope is held for the girls’ safe return. The sisters were last seen outside their home on Stanley Street on Good Friday.
‘They’re sensible girls,’ their mother Mrs Wigmore said this morning. ‘They’d have come home by now if they could. Something has happened to them.’
The Sydney Morning Herald
Wednesday, 20th July 1949
MOTHER’S PLEA FOR WIGMORE GIRLS
More than a year after the disappearance of Sydney sisters Frances and Lilly Wigmore, the girls’ mother, war widow Mrs L Wigmore, has come forward with a plea for witnesses who may know anything about the girls’ whereabouts. The sisters, brunette Frances, who would now be 12, and blonde Lilly, now 10, were last seen outside their Concord home in 1948.
‘I’m not giving up hope,’ Mrs Wigmore told the Herald yesterday. ‘Everyone’s forgotten, but I know my girls are out there. Every night I leave my porch light burning so they can find their way home.’
I slumped back in the chair. ‘Their mother might not have given up hope, but everyone else thought they were dead. Meanwhile they were alive and well upstairs. At least, until Frankie’s diary entry in 1949.’
Tom scratched his whiskery jaw. ‘Ravensong’s a long way from Sydney. It’s a good eight- to ten-hour drive. Probably longer back then. Were they taken randomly, or was it planned? None of the reports mentioned a ransom. And if there wasn’t one, why were they kept alive?’
‘More importantly, what became of them?’
‘You think he killed them?’
‘God, I hope not.’
But even as I spoke the words, my heart sank. What other outcome could there have been? The dark bloodstain on the bed was enough to convince me of that. We could be trapped here forever, Frankie had written. Unless he gets bored and decides to kill us. I hugged myself, my face hot. How could I bear not knowing? Going to the window, I shoved it open. Cold night air gushed in. A moth fluttered drunkenly, and when I tried to shoo it outside, it zigzagged away and got lost in the shadows of the room. Leaving the window open, I returned to the table.
‘You said there’s internet?’
Tom glanced at the window. ‘It’s a cloudless night. We might get lucky.’ Hauling himself out of the chair, he reached for his crutches. ‘Over here.’
He led me to a cramped alcove of the library where he kept his laptop, and connected it to a satellite modem. I didn’t expect to find much, but when I typed the girls’ names into the browser, a long list of links came up. I clicked on a few, and a clearer picture of the case began to form.
In 1953, five years after the sisters’ disappearance, fourteen-year-old Lilly Wigmore returned home alone. She could not tell detectives what had become of Frankie or even if her sister was still alive. Lilly simply said that a man had kept them in his house as prisoners. She did not know the man’s name, nor could she identify him or the house in any way. She claimed she’d never seen his face.
Tom tapped the screen. ‘Frankie said they saw him most days. After five years, Lilly would have known him really well.’
I looked up. ‘Why would she protect him?’
‘Especially if he killed her sister.’
I stayed quiet a moment, thinking. ‘I wonder if she’s still alive.’
I refined my search to ‘Lilly Wigmore’ and followed another half-dozen links, but there was nothing current. I took into account that she might have married and changed her name, but all references to her cut off in 1954, as though soon after arriving home she’d vanished off the face of the planet. Again.
I clicked on a link from a website documenting unsolved Australian crimes. Here I found the transcript of an interview with a retired police inspector. The interview, conducted by Professor Markham from the University of South Australia for a thesis, took place in 1966, thirteen years after Lilly Wigmore arrived home.
Professor Markham: Inspector, back in 1953, you were the first to interview Lilly Wigmore about her ordeal. What were your impressions of the girl?
Inspector Upshaw: Lilly was clearly traumatised. She sat wide-eyed through our questioning, and appeared not to hear half of it. Even the child psychologists we called in couldn’t get anything from her. She claimed not to know what had happened to Frankie, and was unable to identify her abductor in any way.
Aside from some minor cuts and scrapes and nasty bruising, she appeared to have been well looked after during her time in captivity. Her hair had grown to her waist, but she was healthy and seemed acquainted with recent news events. Doctors who performed medical examinations were satisfied Lilly hadn’t been physically abused in any way. But the same couldn’t be said for her emotional state. It was as though she had completely shut down.
Professor Markham: Could Lilly explain where she’d been for five years? Did she give a location?
Inspector Upshaw: Again, we don’t know much about that. In early June of 1953 a neighbour reported a young girl loitering in Stanley Street, Concord. The girl told local police who she was, and that she wanted to see her mother. But her mother was dead. In 1951, Mrs Wigmore died of pneumonia at the age of thirty-eight, leaving Lilly without any relatives. Lilly was fostered by a professional woman by the name of Mrs O’Grady, who got to know Lilly while counselling her. Mrs O’Grady and her husband were dedicated to raising Lilly as their own.
Professor Markham: What about Frankie Wigmore?
Inspector Upshaw: For a year or so following Lilly’s return to Sydney, police issued media pleas for Frankie Wigmore to come forward, but she never did. After that there were one or two appeals for information leading to her whereabouts. But by then most of us believed that Frankie was dead.
Professor Markham: Is that why Mrs O’Grady withdrew Lilly from the public eye?
Inspector Upshaw: When Lilly showed up in 1953, the press went into a frenzy. For a while it was a big story. The O’Grady family was bombarded by requests for interviews with Lilly.
But not all the attention was positive and soon other questions started flying. Who was Lilly protecting? Was her sister dead? Had Lilly witnessed a murder? And if so, why did Lilly refuse to help police locate and catch her sister’s killer? Why was she so reluctant to give evidence, or at least speak in more depth of her ordeal? Then the naysayers chipped in: Had Lilly and her sister really been abducted as she claimed, or had they simply run away?
Mrs O’Grady got up in arms about the media’s treatment of Lilly. She’d had already lost her parents, and her sister’s whereabouts were unknown. Now her grief was being publicly picked over by the media. Certain reporters began throwing around accusations, suggesting that young Lilly herself was somehow responsible for the disappearance of her sister. Then one day the O’Gradys disappeared, taking Lilly with them. Even the federal police were unable to trace them, or at least that’s what they claimed in ongoing press releases.
Professor Markham: But the public was keen to know the truth. Perhaps they even deserved to know?
Inspector Upshaw: I’m sure Mrs O’Grady would disagree with you on that, Professor. As I see it, we all have the God-given right to protect our families from public scrutiny. Young Lilly had been to hell and back, and the O’Gradys were determined to shelter this traumatised young girl at all costs.
On the same website I found another photo, taken three years before the sisters disappeared. Lilly would have been six, with a cap of fair hair and a chubby face that gazed dreamily beyond the camera. Frankie couldn’t have been more different. She was about eight in the photo, with a sharp elfin face framed by unruly dark hair. She glared at the camera, her disdain for the photographer – and possibly the world at large – clear in her eyes.
I printed out any pages with new information, and we returned to the table. ‘We’ve got a ton of material, but we’re still no closer to answers. We need to find that diary.’
‘You’re sure it’s not hidden in their room?’
‘I checked and rechecked. Under the pillow, in the trunk. There were no slits in the mattress, nothing but dust under the bed. No loose floorboards, no hidden cavities.’
Tom was quiet for a while, then he looked up. ‘Aside from Frankie, only two other people could have known about this – Lilly and the kidnapper. And since we can’t find Lilly, and Frankie is most likely dead . . .’
‘Maybe we can find him. But how?’
‘Lilly and Frankie lived here for five years. That’s a long time.’
‘You think our guy owned the place?’
‘It makes sense. Why would he risk keeping them here if there was a chance the owner might show?’
‘So we need a list of previous owners. In particular, between 1948 and 1953, which we might be able to source through the Land Titles registry—’
Tom looked thoughtful. He dug in his pocket and threw a small key on the table. ‘Ravensong’s contract of sale is in the bottom drawer of my filing cabinet. Grab it for me, would you?’
Pompous grouch that he was, I could have hugged him. ‘Yeah, boss.’
On my way along the corridor, I rubbed my eyes. It was almost midnight. It seemed a lifetime had passed since I’d discovered Frankie’s handwritten page. Dust clung to my face and clothes. My eyes burned from fatigue, but my brain had never felt more alert, more on track. The story of the Wigmore sisters had taken hold of me, compelled me to know what became of them. And Frankie’s words had touched a nerve. I knew how it felt to be trapped. I knew the taste of stale air in a room that seemed to shrink with every inhalation. And I knew how the past could become an inescapable prison, regardless of how many years or decades went by. But if I could discover Frankie’s fate, somehow set her free, then maybe I could slip through the bars and fly away too.
Collecting the documents, I returned to the library.
Tom was pale. He wasn’t taking any painkillers, insisting that they clouded his head too much to write. He must be hurting and looked as wilted as I felt. But as he bent over the contract he perked up, tapping his finger on the page with a murmur of triumph. ‘That’s him, Ravensong’s previous owner.’
I leaned in to read the name. ‘Joe Corbin. I wonder if he’s local.’
‘You grew up here. Does the name ring a bell for you?’
I shook my head. ‘Never heard of him. But my brother might have. Duncan makes it his business to know everyone.’