She Came Back by Patricia Wentworth

she were to think anything like that. There mustn’t be anything of that sort, ever. There wouldn’t be if she could prevent it.
    She had to wait whilst what seemed like an endless stream of traffic went by. By the time she managed to cross over, her courage had gone cold, but it held. She was not yet sure that it was Anne whom she had seen, but she was going to make sure. She had seen a fur coat and a glimpse of blue go into the shop. If there was a fur coat and a blue dress on the other side of that looking-glass door, it wouldn’t take a moment to find out whether Anne was inside them.
    She went in, and saw two women waiting by the counter, and a buxom assistant reaching something off an upper shelf with her back turned to the shop. Neither of the two women was Anne Jocelyn, but neither of them was wearing a fur coat, and quite definitely Lyndall had seen a fur coat go in at the looking-glass door.
    She stood there waiting for the assistant to turn round. But she didn’t turn round. One of the women was explaining just what sort of setting-lotion she wanted, and every time it was possible to get in a word edgeways the buxom girl said they hadn’t got it, but that something else would do just as well, in fact very much better. Lyndall could see that it was likely to go on for ages. On the spur of the moment she walked across the shop and through the curtained archway on the other side of which the cubicles for hairdressing and manicure would be found. If Anne was having her hair done, that was where she would be. It wouldn’t take a moment to find out. She could always say she was looking for a friend.
    As soon as she was through the archway she could hear the swish of running water. The cubicles had curtains, not doors. It was quite easy to look through the curtains. A fat woman with a red neck—a thin one with her head over the basin—a little dark girl having a manicure—a permanent wave—another manicure. Not a sign of Anne, not a sign of the fur coat. After all, it had got to be somewhere.
    At the end of the passage between the cubicles was another of those looking-glass doors. She saw her own reflection coming to meet her like a doppelgänger—Lyn Armitage in a grey tweed coat and skirt and a dark red hat, looking scared. It was frightfully stupid to put yourself in the wrong by looking scared. If you were doing something which made you feel not quite so sure of yourself as you would like to be, that was the time to put your chin in the air and look as if you had bought the earth and paid cash down for it.
    She pushed the door as she had pushed the other one, and came into a small square space with a wooden stair running steeply up on the left, a door on the right, and another straight ahead. It was dark after the brightly lighted shop, and it was cold after the warm, steamy heat of the passage between the cubicles. There was a damp, mouldy smell. Quite evidently these were back premises with no allurements for customers. Anne wouldn’t be here. And as the thought went through her mind, she heard Anne Jocelyn’s voice.
    It frightened her, she couldn’t think why. It was only the voice, no words, but she wasn’t sure—no, she wasn’t sure about its being Anne’s voice. If she hadn’t been thinking about Anne just at that moment, perhaps she would never have thought of its being her voice. She took a hesitating step forward. Now that her eyes were getting accustomed to the changed light, she could see that the door in front of her was not quite shut. It wasn’t open, but it hadn’t latched when it was closed. Some doors are very tiresome like that—they latch and spring open again, or they close and do not latch.
    Lyndall put her hand on the panel of the door. She had no design in doing this; it was neither thought nor planned. She saw her hand come up and move the door. It moved quite easily. There was a line of light all down the edge of it like a thin gold wire. She heard the voice which was like