[Woman of WWII 02] - Poppy Redfern and the Fatal Flyers

by Tessa Arlen

  We slowed down briefly for a rabbit that bolted across the road and I decided to change the subject before things got too heated.

  “When I brought up Edwina’s accident last night I didn’t get the feeling her death was a terrible loss. They were polite about it, but they moved on pretty quickly. One of them said she was ‘a bit of a show-off.’ Even her story about being a performer in a flying circus is dubious: her father was a millionaire in aviation. Or at least he was in the early thirties; then he was cheated by his partner and lost everything.”

  We were back to our breakneck speed again and I held on to my hat.

  “But here is the really interesting part: Grable was seen coming out of the ironmongers on the morning before we started filming.” I paused to enjoy his distracted swerve. “Yes! The ironmongers! Imagine that.”

  He pulled up at the entrance to a tearoom. “Let me get this straight,” he said, his eyes shining with delight. “Betty Asquith came out of the ironmongers carrying a huge green tin with ‘poison’ written all over it. I need a cup of coffee, c’mon.”

  We walked up the path to the door of an empty tearoom. It badly needed a coat of paint, and our footsteps echoed across a gritty floor to a long counter presided over by an elderly woman in a hairnet who was carefully dusting a display case with a solitary plate of biscuits set squarely in the middle.

  “Good morning, and what a lovely one it is!” Despite her one plate of biscuits she was a cheerful old lady. “We only have tea or Camp coffee, will that do you?” She looked so apologetic that Griff said, “Love Camp,” which made her smile.

  “Where are you from, dear?” She almost bridled. “America? No rationing over there, I bet.”

  “Afraid not.” He looked appropriately apologetic. “Have you by any chance got a tin of Carnation evaporated milk?”

  A gentle smile. “Yes, we do. But it’s terribly expensive: five shillings?”

  My jaw dropped. “Five . . . ?”

  “Great, we’ll take it. Does wonders for Camp.”

  “Then it’s all yours, and thank you, sir, for coming over and helping us out of a jam,” she said, not quite able to look him in the eye, she was so in awe of his ability to splash five shillings on a tin of evaporated milk.

  “Don’t mention it, glad to be here.” Griff, both gratified and embarrassed, cleared his throat. She shuffled off to get her tin of Carnation; it was probably her one and only tin judging by her canny price.

  “There,” she said as she came and punched two holes in the top of the tin. “If I open it for just two cups, there will be so much left over.”

  Griff took the hint. “Then offer it to your next customers.” Griff lifted his cup and sipped. “Pure heaven.” He sipped some more. I lifted my cup and tried not to shudder. It was what I imagine dandelion roots and alum would taste like if you burned them together for a couple of days.

  Bess found a table that had some crumbs under it and settled herself in. “Go on,” Griff whispered. “Put a bit of evaporated in it. You know you love it.” He picked up the tin and poured a little into my cup. “More? Come on, you know it takes that bitter taste right out of it. Want me to tell you what I think Grable was buying in our friendly ironmongers?”

  I nodded. “You actually know what she bought?”

  “I’ll tell you in the car.”

  We had another cup of coffee each and Griff polished off half the tin, being careful to leave some for other customers. Bess tore herself away from polishing the floor and we made a fond farewell to the lady in the hairnet.

  “Let’s take Bess for a quick walk in that meadow over there,” I said, “and you can tell me about Grable’s shopping spree in Didcote.”

  * * *

  * * *

  THERE WAS A chill in the air and the remains of an early-morning mist lifting up through the trees in the valley below. We strode out, full of warm, milky coffee, with Bess scooting ahead of us down the lane.

  “What I enjoy about her most is her bossy little hind end,” said Griff, smiling at Bess’s retreating bottom. “She is such a force to be reckoned with; she is”—he beamed at me—“a true Brit.” As if on cue, Bess turned around and gave us two short barks. “She’s telling us to catch up.” Bess barked again, picked up a stick, and ran toward us.

  “Drop it, Bessie,” I said, and we laughed as she let go of her stick and then picked it up again. Griff eased it out of her mouth, leaned back, and lobbed it over a gate and into the meadow. She slid under the gate as we climbed over it. She was in full form now; her paws barely touched the ground as she sped over tussocks of wet grass.

  “She’s always so sure we’ll . . .” I turned as Griff came up behind me, and I found myself staring into his eyes. His expression was so serious my heart leapt up into my throat.

  He lowered his head to mine, and I tilted my face up. I could hear my pulse throbbing in my head and feel the warmth of his hand as it cupped my cold cheek. The world dipped in a slow, dizzying waltz as he put an arm around my waist.

  It was Bess who ruined it with her blasted stick obsession, turning bliss into agony as she rammed the broken-off end of her stick into the tender part just behind my knee. I performed a neat curtsy as Griff started to pull me toward him. Did he think I was turning away to avoid his kiss?

  “That must be Elton down there.” He pointed down the hill as he took a step away from me.

  I turned my head and followed the line of his arm. “Ah yes, Elton!”

  He squinted in the morning light. “And there is the wreck of the Walrus.”

  The wreck of the Walrus? The wreck of romance, more like. I could still feel his closeness, his breath on my cheek. I prayed he would take me in his arms again. I looked up at his averted profile and my throat ached. Blast and damn all dogs! Our moment had come and, with Bess’s wretched stick work, had truly gone.

  Should I move back into his arms so he could kiss me? I might really regret it when we got back to Didcote and he flirted with Grable or Zofia . . . I couldn’t, I honestly couldn’t be able to bear it.

  So, sensible girl that I am, I stepped away from him and we both gazed down into the valley below us, together, as if it were the most fascinating sight in the world.

  Coward, Ilona said to me. I always have such hopes for you and then you ruin it all by being such a self-protecting coward.

  “You didn’t tell me what Grable was shopping for,” I said to shut Ilona out and break the silence between us.

  He shrugged and picked up another stick for Bess. “She was telling everyone on our first night here that she had to buy a mousetrap. She’s shares a cottage in Didcote with June, Annie, and Zofia. They have mice. That’s probably why she went to the hardware store.” He was still looking at the tiny plane off in the distance. “Sorry to disappoint.” He turned to me and smiled, his eyes not quite meeting mine. “Really, I am. Rat poison isn’t our solution anyway; it works far too quickly for both their deaths . . .”

  I reluctantly returned to business. “Do you know if Edwina shared the same cottage as June and the rest of them?” I asked.

  He rubbed his chin in the way men do if they wonder if they should shave. “She said she lived in the village. But you know something, Poppy? I have absolutely no idea which house,” he said. We walked back to the car and resumed our journey down into the valley in a silence strained with tension.

  * * *

  * * *

  AFTER MAKING A few wrong turns, we found Elton Farm. It was a huge affair, bigger than my grandad’s farm, Reaches, with one of those drives that go on forever through pastures of fat, sleek cows, and a huge redbrick Victorian house at its end.

  Griff gazed around him in appreciation. “I always thought California was beautiful, but this . . .” He waved his arm at the deep lush grass, the wide canopy of oak and beech trees. Between them and set back at a distance, as if some
one had decided they looked at their best there, stood a grove of birch with their silver trunks and filigree golden leaves waiting to be admired. “It’s so peaceful in its beauty,” Griff said as we meandered down the last yards of the drive.

  “Worth fighting for?” I asked as I wistfully remembered the view of Elton from the meadow.

  He turned and gazed into my face. “Infinitely worth fighting for, and worth waiting for,” he said, and I felt the skin on my cheeks and neck warm in the sun-filled air.

  I wanted to reach out and take his hand in mine, but Mr. Mackenzie opened his front door as we pulled up at the bottom of the drive in a circle of gravel, so I folded them in my lap instead.

  “Quite a spread,” said Griff under his breath as he helped Bess and me out of the Alvis. “Called it a farm on the phone; never said anything about an estate.”

  “One day, Griff, I’m going to take you somewhere spectacular like . . . like Blenheim Palace, where Winston Churchill was born, and you will understand what we mean by owning land and unlimited privilege.”

  “Can’t wait,” he said as I joined him on the gravel drive. “But so far as houses go, Reaches is far more beautiful than this one.”

  I nodded. “That is because Reaches is very old—Elizabethan,” I said in what can only be called a prideful voice. “It’s drafty and hard to heat in winter. This one was built around about 1890. It probably has central heating and really efficient plumbing!”

  * * *

  * * *

  MR. MACKENZIE WAS a quiet countryman in his late sixties, with muddy leather brogues on his feet and a pair of glasses that didn’t sit quite straight on his nose because someone had mended the right temple with adhesive tape. The sight of him standing in the entrance to his wood-paneled hall, with his two elderly springer spaniels waving their heavy tails in welcome, made me homesick for my grandparents.

  Mackenzie led us into his lived-in drawing room and my yearning for home increased. There was a clutter of books and journals on side tables, a vase of late dahlias on a desk in the bowfront window, and a slightly disheveled air of comfort and welcome that made me feel I had stepped into our drawing room at Reaches before the war.

  “Now then, a glass of sherry?”

  Drinks in hand, and a toast to our king solemnly made, Mr. Mackenzie begged to know how he could be of use.

  “It’s about the plane crash,” said Griff.

  Mackenzie shook his head. “Terrible thing, terrible. I knew she was in trouble the moment I saw the damn thing meandering around the sky. You see, I flew in the last war, so I knew there was something wrong when I first heard it.”

  “Did you see or hear it first?”

  The old man frowned down at the carpet with his hands on his hips as he considered.

  “Yes, that’s right.” He nodded. “I heard it and calculated that it was coming from over by the lower field by the railway. I didn’t know at the time if it was one of ours or theirs.”

  “Can you remember how it sounded, sir?”

  Mackenzie cocked his head in concentration. “I could tell it was a single prop. The engine sounded smooth. No stalling, no putt-putt, but . . .” He fixed Griff with his eyes. “Awfully close, much closer than I usually hear them when they fly over from the factories. This time it sounded as if the plane was coming in to land.”

  “I take it that you couldn’t see it from the house?”

  He shook his head. “Too many trees, so I got in my old banger and drove down toward the railway lines.” He waved his arm away from the house and up the drive. “As I came through the gate into the field, by the cutting, the plane came into view. Flying just above the treetops and following along the lines. I was shaken by how large it was and how low it was flying. Great big biplane with its engine suspended over a squarish cockpit between the upper and lower wing. I could tell by the landing gear that it was a seaplane. I drove alongside the railway lines for several hundred yards.” He shook his head at the image he had conjured.

  “What altitude?”

  “Altitude?” He almost laughed and then wrinkled his nose in thought. “It was lumbering along at about a hundred feet. The pilot had obviously been trying to follow the railway line. There was no black smoke and the engine seemed to be working quite normally. It sounded smooth: no stalling or anything.” He glanced at Griff and then at me. “I thought for one moment . . .” He frowned. “I thought for one moment a young boy was taking a joyride, because it looked to me as if the pilot had never flown before. You could have knocked me down with a feather when I found out that it was an ATA pilot with thousands of flying hours to her credit.” He paused and looked away from us. “Then it simply piled into the bridge. Terrible waste. Awful thing to see.”

  Griff sipped his drink and nodded agreement. “How close were you when she crashed, sir? Do you have any idea what time that was?”

  Mackenzie splashed some soda from a siphon into his whiskey glass. “First thing I did was look at my watch. It was ten minutes past ten.” He shook his head as if to clear away the image. “You know, for one moment I looked right up into the cockpit, and I saw her. She half stood up and I thought it looked as if she was trying to do something.”

  “She was alone?” Griff asked.

  “Oh yes, quite alone. I meant to say she was struggling—” He stopped in confusion. “Or . . . I don’t know. Anyway, it was too late. The next thing I knew there was an almighty crash and the plane plunged nose first onto the bridge—three minutes or so after I first saw her.”

  My mouth felt dry, and the sherry had made my head ache. I put the glass down on the table next to my chair.

  Mackenzie came out of his thoughts. “I jumped out of my car and got up on the lower wing. The body of the plane was under the bridge, and the upper wing and the engine were behind it on the track. The door to the cockpit is in the roof and I couldn’t get it open, but I could see her. I ran back to my car and found a wrench and levered the cockpit hatch open with that. She was lying on the floor. It turned out she was dead.”

  He dropped his head. “Funny thing is . . . it looked to me . . .” He passed his hand over his eyes. “This sounds strange, I know, but before she crashed—when I first saw her—it looked to me as if she might have been struggling to get into her parachute. I dismissed it at the time, but when I saw her on the floor she had one shoulder through its harness. If she was an experienced pilot, why was she putting on her chute at such a low altitude? Why wasn’t she trying to get the damn thing’s nose up? It doesn’t make sense.”

  He drew in a long breath. “Elton is a few minutes up the line. I drove up to the Home Guard and called Elton Police. They took over from there. They had the line closed and called an ambulance. If she hadn’t died on impact, I am sure she was gone minutes later. I helped them pull her from the plane.”

  “She was definitely dead?”

  He nodded, “Oh yes, I am quite sure she was dead when I found her.”

  “I know this sounds unpleasant, but was there any evidence that she had been, say, drinking—heavily?”

  Mackenzie looked at Griff as if trying to judge what he should say in front of me.

  “Please be frank with us, Mr. Mackenzie,” I said.

  “From the way she had been flying that’s exactly what I thought, and what I told the police and Commander Abercrombie. I said she looked like she had been drinking. Actually, what I said was that the plane looked as drunk as lord, but there was no smell of alcohol on her at all. She looked, you know, like she had fainted.”

  “No vomit?”

  “No, nothing like that at all. It was easy to see that she was a nice-looking girl. It was such a terrible thing to see her lying in her plane like that.”

  “No smell of carbon monoxide in the cockpit, or maybe petrol?”

  “Ah yes, I see. No, nothing at all. I was completely stumped and so were the pol
ice.”

  Griff got to his feet. “Thank you so much for your time, sir.”

  “Grateful to have helped. So, you work with RAF Intelligence, you say?”

  I know my mouth dropped open like a landed codfish and I had to turn away. I had asked Griff on our way down how he had managed to get an interview with the farmer, and he had been his usual lighthearted and evasive self.

  “That’s right,” he said, his voice offhand and noncommittal. “American Air Force and RAF have a unit that works together to try and solve incidents like these. I just happened to be at Didcote with Miss Redfern when this unfortunate accident occurred. No need for you to talk about this with anyone, Mr. Mackenzie?”

  “Oh, absolutely not, Captain, absolutely not. Of course, my housekeeper knows, but she is not a gossip. I don’t like these newspaper johnnies; they cause more trouble than they are worth.” He walked us to the door and stood on his front step to say good-bye.

  He nodded at Griff’s car. “Now, that’s a sporty little number. What is it?” He strolled out into the sunshine with us to admire the car.

  “Alvis—drophead coupe.”

  “Splendid. I bet you can get some speed out of her.” The old man’s face lit up. “Ah, what it is to be young,” he said. “Beautiful day, nippy little car, and a lovely young woman to keep you company.” He reached down into the jump seat and ruffled Bess’s ears. “Good day to you both. The King’s Arms in Winchester is a decentish place for a spot of lunch, if you have the time. Just tell Ernie Walters that I sent you along.” He smiled at us as if he knew that was where we would be off to. Then, turning, he walked up the steps to his front door, gave us a final wave, and disappeared.

  “What a nice man. We should check out the King’s Arms,” Griff said as we chuntered slowly up the drive. “Now, what do you think about Letty’s crash?”

  “It sounds like she had been drinking something that didn’t smell of alcohol.”