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

by Tessa Arlen

  “Aha, my thoughts exactly. Do you have any chemists in your family?”

  “My family is very small. But I think I should call my uncle Ambrose because he knows absolutely everyone. And he’s in intelligence, just like you, so I bet he has a chemist or two in his back pocket.”

  He laughed and did not acknowledge any dealings with military intelligence, counter or otherwise. “Now, we have a choice: either have a nice spot of lunch at the King’s Arms, or we drive down to the railway bridge and check out the plane.”

  “I vote for the plane.”

  “I vote for both.”

  * * *

  * * *

  “IT’S AN UGLY-LOOKING thing,” I said as we drove onto the part of the bridge that wasn’t covered in debris from the crash.

  “Yes, she’s a tough old brute, all right, but if you’re treading water in the drink and it’s so damn cold you can’t feel your legs, you would be only too grateful to see this old gal come in to land. Of course, the noise inside the cockpit would be pretty loud, and apparently they are as much fun in the air to fly as a bathtub.” He climbed out of the car and slid down the muddy grass bank from the lane onto the railway track, then got up on the plane’s lower wing, or what there was left of it. And down I slithered to be hauled up onto the wing that sat level with the cockpit.

  Griff stepped down into the cockpit and turned to help me through, and to my surprise I found myself in quite a spacious area.

  “Built for a rescue crew,” Griff said as I looked around me.

  “Good heavens,” I said as I spotted an anchor and thick coils of rope lying on the floor.

  “Yep, once she lands on water she becomes a boat, until she takes off again.” He made a thorough check of the cockpit.

  “From what Mackenzie said, Letty wasn’t strapped into her seat when she crashed. Look, here’s her chute.” It was lying at the back of the plane behind the pilot seat. “Why on earth was she trying to put on her chute at a hundred feet?” He stood behind the pilot seat. “What the hell was going on?”

  “Was she getting ready to jump out when it crashed?”

  “Yes, you would think so. But at that height it would have been a liability, and Letty would know that if she was a Class Five. You know what I think? I think she was disoriented. Didn’t know what she was doing.” He sniffed. “Any gas in here would have long since dissipated out of that open door.” He pointed upward.

  “Carbon monoxide?”

  “Yes, that’s possible. Exhaust from the engine might have seeped into the cockpit from a leak. Too much of it will kill you; just enough will make you dizzy and disoriented; a good dose will knock you out. Mackenzie said he couldn’t smell gas when he opened the cockpit door, and if there was enough carbon monoxide to make her disoriented, it would have made him pretty sick too.”

  We stood in the middle of the cockpit with its jumble of sea-rescue equipment. “What do you think?” he asked.

  “Mackenzie said he couldn’t understand why she was trying to put on her parachute instead of trying to get the plane’s nose up. That sounds like she was confused and that she didn’t know what was happening. How long would it take Mackenzie to get out of his car, down this bank, find the door jammed, and then go back for his wrench?”

  Griff climbed up out of the cockpit. He jumped down off the wing and scrambled up the bank. When he got to the Alvis he looked at his watch. “He wouldn’t do it as quickly as I did, so about four or five minutes at the most.”

  “So if there was a gas leak he would smell it?”

  “Probably the first thing he would have noticed.”

  “Maybe she was disoriented from something else!”

  He stood looking at me for a moment, and then he said, “Yes, I think you are right. She either ate, drank, or inhaled something that wasn’t alcohol, carbon monoxide, or rat poison.”

  “And so did Edwina!” I said with more than a little conviction. “That is why the film of our picnic lunch is missing, and why Letty crashed her plane after eating Zofia’s breakfast!”

  “I don’t think we have time to stop in Winchester for a decentish lunch after all,” said Griff.

  “No, but we do have to find a telephone box as fast as we can—I think Zofia might be in very real danger.”

  FOURTEEN

  WOULD YOU BE PREPARED TO PAY A VISIT TO MY UNCLE AMbrose in London?” I asked Griff as he started up the car. “I have a feeling he might know of someone who could be helpful about poisons—or knockout drops. I know the government pay a lot of attention to things like poison gas—you know the sort of thing they used in the last war?” I turned my head to catch a long-suffering look from the driver.

  “Are you coming too?”

  “No, I think I am going to drop in on the greater Attas if they are at home—and see if I can get a sense of what was really going on at that picnic on the airstrip.”

  “Perhaps I should come with you. I can be helpful about the aviation side.”

  I had thought about this. Women tend to open up and relax with other women, far more so if they are all girls together. The presence of my dashing American friend would have the reverse effect. “I think I would be better off on my own with the Attagirls, but if Ambrose is free tonight would you please go and talk to him? You know what questions to ask.”

  I could tell he didn’t like the idea at all. “Whereas you would know what questions to ask of the Attagirls about flying?”

  “Yes, something like that. I think I know what sort of questions to ask women who have lost two friends in as many days in flying accidents.” To me the Walrus and the Spitfire had become murder weapons. The question that was pushing me forward was who had used them and was Zofia the next Attagirl to take a nosedive in her plane.

  But Griff, who never lets small things stand in the way of the infinite possibilities, lifted his hands in surrender. “Sure, I’ll go, if he knows someone who could help us. A man—”

  “Or a woman.” I was beginning to like the idea of us girls stepping out of line.

  “Exactly, or a woman who has made a study of toxins: germ warfare, that sort of thing. And if he does, I would be happy to go up to London. I doubt very much if a poison expert would want to talk to me anyway, even if he was free this evening.”

  “Thank you so much, Griff.” I looked at my watch. “Great heavens, it’s almost two o’clock! We have to find a phone box quickly!”

  There are three crossroads and two T junctions between Elton and Winchester, and not a single one of them had a telephone box perched conveniently by the side of the road.

  “Damn,” I said at the first empty intersection.

  “Blast”—as we slowed down for the next.

  “Damn and blast,” I cried as we zoomed through the last one, well on our way to Winchester.

  Griff slowed down as we came into town.

  “The King’s Arms—Mr. Mackenzie’s recommendation for a decentish lunch,” Griff said as he turned into the gravel in front of the inn.

  “But we don’t have time to eat,” I wailed, wondering how anyone could think of food at a time like this.

  “Hold on to your hat, Poppy. Good Lord, you’re like a cat on hot bricks.” He stopped the car. “There will be a phone here,” he explained.

  “Will you stay here with Bess while I go in and telephone?”

  “Don’t trust me, do you?”

  I was already halfway to the inn.

  “Hey, hold up,” he called as I pushed open the door. “You got enough money?”

  * * *

  * * *

  “MY DEAR GIRL!” Ambrose has what we English call a hearty voice, and I moved the receiver two inches from my ear.

  “I have to be quick—this is a trunk call,” I explained.

  “Off you go, then, my dear, how I can be of help?”

 
What an obliging old darling my uncle is! Within minutes of the briefest of explanations he came up with immediate help, and he did so without a lot of prying questions. I like to think it’s because he works at the Admiralty, where everything is studiedly hush-hush, but it is probably because my bachelor uncle is the soul of discretion and always respectful of what he describes as other people’s privates.

  “Where is young O’Neal now?” he boomed, causing the desk clerk to look in my direction and frown.

  “We are in Winchester.”

  “Righto, just minutes away from Didcote. So, you can drive up and meet me and my old school friend Mathew Cadogan at my club. We’ll be there early, at six. You are welcome to join us for drinks and then dinner.”

  “It will just be Griff; I have a dinner engagement.” There was a long pause. We hadn’t been cut off because I could hear him breathing like a horse.

  “Splendid! Now, everything going well at the new job? Splendid, splendid. Tell O’Neal I’m looking forward to meeting him again.” And he was gone.

  I walked out to the car and found Griff staring through the windscreen with rather a bleak expression on his face. It lightened as he saw me.

  “All set!” I said as he opened the car door. “Ambrose has a best friend from his old school days who knows everything about anything to do with poisons. He’s in forensics, whatever that is. They will both meet you at Ambrose’s club: the Travellers, 106 Pall Mall.”

  “Oh good.” But he didn’t seem to really think so.

  “Thank you so much for doing this. I promise, Ambrose is one of those people who mellow on second meetings.”

  He pulled out into the road and turned the car back in the direction of Didcote. “That’s reassuring. Last time I felt as if I had gone back to the days of the great British Raj. He was the viceroy and I was some sort of native bearer. I am sure everything would have been fine if I was an Old Etonian.”

  “An Old Wykehamist. He went to Winchester. It’s just his manner. I know he is not quite so . . . well, as informal and pally as my grandfather.” I thought about this for a moment. My grandfather is fascinated by young fighting men, and he reveres Griff, firstly because my father was a pilot in the last war, and secondly because he had never met a man who could go into a kitchen and come out an hour or two later with a perfectly roasted sirloin of beef. My uncle Ambrose can be a bit stuffy until he gets to know you.

  “I know what you mean by Ambrose’s interrogative style; it can be awfully heavy going. If he gets on to California again and starts asking endless questions—”

  “Which he will.”

  “Then just tell him how many thousands of acres your father owns in Orange County. That’ll shut him up.”

  “I seriously doubt it will.”

  * * *

  * * *

  THE SHADOWS WERE deepening to indigo as we drove back to Didcote. I took a long, appreciative sniff of the dank tang of autumn, underscored here and there with the sweet smell of woodsmoke as we passed darkened houses.

  Griff glanced over his shoulder to Bess and nodded for me to observe that she had her long nose up in the air too.

  “The violet hour,” he said. “Do you think you’ll take to flying?”

  “It was enthralling.” I remembered the tiny world below me and Letty’s kindness. “I am not awfully sure I have that kind of physical courage, though. I think I’ll keep it for Ilona. It’s the sort of thing she would thrive on.” He knew that Ilona was the protagonist of my first novel, but not that she popped in and out of my head with various observations, encouragement, and the occasional dressing-down.

  “I’ll take you up if you like,” he said.

  “Would you, Griff? I would love that.” I thought of the meadow above Elton as I inhaled autumn air and gazed at a sky that was mauve and yellow on the horizon and a deep, darkening blue above us.

  “Good, then we’ll have to get our hands on a nice two-seater Tiger. Maybe the ATA would lend us theirs. The beginning and the end of day are miraculous from above. I don’t think there is a flyer in the world who doesn’t feel real peace in that moment of being airborne. It’s the separation from all the worries of the world as you lift up and the earth drops away from you—I feel that way even if I’m going on a mission.” I turned my head to look at the darkening hedgerow whipping past me. I couldn’t begin to imagine how that would feel, that moment of being airborne with him.

  We drove on in silence down deepening lanes; the dimmed blackout headlights shone dully on the road’s surface ahead of us. As night closed in and we drove through anonymous villages, I imagined that Griff and I were traveling together in time, skimming through the dark, entirely alone in the world. If I hadn’t been anxious that poison was involved and that Zofia might be in serious danger, I would have wanted our drive from Winchester to Didcote to go on forever.

  Just as we drew level with Didcote Airfield, I broke the silence.

  “Thank you for driving up to London. I know my uncle can be a bit much.”

  I sensed his smile in the dark. “It’s okay. I think it will be a useful meeting. Anything you want me to ask in particular?”

  “If the poison was put in food it would have to be tasteless, wouldn’t it?”

  “Camp coffee would disguise something bitter, though. Are we looking at a couple of hours before it takes effect? What time did you break for lunch when you were filming?”

  “One o’clock, but Edwina started in as soon as the food was brought out. She flew her Spitfire just after half past three.”

  “Two to three hours, then.” He pulled up outside the heavy shadow of the cottage. “Hard to tell if anyone’s in,” he said as we peered into the dense shrubbery in front of the building. “There’s a bicycle propped against the porch railing.” The three of us sniffed the air. “And someone has a wood fire going.”

  He turned and leaned toward me, and on cue my heart rate picked up the pace. “And yesterday morning, breakfast was over at what time, eight?”

  “What? Oh, breakfast! Probably a bit earlier: Letty was still eating. We got up from the table at half past seven and they were walking out to the air taxi at eight.”

  “Mm-hm. Plane crashed two hours after Letty ate Zofia’s breakfast. We are looking for something that would knock them out or disorient them enough to lose control of the plane. Something that could be put in their food or drink without them tasting it. Pretty tall order for Ambrose’s Mr. Cadogan. Wonder what he’ll come up with.” He got out and came around to open my door, and Bess leapt out and made a big thing of stretching on the path.

  “How many of them live here?” I asked.

  “June, Grable, Annie, and Zofia share this one. I have no idea where Letty put up. But I do know that when Sir Basil visits Didcote he stays at Vera’s house at the airfield.”

  “They’re married?” Nothing could have surprised me more.

  I heard him chuckle in the dark. “What a sweet innocent you are. No, they are not married; they are just good friends. It’s not a secret, but it isn’t openly discussed either—so English.”

  Trust Griff to know about everyone’s sleeping arrangements, I thought.

  “Good hunting with the Attagirls. I’ll just wait here until you find out if they’re home.” He was standing so close to me that I caught the faint cedar scent of his cologne.

  “I hope you . . . don’t think . . .” he said and ground to a halt.

  “Think what?”

  “Oh . . . that I am happy to drive up to London and leave you alone with four potential poisoners!” He got into his car, switched on the ignition, and waited as I lifted the iron-forged knocker.

  That was not what you were going to say, I thought, as the cottage door opened and Griff pulled out into the road.

  FIFTEEN

  IT WAS GRABLE WHO ANSWERED MY KNOCK. SHE WAS IN HER DRESSing gown,
with her head wrapped in a towel.

  “Come on in, Poppy, if you don’t mind mounds of wet towels—it’s hair-washing night.”

  “Are dogs welcome?”

  “We would be honored. Annie might even have a bone for her somewhere.” She crouched down and made the proper fuss that Bess required.

  It was warm and bright inside the long, low-ceilinged room that served as both kitchen and living space. A scrubbed pine table with an assortment of ill-matched wooden chairs clustered around it separated the kitchen from the sitting room. It was furnished with large, sagging sofas and chairs with loose covers of faded chintz. The cottage’s black-oak roof beams contrasted starkly with its roughly plastered walls and ceiling. In a recess in the far right corner a flight of stairs that led up to the second floor was half-concealed by a heavy curtain on iron rings. Logs burned in a deep stone fireplace where Zofia was seated drying her hair. In the kitchen in front of a heavy old-fashioned iron stove, Annie was frying something delicious in a pan.

  “June not back yet?” I asked Grable as she straightened up from Bess and wrapped her head more tightly in its towel.

  “Oh yes, she’s back. Playing darts up at the mess with the others.” By “the others” I assumed she meant the lesser Attas.

  Annie looked up briefly from her frying pan and nodded a hullo, and Zofia waved a hand as she brushed through her hair. I had prepared myself for more shock and grief at the news of Letty’s crash, but evidently they had only just returned from two days of ferrying planes, so perhaps they hadn’t heard from Vera yet.

  I had an excuse for the reason for my uninvited call ready, but now that I was standing in their relaxed, unpretentious home, I was saved from sounding awkward, or just plain insincere, by Grable.

  “Have you come up with a solution for your film? Are we all going to be stars?”

  A light knock on the cottage door announced the arrival of another caller.