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

by Tessa Arlen

  “She was like our daughter, and we were like her parents. She was an orphan, you know.”

  What?

  “She lost her parents at a very early age. A sad story, as you might already know.”

  I shook my head and took a cup of tea, with a biscuit balanced in its saucer. “No, I didn’t know.”

  Mr. Franklin nodded. “Her mother died when Eddie was a little girl, and not long after that her father—” He looked uncomfortable and glanced across at his wife to finish for him. She merely folded her hands in her lap and tucked her chin down, as if refusing to answer.

  Mr. Franklin cleared his throat. “Well, he did away with himself.” Mrs. Franklin’s eyes slid over to see how I had taken such a shameful act.

  “We don’t know the details,” Mrs. Franklin apologized. “He had been in some sort of business venture after the last war, and his partner stole something from him—patents, wasn’t it?” she asked her husband.

  “Diddled him right good and proper. Stole the designs of a plane he had invented. Stole them and went on to make a fortune.” He shook his head at the evil ways of commerce and those out to make a fortune from the inventiveness of those more deserving and talented.

  “And Edwina?” I asked. “How old was she when her mother died?”

  “Five, and nearly nine when her dad went. Young enough to understand what had happened she was, poor little lass.”

  It took me a few minutes to take this in; it was counter to everything I had heard or had been told by Edwina.

  The embarrassing and sinful topic of suicide out of the way, Mrs. Franklin became more talkative. “Her auntie took her in. She was a single woman. Strict she was, Edwina told us. A chapel-goer.”

  I blinked. What about the flying circus where Edwina had been an aerial acrobat? The flying circus that her uncle had owned?

  “She mentioned something to me about an uncle who had a flying school?”

  Mr. Franklin was quick to shake his head. “No, no uncle. Just a maiden aunt. She ever tell you anything about a flying school?” he asked his wife.

  Mrs. Franklin’s eyes misted, and she groped for her hankie. “She worked at a big flying school just outside of London, in the office. Edwina left home when she was sixteen.”

  “Her aunt’s gone too,” Mr. Franklin said before I could ask. “So, you see, when we say she was like a daughter to us, we were like a mother and father to her—her only family.”

  My tea was stone-cold in my cup. The silence built for a moment.

  “Would you like to see her room? It might help you build a picture of her, for your film.” Mrs. Franklin’s question was tentative, as if she might be presumptive.

  I flushed scarlet. These two straightforward old people, who came from a generation who were fond of saying they knew their place, clearly thought that we would continue to feature Edwina in our film.

  I stumbled to my feet, hot with shame, as if I were there under false pretenses, and nudged Bess with my foot. She had been blatantly begging for another biscuit.

  I followed them through the cramped but immaculate kitchen and out into an orderly victory garden with rows of winter cabbage and stalks of brussels sprouts.

  “We came here when my hubby retired from the post office up in Warmington. We are from the north country.” Mrs. Franklin ushered me up the crazy paving path. “Our son bought us this little place for our retirement. He lived in Southampton, worked for Supermarine in aviation. He was an engineer.” She could not conceal the pride that had crept into her voice. “He lived in the town, of course, but came home every weekend.”

  She carefully opened the back door of the studio.

  “Our son, Malcolm, used this as his studio. He was a painter, you see.” Mrs. Franklin waved her hand around at walls crowded with framed paintings. “Seascapes, landscapes, that sort of thing. Watercolor was his métier.” I nodded.

  I looked around the spacious area Edwina had lived in when she wasn’t flying Spitfires.

  What had I expected? I asked myself as we stood in a well-lit, attractively furnished room with a divan bed covered in bright cushions. Pinups of American actors on the walls? A dressing table covered in cosmetics?

  I stepped forward to admire the paintings. They were mild versions of Turneresque seascapes: misty, ice blue, choppy water raced toward yellow sand beaches. Clouds and sunsets, dawns and rock pools. There were no dark clouds gathering over wind-tormented seas—all was serene. They were soothing in a rather pale way, meticulously painted. There was an easy chair and a small table by the window looking out into the garden. A folded easel in another, and shelves with orderly rows of brushes and paints that were not needed now.

  A small bathroom opened to the left: a blue-and-white-check dressing gown hung on a peg at the back of the door; shampoo, Pond’s cold cream, a basket of cosmetics, and a tooth mug lined up on the windowsill by the hand basin. I turned back into the room. A small wardrobe stood in one corner, a chest of drawers in another with a vase of paper flowers. The boards were varnished, with a red rug by the divan bed. A clock ticked on a bedside table; a pair of slippers peeped out from under the divan. No photographs, no china ornaments, no books. There was nothing at all here of Edwina, except orderliness—there was, I noticed, far more evidence of its former occupant.

  “What a pretty room,” I said. Mrs. Franklin nodded. Her husband had remained outside when we had come into the room. He was leaning against the wall and smoking his pipe.

  “She was such a lovely girl,” she said. “Always willing to lend a hand.” She opened the drawer of the bedside table. There was nothing in it except a narrow bundle of envelopes tied with tape. “Sometimes our neighbor would come over and spend the evening. And we would all enjoy a game of cribbage. We would make an evening of it. Nice fish-and-chip supper, and sometimes we’d listen to It’s That Man Again on the radio. That Tommy Handley is a right laugh, kept us in stitches.”

  I found it hard to imagine Edwina in this immaculate little cottage, playing crib and giggling over England’s favorite radio program.

  “Just the four of us.” Mrs. Franklin’s voice was a whisper. I took the letters from her outstretched hand; the name and address were typed on the face of each envelope: “Miss E. Partridge.”

  “I think these were from her sweetheart. I am not sure what to do with them. Perhaps one of her friends at the ATA, that Mrs. Lukasiewicz she was always talking about, would know.”

  “Did you meet Mrs. Lukasiewicz?” I asked, knowing what the answer would be.

  “No, dear, they were always so busy.” She turned away and opened a wardrobe. “And then there are her clothes.”

  I couldn’t look at them. “I know someone whose daughter died,” I said. “She was a pretty girl, like Edwina, and she had some lovely clothes. Her mother donated them. So many young women are going without these days . . . And if Edwina had no family—”

  “Yes, yes, of course. That’s what my husband suggested. I just wanted to be sure.” As if he had sensed her grief, the door opened and her husband shuffled into the room. He put his hand on his wife’s shoulder.

  “Come on, love. Don’t upset yerself. Eddie died doing what she loved the most. Come on, now.” He nodded vaguely to me and led his wife from the room.

  “Thank you so much for tea,” I said as we stood in their hall. “And for letting me see Edwina’s room. I will drop you a line when the film is ready, so that you can see it in Southampton.” I drew a deep breath. “I’m afraid that there won’t be very much of Edwina’s flying in it.” I decided not to tell them about Letty’s death, not just yet. There is only so much shock and grief the elderly can take, and the Franklins had had their full share.

  “Never go to Southampton, love,” Mr. Franklin said. “Our boy, our Malcolm, was working at the Supermarine factory when they bombed it.”

  “What a pity they
never met,” I said. Thinking how nice their Malcolm sounded, and how wonderful it would have been if Edwina had met him, fallen in love with him, and had more stability in her short life. And then I remembered that I was thinking about their Edwina, the one who was helpful around the house, who enjoyed a quiet evening of cribbage with people old enough to be her parents and their next-door neighbor.

  She smiled. “Yes, we used to tell her that and she would laugh and say that there was no one for her, she was too independent.”

  “How sad,” I said. Determined that this was not going to be my problem.

  “But she did meet someone, didn’t she, love? You remember?” Mrs. Franklin jogged her husband’s arm

  Her husband looked blank for a moment. “Oh yes, he sounded like such a nice chap.”

  His wife flapped her hand at him as if he hadn’t a clue about boyfriends and that sort of stuff. “It was about a year ago; he was a pilot, of course, at one of the big aerodromes.”

  I tried not to sound too eager. “One of the big south-coast airfields?”

  “Yes, one of those.” She puckered her forehead. “She must have met him when she was delivering planes. It had a church in its name.”

  “Hornchurch?” I said, the first name that came into my head.

  She shook her head. “It was on the south coast.”

  “Was she still seeing him?”

  “No, dear—he was lost in a raid.” She put her handkerchief up to her eyes again.

  “August nineteenth, it was.” Her husband put his hand on his wife’s shoulder and drew her to him. “What a day. The fighting went on from dawn until late in the afternoon. The sky was thick with squadrons of fighter planes. We could hear it all going on from here.” I opened their front door and stood for a moment looking out into the peaceful harbor with its bobbing leisure craft. It might be the sort of pretty seaside scene you see on postcards, but I knew only too well how quickly that could change.

  I thanked them and put a protesting Bess in the bike’s basket. “Someone who shared her interests,” I said as I put my foot on the pedal and then took it off again. My head was throbbing with new information: Edwina had had a pilot boyfriend. He was a fighter pilot at one of the big airfields on the south coast! There had been no rich uncle who had owned a flying school, and saddest of all was that Edwina’s childhood had been desolate and lonely. Her father had committed suicide when his business partner had cheated him.

  She might have been making it all up! Ilona’s voice was uncharitable.

  Bess tried to scramble out of the basket. I picked her up and set her down on the ground.

  If there was no rich uncle with a flying school, where had she learned to fly?

  No reason at all why she didn’t learn to fly in that school—even if she was an office worker, Ilona pointed out. It seems that our Edwina was the enterprising type.

  So far as I could see, Edwina was becoming more difficult to puzzle out each day. And why had she not invited her best friend, the Countess Lukasiewicz, back to her digs to enjoy a homey evening with the Franklins? Zofia didn’t strike me as being a snob.

  Maybe they were not as close as we think they were. Edwina was clearly unpredictable and not much of a girl’s girl, and if you don’t mind my saying so, I think that countess is a deep one too.

  NINETEEN

  BESS COULD HARDLY KEEP PACE WITH ME AS I PEDALED BACK TO the inn. I couldn’t wait to share my thoughts with Griff on what was amounting to Edwina’s double life here in Didcote. As I pedaled up the hill and came to a halt at the inn’s side entrance, I remembered Zofia’s words just before I had left her cottage: “It is you who he wants. It is you who he is interested in—why else would he be here in this wretchedly damp little village?”

  Perhaps Griff and I could stroll down to the pub for lunch and then take Bess for a lovely long walk along the river, I thought, failing to notice that a strong wind was blowing in from the Solent.

  As I came in through the front door of the inn, a tall figure emerged from the gloom. “Here you are. I’ve been worried sick about you. I thought some half-crazed ATA pilot had taken you for a joyride in her plane and shoved you out without a parachute.”

  I hung my coat and beret up on a peg. “I have the most wonderful—”

  “Where have you been? Five hours ago, you were going to talk to the Attas before they left for work, which they must have done at half past eight!”

  His voice had that ominous quality of someone pushed beyond patience into fuming endurance and finally to outrage that could only be expressed in an undertone, because Mr. Evans was polishing glasses five feet away in the bar, and his wife was fussing around with table linen in the dining room. Griff turned and walked down the dark corridor, and, naturally curious to understand why a thunderstorm was brewing, I followed. Together we made a quick circuit of the living room to its farthest corner.

  “Edwina was living some sort of double—” I stopped. The light from the French windows illuminated the face of a man who had evidently spent an exasperating and worrying morning: his hair was sticking up in the front, his tie was pulled to the side, and he looked disheveled and tired.

  “I drove over to the cottage”—his arm made a wide circle—“and hammered on the door until my knuckles were pulp. No answer. Then I made a tour of both the airfield and then the village.” His arm made a wider circle. “I looked everywhere. Everywhere. No one had seen you; no one had spoken to you. And then on top of that, I get back here and Mrs. Evans proudly reminds me you are entertaining that old billy goat to lunch!”

  “Billy goat?”

  “God give me patience: Sir Basil Stowe. That old dog from the Ministry of I Chase Young Women.” His temper had at least cooled now that he could talk above a whisper.

  It was true I had breezed off to have a quick word with June and Zofia. And with all the excitement and information that the morning had produced, I had completely forgotten about Sir Basil.

  “Griff, I am so sorry.” He pulled a postcard from his pocket and flapped it at me. “Really, I am most terribly sorry. Time just seemed to flash by. One moment I was talking to the Franklins, then the next I was pedaling like hell for the inn. I completely forgot about—”

  “It’s nearly one o’clock!” He strove for reason.

  “What?” I looked at my watch and shook my wrist: five minutes past one. “Oh no!” From the dining room I heard the laconic tones of a man who is inquiring after not only his lunch, but his luncheon companion as well.

  “I completely forgot about Sir Basil,” I said, getting up and wishing I could at least comb through my hair and wash my face and hands.

  “I know.” His voice and his brow were angry and wrinkled. Bess crawled under a coffee table. “I would rather you didn’t—” he said.

  “Well, I can’t get out of it now; he’s already here. Anyway, I know he is a bit of a womanizer—”

  He closed his eyes and shook his head like Bessie does with a stick she is trying to kill. “That isn’t the half of it.”

  “I will be fine: Mr. Evans will be in the bar, Mrs. Evans practically sitting in our laps offering us turnip pie with impeccable service. Did you talk to Mac Wilson?”

  He was still holding the postcard. “Mac Wilson is a moron,” he said. “A complete moron. But this”—he flapped the card at me—“this is important. So, when you have finished eating poison pie with your lunch date, promise, whatever you do, please promise that you will stay here and talk to me?”

  “What’s in the postcard? Can I read it now, just quickly?”

  “No, you can’t, because here is your pal Sir Basil. I will wait here for you, and when you have finished lunch I will read it to you.” He spaced out his words as if I was slow-witted. “Poppy, I’m begging you: no leaving with Sir Basil on some innocuous errand and no taking impromptu flights with ATA pilots. After you have finis
hed your treacle pudding you will come right back here? Capisce?”

  “Yes, capeesh. All right to leave Bess with you? They don’t let dogs in the dining room.”

  And I left, my head down in contrition and my heart singing. Men who cared evidently tied themselves in knots if you disappeared for five hours in the middle of a murder inquiry.

  * * *

  * * *

  “CAPTAIN O’NEAL NOT going to join us?” Sir Basil got to his feet as I was conducted to his table by a glowing Mrs. Evans.

  “No, he has another appointment.”

  We were the only people for lunch, which wasn’t surprising, because Mrs. Evans, affable, likable soul that she is, may look like the perfect innkeeper—her round, red, happy face greets you to every meal in her dining room—but she and her ally in the kitchen haven’t a clue how to create something out of nothing.

  When Griff referred to poison pie, it wasn’t because of our original suspicion that Letty and Edwina had met their deaths by poison; it was a fact. Everything Mrs. Evans served up in her dining room had a dullish gray patina as if it had waited for you for a long time, gathering bacteria to it like flies to jam. Even her scrambled eggs looked like they had been made for last week’s breakfast.

  Sir Basil was evidently one of those men who could care less what he ate, but he was admirably and perfectly dressed. From his dazzling white starched shirt collar knotted with an exclusive public school tie to the quiet sheen of his handmade brogues at the bottom of his Savile Row tweed trousers, he exemplified the affluent prewar country gentleman.

  “My dear Miss Redfern. I am so glad you can make time for me!” He smiled, and there was just the right touch of Edinburgh in his accent as he scooted me and my chair into place at the table.

  “What a busy time we are all having,” he said as he smiled across the table. His clear blue eyes crinkled in a smile at the corners. Mrs. Evans blushed as she put down a handwritten menu on the table between us.

  “Errfs with pommes frites,” she read for us. “Followed by my handmade mutton pie avec pommes de terres, and”—a smile of pure pride—“for afters: a lovely treacle pudding, made fresh yesterday morning.” She simpered at Sir Basil, made a little bob that might have been a curtsy, and retired to await our pleasure and gaze at herself in the hall mirror.