by Tessa Arlen
Sir Basil wrinkled his nose. “Have you eaten here before, Miss Redfern?”
“Poppy.”
“Ah yes, such a delightful name. Poppy. I should have suggested the pub, but Mrs. Evans—” He left it to me to understand that our hostess’s feelings would be deeply hurt.
I sipped water and smoothed the way to other topics. “I love the view of the river from here, and you can see Ansons taking off from the airfield.”
“Best view in Didcote,” said Sir Basil without taking his gaze off my face. “Pie?” He turned to the hovering Mrs. Evans to signal that we were ready.
“We will have the pie,” Sir Basil said.
“And to drink?” She batted her eyelashes.
“Why, beer, of course.” And to me: “Mr. Evans’s ale is extraordinarily good.” And with the folderol of ordering over and done with, I launched into the first of my many questions.
“So, you flew with my father, Sir Basil,” I reminded him.
There was just the slightest hesitation. “I certainly did. Well, he was transferred to my squadron at the beginning of the war. After the Battle of the Somme, which took tremendous casualties on land, sea, and in the air, he was moved to another squadron with Bunty Everdean. Great chap, Bunty. Pity he didn’t see the war out. Not many of us did.”
And not many of them had gone on to such an astounding success. June had told me on my first evening at Didcote that not only had Sir Basil designed and built aircraft of significant importance to the RAF, but from his expensive clothes, his abundant wine cellar, and his beautiful Bentley, which I could see parked outside the dining room window, he had clearly made a packet doing so.
Sir Basil propped his strong, manly chin up on a long-fingered hand. “What I appreciated about your father was that he had a wonderful touch with the common man. He was a real leader: stand them a drink at the end of a long day, that sort of thing.” A faint smile. “A bit of carousing rallies the boys when the going gets tough.”
Had he got the right name? I wanted to say “Redmayne? Redford? Redwing?” because people rarely get my surname quite right. There are hundreds of names that start with “Red” in Britain. It comes from the Old English “Read,” which means red-faced or red-haired.
“He died just before I was born, so I never met him.”
“You have his quick wit. He always had a way with words—no one could tell a joke like Clive.” Sir Basil’s eyes crinkled at the corners again.
That did it; there had to be some sort of mix-up. According to my grandparents, who had enjoyed telling me all about my parents, my father was a reserved and private individual. True, he had a sharp wit, which he shared only with closest friends and family. He wasn’t a snob or anything, just a bit of a loner. I knew he had been a war hero, but it certainly wasn’t for being one of the boys, for standing a few rounds and getting them all to sing “Pack Up Your Troubles” to take their mind off their raid the next morning. I had rather got the impression from Uncle Ambrose that my father’s heroism took the form of simply getting on with it, in his own quiet way, and looking out for the men in his squadron. So much so that he lost his life in the last months of the war.
I decided to test the accuracy of Sir Basil’s memory. “My grandad told me that he was very attached to his little Jack Russell, Jock. Took him everywhere,” I said, eating a piece of poison pie and washing it down quickly with beer.
Sir Basil smiled into his glass. “So he did. I had almost forgotten Jock. Fearless little chap.”
“Used to sit on the airstrip and wait for him,” I wickedly lied.
“And loyal. Wouldn’t come in for his dinner until his master came home.”
I nearly choked on my pie! Sir Basil might have known Clive Redfern briefly during the last war, but my father had left his faithful old Labrador at home when he had joined up. I was done with reminiscing with this ridiculous man. It was part of his charm to yarn away about old fallen comrades. It made him sentimental and likable—more attractive to young women. Well, I didn’t like unreliable men.
“So, what is the verdict on Edwina’s crash?” I asked him.
“Verdict? Ah yes, I see. The accident committee made their report yesterday evening. They had made a thorough inspection of both planes. Despite the damage done to both, they were able to ascertain that there were no inherent flaws that might have caused either plane to malfunction in flight.” He steepled his fingertips together and rested them gently against his well-shaped mouth. “Hmm.” He looked across at me and raised one regretful eyebrow. “So, um, yes. I’m afraid it’s as we expected: pilot error.”
I stared at him in disbelief. Pilot error? “Does that mean that the committee believes that neither Edwina nor Letty knew what they were doing?” I asked. “I mean that they were both flying planes that they were very familiar with, and Vera said that the machines were in top condition. Goodness, even the weather was perfect for October! How on earth could they lose control?”
“Well, now . . . let’s not be too hasty. Sadly, we often never know what happened. Look at Amy Johnson—they never even found her—”
I didn’t give a hoot about Amy Johnson. “How can they say pilot error when both of them were excellent pilots with thousands of flying hours? Edwina was giving a demonstration she had done hundreds of times.”
“Ah yes, Edwina. A delightful young woman.” He shook his head. “So full of life, and such a skillful pilot. Nothing I saw her do that morning gave any indication that she wasn’t in top form.”
“But if she was in tip-top form and the plane she was flying was in tip-top condition, why did she crash?”
“I can see these accidents have distressed you, Miss Redfern. Of course they have.” He bent his head as if considering what to say next. “You see”—he lifted his clear blue eyes to mine—“Edwina, well, Edwina had some problems. She was overworked and under stress. Her tangle with the Luftwaffe had left her rather, shall we say, emotionally vulnerable. Women are . . .” He smiled and I gritted my teeth. “Women are more sensitive than men.” He nodded at the wisdom of his words and then glanced at me to see how they had been received. “I would never say that out loud, you understand. Our Attagirls are strong, highly intelligent women. All superbly trained; many of them do their job better than their male counterparts.” He pushed a piece of pie around on his plate, and I said nothing at all as I concentrated on keeping my breath even. I could bet on it that Letty’s accident had been written off as an accident simply because she was a woman. Never mind that she was in her early twenties: fit, alert, and sober. She had flown more hours than most of the RAF top flyboys. Bosh, I heard Ilona say, what complete and utter bosh. I hate it when men say how “sensitive” we are. As if we crumble into tiny little pieces at the drop of a hat. Next thing you know he will be blaming it on the full moon.
“I see. So, are you saying that Edwina lost her nerve?”
He started to shake his head and then turned it into a reluctant nod. He hadn’t mentioned her drinking, her anonymous letters, or the fact that some believed the Luftwaffe story was a fantasy. “I am only saying that she possibly lost her nerve. It happens to the best of us.”
Not to you, though, you old crocodile, I thought. You have the coolest nerve.
Bloody piffle, just plain bloody piffle. Ilona was livid.
“Now, Miss Redfern.” The old charmer spread his hands wide across the table. “How does the Crown Film Unit plan to proceed with this film you have half made?”
I thought about this for the briefest second. “Most of our focus, and our footage, was on Edwina. And because the Spitfire is a Battle of Britain hero in its own right, an emblem of our superiority in the air, the British people will want to see a Spitfire in the film. Unfortunately, we don’t have quite enough footage of it before the crash.”
“Which you won’t be including.”
“This is a film to
entice young women to join the ATA, not frighten them off.”
A toothy smile. “I have to say, my dear, that most of the great British public wouldn’t know a Spitfire from a Hurricane.”
“I am afraid you are wrong, Sir Basil,” I said. “We are a nation of plane spotters—we know our Spitfires!”
He frowned. Sir Basil, senior official at the Ministry of Aircraft Production, might oversee the Air Transport Auxiliary all over the south coast, but it was Mr. Fanshaw who ran the Crown Film Unit, and we all know that keeping the British public consciously patriotic is Mr. Churchill’s top priority.
“We have footage of all the planes the other five pilots flew, but we will probably need to shoot more film of a Spitfire in flight, and then we can call it a day.”
He pushed himself back in his chair. “But why? The archives must be full of Spitfire film.”
“Apparently not. Anyway, the final decision will be made by Mr. Fanshaw sometime today.”
“What about the film Huntley and Keith shot of our lunch? Surely they are going to include that. Surely that will give everyone a sense of what a nice, big, happy family the ATA is?”
I smiled my sweetest smile; I wasn’t going to tell this man that that piece of film had been filched. “Yes, it’s a nice touch, but basically what the public are thrilled about is the Spitfire. And a Spitfire being flown by a woman.”
He frowned down at his plate. “It will be a bit hard to interrupt our work schedule for another round of filming,” he demurred.
“Mr. Fanshaw knows that and he will be very respectful of the ATA’s schedule,” I promised without having a clue what Fanny thought or intended. I made my voice sympathetic. “I know it won’t be the same without Edwina. I wish I had known her better.” I sighed. “Known about her life a little more. Her family must be devastated. Did she have a large family—brothers and sisters?” The light tattoo of his fingers on the tablecloth as he considered what another day of filming would involve stopped.
He frowned and shook his head. “I’m afraid to say I don’t know.” He looked rueful. “I knew so little about her.”
A snort of derision from Ilona. Wasn’t he sleeping with her? Or involved in a way that upset poor old Vera Abercrombie to no end?
I said nothing to either of them. The light beat of his fingertips on the tablecloth started up again. “Yes, I suppose we could arrange for another morning of filming,” he said graciously.
“Oh good. Who would you suggest fly a Spitfire for us?”
“Not my decision, my dear. That is up to Didcote ATA’s commanding officer,” he said rather pompously.
* * *
* * *
“SIR BASIL SAID the ATA Accident Committee inspector thinks both crashes were pilot error!” I found Griff standing on the mossy terrace, smoking a cigarette, as soon as I had said good-bye to Sir Basil.
“Course they did. They are protecting Didcote ATA.”
“What?”
“The pilots are dead—there was evidently nothing wrong with the aircraft that they could find, and, well, I guess it’s easy to blame the pilot.”
How cynical, I thought, how cynical and lazy.
“I know,” Griff commiserated. “War is ugly, but bureaucrats and politicians are uglier. But I have some news, and I think you’ll say it’s ‘interesting’ news!” He could hardly disguise his triumph.
“Zofia wasn’t supposed to fly the day that Letty died.” Griff took me by the arm as we watched Sir Basil negotiating the tight turn out of the inn’s drive in his Bentley. He steered me away from the drive around to the back of the inn and into the windswept garden that overlooked the river. “Zofia was taken off Didcote’s delivery schedule on the morning Letty was killed. Look.” He pulled a bent white card from the inside pocket of his coat. “Vera uses these cards to organize the daily delivery schedules from White Waltham’s master schedule.”
I stared at what appeared to be typed code: “Lukasiewicz, Zofia (Class III) Thurs. 10/8/42 Ferry p/u Mos Ser. DK134 @ de Hav. Fac. Hat. To Sqd. 398 BHA. 0700.” I stared at the card. “I don’t understand all these abbreviations, do you?”
“It says: Zofia what’s her name, who has a Class Three license, was scheduled to fly on Thursday, October eighth. Picking up a Mosquito, serial number DK134, from the de Havilland factory in Hatfield to deliver it to Bomber Squadron 398 at Biggin Hill Airfield. This was written up at oh seven hundred hours. See the date and time in the corner? But it is crossed through. She was taken off the schedule!”
“But Zofia did fly that day. She flew to Biggin Hill. I was there. I saw her being given one of these cards. Why had she been taken off and then put back on again just over an hour later?” I asked.
He shrugged. “I don’t know. You were there. What did you see?”
It had been an awful meal. The five of them silently eating their greasy breakfast like automatons. Zofia, pale-faced and withdrawn, hunched over her coffee, too miserable to eat.
“Zofia was wretched, so wretched she couldn’t eat her breakfast, but Letty did—she ate her own breakfast and then Zofia’s. Does this prove that Zofia was taken off the schedule because she might have been thought too upset to fly, and was put back on to . . . ?” I couldn’t finish my thought because it sounded so incredibly melodramatic.
“To die.” His face was as earnest as his words.
Bessie stopped digging out a promising subterranean hole at the edge of the river and ran back to see what was going on.
“How did you find this?” I waved the card at him.
“It’s a chit,” he said, as if such a thing were public property and available at the local library. His evasive glance meant that he knew I wouldn’t approve. “Each pilot is issued with one when her work assignment is made. Some of them have two or three, depending on the number of planes they deliver. The pilot takes her chit with her. When she checks in at the factory, they rubber-stamp it with the date and write the time next to it. It’s like her passport to the factory ground crew and riggers to release the plane to her for delivery. Then when the pilot delivers the plane at the destination airfield, they rubber-stamp it again with the squadron code and the date. At smaller airfields they just tear off a corner. When the pilots come back to their ferry pool, they check in with their CO and hand in the cards to be reconciled with the ATA logbook and the pilot’s personal flying log. All the returned cards are kept together with the logbook. It’s a simple method for tracking who delivered which aircraft where and when.”
I looked down at the card in my hand. The abbreviations were quite clear now even if they had two horizontal lines of ink neatly run through them.
“So, where did you find this? Griff, you didn’t go through Vera’s office, did you?” Regrettably Zofia would have found my tone stuffy—lecturing, even.
“Her wastebin, to be exact.” He ran his hand through his hair. “For God’s sake, Poppy, it was a wastebin—minutes away from a trash bin!”
I couldn’t believe how offhand he was about rooting through the contents of the commanding officer of Didcote ATA’s office. Vera’s wastepaper basket wasn’t the only place he had looked. It was clear that Griff’s war duties still blurred from those of pilot to something else entirely. “Did you find any other useful information?”
“I had to make sure that I understood their scheduling method. I went through the logbook for October eighth and compared all the chits with the entries. Sure enough, their system is as I described. But I found another chit, issued for Zofia, the same as the one you are holding. It had two rubber stamps to indicate that she had completed her delivery for that day.” He paused; despite his extraordinary discovery, his expression didn’t show that he took pleasure in it. “There was no chit for Letty. I’m sure that there is a procedure for unreturned chits.”
I held the card in my hands. I was so astonished, all I could do was stare up
at him. “I think this proves that Zofia was meant to crash her plane on her flight from Hatfield to Biggin Hill, doesn’t it?” I asked Griff.
“Maybe. C’mon, let’s walk. My feet are like ice.” We paced forward a few yards.
“How far away from us is Hatfield?”
“I can’t be sure about immediate flight time from Hatfield to Biggin Hill in a Mosquito because it wouldn’t be a straight route. There are so many airfields in the south, both RAF and AAAF, that they all have barrage-balloon protection. Zofia would have those marked on her maps and would have to fly around them. I think it said fifteen hundred hours on the Biggin Hill stamp for her arrival.”
I subtracted twelve from fifteen. Three o’clock. “Do you think Vera organized it?”
“She might have. She was in a perfect position to do so, but it doesn’t mean she did, does it? Perhaps she decided Zofia was too upset by her friend’s death to fly and then Zofia insisted and went. After all, what was Vera’s motive to kill Zofia? I don’t see that she had one. If Edwina was sleeping with Basil Stowe, I suppose she might take revenge on her in that crazy way. But why would she want Zofia out of the way?”
In my limited experience of what motivates people to kill a second time, it was the fear that their second victim knew something or had seen something that made the murderer a suspect.
I tried to remember everything I had heard and seen in the past forty-eight hours that might give us proof of our suspicions. “I found out this morning, from Edwina’s landlords, Mr. and Mrs. Franklin, that their version of Edwina’s life was so much more straightforward and . . . well, I suppose I could say acceptable, than the one that involves poison-pen letters and hangovers.” And I told him all about my visit to Zofia and then to the Franklins.
