by Tessa Arlen
“Fanny’s upset because we have gone over schedule,” Huntley grumbled.
“Hardly our bloomin’ fault if the star goes for a Burton in the middle of the sodding pitcher.” Keith may be wearing his cap back to front, the way cameramen do in Hollywood, but his vowels and missing consonants were emphatically from the Mile End Road. Griff, who often tries to imitate a cockney accent, hung on his every word.
He picked up the pot, “Coffee?” he said. He poured an inch into my cup. “Uh-oh, there is not much left and it’s probably cold anyway. I’ll get you some more.” He leaned back in his chair and caught Mrs. Evans’s eye. “Another pot of coffee, please, Mrs. Evans.”
It had been in the coffee! I put my hand over my mouth to stop myself from blurting out what I knew. The drug had been in Edwina’s thermos of coffee, and someone had wandered over to share a cup with her! We had been eating our lunch on the edge of the airstrip, enjoying the sun and one another’s company, and trying to pretend our sandwiches were made with ham and not Spam.
I saw it now, as clear as day. Zofia had taken a sip of coffee from her thermos and poured it out on the grass, her nose wrinkled in disgust. “It’s cold.” She got up from the grass and walked over to where Edwina was sitting. She crouched down, gesturing to Edwina to pour her some from her thermos. Without looking up, Edwina had poured coffee into Zofia’s tin mug. Zofia nodded her thanks as she stood up and lifted the cup to her lips.
“Zofia.” Vera’s voice had been sharp, and she had turned in surprise to her commanding officer. “You don’t have time for—” Vera’s voice had been drowned out in a shout of laughter from Grable, Letty, and Annie. But she had covered the distance to Edwina in three strides and taken the tin cup out of Zofia’s hand.
Then Huntley had turned to me and asked me what plane Zofia was flying, and conscious only of being a newly minted expert on aircraft, I had turned to him and forgotten the incident as if it had never happened. Until this morning, until my dream.
I looked across the breakfast table at Griff. He was reading the Times, shaking his head at the patriotic headlines. “Everyone wants to be a Churchill,” he murmured and, looking up, caught the expression on my face.
“Everything okay, Poppy? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“I have!” I said. “And everything is more than okay; it’s perfectly brilliant.”
Had I actually watched Zofia about to drink Edwina’s drugged coffee when Vera had prevented her? Loudly and with determination? Had Zofia been startled by Vera’s intrusion, her taking the tin mug away from her and directing her to get ready? As she had taken off in her Hurricane, had Zofia mulled over the incident? And not realizing that she was putting herself in terrible danger, had she said something later to Vera? The Attagirls were respectful to their commanding officer and “ma’amed” her when there were outsiders around, but surely Zofia had said something to someone who had treated her like a child late for school.
I didn’t have time to speculate. I had to talk to Griff before we got to the airfield. My coffee came and I nudged Griff under the table.
TWENTY-FIVE
WE WALKED OUT INTO THE AUTUMN MIST.
“It’s a ruddy pea-souper!” Keith laughed.
Huntley cursed and pulled the collar of his coat up around his ears—he had been irritable since I had joined them at breakfast. “I sometimes think this damn film will never be finished, and I am doomed to spend the rest of my life in blasted Didcote!”
I glanced at Griff and he lifted his eyes to heaven. “He’s a bit tense, isn’t he?” he muttered.
“It will all be gone by ten, mate, and we only need half an hour. We’ll be done in time to be back in the smoke by early afternoon, just you wait and see.” Keith’s cheerful optimism did little to set things to rights, and the pair of them fell into an argument about light and filming aircraft against cloud.
“We might as well have used archive footage,” Huntley fumed.
“Are you okay?” Griff was at my elbow. “You keep disappearing into your own world. Anything you want to tell me?”
“It was in the coffee,” I said with complete certainty. “The drug was in Edwina’s thermos of coffee.”
I could have kissed him for his immediate understanding. “Do you know who put it there?”
If Keith still had the film he shot of our picnic lunch on the airfield, I would have all the proof I needed. “I know it sounds potty, but I think it was Vera.” I waited for him to ask me if I was crazy. But he stood quite still and frowned at the ground as he added things up in his mind.
“Yeah,” he said, as if something had been confirmed. “Yeah, that makes sense. But where would someone like Vera get her hands on datura seeds?”
“It grows in England!”
“Yes, of course, but how would she know about it?”
I noticed that he didn’t ask about motive, his favorite question over the last few days.
* * *
* * *
KEITH AND HUNTLEY were still in animated argument as we assembled on the wet grass of the airfield. “I can barely see ten blasted feet in front of me!” Huntley’s frustrated voice was thrown back at him by a wall of fog. We stood, huddled together in the damp cold, with mist clinging to our clothes, and waited.
“Just sea fog. I talked to the Met Office; it will be cleared by ten.” Her voice reached us first as Vera tramped across the field. “Supermarine have just telephoned. Their pilot will bring in a Spitfire as soon as they are cleared for takeoff. You might as well come back to the mess and have something hot to drink.”
Keith and Huntley stumped back toward the mess like dutiful schoolboys, Huntley with his hands in his pockets and his collar still up, hiding the irritation on his face, Keith shambling along with his tripod and camera over his shoulder, whistling through his teeth, determined not to let the rest of us spoil the fun of a morning’s shooting.
Griff pulled me back by my arm as we approached the door of the mess.
“Are you going to tell me everything you are thinking, or do I have to guess the rest?” he asked.
“I will if you will,” I answered.
“Oh no,” he said, “here we go again. You know I can’t. Why didn’t that annoying Mrs. Evans put you up on the other side of the inn?”
“It’s not my fault if you drive a car that sounds like it has a bad cold every time you start the engine. At three o’clock you went off in your Alvis and were clearly gone for the rest of the night. It is quite evident that you have been off investigating. An authorized investigation, because your leave ends today. So, now you are official.” I smiled. Of course I would share, but he had to go first.
A long sigh. “Look, you know what I do, but why do I have to spell it all out for you? Isn’t just knowing enough?”
I called Bess over to us and found myself saying, “No, I suppose it isn’t. You see, it’s infuriating, and I’m sick of it. Are you here to keep me company on my first film assignment, or are you here for some other reason that you won’t tell me about, or are you running both together? At any rate we are in the investigation of Edwina’s and Letty’s pilot-error accidents together. Trust me with what you know. If it contributes to our investigation, then you are obligated to share.” I paused to catch my breath; it’s really hard to shout at someone in a whisper. “It would be the polite thing to do.” He started to laugh. Quietly at first, muffled by the thick folds of the scarf around his neck, then a full-throated roar.
“Polite?” he managed to get out. “You think what I do is polite?”
There was silence. I could practically hear the wheels turning in his head. Well done, darling, said Ilona. God, I thought you’d never ask the blighter!
“Yes, I am onto something. I thought you understood without me having to explain, because I can’t do that. And certainly not now. Believe me—it is for you own good that
I don’t tell you now.” I can’t stand it when people put spaces between their words, as if the person they are talking to is either daft or deaf. “But if you can rein in the wild horses for a moment, all will come clear, hopefully by the time we are ready to pack up and leave this frustrating place with all its viciousness, greed, and what you English call carrying-on. Do you trust me on that?”
He was standing very close to me, so close I could see the sheen of mist clinging damply to his cheeks.
“Here is something I can tell you.” He raised his eyebrows as he smiled at me. “I checked out Mrs. Annie Trenchard. Her adventure at an airfield in German-occupied Belgium happened.”
“In what way? Are you telling me she is a spy?”
He puffed his lips together and huffed. “No, it was, after all, an honest-to-goodness mistake on her part . . . What?”
“That’s no information, Griff. I told you about her adventure. You thought it sounded suspicious and now you are telling me you were wrong?” I shook my head in frustration. “I don’t care about Annie Trenchard’s stupid landing in a German airfield. I only have one question. Do you think I am right about”—I mouthed the word—“Vera?”
His nod was emphatic, his eyes wide with sincerity.
You’re caving! Ilona pointed out.
“Now all I have to do is find out where she got datura from.”
I heard a long sigh of relief. “We are running two investigations, but they coincide,” he said. “Do you know where she got it from? You do, don’t you? Come on, you have to tell—we are sharing!”
I laughed and flapped my arms at my sides in mock exasperation.
And then I caved. “There is only one person here who could possibly have known about a drug like datura, but I am not sure about her motive.”
“Who? Come on, give me names.” He was laughing now.
“Someone so heartbroken by her husband’s infidelity with a woman she admired and trusted that all she wanted to do was wipe her off the face of the world.”
“Zofia?”
When he said her name, I wondered briefly if I was wrong. If when she had gone over to ask Edwina for a cup of coffee Zofia had slipped something into the thermos. I hadn’t been close enough to see. I shook my head. “I’m not sure . . . yet. But I am so close I can feel it.”
“Okay, let’s think about Letty’s death for a moment. Did Zofia murder her because she saw something? Did she drug her breakfast and push it toward Letty?”
I closed my eyes to concentrate. “Come with me. I want you to read these anonymous letters that were sent to Edwina over the past weeks. Maybe they will help to convince us that Edwina and Letty’s murderer had completely lost all sense of reason. Maybe there is some sort of indication of motive.”
“Have you got them with you?”
“Yes, I do.” I patted my coat pocket. “There aren’t that many of them, five, maybe, at the most. But we can’t read them here.”
“Have you read them?”
I shook my head as we set out up the drive to the Alvis. “No, I couldn’t quite bring myself to. They were given to me by the Franklins, to give to Zofia. They thought they were love letters from Edwina’s boyfriend, but they are far from that.”
By the time we reached the car, I was shivering with cold.
“Come on, hop in.” Griff opened the door for me, and I scrambled in. He switched on the engine and the heater. “This should warm us up,” he said, revving the engine. He took off the brake and put his foot on the clutch. “Come on, let’s drive out from under these trees and find an open space so I can read these things. Why didn’t you tell me you had these letters before?”
I shrugged in despair over my proper upbringing. No one reads someone else’s letters—it just wasn’t done. But if that was the case, why had I accepted them from Mrs. Franklin?
We drove down the lane and out into the field where Edwina’s Spitfire lay stranded, waiting to be towed away.
“Perfect spot for reading poison-pen letters,” said Griff as he put on the brake. “Warmer now?” I nodded. “Good, then hand them over. I’ll read them first and then I’ll pass them over to you. Okay?”
I handed over the packet and he slid a sheet of paper out of the first envelope.
“Usual sort of thing,” he said, and I wondered how he knew what was usual about anonymous letters. “Made up of letters and words cut from newspaper headlines and pasted on cheap paper from Woolworths. See this one, and this?” He pointed to different letters. “This looks a bit like the Daily Telegraph newsprint, whereas the others are of lesser quality: thinner paper and a bit smudgy, probably the local Didcote Herald.” He read the first one. “Nasty stuff, but nothing you can’t handle.” He handed it over.
How Does It Feel To Be Hated Because You Are A Whore A Liar & A Cheat?
Griff read on, sliding pages out of envelopes, reading them in silence, and then handing them over to me.
They were all pretty much the same.
Do Your Friends Know What A Filthy Slag You Are?
I thought that one was the most unpleasant until I read the last one.
Everyone Knows You Made Up A Story About Your Luftwaffe Attack To Cover Your Whoring. Are You Ready To Die?
My skin crawled as I read it. Small wonder, I thought, that Edwina was on edge.
Griff slid the letters back in their envelopes. “The last one was sent two weeks before she crashed,” was all he said as he shuffled the envelopes into postal date order and tied the packet up with its string. “The intention of the last is clear. It was a death threat.” I swallowed and reached out to turn off the car’s heater. Through the condensation streaming down the windows I looked out at the lopsided Spitfire.
“Whoever made these was insane. It must have taken hours to cut out letters and words and carefully paste them on a piece of paper with the sole purpose of threatening someone anonymously,” I said, with enough disgust to cover my fear of what could happen next.
He nodded and cracked the window. “Yes, that’s what cowards do. They make their ugly opinions public without owning them.”
I thought of Pamela Brabazon’s eyes gleaming with the pleasure she had gained from passing on gossip. “Edwina’s reputation was ruined by gossip.”
He tapped the edge of the stack of envelopes against his thumb as he thought. “Gossip feeds on itself and grows. Innocent people can be destroyed by malicious gossip. But if any of it is true, then it implicates two women at Didcote with a motive for murder.”
“What if June was married? Is that reason enough for her to kill Edwina? Annie Trenchard is married, and she has never once talked about her husband. She talks about her mother, and she talks about her girls—we don’t even know her husband’s name, what he does, and if he is living or dead.”
He smiled. “So not Zofia, then?”
“No, because Zofia’s husband flew out of Biggin Hill and was killed during the Battle of Britain long before she met Edwina. And the husband that Edwina stole flew out of Christchurch.”
He nodded. “Maybe Zofia came to Didcote because she was connected to Edwina through her husband?”
I shook my head as I remembered Zofia’s story. No, no, no.
“Not Trenchard,” he said with finality. “Her husband is alive and well . . . I know all about him. So, June’s married name is Evesham, or something else? As soon as we have the name of her husband—if she was married—we can contact Christchurch Airfield and find out if a pilot of that name was killed in the raid. But that is only motive for murder, Poppy, not proof.”
I sighed and wiped away the condensation on the window with my glove. We watched in silence as the fog outside started to thin and then lift up through the trees, leaving traces of itself among the bare branches.
“How could Edwina have had an affair with someone’s husband?” I asked t
he world outside the car.
“Sexual attraction is a funny thing, and war makes men and women do strange things. Maybe all Edwina, or the men she slept with, wanted was a release from tension and fear. Maybe he was only interested in the physical side of what happened between them. Maybe Edwina had no idea he was married.
“So, Vera is off the hook, then. How does datura fit in with June?” he asked, and I told him.
He watched me closely as I laid out my reasons, and then he said, “Okay, but does that incriminate her?” He shrugged his shoulders. “You are an intuitive woman and you have a robust imagination, so let’s make a plan.”
TWENTY-SIX
ARE YOUR PEOPLE READY?” VERA ABERCROMBIE WALKED ACROSS to Huntley. “Because . . .” She focused her attention on the plane that had just landed. “What on earth is that?” she asked the young woman pilot who proffered her chit. “I sent you to get a Spitfire and you bring me this thing? It has two cockpits.”
The pilot was one of the ordinary everyday Attagirls. She didn’t get anonymous letters posted through her letter box, and she was rarely, if ever, asked out to the pictures by a glamorous flyboy from RAF Biggin Hill. She took off her helmet and ran her hand through springy fair hair, her expression sympathetic. “It’s brand-new,” she explained. “Supermarine are making two-seaters for training schools. Anyway, there must be a flap on somewhere, because this is the only Spitfire they have available. If we want a single-seater, we’ll just have to wait until next Thursday. At least that’s what I was told.”
Vera, busy with the paperwork on her clipboard, merely sighed in exasperation. “Want to stay and watch them film?” she asked.
“No, thank you. I want some breakfast and then a nice hot bath. How long do I have?”
“Couple of hours, that should do it. How did she fly?”
“As if she were a single-seater, but the cockpits are tiny; can’t imagine how they would fit a great big lug of a bloke in either of them.” And she strolled off to the mess.
