by Tessa Arlen
“She did, she did.” All Vera’s self-possession had gone. “At least that’s what the ATA Accident Committee reported. Brain aneurisms run in Letty’s—”
She got no further. “You gave her datura,” shrieked June. “You crazy bitch. You told me you’d changed your mind, that Zofia had no idea about Edwina’s coffee. That you had taken the film.”
“Actually,” I said rather recklessly, “Vera put ground datura in Zofia’s breakfast because she couldn’t be sure whether she had guessed about Edwina’s coffee or not. And then Letty ate it. I was there; I saw it happen.”
“You see, June, Letty’s death was a mistake!” Vera was so distraught she put her hands over her eyes.
“And what about Edwina? What in God’s name did you both do to Edwina?” Sir Basil’s blood pressure was rising again as he tried to keep abreast of events.
“Please try and concentrate, Sir Basil,” I said as I watched the Spitfire bump gently along the airstrip toward us. “June and Vera doctored Edwina’s coffee before she flew the Spitfire. It caused her to hallucinate so strongly that she lost control of the Spitfire.”
Sir Basil’s head weaved back and forth between June and Vera, his mouth open.
“You killed her?” he asked, as if he could hardly believe what he was saying. “You killed Edwina. But I told you there was nothing between us . . . nothing at all. Have you all gone mad?” He blazed at us. “This will mean the end of everything, Vera. Everything you have worked for! I have worked for!”
Vera had stopped crying. She tried to lick her dry lips. “But I did it for you, Basil,” she whispered. “I did it for you . . .” The tears started again. “I did it to stop her—”
“Blackmailing you.” Griff came up behind us. His face was glowing with health and the sheer joy of flight.
“Blackmail?” June finally understood. I stepped back behind Griff with my growling dog. “Vera, you told me you wanted Edwina out of the way because he was sleeping with her.” Her voice, hoarse from shouting, had been reduced to a croak. “Edwina was out of control. If she saw a man, she couldn’t get him into bed fast enough. She was a wrecker!”
“Blackmail?” Sir Basil finally found his voice. “Blackmailing me?”
A discreet cough from my American friend. “Yes, sir, blackmail. Edwina had found out about the thousands of gallons of gasoline, I mean petrol, siphoned off from not only this airfield but the others in the area: Middle Wallop, Nether Wallop, and all the other smaller airfields in Hampshire. I expect she found out from Mac Wilson.”
Zofia, who had been silently taking in what amounted to the last of a public confession, asked her first question. “She was sleeping with Mac too?” Her voice held a note of—well, I have to say it: admiration.
“Struth,” said Keith to Huntley. “This is like one of those French what’s-a-names.”
“Farce,” said Huntley, his eyes gleaming with delight behind his spectacles.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Sir Basil roared at Griff. “We have petrol dumps all over the county, hidden away, so the ruddy Luftwaffe don’t bomb our supplies. It was simply a straightforward deployment of resources.”
“No, sir.” Griff produced two typewritten pages from the inside pocket of his flying jacket. “You were dealing in black-market petrol stolen from fifteen Hampshire airfields and petrol dumps. I have lists here detailing how much petrol you and Mac Wilson stole, how often, and the names of your contacts. The ministry are aware of your operation, watching you for the past few weeks. Thousands of gallons. You must have made a fortune.”
He turned to me and the smile disappeared. “She hit you?” I nodded, too tired to speak. He lifted his fingertips to my face and I winced. “You were right about the black market, Poppy. Edwina found out about it, didn’t she? And she was blackmailing Sir Basil.”
I closed my eyes as he took Bess out of my arms and put her on the ground. His hand returned to my face. He stroked my cheek and smoothed the hair out of my eyes.
“Edwina was blackmailing Sir Basil?” Annie asked, and Grable pounced on her friend. “Yes, Annie, wake up. It’s been staring us in the face for weeks. “That’s why Vera killed Edwina—not because she was sleeping with him.”
“He had nothing to do with Edwina’s death.” Vera pulled herself together. “He is innocent of any real crime!”
Grable laughed. “Real crime? Seems like stealing petrol is close to murder, when our planes can’t defend our country because there is a fuel shortage.”
I don’t know whether it was because I had been socked on the jaw, but I heard a click as if someone had put something down on the surface of a wooden table. Still looking up into Griff’s face, I opened my mouth far enough to say, “I think Edwina had more on you than just stealing petrol, Sir Basil. She found out that you were in partnership with her father and his brother, just after the last war. A little matter of crooked dealing and stealing nonpatented aircraft designs, wasn’t it? She confronted you recently, didn’t she?” Griff was right; it is amazing that if you don’t think about a thing too hard and try to jam all the pieces in together how everything just floats into place by itself.
I closed my eyes, the better to enjoy Griff’s hand carefully stroking back wisps of hair from my forehead. I saw again Sir Basil’s jovial attempts at conversation with Edwina as she waited on the airfield that morning to fly, and her cold snub in return. A shaft of complete surety and understanding. “It was more than just stealing petrol, wasn’t it? You stole her father’s livelihood, and he killed himself in despair. Edwina’s childhood was a nightmare because of you.”
Sir Basil’s face was ashen now. He opened his mouth a couple of times, but nothing came out. Vera put her head down and I saw tears streaming down her thin cheeks. “Oh, Basil,” she said. “Dear God, then it was true.”
* * *
* * *
HEADS TURNED AS two army vehicles bumped across the field, followed by a civilian police car.
Griff stepped forward and had a short conversation with a businesslike sergeant who was already walking forward before the truck came to a stop.
“What the hell?” Sir Basil drew himself up in a last moment of bluster. “I know absolutely nothing whatsoever about petrol.” He pointed a finger at Vera, June, and then Griff. “These women have given this American some sort of hallucinatory drug. This is all poppycock.” He shrugged his shoulders and put his tie in order. “Absolutely no need for all of this.” He waved at the second truck and words seemed to fail him as he saw the china blue eyes of Mac Wilson staring out of the back at him.
“It would be better all round if you cooperated, because you will be getting in that Land Rover,” Griff said to Sir Basil as the brawny sergeant and his subordinate rattled up with several pairs of handcuffs.
From out of the police car stepped what was clearly a detective in scruffy plain clothes and a young police constable in uniform. They looked at Griff, who waved at June and Vera.
All my earlier energy and determination evaporated in that minute. The side of my face throbbed and my legs were shaking. The vision in my right eye was obscured by my fatly swelling cheek and jaw.
“Grable,” Griff said, ignoring the policemen. “You know what happened—you talk to them. Poppy . . .” He put his hand under my chin. “Oh Lor’,” he said as he examined my face in the last rays of the sunset. “Teeth okay?” I nodded. “Going to be a bit of a bruise there.” He gently felt along the side of my jaw and then pulled me close to him.
“Damn,” he said as he lay my good cheek against his shirt and swayed slowly from side to side with his arms tight about me. “I would have given anything to have been down here when you first spilled the beans, anything.” I felt his warm breath and then his lips on the top of my head, as he planted kisses.
I buried my nose in the warmth of his jacket and his arms closed more tightly
around me. “And miss out on throwing that Spitfire around?” I said and listened to his heartbeat quicken a fraction.
A deep sigh. “Well, it was wonderful, of course; maybe just a tad bit faster than my old Mustang.”
A voice at my elbow whispered, “You would think, my dear Poppy, that he was born to fly. Just like my Aleksy.”
And right on cue I heard Ilona’s light laugh. Watch out, darling. Keep your sweetheart away from that woman, whatever you do. And I buried my nose more deeply in Griff’s shoulder.
HISTORICAL NOTE ON DIDCOTE AIRFIELD AND THE AIR TRANSPORT AUXILIARY
Didcote Airfield is based on the real-life No. 15 Air Transport Auxiliary Airfield at Hamble, near Southampton in Hampshire. Hamble was one of the first all-women ferry pools and the original eight civilian pilots mentioned in Poppy Redfern and the Fatal Flyers were loosely based on those women who joined the Air Transport Auxiliary (ATA) in 1940.
The original eight Attagirls were recruited because they had already been trained to fly small aircraft, often taught by fathers or uncles who had flown in the Great War. There was a huge craze for civilian flying in the 1930s, but it was an expensive hobby, so early ATA recruits were from well-to-do families. With the need for more pilots a government flying school was opened and woman pilots trained to become part of the ATA.
ATA pilots worked long, hard hours ferrying new, repaired, and damaged military aircraft between factories, assembly plants, transatlantic delivery points, maintenance units, scrap yards, and active service squadrons and airfields. They also flew service personnel on urgent duty from one place to another and performed some air ambulance work. Notably the women pilots of the ATA received the same pay as their male counterparts from 1943 until the end of the war, an astonishing first for the British government.
Overall during World War II there were 166 women pilots, one in eight of all ATA pilots, and they volunteered from Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, the United States, the Netherlands, and Poland. Women pilots flew close to one hundred different types of aircraft during the war years and many of them had far broader flying experience than most RAF pilots. Unfortunately at the end of the war it was made clear by the RAF that it would still not accept women pilots into the service. It wasn’t until 1991 that Flight Lieutenant Julie Ann Gibson became the first full-time female pilot for the Royal Air Force. Neither did the world of commercial aviation leap to hire these superbly experienced and skillful pilots.
THE SUPERMARINE SPITFIRE
During the war years the Supermarine Spitfire became an emblem of Britain’s air superiority. More than twenty thousand single-seat Spitfires were built, with only a few dozen remaining airworthy today. Supermarine did come up with the concept of a two-seater training version of the Spitfire, but none were ever ordered and only one was built. It is this prototype that I used for Griff and Zofia’s flight together, so that he could experience the supreme speed of one of the most responsive fighter aircraft of its day.
BLACK MARKET PETROL AND AIRFIELDS
Precious petrol was heavily rationed to civilians during World War II. After the Luftwaffe bombed the Supermarine factory in south Hampshire and its petrol supply dumps, Churchill decided that it was safer to have hundreds of small petrol dumps hidden all over England. After the Battle of Britain, he arranged for small military airfields to be built, some of them tucked away in heavily wooded country, all over England, but with the greatest concentration along the south coast. Phony airfields were also built, with painted wooden planes as decoys. My father told me that sometimes the Luftwaffe would fly over a decoy airfield and drop a wooden bomb on it.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Without the massive amount of available information available at the ATA museum and the archive of the Maidenhead Heritage Centre, in the UK, the historical background of Poppy Redfern and the Fatal Flyers would have been sketchy to say the least.
Aviation historians have described the ATA collection as a “gold mine.” Historians, students, journalists, novelists, filmmakers, and family historians have access to the archive at Maidenhead, so my greatest thanks go to this wonderful organization.
I owe thanks to so many who have encouraged and supported me in writing this book. And my first thank-you goes to my agent, Kevan Lyon, whose professional support and positive encouragement have been unfailing in the last seven years.
At Berkley my many thanks go to my editor, Michelle Vega, both for her great insights—and for making the process so much fun. Also at Berkley, thank you to Brittanie Black, Elisha Katz, Stacy Edwards, and Jenn Snyder and of course to Robert Rodriguez for the design of yet another perfect cover—gray and yellow have always been a favorite color combination of mine!
As always, I am in debt to my family and friends for their patience and encouragement, but most of all my heartfelt thanks go to my amazing husband and partner in life who has so much fun dreaming up titles and lets me know when it is time to press Save, close up my PC, and have a glass of wine.
TESSA ARLEN was born in Singapore, the daughter of a British diplomat; she has lived in Egypt, Germany, the Persian Gulf, China, and India. An Englishwoman married to an American, Tessa lives on the West Coast with her family and two corgis.
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