In This Grave Hour

by Jacqueline Winspear

  Once seated with the half-paned door closed, Maisie removed her white summer gloves. “I suppose poor Sergeant Able would have the rise taken out of him wherever he worked—the constabulary is probably no worse than a bank or a factory.”

  “Wait until he gets into the army. Mind you, I’m going to try to keep him—protected job, and all that—but we’re bound to lose some to the war. Then he’ll be Private Able, and heaven help him. Those lads will have him up a tree before he knows it. Now then, what can I do for you? I don’t need to tell you, I haven’t got all day.”

  Maisie explained her connection to Dr. Francesca Thomas, though she did not mention her by name, instead referring to her “client.”

  Caldwell pinched the top of his nose and blew out his cheeks. “I could have laid money on it being the Belgian you were here about. I know it sounds very dodgy—bullet to the back of the head, obviously made to kneel down—but we’ve come to the conclusion that the man who murdered Addens was just your more theatrical sort of thief. Addens had just picked up his pay packet—his mates had seen him put it in his back pocket—so all the villain of the piece had to do was come up behind him, stick a gun in the back of his head, get him to kneel down, take the money out of his pocket, pull the trigger, and run.”

  Maisie nodded. “Hmmm. I knew there was a suspicion of theft, but I didn’t have details about the amount of money he had with him.”

  “Now you do. And if you haven’t—”

  “But something doesn’t sit well. Why on earth would someone then kill Addens? I mean, get him to kneel down, take the money—but all he had to do, the man with the gun, was tell Addens to stay where he was and not move. He didn’t have to kill him.”

  “Times are hard, Miss Dobbs—well, for some of us they are—”

  “Oh dear. Just when I thought you’d changed, you go sarcastic on me.”

  “Sorry about that—slip of the tongue.” Caldwell leaned forward. “But just imagine it, Maisie—I can call you Maisie, can’t I? Just imagine it—this Frederick Addens works blooming hard down in the pit of the railway platform, he gets his wages on a Friday afternoon, just before knocking-off time, and the next thing you know a tyke is taking the hard-earned cash—money he probably needed to keep a roof over the family’s head and food on the table. And Addens was a big bloke. As a young lad he’d come over here on a boat in the war and made a life for himself through nothing but hard work. I wouldn’t have banked on him staying put for one minute—he would have got up and tackled that thief down, gun and all.” He sighed. “To top it all, no one saw the perpetrator, no one heard a shot—well, you wouldn’t, with the racket around St. Pancras. No one knows who might have killed him. We lost anything we could get our teeth into before it even happened.”

  “What do you think about the killer?” asked Maisie.

  He shrugged. “I’d put money on another foreigner. Someone willing to take a chance, who hasn’t any feeling for killing a person—someone who’s had it a bit rough. Having said that, he could come from Hackney, for all I know—there’s people who’ve been starving on our own streets, these past few years. At least this war is going to give a few more people jobs. I mean, put them in the army, put food in their bellies, and give them something to do. Give them guns for good reason, and perhaps they’ll stop making the policeman’s life a misery—with a bit of luck.”

  “May I see the postmortem report? And how about statements from the men Addens worked with, or people he knew around World’s End?”

  Caldwell sighed. He leaned back in his chair and reached into a cabinet to leaf through a series of files. Pulling out one thick buff-colored folder, he placed it on his desk.

  “I’m going to see if Able has gone to India for the tea, and I’m going to accidentally leave this report here on my desk. Lean to one side while you’re being nosy, won’t you—I don’t want my blokes out there seeing a civilian woman letting her curiosity get the better of her because I’ve been silly enough not to put confidential reports in a safe place.”

  Caldwell left the room, closing the door behind him. As Maisie shifted her chair and reached for the folder, she heard his voice boom across the office. “Anyone know where Able has managed to lose himself this time?”

  She took out her notebook and began to transcribe the most pertinent points from the reports. Though the case had not been written off by Scotland Yard, it appeared it wasn’t exactly open to new information. She closed the file, placed it on the desk in front of Caldwell’s chair, and turned to leave. Opening the door into the office where Caldwell’s men worked, she saw the detective walking towards her, weaving in between the desks.

  “You’re going to have to get a cup of char at a caff on the Strand, Miss Dobbs. Able is probably lost in a corridor somewhere. Sorry I couldn’t help you any further. But always nice to see you.”

  As Maisie was thanking Caldwell, Able hurried towards them. He was bearing a tray laden with two cups of tea and a packet of digestive biscuits. “I ran around looking for some biscuits, fresh, not all limp from the heat. It took me longer than I thought.”

  “Miss Dobbs is just leaving, Able. I’ll take the tea—you show her out. I could do with two cups anyway.”

  As Maisie made her way towards the underground railway at Charing Cross, she reflected on the notes she’d taken in Caldwell’s office, in particular a page detailing the type of weapon used to kill Frederick Addens. According to the report, it was a Ruby pistol. She was not an arms expert, but she knew the Ruby was used widely by forces from different countries during the Great War, and that it was popular with the French and Belgian armies. And she had seen many carried by soldiers in Spain. On the one hand, the gun was plentiful, so it was not surprising that one might find its way into circulation in England. It had its faults, but she remembered that as she took one away from a wounded soldier in Spain, he’d called after her to tell her to keep the gun so that she could protect herself. The weapon, he added, could be used by anyone, even a novice.

  While Sandra typed a report and invoice for another client, Maisie considered how she might broach the subject of her assistant’s health—she was looking for a means to encourage Sandra to take care, not to push herself. The trick was to begin the conversation without letting on that she suspected Sandra was pregnant. She was just about to speak when the telephone rang. Sandra reached for the receiver, and recited, “Fitzroy five-three-two-o,” the new number assigned to the line when Maisie leased the office again.

  “Oh, yes, good afternoon, Your Ladyship,” said Sandra to the caller. “Yes . . . indeed. I’ll pass you over.”

  Maisie looked up at Sandra, who mouthed “Lady Rowan” as she leaned forward with the receiver.

  “Hello, Rowan, how are you?” said Maisie. She had for the past year become used to addressing her mother-in-law by her Christian name.

  “Beside myself, my dear. Just beside myself. We have evacuees, and I am not sure what to do with them. I mean, I know what to do with them, but we have two boys, very boisterous, and I think Cook is about to walk out.”

  “I see. Not to worry.” Maisie had an immediate grasp of the situation. “I believe I know who can deal with this problem. Have the boys started school yet?”

  “Their teacher is billeted nearby, and they’ve been given rooms to hold classes in the village hall until the local schoolchildren are evacuated—ridiculously, the local school are evacuating to Wales, which seems utterly unbelievable to me. Julian says it’s because we’re on a strategic path to London, whatever that means—and if there’s danger, why on earth London children are considered more expendable than the local children is beyond me. To add to our chaos, apparently the billeting officer is bringing a little girl who no one else wants, for some reason, and no one seems to know her name—I fear a monster might be arriving on my doorstep. Then of course they will all have to move anyway—a couple of military liaison people came from the Canadian embassy to Chelstone today to discuss officers being billeted he
re at the house. It transpires there is to be an encampment just outside the village. Of course, one doesn’t mind at all—but the children will have to be rebilleted, and all this moving around must be terribly upsetting for them, so no wonder they’re being awfully difficult. Having had a growing boy myself, I am certainly a match for them—you know me, I will not brook nonsense—but it’s the staff. They are not used to this sort of . . . sort of wild behavior around the house.”

  Maisie had been holding the receiver away from her ear, but she brought it close to speak.

  “Here’s what I’ll do, Lady Rowan. I will telephone my father and ask him to come to Chelstone to sort them out. Could you have George collect him in the motor car? He’ll get them organized in no time—a few jobs to do in the stables, and grooming the horses, that will wear them out. In the meantime, I’ve an idea. It sounds as if you are going to have a houseful when the Canadian officers arrive, so I will get Brenda to go up to Dower House to prepare a room for the boys. We’ll put the little girl in the small box room, though we’ll put a pretty counterpane in there to jolly it up for her. I do need beds though.”

  “I’ll have beds sent up—they’re old staff beds, cast iron so not terribly attractive, and they’d been kept in one of the barns. Thank goodness no one sought to dispose of them. They’ve new mattresses—Mrs. Jenks ordered them when we knew we were going to have evacuees—so they’re perfectly good for children. And I’ll have her send linens and blankets, though heaven knows no one has needed a blanket for days.”

  “All right—and look, as soon as I can get away, I will, but I’m very busy at the moment. I’ll do my best to leave on Thursday. But let me telephone my father and Brenda first—I don’t want them to have too much on their plates, so we’ll have to see what the teacher can do to help. I expect she’s overwhelmed too. Could Cook spare that lovely girl from the village who comes in to help her? If she could lend a hand with the boys in the morning—putting up breakfast—and then help with supper in the evening, I don’t see why we won’t be able to muddle through.”

  “Yes, of course, you’re right, Maisie. But I worry about the small girl. They don’t even know her name—apparently she’s said nothing, and the billeting officer says she was lost on the train, probably in the melee at the station. They think she should have been with the lot from Dr. Barnado’s, who were going to another town. They’re trying to find out.” Rowan sighed. “The billeting officer, Jane Smethers, told me the child refuses to speak and will not let go of the little case she carries everywhere—she just pulls back if anyone attempts to take it from her. Miss Smethers told me she’d had enough of the games, and was going to just snatch it from her when her guard was down, but I told her, ‘For goodness sake, allow the child some dignity and privacy.’ Really, one should not bully a child.”

  “All right, before this situation gets out of hand with the billeting officer, I’ll speak to Brenda. I know she’ll see to it and get everyone on an even keel. It’s asking a lot of them to leave their bungalow to come to the Dower House, but perhaps it won’t be for long. And perhaps this little girl will be more at ease with other children around, and when the dust settles a bit. Anyway, there’s plenty of room at the Dower House—after all, the last family who rented had four children.”

  “She sounded a bit upset,” observed Sandra, when Maisie was finally able to extract herself from the call.

  “Oh no, don’t be fooled. My mother-in-law was loving every minute of it. It sounds as if it’s the distraction she’s needed to lift her from the melancholy that at times assails her. Rowan rises to the occasion when the chips are down—she’s enjoyed putting an evacuee billeting officer in her place, and I think she is rather looking forward to having Canadian officers at the house. They won’t know what’s hit them. But I had better telephone my father—he will be more than able to sort out a couple of unruly London lads. He’ll have them exhausted in no time. Priscilla has always said the key to disciplining boys is in wearing them out physically so the birds in their brains fly in formation. And she does a pretty good job.”

  “And what was that about a girl?”

  “Not sure. Brenda will let me know, and doubtless it will all be sorted out soon anyway. Apparently the little thing just lost her group and probably her identification label, so no one knows who she is. And if she’s not speaking, it’s because she’s overwhelmed, poor love—as soon as they find someone she knows, I am sure all be well. But we can take her in for the meantime.” Maisie looked up as the door opened to reveal Billy wiping his brow with a handkerchief.

  “That St. Pancras Station was blooming boiling today. I thought I would sweat myself silly.” He closed the door behind him.

  “Why don’t you have a cup of tea, Billy—hot drink to fight the heat. I just have one telephone call to make, then we can discuss what we’ve all found out today.”

  Frankie Dobbs laughed when Maisie described the situation at Chelstone Manor. “Not to worry, love,” he assured Maisie. “I’ll sort out the boys and Lady Rowan. They’re just boys who need the law laying down without anyone losing their temper. And we’ll take care of the little half-pint until they find out where she belongs.”

  “Thanks, Dad—I knew I could depend on you. But take care, won’t you?”

  “Oh, I will—it’ll perk me up a bit, setting the lads right. Once they’ve learned to muck out the stables and groom a horse, they’ll wind their necks in. Nothing like a big horse to sort out a big mouth! And at least there will be no cavalry coming round to take the horses this time, not like it was before. Perjured myself, I did, to keep those horses.”

  “I know—remember, I was the one who had to whip up the egg whites so it looked as if we had horses going down with a terrible disease and foaming at the mouth!” Maisie heard her father laugh, and laughed with him. She told him that she would see him on Thursday, and replaced the receiver before calling Billy and Sandra into her office. Soon they were seated alongside the table by the window with the case map pinned out, and Maisie recounted the events of her morning.

  “So, he was murdered by what they’re calling a Ruby,” said Billy. “What I want to know is, how they can be sure that’s what it was? After all, the Ruby is really a copy of a Browning. Mind you, them ballistics boys know their job, so the likes of me won’t argue with them.” He paused, shaking his head. “But I don’t know, it’s not as if there are a lot of guns about, not on the streets. Knives, yes, and there’s no shortage of thieves circulating, but they’re more likely to have a knuckle-duster or a flick knife—from what I’ve seen in my time, anyway.”

  “I’m doubtful about the theory that it was a particularly aggressive theft—unless the thief was a novice and more fearful than a seasoned criminal. There were no other markings on the body, only the gunshot wounds. None of it sits well at the moment.” Maisie paused. “Billy, what about Addens’ workmates?”

  Billy flicked open his notebook. “First of all, the police were right—he’d just been paid, had been given his wage packet, and the other lads saw him put it in his back pocket.” He tapped on the notebook with a pencil. “But he still had another few hours of work to go—he’d taken on some overtime, what with all the extra trains coming and going, due to the . . . due to the war.” Billy cleared his throat. “So they’d all wondered what he was doing going off outside the station.”

  “That point never emerged in the notes held at Scotland Yard,” said Maisie.

  “Could he have gone for a smoke? To get some fresh air, or—”

  Billy laughed, cutting Sandra off. “Fresh air at St. Pancras, Sandra? He’d have a long walk for that, clear out to Yorkshire!”

  “Did anyone see him leave?” asked Maisie.

  “None of his mates that I met.”

  “According to Addens’ wife, and to notes I saw at Scotland Yard, he had a good friend by the name of Mike Elliot. Did you come across him?”

  “No, but I’ll find him,” said Billy.

  “Wh
at about newspaper boys outside the station?” said Sandra. “They see more than anyone, I think.”

  Billy blushed—he’d made an obvious omission. Sandra raised an eyebrow, as if enjoying revenge for his comment about fresh air.

  “Good point,” said Maisie. “Billy, could you go back tomorrow and talk to the tea ladies, to the newspaper boys, anyone regularly outside or who notices people coming and going.” She added notes in red wax crayon to the case map.

  “Sandra, how about you—anything of interest?”

  “I found out about several refugee associations, and it seems that a Frederick Addens registered with one, but must have gone to another for assistance, as they only had minimal information. Apparently he’d arrived as a young man—just a boy, really. According to their records, there had been an older brother and a father in Belgium, both in the infantry and killed in the war. Addens escaped Belgium with his mother. She caught pneumonia on the journey and died in hospital—in Folkestone—not long afterwards. So the lad was on his own. They knew he had been working for the railways in Belgium, so that’s probably how he managed to get a job on the railway here as an apprentice engineer. I did a bit more calling round, and managed to talk to someone in the office on the Southern Railway, and she kindly went into their old records. It turns out that Enid had been a conductor on the trains, so he probably met her there.”

  “I didn’t know that,” said Maisie, tapping a pencil on the table. “I don’t like these important missing details—they might not be crucial, but still, I like to have as many cards on the table as possible.”

  “The railways wouldn’t have kept running during the war if it hadn’t been for the women who worked on the trains, and the young apprentices,” said Sandra. “That probably kept Addens in a job, and out of our army.”

  “Billy, any signs of discord with the men he worked alongside?”

  “No, they seemed a genial lot. And they were all still shocked about what had happened. Not one could think of any reason for Addens to have been killed—which is why it comes back to the money.” He scratched his head, more from habit than easing an itch. “But what I don’t get is this—how come the Addenses were so hard up? I mean, I know a lot of people are very hard up, and it’s not as if many are that flush . . . but they had two grown-up children working, and I daresay giving up money for their keep every week. And another thing—they’d probably lived in that house a few years, and I bet the rent hasn’t gone up much. All in all, they should have felt a bit better off because the boy had started work at, what? Fourteen? And that girl went on to do a secretarial course, and then her librarianship, all at night after she left school at fourteen too.”