In This Grave Hour

by Jacqueline Winspear

  The Ladies’ Refugee Assistance Association had closed in 1920, though according to her research, a Mrs. Rosemary Hartley-Davies, who now lived in Sussex, was the person to speak to. Maisie decided to first tackle the office of the South-Eastern Displaced Persons Relief Board, managed by a Mr. Martin Thorpe. As Tunbridge Wells was on her way to Chelstone, it would not be too much of a detour to continue to Sussex to visit Mrs. Hartley-Davies.

  Maisie was now well used to her new motor car, an Alvis 12/70 drophead coupe, but given intermittent showers, she kept the roof in place rather than risk a top-down drive to Tunbridge Wells the following day.

  The South-Eastern Displaced Persons Relief Board was located in a makeshift office in the lower ground floor of a house not far from the new Kent and Sussex Hospital, in the Mt. Ephraim area of the town. The hospital, which had been built only five years earlier, seemed so very modern when compared to the older architecture of the town, from the Georgian Pantiles to the great number of houses and shops built during Victoria’s reign. When the railway was built in the mid-1800s, a new brand of resident—the commuter—found Tunbridge Wells to be a most agreeable town and so very convenient for London. Now there were new huts in the grounds of the hospital—erected, Maisie guessed, to receive the many wounded expected if war came.

  “I can spare you about fifteen minutes, Miss Dobbs,” said Martin Thorpe once they were seated in his office. He regarded her over half-moon spectacles and only sat down after Maisie had taken a chair. “We have become very, very busy again, offering support for refugees coming from over there in Germany, Austria, and so on—but fortunately, we know the ropes.” He had spoken the words “over there” in an imperious manner; at the mention of Germany his nostrils flared as if a plate of foul matter had been placed on the table in front of him. He wore a gray suit of some age; his tie was askew and his shirt collar seemed as if it had been turned, and not in recent weeks. He was balding, and there was a faint shimmer of perspiration across his pate.

  “Thank you so much, Mr. Thorpe. I understand your late mother was one of the founders of the South-Eastern Displaced Persons Relief Board.”

  “Along with my wife, my mother-in-law, and several other women in Folkestone. As you probably know, refugees were coming over in their droves more or less as soon as the Kaiser’s army began rolling towards Belgium and France. I was an officer in the Buffs—the Royal East Kents—and after I was wounded, I couldn’t just sit about, so I helped out. Not that I was very much help at the time. Anyway, after the war there was quite a lot of work to do in terms of assisting with repatriation, and as my mother was getting on, and my work brought me to Tunbridge Wells, we decided to keep a small office going here, and were given leave to do so by the government. Frankly, not a lot of rubber-stamping went on—as long as we helped them to go after the Armistice, they let us get on with it.”

  “Do you still have records of the refugees you helped?”

  “In the depths of our cellarage, we do. One never knows when one might need the information, though we have been thinking of just burning the lot, now we’re into another war—God help us.”

  “Do you think you could find out whether you have records for either of these men?”

  Maisie passed a sheet of paper to Thorpe, who squinted as he read the names. He passed a hand across his scalp and rubbed it against his upper arm, as if to remove any moisture picked up on the way. “I’ll have one of my helpers have a look for you, but I’m afraid it won’t be today, or tomorrow—in fact, I don’t know when we’ll have the time. But as soon as I know, I could drop you a postcard.”

  “Could you telephone me?” asked Maisie, offering a calling card.

  “We’ve not a phone here, but we’re getting one put in soon. Fortunately, there’s a kiosk across the street—someone could give you a ring. There’s a telephone up in my residence, but if I start using it for this, then my bills will be most unfortunately high. I dare not allow the habit to begin.”

  “I understand.” Maisie opened her handbag, took out her purse, and offered enough pennies to place a call to London.

  “Thank you. It will help us enormously.” Thorpe took the proffered coins and stood up. The interview was over, and Maisie was none the wiser.

  Chapter 6

  From Tunbridge Wells, Maisie chose a route that took her through the villages of Frant and Wadhurst, then on to Ticehurst before reaching Etchingham, just a few miles from the town of Battle. Any motor car, let alone a fast motor such as the Alvis, would have attracted attention—in every village it seemed a small gang of children stopped their playing and ran to the side of the road, waving as she passed. When she reached Church Hill, Maisie pulled over to check the address and was happy to note that she was very close to her destination. She continued on, slowing down so as not to miss the property, and soon brought the Alvis to a halt on a low grass verge outside a Georgian detached house. A stone wall limited her view of the house, though she could glimpse the roof through an ivy-covered archway above a single corroded cast-iron gate, beyond which was a flagstone path.

  Leaving the Alvis, she walked along the road to another entrance which—had the ornate double gates not been locked—opened to a carriage sweep meandering to the side of the house. The mansion was clearly visible, and Maisie could see it was probably only a little larger than the Dower House at Chelstone. Retracing her steps back along the verge, she entered the grounds through the single gate.

  A housekeeper answered the door and asked Maisie to wait while she presented her card to Mrs. Hartley-Davies. It took only three minutes for her to return and bid Maisie follow her to a drawing room with French doors overlooking the garden. Mrs. Hartley-Davies was standing just outside the drawing room, on the terrace. She was a woman of medium height, lithe in build, dressed in a sleeveless white cotton blouse, a pair of elephant-ear jodhpurs that looked as if they had seen a cavalry charge or two, and Wellington boots. She dropped a wooden trug filled with weeds at her feet. Her smile was broad as Maisie approached.

  “Miss Dobbs—so lovely to receive a visitor, even one you don’t know.” She threw a pair of secateurs on top of the weeds and pulled off the worn leather gardening gloves she was wearing. “It’s not often someone emerges from London to pay a visit. Especially someone of your ilk—a gentlewoman is always welcome.”

  Maisie would have put Hartley-Davies’ age at about fifty at most, which meant she would only have been in her mid-twenties when she had been involved with displaced refugees. She believed she had already guessed why the woman might have committed so much time to volunteer work during the war, though she would wait for the reason to be revealed when they sat down to talk. Maisie suspected Hartley-Davies was a straightforward woman; there was something about her that reminded her of Priscilla.

  “Let me just pull off my boots, and then I’ll join you.” Hartley-Davies looked at her housekeeper, who was standing by the door. “Coffee would be a treat, Mrs. Bolton—and something to nibble. I’m starving, and it’s not even lunchtime.” She looked back at Maisie. “I’m a late luncher, so I’m afraid it’s just coffee and whatever Mrs. Bolton can come up with to stave off the animal in my tum.”

  “Thank you for agreeing to see me, Mrs. Hartley-Davies,” said Maisie. “And a cup of coffee would be lovely.”

  “My pleasure—though I was about to send Mrs. Bolton back to the door with a firm refusal because I thought you might be a traveler for a company trying to sell me something. But then I saw on your card that you were an investigator, and Mrs. Bolton said you were a well-turned-out woman, so I thought better of it. My curiosity was piqued. And believe me, when your day concerns nothing more exciting than a battle royale with all manner of garden pests, the arrival of an inquiry agent is thrilling!”

  Her Wellingtons removed with the help of a boot jack, Hartley-Davies stepped into the room and shook hands with Maisie, inviting her to take a seat on a chesterfield set perpendicular to the fireplace, which was covered by a summery need
lepoint screen. By the time they were seated, the housekeeper had returned with cold lemonade and a tray of biscuits, which she placed on the low table in front of the chesterfield.

  “I thought something cold would be better for you, mu’um,” said the housekeeper.

  Hartley-Davies sighed, thanked Mrs. Bolton, and watched as the older woman left the room.

  “It’s her way—she will always give me what she thinks I need, not what I would like.” She glanced from the closed door through which the housekeeper had departed back to Maisie. “Now, perhaps you’d tell me what this is about.” She sipped her lemonade and shivered. “Lemons always make me do that—I love the little shock to my tongue, but it’s as if a lightning strike has gone through me.”

  Maisie smiled, took a sip of her lemonade, and tried not to reveal that she experienced the same reaction with lemons.

  “I am investigating two crimes that might be related in some way, so I must impress upon you a need for confidence in this matter.”

  “Of course.” Hartley-Davies pulled off her scarf and shook out her hair, which was the silver of someone who had lost the color early. As if intuiting Maisie’s thoughts, she lifted a few strands. “It went this color almost overnight in 1915—shock of hearing my husband had been killed at Arras.” She took another sip of lemonade. “I cannot believe that, with a war coming—and let’s face it, we’ve all known it was coming for years now—anyone would feel like committing a crime. After all, you want to look after each other, not cause trouble . . . I would have thought. Wouldn’t you?”

  “Yes, I would. But it happens. There have been many dispossessed and disenfranchised people in dire straits in recent years, and sometimes desperation leads in turn to a desperate measure to obtain money. That’s what the police think in this case—that two men were killed for the money they were carrying at the time. I have a client who has asked me to look into the matter . . . for personal reasons.”

  “Right—so let’s get to it. How on earth can I help you?”

  “Your name is associated with the Ladies’ Refugee Assistance Association. Could you tell me exactly what you did, and how many people you served? I’d also like to know if records are still held—or were they destroyed, or sent on to other authorities for safekeeping?”

  “All right. The lion’s share of the refugees came from France and Belgium, and they started coming more or less as the German army was approaching wherever they lived. If you knew any of our men who were over there, then they might have told you about seeing entire villages and towns on the move, trying to get away with whatever they could carry or put on a horse and cart or a handbarrow.”

  Maisie nodded. “Yes, I understand. I was in France myself—close to the border with Belgium. I was a nurse.”

  “I thought you might have been. Don’t ask me why—I just think you can always tell people who’ve been out of the little milieu they were born to. Anyway, when the refugees came in, there was a specific procedure required to register with the authorities. And everyone was doing their best, believe me. We knew they must have all had a horrible time of it. But a group of us—we had all been at school together, and to a woman our husbands or fiancés were over in France—we decided to help out, to fill the gaps, as it were. We set up a clearing house where we helped refugees, whether men, women, children, or families. If they had no home, we found accommodation. If they needed a good meal, then we made sure they were fed—we’d taken on premises that had been empty for a while, and secured a good rate from the landlord, so we had plenty of room to offer various services. Once they were settled, we found them work, and if they needed to establish contact with someone they had known at home, then we liaised with the Red Cross, who were wonderful to deal with—plus the Germans trusted them too, so we were able to do a fair amount.”

  Hartley-Davies finished her lemonade in a few gulps, and shuddered. “That’s better. Now my teeth are well and truly on edge. I suppose you might want to know how all this was funded. Well, what have you got to lose, after your beloved husband has gone to war and you’re worried sick? I was never one to sit around, and I’m not shy either—so we asked for money. If I was invited anywhere, I would always make sure I told a few heart-rending tales of the flight from the Hun, or the poor state of the little children, and how we were struggling to help them. And then I would say, ‘A pound or two is always welcome.’ Everyone knew we were after more than a pound or two, and it’s amazing what you can wheedle out of people when they are riven with guilt at not doing their bit.”

  “Do you know how many you helped?”

  “Hundreds. Of course, we weren’t the only people doing this—and there were government departments as well. We were in touch with the other associations—some were just for men, and some helped women and families. But I would say a good few hundred passed our way, and when we closed the association in 1920, we still had money in the kitty, so we kept it in hand to help out if any stray inquiries came in. Some of our refugees ended up doing well for themselves—not afraid to try their hand at business, or work very hard for someone else. They were incredibly stoic. One of our refugees became a banker and helped with the financial side of things—not that it involved too much accounting, though it was nice to have the help.” She leaned forward and took one of the biscuits. “I almost forgot I was hungry. Anyway, that’s it, really.”

  For the briefest few seconds, Maisie wasn’t quite sure what she might say—it was rare for such a fortuitous coincidence to be revealed so soon in a conversation.

  “Mrs. Hartley-Davies, was your banker a man by the name of Albert Durant, by any chance?”

  The woman smiled, yet it was an unsettled smile—the sort of smile balanced between joy and shock, with an involuntary twitch at the side of the mouth. “Yes. That’s right. Mr. Albert Durant. Dare I ask how you know this?”

  “I am afraid I must inform you that Mr. Durant has been murdered. He is one of the men I wanted to ask you about—you see, I am trying to find out anything I can about two murder victims, who both happened to have been refugees from Belgium. Both had gone on to marry English women, and in the case of the other man, his children are now grown. Mr. Durant’s wife died in childbirth, as you probably know.”

  Rosemary Hartley-Davies stood up and stepped towards the fireplace. She took a packet of cigarettes and a lighter from behind a framed photograph of a man in the uniform of an infantry officer.

  “Excuse me,” she said, as she walked out onto the terrace. “If I smoke this in here, schoolmarm Bolton will be after me. Believe it or not, she was my nanny when I was a girl—she may be well over seventy now, but she rules my little roost like a mother hen. I am not top dog in my own home.”

  As Hartley-Davies lit up her cigarette, Maisie finished her lemonade, giving the woman time to compose herself. After a moment she joined Hartley-Davies, who was now seated at a wooden table set to one side of the French doors. An older Alsatian had lumbered from the lawn to join her. Maisie had not seen any sign of a dog when she first arrived.

  “This is Emma—my best friend. She was having a little sleep under the willow tree. Emma’s pushing nine now, so we’re both quite settled together, aren’t we, Em?” She nuzzled the animal, who looked back at her owner with the bluish-white eyes of a dog who had diminished vision. “But do not be fooled by her. She may have poor eyesight, but she can hear very well. She won’t bother you unless I seem bothered—and she knows how to show her teeth. I think she could go to fourteen or fifteen—her mother made it, and so could she. She’ll be all right with you—just hold out your hand, let her have a sniff.”

  Maisie held out her hand to the dog, who duly put her nose to Maisie’s fingers. “Mrs. Hartley-Davies, I—”

  “Yes, I know—you want to ask me about Albert Durant.” She flicked her cigarette into a flower bed. “Might you be able to come another day? Perhaps tomorrow? I don’t think I can talk about it at the moment. You see, he was such a helpful man, so very kind, I always thought
, and I’m rather shocked to hear he’s dead.”

  Maisie came to her feet. “I could come tomorrow. I’ll drive over in the afternoon, if that’s all right. My house is near Tonbridge, and it’s a pleasant journey.”

  “It’s a bit of a distance for you, but I would appreciate the time to compose myself.” Hartley-Davies remained seated, but turned to look out at the garden. The dog lay down at her feet, lifting her head as if to provide a place for the hand of her mistress to settle.

  “Of course. Thank you for seeing me, Mrs. Hartley-Davies. And it’s all right, I’ll show myself out.”

  “Oh, you won’t need to do that,” said Hartley-Davies, bringing her attention back to Maisie. “I daresay Mrs. Bolton will be waiting outside the drawing room door, ready to escort you to the gate. She’s nothing if not vigilant, is Mrs. Bolton. Rather like my Em—but she can see and still hear a pin drop.”

  Maisie left the drawing room and, as predicted, the housekeeper was close to the door, arranging flowers in a large Chinese vase on the hall table. She put down the scissors she was using to cut stems, and wiped her hands on a cloth.

  “Allow me, Miss Dobbs.” Bolton opened the front door for Maisie. “Will you be calling again?”

  “Yes,” said Maisie. “I’ll be back tomorrow afternoon—I would say around three o’clock-ish.”

  “In time for tea, then,” said Bolton.