In This Grave Hour

by Jacqueline Winspear

  “That wasn’t so bad, was it?” Maisie wiped her brow. “I’ve known worse.”

  Reaching the house, she leaned towards the first window and cupped her hands around her eyes to better see within. Nothing appeared to be out of place.

  “Anything in there?” Maisie asked of the constable, who was peering into the second window.

  “Nothing.”

  “All right, let’s make our way to the back.”

  They stopped to look into each window, but when they reached the French doors, Maisie slowed down. She felt her heart beat faster, and a chill crossed her bare arms. She stopped.

  “You all right, madam?” asked the constable.

  “Yes. Perfectly fine.” She looked up at the tall man, who at once appeared to be too impossibly young for his job. She wondered how much police work he had really seen—it seemed his daily round of the village offered little in the way of excitement. She knew that was about to change.

  “Just a moment, Constable.” She gestured for him to remain in place.

  Maisie approached the French doors with their many panes of glass, allowing a full view of the drawing room. Once again she cupped her hands around her eyes as she looked in. She surveyed the scene and stepped back.

  “All right, madam?”

  She shook her head. “No, I’m afraid it isn’t quite all right, Constable.”

  “Here, let me—”

  “No, it’s best you don’t look.” She placed a hand on his arm. “You see, I was a nurse, in the war, and I was used to seeing some horrible things, and I think it will be a good idea if you just do as I say.” She reached into her shoulder bag and took out her keys. “Do you know how to drive a motor car?”

  “Yes, madam.” The young man’s face was ashen. “But I should—”

  “Please, Constable . . . I have noticed that there are no telephone lines going to the house—I took account of it as we entered the grounds. I therefore want you to take the key to my motor car and drive back to the police station. Please get this absolutely right—you are reporting a rather brutal murder, and you and your most senior policemen must not return without the murder bag and a pathologist. This is the scene of a crime and should be secured without delay—I know how to do that in the first instance, but you will need assistance.”

  “But madam—”

  “You will be required to confirm my identity, so tell your superiors to call Scotland Yard and speak to Detective Chief Inspector Caldwell. Tell him you wish to establish that you have indeed been speaking to Miss Maisie Dobbs, and tell him why. That should do it.” She placed her hand on his shoulder. “I know this all seems very out of order for you, but please believe me when I tell you I know what I am doing and I know what must be done. Is that clear?”

  He nodded. “Yes, madam.”

  As he turned to leave, she called to him. “Constable, what’s your name?”

  “Police Constable Sharman.”

  “Constable Sharman, remember to bring the motor car back with you—ideally in one piece, with no scratches. And take account of your speed—she can go.”

  “Right you are, madam.”

  Maisie watched him run to the gate, and soon heard the distinctive rumble of the Alvis’ engine, followed by a crunch as Constable Sharman put the motor car into gear. She stepped back to the French doors, took a deep breath, and turned the handle. The door was not locked and opened with ease. She took another, even deeper breath—it would be the last good breath she would allow herself until she left the room—and opened the double doors wide.

  Maisie closed her eyes. She placed her left hand on her chest and crossed it with her right. Soon the image of a white light surrounding her body came into her mind’s eye, and she knew she was protected from all that had taken place in the room.

  “May they know peace,” she said in a whisper, then opened her eyes.

  She closed the doors behind her.

  The first body was that of Mrs. Bolton, who had been felled by a single bullet to the back of her head. She had been kneeling down at the time and her killer had stood behind her to take her life. Rosemary Hartley-Davies was on her back, her skull bloody and splintered. A revolver lay in her open right hand. Maisie bent down to look more closely at the wound and then at the revolver. She took note of the shape, of distinctive markings. She was no expert, but it seemed to be a Browning—or perhaps the copycat Ruby. She looked around the body, at the rug and the surrounding furniture. The blood splatter that emanated from the brain of Mrs. Bolton seemed confined to the floor, as did that of Hartley-Davies. Maisie looked to one side of the latter woman’s body, and noted a spray of blood. Though she could not be sure, the condition of the bodies indicated death to have been late the previous evening. Maisie was confident Constable Sharman would have recoiled from the smell. She had once told a policeman that, having smelled the inimitable fragrance of gangrene in soldiers who had languished in no-man’s-land, she was quite immune to the smell of death.

  She set her handbag on a nearby table and began to make notes. First, was there a link between Maisie’s visit and the murder of the two women. If so, how had the killer known who Maisie was, when she had visited, and why? Could Hartley-Davies have walked to a telephone kiosk to inform someone—and if so, where was the nearest kiosk? How long would it have taken Hartley-Davies to reach the kiosk? Why were the gates padlocked? Had Hartley-Davies put on the locks after Maisie departed? In that case, the killer either had to leap a fence, was directed to an alternative way in, or knew another means of entering the grounds. Or did the killer lock the gates after committing the murders? Maisie wondered if she had been followed on her journey to the village. No—it was so small, she would have noticed. Or had someone seen her leaving the property the day before? After all, she had a most distinctive vehicle. She wasn’t sure how long it would be before the police arrived, but she had to find the woman’s handbag, and an address book, if she had one. Moving from the drawing room, she searched the hall, where she heard whimpering coming from the under-stairs cupboard.

  “Oh my—the dog!” said Maisie, running to the cupboard and unlatching the door. At the last moment she remembered to hold out her hand for the Alsatian to take her scent and—she hoped—know that she was a friend.

  The dog had been cramped and emerged half stumbling from the cupboard, her back legs bending together at the joints. At first she struggled to stand, but sniffed Maisie’s hand and gave a shallow wag of her tail. Her nose went up, and she began to whine. Maisie breathed a sigh of relief that she had closed the door leading to the hall from the murder scene, for now the dog moved at an ungainly lope towards the drawing room and put her nose along the gap between the door and the floor. Her whine gave way to a howl.

  “Come on, dear girl, come with me—come on, let’s get some water for you.” Maisie took the dog by her collar, and though Emma did not want to leave the place where it seemed she knew her mistress lay dead—for Maisie was in no doubt that the dog had caught the scent of death even before the first shot was fired—she allowed herself to be led to the kitchen. The dog’s water bowl was in a corner near a back door that opened onto the side of the house. Maisie filled it to the brim and set it down, waiting while the dog lapped away her thirst. A lead was hanging by the door, so she slipped it on Emma’s collar, opened the door, and stepped outside. It took only a moment for the dog to relieve herself. Once back in the kitchen, Maisie locked the back door and left the dog to her bed and water bowl—she would find her some food later. She closed the door behind her and made her way upstairs to the bedrooms.

  She was correct in her first guess as to which door led to Rosemary Hartley-Davies’ bedroom. Overlooking the gardens, it was feminine without being frivolous, a room she might have chosen for herself. On the bed she found the woman’s handbag. A search revealed her purse, a lipstick, comb, an invitation to the local harvest festival, and a key with a tag attached, indicating that it was for the back door. The purse inside held some money
and a ticket for the opera. Maisie took the ticket. In the bedside table drawer she found an address book, and put it in her pocket. Continuing her search, she found nothing more of note in the room. She returned to the upper corridor. She wondered how far Constable Sharman would have to drive to alert his superiors, and to summon a detective. She had a feeling that, once Caldwell had been apprised of her presence at the house where two women had been murdered, he might well be on his way to Sussex.

  There were three more bedrooms on the same floor. She opened the door of the first. The bed was not made up for a guest, and had only a candlewick bedspread thrown across the mattress and pillows. The room had been dusted regularly, for there was no sign of cobwebbing—it was just an empty room awaiting a visitor. The next room was smaller, and was clearly Mrs. Bolton’s domain. That the housekeeper’s room neighbored that of Rosemary Hartley-Davies was a little surprising—servants were, as a rule, accommodated in the attic rooms. However, when Maisie was a girl working at Ebury Place, the London home of Lord Julian and Lady Rowan Compton, she had been sent to Chelstone to be the general maid, companion, and helper to the elderly Dowager. To enable Maisie to be of assistance if the octogenarian awoke in the night, she slept in a small room on the same floor, rather than a servant’s quarter in another part of the house. Without doubt, Hartley-Davies had not appeared to require any assistance; indeed, as she had mentioned the day before, Mrs. Bolton was old enough to be her mother. Perhaps the younger woman wanted to be close at hand should her former nanny need help.

  The housekeeper’s bedroom was tidy, yet filled with small ornaments and mementoes. Maisie began searching through drawers and in cupboards, finding nothing of note. She looked around the room again, and in that moment, she became still. She closed her eyes. She was missing something. There was something else . . . and within seconds she knew what it was. There was someone else in the house. It was as if she could hear their breathing in her mind, and feel it in her own lungs. Someone was in the house. She stepped into the hallway. There was only one more room on this floor. She closed her eyes, again summoning a feeling of protection, and felt herself calm. She approached the room, turned the handle, and opened the door, her first step slow and measured. She looked into the room.

  “Oh,” said Maisie. She stifled a gasp.

  A pajama-clad man was tied to the bed, a handkerchief bunched into his mouth and secured with a scarf. He had only sockets where his eyes had once looked out onto the world. Maisie had seen soldiers with such wounds in the war, when the eyes had become so filled with shrapnel, there was no other choice for the surgeon but to remove them before infection set in.

  “It’s all right, I’m here—help is here.” She rushed to the man’s side and began to loosen the handkerchief, her fingers pulling the fabric away.

  “God in heaven, what’s going on. Where’s Rosie? And Mrs. B. And who the hell are you?”

  Maisie reached for a glass of water set on the bedside table, topping it up from the adjacent carafe.

  “You should drink this first, then I will tell you. Come on, I’ll help.”

  “You could untie my bloody hands,” said the man.

  “When you’ve had a drink and you tell me who you are. Now then, sip.” She lifted the man’s head and held the glass to his lips. “Slowly—don’t gulp it, or you will be sick. There’s plenty of water.”

  The man nodded to indicate he’d had his fill, so Maisie drew back, returning the glass to the tray.

  “My name is Robert Miller—I’m Rosie’s brother. Where is she? And will you bloody untie me? I’m not the big bad wolf, you know, and from your voice I can tell you’re hardly Little Red Riding Hood.”

  “Calm down, Mr. Miller—a lot has happened, and the police will be here any moment now.” Maisie untied the strips of torn sheeting securing Miller to the bed.

  Miller reached forward and grasped her arm, twisting her flesh. “Who the hell are you? I heard a gun, and believe me, I know a gun when I hear it. It wasn’t some motor car backfiring a couple of times on the road. Where’s Rosie?”

  Despite his disability, Miller was strong, his grip fierce, though soon he began to fail. As Maisie reached forward with her free hand and dug her thumb into the flesh between his collarbone and his neck, he released her arm.

  “Where the hell did you learn to do that?” said Miller.

  “Mr. Miller, please help me—we don’t have much time before the police arrive, so I must be brutally honest with you regarding the situation. Your sister and Mrs. Bolton have been murdered. The man who did this to you was most likely the killer, unless two people were involved.”

  “Oh God, oh God, not Rosie, not Rose . . .” Miller moaned, holding his hands to his ears as if to banish Maisie’s words.

  “I suspect as soon as the killer found you and discovered you were blind, he knew he was safe—but he tied you and stopped you calling out to give himself time.”

  “He could have saved himself the bother—takes me all day to move from this bed, and who the hell would hear me? The legs stopped working in good old 1916. Good year for getting blown to pieces, I hear.” Miller began to cough back tears.

  In the distance, Maisie could hear the distinctive ringing of the bell on a police vehicle.

  “The police are almost here, Mr. Miller. We’ll make sure you’re looked after.”

  “Oh God, not back to the hospital, no . . . I couldn’t bear it.”

  “I’m sure we can find other accommodation for you. Can I get you anything at this moment? I will have to go down when the police arrive.”

  “This is embarrassing—I need help to go to the lavatory. I’ve my own bathroom, just over there. That’s why Rosie gave me this room—because I can’t exactly hobble down the corridor. I feel terrible having to ask, but I’ve been here all night, not knowing what was happening. My wheelchair’s in the corner.”

  Maisie collected the wheelchair, drew back the bedclothes, and leaned across, working her left arm under the man’s shoulders. “If you’ve the strength to lever yourself up, I can get you there.”

  Having helped Robert Miller to sit up, she lifted his legs to the side of the bed, and supported him as he moved from the bed to the wheelchair. She pushed the chair to the bathroom and helped him to stand again, and to maneuver himself into the lavatory.

  “I’m all right from here,” said Miller.

  “I’ll wait outside.”

  Maisie studied the room. Of course there had been no reason for the woman to mention her brother, yet by the same token there had been no sign of his presence in the drawing room—Maisie thought it would have been comforting for him to be seated close to the windows, or outside in the garden in fine weather. She knew she should not rush to judgment, but she wondered why on earth his bed had not been situated in a room downstairs. Surely it would have been far more comfortable.

  “Ready when you are,” Miller called out to Maisie. He was in his chair by the time Maisie opened the door. She could see he had been weeping again, and she knew there would be many more tears.

  “You’re very good at this sort of thing, Miss Dobbs.”

  Maisie smiled as she pulled clothing from a chest of drawers for Miller—a pair of trousers, a clean shirt, tie, and pullover.

  “It’s the second time today I’ve told someone this, but I was a nurse in the war, and afterwards for a while. They teach you how to lift and carry men—after all, you can’t have nurses going down with backache every day.”

  Hearing vehicles pulling up beyond the mansion, Maisie moved across to the window. The Alvis, a black police motor car, and a coroner’s van were lined up outside.

  “I’d better go downstairs, Mr. Miller. I’m sure they’ll think I did it if I’m not there waiting for them.”

  “And I can tell them you didn’t.”

  Maisie looked back at Miller, his empty sockets staring blindly at a place above her head.

  “Do you know who killed Rosemary, Mr. Miller?”

 
He shook his head. “No. But his hands were almost as soft as yours, and he smelled of Brylcreem, as if he’d slathered it all over his scalp. Anyway, Nurse Dobbs, you’d better go down.”

  Maisie turned towards the door. “If you want to get it right,” she commented as she left the room, “it was Sister Dobbs by the time I’d finished.”

  Chapter 8

  It was past eight o’clock when Maisie arrived back at the Dower House. A soft late summer dusk had begun to descend by the time she parked the Alvis, so she sat for a while in the motor car to take advantage of the waning light and the quiet, and to marshal the many trains of thought that had run through her mind on the journey home to Chelstone. Brenda had come to the kitchen window twice to see if it was indeed Maisie’s motor car—most callers would have parked a vehicle at the front of the house—but hadn’t ventured out to ask why she lingered. Brenda had worked for Maurice Blanche and known Maisie as his apprentice; she understood her need for silence.

  She had been detained by the police at the home of Rosemary Hartley-Davies to answer questions, which she expected. She recounted the story that she’d had an appointment with the now-deceased woman and had been perplexed by the locked gates preventing access to the property. She explained that Constable Sharman had fortuitously come along, whereupon she had described her concern to him, so together they had gained entry by moving the rusted gate open. Seeing as the police had indeed checked her identity with Caldwell, there was no point in hiding the fact that she had been looking into the deaths of two former refugees and had hoped that Rosemary Hartley-Davies might be able to help her.

  “Oh yes, I remember the Belgians—had a load of them in Tunbridge Wells during the war, we did,” said Detective Inspector Wood, who had been sent to the scene along with Constable Sharman, two other policemen, and the pathologist. He was a not a young man, and it seemed to Maisie that he must be approaching retirement. He appeared tired, as if not really interested whilst going through the motions of inquiry. A young detective sergeant proved more energetic. On at least two occasions, Maisie caught Wood rolling his eyes as his sergeant expressed enthusiasm at this or that observation.