“That sounds ominous, Pris. I’ll walk along around half past six, I would imagine.”
“Stay for supper—please.”
“All right, I’d love to.”
“Maisie—”
“Pris?”
“I’m so terribly scared.”
“I know . . . I know. I’ll come as soon as I can.”
In telephone calls to Lady Rowan and Brenda, Maisie assured both women that she would return to Chelstone as soon as possible. Brenda reported that twice already Emma the dog had calmly left the house and walked to the school a half mile away, and was waiting outside when Anna and the boys emerged, ready to escort them home.
Maisie took a deep breath before her next call, which was to Francesca Thomas—who was “not in the office” according to Lambert, who had answered the telephone.
“May I take a message for when she returns,” he asked.
Maisie hesitated. “No . . . no, that’s all right. Just tell her that I telephoned. She knows both my office and home numbers.”
“Very well, Miss Dobbs. Will there be anything else?”
“That will be all, Mr. Lambert. Thank you.”
Lambert bid Maisie good afternoon. She replaced the receiver and leaned back in her chair, her gaze cast out towards the window and across the rooftops as she considered the case and the many questions she had asked of those she had met and of herself. At last she reached into her bag and brought out her notebook, going back through details recorded along the way. Taking out her pen, she began to tap it on the desk, as if she wanted to write a certain sentence, but could not bring herself to fashion the words that would without doubt point the finger in one or two directions. She closed the notebook and placed the pen on top.
“Spain was easier than this,” she whispered to herself, before coming to her feet, taking up her bag, her keys, and hat. It was only as she reached the front door that she realized that, once again, she had left the box containing her gas mask behind. She sighed, not bothering to return.
When she reached Priscilla’s house, she stopped for a moment to look up at the mansion, which she now knew as the home of a family to whom she was devoted, but when she first crossed its threshold, it had been as a girl still in her teens, nervous about meeting the parents of the young man she loved, Captain Simon Lynch, a doctor with the Royal Army Medical Corps. They had been introduced by Priscilla at a party in the autumn of 1914, when the women were at Girton College. For Maisie and Simon it was a first love, a love forged in wartime, and for the most part in France. Following Maisie’s posting to a casualty clearing station, it seemed fate was playing a strong hand in their lives when Simon was sent to work at that same station.
The house where Priscilla and her family lived had once been the home of the Lynch family; Simon’s widowed mother had sold the property to Priscilla and Douglas Partridge when she realized she wanted to spend the rest of her days at her country home in Cambridgeshire. But Simon had grown up in this house. Now he was dead, a casualty of the Great War who had succumbed to his wounds years after the Armistice.
“Tante Maisie!”
Maisie looked up to see Thomas bounding down the steps. Priscilla’s eldest son bore a broad smile as he held out his arms to the woman he considered a beloved aunt.
“Thomas, I hear you have broken your mother’s heart,” said Maisie.
“Oh, I might have known she’d have to tell you.” He stepped back, hands in pockets. “She just doesn’t understand—I thought it best to sign up for the RAF now.” He shrugged, sighing. “I mean really, Tante Maisie, if she thought about it, Mama would realize that by the time I’m assigned to a squadron, this war will all be over—I’ll just be square bashing until then, with the odd training flight, and I’ll be earning money! I keep telling her, she really has nothing to worry about. But at least I’ll be near an aeroplane or two and, well, doing something important.” Another sigh. “Do tell her to keep her hair on, won’t you? Really, they won’t let me take on the Luftwaffe for ages yet.” Thomas reached forward, grinned again, and kissed Maisie on the cheek. “Got to go now, Tante Maisie.”
She watched as he jumped down the final steps. “Is she pretty, Tom?”
He turned and laughed. “Absolutely! Must dash, can’t be late!”
And as Maisie looked up, she saw the curtain move: Priscilla, watching her son as he ran towards the underground station. “Oh, my dear Tom,” she whispered, following Priscilla’s line of vision. “Your mother does understand, that’s the trouble—she understands only too well.”
Maisie listened to Priscilla’s grievances regarding her sons, and her concern that Elinor—her sons’ nanny, not yet thirty years of age—had decided to enlist for service.
“She says that all the years of living in France, first with another family, and then with us, has given her such a fluency in French that she would be useful in any arm of the services. It was those advertisements over the past six months, telling us all to do our national service, that did it—she signed up, and she’s in the army auxiliary . . . I think. There are so many services now, one never knows which is which.”
“I take my hat off to her, Priscilla—and let’s face it, keeping your boys in order has given her good practice for the army.”
“Oh, very funny, Maisie—but you’ve got a point there.” Priscilla shook her empty glass. “Another?”
“I’ve barely touched mine yet—don’t let me stop you, though!”
“Oh, don’t worry—you won’t.” Priscilla stood up and walked to a chrome trolley laden with an assortment of decanters, an ice bucket, and a soda syphon. The shelf underneath was stocked with glasses and several bottles of Indian tonic water. Eschewing ice tongs in favor of her fingers, she half-filled her glass with ice and prepared her second gin and tonic, then returned to the sofa.
“Is Elinor’s French that good?” asked Maisie.
“Most definitely,” said Priscilla. “She picked it up from the locals, but—very clever of her—she took lessons twice a week from a local woman who had decamped from Paris to Biarritz. She said she was aware the accent was different there, so she wanted to learn properly, to ‘broaden her horizons’ when the boys were older and she left us.” Priscilla laughed. “The trouble is, they’ve been old enough for a few years—Tarquin is almost fourteen now—but we were loath to let her go. She’s become one of the family. But now she’s on her way, though we have insisted that this is her home when she is on leave, that sort of thing. Which leaves me to do my bit.”
“What do you mean?”
Priscilla took a sip of her drink, then another. “I’m sure you saw the newsreel at the cinema, when they were telling us that everyone should do their national service. You and Tim are always going off to the pictures together, so I would be surprised if you hadn’t.”
“Yes, I’ve seen them,” said Maisie, folding her arms and leaning closer. “What are you up to, Priscilla?”
“See, it’s Priscilla now—you always call me Priscilla when you’re worried or you think I’m up to something. I should start calling you Margaret or addressing you as Lady Maisie, or whatever title you’re entitled to use.”
“Stop trying to distract me—tell me what you’ve done.”
“It was the reel about preparations for civilian casualties if—and perhaps I should say when—Hitler’s Luftwaffe boys are sent to bomb us that caught my attention. They’re recruiting women who can drive to train as ambulance drivers, with extra points if you know some first aid. So I thought to myself, I’ve done it before and I can damn well do it again. I can drive, I can tend a wound, and I have experience—I’m not a girl anymore, but I bet you I’m as fit as a twenty-year-old.” Her eyes widened as she explained. “That’s another thing—you have to attend fitness classes, just to make sure you can run into a building and run out again with a wounded person.”
“Have you signed up?”
“Not yet. They boys were having a row yesterday, the RAF against the n
avy, with Tarquin saying it was all a waste anyway, and if no one fought, there wouldn’t be a war, which got him a semi-friendly pummeling. Anyway”—Priscilla took another sip of her gin and tonic—“anyway, I thought, that’s it, I will not be the only one in this family not doing my bit. Even Cook says she will volunteer with the WVS. So I’m ready, and no one can question my abilities, which I must say are quite considerable—I’ve driven all over Europe. And I was with the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry for four years during the last war, behind the wheel of something a lot harder to start than any ambulance working today.” She paused, took another sip of her cocktail, then held the glass up as if toasting Maisie. “You should do it. It’ll mainly be nighttime work, plus you can drive—and after Spain, especially, you’re well placed to tend the wounds of war, now aren’t you? And we have to work in pairs, so perhaps we could be a team.”
At that moment, the door to the drawing room opened, and Timothy and Tarquin rushed in with the news that they’d followed their older brother and seen him kissing a girl. Priscilla dismissed her two younger sons, admonishing them for telling tales.
“When does Tom leave, Pris?”
“He has a few weeks’ grace. You’ll come to our special family supper, won’t you? I believe he has to be at Cranwell on October the second, so on the first we’ll send him off with a good meal inside him, at the very least. And I do hope he behaves himself with this girl. You know what they’re like at that age.” She sighed and finished her drink. “I wish that were my only worry—it seems so insignificant.”
Maisie nodded, reaching for Priscilla’s hand and feeling her friend’s tight grasp in return. “I’ll be here for Tom’s going-away supper—I wouldn’t miss it.”
Chapter 13
It was dark by the time Maisie arrived home to her garden flat, and she was careful to close the blackout curtains before turning on a light. She knew that if even the slightest chink of a beam from her window were visible from the street, the Air Raid Precautions man would be knocking at her door, admonishing her for risking life and limb, and those of her neighbors, with her carelessness. According to Billy, the blackout had already caused accidents, with pedestrians losing their way or stepping out in front of unseen motor cars, headlamps covered lest they be spotted by an eagle-eyed Luftwaffe pilot intent upon killing anyone, anywhere.
“I tell you,” he had warned, “the way things are going, the blackout’s going to do away with more people than blimmin’ Hitler. Never mind a gas mask, they should have given us all a white stick—I mean, Hitler don’t need to bomb us, he only has to wait until we’ve knocked each other out and just wander in with his troops.”
The telephone was ringing by the time she’d picked up her notebook, ready to review all she had learned since Francesca Thomas arrived unannounced in her garden.
“Maisie. Francesca Thomas here. I understand you’ve been trying to get in touch with me.”
“You have an efficient assistant,” said Maisie, twisting the telephone cord around her fingers.
“Taking a message is not efficient, it’s expected. But yes, he’s efficient.”
Maisie felt her breath catch in her throat. “Dr. Thomas, I wanted to ask you about a man named Carl Firmin. He died last year.” She leafed through her notebook. “On the fourth of August—exactly one year to the day before Frederick Addens was murdered. I visited Firmin’s wife because it came to my attention that he had associated with both Frederick Addens and Albert Durant, and I know he knew Rosemary Hartley-Davies. I understand you visited his wife following his death.”
There was a noticeable pause before Thomas responded. “Yes, I did. My role here changes all the time, but it fell to me to visit her, given her husband’s position as a former Belgian refugee. It was a respectful visit, in consideration of his service to his country—I mean—”
“What service to his country?” asked Maisie. “According to my findings, he was little more than a lad when he arrived here. His life had been under threat in Belgium, so he left and entered British waters as a refugee. How had he served?”
“Forgive me—an error of speech. He served Belgium only in assisting his fellow countrymen even after arrival in Great Britain. He was known to keep in touch with other refugees. He was loyal, and that was worth my visit.”
“I see. His wife said you were asking for documents that might be of interest to Belgium.”
“If we are to be able to reflect on the Great War—and, indeed, on this war—and learn, then the recollections of the ordinary people will be valuable indeed. I wanted to make sure we had a chance to make a case for preserving any diaries Firmin might have kept, before they were destroyed. The bereaved will either get rid of things indiscriminately in their grief, or keep them very close to hand. If Mrs. Firmin was of the former, then we wanted to have her husband’s papers before she disposed of them—that’s if such papers existed, and it was my job to find out. Most important, though, it was my job to collect official documentation belonging to a deceased Belgian national—a passport, a certificate confirming status as a refugee, that sort of thing. We’ve done the same with papers belonging to Frederick Addens and Albert Durant, as you know. After all, we don’t want them falling into the wrong hands and aiding a spy—and let it be said that such things can and do happen.”
“Yes, that makes sense.”
“And your progress on the case, Maisie?”
Maisie unwound the telephone cord from her fingers and let it drop. “The threads are leading somewhere, Dr. Thomas.” She paused, allowing her words to linger in the air, just as microscopic drops of a fragrance might remain long after a woman had used an atomizer to apply perfume to the soft skin under her ears, or to her wrists. “In fact, I would say that I am close.” Another pause. “But of course, you have to remember, I must take due care, for if I pointed the finger towards the wrong person, it would lead to a tragedy, so I take my time.”
“Surely there’s a risk involved—Maisie, if you have a name, you must tell me.”
“As I said, I am close, Dr. Thomas—though not close enough yet.”
“Right you are. I trust you implicitly.”
“One more thing—do you find it interesting that Firmin and Addens died on the same date, one year apart?”
“It’s probably just a coincidence, but if not I am sure you will discover the link.”
“Thank you. I’ll report again before the week’s end.”
“Good enough,” replied Francesca Thomas, ending the call.
With the long tone of disconnection ringing in her ear, Maisie set down the receiver, turned off the light, and opened the French doors to the garden. There was a chill in the mid-September air. She pulled her cardigan around her and sat down in a wicker chair.
It seemed that no matter how many times Francesca Thomas had invited Maisie to address her by her Christian name, she always reverted to “Dr. Thomas.” Sometimes she felt like no more than a girl alongside the other woman, who was, in truth, only a few years older than Maisie. But such feelings were not the aspect of their conversation that troubled her, as she looked up at the night sky, now accustomed to the darker shadows of barrage balloons floating above. Thomas had lied to her. She had slipped up and lied. But was the error deliberate? And could it be that, having asked Maisie to investigate the case of Frederick Addens, she now wished she had left well enough alone? What was the risk that Francesca Thomas was taking? But more to the point—what other risks might she take, and why? Yes, it was true, Maisie did not want to point a finger without all the evidence to hand. Maurice had cautioned her against such a move from the very beginning. “No matter how loud the wolves bay, no matter how much they want blood to atone for a terrible loss of life, Maisie, you must take your time. Know that the moment you feel pressure bearing down, you are primed to make a mistake. You can never bring back the life of an innocent swinging dead in the hangman’s noose.”
Yes, perhaps “Dr. Thomas” was best, thought Maisie. Distance,
rather than familiarity, would serve her.
“Morning, hen.” The voice boomed into the receiver as Sandra passed it to Maisie. She had no need to introduce the caller, for Maisie could hear MacFarlane asking for her from a distance of several feet.
“Good morning, Robbie. Do you have some news for me?”
“Not the news you might have wanted—nothing doing this week. But on Monday morning—that would be September the eighteenth—at five sharp, your transport will be leaving from an airfield in Kent, not far from Bromley. Called Biggin Hill. We’ve got a Lysander going out of there into Belgium. None of your business what it’s up to, but he can take you. Very much on the QT, though. And because I owe you—as you so kindly reminded me—I’ve arranged a motor and a driver ready to take you on from there. That’s for my peace of mind, not yours. But—and this is a big but—you must be back at the airfield no later than three in the afternoon, and if you tarry, the driver is instructed to tap his fingers on the steering wheel and make a noise. I do not want to have to get on one of those bloody Lysander things to come and get you. This is all very improper anyway.”
“When did you ever worry about what was proper, Robert MacFarlane?”
“Granted. Everything I’m doing now is improper, and I sometimes think a nice cushy desk job at Scotland Yard would have been a better choice, but this is what they pegged me for, so this is what I do. One more thing. Wrap up warm for the journey and bring a flask of tea and one of those buns you like. There’ll be no steward offering silver service breakfast on the way. And I want you to get on the blower to me as soon as you return, so I know you’re safe and sound.”
In This Grave Hour Page 18
