So in the end I remained silent, though I couldn’t help monitoring him from the corner of my eye with growing concern. He took a deep drink from his second glass of scotch, but rather than refill it, he crossed the terrace to sink into the vacant chair across the table from Reg.
“What have I missed?” he asked with forced cheer. “Are there any grand plans for this evening? It is our last night here, after all.”
“Aye, Ver,” Reg chimed in. “What have you got planned for us? Another cribbage tournament? Some nocturnal sea bathing? A spot of snipe hunting?” This last was uttered with a particularly impish grin, poking fun at me for the time Reg and our older brothers had convinced me and my younger brother, Tim, to sneak out of the nursery after dark to join them on a snipe hunt. Of course, had we realized the snipe we were hunting was mythical, and that the pillowcases they’d told us to bring to capture the bird were actually going to be used on us, Tim and I wouldn’t have been so eager to tag along.
“Are you sure hunting is the best idea?” Daphne voiced in concern, artlessly unaware he was teasing me.
“He jests,” I assured her.
“Do I?” he challenged, the natural lines and tiny scars near the corners of his eyes crinkling.
Max chuckled into his drink, and a glance at Sidney and George told me they were also familiar with the general joke.
“Yes, unless you intend to be the hunter strung up in a tree with a pillowcase over your head this time,” I replied pointedly before taking a sip of my gin rickey.
“That wasn’t my idea,” Reg replied as he echoed the others’ laughter. All save Daphne, that is, who merely frowned, either in confusion or disapproval.
“No, it was undoubtedly Thomas.” His older brother had always been the most domineering. “Or Freddy,” I conceded, for my oldest brother had possessed a reckless and impulsive streak. “But you were also content to leave us there all night at their urging,” I muttered wryly, unwilling to let him off the hook as I recalled the fear I’d felt and the chill of that autumn evening, which had made me shiver in my thin coat. Though even as I’d listened to Tim’s whimpers, I’d refused to cry, determined not to give the older boys the satisfaction.
“Only because I knew Rob would return to release you.” A smile still curled his lips, showing he was far from chastened.
“Yes, Rob always looked out for those who were younger and weaker.” A sharp pain lanced my heart as thoughts of my second-oldest brother tinted the memory with sadness. He had always been the best of us, and when his aeroplane was shot down over France in July 1915, he’d taken a piece of me with him. That I still hadn’t reconciled myself to his loss even four years later simply made matters worse.
I drained my glass of its cool libation, resolutely pushing back the other memories battering at the door to my consciousness. When I opened my eyes, I found my husband watching me from his position leaning against the stone balustrade. It was obvious he knew where my thoughts had strayed, but I knew he wouldn’t say anything. Not now anyway. Not until we were alone. And there was time enough to distract him from doing that.
“No snipe hunting,” I declared as I set my glass on the table nearby. “And I suspect another cribbage tournament would only result in Reg routing us all again.”
Reg’s teeth flashed in a cocksure grin.
I had happened to stumble across a deck of Braille playing cards in a specialty shop I’d visited in London and brought them to the cottage. Reg had initially struggled to adapt to them, but with Daphne’s assistance he had quickly acquired proficiency with them and sightless game play. This did not surprise me in the least. Reg had always possessed a quick mind and a dogged determination. Now, a fortnight after his arrival in Seaford, he was trouncing us all, with the possible exception of George, whose mathematical genius always made games of chance more interesting.
“Nocturnal sea bathing, then?” Reg persisted merrily.
Sidney straightened, crossing closer to the rest of us. “Not this evening. Not with those storms that hovered over the Channel earlier today. The water will be too choppy.”
“Perhaps Verity means to surprise us,” Max chimed in to say, possibly hoping to save me from Reg’s further harassment. But he looked to me with the same enthusiasm.
Given the reason behind my and Sidney’s retreat from London, and our decision to host this extended house party, we’d gone to great lengths to entertain and distract ourselves and our friends. After all, the one-year anniversary of the armistice ending the war had passed less than a fortnight earlier, and each of us had struggled with the tides of our own grief and loss. We had each lost loved ones, each sacrificed for the war effort—some more than others. While Sidney, Max, and Reg had served as officers in the trenches of the Western Front, George, Daphne, and I had worked for the British Intelligence Services. George had been a brilliant codebreaker for Naval Intelligence, while Daphne worked in the Registry for MI5 counterintelligence, and I had operated in a number of capacities for the Secret Service, even spending time behind enemy lines in German-occupied Belgium and France, liaising with our intelligence-gathering networks there.
Given our collective memories, our collective desire to escape the pomp and circumstance being orchestrated in London to mark the occasion, I’d had my work cut out for me. Though I’d known it was foolish to hope to pass that day and those around it without confronting some dark emotions and painful recollections, I’d done my best to strategically sprinkle our itinerary with welcome distractions. Some mundane and some outrageous. Some peaceful and some dynamic. Each of us had also done our fair share of strolling alone through our gardens or along the rocky beach. Each of us coming to terms with what had passed, our own part in it, and the fortune of our survival to see this day when so many others had not.
So I met the looks on their eager faces with some sense of chagrin as I was forced to admit the truth. “Actually, I didn’t make any specific plans for this evening. I thought we might all be preoccupied with preparations for our return to London.” I glanced anxiously at each of them in turn, searching for signs of disappointment. “But we could make up a table of whist or brag, if you like. Or play some music on the gramophone and roll back the rug in the parlor so we can dance. We’re short on ladies, of course, but I’m sure Daphne and I can rise to the challenge if you gentlemen are willing to take turns.”
George lowered his leg from where he’d crossed it over the other knee and leaned forward so that a curl of his dark hair fell over his forehead. “Don’t fret, Ver. I fear we’ve become quite spoiled in your charge over the past few weeks. We seem to have forgotten we can entertain ourselves.”
“Bentnick’s right,” Max chimed in, tipping his glass to me. “A relaxing evening is just what we need.”
I offered them a tight smile, appreciating their desire to reassure me, but I still felt that I’d let them down. Fortunately, I would have all of dinner to come up with something clever and diverting. Mr. Parson should be appearing at any moment to inform us the meal prepared by his wife was ready. We rarely stood on ceremony at Sweetbriar Cottage, and so had taken to not dressing formally for dinner as we would elsewhere. Someone of an older generation like my mother or my aunt might have balked at such informal behavior, but none of the men minded eschewing their evening attire, and Daphne was accustomed to my ways.
So when the door behind me opened, I sat upright, swinging my legs over the side of the chaise in anticipation of Mr. Parson’s announcement. But rather than declare dinner to be served, he spoke in a strained voice. “Mrs. Kent? It appears you have a visitor.”
My brow furrowed at his choice of words. “It appears I do?”
He cleared his throat, his brow puckering in disapproval. “Yes, well, she claims to be a relation of some kind, but I’m not quite certain.”
I glanced at Sidney in confusion as I pushed to my feet. “What is her name?”
But I could now see beyond his shoulder to the woman standing behind him, havin
g refused to wait in the entry as he must have requested. So when he pronounced her name it was all but drowned out by my exclamation of astonishment.
“Mrs. Ilse Vischering.”
“Großtante Ilse!” I rushed forward, forcing Mr. Parson to step aside as I threw my arms around my great-aunt.
A fur stole was draped around her shoulders, and she smelled of the eau de cologne she had worn for as long as I could remember—a blend of peony, spices, and jasmine. Her husky voice when she whispered in my ear was the same, albeit frayed at the edges with the same rush of emotion I felt. “Mein Liebchen.” However, her shoulders were frail beneath my arms, her body thin, and when I pulled back to look into her eyes, I could see that she had aged greatly in the past five years.
“How did you make it out of Germany?” I gasped.
CHAPTER 2
Perhaps the more pertinent question was, How had she been allowed into England? For I knew that very few visas were being granted to German citizens seeking to come to Britain. Of course, this was more to keep out those who might pursue employment here rather than elderly women with their own means of support, but the authorities were still being rather strict about which applicants they would even consider.
I stepped back, studying her more closely. Whereas before she had been Rubenesque and pleasantly round, her skin now sagged on the fine bone structure of her face, its color pale and sallow, while dark circles ringed her sunken eyes. But those green eyes, so like my own, were still sharp and brilliant, albeit watery with emotion at the moment.
“And why didn’t you inform us you were coming?” I pressed. “I would have met your ship at the dock.”
“There was no time, dear. When our visas were finally issued, I was just anxious to be gone.” Her hand shook slightly as she raised it to tuck a tendril of my bobbed auburn tresses behind my ear. “As to the rest, I think your father vouched for me with your Home Office. Or at least convinced them that I could not be a threat.”
That was very like Father. To quietly arrange matters and set things into motion, and then tell no one about it. But in this instance I rather wished he’d said something. At least then I might have been better prepared for his Tante Ilse to appear on my doorstep. But perhaps he had worried I might be disheartened if the Home Office had denied her application. He knew how much Tante Ilse meant to me. How close we had been before the war tore everything apart.
“You must have traveled to London first,” I surmised. My parents lived hundreds of miles farther north in the Yorkshire Dales, while Sidney and I spent most of our time at our Berkeley Square flat.
She nodded as a guardedness entered her eyes. “Your housekeeper was reluctant to tell us where you were at first.”
Just as Mr. Parson had been reluctant to admit her here. Because she was German.
Her English might be excellent, but her accent and inflection, even refined as it was, gave her away. Because of the war, Germans were shunned, if not outright reviled, by most British. It didn’t matter that the Germans had lost even more soldiers than the British Isles, or that their economy was in shambles, its population starving. The Germans were the enemy. They had killed our boys. They had caused our suffering. And the vicious propaganda put out by the government had done its job too well, splashing images of Huns brandishing babies on spikes and trampling over the bloody ravished bodies of innocent Belgian women.
Even knowing the greater facts of the matter as I did, even mourning the deaths of my second cousins who had fought for the other side, I still had to check my reaction to the German people at large. After all, I had witnessed firsthand what they had done to the populace of the territories they occupied in Belgium and northeastern France. I had listened to the stories the people there had to tell of their atrocities, and beheld the people’s stripped homes and empty larders. I’d also endured the groping hands of the German soldiers at checkpoints and among the streets of the cities and villages, ever fearful they would realize I was not a local civilian but a British spy.
But when confronted individually, it was harder to ignore their humanity and their equal suffering. And I could never disdain my Großtante. Especially not knowing what she’d done for me during the war at terrible risk to herself.
I squeezed her upper arms gently, conscious of how fragile they felt beneath my hands. “Well, I’m glad you found me.” My gaze slid over her shoulder, expecting to find her longtime maid, Schmidt, hovering there, but instead there stood a new girl. She couldn’t have been much older than twenty, and although she lingered in the shadows across the room, I could tell she was quite pretty.
Tante Ilse turned to look behind her, anticipating my question before I could ask it. “Schmidt died. The Spanish influenza,” she explained.
“And you?” I asked in alarm, wondering if the virus that had ravaged the rest of the world in subsequent waves of infection since the summer of 1918 was at least partly the cause of her decline.
“It spared me.” She sighed. “Though not your cousin Gretchen.”
My heart clenched at this news.
She shook her head wearily. “Why is it the young that the world seems so insistent on taking from us?”
First the war, and then the influenza, which had disproportionately killed more young adults in the prime of their life than children or the elderly. I had no answer for her, for I had found myself wondering the same thing.
Her eyes widened as they drifted toward the terrace beyond me. “Oh, but I am sorry. I seem to have interrupted a party.”
I had all but forgotten about the others who were gathered there, so intently was I studying Tante Ilse’s face and trying to come to grips with the fact she was here actually standing before me.
“Allow me to introduce you while Mr. Parson shows your maid to the Primrose chamber, where she can settle your things.” I turned to the man who still stood stonily to the side, offering him a stern look of my own. He might despise Germans, but he would treat my great-aunt and her servant with respect or else he would hear it from me.
He nodded his head once before turning to usher the young maid toward the entry hall and then the stairs.
“Tante Ilse, allow me to introduce you to my husband,” I declared, guiding her toward Sidney, who had already crossed to meet us halfway.
“So you’re the fellow who captured Verity’s heart,” she murmured with a soft smile as he clasped her hand. Her eyes twinkled as she scrutinized his handsome visage, clearly liking what she saw. “I can see why she chose you.”
Sidney laughed before his gaze briefly brushed over mine. “And I can see where she gets her charm.”
Tante Ilse giggled. “It’s certainly not from Frederick or Sarah,” she jested, naming my parents by their given names. “As much as I love them,” she added, perhaps worrying she had been too severe. But she wasn’t wrong. My father and mother had never been noted for their charm or joviality. Not even before the war.
“I wish I could have attended your wedding, but . . .” She shrugged, as eloquent a gesture as could be made to explain the impossibility of a German traveling to England for such an occasion in the midst of a bitter war between the two countries.
He patted her hand. “Well, I’m pleased to meet you now. Verity has told me so much about you.”
A bold-faced lie if ever I’d heard one, for I’d told him almost nothing about her. Not during the summer before the war or during his all-too-brief leaves from the front—days that we’d mostly spent wrapped up in each other—and not since his return from the dead five months prior, when we’d teamed up to catch the traitors he’d feigned his death to apprehend. But we had been rather preoccupied since then—readjusting to each other and investigating unsolved crimes from the war and after.
In any case, Tante Ilse didn’t try to tell the same lie, for she couldn’t. It had become all but impossible for mail to slip through to Germany during the conflict, and only recently had we been able to resume exchanging letters. She had no telephone and, a
s I understood it, little chance of being able to make a call from her home deep in the countryside of Westphalia even if she had, as Germany’s broken infrastructure was still in pieces.
I turned to find that the other gentlemen and even Daphne had stood to greet her, and I introduced them each by name. She lingered longest with my cousin Reg, who was also her grandnephew, though they had never been close. My Aunt Ernestine had always disapproved of her mother’s German lineage. Or perhaps that wasn’t true. Perhaps she had become critical after her marriage to an English baronet. Either way, the war had hardened her desire to distance herself from that branch of the family, and Reg’s reaction to Tante Ilse, while polite, was far from effusive. Tante Ilse responded in kind, seeming to take her cue from him.
Or maybe she was merely too tired to display more warmth, for I could see the effort it cost her to perform even this most basic of social rituals. Her shoulders slumped, and lines of fatigue and possibly pain scored her brow, even as she smiled graciously and said all the right things.
“We were just enjoying some drinks before dinner,” I explained. “But perhaps you would like me to show you to your room. I’m sure today and many of the days before it have been long ones.”
“Yes, please. You are all so kind.” She reached for my hand, and I was alarmed to discover hers trembled. “But I think I would like to lie down.”
Everyone murmured their consent and best wishes as I guided her toward the door, before speaking over my shoulder. “Don’t hold dinner for me. I’ll join you once I’ve settled Frau Vischering.”
Murder Most Fair Page 2
