‘How on earth…? No, never mind. What is it you want me to do for you, Posie?’
‘Do you have access to some sort of central compendium of all the Schoolmasters and Schoolmistresses currently working in the country?’
‘No! Of course I don’t. Not at my fingertips, anyway. Who would? I don’t think there is such a central directory. If this fella wants to stay hidden he won’t have made the daft mistake of joining the Trade Union for teachers, or the Association for Schoolmasters, or the Teachers’ Registration Council. Teachers don’t have to join those associations, unfortunately. That would make things too easy for us. So it’s needle-in-a-haystack territory, Posie. Yet again.’
Posie’s mind was scrambling but the Inspector got in quicker:
‘Unless…’
‘Yes?’
The Inspector sighed:
‘Unless I get a couple of my lads to scoot over to the Board of Education on Whitehall; go through the records for all the schools in the country. You see, schools have to declare when new teachers come and start working for them; their pay-scale, their date of birth and so on. The records should be up to date, particularly since this bally Geddes Act means that teachers’ pay is getting slashed, and it all needs to be recorded somewhere. But this Dr Winter has probably got a pseudonym. It could take forever.’
‘No, I don’t think it will take forever,’ Posie said certainly, thinking of the Dr Winter she had worked with. She did not think he was imaginatively inclined, definitely not the sort of person who could come up with an exotic new name for himself.
‘Just check the new teachers for the year 1918, when Dr Winter supposedly died. That’s when he would have started to work, I’m sure of it. Just get your men to check private schools for boys, they’re the only places where those black gowns are compulsory for Masters; that will narrow down the search a lot. And get your lads to check under the name “Winter”, of course, but also polar opposites too: “summer”, “autumn”, “spring”. Golly, and derivations of winter, too: “Snow”, “White”, “Frost” He won’t have wandered far from his real name, I’m sure of it.’
‘I have his date of birth already, but is there any particular subject he’d be teaching?’
‘Mnn, not sure. The sciences? That’s the nearest thing I can think of next to medicine, isn’t it?’
‘You don’t ask much, do you? Good job it’s Christmas and I’m feeling charitable. I’ll have to say it’s official police business, which we both know is a lie. My lads could be over there at the Board of Education for a long time. I’ll get a couple of my best Constables on the job and tell them to take a thermos flask of tea over with them. They’ll come back to you when we know more, hopefully tomorrow morning. I hope this isn’t a mare’s nest, Posie. Tell me there’s method in the madness – you’re not just going on some fantastical “hunch” – please?’
Posie ignored the question and stroked the cat instead.
‘Thank you, Inspector. Thank you a hundred times. I owe you, big time.’
‘Again,’ said Inspector Lovelace smartly as he rang off.
****
Just as Posie was heading back into her own office, a Post Office messenger-boy knocked and came through the glass-stencilled main office door.
‘Telegram!’ he announced cheerily, proffering his cap, hopeful for a Christmas tip. Prudence Smythe, so supremely frugal that Len Irving swore she used their tea ration five times over, shook a small desk-sized Christmas tree in his direction angrily.
‘Get away with you! No tips here! You get paid a working wage by the Post Office, you cheeky scoundrel!’
Posie passed a coin over to the lad and took the telegram, to the loud tut-tutting of her secretary. It was from Professor Winter, up in Glasgow.
She read:
YOUR TELEGRAM JUST CAUGHT ME.
LUCKILY FOR YOU I’M ABOUT TO BOARD THE OVERNIGHT SLEEPER TO LONDON FOR A MEDICAL CONFERENCE. IF YOU WANT TO DISCUSS MY SON, MEET ME AT 7.30 SHARP TOMORROW MORNING AT KING’S CROSS STATION, PLATFORM 5.
YOU CAN WALK WITH ME AND WE’LL TALK AS WE GO. DON’T BE LATE - I WON’T WAIT FOR YOU.
PROFESSOR G.WINTER
Posie sighed in relief. At last – a break – a few odds and ends were coming together. All her hard work might just be paying off, after all.
Never mind that the Professor sounded unfriendly and frosty in his telegram – Felicity Fyne had described him as a cold fish, and that was certainly saying something – wasn’t it hopeful that he had bothered to write back at all?
Posie found she was considering all of this and playing absent-mindedly with the small desk-sized Christmas tree when Len Irving, her business partner, came crashing noisily into the office. He was laden down with Christmas presents wrapped in brightly coloured papers. He was also managing to shake out a huge umbrella at the same time, causing icy water droplets to spill out across the carpet.
‘Wotcha, Po! Terrible weather out there. Freezing fog and now rain! Chills the bones! And talking of cold old bones, how’s your dead doctor doing?’
Posie rolled her eyes heavenwards: Len could be very annoying at times, almost akin to a small child. But there was no getting away from the fact that, what with his dark good looks and his near-permanent smile, he was devilishly handsome, and charming to boot, which had got him forgiven hundreds of times over.
Len had been Posie’s almost-boyfriend for a while there back in 1921, before he had got sudden cold feet and married his childhood sweetheart, Aggie, instead, in a sudden whirlwind wedding abroad. At the time, Posie had found Len’s actions utterly incomprehensible and cruel; salt had most definitely been rubbed into the open wound of her broken heart and Posie had wondered if they could continue to work professionally together. But they had struggled on through.
Since then Len had become a father to a baby son, Alfred, the apple of his eye, and Posie, well, Posie had Alaric now: as much as anyone could ‘have’ Alaric, that was.
‘Actually, I don’t think the doctor is dead, after all. I think he’s in hiding, for whatever reason.’
‘Oh?’ said Len, raiding one of the bags he was carrying and producing some Eccles cakes in a green-and-white striped Lyons Cornerhouse wrapper.
‘You’ll find him then, poor fella. He can’t stay hidden for long with you on the case, can he? Want one?’ He waved the cakes first at Prudence, who accepted with a slight blush, for Len still had that effect on her after almost two years, and then at Posie, who shook her head, but not altogether convincingly.
‘Can’t. Thanks, though. I had a delicious Italian lunch with old Lovelace. My Christmas present to the Inspector.’
‘Chief Inspector,’ cut in Prudence insufferably from behind her typewriter, between mouthfuls of flaky pastry. Posie rolled her eyes; their secretary was a terrible stickler for titles.
‘Coo-ee! That sounds nice.’ Len was reclining on the sofa in front of the main fireplace of the waiting room, stuffing his face happily.
‘I’m looking for a nice place to take Aggie to for the New Year. You know, a slap-up treat. We haven’t really been out since the baby was born. We’ll leave Alfred with Aggie’s mother for the night and I’ll take her up town. It can’t be too expensive, mind. Where was the place again?’
Len had thrown his beloved camera and all his parcels over the floor and coffee-table. Good job they weren’t expecting any clients just yet, Posie thought to herself huffily, although she was aware that it was the mention of Len’s wife’s name which had made her feel sour, if truth be told, and not the state of the waiting room.
‘Oh, it was “the Florence”, if you must know,’ Posie replied with a touch of ill grace.
‘Over on Rupert Street? It was quite famous before the war, wasn’t it? Quite the celebrity hang-out in its day.’
‘Yep, that’s the one. I hadn’t been there in a long while. I’d forgotten how badly damaged the street was by the bombing in the war. It’s still not repaired. It makes the whole place feel quite
run-down. I don’t think it would meet the high standards of your Aggie, so I wouldn’t bother if I was you.’
‘Ah, well. We’ll see about that,’ mused Len, oblivious to the sarcasm underpinning her words. He stretched out lazily. A warm fug had settled over his face as if he were recalling something extra special from days long gone.
‘I remember Rupert Street.’
‘Oh yes?’ Posie said without interest. The evening post had just arrived and Prudence was sorting through it hastily, checking her wristwatch, wanting to leave on time. She passed Posie a couple of letters and filed the others with her own inimitable speed in the different wire baskets on her desk. Prudence gathered up her string shopping bag stuffed to the gunnels and bade both Len and Posie a swift goodnight, a couple of library books tucked under her arm.
Posie turned to her post. The first letter was from an elderly woman whom Posie had been working for in Harrogate. It was a simple thank you. The second, in bright red ink, was unfamiliar. She started to rip the second letter open.
‘Yes,’ continued Len dreamily. ‘It was a nurse. She was a stunner.’
‘Sorry? What?’ Posie pulled out an oblong card with an expensive gold border, covered in spidery red handwriting.
Len sighed. ‘I was just telling you that I went out with a nurse just before the war. She lived in that big hostel for nurses on Rupert Street. I had a devil of a time seeing her though; what with her crazy shifts and then the strict curfews in place at that hostel. There was a bulldog of a woman warden there on the door, I remember. Many was the time I tried to sneak through and failed.’
Posie gave Len a withering glance. She tried to look like she didn’t care, but the details of his former love-life did still interest her, unfortunately.
‘Well thanks for sharing that, Len. How illuminating. And what happened to her, this nurse of yours?’
‘Dunno.’ Len shrugged. ‘I wanted to look her up after the war, but I couldn’t, could I? I was gutted at the time.’
Posie rolled her eyes: ‘I’m sure you got over it easily enough and moved on. Does Aggie know about the nurse? I thought she was your “before, during and after” the war?’
Len reddened, perhaps realising his insensitivity. He murmured something about having some work to do, and lurched off into his office.
Posie took his place gratefully on the couch and Mr Minks jumped up and joined her in front of the fire, curling around her legs, wrecking her good ten denier stockings like usual. She turned with interest to the oblong card. It was short and to the point, and utterly surprising:
Miss Parker,
We met on Tuesday in Cambridge. Please forgive my rudeness then. I will explain all when I see you again. If you would be kind enough to pay me a visit, I think you will understand.
Could you come to Cambridge this Friday, 22nd December? I very much hope so as I have something to show you. Say, two o’clock outside King’s College?
Please don’t reply to this letter, even if you can’t come.
If you DO visit I will be delighted; if you do not, all it will have cost me will be a short wait outside a beautiful building.
With best wishes,
Evangeline Greenwood.
Posie stared into the middle distance, lost in thought. There was fear here too, hidden behind the showy red ink.
But there was something else, something like defiance, and, even more strangely, a sort of pride. And what on earth was it that Mrs Greenwood wanted to ‘show’ Posie, which meant she would have to make all the effort to trog up to Cambridge yet again? Was it the potential breakthrough research which Richard might have been working on before the war, which Dr Greenwood had got his hands on and was acting so cagily about? How come Mrs Greenwood was in a position to show Posie it now, when she hadn’t been on Tuesday? And why couldn’t Posie see whatever it was here, from the comfort of London?
She sighed: she didn’t really fancy going up there again, and she had plenty on here in London in the run-up to Christmas, but there was nothing for it. Besides, if she didn’t go, she might never hear from Evangeline Greenwood again, and now more than ever, Posie was convinced that Evangeline Greenwood held the key to unlocking the mystery of Richard Parker’s final years.
****
Posie fed Mr Minks his usual bit of best quality chicken and locked up at the Grape Street Bureau. She hurried home. Outside her flat in Museum Chambers, next to the British Museum and just around the corner from the office, three or four revellers strolled along the pavement, slightly the worse for wear, off to a Christmas party in fancy dress. They emerged out of the freezing fog like jolly phantoms.
It wasn’t late, only seven o’clock, and normally this stretch of Bloomsbury-meets-the-West-End was busy with theatre-goers and shoppers, but the majority of people had packed up work for Christmas already, and escaped to the country, or wherever it was people went to when they had a real family to go home to.
‘Merry Christmas, lovey!’ shouted out one of the party-goers. To Posie’s surprise it was a burly man, dressed in a flimsy female nurse’s uniform.
‘You too.’ Posie nodded politely. She fished around in her bag for her keys, thinking how much easier it would be if Mr Minks had decided to move with her around the corner when she had bought her large flat, rather than stubbornly insisting on staying on at the office. Still, he was an old cat now and he didn’t ask for much, so she humoured him.
Alaric was in. Posie could see the light spilling out from under her front door when she got out of the birdcage lift.
She felt suddenly light and joyful, and found herself looking forward to the evening ahead, hastily squirting herself with a dash of parma violet and dabbing a bit of pink greasepaint on her lips. She put her key in the lock, and swung in, ready to tell him about the improbable sight of the man dressed as a nurse.
But she stopped as soon as she saw the hallway strewn with paper, and Alaric, head in hands, madly roving backwards and forwards in the room he used as both his bedroom and study when he was staying in London. It was a scene of first-rate chaos. Bikram, Alaric’s liver-coloured Pointer dog, sat patiently in a basket in the corner, pretending to sleep. It looked the best approach.
Too late Posie remembered that Alaric had been asked to give a big lecture, the Christmas address, on Friday at the Royal Geographical Society in town, for which they were paying him a handsome fee. He always left things to the last minute, and this looked worse than usual.
She decided to leave Alaric to it. Posie was hungry, too, and it looked like she’d be eating alone; a scratch meal for one, just like back in the old days. She fetched some cheese and biscuits and sat on the floor of her calm, uncluttered, pale green-painted sitting room, closing the door softly behind her.
The flat was decidedly free of the many Christmassy decorations which were tacked up in gaudy abundance over at the Grape Street Bureau, mainly at Prudence’s insistence, but Posie had put up one tiny green tree, bought for a small fortune at Holborn Tube Station from a grocer up for the day from Kent. It was tastefully decorated now with just a few silver baubles bought at Liberty on Regent Street, and underneath it sat one neatly-wrapped Christmas present for Alaric, from her. The present was a book about city-beekeeping, and Posie had spent weeks looking for something suitable. When she had chanced upon the book in Foyles on the Charing Cross Road she had snapped it up at once, even though it had been pricey. Alaric had spent much of his twenties and thirties keeping bees in the grounds of his ancestral home, Boynton Hall, and had become justly renowned for his honey.
Since a disaster the year before when most of his hives had perished, he had been building them up again both back at Boynton Hall in the country, and also installing twelve hives on the roof of Museum Chambers, facing out over the British Museum, for when he was in London. It was early days yet but his attempts at city-beekeeping had seemed rather experimental so far and he had complained to Posie that it was all rather unchartered territory. Posie hoped her little gift woul
d provide some handy hints and advice.
So far the gift looked a little lonely under the tree and hadn’t been joined by a ‘matching’ present from Alaric to Posie. In fact, she had no idea whether Alaric had even noticed the tree, let alone his present. Had he even noticed it was about to be Christmas?
She sighed huffily, and as she munched away on her cheddar she wished she had taken one of Len’s Eccles cakes for a dessert, they had looked so very tempting.
Posie thought of Len now, too, which she didn’t permit herself to do very often. Would he have bought her a Christmas present if they were still a couple? He was so infuriating sometimes… a nurse! A stunner! Had he ever described her as a stunner to anyone? It seemed unlikely, somehow.
And now she had nurses on the brain, Posie thought to herself crossly. How many times had she seen a nurse, or heard one mentioned today? Too many times!
And suddenly, and with a sharp and horrible sense of clarity, an unwelcome thought planted itself firmly in Posie’s head. Could it be? Her thoughts tumbled over each other in a mad rush:
A nurse. In a hostel on Rupert Street.
A nurse who posted letters from the Rupert Street Post Office.
A nurse who knew secrets. Secrets which were supposed to be dead and buried. A blackmailer.
Almost as if she were sleepwalking, Posie found herself padding along the parquet-floored corridor and entering her own bedroom and opening the big dark wooden cupboard where she kept her clothes. Stuffed at the very back of it was a small school tin trunk, which Posie kept her treasures in. Here was her mother’s rose-gold locket with a tiny photograph of Posie and Richard cut carefully out and stuck inside on opposite sides of the hinge. Here were her photographs of Harry Briskow and her brother Richard in their uniforms just before they left for the war, and here too were letters from both, sent from the front line.
Several letters from her father were gathered here too, as well as random bits and pieces from other family and friends.
She unlocked the tin trunk and started to scrabble through its precious contents.
The Vanishing of Dr Winter: A Posie Parker Mystery (The Posie Parker Mystery Series Book 4) Page 8
