Hither Page

by Cat Sebastian

  Sommers blinked. “That’s what you’ve been doing with your day? Asking about me?”

  “Well, no, of course not. I’ve been soaking up all the best—which is to say the seediest—village gossip. You’d be shocked to know what people will tell a perfect stranger. I’ve learned which nefarious characters everyone suspects of ration fraud and adultery and just about every crime other than murder. Wychcomb St. Mary is a sink of vice, I’m sorry to say.” The barmaid put a pint of brown ale before Sommers, and Leo wondered what it must be like to live in a place where your drinking preferences were known before you spoke. “But let’s put that aside because at the moment, The Mystery of the Brilliant Young Surgeon is rather more interesting to me than all the dead charwomen in all the kingdom.”

  Sommers paused, his mug halfway to his lips. “Brilliant young surgeon? Rubbish.”

  “I don’t think it is.” For one, there was no possibility that a mediocre surgeon would have been brought in to stitch up his shooting arm, which was also his forging arm, and in general, a very useful arm for the empire to have intact. “I’d really like to know what you’re doing in a tiny village rather than cutting people up for science and profit or what have you.”

  Leo wasn’t trying to be polite, or sensitive, or even a decent person. Sometimes finding out the truth meant being an utter bastard. But he hadn’t expected Sommers to turn ashen, hadn’t expected the doctor’s hands to shake, causing some ale to slosh over the side of his glass, spilling onto the table. Leo gently took the mug from the doctor’s hands and mopped up the ale with his own handkerchief. He didn’t know exactly what he had said to cause that reaction, and it might simply have been the man’s regrets about wasted potential, but he was filing this episode away for later reference. For now, he thought a tactful silence more likely to gain the doctor’s confidence.

  “What else did you learn?” Sommers asked after he recovered himself.

  “Mr. Norris, the secretary, is generally considered a local treasure. Agnes, behind the bar, says that he” –here Leo made a show of paging through his notes to read the exact words— “smells like an advertisement.” He looked up to see that Sommers was smiling despite himself. “And Agnes also has it on good authority that Colonel Armstrong pays this secretary only half what some other fellow pays his own secretary.”

  “Is that so?” Sommers frowned. “I wouldn’t have thought Armstrong the type to hire a cut-rate secretary, nor would I have thought the work he offered exciting enough to make a man settle for lower wages.”

  If Agnes’s source was to be trusted, then the matter of the underpaid secretary was another loose thread for Leo to pull at. It could be as simple as Norris taking a reduced wage because he wanted access to Armstrong’s papers in order to sell secrets. Or it could be that Norris had something in his past that hindered his chances of finding better employment. “Agnes seems to believe that Mr. Norris takes this pitiful wage out of civic duty, to counterbalance the dearth of handsome men in Wychcomb St. Mary.”

  “I take that very personally,” Sommers said with mock affront.

  “Oh, but you shouldn’t,” Leo said, all reassurance. “Your name came up. She said you were pleasant to look at, but one can’t develop an appropriate pash—her word, not mine, I assure you—for the man who lances one’s boils.”

  The doctor’s shoulders shook and he buried his head in his hands. “I’m quite crushed,” he said when his laughter subsided.

  “Yes, well, she told me that I don’t seem like the marrying kind, just like her bachelor uncle. You may have guessed that Agnes is quite correct on that count.”

  “Agnes’s uncle had a pet monkey,” Sommers sputtered.

  Now Leo was laughing. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d laughed this hard, great sobs of laughter shuddering through his body. When he looked across the table at Sommers, he saw the man wiping tears of laughter from his eyes. Leo slid his foot under the table until it brushed the doctor’s.

  “So, what do you do in London two days a week, Dr. Sommers? It can’t be entirely in the pursuit of vice.”

  Sommers pulled his foot away from Leo’s. “We’re not talking about that.”

  “Why not? The movements of suspects are always of interest to investigators.”

  Sommers raised his eyebrows. “I’m not a suspect. I was at a lying in the night Mrs. Hoggett died, in plain view of the district nurse, the laboring mother, and Colonel Armstrong’s housekeeper.”

  “You’re a doctor. You could have prescribed the woman an excessive dose of barbiturate.”

  “And then wished upon a falling star that she tripped down a convenient flight of stairs? Don’t be silly. And why would I have done that in the first place?”

  Leo was glad that Sommers seemed unconcerned to learn that he wasn’t above suspicion. “The motive is almost always money. It’s tedious, if I’m honest. In crimes of passion the motive might be jealousy or anger or revenge, but for anything premeditated, it’s money or secrets.” He didn’t for a minute think that Sommers was mixed up in the death of Mildred Hoggett. The culprit had to have been on hand to hit her on the head or push her down the stairs. But Leo’s usual practice was to dig up everything that could possibly be uncovered. Secrets were like a vein of ore; tiny little strands might lead to a mother lode. He was going to have to look into what Sommers did on his jaunts to London. Hell, he was going to have to look into a number of things this man wouldn’t approve of.

  “About the money.” Sommers filled Leo in on the contents of Mildred Hoggett’s will.

  Leo whistled. “All to Wendy Smythe.” He hadn’t seen that coming. Hadn’t expected the woman to have a will, for that matter.

  “Every last shilling,” Sommers said.

  “Where’d she come by that sort of money?” Leo mused aloud. Scratch a snoop and find a blackmailer, he repeated to himself.

  The doctor shifted in his seat. “She seemed to have a habit of poking into things that weren’t her business. I caught her looking into the patient files in my surgery.”

  Well, well. He hadn’t expected Sommers to cooperate. And indeed, the man looked like he had just taken a bite of spoiled meat.

  “And,” Sommers went on, his cheeks reddening. “She also went through my cupboards upstairs. I only hired her to clean the downstairs rooms and the surgery. She had no business being upstairs.”

  It took Leo embarrassingly long—a second or more—to realize why the doctor was blushing. “A sensible practice. That way you can entertain visitors upstairs without worrying about anyone coming across the evidence.”

  The doctor was beet red now, all the way from his cheekbones to the collar of his shirt. “There’s no evidence,” he hissed. “There’s no entertaining, either. Good God, man. You are horribly indiscreet for a...whatever you are.”

  “I know,” Leo said cheerfully. “It’s part of my charm.” It was part of his strategy, but he wasn’t going to explain that. “So, she could have been snooping because she was a blackmailer. Or she could have been looking for things to steal. Either way, she could have amassed a tidy sum, especially if she had been doing so for many years. Did anyone know about the will?”

  “I’d swear that nobody at Little Briars did.” And then, as if remembering who he was talking to, his body stiffened. “Although I don’t suppose you’ll take my word for it.”

  Indeed, Leo would not. He wasn’t in the habit of taking anybody’s word for anything, especially statements made to protect a friend. Instead of answering, he pushed his pack of cigarettes across the table for Sommers to take one. “So, that’s why you’re here, willing to cooperate with my wicked schemes,” he said lightly. “You want to make sure nobody pins this on the girl.” Even less than a thousand pounds could mean a lot to a girl who, by all accounts, didn’t have a penny to bless herself with.

  Sommers frowned. “In a matter of speaking, yes.” He took a cigarette, casting it a glance as if it might be some kind of nefarious trick. “A necessary e
vil,” he added, his jaw tight.

  Leo hadn’t known he was capable of having his feelings hurt. It had been so long since he cared one way or another about what anyone thought of him that the awareness of wounded vanity returned to him like the prickling sensation of a limb too long unused. He was so accustomed to playing a role, acting a part, completing a mission, that sometimes he found it convenient to ignore that beneath the mission there was a man. Maybe it was the fact that he was in England, his nominal home; maybe it was the fact that he was using his own name. But whatever the reason, he found it difficult at this moment to think of himself as an agent, as a tool. He looked across the table and wished Sommers didn’t look so utterly sickened by the prospect of dealing with him. Leo was conscious that this was a lapse on his own part. It was perfectly reasonable of Sommers not to relish the prospect of having Leo around. After all, Leo would peel back layer after layer until all the village’s sins and weaknesses were laid before him, including the doctor’s own. But finding out the truth wasn’t the goal—the truth was just another weapon, a knife to put in the right person’s hand, a grenade waiting to explode.

  “That’s me, all right,” Leo remarked, flicking open his lighter and lighting both their cigarettes behind his cupped hand. “A necessary evil.”

  Chapter 5

  At this rate, everyone in the village was going to get tonsillitis. Both the Griffiths children were tucked in bed in the drafty vicarage nursery, and James had seen four patients at morning surgery with the same symptoms.

  “You can give them broth if they’ll take it,” James told an especially ragged looking Mary Griffiths. “Or some elderberry syrup. If you haven’t any, then Mrs. Clemens at Wych Hall might be able to scare some up.” The colonel’s housekeeper had a way of making things appear even when all the shops were out of stock; James chose not to inquire too closely into her means.

  “I can’t stand beef tea,” Polly Griffiths complained from her bed, her voice scratchy and weak. “I’d rather die.”

  “Hush,” Mary admonished her daughter. “You’re not meant to talk.”

  Something about the little girl languishing theatrically in her bed reminded him of Wendy when she had first come to the village. She had always had a flair for the dramatic and hadn’t been much older than Polly and Owen Griffiths at the time. During holidays from university and leave during the war he had seen her grow from a gangly child to a—well, still frankly gangly—young woman.

  James dropped his thermometer into his bag and snapped it shut. “You’re going to fall ill yourself if you don’t get some rest,” he told the vicar’s wife.

  “Rest? Fat chance of that happening,” she scoffed. He followed her down the stairs and into the kitchen, where the breakfast dishes still sat piled in the sink.

  “Ask Wendy to help. You know she loves the children.” He had nearly said that she loved being useful, which was nothing more or less than the truth. She was always delivering bundles of kindling to some of the poorer families and pots of quince jam to elderly ladies. He wondered if her efforts to be useful had arisen from wanting to feel like she belonged in the village that was her adopted home. Did she fear that Edith would throw her out on her ear if she didn’t earn her keep? Edith herself had said that she offered the girl a permanent home under no uncertain terms, but Wendy might have doubted that they really wanted her. James knew something of how it felt not to know if one was a wanted family member or simply a burden.

  “I can hardly ask her to be an unpaid nursery maid,” Mary said, bringing James back to the present. “It’s my own fault for not knowing what I’m doing here.” She gestured around the untidy kitchen. “I grew up in poky little flats until my mother brought us back to England. Then she married my stepfather and we lived in squalid hotels. I don’t know how to do things properly—not keeping a house, not raising the twins—”

  “Don’t talk about my friend like that. Your children are lovely. Your home is...” As he struggled to find a word, a large hound bounded into the kitchen, put his feet on the edge of the sink, and began enthusiastically licking the breakfast dishes. “Homelike,” he announced, proud of himself for having settled on a word that was both true and somewhat complimentary. “It’s all right to ask for help, you know.”

  She shot him a shrewd look. “You first.”

  He held his hands up in surrender. “I know, I know. I’m a hypocrite.” That earned him a smile. Truly, though, the sort of help Mary needed was...basic. It was possible. She needed an au pair or a good housekeeper, whereas James needed a magical machine to clear away the invisible shrapnel that the war had left inside his skull. He thought he was doing about as well as could be expected in a world where that machine didn’t exist. He did his job, even though it wasn’t quite the job he had once imagined he’d have. He ate three meals a day, slept most nights. Looking at Marston and the men at the nursing home where he worked at two days a week, he knew how much worse it could be.

  “So we agree,” Mary said, turning on the tap and rinsing a cup. The dog happily lapped at the stream of water. “We’ll just muddle through this world and then hope for better in the next. I’ve never not muddled, if I’m honest. I’d be quite ill-prepared for a world where things went better than I expected.”

  “Lucky you, Wendy seems to operate on a plane that’s entirely beyond muddling. It’s only a matter of time before she stands for parliament or becomes a criminal mastermind, so you ought to give her some honest work to keep her busy. It would do her good,” he insisted. “Besides, I’m worried about her since Mrs. Hoggett’s death. I think she’s taken it hard. Do you know if she has any relations I could contact for her? Did her mother ever leave a forwarding address or get in touch with you in any way?”

  The vicar’s wife went perfectly still, the only sound the running water. “With me? No, why would she get in touch with me?”

  “Weren’t you the one who arranged billeting for the children who were evacuated from London,” James said, puzzled by the woman’s defensiveness.

  “There weren’t any other children.” She took up a dishcloth and swiped it over a bowl that was crusted over with old porridge. “There was only Wendy.”

  “I see. I was here so infrequently during the war, and I never paid much attention. Isn’t that odd, though? Didn’t entire schools evacuate to the same village?”

  “Perhaps sometimes, when it was done through the authorities. But Wendy was sent here privately.”

  That surprised James. Wendy had never heard from her mother after she stepped off the train. He wouldn’t have thought that a woman who could so blithely abandon her child would have had the forethought or the concern in the first place to arrange for her to leave London for a place of safety.

  “Why here?” he asked. “Did Wendy’s mother know somebody in the village?”

  “I’m afraid I don’t remember the details,” Mary said with an air of finality, tossing a couple of still-soapy teaspoons onto the draining board.

  “I wonder if you still have the paperwork? Whatever forms Wendy’s mother filled out? There must have been something.”

  “It’s been over five years, James. Nobody keeps things for that long.” She still faced the sink, so James couldn’t see her expression, couldn’t see whether she was simply tired and annoyed or if she was being deliberately cagey.

  “You’re saying we don’t know who her parents are? There’s no birth certificate? Nothing?” He shook his head. “Surely that can’t be.”

  They were interrupted by the vicar’s appearance in the kitchen door. “Oh, you’re just the man I need, Sommers.” The vicar’s cheeks were flushed and his voice scratchy. “I have the devil of a sore throat.”

  James spent the rest of the day diagnosing and treating the tonsillitis cases that had sprung up throughout the village. The matter of Wendy’s origins might have sunk in priority, but for the fact that at nearly all the houses he visited, he could hear people whispering about Mildred Hoggett’s will.


  “I’D REALLY LIKE FOR it to be the gardener,” Sally Bright said as she unceremoniously piled the luncheon dishes into the deep kitchen sink. Leo knew the girl was one of Templeton’s agents, but in her neat black uniform, she looked very much a proper parlor maid. “He pinches my arse every time he passes me by, and I wouldn’t mind watching him swing. Would shoot him myself.” She flashed him a vulpine grin. “If that was what king and country wanted from me.”

  Leo tried to look stern. “I’m going to tell Templeton that spycraft is bad for the morals of today’s youth. Stunts their growth and warps their minds.” He gazed pointedly at the top of the girl’s head, which fell several inches beneath his own.

  As far as Leo could tell, there were two types of people in his particular branch of the intelligence services. One sort was a career bureaucrat—Eton, Cambridge, opinions about things like horses and wine. The other type was gleaned from the criminal classes—urchins and runaways with an aptitude for deceit and with nothing and nobody to lose.

  Leo was, of course, of the second type. He had gotten picked up by the police after what had to have been his eighth robbery. He had probably been fourteen or fifteen, but had lost track during his time on the street. A man had taken him out of his cell, asked him about his background, quizzed him in the five languages Leo spoke, and the next thing Leo knew he was one of Templeton’s agents. That had been fourteen years ago when another war in Europe seemed like something that could be avoided with a bit of deft maneuvering. They had spent a couple of years trying to do just that, buying and selling secrets, intercepting shipments, spying and being spied on. A few well-placed bullets seemed only reasonable, even more so when war finally, inevitably, broke out.