She had waited outside the gates, having observed that the van would leave at different times of day. She had also learned from Lord Julian that a variety of steps were taken to ensure the safe arrival of money in London or wherever stocks were bound. Alternate routes were chosen, selected just before the van left, and a certain understated police presence along the way meant additional security. How tempting it must be for someone like Jimmy Robertson—though would even a family such as the Robertsons risk so much? She knew only too well that the darkest inhabitants of London’s underworld were not stupid—though they were informed enough to slip through the law’s dragnet.
Maurice had taught her early in her apprenticeship that she had to be something of a chameleon. On one hand, she was an advocate for the dead. In viewing the deceased she had to endeavor to understand every inch of their being—and not only from the perspective of the pathologist’s craft. He cautioned her to accrue knowledge of the “forensic science of the whole person.” Hence she was accustomed to being alone with the deceased, to absorbing an aura others might not feel. But Maurice also imbued in her the need to understand the mind of a criminal—and the criminal in question might have the equivalent of a doctorate following long study of his or her subject. Or he might be a neophyte, a mere novice who sees only the fortune waiting at the end of crime’s rainbow rather than the nuances of color in the job to be done. And now, having satisfied herself that she understood what was required in the transportation of considerable amounts of money, she decided that Jimmy Robertson would not have ventured beyond a red outer ring of that rainbow—at least not if there were easier pickings closer to home. But what were those easier pickings? And how did Yates and Sons fit into the picture? What was the pot of gold the man in the black and green Rover 10 was looking for—or perhaps protecting? Before driving away she decided she had chosen the correct category for the presence of large amounts of new money in the same place as Joe Coombes had been lodging. It was not a distraction, neither was it crucial, but this particular shoe fit somewhere. For now she would still consider it important, something she would perhaps come back to.
The following morning, Maisie declined a fried breakfast in favor of a soft-boiled egg and two thick slices of Mrs. Keep’s homemade bread, toasted, with butter and honey from the farm’s hives. She packed up her overnight bag, and left, waving to Mrs. Keep as she drove away. The Keeps—still anxious for news of their sons—had assured her that Phineas Hutchins was a “good sort” who kept to himself but knew the land and his livestock better than anyone.
Grateful for such a solid motor car, Maisie drove at low speed along the pitted track down to the farmhouse where “Finny” Hutchins resided. It was a timber-framed home with a thatched roof and well-tended vegetable garden in the front. Maisie came to a halt alongside the farmhouse, stepped out of the motor car and walked to the front door. She knocked twice, but was not surprised at the lack of an answer—a farmer would be expected to be out on his land long before breakfast. Maisie never embarked upon a trip to the country without her stout walking shoes—which she appreciated as she entered the muddy cobblestone courtyard beyond the house, leading to a series of low buildings. Two border collies—one young, one more mature—saw Maisie first, and came running toward her. The older one seemed more measured, the younger one was yapping. The experienced dog maintained a low trot around her, as if she were a sheep to be kept in place. Hutchins looked up from his work, mending a fence. He was not a tall man—Maisie had an inch or two on his height—but he had a solid bearing, a strength to his body. She thought he might be in his sixties. His gray hair was clipped in a tidy fashion, and he was clean-shaven. And though his attire—corduroy trousers, a gray shirt, woolen weskit—showed age, it would appear they were clean. She wondered what Freddie Mayes might have meant by his comment about the aroma that followed the farmer to the pub.
“Lads! Lads! Get back ’ere!” Hutchins commanded. The dogs ran to heel as the man wiped his hands on a handkerchief pulled from his pocket. He took his tweed jacket from where it had been hung on a fence post and collected his shepherd’s crook, which was leaning in the same place. He walked toward Maisie.
“Hello—Mr. Hutchins? Good morning—my name is Maisie Dobbs. I wonder if you could spare me a little of your time.” Maisie held out her hand.
“Depends upon what you’ll be wanting with that precious time of mine. We’ve got to get up to the big field presently—so the lads and I shall be tapping our feet to be off before you know it. Eh, lads?” He passed the crook into his left hand, with which he also held the jacket, and accepted Maisie’s hand. “My, that’s a strong shake you’ve got there, young lady. Can’t abide a wet fish in my fingers, no I can’t—can I, boys?” He looked down at the dogs, then back to Maisie. “And I like to see a person come to a farm with good solid footwear. Not like some of them land girls I’ve heard are turning up without even a pair of good boots. Now then, Miss whatever-your-name-was—state your business, because I’ve got to get about mine.”
Maisie smiled. “Mr. Hutchins, I want to talk to you about Joe Coombes—I’m a friend of his parents, and I am also an investigator, so I’m trying to help get some questions answered for them, about his passing. Can you help me?”
The man’s ready smile evaporated. He looked down at his feet. The older of the two dogs whimpered. “You’d best come in then,” said Hutchins, pointing to the farmhouse with his shepherd’s crook.
Maisie declined the offer of tea, and Hutchins joined her at the kitchen table, where he had drawn back a chair for her when they entered. The kitchen was neat, as if everything was in its designated place. The pine table was scrubbed and clean. The red-tiled floor smelled of disinfectant.
“You keep a comfortable farmhouse, Mr. Hutchins,” said Maisie. “I live in the midst of several farms, and I know a good farmer when I see one.”
“Farm has to run like a ship—otherwise you never know what might end up overboard in a storm.” He rapped the knuckles of his right hand on the table. “Right then, miss—let’s get down to it. What do you want to know about Joe?”
“I’d heard that you’d befriended him, and that he had visited you here at the farm.”
“That’s true,” said Hutchins. “Took to my young pup there, and started asking me about him, and about how I train them for sheep. I don’t only have my own two, but that one’s mother, and I sell the pups when she has them. I breed a good sheepdog, and there’s farmers who know it. The bitch whelped again just afore Joe died. I let him have first pick.”
“Really? Joe?” said Maisie.
“Don’t look so surprised! He might have been a London boy, but he soon had the country in him. Loved it here, he did. And he came over to the farm many an evening, and would sit here talking to me, asking me questions. Came out with me to watch the dogs working. He asked me for one and I told him—put one of them dogs in London and you’ll have a lunatic on your hands. Fifty mile a day that dog can do—easy. Been bred for a job, not to sit in front of a fire. Mind you, mine always like the fire of a winter’s evening, I must say. My late wife said I was a soft touch with the dogs. But they work for it, and they’re good ’uns. Joe said he wouldn’t want a dog in London, that he wanted to work for me here on the farm. Said he’d had enough of it all, London, the painting, and going round the country to these airfields.”
Maisie leaned forward, resting her elbows on the table, and drawing closer to Hutchins. “I am not shocked, Mr. Hutchins, but perhaps a little taken aback. I’d heard that Joe missed home, and that he wanted to finish with the job.”
“Right enough he did. He’d had enough of all of them. But he didn’t want to go home, and that’s a fact.”
Maisie looked down at her hands. She was in no hurry to continue, and felt that Hutchins was waiting for her to say something. And she suspected he was waiting for her to ask the right question—a question that he could answer without feeling as if he had revealed a confidence.
“Was
Joe troubled, would you say?” Maisie looked up into the farmer’s eyes.
“He was.”
“And what was he troubled about?”
“I don’t know, though I tried to find out.”
“And how did you do that—how did you try to find out?”
“We’d go out to the fields, check the sheep of an evening after he’d finished at one of them airfields, and then we’d come down to the house for a cup of tea and perhaps a bite to eat. Sometimes he’d stay and sometimes he had to get back to the other lads, or to have the dinner his landlady had put out for him. He’d sit there, right where you are now, and we’d talk, and as time went on, it was always as if he wanted to tell me something, but just couldn’t get the words out.”
“Do you think he was in trouble?” asked Maisie.
Hutchins shook his head. “I know what a lad looks like when he’s in trouble, when he’s been up to something, and that wasn’t the look he had. No, it wasn’t that kind of trouble. But it was close—it was as if he was trying not to get into trouble.”
“Do you think someone was making him do something he didn’t want to do?”
“Well, his father was for a start.”
Maisie frowned, and was about to speak when Hutchins continued.
“Far as I can make out, Joe wanted to ask for his cards from this Yates business and get another job—he wanted to come to work on the farm. But he said his father had put his foot down, that he said that if he gave up working for Yates, then he might as well never come home again. He told Joe you don’t give up a chance of a craftsman job, an apprenticeship that could lead to something. I remember him sitting there, and saying, ‘I don’t want to go where this job is leading though. I want to stay on your farm.’ He was only a boy.” He sighed. “I can see his father’s point, but Joe told me his father had just brushed it off when he told him about the headaches. Not sure I would have done that—but I don’t know. Not my place to comment upon how another man raises his son. But I know this—they’re soon gone, especially if there’s a war on.”
Maisie nodded. “Do you think Joe was scared of anything?”
Hutchins met her eyes once again. “I do, Miss Dobbs. Yes, I do. Only I don’t know what it was. He wouldn’t tell me. I said to him, one evening, out there with the dogs, I said, ‘Come on, lad, a problem shared is a problem halved. Tell me what’s bothering you, and it might not seem so bad—like putting on the light in a dark room.’”
Maisie smiled. “A very dear friend of mine once said the same thing—about putting on the light in a dark room. He told me that when we keep secrets they grow inside us, and we can’t see the truth of them anymore.”
“That’s about the measure of it,” said Hutchins. “What Joe couldn’t tell me could have been a small thing, or it might have been something much bigger than he could manage. But he was scared—and he seemed fearful of what might befall me if I knew what it was.”
“Did he say as much?” asked Maisie.
“Just that it was best if I didn’t know. That’s words of a fair size for a young man.”
“Yes, you’re right.”
Phineas Hutchins broke the silence that followed.
“Now, Miss Dobbs, you can answer a question for me. You’ve been looking a bit surprised ever since we met. First out there in the courtyard, and now in here. You keep looking around my kitchen, as if there’s something you find curious about me and my house.”
“Forgive me, Mr. Hutchins—but I was told to expect a quite different person.”
Hutchins laughed. “Bet it was that Freddie, the one who was supposed to keep an eye on Joe. I surmised he was the foreman, and in that position, he should mind the apprentices. It’s part of the job—just like Odin here looks after his apprentice, Loki.” The dogs pricked up their ears as their names were spoken. “First time Freddie saw me, I’d been out there in the courtyard loading up two pigs being taken to market. I’d had a miserable time of it. As a rule I’d have a good old wash and brush up before I went to the local, but this time I had a thirst on me and I didn’t care what anyone thought—and me and the landlord grew up together, so he knew I was usually better turned out. Anyway, that was when Joe came over to talk about the dogs, and we became friends.” The man looked down at his hands, and in that moment it was as if every line on his forehead, every fold of skin on his face, became more apparent. “He was a good boy, Joe. He was my friend and I do miss him. Nice to have a lad around again, here in the house.”
Maisie nodded, and took one of Hutchins’ hands in her own. Some seconds passed before she spoke again. “I should be going, Mr. Hutchins.” She slipped her hand away and took a card from her pocket. “This is my card. If you can think of anything else that might help me, please get in touch.”
“’Fore you go, miss—come out to the barn. Want to show you something.”
Hutchins led the way, first to the courtyard, then to another small outbuilding. He drew Maisie inside and pointed to a large boxed-in area filled with straw.
“Oh, my goodness. May I?”
“The mum’s name is Freya. She’s not as protective as she was—she’s already started nipping at them, telling them who’s boss. Take a pup away from the mother too soon, and you take away the first lessons in life, so I leave them with her a bit longer than some might. She’s letting them all know they can’t be top dog. She’ll let you pet them.”
Maisie knelt down to stroke the pups, who nipped and tumbled trying to get to her outstretched hand.
Hutchins pointed to one of the pups. “That one there—with the one blue eye, one black—he’s the one I earmarked for Joe. They’re all spoken for,” said the farmer. “Even with the war. Work has to go on and a farmer needs good dogs.” He knelt down beside Maisie and picked up the one he had chosen for Joe, holding it to his chest as he stroked the pup. “This one stays though. Not getting rid of Joe’s boy. Going to call him by the name he chose for his dog. He went to the library and looked up names so it fit with my little gods here—and of course, my goddess.” He smiled as he reached across to ruffle the bitch’s ears, setting the pup in front of its mother. “Joe wanted to call him Magni. That’s the god of strength. Seems only right he’ll have that name, even though Joe’s not here.”
Later, as Maisie bid good-bye to Phineas Hutchins, she wished she had known about him sooner, for the perspective he offered regarding the final weeks of Joe’s life was not quite what she was expecting, though she was not surprised. Despite taking more time than she had hoped, it seemed the mystery surrounding the death of Joe Coombes was beginning to give up its secrets. “Everything yields to pressure, Maisie,” Maurice had taught her. “The slow drip of water on stone will, in time, wear away a ridge. Even the strongest metal, if enough weight is applied, will start to bend. Some cases will begin to give quickly. But do not despair of the assignment when it seems to defy every effort. Just give it time. Continue with your work, with your questions and your observations. Wait for the yielding.”
There was one more task to be completed before setting off on her journey back to London. She slowed down alongside All Hallows Church, parked the motor car and entered the place of worship. The church was cool and damp, and to the left as she entered was the town’s war memorial plaque. One by one she read down the long accounting of young men from the town who had perished in the years 1914 to 1918. And there he was. Joseph Hutchins. Age nineteen.
She returned to the Alvis, took the driver’s seat once again, started the engine, slipped the motor car into gear and drove off toward the Winchester Road. At last, slowly but surely, the yielding had begun.
Chapter 13
Detective Inspector Murphy met Maisie at the entrance to Basingstoke Police Station.
“Caldwell was on the blower, telling me you were coming in and to accord you any assistance you required,” said Murphy.
“He did?” said Maisie, taken aback.
“He holds you in high regard, but he is one of those peopl
e who seems to enjoy being contrary, doesn’t he?”
“That’s one way of putting it—though we get on a lot better than we used to.”
Murphy laughed. “I bet it only took one case where you proved your point, eh?” He opened the door to the street and indicated a waiting black motor car, the engine idling, a driver at the wheel. “I’m not so against private inquiry agents myself, as long as everyone plays fair and isn’t like a dog in a manger with the details. And especially now—I’ve lost a few lads to the services, and that makes surveillance of criminal activity very tricky, with men thin on the ground.”
The driver stepped out of the motor car as Murphy and Maisie approached, and opened the rear passenger door. They took their seats and were soon under way.
“You’ll see that where we’re going is more or less around the back of the station. There’s a high wall, the one we believe Joe leapt from, and the railway line below. That part of the line was laid down when the railway was built, and is used to shunt a loco into for a while—perhaps while it’s awaiting maintenance or cleaning. It’s not been used much in recent years, and you’ll see the buffers end at another part of the wall—it takes a dogleg turn there.”
“Right, I understand.”
“Up above and behind the wall is a road usually used as a shortcut down to the station—busy enough during the day, but not at night. Never at night—too quiet and what with the blackout, no light at all. The railway line at that point is not exactly looked after. You won’t see any hanging baskets of flowers, and there’s weeds all over the place. Broken bottles where lads have thrown them over, and all sorts of mess. Even if that lad had lived, tetanus would have got him, the state of the place. But like I said, not used much in years.”
To Die but Once Page 19
