To Die but Once

by Jacqueline Winspear

  “Hello, Archie. How about that—what a coincidence, bumping into you. How are you?” Maisie smiled.

  “Hello, Miss Dobbs. What’re you doing here?”

  “Actually, Archie, I am so glad to see you—I’ve been meaning to have a chat. Can you spare a moment? I know where there’s a caff quite close by.”

  “I can’t, miss—I’m meeting my sister, and she’s due out of work any minute, and she don’t get long for her break.”

  “Oh, not to worry—Mr. Beale will wait for her.”

  “Good as done, miss,” said Billy. “Meet you at that place you told me about? Where you went with Vivian before?”

  Maisie nodded. “Yes—when I’ve had my chat with Archie, we’ll join you. Come on, Archie.”

  “But, Miss Dobbs—”

  “Archie—I want to talk to you about Joe. And about your cousin—Teddy Wickham. You can’t all enlist to get away from your uncle Jimmy—the next thing we know, Vivian will be in the ATS. Or even the Wrens—I hear all the girls enlisting want to get into the Wrens for the uniform, and your Viv is a stylish young woman.” She laid her hand upon his arm. “Help me, Archie—this is about your brother, not the supplies, or the Bank of England, though I think I know why that might interest you. Come on, Archie—take the brave way out. You can’t run forever.”

  “You don’t know what he’s like—he’ll kill us. I told Joe. I told him—keep your mouth shut about those bloody headaches. I got him some aspirin powders, and told him to just knock a couple back every day and he’d be all right.” Tears welled in Archie Coombes’ eyes, and his hands were shaking. Rivulets of perspiration beaded his forehead, and began to stream along his temples, down to his jawline.

  “I will do everything I can to protect you—but help me, Archie. Help me for Joe’s sake. Help me for your brother.”

  Archie Coombes looked from side to side, then back to Maisie.

  “I’m so scared, Miss Dobbs. I never thought I could be so scared. I thought it can’t be any worse, being in the army, being shot at, than looking over my shoulder at every motor car, wondering if my number’s up.” He began to weep.

  “Come on, Archie—let’s go over the road. Let’s find a place to sit down and have a chat.”

  Chapter 17

  Some fifteen minutes later, Maisie and Archie reached the café where Billy was waiting with Vivian Coombes.

  Billy stood up as Maisie approached. They exchanged an almost imperceptible nod, and Billy smiled at Archie and his sister.

  “I’m leaving you two to talk to Miss Dobbs now—lovely to see you again, Viv. And thank you for asking after my Billy. Can I get anyone another cuppa before I go?”

  “I think we’re all right, Billy,” said Maisie, taking a seat and pulling out the chair next to her for Archie to be seated as Billy left the café.

  “Vivian, Archie has been talking to me about the difficulties involved in being related to Jimmy Robertson, and I wonder if I can ask you a few questions—I just want to connect the dots, if I may.”

  “Uncle Jimmy’s not a difficulty, Miss Dobbs. People thinking he is, that’s the difficulty. He’s been good to us.” She turned to face her brother. “And you should learn to keep your mouth shut, you stupid idiot.”

  “But Viv—”

  Maisie held up a hand. “A row between the two of you isn’t going to help matters—and neither is denial, Vivian. You could be in a lot of trouble, and lose a very good job. I just want to get some things sorted out. And you probably don’t know this, Vivian, but Archie was on his way to barracks and was coming here to say good-bye to you when I bumped into him—he’s enlisted, so you don’t have a lot of time with your brother.”

  “Oh that’s just wonderful.” Vivian glared at her brother. “You yellow-bellied twit! Off to join the army because you can’t get anything right—see what good that did Teddy. You’re like a child with his hands over his eyes who thinks no one can see him.”

  “Oh, leave off, Viv—things are bad enough as it is.” Archie rested his head in his hands, elbows on the table.

  “And don’t loll around on that table—I know people in here. You’ll have everyone looking at you and you’ll show me up,” added his sister.

  “All right, Vivian, here’s your choice,” said Maisie. “You either talk to me now, or you’ll be talking to the police for hours on end. You’re going to have to talk to them anyway, but you can make it easy on yourself by starting to tell the truth right now. Get into practice. You’re in trouble—but it might not be as bad as you expect, if you cooperate.”

  “I’ve been cooperating since I was a child—I’m fed up with cooperating with someone. Mum and Dad, and now Uncle Jimmy. I suppose you want to know all about Teddy too, don’t you?”

  “Actually, no—I know about Teddy, and I know all about Archie. What I want to know about is every step that was taken so your uncle was awarded the contract to supply Mike Yates with a special paint to use as a fire retardant on airfields.”

  “That? You want to know about that? That was nothing much.” Vivian Coombes smirked and turned away, her back to her brother, and her right shoulder to Maisie. She lifted up her handbag, which she had placed on the floor, and took out a lipstick and compact. She proceeded to apply the red lipstick, rolling her lips together before closing the compact with a snap. Maisie could see she struggled to control her shaking hands. “And how long do you think I can stay here in this café? I’ve got to get back to work.”

  Maisie looked at her watch. Not long now. “Just another couple of minutes, then you can go. But first—that contract, how did you find out about it?”

  Vivian Coombes sighed and flapped her hand at Maisie, as if the answer were hardly worth her time.

  “I’m on the government exchanges—you know that. And I heard it on the line—it’s not as if they’re all scrambled, after all, and not all the calls are important or top secret. Most of the time it’s just one boring civil servant speaking to another boring civil servant. Anyway, it was before the war, when I’d just been promoted—I heard this bloke talking to another bloke about putting the contract out to tender, that it had to be done quickly, none of this waiting for months. Painting the airfield buildings with that special paint to stop fires was urgent, on account of the expected attacks and the chance of invasion if war were declared. I knew Uncle Jimmy was always looking for a new bit of business, and that he’d sold paint to Yates before, so I let him know. After that I didn’t do anything—he’s got his ways of finding out about the other bids, so he made sure he got it. I can’t go about my job listening to everything.”

  “Just as well.” Maisie sighed. “But you were rewarded for your trouble, weren’t you?”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” said Vivian.

  “Come on, Viv—she knows,” said Archie. “And this is about our Joe. Uncle Jimmy wasn’t on the up and up, not with that paint.”

  Maisie watched as Vivian Coombes looked at her brother, then at her hands, and when she met Maisie’s eyes, her lips trembled.

  “You’re a strong young woman, Vivian, and you are loyal to your family. Your uncle has seen you all supplied with some lovely things in the past, gifts that made life a little easier. You’ve had brand-new clothes, good shoes, nice furniture, all sorts of little extras. And he had that telephone put in at the pub. It wasn’t the brewery, was it?” She looked from Vivian to Archie. “Your family were the recipients of stolen goods, and have been for a long time. Being a ‘receiver’ of such items is a crime in itself, but the passing on of confidential information carries a different kind of punishment in a time of war.”

  “We weren’t at war, not when I told him,” said Vivian. “I just thought I would let him know.”

  “All in your favor, Vivian, that there was a limit to your sharing of information from a confidential government call. But the judge might see it as simply a question of semantics,” said Maisie.

  “Of what,” asked Archie.

  Vivian ro
lled her eyes. “She means it’s down to how the judge sees it. That big bits of information are the same as small bits, when it comes to language—it’s confidential whether it comes from the prime minister or the cleaner, when it’s on a government line. You dopey item.”

  “It’s the seriousness of the crime that counts, and character,” said Maisie. “Fortunately, you weren’t in on the most egregious part of the crime.”

  “What was that?” said Vivian.

  Archie began to weep, his head low, his shoulders revealing his grief and fear.

  “Oh you, you blimmin’ watery head. I wish you’d pull yourself together,” said Vivian to her brother. She took her bag and began to stand up.

  Archie looked up at his sister. “You’re not as hard as you try to be, Viv. Uncle Jimmy killed Joe. He might have got him that job, so he was in a reserved occupation, but he was killing him slowly because he was adding other stuff to the paint to make it go a lot further. He wasn’t supplying Yates with the stuff exactly as it was shown to him by the RAF bods and the government officials. I know—I’m a slave in his blimmin’ engineering works. I know what he does, and he was doing things on the cheap so he made more money—a lot more money. He was thinning it down so he could sell it to other businesses, for painting factories, shops and all sorts of other buildings, telling the landlords that it would save their properties from burning down when the invasion came and we were bombed. He couldn’t use water because it would have just gone lumpy like rotten eggs, so he used chemicals. Mike Yates was in on it. And yes, Dad wanted me and Joe to have jobs where we wouldn’t be called up, but what were we really protected from? Eh? No one protected Joe, did they? That stuff was killing him.”

  Maisie watched the siblings argue back and forth, then saw her chance to interject.

  “Joe was made very ill by the paint—possibly he was more susceptible to the toxins due to his age, and the fact that he was still growing. And because he was the apprentice, he was set to work on tasks that demanded most exposure to the poisonous vapor—decanting the paint into the smaller pails, stirring it to mix the chemicals, and then the final testing, setting the blowtorches on the finished walls where he was breathing in even more danger. There are more pathology reports to come through. But ultimately Joe was not killed by the paint or an accident—he was murdered, and his life was taken because people knew about his health and that he was suffering. He had to be stopped, because the more he talked about his headaches, and the more he wanted to leave an apprenticeship that was considered an otherwise good opportunity, the more attention was drawn to him and therefore to the job he was doing and the materials he was using. If he continued complaining, it was only a matter of time before the paint was subject to renewed testing by the authorities. Your uncle Jimmy needed time—time for the contract to run its course, enabling him to make as much money as possible. And the contract could go on for a long while, given the number of new aerodromes being built and any repainting required after the job was finished.”

  Vivian stared at Maisie, her mouth open.

  “You want to watch that, love—something might fall in if you keep it that wide.” Caldwell stood over Vivian Coombes, then pulled up a chair and sat down.

  Maisie shook her head and sighed. “This is Detective Chief Inspector Caldwell with the golden tongue from Scotland Yard. He would like to speak to you both on his premises, and not here in the café. A motor car is waiting outside, so my advice is to accompany him without attracting attention.” She turned to Caldwell. “Thank you, Inspector.”

  Vivian Coombes came to her feet. “But I have to get back to work—you don’t understand, I have a shift—”

  “All sorted out, love—your supervisor knows you’ve been a witness to a serious crime and that you are providing us with invaluable information, for which you could well receive an important reward. Your life.” He drew his attention to Maisie. “Now then, Miss Dobbs, would you be so kind as to lead the way, and I’ll bring up the rear, as the saying goes.”

  Outside the café, Caldwell shepherded the siblings into a police vehicle, and turned to Maisie. “They’ll be at each other’s throats all the way to the Yard, mark my words.” He held out his hand to Maisie. “My colleagues with the Flying Squad will love this one—nailing Jimmy Robertson will be a coup.”

  “There’s more, Inspector Caldwell—I just had to get them into safe hands. What about Teddy Wickham?”

  “Steps have been taken to question him. His testimony will come in useful to snare his uncle, though he will most likely end up being reassigned to another military capacity—and that’s after a good spell of cleaning latrines before being promoted to peeling spuds and chopping cabbage. And after that, he won’t be in any cushy number like looking after stores.” He shook his head. “The forces have lost enough men and they can’t afford to lose more, so they’re making allowances.” He sighed. “Anyway, getting Jimmy Robertson off the streets will be a dream come true for us at the Yard. Trouble is, the nasty bugger gets others to do his dirty work, so he’s hard to nail. But this time, it’s his family telling us the story.” He turned to get into the motor car. “I’ll see you at the Yard, to make a full statement.”

  “And what about Joe Coombes’ killer?”

  “Got Murphy on it, down in Basingstoke. Should be picking him up at any minute. How did you know it was him?”

  “It was a process of elimination. Freddie Mayes had a lot to lose, with Joe being so ill and him worried more people would notice and then the balloon would really go up. Mike Yates, Freddie—they’re all Jimmy Robertson’s men, one way or another.”

  “The money way,” said Caldwell.

  “The past ten years have been bad for a lot of people—no work to be had, and even when you get a job, you’re not being paid as much, or you’re on short time. I would bet that Freddie had more going on at home than we know about—and responsibility brings a need for more money. I have no idea who Jimmy Robertson’s driver is, but I imagine he was the man with the cosh, and Freddie just knew the route that Joe took when he was out for a walk, trying to clear his head. He was an accomplice, not the perpetrator.”

  “We found the motor, and the driver—he’s got previous as long as your arm, including grievous bodily harm—good old GBH. In fact on his record, there’s a long line of GBH, GBH, and even more GBH. His name’s Sidney Spooner—the initials suit him. He should be over there with old Hitler.” Caldwell paused, then inclined his head toward the back seat of the motor car. “And what about their parents? I’m looking forward to hearing their side of the story.”

  “Can I talk to them first?” asked Maisie.

  Caldwell nodded. “All right. This time, yes—I owe you.”

  Maisie watched as Caldwell moved away. His rhetoric was the same, but it was tempered, flat, as if someone had stepped hard upon an essential—and not entirely likeable—part of his character. And such was the air of melancholy that emanated from him, underlined by his willingness to follow her lead, that she reached out to touch his shoulder.

  “Inspector Caldwell—wait. There’s something amiss.” She kept her voice low as he stepped back to face her. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

  Caldwell shook his head. “I don’t like to admit it, but there’s not much anyone can get past you, is there, Miss Dobbs?” He took a deep breath, looking up at the barrage balloons, then casting his eyes down to the sandbags and barbed wire. He exhaled as he brought his attention back to Maisie. “It’s Able—you remember Able?’

  “Yes, of course—of course I remember. You said he joined the navy.”

  Caldwell nodded. “He did—and I made a joke of that too. Able Seaman Able. That’s what I said when he joined up. And the lad took it all in good heart.” Caldwell looked at his feet, then at Maisie again. “HMS Keith went down on Saturday. She came under attack by German aircraft, taking out her steering gear first, then they dropped a bomb right down her funnel. And she’d already done one run to Dunkirk, evacuating
over nine hundred soldiers—she was on her way back to get more when they attacked her. A lot of men were saved, but Able wasn’t one of them.”

  “I am so sorry, Inspector. I’m so very sorry.”

  “I feel bad about it—the way I teased him, made everyone laugh at his expense.”

  Maisie shook her head. “Don’t—don’t blame yourself for anything. Able was a good sport, and even though you ribbed him, he would smile and laugh in return. You noticed him, Inspector—even though you had a joke about his name, he was never invisible, and was held with great affection by the other men because of the way he took it. I believe he knew it too—knew he was popular, and well liked.”

  “Thank you, Miss Dobbs. Thank you very much for that. Now then—I’d better get these two over to the Yard, before they kill each other in the back of my motor car.”

  Maisie watched the vehicle drive away.

  “I heard that—about Able. Terrible shame,” said Billy, who had been waiting outside the café for Maisie. “Miss—did you really mean it, about Able knowing he was held with affection? By Caldwell? I mean, does that man hold anyone in any sort of affection?”

  Maisie raised a hand to hail a taxicab. “He was a good assistant to Caldwell, and though Caldwell could be merciless in his teasing, Able had a gentle kindness about him, and I believe he would see no advantage to saying anything that would add to Caldwell’s grief and guilt.”

  A taxi stopped, allowing Maisie and Billy to climb aboard.

  “So, why do you think someone like Able joined the police in the first place, if he was that gentle? I mean, you really need to be a bit of a tough nut to do that job, unless of course you’re on the beat in a little village somewhere.”

  “I don’t really know—and by the way, from my experience, being on the beat in a village can be fraught with danger. But I would imagine that if we delved a bit further into his motivations, it might have something to do with his father. Perhaps he was a policeman, and even in a small village—a man who aspired to Scotland Yard and pressed his son into the same profession. Perhaps when war was declared, the navy offered a way out of the family business for Able, so he jumped at the chance of enlisting into the senior service.” She paused. “It’s all perhaps, perhaps, perhaps. And on that note—talking about a family business—we’re going to see Phil and Sally Coombes.”