An Incomplete Revenge jw-3

by Jacqueline Winspear

  “I am so glad you’re here, Maisie. So glad you came.” She stood up and held out her hands toward Maisie, and Maisie leaned down to kiss her cheek, as if she were indeed the daughter-in-law she might have become, had the fates not ruled otherwise.

  Maisie nodded, grasped Margaret’s hand, and walked to the bed. Simon’s breathing was even more labored than it had been earlier in the day. She helped his mother to the chair, then reached across to lay her fingers on his forehead. His eyes were closed but seemed to flutter as she touched him, though as she drew her hand away, there was no movement, no indication that he had felt her touch. She walked to the end of the bed and looked at the clipboard with notes attached. There was no reason to think he was uncomfortable while death made ready to claim him.

  The staff nurse returned with another chair, and Maisie drew it close to Margaret. They sat for a while, both watching Simon, the rise and fall of his chest, listening to the breath catching in his throat, the sound reverberating into his lungs, before echoing back like a slow rattle.

  “You’ve been good to come these past two years, Maisie.”

  Maisie bit her bottom lip, once more at a loss to explain her earlier absence. “I—”

  “It’s alright, my dear. I know, I understand. You were both so very young, you saw so much. I might have not been able to comprehend your not visiting when he first came home, but time has tempered me, has given me leave to appreciate how the war touched you, too.” She turned to look at Maisie, her eyes watery with age but her vision still acute. “I don’t know how I would have dealt with such a blow, had it been me. So, yes, I am glad you have come.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Lynch.”

  “Things are very different than they were in my day,” she continued in a whisper, with respect to the hour and Simon. “And I confess, Simon’s father and I, though we thought you delightful, were rather worried—I shall be frank with you, Maisie, I am too old now to do otherwise—that you would not be suited to marriage with Simon. But it was wartime, and we loved our son, so we sought to do nothing until he was home again.” She shook her head. “Now, of course, I wouldn’t care whom he married, what he did, if only he were here and not like this.” She raised her handkerchief to her mouth.

  Without giving a thought to protocol, Maisie placed an arm around the woman’s shoulder and allowed her to lean against her. “I know, I understand. We neither of us know what might have happened, but we are both here now, and we are here for Simon, for your son.”

  Simon’s breathing became louder, his eyes at once wide open, as his body automatically responded to the pressure of his failing lungs. His chest raised up, twisting his spine, and he convulsed. Maisie stood up and held his shoulders down, spoke gently, though he could not hear, as Margaret Lynch wept aloud. “Simon. My son, my son . . .”

  He became calm, and though he continued to breathe, in troubled raspy breaths that sounded like a barber sweeping a blunt blade slowly back and forth across the strop, he looked not at Maisie or his mother but at a place above and in front of him, staring wide at a vision only he could see. Then all movement ceased and there was nothing. No more abrasive breaths, no life in his eyes, just the shell of a man lost to war in 1917.

  Maisie reached over and drew her fingers across his eyelids, then took his hands and rested them on his chest, as if to protect his heart. She turned to his mother. “Stay with him, Margaret, while I go to the staff nurse. And . . . don’t be afraid to talk to him, to say your final farewell.”

  “What about you, Maisie?”

  Maisie looked back at Simon. “I said my farewell this morning.” Her voice was low as she turned to face the bed where Simon lay. “It’s alright—we’ve said our goodbye.” She squeezed his cooling hand and left the room.

  ELEVEN

  Maisie and Priscilla remained with Margaret Lynch while formalities concerning Simon’s death were completed before accompanying her back to her London home in a taxi-cab. They saw that she was comfortable and her household alerted to her loss before taking their leave. Margaret Lynch had bid farewell to Maisie with an affection laced with melancholy, holding her hands as if she were unwilling to release this young woman who had known and loved her son. Maisie accepted an invitation to visit. She knew that, for the first time, Margaret Lynch would ask her to describe the tragedy that had led to both Simon’s wounds and her own and that, in telling the story, there might be healing for them both. Priscilla insisted on escorting Maisie to her flat, and as soon as she left, Maisie went straight to bed and descended at once into a deep and dreamless sleep.

  ARRIVING AT THE Dorchester in something of a rush later that morning, for she had overslept, Maisie saw Priscilla waiting for her outside the hotel. She was dressed in black, as was Maisie. A doorman opened the MG’s passenger door, and Priscilla waved him off quickly with a tip so they could continue on to St. Anselm’s in haste.

  “For goodness’ sake, Maisie, when will you have a telephone connected in your flat?” Priscilla wound down the window and lit a cigarette.

  “I have one at the office, and that’s an extravagance, Pris.”

  “We might have been late.”

  “But we’re not. We’ll be at the school on time. What’s wrong with you? Too many bad memories of being called up in front of the Head for a strapping?”

  Priscilla laughed and waved a plume of smoke out of the window. “I suspect you’re right. I detest this sort of thing, makes me wonder whether we ought to just leave London for the estate and take on a tutor for the boys—but that rather defeats the object, doesn’t it? So much for my vision of a houseful of boys down for the weekend, games of tennis, and building forts of branches and leaves in the forest. Looks like my three will be outsiders forever if I don’t sort something out.”

  “Does it have to be boarding school?”

  Priscilla shook her head. “We’ll see. I’ll have to talk to Douglas after I meet Cottingham this morning. And speaking of my absent spouse, thank heavens he’ll be in London next week. We miss him terribly”

  “Here we are.” Maisie maneuvered the motor car through the gates of the school, parking alongside one other motor car in the semicircular carriage sweep. “And with five minutes to spare.”

  “Look, you wait in the entrance hall, and I’ll go in to see Cottingham. I’ll tell him you’d like to meet him, then suggest that I see my boys while you are in conference, which will give me a chance to find out what they’ve been up to and assess the damage. Let’s hope he’s in an acquiescent mood.” Priscilla stepped from the MG, and as the women made their way to the entrance, Maisie handed her a calling card. The plan went smoothly, and Maisie was called in to see Dr. Cottingham, while Priscilla was escorted to a room where she would be able to see her boys, who would be brought from their classes to join her.

  “Dr. Cottingham, how very kind of you to see me this morning, and without prior notice.” Maisie extended her hand to greet the headmaster. She was surprised to find him quite young for such a post, and calculated that he must be in the region of forty-five. She had envisioned a rather crusty professorial character, with a balding pate and eyes narrowed by constant vigilance for the less-than-sterling behavior of his charges. Instead, Cottingham wore a tailored pin-striped suit, crisp white shirt, and silk tie. His shoes were polished to a shine, and his gunmetal-gray hair was swept back. The gown that a master usually wore had been draped across a chair, ready to be donned should a boy be brought to him for punishment or, less likely, praise. Clearly he had no need of such accoutrements to impress or intimidate parents. Yet he gave the immediate impression of being a fair man, which inspired Maisie to wonder how bullying could survive in any environment in which he worked. Or perhaps that first impression was a blind.

  “It’s no trouble at all, Miss Dobbs.” Cottingham took her hand and smiled, then returned to his chair behind the polished oak desk. “Please, be seated.” He paused. “Now then, how might I assist you? I understand that you are”—he reached forwa
rd to take up her card from the desk—“a private investigator and a psychologist. Very impressive, if I might say so. Where did you study?”

  “At Girton and at the University of Edinburgh’s Department of Legal Medicine.”

  “Well, well, well.” He set the card back on the desk. “Please, go on.”

  “Our conversation must be in confidence.”

  “Of course.”

  “I would like to ask some questions about a former pupil—and you will have to cast your memory back a few years, I’m afraid.”

  “Who?”

  “Alfred Sandermere.”

  “Oh, lord!” Cottingham rolled his eyes. “Once seen, never forgotten. If I were to pick three or four boys from my days here who might attract the attention of either the police or a private investigator, Sandermere might be at the top of the list.”

  “Really, why?”

  “Dreadful boy, such a chip on his shoulder. Typical second-son behavior, but multiplied by ten. Possibly because his older brother was definitely a top-drawer scholar, with first-class performance on the sports field—multiplied by ten!” He looked at his watch. “If you will excuse me, I’ll have his file brought up.”

  Cottingham left the room, leaving Maisie on her own. It was the first opportunity she’d had to be in wakeful solitude since Simon died, less than twelve hours earlier. She stood up and paced to the window, which overlooked a quadrangle where boys congregated between classes. To the right a stone wall marked the perimeter of the headmaster’s house, beyond which, she suspected, a walled garden gave the impression of being in the country, rather than in west London. Had Simon attended such a school? She frowned. It occurred to her that she had little knowledge of his life before they met, except, perhaps, the snippets shared by Priscilla, for he had been a family friend and a cohort of her three brothers. Maisie’s entire knowledge of him was, more or less, limited to their time together and to life since then, a life spent grieving for a man not yet dead but lost to war all the same. And now he was dead, except that the true mourning had already been done, and there was little more to do now, except respectfully wear black until after the funeral. How would she fill the place he’d occupied? How would she use such freedom, now that it was hers? It was as if she were a seeding ground that had lain fallow for years and had now been freshly tilled. How, then, might she grow, now that he was gone?

  “Ah, we’re in luck. My secretary found Sandermere, A.’s records with the greatest of ease. Terribly efficient, our Miss Larkin. Now then, let me see.” He resumed his place without questioning the fact that he had entered his study to find Maisie at the window. She sat opposite him once again.

  “Not a terribly impressive academic record. Good at sports, but not what you would call a sportsman—he was a bad loser. Never could make him captain of the cricket or rugger teams, though he certainly had the physical accomplishment.” He turned a few pages.

  “Can you tell me, specifically, about his suspensions?”

  “That I can.” Cottingham reached for a sheaf of papers clipped separately into the folder. “I have the exact dates of suspensions, until, of course, his final expulsion from the school.” He unclipped the list in question and passed it to Maisie. “You may make a note of those dates. We released him to his father. As I understand it, he languished at his parents’ estate in Kent to consider his wrongdoings.”

  “Bullying?”

  “I wish it were as simple as that. It was intimidation, really. Rather sophisticated, even for a boy like Sandermere. There wasn’t much I would put past him. Mostly it was to do with money—it’s not as if he needed it—but he would find out what other boys had been getting up to, you know, their petty little infractions, and demand money.” He looked at Maisie. “Yes, with menaces, as they say in police parlance.”

  “Did he harm anyone?”

  “That’s what a menace such as Sandermere does. Hard if you fight back, hard if you don’t.” Cottingham looked at his watch. “Can I help you with anything else, Miss Dobbs?”

  Maisie gathered her notebook and placed it, along with her pen, into her black leather document case. “No, you’ve been most kind.”

  Cottingham walked her toward the door and held out his hand, which she took, asking a question at the same time. “What about the Partridge boys? They’re being bullied here, and understandably they’re fighting back. How will you deal with that?”

  “I think bullying might be too strong a term for the Partridges’ teething problems here at St. Anselm’s. If we give it time, they’ll deal with the occasional ribbing themselves, Miss Dobbs. Staff step in if it looks as if the damage will really hurt someone. But every boy gets a black eye or a split lip now and again. Do bear in mind, the rugger field is a far more dangerous place than the dormitory.” He frowned. “The thing is, they’re different. When they fit in a bit more, the teasing will stop—they’ll be part of the pack. You see, they can be whoever they want to be at home, or back in France, but here in school it’s like an army. Everyone has to march to the same drum.”

  “Thank you, once again, Dr. Cottingham.” Maisie left the office and shivered.

  “GOOD HEAVENS, WHAT’S happened here?” Maisie looked at Priscilla, who raised an eyebrow and shook her head, then looked again at the three boys seated beside their mother outside the Head’s office. The eldest, Timothy, was sporting a black eye, the middle son, Thomas, a nasty graze to the cheek, and the youngest, Tarquin, was running his tongue back and forth through the gap where four front teeth used to be.

  “At least they were his milk teeth, Maisie. Can you imagine what I would do trying to find a dentist to make a plate for a boy who had just lost his adult teeth? I really don’t know whether to bang their heads together or just pull them out of here.”

  “But, Maman—”

  “Not a word, Tarquin, not one word.” Priscilla held up her index finger as she spoke.

  The youngest slumped in his chair. “Wasn’t my fault, Tante Maisie. That boy picked on me first.” He continued his explanation in English peppered with French, as if he had no conception of the point at which one language ended and the other began.

  “Yes, but you didn’t have to slug him back, did you?” Priscilla raised an eyebrow as she looked sideways at her son.

  Maisie smiled and whispered, “Yes, he did, Pris.”

  “Don’t encourage them, Maisie, unless you want to come and live with us and teach them instead of being an investigator.”

  Maisie winked at Tarquin, then smiled at Priscilla. “I think I’ll have a walk around, while you’re in with Dr. Cottingham.”

  “Probably for the best. Then you won’t have to listen to a screaming mother on the other side of the door.”

  Maisie stepped away. When she looked back, she saw Priscilla draw her glove from her hand, lick her fingers, and try to slick down each boy’s unruly fringe. She heard the door open and close behind her, and suspected the meeting might only be a short one. Nevertheless, she walked around the entrance hall, stopping to look at various plaques commemorating the school’s achievements.

  One huge marble engraving held the names of each headmaster since the school’s founding in 1640, and another a roster of sporting achievements since the century began. Then another, with a single red poppy placed on top, a list of boys from the school who had given their lives in the Great War—boys who had left school to join Kitchener’s army and had, most likely, lied about their age. She ran her finger down the list of names until she came to the one she wanted: First Lieutenant Henry Arthur Crispin Sandermere, V.C., July 1916.

  “WELL, THEN, THAT’S that.” Priscilla marched toward Maisie, her face flushed, her arms outstretched around her boys, like a mother hen shielding her young with her wings. “We’re off to the Dorchester now. The boys will not be coming back to St. Anselm’s. I’ll send a driver for their trunks and tuck boxes later.” She feigned a glare at her sons. “Not one giggle, one comment. This is only the end of this school, not of your e
ducation. Come along, let’s go to Tante Maisie’s motor car.”

  Maisie walked briskly alongside Priscilla. “Pris, it’s a two-seater. I don’t think I can fit—”

  “Nonsense. These two can squeeze behind the seats, and this one will sit on my lap. Somehow, we will all get into your MG.”

  Not wanting to contradict her friend, Maisie acquiesced, rolling back the roof to better accommodate her passengers. Fortunately, the sun was shining as they drove along, slowly, so as not to lose a boy. The two older boys were seated precariously on the collapsed roof, while Tarquin Patrick sat on Priscilla’s lap, still poking his tongue through the gap in his teeth. Not being able to stop herself, Maisie began to laugh.

  “Don’t laugh, you’ll start them off,” said Priscilla, the corners of her mouth twitching as she endeavored to counter the urge to giggle. It was a battle lost within seconds.

  Maisie delivered the Partridge family to the Dorchester and went on her way, smiling. She was glad the boys were no longer at St. Anselm’s. She didn’t like a place where prejudice was tolerated, and violence between boys, who would one day be men, explained away as the result of not hearing the drumbeat of one’s peers.

  CHECKING HER WATCH as she entered her flat, Maisie decided to add a few notes to the case map before collecting her bags and setting off for Kent. Once more she would stay with Frankie this evening, and then at the inn until the end of the week, by which time, she hoped, her work would be done and some sort of explanatory report could be submitted to James Compton.