Elsie flipped around and dashed back to her bedroom, closing the door quickly behind her. She dropped to her knees and pressed her ear to the base of the door, feeling a cold draught blowing against the side of her face. She waited and a few moments later, she felt a mild suction of air and the sound of footsteps. Two pairs of feet, walking down the corridor. Elsie held her breath as they paused for a fraction of a second outside her door, before continuing to the stairs. Elsie leapt up and hurried to the window, where she proceeded to remove the blackouts. The telescope was still in place, just as she had left it earlier. She tilted it downwards and sharpened the focus.
Moments later, a figure in a dark hat and dark coat filled the viewfinder. The woman turned back towards the house and waved.
Elsie squinted, trying to see the woman clearly. She had short, brownish hair and a pinched, witch-like face. The woman glanced up at her frowning, her uncertain face magnified in Elsie’s vision.
Elsie froze, watching as the woman said something to Agnes.
The woman pointed and Elsie froze.Tugging the telescope back, she shoved the blackouts into place, stripped down to her bra and knickers and dived into bed. She turned on her side to face the door and closed her eyes.
Agnes must have run at a remarkable speed, for no sooner had Elsie climbed into bed, than the unmistakable sound of hurried footsteps filled the corridor. They stopped outside Elsie’s room and she tried to regulate her breathing and heart rate. She was certain, as she waited for her door to be flung open, that the moment she ceased to think about her heart and lungs, they would stop working.
Agnes, on the other side of the door, cleared her throat and Elsie tried to prepare her justification, but it was as if her thoughts were tied to balloons, floating away from her, needing to be grasped and held onto. She heard a light tink as Agnes’s wedding ring touched her door knob. Her thoughts were scattered still and she had nothing to say but the truth. Was the truth so awful?
But Agnes said nothing, and moments later moved along the corridor towards her own bedroom.
Elsie flung her head back into the pillow and exhaled. She thought of what had just happened and what she had just heard. She replayed the only clear words over and over in her mind, trying to make sense of them. You can still use Daniel Winter...
Chapter Eight
Tamara Forsdyke stared at her laptop screen, unblinking. She had Googled the name Morton Farrier and the vague notion of familiarity suddenly solidified: he was the genealogist involved in several cases that had made the news at one time or another. Tamara had then pored over each of the search results in turn—most of them news stories—and a sharp fear rose inside her as she came to the conclusion that Morton Farrier could pose a considerable threat to her.
She looked at the clock in the corner of her laptop: it was time she left for a meeting in London. An important client was flying in from Beijing and she needed not to be late.
Tamara took one last look at Morton’s photo in the most recent news story, then shut her laptop, wondering what to do next.
Morton was reclining in his Mini, appearing quite like a dead person. Another migraine was sitting on his forehead with all the weight of a bag of ballast and he was waiting for the medication to kick in. Stress, his doctor had put it down to. ‘Did any change happen in your life around the time they started?’ the doctor had asked. ‘No,’ had been Morton’s reply. At the time, a one-word simple lie had seemed the quickest route to a packet of pills. What he should have said was: ‘Yes, my adoptive father died and, rather than spend time grieving, I carried on working—badly—whilst spending every waking moment trying to trace my biological father.’ But his perfunctory answer had worked; Morton had got what he had wanted: medication and the absolute avoidance of any kind of counselling. He didn’t need a psychologist to help him to join the dots between losing one father and the search for another.
He swigged down some more water, then reached for his bag and stepped from the car onto the wet pavement. Walking quickly through the dreary grey streets of Folkestone town centre, Morton arrived at the library. He bounded up the stairs with familiarity and entered the Heritage Room. It had been in this very building last year that he had taken his first genealogical steps towards finding his father. An echo of the desperation from his previous visit returned, as he found himself walking in his own footsteps towards the helpdesk. His research had come so far since that day, but, in a paradox familiar to all genealogists, the breaking down of one brick wall had only led to several others.
‘Can I help you?’ a voice asked, drawing Morton’s attention to the here and now. It came from a woman with pinched, shrew-like facial features. Her blonde bob had cast a generous dusting of dandruff over the shoulders of her blue suit.
‘Hi. I’d like to have a look at newspapers for the Hawkinge area around 1940, please.’
The woman bobbed her head emphatically and spoke as she marched across the room. ‘For Hawkinge you’re looking at the Folkestone, Hythe and District Herald. The originals are too fragile to produce, I’m afraid, so we have them on film.’ She reached the two microfilm readers, stopped and turned to face him. ‘Have you used one of these before?’
Morton glanced down. It was an old machine, one of the first varieties to be motorised. One speed forwards. One speed backwards. ‘Just a few times,’ he responded.
The woman pointed to a metal filing cabinet beside the reader. ‘They’re all in there; I’ll leave you to it.’
Morton thanked her, selected the film for 1940 and loaded it onto the machine, slowly winding his way through the grainy yellow images of each edition of the newspaper, building up a picture of the war locally through the filter of propaganda. ‘More happy pictures of our evacuated children in Wales!’ ‘Local men doing their bit!’ ‘Another downed Jerry!’ ‘Spitfire Fund smashes record!’ ‘Helpful tips for housewives!’
When the raids on the southeast coast began in July, Morton made notes and took photos of articles that might pertain to Capel-le-Ferne, Hawkinge or the aerodrome, but, in reality, it was nigh on impossible to correctly identify the ambiguous geographical locations referred to, since the newspapers were prohibited from revealing anything of importance to the enemy.
Morton shifted the page on, stretched and closed his eyes for a moment. The tablets had yet to work, and staring at the screen was only making his headache worse. He opened his eyes and did a double-take at the microfilm reader. Below a dark scratchy image was the caption RAF Swing Quintet visits Hawkinge. Morton leant in closer, tightened the zoom ring and read the full story. A large number were present at Hawkinge Village Hall on Friday night last week, when the attraction was the appearance of the RAF Swing Quintet. A classic display of ‘jitterbugging’ caused a flurry of arm-wagging amongst the gay people who packed the crowded floor, many of them local RAF and WAAF personnel, enjoying a well-earned break from serving their country.
Morton rotated the zoom lens further, the photograph now filling the page. It wasn’t a great image by anyone’s standards and a tricky one for him to apply his expertise in photo analysis. It was evidently taken mid-dance and not staged, for many faces and limbs were blurred. The dance floor was, as the story suggested, crowded with couples. Most of the men wore their RAF uniforms but all of the women were dolled up in fancy evening dresses. Morton intended to take a high-resolution photograph of the image and then take a closer look later, but, as he zoomed back out, he caught sight of someone familiar. Could it be her? He zoomed back in and sharpened the focus. He was sure that it was: Elsie Finch.
Morton hurriedly removed Barbara’s yellow file from his bag, flicking quickly through the pages until he came to Elsie’s 1939 wedding photograph. Holding the picture beside the microfilm reader, Morton compared the two faces. It required no skill whatsoever to verify that they were one and the same woman. The hair, the facial shape, the eyes—all the same. Then he realised what had been bothering him about Elsie and Lawrence’s wedding picture—her eyes—
they reminded him of some of the images that he had studied in the not-uncommon Victorian practice of post-mortem photography. In the dance photograph, however, there was a light there—a sparkle. Life, perhaps. It struck Morton as curiously back-to-front that a photograph taken just one month after the death of her husband should show a zest curiously absent from her wedding picture.
He looked back at the photograph. Elsie’s dance partner was evidently mid-jitterbug, for his left hand was obscuring the lower half of his face. Morton pulled the image tighter and, despite the distortion, thought that he recognised him. He scrolled through the pictures on his mobile phone and found the ones taken at the National Memorial to the Few at Capel-le-Ferne. William Smith, he was sure, was dancing with Elsie.
Morton took a series of photographs of the screen, intending further detailed analysis later on. He sat back and smiled. His headache was at last lifting and he had just found clear evidence linking Elsie to William. He thought of Barbara’s reaction when he showed her what would probably end up being the only photograph in existence of her biological mother and father together, dancing and enjoying each other’s company. His mind drifted back to last year, to standing outside the pair of houses in which his own biological parents had met. Had anyone photographed them together? It was possible. Then his thoughts turned back to the unopened letters and a sharp nettling entwined around his heart, branching out and stinging the muscles in his limbs. He took a deep breath and shook off the thoughts. Concentrate, he told himself.
He returned to the newspaper story, focussing on one section: …many of them local RAF and WAAF personnel… Was Elsie in the WAAF? It would go some way to explaining why she was so far from her home in Nutley and why she had met William at a dance in Hawkinge. He took his computer from his bag, perched it on his lap and opened up a web browser.
His searches baffled him. Each result pertained to the aerodrome becoming a training ground for WAAF personnel after its closure in September 1945. He clicked on each suggested link and read the content. Not one result related to WAAF personnel working on the aerodrome during the war. Perhaps she had simply lived in Hawkinge, but not worked at the aerodrome, he thought, removing the word aerodrome from the search. Google presented him with a shiny new set of unclicked results. At the top were the personal recollections of Mrs Susan Stubbs on the BBC People’s War website. It was a very brief account of her time working at Maypole Cottage, monitoring German radio transmissions. Her story made no reference to any of her colleagues but did mention that she had been employed because of her ability to speak German. Morton’s attention left the page in front of him, as he recalled that Elsie’s mother was named Christina Neugebauer. Was it making too much of a leap to suggest that Elsie, too, had a Germanic background and that she had served in the WAAF at Hawkinge?
Morton stared for a moment at his laptop screen, recalling a previous case that he had worked on, involving a soldier in the Second World War. His promotion, like all other military advancements, had been mentioned in the London Gazette. Morton accessed their website, typing Elsie’s name into the search box under Awards and Accreditations.
Women’s Auxiliary Air Force.
The undermentioned are appointed Assistant Section Officers. 30th November 1940.
887509 Sergeant Mrs. Elsie Finch
Morton smiled as he saved a copy of the image onscreen. He returned to the search results to see if Elsie had received any further promotions. He found two more and clicked on the next entry.
Women’s Auxiliary Air Force.
The undermentioned are appointed Flight Officers. 3rd February 1942.
887509 Assistant Section Officer Mrs. Elsie Finch
Having noted and photographed the promotion, Morton looked at the final entry.
Women’s Auxiliary Air Force.
The undermentioned are appointed Squadron Officers. 17th January 1943.
887509 Flight Officer Mrs. Elsie Finch
Morton was impressed; Elsie had reached the rank of Squadron Officer. Perhaps his initial assessment of her, that she had had little impact on the world, had been far too harsh and hasty.
It didn’t surprise Morton greatly when, after several minutes of searching, he discovered that WAAF records were held by the Ministry of Defence and subject to a strict closure order. Only a copy of the person’s death certificate, thirty pounds and permission from the next-of-kin would give access to the records. Morton made a note to print the application form and email it to Barbara. Then he thought about his last disastrous visit to her and how incompetent he must have appeared, and decided instead to take the form to her personally. He could also show her the photograph of William and Elsie together, which might just inspire some confidence in his abilities.
Separate links began to join together in a possible chain of thought: Elsie had joined the WAAF and been sent to Hawkinge owing to an ability to speak German. Once there, she had met William Smith at a dance and a brief relationship had resulted in the birth of an unwanted child. That relationship had ended when William Smith’s Hurricane had mysteriously crashed. And there the chain ended; he needed more insight into William and Elsie’s time at Hawkinge. It was time to pay a visit to the Kent Battle of Britain Museum, but first, he wanted to check out the reference section of the library for any books on the aerodrome or the work that went on at Maypole Cottage.
It was two hours later when Morton parked his Mini at the Kent Battle of Britain Museum in Hawkinge. He had found several history books on the area and now had a good understanding of both the aerodrome during the Second World War and the nature of the work that went on at Maypole Cottage. If his suspicions that Elsie had been employed there were correct, then her work had been of national importance, something that he was sure would please Barbara.
He locked the car and bounded towards the entrance. Inside was a low-ceilinged gift-shop jam-packed with memorabilia, model aircraft and books on the Battle of Britain. Sitting behind a desk was a wiry old man who snarled out at him. ‘Seven pounds, please,’ he demanded. ‘And your mobile.’
Morton handed over the money requested and chuckled.
The man passed a small ticket across and repeated his request. ‘Your mobile phone and any camera equipment, please.’
‘Really?’ Morton asked incredulously.
The man reaffirmed and pointed to a sign. No mobiles, cameras or recording equipment.
‘Why’s that?’ Morton asked, reluctantly fishing his mobile from his pocket.
‘They set the alarms off,’ the man replied.
Morton frowned. ‘What, even if the phone’s switched off?’
Another nod.
‘So, any camera would set your alarms off, even an old-fashioned film type?’
‘Yes, that’s right.’
Morton was unable to prevent himself from laughing. He hated this type of absurd officiousness that made no sense. ‘I think you need to invest in new alarms, then,’ he mumbled. ‘Or a better excuse.’
‘Do you want to go in, or not?’ the old man snapped.
‘What about a notebook?’ Morton asked.
‘As long as it’s the paper version and not the computer.’
Morton handed over his phone and, biting his tongue, followed the signs to enter the museum. A short concrete path led to another door on a huge camouflaged hangar. He stepped inside and absorbed his surroundings. The hangar, it seemed to him, was an original from the war. A narrow, roped-off walkway passed through an eclectic mixture of replica aircraft, original army vehicles, various engine relics and display boards. He tried to mentally remove the clutter, instead imagining it as it would have been on the 15th August 1940, filled with pilots, mechanics and aircrew hurrying to get the aircraft combat-ready. In his mind, he saw William Smith strolling through in his RAF uniform, hands slung in his pockets, heading out to the dispersal hut in anticipation of a scramble. His last scramble. In Morton’s reverie, William was smiling, happy. What, then, had happened that day? William disappeare
d, and with him went Morton’s imagined scene. He was back in the jumbled room. He moved to the first display board and began to read the copious notes that explained all about the Spitfire engine in front of him. The notes were exceptionally detailed, including biographical information on the pilot, details of the aircraft and eye-witness accounts of the crash. Morton read the board from top to bottom, then moved on to the next and began to read. He stopped after the first sentence, realising that he would need at least a month in here to read everything properly. Changing tack, Morton skim-read the board for keywords and dates, then proceeded to the next engine and the next display board. The place really needed a good curator, he thought, as he scanned through the text.
It took twenty minutes for the keywords to spring out at him. Pilot Officer William Smith…32 Squadron…15th August 1940.
He had found it. He looked carefully at the display, wishing that he had some method of taking a photograph for the case file. It was a large black engine that appeared, but for one squashed section, to be in fairly good condition. Morton eagerly began to read the display. The Merlin III engine from Hurricane N2459, which crashed into Grove Farm, Lympne at 15.00 hours on 15th August 1940, during a flight patrol from RAF Hawkinge. Pilot Officer William Smith, aged 19, was killed. Smith was reported missing after the patrol and the cause of the crash still remains a mystery. No.32 Squadron had been operating from the forward airfield at Hawkinge. Twelve-year-old Jeffrey Richards watched Pilot Officer Smith’s final flight and later remembered: ‘The Hurricane descended at great speed at around forty-five degrees. I could see the pilot and he was certainly conscious. It crashed with a loud thud and immediately burst into flames. The pilot made no attempt to pull out of the dive or to escape.’ An excavation of the site on 29th June 1972 revealed this Merlin III engine, together with other items including Smith’s parachute. As the excavation continued, Smith’s remains were found to be still in the aircraft and the salvage operation was halted. Later that year, the Ministry of Defence undertook a full excavation and Smith was buried in Hawkinge Cemetery with full military honours.
The Spyglass File (The Forensic Genealogist Book 5) Page 10
