“Answer the question, please, Catherine.”
“Never met anyone by that name in my life.”
“Could you make a bomb of poison gas?”
“Such as?”
“Chlorine. Chlorine and phosgene, or mustard gas.”
“Old wartime favorites?”
“Yes.”
“No, I couldn’t. That takes more of an expert than I can lay claim to being. And I wouldn’t. Saw what the gas did to my brother.”
“But you were making bombs.”
“Not like that, though. We might’ve created a stink, might have caused a few tears, or the police to run away from a march, but no, I’m not in the business of killing like that.”
“But I understand Mills Bombs were found.”
“They might have been found, Miss Dobbs. But I didn’t know we had them. I was only involved in developing chemical concoctions to upset the police during our demonstrations. Not killing people.”
Maisie nodded. “That will be all, thank you.” She pushed back her chair to stand.
“Thought so. I tell you everything I know and I’m still not getting out of here.”
“I’m sorry, Catherine. I have to be honest, I don’t think I can get you out. At the very least, you are guilty of conspiring to cause an affray, and the men you were with were in possession of dangerous weapons. But I will record our conversation. It may help when you come up before the judge. And try not to get in with the wrong crowd again—you are far too intelligent a woman to have done such a thing.” She nodded to the policewoman and left the room, passing the constable as she departed. “You can escort Miss Jones back to her cell now.”
Stratton was waiting for Maisie at the end of the corridor, and moved forward to walk in step with her as she alighted the staircase.
“What do you think?”
Maisie stopped, turning toward Stratton. “What do you think I think? They might have been planning subversive activity, they might have had a cache of weapons that they surely must answer for in a court of law, but they are not behind the threats we’re investigating. I really don’t know what’s happening here, but—”
“MacFarlane is under pressure to produce suspects.”
“I suppose next he’ll round up the women unionists for even daring to ask for pensions.”
“No, not quite, however—”
“Come on, Richard, you know he’s wrong. Even he knows he’s wrong.” She continued on up the staircase, realizing she had just addressed Stratton by his Christian name. Her cheeks blazed.
“Stop, wait, please, Maisie.”
“Yes?” She turned as he placed a hand on her arm.
“You and I do not have to discontinue the investigation.”
“I know. I have no intention of stopping, even though I am sure my work here on this case has just come to an end, and even though it will be on my own time.” Maisie did not try to hide her exasperation. “I just know there is someone out there, working alone—or with a close associate—who is on a knife edge. I just feel it. I have been trying to compose a picture in my mind’s eye of the type of person we are looking for, and I do not see him reflected in any single member of that group we’ve just viewed. Catherine Jones may be a trained chemist, may be an intelligent woman, but there’s something she does not have, something you would need to be able to kill dogs, birds—and eventually, a human being. She does not have the suffering. Even in the hard nuts who appear beyond any redemption, we see that terrible ache that took root and grew to take over a whole person. She had lost her parents, yes, her brother, yes, but she does not display a level of . . . ” Maisie bit her lip, searching for words to describe an emotion she could feel but not give voice to. “Deep, deep melancholy, a darkness. She is not someone who truly has nothing to live for but to give up her life for others in a similar position.” She turned to continue up the staircase. “And that makes the man we are looking for very, very dangerous indeed, for he has nothing to lose, not even his conscience. We should be thankful that he is choosing to increase the stakes slowly, but I fear his patience is wearing thin.”
“I think you’re right.” Stratton kept pace with Maisie, who was now making her way toward the meeting room at a fair clip.
“Then tell Robbie MacFarlane.”
“Tell Robbie MacFarlane what?” The Detective Superintendent’s voice boomed from a room on the left as he walked into the corridor. “Tell Robbie MacFarlane what, Miss Dobbs?”
Maisie stood tall to answer MacFarlane. “Sir, I do not believe the people we have just seen are responsible for the threats sent to Downing Street.”
MacFarlane placed a hand on Maisie’s shoulder. “Well, Miss Dobbs, at this moment in time, it does not matter what you believe.” He turned to Stratton. “I’ll talk to you later. I just need a word with Miss Dobbs here.” Bringing his attention back to Maisie, he cupped her elbow in his hand and steered her toward his office. “Sit down please, Miss Dobbs.”
Maisie took a seat and placed her document case on the floor alongside her chair. She rested her hands in her lap and crossed her ankles, noticing that MacFarlane had followed each move.
“Now then, I know you think we’ve got the wrong people, and perhaps you are right. I’m not going to dismiss your observations out of hand, but I will save you the time.” He folded his arms and looked at his feet. Maisie noticed that the fabric of his jacket was taut across his shoulders, and thought he might have bought the jacket when he was a younger man and the intervening years were not accommodated easily by his clothing.
“Miss Dobbs, your services are no longer required by Special Branch. Your contributions have not been without merit, but now that we have suspects in custody, there would be unwanted speculation if we retained you for any longer than necessary, especially in these times of tight budgetary oversight. In short, the bean counters are watching me, so you had better be on your way.”
“And you no longer have to keep an eye on me because my name was mentioned in a threatening letter sent to the Prime Minister’s office?”
“We believe that to have been a shot in the dark, perhaps a device to throw us off the scent, so to speak. Plus, you have been mentioned in the newspapers before in one or two cases involving former soldiers.” He laughed. “And I doubt you could make a bomb, Miss Dobbs.”
“Yes, you’re right—bombs and poison gas are hardly in my line.” Maisie reached for her case and rose from the chair, holding out her hand. “Thank you for the opportunity to work with you, Detective Chief Superintendent MacFarlane. I am glad to have been of service.” She cleared her throat. “I take it my account will be settled promptly.”
“I will personally ensure you are not out of pocket.”
“Thank you.” She turned to leave, but MacFarlane reached out and placed his hand on her shoulder.
“I hope we meet again, Miss Dobbs.”
“Yes, of course. I am sure our paths will cross.” She pulled on her gloves. “Now then, I should be off.”
Maisie made her way to the meeting room where Billy was in conversation with Stratton and Darby.
“Ready, Billy?”
“Yes, Miss.” He held up a rolled-up length of paper. “I’ve taken the case map.”
She turned to Stratton and Darby, holding out her hand to each in turn. “Gentlemen, it was a pleasure working with you. I wish you the best of luck.”
As soon as they were outside, Maisie raised her hand to summon a taxi-cab.
“Pushing the boat out, aren’t we, Miss?”
“I need to get back to the office, Billy, so we can get on with some real work.”
A cab drew alongside and Billy opened the door for Maisie to take a seat before he instructed the driver and then clambered aboard. “I thought we were working, if you don’t mind me saying so.”
“As the Chief Superintendent said, Billy, I do not have the knowledge to make a bomb or some other sort of terrible weapon. But someone out there does and he’s been letting us
know that he has every intention of using that knowledge if his demands are not met—and we must assume they definitely will not be met.” She looked out of the window at the already darkened skies of a winter’s midafternoon, then turned back to Billy. “So, our job is to find the person who has that knowledge.”
“There’s a lot of people like that about, I mean, I could knock together an incendiary device if I had to.”
Maisie shook her head. “But you are guided by goodness, Billy. Our man doesn’t know what it is to feel that goodness anymore.”
I feel as if I have been shouting at someone who is walking away from me, and who cannot hear. It has been like that since the war. And so, because I don’t want to shout louder, I turn back, I don’t bother. But now I have to bother. I can hear myself screaming inside my head. I can hear my voices, telling them how wrong they are, how wrong they have been. I can no longer plead in my prayers. Listen to me. Listen to me. Please, please, listen to me. But no one listens, because the man with his hand held out, the man who cannot walk as he once walked, or think as he once thought, has nothing that anyone wants to hear, not anymore. So now I have to shout. Only I no longer shout with words. There is no point. They only listen to me when I take action. Then they have to listen. So I shout with the doing, and it always comes back to what I do well.
TEN
The taxi-cab dropped Maisie and Billy at the junction of Warren Street and Fitzroy Street. As they walked around the corner into the square, a black motor car parked on the flagstones in front of the mansion that housed their office caught their attention. They both stopped walking and stood for a moment to observe the vehicle.
“It’s not a police motor, but it is official,” offered Maisie.
“Could be for someone else.”
“It could.” She paused. “But it isn’t. Come on, let’s see who it is.”
They did not look into the motor car as they passed and made their way up the steps to the front door, but as Maisie took out her key, they heard a door open behind them and a voice call out.
“Miss Dobbs? And this must be Mr. Beale. Jolly good to have caught you.”
They turned around, and Maisie slipped the key into her pocket.
“Gerald Urquhart. Remember me? Well, I just dropped by to have a little conversation, a little chin wag, as they say.” With a lightness of foot, he came up the steps toward Maisie and held out his hand, though his voice was now low. His coppery brown hair was slicked back by oil that made it seem darker, and he wore a gray suit with white collar and black tie. His shoes were polished to a deep shine. “Military Intelligence, Section Five. It’s a business matter. Let’s go up to your office, shall we?” He nodded toward the door for Maisie and Billy to lead the way. “Just a few points to discuss. I’m sure you want to keep the Funnies up to date, eh? MacFarlane and his boys can be so cloak and dagger, can’t they?”
Opening the door to her office, Maisie approached her desk, set her document case on the floor and her shoulder bag in a drawer. “Billy, pull up chairs for yourself and Mr. Urquhart, please.” She sat down behind her desk and waited for the men to be seated. Behind Urquhart’s back Billy caught Maisie’s eye and raised his hand to his mouth as if holding a cup. Maisie shook her head. There would be no offer of tea for the man from Section Five.
“Miss Dobbs.” Urquhart pulled at the trouser fabric close to his knees as he sat down. “I understand that our friend Robbie MacFarlane has dismissed you from the investigation regarding the source of those letters sent to the Prime Minister et al.”
“Detective Chief Superintendent MacFarlane has a group in custody and believes them to be behind the threats. They are union activists, and one of the group studied chemistry at university, so has an understanding of combustible substances.”
“I see. And you think he’s wrong.”
“I think it’s worth continuing the search. I think it’s worth leaving no stone unturned.”
“Do you know why you’ve been dismissed?”
“I would have thought it’s clear.”
“Not at all.” He crossed his legs, leaning back in a manner that Maisie interpreted as proprietorial. “No, you were dismissed because of Robbie’s tendency toward maverick acts. Taking you to Number Ten was not one of his better strategic moves.”
“I understood I was asked to accompany the Chief Superintendent because I was available and was working on the case. I believe he wanted to bring some immediacy to the meeting, to show that he was not thinking in the usual way, so to speak—that he was willing to consider intelligence beyond Special Branch.”
“Or in other words, that he could do what he liked in his personal bailiwick.”
Maisie did not respond. She wasn’t about to agree with Urquhart, or disagree, though she could see his point.
“Moving to a more fruitful dialogue, I hope, I understand you have a—now, what would your old teacher Dr. Blanche say?” Urquhart put his finger to his chin in mock thought. Maisie said nothing, though she felt a welter of dislike for the man. She waited for him to continue.
“Oh, yes, he’d say that you had a sense of the author of the letters, wouldn’t he? Good old Maurice.”
Fighting the urge to stand—she didn’t want to give the impression of needing height to have a voice with power behind it—Maisie responded with a certain coolness. “Dr. Blanche has been decorated for service to this country and, as you know, much of that service has been in intelligence, so I would prefer it if you referred to him with the respect his contribution to our nation’s security deserves.”
“I beg your pardon, however—”
“However,” Maisie continued, aware that she may have sounded overprotective, “I do indeed have a sense of our letter-writer.”
“And would you care to let me have a glimpse of your sense?”
Maisie rested her forearms on the desk. “Mr. Urquhart, your manner has done nothing to endear you to me, though I realize you did not come here in search of my friendship. If it weren’t for the fact that I believe we have little time to find the letter-writer—who has proven already that he has the wherewithal to do the sort of damage to life that brings a chill to the bone—I would not be continuing this little chin-wag. But we have no time to lose. I will make no secret of the fact that I do not intend to wash my hands of this case, even though I really do need to concentrate on work that brings in an income.”
“We’ll pay for information.”
“Yes, you will.”
Urquhart took a deep breath and exhaled. “Miss Dobbs, tell me what you know of this man we’re all after. We have our own specialists working on this case, but we . . . we feel that you may have a greater knowledge.”
Maisie leaned back and looked across at Billy, who seemed to be on the edge of his seat as he followed the back-and-forth volley of words. She stood up and walked from the desk to the middle of the room, then walked back again. She continued pacing as she spoke. “The man we are looking for has most probably been released from a secure institution during the past two years, though there should be a margin for error—remember, this speculation is not an exact science.” She paused to look out of the window, then began walking back and forth again. “In general, such a man would most probably have remained close to the institution in question, not making any significant moves to another region, unless there were family there to receive him, so I think we can expect him to have been previously in care in one of the London hospitals for the mentally ill, or a home specifically for soldiers with a psychiatric or emotional affliction. He is, I would say, poorly nourished, and has few, if any friends. He has some difficulty with physical adroitness and most probably suffers from night tremors and hallucinatory dreams. He is a haunted man.”
“How can he handle chemicals with volatile properties if he has tremors and such like?” Urquhart was writing in a notebook, but paused and looked up at Maisie as he asked the question.
“Training. I would say that this man has some sort of
training, perhaps as a chemist, an engineer, physicist. He might have been a doctor. He is an educated man—though I suspect he might come from lowly beginnings, and that there were other losses in his life. In my experience—and I am sure you are fully apprised of my professional experience—the men who suffered the most from the various war neuroses were those who had some difficulties in childhood, though that is by no means prescriptive.”
She took her seat again, folding her arms as she faced Urquhart and looked into his eyes. “He’s lonely, but at the same time is weary of company, has barely the will to communicate with others. He might have one friend, one person he trusts, but I am not sure. He feels disenfranchised. He may have tried to get work, but was turned away—we might even assume he has obvious wounds that are not attractive, scars and the like. He may be unable to control spittle when he talks. There are many manifestations of psychological wounds that are not pleasing to the eye, and those tics and so on are not something that people want to see, or want their customers to be exposed to. If you watch a man thus afflicted walk down the street, you will see the people coming toward him part as a river divides when it reaches an island. It becomes easier for him to go out after dark.”
Urquhart was silent for several moments. “This means going through a lot of records. And what if he’s moved in from somewhere else?”
Maisie sighed. “I didn’t say this was a certain bet. It’s a template, an idea rooted in my own understanding of the gamut of war neuroses, and also in the conversations I’ve had with experts at two hospitals.”
“And they don’t recognize the description you’ve given us?” Urquhart leaned back in his chair, resting his arm along the back of a vacant chair next to him.
“The description I’ve given you could probably match hundreds of men still held in asylums, but, to answer your question—no, they don’t, not specifically, otherwise I am sure we would have the person in a cell by now.”
“Do you think he might be part of one of these troublemaking organizations—the unions, the Fascists? Sounds like he would be drawn to them.”