Once the tallying was finished, they spoke of the London boys just released from police custody. As soon as they had returned to the hop-garden, George and his family had packed up their belongings and gone home to Shoreditch. “Shame,” said Billy. “They needed the money, and the farmer’s not duty-bound to pay you your wages unless you see out the picking to the end. Pity they couldn’t find it in them to stay.” When they began speaking of Sandermere’s attack on Paishey Webb, Maisie debated whether to visit the gypsies again today. She had planned to but now wondered if her presence would be unwelcome at such a time. But it struck her that the risk of retaliation by Sandermere, owner of the land where they had made camp, might encourage them to move on, and she wanted to see Beulah again. So she chatted briefly with the Beale family and took her leave, once again carrying her knapsack over one shoulder as she walked at a brisk pace toward the hill and the clearing. If she was not welcome, she would leave with haste.
THE LURCHER CAME down the hill, walked with her until they reached the vardos, and then ran across the clearing to Beulah. Maisie waved as she came into the shade, her eyes seeing only outlines as they adjusted from the day’s bright light. Beulah raised one hand and beckoned Maisie to her.
“I wanted to find out how Paishey is.” Maisie took her place, seated on a fallen tree next to Beulah.
“She’n be better when we leave, now. Only another week, then we’ll go.”
“Where to?”
“Up’n there.” She thumbed to the north, meaning London. “We’ll go to the Common for the winter. No more work on the land afore year’s end, not for us anyway.”
Maisie nodded. “What about her ear, where the ring was taken from her?”
Beulah called to Paishey, who was sitting on her haunches, chopping vegetables into a bowl. She set the task to one side and, light of foot, approached the matriarch. “Show’n her.” Beulah pointed to the younger woman’s ear.
Paishey drew back her black hair to reveal the lower half of her left ear, encrusted with a deep green paste molded to her flesh. Beulah motioned for her to lean forward and, as she came close, reached up with her vein-strapped hands and picked at the paste until it fell away. The lobe was no longer livid and swollen, and there was no division in the flesh, just a single line of no more than a hair’s breadth where the earring had been dragged free.
“She’n be wearing gold again, come morning.”
Maisie smiled at Paishey, taking her hand. “And your heart?”
The young woman nodded accord, to say she was well. “I’ve my Boosul and my Webb. If’n I let my heart break over an old sot, Webb’d go after ’im, and I don’t want that. We’n be good people, don’t want trouble.” She waved as she returned to her bowl of vegetables.
“I saw you out in the woods last week,” said Maisie, turning to Beulah. “You were dowsing, with a forked hazel twig.”
Beulah cackled. “Least you knew it were hazel.”
“Can you teach me?”
“No. Can’t be taught. I can tell you how, but I can’t teach you to feel, to listen to the rod.”
“I want to try.”
Beulah placed her hands on her knees and levered herself to standing position. Maisie stood up, too, and thought the old woman might rest her hand in the crook of her arm. Instead she walked upright, not stooped, toward her vardo, motioning for Maisie to follow her. She reached underneath the vardo to pull out a wooden fork cut from a hazel branch and cleared of leaves, then walked toward the field where the horses grazed. She stopped and looked out across the land, breathing in the late-afternoon air, as the sun traveled down toward the horizon, bathing the stubble in a pale orange-red shimmer. Beulah handed the fork to Maisie. Then, placing her hands on top of her pupil’s, she gave weight to the rustic divining tool.
“This’n be how it’ll feel, when it’s pulling.”
“How does it know what I’m looking for?”
Beulah shook her head. “You’n know the answer, girl. You does it all the time. You hold it here.” She tapped Maisie’s head. “If’n you want coins, you hold coins. If’n you want water, you see water. And if’n you want silver, you think silver.” And when she said the word silver a second time, with a movement as sudden as lightning, she removed the watch from Maisie’s jacket lapel and threw it into the field.
Maisie clutched her lapel. “Oh, no! Why did you take that? We could have used something else. Why my watch?” She looked down, clutched the fork’s handles, and moved forward.
“Slow, girl, slow. Let’n the fork tell you how to step.”
Maisie felt the woman’s hand, light, on her arm. She had not seen where the watch was thrown but listened with her fingers to the rod’s counsel and held the watch in her mind’s eye. Taking one carefully gauged step after another, she made her way across the grass. Without looking up, she knew the horses had stopped grazing and were ambling in her direction. Beulah walked behind her, along with the lurcher. She offered no words of advice, no instructions, only her presence as witness.
She turned once, the weight between her fingers pulling her to the left and then in a straight line. The horses were closer now—she could hear them nickering behind her. She wondered why Beulah did not chivvy them away, then thought it was to test her resilience to distraction. Never, since her apprenticeship with Maurice, had a lesson been so keen.
The rod pulled again, the weight trying her balance. Her watch was close. Then, as the rod pointed downward, the heaviness in her hands diminished. She knelt down, pushed the stubble aside, and claimed the watch.
“Thank God!” She held it to her chest, closing her eyes, then stood up, turning to Beulah.
The woman regarded Maisie in silence, with the horses leaning close together behind her and the dog at her side. “Now’n you know. Now’n you can dowse.”
“It was a sudden lesson, Aunt Beulah.”
Beulah was frowning and came to Maisie, taking the watch from her. She held it in her hand, as if to feel its weight. “Get rid of it.”
“What do you mean?” Maisie stepped back, as she might if threatened.
“That watch has been too close to death. That watch holds too much pain to be worn so close to your heart. Its time is done now. Get rid of it.”
“But it was a gift, from someone dear to me. I can’t just—” She took back the watch.
Beulah stared. “Yes’n you can. Hold on to time, like that”—she pointed at the watch—“and you stay in time.” She turned and walked back up the hill, stretching out her arms to send the horses away, while the lurcher followed, stopping only once to look back at Maisie.
LATER, MAISIE RETURNED to the inn, where she was shown to the same room she’d occupied before. She ached for a hot bath and, when she inquired, found that the Yeomans could not do enough for her. Once again she steeped herself in a tin bath filled with hot water, leaning back to rest her head as the steam filtrated into every pore.
A letter had awaited her arrival at the inn, a brief note from Beattie Drummond written in a matter-of-fact manner to let her know she would be coming down on the train from Paddock Wood the next morning, arriving at Heronsdene station at nine o’clock. She asked if Maisie would pick her up, as she had information of interest regarding the case. The case. She thought Beattie’s tone somewhat proprietorial, as if she was claiming part of the case as her own. Maisie had encountered such behavior in the past, in other instances where the interest shown by a source of information crossed a line. The reporter’s enthusiasm was a direct result of her hunger for some acclaim in her field, but Maisie could not allow it to stall her progress, which she felt was already hampered enough—by herself.
Later, as she lay back in bed before allowing sleep to claim her, Maisie replayed the day in her mind, watching as certain events and encounters came to the fore. There was Sandermere’s drink-inspired frenzy, his lack of control. Then Beulah, taking her watch, the talisman that had gone to war with her, and throwing it away. And her warning: That wa
tch holds too much pain to be worn close to your heart.
She cleared her mind so she could rest. The last thing she saw before she fell asleep was a vision of Simon, sitting in his wheelchair at the convalescent hospital. She remembered, once, leaning over him, her arm around his shoulder, his head pulled into the crook of her neck. There was a point at which the edge of her scar met his.
THIRTEEN
Beattie Drummond stepped down from the train, once more wearing businesslike attire, a blue-gray skirt with a white blouse and, on her feet, black shoes smart enough for the street yet stout enough to wear out to a farm, should it be necessary. She carried a jacket to match the skirt, and a brown briefcase with both buckles broken, so the flap lived up to its name. She moved the jacket and briefcase to her left hand when she saw Maisie and held out her right hand in greeting.
“How are you, Miss Dobbs?”
“Very well, thank you, and you?”
After shaking hands, they walked to the MG, where the reporter squinted into the sun as she waited for Maisie to open the passenger door. “Might I call you Maisie, seeing as we’re working on the same case?”
Maisie waited until Beattie was seated and then turned to face her. “Of course you may But look, Beattie—” It was time to set a boundary between her work and the newspaperwoman’s business. “I am grateful for the information you are finding for me, and I will most certainly keep my word and ensure that you are the first to know if I encounter anything that amounts to a scoop for your newspaper, but I have only one assistant.”
Beattie was firm. “I thought, seeing as he’s not with you at the moment, you might need a bit of help with the legwork.”
Maisie shook her head. “Ah, but he is here. And I have found that I make more efficient progress alone, or with just my assistant working on other aspects of a case, in tandem with my inquiries.” She paused, so that her words might have an effect. “And though I am at present looking into events that have piqued your interest for some time, it is not yet what I might term a case, not in the way you might think.”
“Oh, yes it is. You’re sniffing at this one like a hound following a scent, and I want to be there when you chase down the culprit.”
“Then if you wish me to execute my duties effectively, you must return to Maidstone when we have completed our conversation and leave me to do my work. Rest assured I will keep my promise to you.”
Beattie Drummond looked down at her hands as she clutched the top of her briefcase. “I want to be out of here so much. I want to be taken seriously by a newspaper and not have to go to one more school fete.”
“Yes, I know you do, Beattie, and I give you my word that you will have your scoop.”
Beattie nodded. “Is there somewhere we can talk?”
Maisie started the motor car and drove slowly away from the station, stopping at the edge of a field. She reached behind the seat for a blanket and a bag with a flask and two beakers.
“Come on, let’s have a cup of tea.”
They set the blanket at a point overlooking the soft undulating patchwork-quilt fields and ancient woodlands that were a hallmark of Kent’s High Weald. Sitting down, each with a beaker of tea, they discussed Beattie’s findings.
“Here’s a list of seven houses where miscellaneous fires have broken out. There have been at least three more according to my records, but I don’t have the details. As you can see, they take place around the same date each year. You have the family names there, though I have only given the head of household and spouse, not the names of all the children—with one exception.”
“Which is?”
Beattie leaned across, still holding her beaker of steaming tea in one hand. “Phyllis Mansell, now Phyllis Wheeler. She and her husband live with her parents, though they have two children of their own, and a new baby, I think—last time I came to the village for the paper, she was up like a balloon. Anyway, she was supposedly best friends with the girl who died, Anna Martin.”
“How do you know?”
“Snooping. Asking questions to make things easier for any private inquiry agent who happened to come along.”
Maisie raised an eyebrow and smiled, taking the comment in the spirit of a quip, rather than a bitter retort. “Thank you. I appreciate it. Do you know anything else about the Martin family? How long had they been here?”
“They had been here for some years. The parents had been in London, then came to Kent because Anna had trouble with her breathing. They thought that getting her out of those pea-soupers would be just the ticket. You can imagine it: ’Come to the country air, breathe in dust and hay!’” Her mimicry reflected recent government advertising campaigns to get more people out and hiking, for better health and to fight disease. However, Maisie was intrigued when she mimicked an accent, rolling her vowels and using a singsong cadence.
“Why are you speaking like that?”
“Well, they were Dutch, the Martins.”
“Dutch?”
“Yes, only one generation back—something like that.”
“So the original name was probably Maarten.” Maisie looked into the distance, seeing the name written in her mind’s eye. “Hence the names Jacob and Bettin.”
“And Willem.”
“Yes, of course.” Maisie was reflecting upon Carter’s description of the baker in Heronsdene and how Mrs. Crawford always ordered from him, because he was the best. But he hadn’t mentioned that the family were from the Netherlands.
“Did they have discernible accents, do you think?”
“I don’t think so, despite my impersonation, though I understand Dutch was spoken in the home. I once had a Dutch friend who spoke five or six languages. She liked to travel and told me, ’No one speaks my language, so I have to speak everyone else’s if I want to be understood.’”
Maisie was thinking about Priscilla’s boys, hence “I see” was the sum of her reply.
“Anyway, you’ll find Phyllis rather loath to talk about her friend—I know. I tried collaring her for a chat during the pancake races one Shrove Tuesday. Clammed up very tight, she did.”
“I’ll try to find out if she has any thoughts about the fires.”
“I doubt she can tell you much, really. I was just sniffing around, wondering whether to write some sort of In Remembrance piece when the ten-year anniversary of the Zeppelin raid came around. No one wanted to think about it, talk about it, or otherwise bring it back. So that little idea was shot down in flames, as so many before them.” She sighed. “Anyway, here’s the Reverend Staples’s address. He was the village vicar. As you can see, he lives in Hawkhurst now, at Easter Cottage, down the road from the church, St. Laurence’s at The Moor, which is the old part of the village, up on the hill. He’s not the vicar there, but old habits die hard—he can probably only sleep if there’s a church clock on his doorstep clanging away all night. Do you need directions?”
“Please, if you don’t mind.”
“He’s a good sort, really. Rather fond of chamber music. In fact, while he was vicar he started a quartet here in the village.” Beattie noted the directions on the sheet of paper she had already prepared for Maisie and handed it to her.
Maisie folded the paper and placed it in the black document case she’d brought with her from the motor car. “You’ve been very kind and incredibly helpful, Beattie.” She paused, then reached out and placed her hand on the reporter’s shoulder. “You really will get your chance, I promise. As soon as anything concrete surfaces, I’ll be in touch. I give you my word.”
Beattie nodded and glanced at her wristwatch. “Well, this will never get the eggs cooked, will it?” She looked at Maisie. “Where’s that lovely nurse’s watch you were wearing last time we met?”
Maisie shrugged. “I forgot to put it on today. I’ll have to use the sun as a timepiece.”
As the women returned to the MG, Beattie expressed annoyance at having missed the two London boys who had been released by the police. “I thought I would be able to
interview them with their people, you know, among the hop-pickers, get some other bits and pieces to give some local color. Heaven knows, they didn’t hang around once they’d been let off.”
“The parents wanted to get them back to London, back to work before news of their arrest filtered northward and they lost their apprenticeships,” said Maisie, easing the MG back onto the road.
Conversation was lighter as they drove toward the station for Beattie to catch the train to Tunbridge and from there to Maidstone. As Beattie alighted from the motor car, Maisie leaned toward the passenger window. “Beattie, I had some good advice from a friend yesterday. She told me that if you want to find silver, you have to think silver. There’s no reason why it wouldn’t work with your business as well. If you want success, you have to hold it“—she tapped the side of her head—“as vividly as you can, up here.”
Beattie frowned, then smiled. “Oh, I see. Imagine myself sitting at the guv’nor’s desk.”
Maisie shook her head. “No. Really see yourself at one of the big newspapers. Think silver, Beattie.”
MAISIE DROVE DIRECTLY from the station to Hawkhurst, a journey that once again took her through village after village resplendent in the midst of a varied and colorful harvest. She saw apples almost ready for the picking as she passed the orchards, with sweet Cox’s Orange Pippins hanging heavy on branches and hearty bitter Bramleys just waiting to be sliced into a pie. Alongside an orchard of nutty-brown russet apples, she stopped, idling the MG while she slipped through the fence and twisted one from a branch, and then drove off before anyone caught her in the act of scrumping.
Entering Hawkhurst, she drove up toward The Moor, past the grassy common, the village school, and the church, before parking outside Easter Cottage. She pulled on her jacket, smoothed the linen skirt she had selected that day, and on her head placed a soft straw hat with a purple grosgrain band and low broad brim. She put a clutch of index cards into her shoulder bag, not wanting to use the document case, lest it seem intimidating, too formal. Then she locked the MG, walked up the path, and rang the bell.