“Now then, what can I do for you, Miss Dobbs? You said that you wanted to speak to me in connection with Ralph Lawton. I must say, I thought it rather odd; after all, the poor chap’s been gone for thirteen years.”
Maisie looked toward the door for just a second, having noticed that she had not heard a click. The door was ajar by a good four inches.
“I trust our conversation will be in confidence, Mr. Hazleton.”
“Absolutely. You have my word.”
“Good. First of all, here’s my card.” Maisie took a card from her coat pocket—there had been no offer to take her mackintosh—and passed it to Hazleton. “I have been retained by Sir Cecil Lawton to prove that his son is, in fact, dead. It seems that Lady Agnes Lawton had a strong belief that her son was still alive, and—”
“What utter tosh!”
Maisie smiled. “That’s as may be, Mr. Hazleton. However, Mrs. Lawton’s belief was so strong that on her deathbed she asked her husband to continue her quest. Though Sir Cecil has no doubt that his son is dead, he feels duty bound to conduct a limited inquiry; hence he retained my services.”
Hazleton looked at the card again. “Oh, I’ve heard of you.” He drew out the I as if to suggest, perhaps, some previous knowledge regarding Maisie’s reputation.
Maisie did not comment but continued with a question. “First of all, Mr. Hazleton, I understand that you and Ralph Lawton were at school together and were good friends—is that so?”
Jeremy Hazleton blew out his cheeks and shook his head. “I don’t know about good friends, Miss Dobbs. Certainly we spent time together as boys, but we weren’t each other’s best friend, if you know what I mean. To tell you the truth, Ralph didn’t have a wide circle; in fact, he took a beating from the other boys on more than one occasion, so I rather stuck up for him.”
“And why might he have taken a beating?”
Hazleton shifted her gaze, turning his wheelchair away from her just slightly, and began to sketch a circle on his blotting pad, a sphere that he then spiraled inward. “Oh, you know how it is with children who are on the outside—and there’s always one, isn’t there? He wasn’t very good at sports—positively hated anything involving the mud. That sort of aversion to the rough-and-tumble gives rise to a fair bit of ribbing.”
“But a beating?”
“You know how boys can be.”
Maisie moved on. “And how did you help him?”
Hazleton laughed. “Not to put too fine a point on it, Miss Dobbs, I enjoyed a measure of popularity as a boy. It was a position I used to influence the behavior of others.”
“I see. Now then, I understand that you were still in touch with Ralph Lawton when he was killed in France.”
Hazleton frowned. “To tell you the truth, I can’t remember, Miss Dobbs. I believe we may have corresponded a few times.”
“But didn’t you visit him when he first enlisted?” Maisie took a clutch of index cards from her document case. “Yes. I noticed in Ralph’s personal papers that he mentions several occasions on which you met after leaving school, one being when he first joined the Flying Corps; he had some leave and met you in”—Maisie turned over the card—“yes, in Ipswich, for a day or so. You stayed at a guesthouse there.”
“Oh, yes, of course.” Hazleton lightly hit his forehead with the heel of his right hand, a move Maisie thought rather staged. “It’s so long ago, I can hardly remember. I think it was a coincidence, really. If I remember correctly, we exchanged a couple of letters, realized we both had a couple of days off at the same time, and thought we would go to the coast to have a bit of fun, meet some girls, what have you.” Hazleton looked at Maisie and smiled. “Youthful high jinks, you know.”
“And did you—meet some girls?”
“I daresay we did, though one stag weekend seems like the rest at that age.”
Maisie heard the door handle rattle as Charmaine Hazleton came into the room. She looked at her watch and was about to speak, but Maisie spoke first.
“Mr. Hazleton, can you think of any reason, any reason at all, or any circumstance in which Ralph Lawton might still be alive?”
Shaking his head, Hazleton began to move his wheelchair back to the desk. “Miss Dobbs, I consider myself fortunate to have survived a bloodbath, a hell on earth. Ralph was flying behind enemy lines, as far as I know, and was shot down, his aeroplane on fire. There is no question in my mind that he is dead. I therefore cannot imagine any scenario whereby he is alive. Now, if you would excuse me.”
Maisie stood up. “Thank you so much for your time, and on a Sunday. You have been most accommodating.” She smiled. “I wonder, may I telephone you if I have further questions?”
Hazleton smiled in return, remembering that Maisie Dobbs was also a member of the voting public. “Of course.”
CHARMAINE HAZLETON ACCOMPANIED Maisie to the front door, whereupon she took an umbrella from a stand in the hallway and proceeded to walk to the MG rather than bid her farewell on the threshold. As they negotiated the steps down to the pavement, Maisie turned to her hostess.
“Mrs. Hazleton, how did you meet your husband, if I may ask?”
“I was his nurse. I took care of him from the day he was brought back from Flanders.”
“I see. I was a—”
Maisie was interrupted sharply by Charmaine Hazleton as they reached the street.
“Miss Dobbs, I wonder if I might ask you a favor?”
“Why, of course, Mrs. Hazleton.”
The woman held her chin a little higher, as if it might bring her to Maisie’s height. “I do not want my husband contacted with regard to Ralph Lawton again.”
Maisie inclined her head. “Why not?”
The woman clasped her hands together firmly in front of her. “As you can see, my husband suffered in the war. Since that time he has gone forward with purpose and resolve; he has a successful political career in front of him. Such memories of the war, of friends lost, are troubling to him.”
“But I would have thought that those living with wounds from the war form an important constituency for whom your husband represents a voice. Surely he is used to—”
The woman swallowed deeply. “That’s different.”
“Is it?”
“Yes, Miss Dobbs. Now then, please go and do not try to speak to my husband again. I tell you, I will do everything in my power to prevent his being troubled by memories. I will not let it happen!” She turned and walked away, her spine erect, her chin still held upward.
Maisie knew that Hazleton had lied. Lawton’s papers revealed that he had continued a regular correspondence from the day they left school until the day the aviator was killed, and they had seen each other more than once. She understood, too, that Charmaine Hazleton’s favor was out of proportion, given the seeming innocence of the MP’s responses to her questions and to what he claimed was sporadic friendship at best.
As she drove steadily back toward London, the rain glancing off the MG’s windscreen, Maisie tried to recall if there had ever been another time in her work when she received two threats in one day and for the same reason: Ralph Lawton had loved another man.
ELEVEN
“You can tell your batman there to keep his nose out of proper police work, if you don’t mind.”
“Well, good morning, Sergeant Caldwell. I’m very well, thank you, and you?” Maisie had deliberately leaned back into her chair when she answered the telephone to an aggressive tone from Stratton’s assistant. She would not allow someone for whom she had so little regard to have a negative effect on her mood at the start of a new week.
“Never mind about me, you just make sure that jack-the-lad there minds his own business.”
“Sergeant Caldwell, I wonder if I might speak to Detective Inspector Stratton, if you don’t mind.” As she spoke, Billy came into the office, mouthed a good morning when he saw that she was on the telephone, and took off his coat and hat, hanging them on a hook behind the door.
“Inspector
Stratton won’t be in for a few days, so I’m holding the fort here on this case, and I’ll be—”
“Sergeant Caldwell”—Maisie looked at Billy, who rolled his eyes when he realized the identity of Maisie’s caller—“I fully appreciate your concern for the integrity of your investigation. However, I assure you that Mr. Beale has done nothing that might have an untoward effect on the case of Avril Jarvis. Mr. Beale was acting on my behalf and was undertaking very specific research in connection with my responsibility to the case, which, as you will appreciate, may well involve an appearance in court.”
“I’ll need to speak to you and Mr. Beale here at Vine Street, you know.”
“Yes, I had expected as much. Now then, shall we come along at ten?”
Caldwell coughed, clearly caught off guard by Maisie’s taking a lead in the conversation. “Yes, that would suit very well. Ten o’clock it is, then.”
“Until then.” Maisie replaced the receiver.
“Didn’t take long for ’im to start breathing fire, did it?” Billy stood in front of Maisie’s desk.
“No, he was very quick off the mark, I must say.” Maisie gathered a manila folder with several papers inside. “Come on, let’s sit over there and work on the case map until we’re ready to leave for Vine Street. Bring your notes, Billy.”
They sat at the table together, rain slanting across the windows so that the view to the square was obscured by rivulets of water running down the glass on the outside and condensation inside.
“Let’s look at what we’ve gathered. Tell me about your inquiries.”
Billy Beale shuffled his notes and fidgeted on his chair. There were times that Maisie wondered whether she had done the right thing in giving Billy a job as her assistant, yet time and time again, often when she was at her wits’ end, he had proven his worth to her.
“Well, I don’t want to repeat myself, Miss, so I’ll just take up where I left off, if it’s awright by you.”
“Yes, go on, Billy.”
“So, I told you what I’d found out about the stepfather. Now, according to one of the neighbors”—Billy looked at his notebook—“on the day she was meant to go to London, young Avril was crying and crying, ’oldin’ on to ’er mum for dear life. Apparently the noise of it brought out the neighbors, so everyone saw the stepdad when ’e pulled ’er fingers away from the mother’s clothes one by one, slapped the poor kid around the ’ead, and told the neighbors to bugger off inside—sorry, Miss, but that’s what ’e said.”
“That’s all right, go on.” Maisie had pushed back the chair as Billy spoke and now had her back to him as she looked out of the window. She did not want him to see her tears.
“Well, ’e frog-marches ’er to the railway station and, as far as they know, went wiv ’er to Taunton on the branch-line stopping service, then put ’er on the train for London, where the uncle was to pick ’er up.”
“Oh, God.”
“Well, I don’t know about God, Miss, because she certainly didn’t get no ’elp when she needed it, and you can bet your bottom dollar she was praying.”
Maisie turned to him. “All right, so we know she was sent to the uncle, who we now believe was probably the stepfather’s friend rather than a blood relative. And we know she was not in service but was put to work on the streets, the uncle being a common pimp. Now, what about this aunt?”
“This bit is what you would call woolly, Miss.”
“Yes.” Maisie took her seat once again. This time, Billy noticed her expression as she pulled a handkerchief from her pocket.
“You awright, Miss?”
“Bit of a cold, Billy. This weather.”
Billy nodded, knowing full well that Maisie had not suffered a real cold since they had begun working together and that England was enjoying a rather warm Indian summer, even with today’s rainy humidity. “The stepfather is dead.”
“Dead? How?”
“He died from so-called natural causes. A heart attack or something.”
“But?”
“Turns out the aunt—now this is an aunt on the dead father’s side; you know, Avril’s real father, who died in the war—anyway, locally they call ’er a witch. Not that she is a witch, of course, but she’s always out and about collecting plants and weeds in the woods and beside the river, you know. And people go to ’er when they come down with something. Trust ’er more than they trust the local quack, and she’s cheaper.”
“How did the stepfather die?”
“Found dead outside the pub one afternoon. They’d called last orders, and after everyone’d turned out, the landlord locked up and that was that, as far as ’e thought. Then just before it’s openin’ time again in the evenin’, there’s a commotion outside with a couple of the locals bangin’ on the door and shoutin’ for ’elp. So the landlord opens up, and there they are, standin’ over the stepdad—dead on the ground.”
“Did you find out what the pathologist said?”
“There was an inquest, and it was put down to natural causes.”
“And the local story is?”
“That the aunt did it, put something in the man’s drink. She was known to go into the pub for a swift one of a lunchtime, and there’s some what think she might’ve been in on that day, though no one will say they definitely saw her. But the word on the street—and remember, it’s only a tiny little place—is that she did it with some of the tinctures she brews.”
“I see.”
“What do you think, Miss?”
Maisie made some notes on the case map pinned out in front of them for several seconds, then turned to Billy.
“To tell you the truth, I might have done the same thing myself.”
Billy’s eyes reflected his surprise at her comment. He was about to speak when Maisie continued.
“Good work, Billy. Let’s get all the notes down now; then we have to go to Vine Street to see Caldwell. I will need to make a detour on the way back, so you should return to the office without me.”
“Where are you go—” Billy corrected himself. After all, it was not right to question one’s employer.
“That’s all right, I can tell you. I am going to check the war service records for Peter Evernden. After that I’m off to Thomas Cook’s to book tickets for passage to France at the end of the week.”
“You goin’ over there all by yourself?”
Maisie checked the time on her watch, today pinned to the lapel of her burgundy jacket. “Actually, no. I spoke to Dr. Blanche upon returning from Cambridge yesterday afternoon, and he has decided to come with me.”
“Be like old times, won’t it? You know, you and ’im together again, on a case.” Billy clearly did not want to admit that he felt just a little left out.
“Well, we’ll see. He insisted upon coming, to tell you the truth. Frankly, I can’t see why, though I know he likes the opportunity to go to France, and travel alone is daunting when you reach his age.”
“Gaw, I dunno, Miss. I reckon it’s pretty dauntin’ goin’ to Taunton, if you ask me.”
Maisie smiled. “Come on, let’s get going. I’ll tell you about Cambridge on the way, and we’ll talk about our next move on the Jarvis case.”
As they gathered their coats, Maisie knew Billy had hit the nail on the head. She was surprised when Maurice said that he would like to accompany her to France, and she had felt unable to decline. Without Maurice she might well have been a children’s governess by now, at best. In fact, had she not been so fortunate, she might have ended up in Avril Jarvis’s shoes. How then could she refuse Maurice, even though his request unsettled her?
THE MEETING AT Vine Street was predictable: an overlong complaint from Caldwell that Maisie later referred to as a “tedious long-winded slap across the knuckles,” together with a request that Billy share the information he had gathered, which he did, to a point. For her part, Maisie was curious regarding the absence of Detective Inspector Stratton, only to be told that his son’s illness had caused him to take a sho
rt leave. Caldwell added—rather sarcastically, she thought—that it was nothing serious and that his own nippers would have been over it all by now.
“That man makes me seethe!” said Maisie, as she and Billy left Vine Street police station.
“I must admit, Miss, I was a bit surprised that he wouldn’t let you see young Avril, not after what you’d done for them,” said Billy. “Mind you, I reckon they think that it’s all done, seeing as they’ve received the bill and you’ll get paid.”
“That’s exactly what it is, Billy.” Maisie looked at her watch again. Frowning, she tapped the face and unpinned the timepiece, which she held to her ear. She wound the mechanism and listened again. “Oh, dear…”
The watch had kept perfect time ever since 1916, even in the most terrible conditions, including the shelling of the casualty clearing station in which Maisie was wounded. Maisie shook her head and continued.
“Well, it’s not all done, not by a long chalk.” She turned to Billy. “Right, I’ll see you back at the office, Billy. There’s one person whose response is missing in this Avril Jarvis case, and that’s the mother. I know you couldn’t see her, but the woman must be feeling something.”
“Well, you’d ’ave thought so, wouldn’t you?”
“Billy, look, get on with it. If you have to go back down to Taunton, so be it.”
Surprise at his employer’s manner registered on Billy’s face, the lines between his brows furrowed even more. “Miss, I know I’m findin’ out all sorts of background points, but I don’t reckon I’ve discovered anything that proves she didn’t do it—you know, the murder.”
Maisie knew her exasperation was not with Billy but was a symptom of the frustration she felt. There was so much that seemed close, yet untouchable, not only in the case of Avril Jarvis but of Ralph Lawton. She was not looking forward to going to France—was dreading it, in fact—and she felt pressured by the promise made to Priscilla. Then there was Andrew. Andrew with his surprise that she was avoiding, yet also knowing he would understand and tolerate her changed plans. She took a deep breath, closed her eyes briefly, and replied in a soft, modulated tone.