Please keep in touch, Maisie. Pauline sends her love--perhaps you girls will have a chance to meet one day.
It was signed with a flourish: "Charles."
"There you are, Miss. Nice cuppa the old char."
"Lovely--thank you, Billy." Maisie pushed back her chair, leaving the letter open on the table as she looked out upon the square again. She cupped her hands around the chipped enamel mug. "I thought we were in for a warm spring, but look at that rain."
"Coming down cats and dogs, ain't it?" Billy sipped his tea and reached for the letter. "You know what I reckon happened to this here Michael Clifton?" Billy continued without waiting for an answer. "I reckon he heard about the war starting and came over all patriotic for the half of him that was British. That and the fact that something gets into lads when a war starts. Makes them get all mannish, as if they can't wait to get on with getting old. Look at me and my brother--and him buried over there."
Maisie nodded. "I know--though it's true to say that you and your brother were also pushed by public opinion. I remember Charles--Dr. Hayden--saying that in America in 1914 it was different. There were a lot of people who had just emigrated from Germany, so there was a significant allegiance to the Kaiser at first. But thank heavens for the American doctors and nurses who volunteered when war broke out; they saved a great many lives."
"So, what do you think of this, Miss?" He held up the letter.
"Let's see what the Cliftons have to say--they'll be here in a minute. But I don't think it has anything to do with money. If they want to find that woman, it's because there's a link to Michael. The question is, what kind of link? It could be something as simple as wanting to speak to someone who knew their son at a time when he was at a great distance from them--it appears they were a close family. But my sense is that it's more than that." Maisie closed her eyes. "They want to unlock some door to the past, I would say. And they have reason to believe this woman holds the key."
The bell above the door began to ring.
"That must be them. Go on, Billy, go and let them in while I put these few things away."
Maisie turned up the jets on the gas fire and pulled four chairs closer, so that the room might be more welcoming when the new clients entered. She heard their footsteps on the stairs, and Billy asking how they were liking England and if they had had a good crossing from France. The door opened, and Maisie walked towards Edward and Martha Clifton, extending her hand to welcome them into the room.
"How lovely to meet you, Mr. and Mrs. Clifton. May I take your coats?"
Maisie judged Edward Clifton to be about seventy-seven or seventy-eight, probably a little older than her father. He was a man of average height, not stooped, but one who seemed ill at ease with the restricted movement that came with age. He wore a black woolen overcoat and black homburg, which he removed as he stepped into the office. His suit was of a deep slate gray fabric, a color matching the silk tie and the kerchief in his pocket. Martha Clifton--Maisie suspected she might be some ten years younger than her husband--removed a cashmere coat trimmed with fur. She was wearing a stylish ensemble of light tweed in which mauves were blended with earthen colors perhaps more suited to autumn than spring. Her cloche accentuated deep-set brown eyes, around which the skin was lined, gathering in gentle ripples when Maisie took her hand, and she smiled in return. Maisie could imagine that smile becoming broad upon greeting her children and grandchildren, and an image came to mind of her eyes filled with tears when she was reminded of her youngest son, Michael.
When her guests were settled, Maisie took the seat closest to her desk, while Billy handed cups of tea to Edward and Martha, and in those precious seconds without conversation, she was able to gauge their mood and feelings towards each other. They were, as might be imagined, somewhat tense, though Maisie could detect a connection between them that she found rare in a man and wife of their generation. They leaned towards each other in the way that a pair of ancient oaks might seem as one, their branches laced together as the years passed. Yet at the same time there was an independence and, Maisie thought, profound respect. She could see that there had been no secrets in the household, and decisions had never been made alone, until the day Michael left for England.
"Now, perhaps you could tell me what it is you would like to discuss with me, and how you think I might be able to help you." She was careful not to mention Charles Hayden's letter, as she wanted to hear the story from the couple.
"Well--" Edward Clifton looked at his wife, and reached for her hand, which she had already moved towards his. "Our son, who was an American citizen, came to England in '14 to join up." He cleared his throat. His voice was deep, and though one could not mistake the Englishman in his accent, there was a slower rhythm to his speech, a cadence distinguishing him as one who had gone away and would never again be at ease in the country of his birth. "He decided not to tell us until just before he sailed." He glanced at his wife again. Martha Clifton nodded for him to continue. "Michael's mother and I, well, we thought he'd be turned away and shipped right back home, but that was not to be, given his profession."
"Which was?"
"Michael was a cartographer. He had been working for one of the family companies as a surveyor, assessing land prior to purchase."
"And is that what he was doing before he enlisted for service in England?"
"Yes--and no."
Maisie looked at Martha, who had leaned forward as she spoke. "Each of our children has money left in trust by my father. The trust stipulated that until they reached the age of thirty, I had to cosign transfer of funds from the trust. From the time he was in his teens, Michael had been fascinated by California. He said there was so much there for a young man, that he wanted to just go see what it was all about. Then, a month before he left to return to Boston, he wired me and asked for a significant sum to be transferred into an account in Santa Barbara--it's a little town along the coast."
"And you agreed?"
"It was his money. He was a man--twenty-three at the time. And both his father and I felt that if he lost the money, well, it represented an investment on a lesson that would stand him in good stead."
Maisie nodded. "And before I go on--may I ask how you felt about Michael making a decision that was not on behalf of the family business?"
"We were all for it," said Edward. He paused to clear his throat. "Let me explain. My great-grandfather was a shoemaker who built a successful business, which was in turn taken over by my grandfather, then my father. I was the only male in my generation, and from early childhood I was told that I was in line to take over the business. It was drummed into me time and time again." He smiled and looked at his wife. "And you know something, Miss Dobbs? I couldn't stand it. I hated the smell of the factories, the untreated leather, the whale oil when it was delivered, the tannery. I detested the shoe business and would have walked around in rubber boots to make my point. I had no mind to go into that company, and in the end, I suppose you could say I ran away. I had a bit of money of my own--we weren't poor, but I had to earn every penny--and America beckoned. Same thing happened in Martha's family, to her brothers; they were expected to join a family business without consideration of what they might have wanted. In my case, my father and mother disowned me, my letters were returned, and I never spoke to my family again--which grieves me to this day. So, with that in mind, my corporation is set up to be run independently. We never wanted our children to feel beholden to us. If they had it in them to join the company--fine. But if not, we still wanted them to sit at the table with us for Thanksgiving dinner without an argument about it. As it happens, Teddy--our eldest son--and our daughter Anna's husband both work for the corporation. Michael was just doing what I had done years before. He was breaking away, and we wanted to make it easy for him to come home again, always."
Maisie nodded. "Do you know why he wanted the money?"
"There's a tract of land in his name in an area known as Santa Ynez--that's with a y. It's a Spanish nam
e. We haven't been there, but Teddy went out in '21, and said it was just the sort of place that Michael would have loved."
"What happened to the land?"
"There are legal and probate problems remaining. We have no proof of title, no bill of sale. Michael paid in cash--and of course, he was listed as missing." Clifton preempted Maisie's next question. "Yes, time has passed, and we should have had no difficulty in making the case that Michael died in the war, but gaining access to the land has been difficult. The area is awash with oil companies, and even though we've pressed the point that Michael was killed in the war, the court ruled that Michael's intentions were not known, and there might be other claimants--and believe me, there have been a few because it's valuable land, but we've managed so far to keep it all from being settled, pending the discovery of proof." He paused and shook his head. "And you have to remember, though we're here in 1932, when Michael first went out to California, there was still more than a hint of the Wild West about it. Well, that's how it seemed to East Coasters like Martha and me."
"I can see this must be very troublesome for you, on top of losing your son," said Maisie. "But how can I help you?"
Martha Clifton took her husband's hand in both her own. "We have a batch of quite a few letters. Given that they were buried for years, they are in fair condition due to the waxed paper and rubber cloth Michael had used to wrap them. They were clearly of some value to our son, yet we could not bring ourselves to read them." She looked down at her hands, then began to turn her wedding and engagement rings around and around, lifting them above the first bone in her slender finger, then pushing them back down again. She looked up. "I don't want to pry into my son's past, but to me the hand seems to be that of a woman, perhaps someone Michael loved, and I would like to know who she is. I--"
"I understand," said Maisie, her voice soft. She turned to Edward Clifton. "Do you have anything else?"
Clifton reached into the inside pocket of his overcoat. "I have a journal, a diary kept by Michael. Again, some of the pages are fused with damp, and foxed with age, but we have read a few paragraphs." He paused as he handed the brown-paper-wrapped book to Maisie, who reached forward to take the package from him.
"So, am I to take it that you would like me to read the letters and the diary, that you wish me to identify the letter writer, and--" She looked from Clifton to his wife. "Am I right to assume that you would like me to try to find the person?"
Martha Clifton smiled, though her eyes had filled with tears. "Yes, yes, please, Miss Dobbs. We can help a little, because we've already placed an advertisement in several British newspapers, and we've received a number of replies; you see, though we didn't read Michael's letters, we opened one or two to see if there was an address or full name--but there was nothing to identify the writer. In the advertisement, we said we would like to hear from a woman who had known Michael Clifton, of Boston in the United States, in the war."
Edward Clifton cleared his throat and began to speak again. "And I thought that, given your background, you might want to see this document, which we received from the French authorities." He held out a brown envelope towards Maisie. As she began to draw out the pages, Clifton continued. "It's a report from the doctor who examined our son's remains. A postmortem of sorts. Charles has seen the report, and we've talked about it."
"And I said I would rather not read it," Martha Clifton interjected.
"Yes, I understand." Maisie began to scan the page. She made no comment, but nodded as she reached the end of each paragraph. She could feel Edward Clifton's gaze upon her, and when she looked up she knew that in the brief meeting of their eyes there was an understanding. She knew why he had come to her, and that the truth of Michael Clifton's death had been kept from his mother. And she could understand how a French doctor--possibly tired, probably weary of another aging corpse brought from the battle-scarred land upon which so many had died--had missed what an eminent Boston surgeon, one who himself had served in that same war, had seen when he read the report.
"It all looks fairly straightforward, but I would like to keep it here, if I may."
"Of course." Clifton looked at his wife and smiled, as if to assure her that all would be well now and that they had made the right decision in seeking the help of this British investigator. "We'll have the letters sent over to you as soon as we get back to our hotel--we're staying at the Dorchester."
"And we'll send some photographs of Michael." Martha Clifton seemed to press back tears as she spoke. "I'd like you to know what he was like."
"Thank you, a photograph would be most useful, though I have a picture of Michael in my mind already. You must have been very proud of him."
"We were. And we loved him so very much, Miss Dobbs." Edward Clifton reached into his pocket once again and drew out another envelope. "Your advance, per our correspondence."
Billy escorted the couple downstairs to the front door, and helped them into the motor car waiting outside. Maisie looked down from the window and watched as they drove away, Billy waving them off as if bidding farewell to a respected uncle and aunt. She heard him slam the door, then make his way upstairs to the office.
"Brrr, still nippy out there, Miss." He sat down at the table and reached for the jar of colored pencils to begin work.
"Yes. Yes, it is." Maisie remained at the window, still clutching Michael Clifton's journal and the envelope containing the postmortem report.
"Should be an easy one, eh? We'll get the old letters, warm 'em up nice and slow, find out who the writer is, and Bob's your uncle. We'll find Michael Clifton's lady friend, and there we are. Job done."
Maisie turned and pulled back a chair to sit down opposite Billy. "Not quite."
"What do you mean?"
"Unless I am much mistaken, Michael Clifton was not killed by the shell that took the lives of his fellow men. He was murdered."
TWO
Why do you think Dr. Hayden didn't say something in his letter, about that postmortem report?" Billy stood in front of Maisie's desk, his arms folded. "I mean, it takes you by surprise, reading that sort of thing."
"In some ways I can see why he made no mention of it. He might not have wanted to influence me--he saw an anomaly and wanted me to spot it myself, without encouragement or direction." Maisie began to gather her belongings, checked a manila folder that she placed in her document case, and glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece before turning back to Billy. "Have you ever been on the street and seen someone looking up into the sky? Next thing you know, other people are looking up, and before long everyone reckons they've seen something. Well, independently, both Dr. Hayden and I spotted commentary regarding damage to the skull and concluded that it was not in keeping with other wounds. It was the sort of injury more likely to be found in a case of attack with a heavy, blunt object, and the notes suggest to me that there is room for investigation."
"I see what you mean, Miss."
Maisie picked up the telephone receiver, but did not dial. "The first thing I want to do is to show the report to Maurice. I want to hear what he has to say about it. Now, a parcel will probably arrive from the Cliftons in an hour or so--I am sure they will lose no time in sending a messenger with the letters and other items of interest. Would you stay until it arrives?"
"Of course, Miss." Billy fingered the edge of the case map, the offcut of plain wallpaper where all evidence, thoughts, hunches, and observations on any given case were noted using colored pencils. Some words were written in capital letters, others with a star next to them. Then clues were linked this way and that, as if the person creating the map were trying different pieces in a jigsaw puzzle to see if they might fit.
Maisie replaced the telephone receiver. "Is everything all right, Billy?"
"Y-yes, of course. Nothing wrong."
"Do you need to leave early?"
"No, no, it's not that."
Maisie stepped towards the table and sat down opposite her assistant. "Doreen's coming home soon, isn't she?
"
Billy nodded and continued to rub the paper between thumb and forefinger.
"It's been a long time since she went away. But she's done well of late, during her weekend visits home, hasn't she?"
"Very well, all things considered."
"It's natural to be worried, Billy. You've all got to get used to living together again, and there isn't exactly a book to guide you."
Billy leaned forward and put his head in his hands. Maisie could see he was afraid.
"That doctor, the one you sent us to--Dr. Masters--said that once the anniversary of our Lizzie's passing had come and gone, she'd make better progress. And she has. It was as if there was a nasty old abscess full of memories in her head that had to open up. But that don't stop me feeling two things at once. On one hand, I'm pleased as punch that she'll be back with us, and on the other, I'm worried to the bone for our boys. They've done well, Miss. Her goings-on before she was taken away had made them like little ghosts around the house, never knowing what was going to happen next. They didn't know whether she'd be all sunshine and light, or whether she'd be ready to give them a stripe across the backs of their legs. They want their mum to come home, but I can see they're dreading it too."
Maisie did not respond at once, but allowed silence to follow Billy's confession. To speak with immediacy would suggest his words had no import, that such fears were unfounded. And he had good cause to be concerned.
"Those feelings are to be expected." When she spoke, it was with tenderness in her voice. "You and the boys have been on your own for four months, and they've become accustomed to a new rhythm to their days, and your mother is very good with them--solid as a rock, isn't she? Now you have to bring Doreen into your circle and welcome her home--which is so hard when you have such troubling memories of her before she was committed. Just take each day as it comes, Billy. Give Doreen time to negotiate her own path back into the fold--and remember, she's been in a place where she's found the healing she needed, so she must be scared too."