“That’s exactly what Roger Allen said.” She clenched and unclenched her hand, and brought her eyes up to look at everyone around the table. “I imagine it is what many in America say about Negroes and the injustices visited upon them. An unpleasant topic brought up by unpleasant people.” She brought her hand to her mouth for a second, and I thought she might burst into tears. But that wasn’t Diana’s style, not the English way at all. When she lowered her hand, her expression was still angry, but controlled.
“Who is this Allen character?” Tree asked.
“A powerful man from the Foreign Office who sits on a powerful committee. A man who sees no reason to be moved by the extermination of Jews throughout Europe,” Diana answered. “He said that the Poles and Jews were deliberately exaggerating reports of atrocities simply to stiffen British resolve.”
“Any chance that might be true?” Tree asked.
“About as true as lynching being an invention of your Negro newspapers,” Diana said, her voice hard. “Even with the eyewitness reports we brought out of Italy, our leaders still refuse to do or say anything.”
“All sounds pretty familiar to me,” Tree said. “Europeans don’t have colored folk, so they go for the Jews instead.”
“Is that an apt comparison?” Kaz asked, perhaps feeling slighted as a European.
“Yes, and I think Tree has a point,” Diana said. “My father told me that the Americans had asked Anthony Eden of the Foreign Office to help get about sixty thousand Jews out of Bulgaria. Their government has yet to turn them over to the Germans, but no one knows how long they can last. I asked Allen about that, and he said they recommended that the British government do nothing.”
“Why?” Kaz asked.
“Because then Hitler might want to negotiate for all the Jews in Europe. ‘And that wouldn’t do at all,’ Allen told me. When I asked why, all he said was, ‘Whatever would we do with them, my dear?’ ”
Diana twisted her napkin, her lower lip quivering. I reached out my hand to take hers, but she pulled away.
“Whatever would we do with them?” she whispered, and left the table.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
“I have failed, Billy.” Diana curled up against me in bed, twisting her hair between her fingers in a childlike gesture. “And I was a fool to think I wouldn’t.”
“It’s not your fault that the rich and powerful of the world don’t give a hoot about mass murder at a comfortable distance. To them, it’s like reading about a flood or an earthquake half a world away. Terribly unfortunate, but what can one do?” I spoke the last sentence in a snotty Beacon Hill drawl, trying for a laugh. I got a smile.
“No, it isn’t my fault. I know that,” she said, sitting up straight and clutching a pillow to her breast. “What really bothers me is the bravery and sacrifice of those who worked to get the truth out: Poles, Jews, Italians, even Germans. What will they think? Are we worthy of them? And the deaths, Billy. All the people dying in the camps every day, while we do nothing.”
“I feel the same way about Margaret Hibberd and Stuart Neville,” I said, understanding there was no real answer to the question Diana had posed. Some might argue that fighting men were dying every day to end this war, and that was the best we could do for those in the camps. But that wasn’t what she needed to hear right now, or what I necessarily believed. “My dad always said to remember that every murder victim deserved to be alive all the days we were investigating the crime, and more beyond. And that our police work had to be worthy of the days we had and they lost.”
“I would like to meet your father, Billy. He seems like an interesting man.”
“He’d like you,” I said. “Your spirit.” I kissed her. “But you’d have to lose the accent, and none of this lady stuff. Wouldn’t go over well in Southie.” Diana punched me in the chest. Hard. I tickled her, and then we forgot about the sorrows of the world for a while.
Inspector Payne came by in the morning, as we’d arranged. We planned to interview Ernest Bone and the other guy Neville had visited before he was killed. It was doubtful they’d be able to help, but we had damn little else.
“First, we drop in on Stanley Fraser, the solicitor,” Payne said, as a constable drove us into Hungerford. It was a warm day, the sun bright and the ground smelling sweet with the promise of spring. “I’m sure I’ve heard the name, but I can’t recall where. I do know most of the solicitors hereabouts, but I don’t think I’ve seen him in court.”
“I thought only barristers appeared in court,” I said. “Or do I have that backward?”
“No, you’re right that barristers argue before the bench, but a solicitor may view the proceedings, and I’ve got to know quite a few by sight over the years. But not this Fraser chap.”
“Any news on Sophia or the girl we found?”
“Nothing new, no. There is a panic rising, though, and I’m not surprised. It would be worth his life if anyone witnessed a man approach a young girl today. I’m worried about some innocent traveler being drawn and quartered for saying a simple good morning to a schoolgirl.”
“I’ve asked Kaz to drive Diana out to the Avington School for the Channel Island girls this morning, to see if she can get any information out of them,” I said, watching as we drove by a farmer plowing his field.
“Woman’s touch, that sort of thing?” Payne asked, raising an eyebrow.
“That, and the fact that she’s a Special Operations Executive agent,” I said. “She might pick up on something.”
“When our girls were young,” Payne said, leaning back and closing his eyes, as if visualizing the memories, “they could keep any secret from us. But perhaps Miss Seaton can wring the truth out of them. Nothing like an SOE interrogation to break a pack of twelve-year-olds, I imagine.”
“If there’s a truth to be told,” I said.
“Girls and secrets go together. You may learn that yourself one day, Captain. Perhaps you and Miss Seaton are headed in that direction?”
“Perhaps,” I said. “But we’re more often going in separate directions. Maybe when the war’s over.”
“Hmm,” Payne said. “Peace. I wonder what that will be like? Ah, here we are.”
We’d gone from fields and farms to a residential street on the outskirts of Hungerford. Atherton Street, where Stanley Fraser lived, contained rows of modern semi-detached brick houses with neat gardens and lace curtains in every window. Two women were walking back from the market in Hungerford, bags heavy in their hands and jackets open to the warming air. An elderly gentleman pedaled his bicycle slowly past us. The neighborhood was quiet, the few people subdued, as if not to disturb the tranquil setting.
Payne told the constable to wait. Fraser inhabited both sides of the semi-detached, a brass plaque marking the right half as his office with the left side apparently his home. In the reception area we were greeted by a young woman who was busy putting away her nail polish, and with little else.
“One minute, please,” she said, without asking our names. She walked to an inner door, swiveling her hips all the way, and stuck her head in the room. Payne raised his eyebrows at the view and looked away guiltily. Me, I kept looking in case there was a clue in that general direction.
“Go in, gentlemen,” she said, returning wearily to her chair. It looked like a tough job.
“Inspector Payne, Berkshire Constabulary,” Payne said, holding up his warrant card. “This is Captain Boyle. We have a few questions for you, if you don’t mind.”
“What do the police and the American army want with me?” Fraser said, leaning back in his chair and studying us, pointedly not inviting us to sit in the two comfortable armchairs fronting his desk. He had a paunch restrained by a tight-fitting vest and a disappearing hairline that had left a glossy sheen in its wake, as if the crown of his head had been polished. He tapped a fountain pen on his desk, flashing his manicured nails.
“Now I remember you,” Payne said, snapping his fingers. “Razor Fraser, they called you for a while, didn’t they?”