But she doubted Mike would be convinced by her arguments, especially if he’d found out about Padgett’s. He’d go into a tailspin, certain he’d lost the war, and nothing short of telling him about VE-Day would persuade him otherwise. But telling him meant their finding out about her deadline, and the rest of it. Which would give them even more to worry about, and now, with this discrepancy …
I must find out about those fatalities before he does, Polly thought. “Don’t bring up the subject of Alf and Binnie to Mike,” she said to Eileen. “He needn’t know about the letter. And there’s no need to tell him you didn’t write and tell them your address.”
“But perhaps I should write to them. To tell them Whitechapel’s dangerous.”
I should imagine they already know that. “I thought you didn’t want them to know where you are.”
“But I’m the one responsible for them being there instead of in Canada. And Binnie’s still not completely well from the measles. She nearly died, and—”
“You didn’t tell me that,” Polly said.
“Yes, she had a horribly high fever, and I didn’t know what to do. I gave her aspirin—”
And thank goodness Mike hadn’t heard that either.
“If Alf and Binnie are in danger,” Eileen said, “it’s my fault. I—”
“Shh,” Polly said. “Someone’s coming.”
They listened. Far below them a door shut and footsteps began to ascend the iron steps.
“Eileen? Polly? Are you up there?”
“It’s Mike,” Eileen said, and ran down to meet him. “Where were you?”
“I went to the morgue,” Mike said.
Oh, no, I’m too late, Polly thought. He’s already found out about the five fatalities.
But when he came up the stairs, he said cheerfully, “I found a bunch of airfield names, and I’ve got a job, so we don’t have to live on just Polly’s wages.”
“A job?” Eileen said. “But if you’re working, how will you be able to go look for Gerald?”
“I’ve been hired as a stringer for the Daily Express, which means I go out and find news stories—including at airfields—and get paid by the story. I didn’t have any luck finding a map, so I went to the Express’s morgue to look through their back issues for mentions of airfields—”
The newspaper morgue, Polly thought, not the actual morgue.
“And when I told them I was a reporter who’d been at Dunkirk, they hired me on the spot. Best of all, they gave me a press pass, which will give me access at the airfield. So now all we need is to figure out which one it is.” He pulled a list from his pocket. “What about Digby? Or Dunkeswell?”
“No, it was two words … I think,” Eileen said.
“Great Dunmow?”
“No. I’ve been thinking. It might have begun with a B instead of a D.”
Which means she has no idea what letter it began with, Polly thought. “Boxted,” she said.
“No,” Eileen said.
“B,” Mike murmured, going down the list. “Bentley Priory?”
Eileen frowned. “That sounds a bit like it, but—”
“Bury St. Edmunds?”
“No, though that might … oh, I don’t know!” She threw her hands up in frustration. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t worry, we’ll find it,” Mike said, wadding up his list. “There are lots more airfields.”
“Can you remember anything else Gerald said about where he was going?” Polly asked.
“No.” She frowned in concentration. “He asked me how long I was going to be in Backbury, and I said till the beginning of May, and he said that was too bad, that if I’d been staying longer he’d have come up some weekend to ‘brighten my existence.’ ”
“Did he say how?”
“How? You mean motor up or come by train?” Eileen asked. “No, but he said, ‘Is backwater Backbury even on the railway?’ ”
“And the day I saw him,” Mike interjected, “he said one of the things he had to do was check the railway schedule.”
“Good,” Polly said. “That means the airfield’s near a railway station. Mike, you said he went through to Oxford?”
“Yes, but that was just to set things up, not for his assignment. He could have been checking on a train to anywhere …”
Polly shook her head. “Wartime travel is too unreliable. Mr. Dunworthy would have insisted he come through near where he needed to go. Troop trains cause all sorts of delays.”
“She’s right,” Eileen said. “Some days the train to Backbury didn’t come at all.”
“So we’re looking for an airfield near Oxford,” Mike said.
“Or Backbury,” Polly said.
“Or Backbury. And near a railway station, and one that has two words in its name and begins with D, P, T, or B. That narrows it down considerably. Now, if we can just find a map …”
“We’re working on that,” Polly said. “And I’m working on writing down all the raids.” She gave them each a copy of the list for the next week.
“There are raids every night next week?” Eileen said.
“I’m afraid so. They let up a bit in November when the Luftwaffe begins bombing other cities, and later on when winter weather sets in.”
“Later on?” Eileen asked in dismay. “How long did the Blitz last?”
“Till next May.”
“May? But the raids taper off, don’t they?”
“I’m afraid not. The biggest raid of the entire Blitz was May ninth and tenth.”
“That’s when the worst raid was?” Mike asked. “In mid-May?”
“Yes. Why?”
“Nothing. It doesn’t matter. We’ll be out of here long before that.” He smiled encouragingly at Eileen. “All we have to do is figure out where Gerald is. Can you think of anything else he said that might give us a clue? Where were you when you had this conversation?”
“There were two—in the lab, and then over at Oriel when I went there to get my driving authorization. Oh, I remember something he said about that. It began to rain while he was telling me how important and dangerous his assignment was, and he looked up at the sky and held out his hand the way one does to see if it’s really raining, then pointed at my authorization—you know, the printed form one has to fill up for driving lessons. You had one, Polly.”
Polly nodded. “A printed red-and-blue form?”
“Yes, that’s the one. He pointed at it and said, ‘You’d better put that away, or you’ll never learn to drive. Or at any rate, where I’m going you wouldn’t,’ and then he laughed as though he’d said something tremendously clever. He’s always doing that—he fancies himself a comedian, though his jokes aren’t funny in the least, and I didn’t understand that one at all. Do you understand the joke?”
“No,” Polly said, and she couldn’t think of anything the form would have to do with an airfield. “Can you remember anything else he said?”
“Or anything at all about when you were talking to him?” Mike said. “What else was going on?”
“Linna was on the phone with someone, but it didn’t have anything to do with Gerald’s assignment.”
“But it may trigger a memory of the name of the airfield. Try to remember every detail you can, no matter how irrelevant.”
“Like the dog’s ball,” Eileen said eagerly.
“Gerald had a dog’s ball?” Mike asked.
“No. There was a dog’s ball in one of Agatha Christie’s novels.”
Well, that’s certainly irrelevant, Polly thought.
“In Dumb Witness,” Eileen said. “At first it didn’t seem to have anything at all to do with the murder, but then it turned out to be the key to the entire mystery.”
“Exactly,” Mike said. “Write it all down, and see if it triggers something. And in the meantime, I want you to make the rounds of the department stores on Monday and fill out a job application at each one.”