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 watch 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.”