“You can’t stay here, jook. Your people are moving on.”
The dog still did not even flinch, so Maisie remained awhile, stroking her coat and lulled by the sounds of the village—the birds on high, a horse being ridden along the High Street, children playing in the fields. Soon, though, Maisie stroked the lurcher once more, remembering the time when Beulah’s dog had walked with her to the MG, her glistening diamond-like eyes reflecting the moonlight.
As she drove through Heronsdene, Maisie saw Beattie Drummond, notebook in hand, interviewing Fred Yeoman outside the inn. She did not stop, to talk or pass the time of day. She was going home.
EPILOGUE
In early November, Maisie decided that the ritual she referred to as her final accounting was long overdue on the Heronsdene case. In the interim, work had come in at a more pleasing pace, although the economic slump that gripped the country showed no signs of improvement, with evidence of a deepening crisis. Those of a certain station were able to retain the illusion that nothing had changed since the heady days of the early 1920s, and the increase in house construction remained baffling to economists. But for the poor, life became even more desperate, with labor lines growing, soup kitchens struggling to feed more mouths, factories closing, and the country in the grip of despair.
Along with that mood of hopelessness came the search for a scapegoat, with the finger pointed toward those who appeared not to belong, who were not considered “one of us.” Oswald Mosley’s particular brand of fascism was feeding upon the discontent, and it appeared to Maisie that people were beginning to take to their corners, ready for a fight. Thus she would not allow herself to breathe easy, feeling the weight of responsibility she had assumed, not only for her own financial security—as had many women of her age who would remain spinsters due to a war that had claimed a generation of young men—but for the weekly wage that kept the Beale family from want. Only when she had cleared her desk of urgent matters would she take time to reflect upon the month’s worth of events that still caused her heart to ache.
“I won’t be in the office for a few days, Billy. It’s time to write my final notes on the Heronsdene case and put it to rest.”
Billy nodded. He understood the importance of this time to his employer, and in his way was emulating her procedures, closing those cases she now allowed him to consider his own with a visit to each place of significance encountered along the way.
“I expect I’ll see you on Tuesday or Wednesday, then. I’ve got me ’ands full with this woman who reckons the shopkeeper is thievin’ from her, the one the police didn’t want to know about. And there’s that other woman who says her best friend is bein’ blackmailed and will pay us to find out.”
“Good work, Billy.” She tidied her desk and collected her shoulder bag and document case. “I just hope the weather holds. This sunshine is lovely, but that wind is going right through me.”
“And takin’ the leaves with it—’ave you seen the square? It looks like every leaf in London came to cover the paving stones.”
Maisie smiled as Billy opened the door for her. “You can leave word with my father, if you need me.”
“Right you are, Miss.”
HER FIRST STOP was not in Kent but in London. At St. Anselm’s school, she remained in her motor car and watched from beyond the gates as the school’s cadet force—an extracurricular activity for those who might one day wish to join the services—marched back and forth across the quadrangle. She thought back to the headmaster, and the way he talked about the school being an army where everyone had to fit in, play their part, and not rock the boat. As the boys clattered across the paving stones, their uniforms pressed and their boots seeming one size too big, she thought about those too young who went to war, the Pim Martins, boys treated as men when it came time to face the cannonade. After listening to the boy in charge shout, “About turn!” one last time, she pulled out into the traffic, on her way to see Priscilla.
Maisie was shown into the entrance hall of the house in Holland Park, just in time to see a gang of boys rush through in a boisterous game of tag. Tarquin, who was bringing up the rear of the unruly snake of boyhood that galloped past, greeted her in his usual manner, by leaping into her arms and kissing her on both cheeks.
“Tante Maisie, Tante Maisie, watch this! Stay where you are and watch this!” Still without his four front teeth, he clambered from her arms and ran to the top of the stairs, where he swung his leg over the banister and, holding on as if his life depended upon it, slid at some speed to the bottom of the staircase, where he promptly fell off and landed on his behind.
Soon his brothers and their friends had sprinted up to the top of the staircase, ready to slide down the banister one by one.
“Get off that banister and down those stairs immediately! You are nothing but a band of ruffians.” Priscilla walked to the bottom of the staircase, her hands on her hips, then called out, “Elinor! Do something about these horrible creatures before I have to do it myself!” She turned to Maisie, grinning. “Better not let them see me smile. I think it’s all rather fun—used to do the same thing myself.”
Elinor emerged from the upstairs rooms to inform the Partridge boys and their friends that tea was ready in the nursery.
“We’ll go into my sitting room for something a little more grown up,” said Priscilla.
Maisie accepted a glass of cream sherry, while Priscilla prepared a cocktail.
“Douglas is with his publisher this afternoon, hence the high jinks on the staircase. I daresay Simon slid down that very banister when he was a boy.” She looked at Maisie as she sat down on the pillowed sofa next to her friend, each of them having claimed one end. Priscilla kicked off her shoes and pulled her feet up under her. “Make yourself at home,” she instructed, before continuing. “Have you seen Margaret?”
Maisie shook her head. “I saw her just before she moved from London, and I thought I would drive out to Grantchester in a day or so. I’ll be sure to call first, just in case.”
“She’d love to see you.”
“Yes, I know. I’ll go, I promise.” Maisie changed the subject. “Are the boys settling in at their new school?”
“Didn’t you see that tribe out there? The school is popular with the families of diplomats, so it’s like the League of Nations, with everyone speaking a different language—as well as English, of course. They leave school early on Fridays, and each of the boys wanted to bring a friend home for the weekend, one of the boarders.”
“Will you stay here, in London?”
Priscilla shrugged. “I’m not sure. I was planning to open up the country house for weekends, but now I don’t know.”
“What do you mean?”
“I haven’t decided if I like it here. Perhaps it wasn’t such a brilliant idea to bring the family back to England just because I wanted to relive my childhood.” She shrugged. “After all, that’s what it was all about, wanting to see my boys doing the things my brothers had done, as if I could bring them back in a different way. But the fact is, my boys are who they are, their own little people. They’ve been brought up in France, on the coast, and they are each of them different. Even though they’re in a good school, for them, we might all be better off back where we were, away from this country. Even Elinor wants to go back to France. Do you know that last week she was telling me that when she was in school they were whipped for speaking to each other in Welsh? They were forced to speak English.”