“I’ll need to shove me jacket up inside me cardigan, Miss, seeing as I ain’t got quite the middle that ’e ’as.”
“Pretend, Billy. Seriously, I want you to close your eyes, sit at the table, and truly imagine that you are Joseph Waite. I’ll go outside the door, give you a couple of minutes, then I’ll come in and sit down as if I’m Charlotte. For the purposes of this experiment, I am Charlotte.”
“Awright.” Billy frowned. “I’ll give it a go.”
Maisie nodded, and walked toward the door, but before reaching for the handle, she turned to her desk, took the Times from her briefcase, and dropped it on the table in front of him.
“You’ll probably be reading this.”
She left the room as Billy shifted uncomfortably in the seat. He closed his eyes, drew back his shoulders, tucked his legs underneath the chair so that his heels rode up and the balls of his feet supported the imaginary weight of his middle. His war wound nipped at his leg as he moved, but he ignored it. He puffed out his cheeks for just a few seconds, and imagined what it might be like to have built a successful enterprise to become a powerful man of commerce. Slowly he began to feel quite different, and realized he was getting just an inkling of the way in which Maisie used her knowledge of the body to gain an understanding of another person. He reached for the newspaper and snapped it open, feeling richer than he had felt in a good long while. And it surprised him that he felt a glimmer of an emotion that rarely surfaced in his being: anger.
“Good morning, Father,” said Maisie, entering the room.
“Good morning, Charlotte.” Billy reached for his pocket watch, noted the time, and placed the newspaper on the table between them. “What are you doing with yourself today?” He continued, checking his watch again, and taking a sip of tea.
“I thought I might go shopping and meet a friend for lunch.”
“Nothing better to do today, Charlotte?”
There was an edge to Billy’s voice that almost caused Maisie to break out of character and look up, but she continued, defiantly. “What do you want me to do, Father?”
Billy consulted his watch again without responding, while Maisie— as Charlotte—reached for the newspaper. She turned to the front page, read barely two lines, then suddenly gasped and burst into tears. She threw down the paper, scraped back her chair, and ran from the room with her hand covering her mouth. Billy sighed, wiped his brow, and stretched out his legs, happy to be rid of his assumed character.
Maisie returned. “That was an interesting exercise, wasn’t it?”
“It was really strange, Miss. I remembered watching ’im when ’e talked about Charlotte, so I mimicked his posture.”
Maisie nodded for Billy to continue.
“And, well, it was right peculiar, it was, ’ow I started to feel different, like another person.”
“Explain, Billy. I know this seems difficult, but it is most important and helpful.”
“I was right touchy, like a piece of tinder ready to catch fire. I started to think about the father that died down the coal pit, ’is mother and ’ow she must’ve ’ad to work ’er fingers to the bone, and then all that ’e’d gone through, ’ard graft, and all. Then I thought about the wife up in Yorkshire, sittin’ on ’er behind, and by the time you walked in the door, I felt all of what ’e’d felt—well, what I felt ’e’d felt—and, to be quite ’onest with you, I didn’t even really ’ave patience with you. I mean Charlotte.”
“ Do you believe he was in the room when Charlotte ran out?”
“I reckon so, but it was as if I was making meself sit there, because I’m determined not to let ’er annoy me. I couldn’t do any more reading of the newspaper, I was so . . . so angry! That’s why I ’anded it to ’er, I mean you. What about you, Miss?”
“You know, after seeing Charlotte’s room yesterday, in taking on her character I wasn’t exactly ‘full of the joys of spring.’ I didn’t get that feeling at all when I was in her room. Instead, I had the sense of a troubled soul. But there must have been provocation of some sort to make her leave home. I have to say, I felt other emotions, though I confess I am now drawing upon the feelings I intuited when we went into her room and when I was alone for a while.” Maisie picked up a pencil from the table and began to doodle along the bottom of the paper. She drew an eye with a single tear seeping from the corner.
“What did you ‘sense,’ then?” asked Billy.
“She was confused. As I acted her part at breakfast, I felt a conflict. I could not hate my father, though I dislike what he is and I am trying desperately not to be intimidated by him. I would like to leave his house, to live elsewhere, anywhere. But I’m stuck.” Maisie looked out of the window, allowing her eyelids to close halfway and rest as she considered Charlotte Waite. “I felt defiant when I first picked up the newspaper which, according to Waite, was the last thing Charlotte did before bursting into tears and leaving the room.”
Billy nodded as Maisie got up from her chair and walked to the window with her arms crossed.
“What this exercise suggests is that Waite’s recounting of his daughter’s departure has only a tenuous relationship to the truth. It serves to remind us that the story we heard yesterday was told through his eyes. To him, it may be exactly as it happened, but I think if you asked Charlotte, or a fly on the wall, you’d get a different account. One thing, though: We should go through Saturday’s Times to see if anything in it caused Charlotte Waite’s distress.”
Maisie flicked a piece of lint from her new burgundy suit, which she was beginning to think had been purchased in error as it seemed to attract any white fiber that happened to be passing.
“I’ll get a copy.” Billy made a note in the cloth-bound palm-size book he carried with him.
“Let’s put the table back and go over the rest of the visit carefully. Then I’ve some paperwork to do before we go our separate ways at noon. We should meet back here at about five, to exchange notes.”
“Right you are, Miss.”
“By the way, I didn’t know you could mimic a northern accent.”
Billy looked surprised as he leafed through his notebook, pencil at the ready to work on the case map. “What d’yer mean, Miss? I ain’t got no northern accent. I’m an East End of London boy. Shoreditch born and bred, that’s me.”
Billy left the office first, taking with him the address book found in Charlotte Waite’s rooms. There were few names listed, all with London addresses except for a cousin and Charlotte’s mother, both in Yorkshire. Billy had already confirmed that Charlotte had not sought refuge with either of them. As Joseph Waite supported both his wife and niece, it was unlikely that they would risk their future financial security by deceit. Billy’s next task was to confirm each name listed and also find out more about Charlotte’s former fiancé, Gerald Bartrup.
Maisie cast a final glance around the office, then departed after locking up. Once outside, she made her way along Fitzroy Street, then Charlotte Street, taking a route parallel to Tottenham Court Road. As she walked toward her destination—the Waite’s International Store on Oxford Street—she turned the contents of Charlotte’s address book over in her mind, then mentally walked through Charlotte’s rooms once more. Maisie always maintained that first impressions of a room or a person were akin to soup when it was fresh. One can appreciate the flavor, the heat and the ingredients that went into the pot that will merge together to provide sustenance. But it’s on the second day that a soup really reveals itself and releases the blending of spices and aromas onto the tastebuds. In the same way, as Maisie walked through the rooms in her mind’s eye, she was aware of the rigid control that pervaded the Waite household and must have enveloped Charlotte like a shroud.