The yard had been deserted as he’d entered it through a pair of gateposts stripped of the wrought-iron gates they must once have had, but he had taken only a few steps across the snow-covered cobbles when the back door opened and a woman had put her head out.
‘Yes … can I help you?’
‘I’m looking for Mrs Spencer,’ Madden had replied.
‘I’m Mary Spencer.’ Her tone had been friendly.
‘How do you do. My name’s Madden. John Madden. I live not far away. At Highfield, in Surrey. I took the train over this morning.’ He’d walked across the yard to her. Actually, the person I want to speak to is Eva Belka. I understand she works for you. Would it be possible for me to see her?’
‘Eva … Evie?’ Her eyes had widened in surprise when she heard the name. ‘Yes, of course. But I’m afraid she’s not here at the moment.’
Before Madden had had a chance to respond, he’d been interrupted by a sound, the creak of an unoiled wheel, and glancing behind him he had seen the crouched figure of a man emerge from one of the stalls at the rear of the yard pushing a wheelbarrow heavy with cut logs. Elderly by the look of him, he was bent almost double by the load he was propelling through the snow and Madden had moved instinctively to help him.
‘Here, let me give you a hand with that,’ he’d said.
‘Hello-!’ Taken by surprise — the old fellow had been plodding forward with his head down — he came to a halt, letting go of the wheelbarrow handles as he did so. Its metal supports rang dully on the snow-cushioned cobbles. Between the scarf he had wrapped around his neck and a cap pulled down low, Madden glimpsed a pair of cheeks covered in white stubble and a rheumy eye. ‘Didn’t see you there, sir.’
‘Oh, Hodge, you really mustn’t. That’s much too heavy for you.’ Mrs Spencer came to life. ‘You’ll do yourself an injury.’
She had hurried down the steps from the door, but was too late to prevent Madden from taking hold of the handles himself and wheeling the barrow over to a woodbin that stood against the wall of the house near the back door.
‘That is kind of you, but you shouldn’t, Mr…? I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name.’
‘Madden.’
‘Mr Madden …’
She waited until they had finished tossing the logs into the woodbin, then spoke again:
‘Come inside, won’t you? And you, too, Hodge. Mrs H and I were about to have a cup of tea.’ To Madden she added, ‘And you want to speak to Evie, you say?’ She smiled. ‘It’s what my son has always called her and now we all do.’
‘If I may.’ Madden had followed her up the steps. ‘As you’ve probably gathered, I don’t know her, but I believe she was a friend of a young Polish woman who worked for me as a land girl.’
‘Really?’ Mrs Spencer had looked surprised. ‘Well, she’ll be back soon so you won’t have long to wait. She and my son have walked over to some neighbours of ours.’
Inside the warm kitchen ‘Mrs H’ was revealed to be a woman several sizes larger than her husband and occupied at that moment in stoking the embers of an iron range. Down on her knees, she lifted a round, red face lit by a smile when Mrs Spencer introduced them, but continued with her work, prodding the fire vigorously with a poker until she was satisfied, and then carefully inserting logs into it, cut to measure, from a pile lying on the stone-flagged floor beside her.
‘A Polish girl, you say?’ Having hung Madden’s coat and hat on a hook in the wall behind a Christmas tree which stood at one end of the spacious kitchen, Mrs Spencer began to busy herself with the tea things, laying out cups and saucers and fetching a tin of biscuits from a cupboard. ‘Eva never told me she had a friend in the neighbourhood.’
‘They only met recently,’ Madden explained. ‘That’s to say they didn’t know they were living so close to one another, or even that they were both in England. But they attended the same college in Warsaw years ago.’
‘Oh, that girl …!’ Mrs Spencer had stood transfixed, a milk jug in her hand. ‘Yes, of course — Eva told me all about her. What was her name again?’
‘Rosa. Rosa Nowak.’
‘I remember now. They met on the train going up to London and Eva said this girl … Rosa … had promised to get in touch with her. They were both going to be away for a few days, but Rosa said she would ring her when she got back. She had our telephone number, but she never rang and Eva was quite upset. She was hoping they could get together again.’
She had looked at him questioningly, as though hoping that he could supply the missing pieces of the puzzle, but at that moment, deaf to the conversation going on behind her, Mrs H had risen from her knees with an effortful groan.
‘There we are …’
Dusting off her hands, she had picked up a kettle that was whistling on top of the stove, spouting steam, and brought it to the table.
Aware that he and his hostess were about to embark on a sensitive topic, Madden had decided to delay any further explanation. But during the next ten minutes, while Mrs Spencer poured their tea and the talk had been of small matters, he had twice caught her glancing at him with what seemed to be more than mere curiosity. With a guarded look.
‘Come on, Ezra. Up you get.’ Mrs H had nudged her husband, who’d fallen into a doze at the table. ‘There’s lots to do.’
Mary Spencer had escorted them to the door.
‘And you will look in on us later this afternoon like you promised?’ Mrs H spoke anxiously as she paused on the steps outside. We’d like to wish the lad a happy Christmas. You can tell him I’ll show him me glass eye if he likes.’
With a chuckle she turned her face in Madden’s direction in case he had failed to notice the object.
‘They’re going over to Mrs H’s sister in Liphook for Christmas dinner,’ Mary Spencer explained as she shut the door behind them. ‘So we won’t see them tomorrow. They’re such a kind pair. I don’t think I would have managed without them.’
Madden had been considering his next words.
‘I understand your move down here wasn’t voluntary,’ he had said finally, and as he’d hoped it brought her up short.
‘How on earth would you know that?’ she had asked, and when he made no reply she went on, ‘Why are you really here, Mr Madden? What do you want with Eva?’
The moment had come to reveal the purpose of his visit, but during the preceding ten minutes he’d become aware of a current of feeling emanating from Mary Spencer: not suspicion exactly, but a wariness which clearly had him as its object. His initial intention, which had been to sit down quietly with Eva Belka and find out what she remembered of the journey she had made with Rosa, now seemed impractical. He realized he would have to deal with her employer first, and in the circumstances frankness had seemed to be his best strategy.
‘I’m afraid I have some sad news for her,’ he had said. Rosa’s dead.’
‘Oh, Lord!’ She had put a hand to her mouth. ‘How dreadful. What happened to her? Was it a bomb? Eva said she’d told her she was staying in London for a few days.’
‘No, I’m sorry to say she was murdered.’
‘Murdered-?’
‘That same evening. In fact, only about half an hour after she and Eva parted at Waterloo.’
Mrs Spencer had stared at him dumbstruck. The shock on her face had been unmistakable.
‘I think something happened on the train — something Eva was a witness to — and I want to ask her about that. Also, whether Rosa said anything to her about it at the time.’