“Better make sure you’re wearing your knickers, Margie,” someone else commented.
An eager-looking woman seated by the window raised her hand. “What about the land girls, m’m? Will they be coming?”
“They’ll be invited,” Elizabeth assured Florrie Evans.
“Ooh, ’eck,” someone muttered, “we’ll have to fight them off if we want to dance with the Yanks.”
Everyone started talking at once, and Elizabeth clapped her hands. She clapped them twice more and begged for silence, still without success.
Deciding to take matters into her own hands, Rita stepped forward and bellowed, “Bleeding well shut your mouths, will you! Her ladyship’s trying to speak!”
Momentarily deafened, Elizabeth clasped her throat as the room fell silent once more. “I just want to remind everyone,” she said after a pause to collect her thoughts, “that this dance is an effort to restore harmony between the Americans and the people of Sitting Marsh. There will be British soldiers at the dance, just as eager and just as capable of dancing with you as the Americans. I trust you will all remember that and accord everyone the same courtesy. I hope those of you with daughters who might attend will impress upon them the importance of treating the British and the American military alike.”
“You can impress upon them all you like,” Joan muttered, “but that doesn’t mean they’re going to listen.”
“Well, you must make them listen.” Elizabeth gestured at Rita. “Now, Mrs. Crumm will take over and delegate the work of decorating the hall. I realize we have limited supplies, but we should be able to come up with some ideas to make the place look festive.”
The discussion that followed was boisterous, loud, and none too productive. In fact, some of the suggestions were downright ludicrous. Elizabeth was quite thankful when one suggestion to use toilet rolls for decoration was shot down for lack of coupons. She did her best to ignore the uproar and concentrated on enjoying her egg and cress sandwich. The hot buttered scone that followed, lavished with Devon cream and strawberry jam, was even more delicious, especially when washed down with a cup of hot, strong tea.
Rita finally secured a list of names of those willing to meet at the town hall that evening and with an air of bravado informed Elizabeth she had nothing to worry about. “We’ll do the place up, one way or another,” she said, her voice lacking conviction.
“I’m sure I can rely on you and your ladies.” Elizabeth rose from the table. “If there’s anything I can do to help, please don’t hesitate to ask. I’ll have Polly hunt for something that might be useful. My parents used to decorate the Manor House for special occasions. There might be something in the attics you could use.”
“Thank you, your ladyship, but we don’t want to posh it up too much, do we,” Rita said, her expression smug. “After all, this won’t exactly be the society ball of the year. We don’t want the ordinary people to feel out of place.”
“Perhaps not,” Elizabeth said quietly. “On the other hand, we don’t want it to look like Saturday night at the boozer, either.” She moved to the door. “Of course, one has to know the difference. I’ll send Violet down to supervise. I think a certain amount of taste would not be amiss.” Well pleased with the look of outrage on Rita’s face, she closed the door firmly behind her and headed for the bake shop.
Bessie was behind the counter, discussing with the three ladies who worked for her the items to be baked for the dance. She smiled at Elizabeth as she walked in. “There you are, your ladyship. I was just telling my girls we’ll have to bake all night to get everything done. But it will be worth it, won’t it, ladies?”
Elsie, Helen, and Janet nodded in enthusiastic agreement.
“Thank you all,” Elizabeth said warmly. “I’m sorry it’s such short notice, but I think the situation warrants a certain amount of haste. I’m hoping we can all set an example for the military and prove that we can all get along quite well together if we put our minds to it.”
“I hope you’re right, m’m,” Bessie murmured, echoing Elizabeth’s lingering doubts. “But we’ll give it a jolly good try, anyway.”
“Yes, well,” Elizabeth rubbed at a nonexistent spot on the counter, “about the funds for all this. I-”
“Don’t you worry about nothing, m’m,” Bessie assured her. “If they all pay a shilling to get in, that should be enough to cover everything, including this afternoon’s tea meeting. There’s always the war effort fund if we’re a bit short. After all, this is a war effort, isn’t it?”
Elizabeth sighed. “Thank you, Bessie. I just hope we’re doing the right thing.”
“Of course we are.” Bessie turned to her helpers. “Well, get on with it. You’d better get cracking if you want to get some sleep tonight.”
The women scurried into the kitchen, and Bessie leaned her plump, dimpled elbows on the counter. “I know it’s none of my business, your ladyship, but I was wondering if they found out who killed that poor land girl yet.”
“Not as far as I know,” Elizabeth admitted.
“Seems like that German killed her, then?”
“I really don’t know what to think,” Elizabeth said carefully. “So far no one seems to know with whom Amelia spent that last evening. He or she might have been able to answer some important questions.”
“Well, maybe I can help you there.” Bessie looked over her shoulder at the door to the kitchen, which was firmly closed. “I wasn’t sure if I should tell you this, but I just found out a little while ago that Elsie’s brother, Tim, is stationed out at the camp in Beerstowe. He saw a young woman creeping out of the sick bay just before midnight the night the land girl was killed. The only patient in there at the time was a friend of Tim’s. His name is Jeff Thomas, and he’d been going out with the girl who was killed. Tim’s pretty sure it was her he saw creeping out of there that night. He didn’t say anything to the police because he didn’t want to get Jeff in trouble. Especially now his girlfriend is dead. But I thought you might want to know.”
“I see,” Elizabeth said slowly. “Thank you, Bessie, for letting me know.”
She left the shop, mulling over this latest piece of information. Amelia apparently did spend the evening with Jeff Thomas after all and had left there alive, presumably to come home alone. Sheila Macclesby heard the girl arguing with someone after she arrived back at the farm. The German pilot? Or Maurice? It certainly seemed that the suspects had been narrowed down to those two, and although Elizabeth hated to admit it, it was beginning to look more and more as though one of them had taken a spade to Amelia’s head.
She went over the possible scenarios in her head as she rode her motorcycle back to the Manor House. The remaining land girls were still a possibility, of course, but only one of them had any real motive, and although Pauline’s attitude wasn’t the most pleasant she’d come across, Elizabeth couldn’t picture her wielding a spade at a young woman’s head. Then again, none of her suspects seemed capable of such a ghastly attack.
There was always the possibility that the German pilot had been discovered lurking in the yard when Amelia arrived home that night. Perhaps he’d panicked, killed the girl to silence her, then taken her body to the woods to secure his hiding place. Had he then exchanged his blood-stained uniform for clothes stolen from the farmhouse and hidden them in the sacks to be burned?
Or had Maurice killed Amelia in a fit of rage? Perhaps Sheila had found his bloodstained clothes and burned them to protect him.
Whatever had really happened, it seemed unlikely anyone would be able to prove anything. Unless she could trace the origin of the buttons she’d found.
She would pay a visit to Rosie Finnegan the very next day, she decided. Rosie owned the clothes shop in the High Street. Maybe she could help find out to what garment those buttons were attached. If they didn’t come from Maurice’s reefer jacket, then perhaps they came from the German pilot’s uniform. It wasn’t much, but right then it was all she had. And something told her she had to get at the truth soon, before an innocent person was convicted of murder.