The next morning I awoke to a knock on the door. It was Alice Withers, the kitchen maid, with my uniform from yesterday, or most of it. She had bright eyes, full lips, straw-blonde hair, and looked to be twenty or even younger. A cheery girl.
“Sorry to wake you, Captain,” she said, “but the baron said you should be up, and I thought you’d want these things. I cleaned and stitched the shirt myself. The trousers were a lost cause, sorry to say.” She placed the pile of clothes on the bed as I sat up.
“No problem,” I said. The shirt looked like new, except for the tear, which had been expertly sewn up. “How’d you get the bloodstains out?”
“Cold water and spit,” she said, giggling a bit. “Then you rub in salt and scrub with washsoap. It’s how Mrs. Dudley taught me. I hope you don’t mind.”
“The old ways are often the best,” I said, glancing at the clock. It was past time to get up. “Thanks, Alice.” She giggled again as she shut the door.
I washed and dressed, wincing as pain shot through my protesting legs. I sat back down on the edge of the bed, overcome by the realization that I really had been lucky yesterday. A thirteen-hundred pound vehicle had been tossed in the air by a 7.5-inch shell and then fallen smack on top of Kaz and me in about the only position guaranteed not to crush the two of us into a red meat pie. Luck. How much did I have left? Those guys on the beach hadn’t even met the enemy yet, and now some of them were six feet under before they’d fired a shot in anger.
I downplayed my injuries at breakfast, telling everyone I was fine even as I felt blood seeping through the thick bandage on my arm. I might need more of Alice’s spit tomorrow.
“Are you sure you’re well enough to travel, Captain?” Sir Rupert asked as he tucked in to his eggs.
“We’re only going to Dartmouth, to talk with an Inspector Grange,” I said. “Shouldn’t be a problem.”
“Edmund Grange, you mean? Of the Devon Constabulary? Decent man, he should be of help to you,” Sir Rupert declared. “I sit on a committee for the Dartmouth Royal Regatta; I met him last summer while we were preparing for the festivities. Big headache for the police, I expect, but everyone enjoys the fun. It’s all scaled back these days, thanks to the war, but it’s a morale boost for the locals even so.”
“Oh yes, the Mayor’s Ball is the highlight of the week,” Helen said, lighting up with enthusiasm for a brief moment. Then her face went blank, and she stared down at her plate. Maybe the notion of going to the ball with David this year didn’t sit well.
“Give Grange my best,” Sir Rupert said, a brief frown creasing his forehead as he watched Helen. “And I’m glad you’re not badly hurt, or worse.”
“Indeed,” Great Aunt Sylvia said. “It would be a silly way to go, in any case. Tell me, Baron Kazimierz, have you family in Poland? It must be quite difficult for them, from what I hear.”
“No, Lady Pemberton,” Kaz said in a low voice. “I do not.” The only sound that followed was Edgar tapping the shell of his soft-boiled egg. After a few minutes, the idle chitchat picked up again. Kaz and I excused ourselves and made for the jeep.
Family was a hard subject for Kaz. His was wiped out by the Nazis after the invasion of Poland. They had been wealthy-far wealthier than the residents of Ashcroft House-and his father had had the foresight to transfer the family fortune to a Swiss bank in case of war. He hadn’t foreseen how quickly the war would be at his doorstep, however, and had missed his chance to leave the country. The Kazimierz family had been murdered as part of the Nazi plan to exterminate the intelligentsia. Businessmen, aristocrats, lawyers, and anyone who might resist were ruthlessly slaughtered. Kaz had had no relatives to squabble with and no one but me to confide in since he was maimed in the explosion that had killed Daphne Seaton.
It was our first case together. Kaz lost the love of his life and got that scar as a daily reminder. He took chances and sought death after that, but he was too damn lucky to find it. Since then, he’s hung around to keep me out of trouble, I think. It’s a good thing for him that trouble seems always to be right around the corner.
Maybe I should revise that bit about Kaz having no one else but me. There is a princess in Rome, but she’s part of the underground, and he won’t be seeing her anytime too soon. Again, it’s a long story, but she deserves a mention. Sometimes broken hearts do heal.
“A hospitable bunch, but strange nonetheless,” I said, if only to break the silence as we headed down the long driveway.
“I admit there are undercurrents of tension within the family,” Kaz said. “That is clear. The question is, does it have anything to do with why David wanted me to visit?”
“It wasn’t just for old times’ sake?” We drove through the muddy streets of North Cornworthy, and I noticed the mill this time, down from the bridge that spanned Bow Creek. That was where Great Aunt Sylvia’s grandfather supposedly put his own sweat into the construction.
“I do not know,” Kaz said. “I think there must be something he wants to talk about. He seemed to relax when we said we’d stay, did you notice? Or it could have been the strain from his injuries. He is recuperating, after all, and still on sick leave. Perhaps it was a wave of pain that passed.”
“Having a wife who can’t look you in the face could cause a lot of pain,” I said. “You didn’t know Helen at all?”
“No,” Kaz said. “I hadn’t met her before. Whenever David mentioned her in his letters, it was what you’d expect. She was wonderful, he couldn’t believe how lucky he was, that sort of thing.”
“Some people are fine when the going is easy,” I said. “Wealthy girl gets a dashing, blond-haired RAF pilot who went to Oxford. Fairy-tale stuff. As long as the fairy tale plays out, she’s the perfect wife. But then reality comes along when his fighter goes down, and the charming prince isn’t quite so charming anymore. Life gets tough, and she doesn’t know how to handle it, so she hides out on his left side.”
“You could be correct,” Kaz said. “And if so, I don’t know what David might expect me to do about it. Perhaps he doesn’t want her to look at his burns, did you think of that?”
“It didn’t look that way to me,” I said. “She was the one moving around to his good side, far as I could tell. Either way, he might want a shoulder to cry on. Ashcroft may not provide many sympathetic listeners, especially when it concerns one of their own.”
“We shall see,” Kaz said. We drew closer to the River Dart and heard the blast of a steam locomotive from the opposite bank. The green hills rose above the rail line as the engine pulled its long load toward the coast. “You know, our dead chap could have come from anywhere. He could have come from the north of England on that very train, got into a dispute, and been shot and dumped in the water that same day.”
“Meaning we should widen the search?”
“Yes,” Kaz said. “Contact Scotland Yard as well. If we assume he wasn’t in the military, that narrows it down quite a bit. About thirty years of age, in decent condition, and engaged in a business that involves violence.”
“You’re right,” I said, following his lead. “He might have had a criminal record that would have kept him out of the service. Good thinking, Kaz. Let’s see what Inspector Grange has to say, and then we’ll follow up, maybe call Inspector Scutt at the Yard.”
I’d worked with Detective Inspector Horace Scutt of Scotland Yard a while ago. We hadn’t seen eye to eye at first, but he was a good cop, and I trusted him. He was beyond retirement age, staying on for the duration. It had to be tough, dealing with a war and thousands of rowdy servicemen when you should have been tending roses or doing whatever coppers do when they turn in their badges.
We threaded our way through Dartmouth traffic, mostly military, and sought out Inspector Grange at the Devon Constabulary. This time we were lucky.
“Glad to help, for what it’s worth,” Inspector Grange said when we’d explained our assignment. He gestured toward two chairs in front of his desk and flopped down into his own. He was stout, with a thick grey moustache and even thicker eyebrows. He looked tired as he fired up his pipe. “I heard you chaps got caught up in that mess at Slapton Sands. God-awful.”