An Incomplete Revenge

by Jacqueline Winspear

  “Are you sure you wouldn’t like to sit in the residents’ room, Miss Dobbs?”

  She shook her head. “No, thank you, Mr. Yeoman. But I would like a half-pint of the Harveys ale, if you please.” She pulled off her jacket, a sign that she was staying, and looked around the bar. A man next to the counter stepped away and held out his hand toward a stool. She inclined her head and stepped forward, thanking the man for giving up his seat. Fred placed the frothy brew in front of Maisie, which she sipped before turning around. All eyes were upon her, the outsider.

  She set down her glass and looked again at the villagers, weighing her words with care. She had no need to raise her voice; the crackle and spit of a fire in the inglenook was the only sound to punctuate her words. “You’ve all seen me in this village, and you know I’m working for the company involved in negotiations to purchase the brickworks and the estate. And you know by now that my interest has been in the crimes, and more importantly, the fires that have occurred in this village.”

  Her words were met with silence. One man shuffled his feet, only to be met with a scornful look from his wife, who crossed her arms and turned away from him. Maisie continued.

  “Heronsdene is a beautiful village, and I believe you are all good people.” Again she paused, choosing her words with care. “But a secret cannot be kept forever—”

  At that moment the door opened, and it appeared to Maisie that every single man and woman in the room drew breath as the man they had known before the fire only as Webb, the traveling gypsy, came into the bar. Maisie nodded and smiled, holding out her hand to the seat just vacated next to her. No one attempted to leave. No one made an excuse to depart, or coughed, or made a noise.

  Webb joined Maisie and looked around the room, as if to remember every single face and to torment each villager with his silence.

  “I was just saying,” said Maisie, her voice low, “that a secret cannot be kept forever.”

  Webb cleared his throat to speak, but instead nodded to Maisie, who continued addressing those assembled.

  “You came together this evening to decide what to do about this man, whom you knew as Pim Martin when he was a boy. He was from a family you understood to be of Dutch blood until the night of the Zeppelin raid, when you came to sense the power of doubt. Will anyone speak to this man of that night?”

  There was silence for a moment. Then a woman began to sob and was comforted by Mrs. Pendle. One man stood as if to leave, but was stopped by another, who laid his hand on the man’s shoulder and shook his head.

  Maisie spoke again. “Pim Martin went to war as a boy. He fought for his country, as did the other sons of Heronsdene. This man, then barely fourteen years of age, saw death of a most terrible kind—” Her words caught in her throat, as she banished images of the war from her mind. “Then he came home to . . . nothing.” She paused. “So I ask again—will anyone speak to this man of that night?”

  Now the silence in the room was interwoven by more sobbing. Maisie watched one woman repeatedly punch her knees with her fist, as if to strike feeling into limbs that were otherwise numb.

  The man she knew to be Mr. Whyte coughed and raised his hand, taking off his cap, then passing it from his left hand to his right and back again. “It’s hard, to tell of what happened—”

  Another voice joined in. “It was madness. We were all touched by madness and didn’t know what we were doing.”

  “It wouldn’t’ve happened if the boys hadn’t been killed.”

  “Or if that Sandermere hadn’t been drunk, the lying hound.”

  Now voices came from left and right, as if every man and woman wanted to speak at once, to confess and have the hand of absolution laid upon them.

  Fred Yeoman raised his hand. “Miss Dobbs is right. We’ve got to tell, and it’s no good starting in the middle and then going both ways at once. Someone has to start at the beginning, and it might as well be me, because I’m the landlord here. But first I’ll put a glass in Pim’s hand, if you don’t mind.”

  “Webb. You can call me Webb now.”

  Yeoman nodded and pulled an ale, finishing the pour with a hearty head before passing it to the gypsy. Then he wiped the counter once again, threw the cloth to one side, and gripped the edge of the bar as he began to speak, looking down at his whitening fists, then up at Webb and the gathering in front of him.

  “After you’d gone, after they’d taken you to the reformatory, there was change here in the village. We lost a lot of our boys, the first lot in ’ 15, then others here and there, then a dozen all together in the summer of 1916. It was during the hop-picking that the telegrams with news of more lost were delivered.” He looked at Webb. “You’ll remember them. There was Derek Tovis, John Barham, Tim Whyte, Bobby Pickles, Sam Pendle, Peter Tillings—all gone on the same day. All our boys.”

  Webb nodded. “I remember them, each and every one.”

  “Word went round like wildfire, and it was as if we’d lost them all at once. Small village like this, and we’d lost nigh on all our boys.”

  Yeoman cleared his throat. Then George Chambers, whom Maisie had visited, looked directly at Webb, raising his hand to speak.

  “All I’ve got to say is, that it got us all here, right here.” He thumped his chest. “It felt like we had one big heart that was breaking, here in the village, and we didn’t know what to do. How to get rid of the . . . the pain.”

  Maisie looked at Webb, at his fingers, curled and frozen as he clutched his glass, which she feared might break.

  Whyte took up the story. “Then, that night, we’d all been in here. You know, Pim—Webb—you know how it was, how we’d always come here, to talk of village matters, sort things out. Well, we were here, talking of the boys, wondering how we would all get through it. And that young Sandermere was in.”

  “I refused to serve him, not only on account of his age, but by the smell of him he’d already been at his father’s brandy,” said Yeoman.

  Whyte continued. “It’s not as if anyone would ever listen to him, as a rule. Not as if he was respected, like his brother, Henry, and his father before him.” He shook his head and brushed his hand across his forehead. “But he was going on about the Hun this, and Fritz that, and we all sort of joined in. It was somewhere to put the—you know—the hate.” He looked around the room, his discomfort at such candor causing him to shrink back against the wall.

  Yeoman spoke again. “We was all talking, about the boys, about the war and the Germans, when we heard that drone. It was strange, a sort of muffled whirring. Bill over there said, ’Can you hear that?’ Then Sandermere stumbled outside and looked up and came running back. ’It’s a Zeppelin!’ he shouted. Someone said, ’Don’t be bloody silly, boy, you’re one over the top. What would a Zeppelin want here?’ The Hun had taken enough of our boys over there.”

  “Then we heard it,” said another man, who also took off his cap as he spoke, looking with intent at Webb, as if willing him to understand.

  “The explosion,” added Yeoman. “Down at the smithy.” He coughed and held his chest. “We all rushed out, and the fire was already well out of control, but someone started running to the telephone kiosk in the next village, to call out the fire brigade.”

  Whyte took up the story. “We had to do something, so we all ran down to the smithy to do what we did today, to put out the fire, which was in the barn next door.” He looked at Webb. “Your people were at the bakery, son. Your father never came down to the inn as a rule, on account of being up early to start the ovens.”

  Webb swallowed deeply, his eyes watery yet his gaze unflinching. He said nothing, but looked around the room to see who might take up the story. Maisie turned to Yeoman, who spoke again.

  “We thought the smith was dead. Couple of people had gone to his house, but there was no answer, so we thought he’d been in the barn—always pottering at night, the smith.” He paused, then reached behind the bar for a brandy bottle and a tot glass. He filled the glass, downed the amber
liquid in one gulp, and poured a second time. “Then that Sandermere boy started again, yelling about vengeance, about revenge. Then he says, for us all to hear—” He turned to Webb. “I’m sorry, lad, I am so sorry—are you sure you want to hear this?”

  Webb nodded and reached for the brandy bottle, pouring a measure into his empty beer glass. “Go on, Mr. Yeoman. I’m listening.”

  “Sandermere said, ’Them von Martins called the Zeppelin to kill us all.’ He kept screaming and yelling that you were really Germans, that you weren’t Dutch at all, and that you’d avoided being sent to an internment camp because your father had lied. He said your sister Anna had told him that your name was really von Martin, not van Maarten, and you were spies.” He choked back tears, and the villagers clustered closer together. “And we had no doubt, because our boys were dead, and our village had been bombed, that he was telling the truth. He just kept screaming to go and get them, that they must pay with their lives. It—it’s hard to tell it now, but it was as if we’d been struck by madness. We weren’t ordinary people anymore, we were one big monster, an animal out of control going after the enemy, who had to pay. And we let a drunken boy lead us, with his filthy ideas and his taunting, until we believed we had to make the enemy suffer, for our sons and for our village.”

  Webb did not look up but asked, in an almost whisper, “And what did you do?”

  “We had fire in our hands, and we had fire in our hearts, and we ran, a mob holding pieces of burning wood from the barn, nothing but a rabble with Sandermere at the head, moving toward the bakery. And the terrible thing is, your parents were running down the street, to see if they could help.” He choked back tears and put his head in his hands.

  Whyte took up the story again. “Then they saw us coming, with Sandermere shouting, ’There they are, Fritz and his wife!’ And Jacob put his arm around Bettin and ran back to the bakery. She was screaming for Anna, to go indoors—the girl was just coming out to see what she could do—and they all hurried inside.” He stopped to take a breath, rubbing his chest as if winded by his memories. “I don’t know where the paraffin came from, but soon the bakery was burning, and we bayed like animals, for the blood of the German family we’d been told lived inside.”

  Mrs. Pendle stepped forward, her voice low, as she spoke. “We were the devil himself that night. It was as if all the terrible things you ever thought in your life had made lunatics of us, and we could not stop. We are murderers, each and every one of us, because we killed an innocent family. It doesn’t matter where they came from, they were innocent. And we are ashamed. We are so ashamed.”

  Fred Yeoman spoke again. “I don’t know when we came to our senses. The house had almost burned by the time the fire brigade came, and the men who were sent by the authorities had no questions for us. And the smith had been out on the railway lines, picking up coal for his fires, so he wasn’t dead after all.” He moved to place his hand on Webb’s shoulder, then drew back. “The next day, we all saw the truth of what we’d done. It’s been like a sickness ever since. A few have moved away, but it’s hard to do with a village like this. You know your own, and you know where you belong. We’ll never get over it, never. We’ll bear that cross, all of us, forever, and there’s not one of us that goes to bed at night and doesn’t hear the screams.”

  “Then, the next day, we found out you were presumed dead,” said Whyte. “And the lie went on, a whole family killed by the war. Soon we all began to believe the tale, though we never forgot that lunacy, that insanity that laid claim to every single one of us.” He looked around the room, as if to dare a contradiction. “Then the fires began, each year, about the same time as the anniversary of the Zeppelin raid. And we believed we were being haunted, that the spirit of Pim Martin had come home to drive us into our graves, had come for his due. So we didn’t report the fires, because we knew we had it coming to us. We deserved to die, if it came to that.”

  Silence enveloped the room. No one stirred, no one coughed or shuffled their feet. Only the fire crackled in the grate, the odd spark spitting out onto the hearth as the logs smoldered.

  Yeoman was the first to move, pulling down tot glasses and filling them with brandy. He began speaking as he poured. “And the thing is, I never did find out—I don’t think anyone did—why Sandermere went off like that. He’d been seen with Anna, was sweet on her, so why would he do such a thing? I never knew whether it was a mania or the drink that made him accuse like he did, that made him lie and cause death into the bargain.” He set the bottle down and looked at Maisie, as if for help. “And he’s had us by the throat since it happened, reminding us that we were all in it together and if one talked, we’d all be branded killers.”

  “You were killers,” said Webb, breaking his silence. “You took my family, and they were good people. They came here to be part of this village, part of you, and you murdered them.” He sighed and took up a tot of brandy. “But—” He paused and looked around the room, his gaze alighting upon each villager in turn. “But I have come to know something in the past few days, something I learned from my father when I was a child, except that somewhere in the middle I forgot. I have learned, I hope, that revenge can only take more lives, and this life of mine—my wife, my daughter—is too precious for me to give it over to vengeance.”

  “Do you forgive us?” A voice barely more than a whisper asked the question.

  Webb shook his head. “That is not for me to do.” He finished his drink and rapped the glass back on the bar. “This business of forgiving yourselves is your work.” He turned to Maisie. “Beulah was right; she said you would set me free. I thank you for your kindness—to her, to me, to my people.”

  Webb picked up his hat and left the inn, the cluster of villagers parting to allow him to reach the door, which he closed, gently, as he stepped outside.

  Fred Yeoman turned to Maisie. “He won’t come back, will he, Miss Dobbs?”

  Maisie shook her head. “The gypsies will move on after Beulah’s funeral, and they won’t be back. They rarely return to a place where one of the clan has died. It’s bad luck.”

  “I’m glad we talked to Pim. Can’t call him Webb, not with him being the image of his father, now that I’ve had a good look at him.”

  “It’s done now. It’s out in the open and we’ve told of what went on, but it won’t make us sleep easier in our beds,” added Whyte.

  The room was quiet once more, as if all assembled here were trying on their memories of that night to see how they fit, only to realize that they would wear their guilt forever.

  Maisie was thoughtful before speaking again. “Think of what Webb said, that there’s no time for vengeance. I can’t help you with your shame, your remorse, but I can make one small suggestion.”

  “What’s that?” Fred Yeoman leaned forward.

  “You’ve let their land grow wild. In law it belongs to Webb, and you never know—he may come to claim it one day or he may wish to sell. Look after it for him. Keep it well. People died there, so it deserves to be cherished.” Maisie stepped away from the bar, reaching across to shake Fred Yeoman’s hand. “Thank you, Mr. Yeoman. I have to be off now.”

  Once again the villagers stepped aside as Maisie left the inn. She stood outside for a few moments, and as she pulled her collar up she heard the sound of sobbing coming from inside and the low muffled voices of the villagers. She walked back to the MG, stopping alongside the land that once held the bakery where Jacob and Bettin van Maarten worked to raise a family and be part of a community. She thought she saw movement on the other side of the lot and stepped aside, so that the light from the church gate could illuminate the land. Michaelmas daisies had been strewn where once the threshold had been, where Jacob Martin, the baker, had been photographed holding a loaf of bread baked in the shape of his adopted country, surrounded by her flags flapping in the wind.

  SOON SHE WAS on her way to Chelstone, but stopped when she reached the next village, to place a call from the telephone kiosk.


  “B. T. Drummond speaking.”

  “I guessed you’d be there, waiting by the night phone.”

  “Maisie Dobbs! I thought you had gone to ground and I’d never get my story. If this is about that fire, then you’re late. I already know, the story’s mine, and I’m coming out as soon as it’s light—with a photographer.”

  “The fire is only part of why I’m calling. I have your scoop for you, if you want it, though I don’t think you’ll be able to print it—but a promise is a promise and I said I would let you know.”

  Maisie heard a notebook flipping open.

  “Right, then, go ahead.”

  “It’s too long a tale, Beattie. Can we meet before you come down to Heronsdene tomorrow? I can see you in Paddock Wood, if you like.”

  “Right you are. Nine o’clock at the station?”

  “Nine o’clock it is.”

  Maisie set the telephone receiver back on the cradle and returned to the MG. Settled into the work of driving, she sighed. No one, not even Webb, had asked why Alfred Sandermere had been so anxious, even in his impaired state, to see an end to the Dutch family. It was an omission that allowed her a measure of relief. She had been cautioned by Maurice Blanche during her apprenticeship to take care when handling truth, and she knew that such knowledge would have brought nothing but added distress to a man who had lost so much.

  NINETEEN

  Maisie arrived at her father’s home late and tired, with black smudges on her forehead, her hair matted and slicked to her face. The odor of disinfectant and smoke was still clinging to her as she dragged her bag from the motor car and entered the cottage.

  Frankie banked up the kitchen fire and brought the old tin bath from the scullery, setting it on the floor in front of the coal stove. As soon as the water was hot, Maisie filled the bath while her father walked across to the stables for his customary final check on the horses stabled at Chelstone. She opened the stove door so that heat from the blaze would keep her warm as she bathed, washing away the stench of fire and several livid red smears of Alfred Sandermere’s blood that remained on her arm above the wrist. She was exhausted, the muscles of her neck and shoulders were taut and aching, and though she was keen to return to London, she knew that a day under her father’s wing would be solace indeed. She would remain in Kent until Beulah Webb was buried and the ritual of the final farewell done.