by Tessa Arlen
I remembered Edwina snubbing Sir Basil several times on the evening we had arrived and again when we were filming. “But it ended, didn’t it?”
“Their little fling? Well, certainly it has ended. Edwina is no longer around, is she?”
I was so shocked at her outspoken words and the cynical little laugh that accompanied them—words that could incriminate Vera easily in Edwina’s accident—that my jaw dropped.
“Oh no, no. Not so fast, my dear. Their little fling ended well over a couple of weeks ago. How, I have no idea. I doubt Vera confronted them; she is too English, too polite. But I imagine Sir Basil got the hint—or maybe Edwina was too much for him.”
She looked up at the kitchen clock.
“Nearly nine. I must be running; these senior RAF officers expect me to be in full uniform. No nice warm Sidcot zip-up suit for me today.” She walked to the foot of the stairs and then turned as if something had just occurred to her. “If you are interested in those letters, Miss Redfern, you can read them for yourself. It might help you to understand a little more about Edwina’s situation. I can tell you are curious.” She sorted through the contents of a drawer to a little table and handed me a key with a label. “Address is on the tag. Edwina lived in a little studio down by the river on the wharf. It is attached to a cottage owned by an elderly couple, Mr. and Mrs. Franklin. They liked Edwina staying there because it belonged to their son who was killed at the beginning of the war. It made them feel less lonely. Introduce yourself to them.” Her eyes were thoughtfully fixed on my face. “Yes, I would suggest you say hullo to them; they won’t mind you taking up their time. And they might make better coffee than I do.”
Finally, someone who is not scared of actually saying something relevant. Ilona clearly approved of Zofia; she was her kind of girl.
Zofia turned at the foot of the stairs and looked back at me. Her smile was enigmatic. “Whatever the ATA Accident Committee come up with, it won’t help us understand what really happened in the last three days,” she said. She paused for a second and then walked back toward me. “May I be completely frank with you, Miss Redfern, or will you shy away and look embarrassed? Such an English response to directness, I have discovered.”
“I would be grateful,” I said.
“There is no need for gratitude. This is not about Edwina. This is about you and that handsome American pilot who escorted you here.”
Oh God, what was she going to tell me about Griff and Edwina? You need to know, prompted Ilona. Pull yourself together. I took in a deep breath and nodded.
“Well then, first of all the young captain is very attracted to you, but I expect you know that.” I started to shake my head. “Forget about Edwina and her determination to always have a man hanging around her, and her rather uncouth approach.” Her look was direct, to see if she was wasting her time on me. I returned it equally directly. “Pleadingly” is probably a more apt description.
“Good, very good. Your biggest misunderstanding of your captain is not because he is an American: a man from a progressive culture that is easy and informal in its manners—just like in the movies, yes? Of course, it doesn’t help that he looks a bit like a film star, does it?”
I sighed.
“Of course women are attracted to him—he is a novelty. But underneath all that easy American appeal he is no different from any man. He has moments of doubt, he worries that he might have said the wrong thing, he often feels unsure of himself, and he covers all this up with that easy informal charm, and you fall for it and think that he doesn’t care about anything. All women do this, because they simply don’t understand that men are just as vulnerable as we are. So, forget about Edwina and her big play on the night you arrived. I can assure you that Captain O’Neal is no fool, and he is a gentleman. But more importantly it is you who he wants. It is you who he is interested in—why else would he be here in this wretchedly damp little village, hanging around an airfield on his precious leave? So”—she laughed and tossed her head as if she were an American matinée idol’s dream come true—“if you want to be with this very serious American, and I think you do, then be with him. It is up to you, kochanie. Stop underestimating yourself: you are a smart and very beautiful young woman. Drop the stuffy manners—I think they make him nervous—and be your very lovely and warmhearted self.”
And she disappeared up the stairs, leaving me to read the label on the key: 21 Front Street.
EIGHTEEN
BESS MADE IT QUITE CLEAR THAT THE BIKE’S BASKET WAS NOT something she was willing to travel in. I gave up. “Stay with me, Bessie,” I warned her. “Otherwise, in you go.” She folded her ears back the way she does when she gets her way and trotted on ahead off up the lane toward the village and Front Street.
I thought about what Zofia had told me about Edwina and Sir Basil. How painful it must have been for Vera to have found out that the man she loved was playing around with the best pilot in her command; how humiliating to have to pretend that everything was normal, when it hurt like mad to be made a fool of. Vera’s need to be the best woman commanding officer she could be had been compromised by her lover’s selfish behavior with one of her pilot officers. If that wasn’t motive for murder, I didn’t know what was. In her pain and hurt Vera could easily have decided to eliminate the woman who had stolen her lover’s affections and either put some kind of poison in her food or sabotaged her plane. I remembered seeing her intense conversation with Mac Wilson outside the hangar when Griff and I had walked over to talk to Mac about Edwina’s crash. But that didn’t explain why either Letty, or Zofia, had to go the same way, unless they had seen something. I cursed the loss of the piece of film of our picnic.
But I had much more than Zofia’s observations on Edwina, Sir Basil, and Vera to be grateful for. How many times had I wished I knew a woman of my age who had lived a full life and who understood the convoluted tangle of doubts that so often exist between men and women? The thrill of attraction and delight in their company, and the fear that they might not feel the same way? I remembered one of my friends, in the village I grew up in, who had found the courage to come out of her lonely shell, and to believe in herself more, and was now living in blissful happiness with a husband who adored her.
“That’s it!” I said to Bess. “I am so terrified that he might not like me as much as I like him that I’ve been really off-putting.” I clutched at the brake on the handlebars too quickly and skidded on a patch of mud. I must have told you a million times just to be yourself, Ilona scolded. Stop being so remote, so self-contained, and let him know how you feel. No wonder he is confused!
But how did I let him know how I felt? By behaving like Edwina?
Dear God, how much instruction do you need? Look him in the eye; don’t look away. Stand closer to him, let him know how much you enjoy his company, and stop correcting him when he uses English words he doesn’t completely understand!
I pedaled fast and felt the key to Edwina’s digs slide forward in my coat pocket. If I got a wiggle on I had time to go to Front Street before my lunch with Didcote’s man-about-town, Sir Basil. “Come on, Bessie,” I called with more authority than I usually use, and she stopped loitering in a pile of leaves and came running after me.
I felt such an extraordinary sense of freedom and purpose as she ran alongside me that I actually laughed out loud and lifted my feet off the pedals as we sped down the slope of the lane. And then the hangar loomed up on our right, and I pressed the handbrake and trailed the tip of my shoe on the tarmac. My curiosity, stirred by the brief flare of headlights last night, and the rumble of a heavy load into the village much later, brought me to a full stop.
I stood astride the bike. The hangar was well back from the road in the woodland that fringed the airfield. There was a track leading off the lane. I wheeled the bike to the top of the track and looked down toward the hangar a couple of hundred feet away. This was not the building where we h
ad had our one and only conversation with Mac Wilson on the day after Edwina’s accident. This one was smaller, with two large sliding metal doors, one of which was partly open. I took a step forward onto the thick carpet of leaves that covered the track, and Bess, convinced that we had arrived at our destination, ran ahead of me.
“Come on, Bessie, this way,” I said, wheeling the bike back to the lane. “Bessie, come on, girl.”
Usually willing to join me, Bessie occasionally displays a strongly independent streak. Today was one of those days. Nose to the ground, she was following the scent of some woodland creature, her little bobtail wagging in excitement as she coursed forward over the fallen leaves. I laid the bike on its side and walked down the track. “Come on, Bess.” I smiled as I remembered what my grandfather always said when she was disobedient: “Don’t go after her; make her come to you.” And in exasperation: “It’s too late; now she thinks she’s in charge. No wonder she needs to be on a lead.”
“Bessie,” I implored. She turned her head but was instantly distracted, and on she went. I trotted after her through the trees and into the grassy clearing in front of the hangar, where we both stopped. Bessie because she had lost the scent of the trail she was on, and I because clearly marked in the wet grass were two sets of deep, wide tire tracks. I stopped and bent over them. The exposed ruts in the grass were fresh. They must be the tracks of the lorry I had seen last night on my way back to the inn. My pulse rate picked up, for there, off to the right, were two more pairs of tire marks. I sidled over to them. The distance between right side and left was far narrower, the tires thinner and less aggressive in tread. They were made by a lighter vehicle—the open-top type of vehicle that Americans call “jeeps” sprang to mind.
“Bess, now!” I hissed. “Come here now!”
The last thing in the world I wanted was for Mac Wilson to appear in the doorway of his hangar and ask me what I thought I was doing trespassing on the airfield. As I bent to scoop Bess up in my arms I investigated the marks more thoroughly. I noticed that the deeper tire tracks didn’t stop outside the doors to the hangar. The truck had driven inside it and had returned back up the track to the lane.
As I half ran, half walked back to my bike, I was convinced that I was being watched. Why hadn’t I left this part of the investigation to Griff? I picked up my bike, tumbled poor Bess into the basket, and, turning my head fractionally to the right, I looked back at the hangar’s doors. Someone had been watching us: a gloved hand slid the door closed, and my heart bumped so hard up into my throat that I could hardly breathe.
* * *
* * *
MY LEGS, FUELED by adrenaline, shot me up the hill and down again into the village in less than ten minutes. I whipped past the ironmongers and was panting for breath when I turned into Front Street. It is little more than a lane and has a terrace of fishermen’s cottages on its left side and the river on the other. It narrows down even further to a stone wharf, once a place where fishermen sold mackerel, and which had been turned into a yacht club in the early thirties. No one could drive a heavy truck, lorry, or petrol tanker down this, I thought as I got off Grable’s bike.
The cottages were tiny: two rooms downstairs and two bedrooms upstairs would have housed a family of six at one time. Since the yacht club had been built, most of them had been gentrified: bought by artists and weekenders who enjoyed sailing and who wanted running hot and cold and inside loos. They were pretty, much in the way of all seaside and river weekend cottages: blue front doors, window boxes full of red geraniums in summer, and most of them had names. Number twenty-one had a sky blue front door and a plaque that proclaimed its occupants had “Dunroamin.” This was where Mr. and Mrs. Franklin lived. It was at the end of the row, and a one-story stone building with a shed roof and its own front door painted to match its parent had a little sign over it saying “Dunroamin Too.” I flinched at the jokey names and immediately reminded myself not to be starchy.
I had barely raised my hand to knock when the door opened. A neatly dressed thin woman, wrapped up in a cheerful pinny, her hands dusted with flour, stood on the narrow threshold, her dark brown eyes curious and expectant. Behind her a stooped, elderly gray-haired man holding the Daily Telegraph in his hands looked over his wife’s shoulder. His gray brows came down and he took a half step backward as if annoyed at the interruption to his morning.
“Mr. and Mrs. Franklin?” I had the belt of my coat tied around Bess’s neck, but I needn’t have worried, because she was on her best behavior. Sitting tidily at my feet with her head cocked to one side, Bess would look completely at home curled up by the fireside of “Dunroamin.”
“Yes?” Mrs. Franklin said and wiped her hands on an apron with “A present from Margate,” embroidered across its bib.
I had rehearsed my introduction as I pedaled into the village.
“My name is Poppy Redfern. I’m from the Crown Film—”
“Oh yes, please do come in!” His expression no longer irritated, Mr. Franklin stepped aside and waved his newspaper in welcome.
Bess and I crowded into the little hall. It was strongly scented with lavender furniture polish, with a powerful undernote of rising damp.
“Edwina told us all about you, Miss Redfern,” Mrs. Franklin confided. “She was so excited about being in your film.” She pulled a hankie out from her cardigan sleeve. “She could hardly sleep for excitement the night before you arrived.”
This image of an enthusiastic young girl as she tossed sleeplessly in her bed with anticipation of a big day ahead was wildly out of place with everything I had seen and learned of the dead girl. Her husband was nodding as he shuffled along in his carpet slippers into the front parlor. Mrs. Franklin, although probably the same age, hopped forward to the parlor door, a quick little bird; her bright eyes never left my face.
“Well, Mother, are you going to put on the kettle?” he said in a surprisingly thick north-country accent. “Looks like this young lady could do with a cup, and one of your oatmeal biscuits to go with it. Aye, lass?”
“Oh, thank you, yes, please.” They were a generation who drank tea with their breakfast, again after lunch, and at four o’clock in the afternoon. “Putting on the kettle” was the first thing you did when someone came to call—an act of simple hospitality. They left the offer of coffee in the morning, sherry before lunch, and a whiskey and soda in the evening to the middle classes. Tea was what helped people like the Franklins through good times and bad.
Mr. Franklin ushered me to a chair upholstered in stiff, scratchy fabric and then lowered himself into an easy chair by the window that looked out onto the street. We could hear Mrs. Franklin clattering about in her kitchen and talking to the “nice little doggy” who had accompanied her there.
Two pale gray eyes regarded me for a moment. “Terrible thing to have happened,” Mr. Franklin said in his comfortable voice. “We were hoping someone from the airfield would come by and tell us about it. About how it happened.” There was no complaint, no censure that they had been forgotten. His tone was low pitched and his long, slow Yorkshire vowels pleasant and unhurried. “Not that we were expecting . . . a fuss. There is a war on after all.”
I wondered how the Franklins heard that their lodger would not be coming home to dinner. Had Mrs. Franklin made shepherd’s pie, and had they sat there waiting to hear her footsteps on the lane outside? They must have picked up their knife and fork and reassured each other that she was stuck at some airfield in Norfolk. “Be home tomorrow,” they had said.
“We heard all about it in the village,” he said in a reasonable voice, as if this was the way news of violent death was brought home. He jerked his head toward the kitchen. “Mother was up at the baker’s to get a loaf of Hovis and a tin of something for Edwina in case she was hungry when she got home. And she heard that the girl who flew the Spitfire had crashed.” He shook his head. “Terrible shock it was.” He lowered his voice. �
��Her heart’s not that strong, you see. Not after our lad”—he lifted a thickly veined mottled hand and pointed to a large photograph, framed in expensive silver, of a young man in his early thirties in uniform that dominated the mantelshelf—“was taken from us.” Obediently, I examined the smiling portrait. It was a nice, open face. His slicked-down hair lifted in a cowlick at the crown. His eyes were bright and clear. He looked what he evidently was: a good boy from a kind and sensible family.
I couldn’t bear the look on Mr. Franklin’s face as he acknowledged his son.
“Edwina was a very skillful pilot,” I said.
“Aye, she were that.”
“I only met her briefly, but she was so . . . so lively, so much fun. A . . .”
The briefest nod; eyes faded with age and grief flicked to the door as his wife came in with a tea tray. “She were a right live wire was our Edwina, wa’n’t she, love?”
Mrs. Franklin smiled. “She certainly brightened up our lives.” She set down the tray and took a seat, with Bess sitting as close to her as she could get. Mrs. Franklin fed her an oatmeal biscuit.
“Miss Redford was saying that she didn’t know Edwina that well,” her husband informed his wife.
“Well, she wouldn’t, would she, what with being with the film people and not the ATA. And I believe it is Miss Redfern, isn’t it?” She lifted the pot. “Milk in your tea, dear?”
“Yes, thank you. I can tell that you were like family to her,” I said, determined not to lead anyone into thinking that Edwina and I were best friends.
“And she to us, daughter she was to us was Eddie.”
Eddie. There was nothing about Edwina’s appearance and manner that made me think of her as an Eddie.