by Tessa Arlen
It was well-known in the village that Sid had been soft on Doreen, but to everyone’s disappointment she had treated him with all the dismissive affection of a sister to a brother and had become engaged to the now-dead Brian Chambers. Granny had hit the nail on the head, of course: “Ivy would make a much more suitable girlfriend for someone as unassuming and gentle as Sid, because she is outgoing and not quite as self-interested as Doreen. I am sure the two of them will get together in time: Sid is what we used to call a late developer—just like dear Mr. Churchill.”
We had reached the village pond at the bottom of the green, and the late summer sun blazed its last rays across its surface, turning the water to mirror gold. A few straggling ducks were swimming to their nests in the reeds, creating bright orange Vs behind them. It was a tranquil scene; the air was quiet and still and it didn’t feel like there was a war on. It didn’t feel like someone in our village could be a murderer, either. I waited by the pond’s bank, staring steadfastly at the ducks to give Sid a moment to recover.
After a few moments, he squared his shoulders. “All right . . . sorry about that, it won’t happen again. Now, back to business. Where do we go next?”
“Quite a bit of walking involved in this job, I’m afraid, Sid. In fact, that’s all it is, really,” I reminded him as we crossed the end of the street and turned left down Smithy Lane. Sid is not much of an outdoors type. He had been sickly as a boy: earaches, colds, and bronchitis had blighted his childhood in winter. In summer he stayed inside to avoid hay fever and stuck stamps in his album while we swam in the river and picnicked at the top of Marston Downs. He had failed his army physical because he had flat feet, couldn’t possibly join the RAF because he was color-blind, and had been turned down by the navy because of his asthma.
We walked past the Newcombes’ house and went on to the smithy at the bottom of the lane. Sid was more relaxed now that we had passed all the Newcombe family landmarks. “I’m building battleships at the moment—from kits. Finished three of them already; the detail on them is wizard.”
“I thought all battleships were the same.”
Sid snorted as if girls could hardly be expected to know the difference. “Oh no, there are many different classes: dreadnoughts, frigates, aircraft carriers. I’m going to build a model of HMS Ark Royal. Dreadnoughts are top-hole; they . . .” He launched into the Royal Navy’s inventory, and somewhere around an avid description of minesweepers I had a conversation in my head with my fictional heroine, Ilona, about men who love war.
I was grateful when we reached the lane that led up to the Wilkeses’ farm. “Oh dear,” I said, not feeling in the slightest put out. “Mrs. Wilkes hasn’t drawn her scullery blackout. We’d better remind her.” It was the tiniest crack of light, but I needed a respite from Sid’s passion for the armed forces. I also wanted to see how Audrey Wilkes was taking the death of one of her friends. We walked up the lane and I knocked on Mrs. Wilkes’s kitchen door.
“Good evening, Miss Redfern . . . Oh dear, have I forgotten? I am so sorry; we have been at sixes and sevens all day.” Mrs. Wilkes ushered us into her kitchen and adjusted the blackout. “I just can’t get little Doreen Newcombe out of my mind. Such a wicked thing to happen. What is wrong with the world? Nothing has been the same since this dreadful war. Both Audrey and I have been that upset.” Mrs. Wilkes is a tall, broad-shouldered woman, and her daughter takes after her. Both Audrey and her mother dwarf Mr. Wilkes, who is a short, upright, wiry individual with gray hair and a neatly clipped beard.
Audrey looked up from a magazine she was leafing through at the kitchen table and nodded. Her face wore its usual shut-down, brooding expression. Something about her silence made me want to find out what was going on behind that blank facade. After all, one of her childhood friends had been brutally killed, and you don’t find out important information by being polite all the time. Ilona never lets that sort of thing get in the way of her reporting.
“I was talking to Mrs. Martin the other night, and she told me how helpful you had been in making the church crypt comfy in case we have an air raid.” No answer. I was determined not to be shut up, so I blundered on. “It was a good idea to run an electric cord down into the crypt, so we can make hot milk for the children.” Audrey shrugged her shoulders and turned another page of her magazine. It was an old one, prewar, featuring Hollywood’s favorite matinée idol and heartthrob: “Errol Flynn is Captain Blood,” the headline read over a picture of Flynn with shoulder-length curls and a doublet unbuttoned to his waist.
Audrey examined the photograph for quite some time before she said, “I thought the kiddies might like a cuppa something hot; it can get cold down there.” Her tone was expressionless, but her deep-set eyes were watchful. At the sound of her voice, Bess, who had been sitting quietly at my feet, went and stood by the door.
“Terrible thing to have happened to your friend, Audrey. I’m so sorry, you must feel miserable.”
She continued to study her magazine, and without lifting her head she said, quite casually, “You wouldn’t catch me running around with a Yank, but Doreen was always a flirt.”
It was such an implacable announcement, devoid of any compassion. I heard sensitive Sid’s sharp intake of breath as Mrs. Wilkes rushed in. “Doreen was always so full of life.”
Audrey reached out a hand without lifting her eyes from the page and picked up an apple, and Mrs. Wantage’s words came back to me: “I’m worried sick about Ivy. She’s been crying all day and hasn’t eaten a thing.” I heard Audrey’s savage first bite as Sid and I said our good nights and followed a jubilant Bess down the drive and up the lane toward the second of the village’s watering holes.
“She’s always been that way,” Sid said.
“What way?” I was Ilona again—on the hunt for information.
“Grumpy . . .” He stopped and groped for the right word. “No, she’s more like . . . surly: never cracks a smile, that one. I think she resented Doreen—resented her popularity and how much people were drawn to her. She wasn’t very popular at school; they used to call her Big Aud. But she’s not a bad sort—really.”
“Children can be very cruel,” I said, remembering my boarding school and the bullies who reigned over us.
He chuckled in the dark. “No one teased Audrey much. She was fearsome if she lost her temper. She threw Brian Chambers off the climbing frame when she was only eight. He must have been at least eleven at the time. He landed on his arm and broke it.”
My mind went back to Audrey hunched over the kitchen table. I saw again her broad-palmed hands, her strong fingers turning the pages of her Hollywood magazine. Doreen was such a tiny little thing, with delicate wrists and ankles and a long, slender neck. I shivered, lost in dark thoughts, as we trudged onward into the night.
Sid resumed his paean to machines of destruction, this time to the great British Lancaster bomber. “The Lanc is primarily a night bomber, Poppy, but is also used for daylight precision bombing and can carry the twenty-two-thousand-pound Grand Slam earthquake bombs. The largest payload—”
“Here’s the Wheatsheaf, and it’s easily another half an hour to closing time!” I cried, not wanting to hear any more about machines of death and destruction. “We can take a break and have a shandy if you like.”
The moon had gone behind a cloud and Sid was a dark shape in the road next to me, but I saw his head whip round. “My mum made me promise not to touch a drop until I turned twenty-one.”
“You can have just plain lemonade, then. Come on, Sid, my treat.”
But he shook his head. “And that means that I don’t go into a pub until I am twenty-one either.”
* * *
—
IT SEEMED LIKE hours had creaked by as we plodded back into the village. Sid was dragging his feet as we tramped over the wooden footbridge past Streams Farm, and as we turned into Water Lane, I noticed that he was limping.
“No need to come any further, Sid,” I said, desperate to be rid of his sighs and complaints and to return to my thoughts about Audrey and her friendship with Doreen. “The church is just a bit up the hill, and then it’s only a few yards past the vicarage to Reaches Lane.”
“Yes, but that was where Doreen was found—in the churchyard. That place gives me the willies, anyway.” I could see he was torn between getting his boots off and his duty.
“But I am not going into the churchyard, Sid. You go on in; it’s well past eleven.” He stood, unsure, by the side of the road, his hand already on the garden gate, his right shoulder slumped forward with the weight of his gun. I was walking away from him toward the churchyard with Bess racing alongside me. “I’ll see you tomorrow night, then, Poppy,” he called after me.
Saint Bartholomew’s Church and its surrounding graveyard sit up on a rise, buttressed at their steeper side—the side I was approaching from—by a flint stone wall. It is not a steep gradient, but whether it was the deep dark, or just the knowledge of what had happened here in the middle of last night, I was out of breath as I came level with a grove of ancient yew trees on the edge of the churchyard. Their heavy boughs blocked the pale light of the stars and I couldn’t see a foot in front of me as I stumbled on the cobbles of the lane, wishing I hadn’t been quite so quick to say good night to Sid.
The absolute silence under the trees felt almost threatening, and the hair on the nape of my neck lifted as I peered into heavy shadows for Bess. “Here, girl—here, Bessie,” I called—to no avail.
And then the still night air was shattered by a scream. It echoed across to me from the meadow below the lane: a harsh, plaintive cry that sent shivers up and down my already crawling spine. I must have been terribly on edge, because of course I knew that it was only the call of a vixen on the hunt, but the almost human sound had added to my worst imaginings. The palms of my hands were clammy as I picked up the pace, humming aloud to keep up my spirits. As I came level with the churchyard’s tall hedge I heard another sound: a movement in the undergrowth and then the brittle snap of a tree branch. Heart pounding, I switched on my torch, pointing the low beam to a break in the hedge.
Silly girl, I told myself, it’s nothing to be afraid of: just field mice or rabbits scared by the vixen. But rabbits don’t break branches, and mice are too light to disturb the undergrowth that audibly. I was so demoralized that I didn’t dare turn my back on the hedge, not even to run down to the vicarage and pay the Reverend Fothergill a call. I wondered whether he or his housekeeper would hear me if I shouted for help.
Rooted to the spot, I peered into the hedge. The shadow underneath it was unfathomable, as if a deep cavern had opened into the earth. I had never felt this nervous alone at night before. All my earlier curiosity about who could have reason to kill Doreen Newcombe evaporated as the beam of my torch danced up and down in my trembling hand.
I drew a long breath to calm my nerves. My heartbeat slowed, and I was just beginning to laugh at my earlier fears when I heard the unmistakable sound of someone, or something, moving toward me through the undergrowth.
I groped for my whistle on its lanyard, raised it to lips so dry I had to hold it between my teeth. My torch beam swept the bank again, and in its feeble light I saw, quite clearly, a hand lifted to shield a pair of eyes. I took in a breath to whistle for help. It was at this moment that Bess erupted from the hedgerow on the other side of the lane, barking hysterically, as she threw herself forward. I let the whistle drop from my mouth, because it was Ivy Wantage warding off affection from Bess joyfully leaping around her like a little porpoise.
“Can you turn that off, please? For heaven’s sake, Poppy, you’re blinding us.” And out from under the shelter of the trees came Joe Perrone and Ivy. My laugh was almost hysterical.
“Ivy?” I said. “What on earth are you doing here at this time of night?” And why would you want to be in this terrible place where your best friend was killed? was my second thought.
“What was that terrible cry?” the sergeant asked. “Made my blood run cold—especially as we were standing in the middle of a cemetery.”
I was grateful they couldn’t see how scared I had been. “It was a vixen—she was probably hunting.”
“A vixen?”
“A female fox.”
“It was like something out of a ghost story!” He laughed, and Ivy smiled, but her face was wan and tired, and I could see dark smudges under her eyes.
“Ivy, does your mum know where you are?”
Joe put a protective arm around her shoulders. “She’s really upset, and she wanted to bring flowers.” He shrugged his right shoulder behind him toward the laurel hedge where Doreen had been found not twenty-four hours ago. “Anyway, she is quite safe with me. But you’re right; her mom might be worried if she found she wasn’t at home.”
He jumped down from the bank and turned to help Ivy down. Standing together in the lane, we made an awkward trio.
“I am so terribly sorry about Doreen, Ivy, but what made you come here of all places?”
“I just wanted to . . .” She paused and hung her head in misery. “Wanted to . . . bring her . . .” She gave up and started to cry, dashing the tears out of her eyes with the back of her hand.
I put my arm around her shoulders, and she sagged against me, weeping incoherently about Doreen. “She feels awfully cold, Sergeant. We should get her home. Come on, Ivy, let’s get you moving.” I chaffed her cold hands, and then something made me say, “I’ll walk along with you.” I had no intention of leaving Ivy alone with a man she had known for only seven days.
FIVE
Not a single Yank in sight, for once.” Sid spoke for the rest of the village as we tramped down the High Street the following evening. “Why didn’t they have them all confined to base right from the start instead of waiting until this morning? Then perhaps this terrible thing would never have happened.”
We crossed the green in the direction of the Rose and Crown. “There were nearly always four or five of them lounging around the pub at opening time. I wouldn’t mind that,” he said, making a huge concession to men who drink beer, “but they were so loud. Why did they have to shout out to their friends the way they did?”
I had rather liked the banter that flew back and forth between American airmen with their pints of beer, calling out to their pals sauntering down the High Street to join them, hands in pockets, caps tilted: warriors returning victorious from battle. Their teasing was always good-natured, in that slightly mocking way of men who work and live together. Yet at the same time it was clear that their sociable ribbing was a front that preserved distance over genuine emotion. When a full squadron took off in a roar of petrol fumes and smoke in immaculate formation, it rarely came home complete. We had seen the ragged numbers returning across the horizon of our village and knew that there were faces we were just getting to know and voices we had begun to recognize in our pub that we would no longer hear again. Little Buffenden had learned not to ask after familiar faces now missing. In the short weeks that they had been with us, the village had accepted our Friendly Invasion.
“I am sorry not to see them on the green. I think they brought hope to our lives when they first came,” I said to Sid. “Not just in helping us to win the war, but in helping us to believe that our fear, our deprivations, would be a thing of the past, that we can believe that the end is within reach.” I didn’t say that their youthful exuberance, their swagger, and their laughing banter made our village community a brighter and happier place. I knew where Sid stood on our Yank invasion.
“It would be an affront to our grief if th
ey were still lounging about the place as if nothing had happened. It is right and proper for them to be kept on base.” Sid’s bunions were playing up, and army-issue boots didn’t help. He had also pulled a muscle in his shoulder, so I carried his Sten gun when no one could see us, out on the country lanes.
“They have been flying missions all week: night and day,” he complained. “We can hear them taking off even down in our little dip in the road. I expect they are going to Germany to revenge the Luftwaffe’s raid on Ipswich and Canterbury, if it was Ipswich and Canterbury they were aiming for,” he scoffed. Like all patriotic Englishmen, he made a point to be sneery about anything German.
“Why on earth would the Luftwaffe bomb Ipswich and Canterbury? I thought they concentrated on our industrial towns.”
“Because they are old towns. It’s all part of these . . .” He hesitated over his pronunciation. “These Bed-something raids.”
I hadn’t a clue what he was talking about and decided that I must make an effort to listen to the evening news more often. If I relied on Sid for what was happening in the war, I would end up sounding as half-baked as he did.
All I had thought about for the past two days was who could possibly have a reason to kill Doreen. Unlike everyone else in the village, I couldn’t quite bring myself to suspect Joe Perrone simply because he was an American. But I had been reluctant to let him take Ivy home alone when I had bumped into them both outside the churchyard. I thought about this for a moment. Had I gone with them to see Ivy home because I felt naturally protective toward her, and she was so distressed, or was it because her friend’s brutally murdered body had been found under a hedge the night before and we were all at risk now? My sense of Joe Perrone was that he was what we call a “nice” boy; at least that had been my impression.