Olive Bright, Pigeoneer

by Stephanie Graves

  She looked at him—he very deliberately wasn’t looking at her—and her shoulders dropped.

  “I think I need to,” she said quietly. “Don’t you? It’s a joint effort, after all, and I’m not contributing here, not really.” In fairness, every one of her responsibilities could be taken up by someone else, whether it be her father, Jonathon, Mrs Battlesby, or the women of the WI. It wouldn’t be convenient, and it would likely not be easy, but it could be done. As things were, she was entirely dispensable.

  He was silent. No empty protestations for the sake of her feelings.

  Bear up, Olive. You wouldn’t want that in any case.

  “You won’t even miss me,” she said, bumping his shoulder with hers. “Too much to keep you busy. You’ll have to care for the pigeons, you know. Or do the best you can, anyway.” She’d write a letter, requesting that the Bright loft be given fresh consideration, but beyond that, it was out of their hands.

  Jonathon turned toward her, his face slack with worry.

  She gave his shoulders an encouraging squeeze, the string bag that held her library book bumping gently against his arm. “And don’t worry about this business with the NPS. Pigeons are extremely resourceful. With you watching over them, they’re bound to do just fine.”

  They had reached the edge of the village now and were walking along the river, the chattering redwings in the nearby hedgerow volubly conducting business of their own.

  “Maybe you’ll be posted to one of the services stationed nearby.” Jonathon sounded optimistic, and she couldn’t blame him. He was a protective, sensitive soul and was liable to worry if he couldn’t keep an eye on her himself.

  Olive thought it best to shy away from the honest answer, that she rather hoped to be posted somewhere a bit more dangerous, and was poised to agree with him as she switched the battery to her other hand. But in that in-between moment, a high, crisp voice reached their ears, coming from the other side of the brick wall that edged the riverbank, just over the footbridge.

  “You cannot possibly think to hide this information from the vicar.”

  Bafflement stole over Olive’s face as she strained to hear the response. Unfortunately, she had no luck discerning individual words amid the whisper-hissed reply. Given that it prompted a familiar, cracking thump, it seemed unlikely to be accommodating.

  “That’s Miss Husselbee,” Jonathon said in hushed tones redolent of both respect and uncertainty.

  Having been the cause of that umbrella thump that very morning, she nodded in recognition and tried to decide what to do. Should they stay put and risk eavesdropping on a private, and very awkward, conversation, or walk on and risk a direct confrontation?

  “It is very much my business,” Miss Husselbee began again, forestalling any decision on Olive’s part. “A person’s sordid past is the business of any good citizen.” Another punctuating thump.

  Olive’s eyes flared as she wondered whom Miss Husselbee might have cornered with such an accusation. Sordid past? Her mind boggled.

  “What’s sordid?” Jonathon had leaned in so close that his breath tickled her ear.

  “Shameful.” They shared a look.

  “Golly,” he said, subdued.

  The second voice, lashing out, louder now, shook them still. “For once in your tedious little life, mind your own business.”

  Olive took hold of Jonathon’s arm; she knew that voice.

  Miss Husselbee naturally ignored the suggestion. “I knew the moment you set foot in the village that you’d be trouble, and it’s rare that I’m mistaken.”

  “You know nothing about me,” came the scathing retort, “and you had better not spread your spy-gathered stories any further.”

  “Don’t presume to threaten me, young lady. Only one of us can claim the moral high ground, and it certainly isn’t you.”

  “How is it,” the voice said tightly, “that you’ve not yet been murdered in your bed?”

  Olive and Jonathon stood rigid with shock, as if listening to the latest instalment of Lights Out.

  Olive could well imagine the rolling of Miss Husselbee’s hazel eyes. “Leave it to you to be melodramatic about the whole affair. I have found you out, and it is my duty to ensure that you do not deceive someone who has placed his trust in you.”

  “Stay away from him, or I’ll—” The words were bitten off: either her plans were too unspeakable to utter or she hadn’t yet settled on a punishment worthy of such a betrayal.

  Judging by the frosty harrumph, the older woman wasn’t cowed and had simply walked on.

  Caught in the middle of a secret half revealed, Olive was fretting and distracted when Jonathon tugged her sleeve. As they stepped onto the bridge, a woman had emerged from behind the wall and was quickly turning away to walk briskly in the opposite direction. Olive stared after her, her thoughts echoing Jonathon’s quiet words: It’s Margaret.

  Wednesday, 8 January 1941

  Peregrine Hall, Pipley

  Hertfordshire

  The weather has been particularly disagreeable these past few days. However, I still manage to venture forth from the Hall at least once a day, swaddled in scarves and sturdy tweed. My reasons are partly self-serving—the fresh air and exercise are invigorating to both body and spirit—and partly altruistic. Someone must keep a sharp eye on the goings-on in this quiet corner of Britain, and I consider myself more than equal to the task.

  We are beginning to hunker down on the home front as that beastly Hun marches across Europe, wreaking havoc and hate. More of our boys have joined up, but an even greater number of new faces have joined the ranks of our little village. Over the past several months, we’ve had a steady trickle of evacuees from London and Southampton, my favourite among them a boy of twelve, who’s proven himself a stalwart young fellow despite the irresponsible antics of his mother. I admit I’m considerably less impressed with the woman who has somehow managed to ensnare our young vicar. If I believed in such nonsense, I’d say she’s bewitched him. For there is something about her that sets me the wrong way. A shortage of silk stockings, and the girl coats her legs in gravy browning! It requires only a single hungry dog to show her the error of her vainglorious ways; surely one will soon step up to do its duty. The other newcomers have, as yet, done nothing to call attention to themselves, either good or bad, but time will tell.

  V.A.E. Husselbee

  Chapter 3

  Thursday, 1st May

  “I wonder what went on in her sordid past,” Jonathon said ghoulishly as they walked on. He appeared relatively unaffected by the whole exchange, but Olive’s thoughts were in a whirl of confusion. “It looks like this is another mystery,” he said excitedly. Before she could answer, he went on, “Could she be a secret agent?” She shot him a quelling glare just as he turned to climb the steps to school. He’d managed only two before he turned, his eyebrows climbing, and said, his voice quiet with awe, “Or a double agent.” He clearly required no response, because with a flashing grin, he hurtled up the remaining steps and disappeared through the windowed door, his olive-green socks sliding lazily down his pale, thin legs.

  “It’s nothing,” she said to no one at all, not entirely convinced. Margaret had sketched in her past with broad strokes, but what had been left unsaid? For the second time that day, the Sergeant Major’s tongue wagging had sent her thoughts into a spiral of suspicion. Beastly woman!

  Margaret had been modelling ladies’ stockings and undergarments for a London department store when the Blitz started—a fact she’d already confided to the vicar, who also happened to be her fiancé. After too many consecutive nights spent in damp, overcrowded air-raid shelters, holding her breath as the bombs screamed down, she had decided to evacuate. With her father dealing with Nazi U-boats in the Atlantic and her mother long dead, she’d shown up in Pipley, somewhat at loose ends. Her aunt Eloise had dragged her along to the WI’s weekly knitting parties, where she and Olive had quickly become fast friends, bonding over their clumsy-fingered efforts.


  Judging by her friend’s blistering reaction, Miss Husselbee had somehow uncovered something more. Something Margaret wanted kept quiet. Or else she was creating drama for its own sake, and Margaret simply wasn’t in the mood to put up with it. It wouldn’t be the first time the pair had butted heads. With any luck, the matter could be cleared up that very afternoon, over a cup of tea and a quiet, calming chat. If nothing else, her friend could turn the whole thing into a riveting letter for some unsuspecting soldier.

  Her string bag had wrapped itself around her wrist, and as Olive let it unwind, her book paddling around in a circle, it struck her that the surreal conversation between Margaret and Verity Husselbee was exactly the sort that might take place in a Christie mystery. She scoffed. Whatever the trouble, it certainly wasn’t anything worthy of murder.

  Although according to Poirot, cold-blooded, deliberate murder was motivated by gain, jealousy, fear, or hate. Judging by the feelings of much of the village toward Miss Husselbee’s meddling ways, she might be a bit at risk. The bad luck of it was that the Sergeant Major was effectively the Miss Marple of the village—ferreting away little bits of gossip and then bringing them to bear on the guilty parties—although she tended to be much more strident about it. Who, then, would solve Miss Husselbee’s murder?

  Olive shrugged dismissively. If it came to that, she’d do it—she’d learned a good bit from Poirot’s order and method. He’d started out somewhat haphazardly, in her opinion, in The Mysterious Affair at Styles, but by Murder on the Orient Express, he was marvellously intuitive and efficient.

  Moments later she’d rounded the corner into the gravelled yard of Forrester’s Garage, conscious of a callus forming on her middle finger, under the handle of the accumulator. Her boots scuffed loudly as she pulled up short, her heart hitching as she stared at the coveralled man bent over the yawning hood of a battered green Wolseley. It was silly really. It couldn’t possibly be George, but she felt the aftershock just the same: an awful sense of emptiness low in her stomach. George had worked for his father before going off to train for the RAF, and she could always find him tinkering under the hoods of a rotating collection of automobiles. But no longer.

  She took a deep, stuttering breath and walked determinedly past the car, nodding at Tommy Marin, who’d peered over his shoulder at her, his cheek smeared with grime. Squinting into the relative darkness of the garage’s twin bays, she scanned the shadows for George’s father. She found him settled on a stool beside a wood stove, patching a bicycle tyre by the light of a lamp. He was hunched and rumpled, and he hadn’t shaved. She inhaled deeply as she approached, hoping for a whiff of lavender soap amid the pervasive scents of rubber and gasoline. George had always smelled of lavender soap, and Olive was feeling rather mawkish. But despite multiple sniffs, she couldn’t detect even a hint of it—Mr Forrester smelled of something else, which she couldn’t quite place.

  Judging by the shift in posture and the quizzical frown from Mr Forrester, she was making a cake of herself. She stepped clumsily backwards and bumped the accumulator against her knee. Biting back a curse, she smiled, her mouth tight with pain, and glanced down to see if any acid had leaked onto her trousers. “Morning, Mr Forrester.”

  He nodded. “Your repair holding up?”

  A few weeks ago, she’d shamefacedly wheeled her mangled bicycle into the garage after a collision with a signpost. She’d been tracking the flight path of a promising yearling as he’d made his way home from a launch at Hertford Castle, and not watching where she was going. She’d come away without injury, although George, who’d popped out from beneath a lorry like magic when she’d rolled in, had seen fit to work her pride over pretty well.

  “Perfectly,” she told him.

  He nodded and aimed his chin at the glass-encased accumulator dragging at her right hand. “You were just in Monday. It’s not lost its charge yet, has it?”

  The accumulator would run the wireless for at least a week, but her father had insisted they keep a spare, always charged and ready. “Not yet, but Jonathon would be lost without Mr Middleton’s gardening programme,” she said, poking fun at the BBC Home Service.

  Mr Forrester seemed not to have heard any but the first two words. Olive understood. She wasn’t in the mood for conversation, either, but one had to carry on.

  “Shall I put it with the others?” she asked.

  When he nodded, she skirted a jumble of old bicycle wheels, some warped, others missing spokes, all depressingly flat, to the sturdy wooden worktable against the back wall of the garage. The table was divided: on the left were the batteries that needed charging, and on the right, the ones ready to be picked up. Olive hoisted the beastly thing, being careful not to tip it, lest any acid drip. After turning it so that her surname, marked in white paint, was displayed, she pushed it back from the edge.

  “How’s Lady Camilla bearing up?” she asked solemnly. Olive hoped George’s mother’s grace and good humour would carry her through the fearful uncertainty of sending her only son off to complete his flight training.

  “Well enough,” he said gruffly, using his pocketknife to cut a length of patching tape before tucking the roll back into his shirt pocket. Olive understood what remained unspoken: As well as can be expected.

  “Right,” she said, not knowing what else to say. But then, figuring it couldn’t hurt, she leaned closer, lowered her voice, and admitted with a shy smile, “I sent a pigeon along with him.”

  His head came up to rake her with a suspicious glare. “I don’t want him in trouble.”

  Olive’s smile cracked as she stared at the angry caterpillar brows that had inched together over his nose. His eyes were bloodshot, and his cheeks stained a ruddy pink. “There won’t be any trouble.” She shook her head, wanting to dispel any whisper of uncertainty. “He’ll have released her before anyone even knows she’s there. Besides, these days, pigeons are war heroes—they may as well be mascots of the RAF.” Her smile was surely too wide and too bright, but he wouldn’t notice, because he was staring down at the bicycle tube caught between his knees.

  “Well,” she said finally, breaking the silence, which had grown awkward. “I’d better be off.” She shifted guiltily, poised to hurry away, but with her shoulders sagging under the weight of their shared worry, she turned back. “George will be all right, Mr Forrester. He’s brave and smart, and he’s got plenty of experience getting out of scrapes.”

  The phone rang then, shrill in the darkened garage. He lifted the receiver but didn’t put it to his ear, eyeing her with pointed dismissal. Eager to be away, she spun, her heel skidding slightly on an oily patch, and strode quickly back across the yard and around the high holly hedge. Alone again and free of the accumulator, she swung her arms and hummed a little tune, wondering if absolutely everything was destined to be awkward now.

  Rather conveniently, the lending library was tucked into the south-facing corner of the village hall. Maverick Darling had made his fortune in the mills and then had donated the funds for both the library and the village hall. And while half of the building had been requisitioned the previous year by the Women’s Voluntary Service and the Home Guard, the remainder continued to be put to regular use for meetings, lectures, and knitting circles, as well as organised games of whist, rummy, and badminton. The concerts, amateur theatricals, and dances, put on more frequently since the onset of the war, were highly anticipated and well attended, a much-needed respite from the constant worry and uncertainty that plagued them all.

  Olive slipped through the door and stood, her arm curled behind her, her hand still gripping the knob, as the peaceful silence and cosy warmth of the room settled around her like a hug. She took a deep breath, the crisp newness of spring fading under the layered scents of paper, leather, and lemon oil.

  Miss Rose was, as always, tucked behind the broad wooden librarian’s desk, hunched over the pages of the book open in front of her. In the dim lighting, she seemed pale as a watermark behind the delicately framed
spectacles linked to a chain around her neck.

  Olive took in her Peter Pan collar, dowdy cardigan, and the long, elegant fingers resting on the navy blue wool sleeves. While she couldn’t see them, Olive felt confident that the desk hid a plain brown tweed skirt and sensible shoes. It was always the same. Olive had often felt that when Violet had gone off, she’d left Rose trapped, Pipley’s very own Sleeping Beauty, locked away forever in a life of dreary monotony. Although, in fairness, no one would call her a beauty.

  Her hair was forever scraped into a severe bun that stretched the youthful, freckled skin of her face and highlighted slightly bulbous eyes as unfathomable as dark treacle. Her nose was a touch too long, her lips were too wide, and her teeth were rather a jumble. Her expression, as ever, was patient and reserved.

  “Hello, Olive.” Rose rarely raised her voice beyond a quiet murmur, even on the high street. She’d clearly adapted to a life in the library. “May I help you with something?”

  “Morning, Miss Rose,” Olive said, approaching the desk. Her gaze settled on the miniature bouquet of wildflowers corralled in a jam jar before shifting errantly to the book claiming pride of place. With a brittle smile, the librarian leaned forward, crossing her arms lightly over its pages.

  Olive slid her borrowed book forward. “I’m looking for another Christie mystery.” Propping her hip beside the delicate cluster of red campion and pignut, she added, “I’ve a mad crush on Hercule Poirot and his little grey cells.” She tapped her temple with her index finger, but when it became obvious that Miss Rose was completely distracted by the invasion of her personal space, she slipped her hand awkwardly back down again and fisted it at her side as she stood up straight.

  “I see,” said Miss Rose, peering up at her over the rims of the spectacles she used for reading. “I prefer Miss Marple, but to each her own.” Despite the broad-mindedness inherent in the words, the awkward shift in Miss Rose’s gaze seemed to indicate that Olive’s preference for a little Belgian with an egg-shaped head over an upright British lady was entirely perplexing. “I believe we have several of Mrs Christie’s novels on the shelf right now, if you want to check.”