Catching the Wind

by Melanie Dobson

  “Baby’s ready to come, whether or not we are.”

  The front door opened, and she pulled Rosalind back into the trees. The policemen marched toward their car, Frau secured between them. Her head was down, resigned, it seemed, to her fate.

  Brigitte probably should have wondered what would happen now that Frau was gone. Would they continue receiving their boxes of food from Breydon Court? The food rations from town?

  But as the car drove away that afternoon, all Brigitte could think about was Rosalind and the baby about to be born.

  CHAPTER 39

  _____

  Quenby brought an orchid for Mrs. Douglas, the petals a dark shade of plum. The woman had dressed in a neat peach-colored suit for their meeting, and she wore a strand of pearls and polished ivory pumps.

  “You look lovely,” Quenby said as she extended her gift.

  The woman smiled from her high-back chair next to the hospital bed, placing the flower on the tray beside a blue ceramic teapot, steam curling from its spout, and a plate of digestive biscuits. “Thank you for returning, Ms. Vaughn.”

  “Please call me Quenby.” She gently shook the woman’s hand, mindful of her tender translucent skin.

  “I hope it wasn’t too much trouble.”

  Quenby thought about her first venture alone on England’s roads and was quite pleased with herself. She’d left Lucas an hour ago, at the train station in Bromley, and her confidence was bolstered by the time she reached Tonbridge. “It wasn’t any trouble at all.”

  “I can’t stop thinking about Olivia Terrell,” Mrs. Douglas said as she dashed each cup with milk and then poured the tea. “Could you please remind me why you’re trying to locate her?”

  “I’m searching for the evacuee girl who lived with the Terrells,” she explained. “When Mrs. Terrell moved away, Brigitte went with her.”

  Mrs. Douglas scooted toward the edge of her chair. “Do you know what happened to Mrs. Terrell?”

  “Lady Ricker sent her to live in a house near the coast, but I don’t know where she went after the war.”

  Mrs. Douglas shook her head sadly. “So many people were killed in those days. My father died at the Biggin Hill aerodrome in December 1941.”

  Quenby set her biscuit back on her plate. “Did he work at the airfield?”

  “Yes, he was an instructor.”

  “I found some photographs of the airfield at the Terrells’ house.”

  “What sort of photographs?” Mrs. Douglas asked.

  “The sort that might have educated the German military.”

  Mrs. Douglas closed her eyes briefly and then opened them. “I suppose that doesn’t surprise me. Mother suspected Eddie Terrell was up to no good. He was curious about the RAF and even went with my father several times to visit the base. Eddie told my parents he was interested in joining the RAF, but he stayed at Breydon Court.”

  “Did your mother continue to work at Breydon Court?”

  She nodded. “Lord Ricker died before the war ended, and then Lady Ricker took her two children to live in London.”

  “And your mother was out of a position—”

  “Oh no. Lady Ricker kept her on the payroll as a housekeeper until the house was transferred to the Dragues. My mother followed the lives and careers of the Ricker children as they grew. Kept lots of clippings and such from the papers.” She smiled. “My mother liked to keep things.”

  In Quenby’s work, she had a fondness for people who kept things, especially pictures and papers. “Why did your mother tell you so much about Eddie Terrell?”

  “Come with me.” Mrs. Douglas leaned forward on her walker and motioned for Quenby to follow her. They walked around the kitchen, into an office next to it.

  The room was filled with boxes and stacks of papers, one pile of boxes looking like a tower of Jenga blocks, ready to tumble onto the floor. Mrs. Douglas’s walker maneuvered precariously close to the tower, but she moved smoothly around it. Then she knocked on a box with the leg of her walker. “Would you be so kind as to open this?”

  “Of course.” Quenby removed the cardboard boxes from the top of the stack and placed the selected one on the desk.

  Mrs. Douglas peered inside; then she riffled through the manila files. “Here it is.” She pulled out a file. “Eddie was usually behind his camera, but someone must have borrowed it.”

  Quenby studied the black-and-white picture of a man leaning against a polished newel post, his legs crossed casually as if he didn’t have a care in the entire world. Beside him was a prim-looking woman, probably in her late twenties, but she looked a decade older than her husband with her lips pressed firmly together, her hands clasped in front of her straight skirt.

  “Is this Olivia?”

  “It is. Quite an unhappy-looking woman.”

  Quenby agreed. “How did you get her picture?”

  “My mother found it in Lady Ricker’s bureau, years after the family moved out.” Mrs. Douglas opened a drawer and took out a clear cover with newspaper clippings inside. “I don’t think she had any qualms about taking it. She said no one was left to appreciate the beautiful things anymore. The Dragues, she feared, would dispose of it all.”

  Mrs. Douglas plopped one of the newspaper articles onto the desk. Eddie Terrell was on the front page, smiling back at them. The date was May 1965.

  Quenby glanced between the glossy photograph and newsprint. “He looks almost the same—”

  Mrs. Douglas tapped the paper. “Read the caption.”

  Quenby read it twice.

  It wasn’t Eddie Terrell in the photograph. It was Lord Anthony Ricker, the Rickers’ only son.

  “I see,” Quenby said before looking up again. Apparently Eddie Terrell had known Lady Ricker quite well.

  Mrs. Douglas’s gaze was intense. “Do you?”

  “Indeed.”

  “Well, then.” Mrs. Douglas shuffled toward the door. “Shall we finish our tea?”

  “When did Eddie pass away?” Quenby asked as she returned to her chair.

  “I’m not certain, but Mother said there were rumors that he died before the war ended. He went on an errand for Lady Ricker in 1943 and never returned.”

  “Perhaps he went to live with Olivia.”

  Mrs. Douglas picked up her teacup and took a sip. “The driver took Lady Ricker to find Eddie, but they returned without him or his car. There were whispers that Eddie had been murdered.”

  “What did the driver say?”

  “Nothing, to my knowledge. Apparently he died a few weeks later as well.”

  Quenby shivered. “Did your mother think Eddie was helping the Nazis?”

  “I wouldn’t accuse anyone . . . ,” she began, tea splashing over the side of her cup.

  “I’m not looking for accusations, Mrs. Douglas. I’m trying to find the truth so I can locate the girl who lived with Olivia and him.”

  Mrs. Douglas set her teacup back on its saucer. “Mother didn’t know if Eddie was a Fascist, but his grandfather was German. That’s why Olivia lost her job with Churchill. Everyone was suspect at the time.”

  “Perhaps Eddie was suspect for good reason,” Quenby surmised.

  “At the time, many British people thought Hitler was going to win.”

  Had Eddie lost his life on one of his trips to Newhaven? If so, did one of Hitler’s men kill him or had Olivia finally had enough? Maybe she was tired of living in that dump of a house, of being Eddie’s pawn.

  Quenby’s mind flashed back to those tombstones she’d seen, tangled up in the weeds near the Mill House.

  Was it possible that Eddie was buried there? If so, what happened to Olivia and Brigitte after he died?

  Quenby cruised south toward Newhaven on the A26, a file filled with photographs and newspaper articles from Mrs. Douglas on the seat beside her. The Mill House was the last place where Brigitte was known to be alive. And the place, Quenby suspected, where Eddie Terrell had died.

  Olivia had given up her job for Eddie. Was it
worth giving up her entire life to become a traitor with him? This Eddie must have been some charmer. Married to Olivia but sleeping with his boss while Olivia operated a safe house for them. Almost as if he and Lady Ricker had sent her away so the two of them could carry on their affair in private.

  A real hero of a guy.

  If someone had murdered Eddie, would Olivia have stayed with Brigitte at the Mill House? Quenby doubted it, unless Lady Ricker paid her handsomely to cooperate—and she never found out about the affair.

  Then again, Quenby was assuming Olivia was a victim here. She could have supported Hitler’s cause on her own. Perhaps she’d even married Eddie because he was a Fascist. It was entirely possible that she knew about the affair and didn’t care.

  Her phone rang, and she glanced down and saw Lucas’s number.

  “You’re not talking while you’re driving, are you?”

  She pulled into the parking lot of a Shell station. “Of course not.”

  “Very good,” he said. “The plane will be waiting for us tomorrow morning at Biggin Hill. We’ll fly back on Wednesday.”

  “We don’t need to stay in Florida an entire day.”

  “Yes, we do. The pilots need to rest at least ten hours before we fly again.”

  “What are we going to do for ten hours?”

  “I say we go to Disney World.”

  Her stomach rolled. Surely Lucas must not know what happened to her there. “I’ve already been.”

  “But I never have.”

  “Why not go to Disneyland in Paris?”

  “Because I’m not going to be in Paris tomorrow,” he said. “This will be fun.”

  Fun for him, perhaps, but not so much for her.

  “Are you headed back to London now?” he asked.

  “No, I decided to detour down to Newhaven.”

  “Newhaven is hardly a detour.”

  “Fair enough,” she said before telling him about the conversation she’d had with Mrs. Douglas. “There’s a cemetery near the Mill House. I thought Eddie Terrell might be buried in it.”

  “You think someone murdered Eddie and then gave him a funeral?”

  “I know it’s a long shot, but I want to check.”

  “Kyle’s probably waiting to run you off the road again so he can rescue you.”

  “I doubt it.”

  “Should I take the train down to meet you tonight? We can visit the cemetery early in the morning and then drive to the airport together.”

  “I’ll be fine,” she insisted. Venturing into the woods north of Newhaven was nothing compared to going back to Florida. “Do you mind if I keep your car overnight?”

  “I don’t mind, but—”

  “Yes?”

  “Please be careful.”

  “I will.”

  It was almost six o’clock now. She wouldn’t race against the setting sunlight again to find the cemetery or risk having to knock on Kyle’s door after dark. But if she hurried, she would be able to visit the library before it closed. Eddie Terrell might not have had a formal burial, but if he had been murdered at the Mill House, perhaps the local newspaper wrote a story about it.

  After hanging up with Lucas, she phoned Chandler to tell her she was returning to Newhaven. Evan hadn’t contacted her, she reported on her boss’s voice mail, but the more she searched, the more complicated—and disturbing—the story about Lady Ricker had become.

  As she drove south, the realization of what the Terrells and Lady Ricker had done almost overwhelmed her. They had conspired with the Nazis to kill people like Mrs. Douglas’s father. Promoted the hatred and annihilation of an entire race of innocent people. How could they justify what they had done, supporting a man who was slaughtering innocent men, women, and children?

  Perhaps they didn’t know the extent of what was happening in Germany during the war.

  But perhaps they did.

  Chapter 40

  Mulberry Lane, April 1943

  “They have Olivia,” Lady Ricker whispered, tipping her straw hat closer to her eyes with her gloved hands, perusing the gardens beside him.

  Eddie stabbed the hoe into the soil and glanced both ways. Lady Ricker would never come out to the gardens unless it was urgent.

  Two lads were planting seed for him nearby. They were from the village, hired for a few months to help him and the two POWs they retained. It was necessary to hire outsiders to maintain their food supply, but they had to be even more cautious with their words outside the house.

  “I’ll come to your room to discuss it,” he replied, glancing over at the boys. “This afternoon.”

  It would be a double advantage for him. He hadn’t been invited up to her room since Rosalind arrived.

  “You can’t,” she whispered. “Lord Ricker is coming from London.”

  He took her arm, motioning her away from the curious eyes of the workers. Lady Ricker didn’t put much stock in the lips of the lower class. No one, she thought, would believe the gossip of a farmhand, but Eddie knew well the power of a workingman to light a match of speculation. These days one didn’t need much more to start a wildfire.

  As they walked along the stone pathway, he pointed at the pond strewn with lilies as if he were giving her a tour of her land. “Who has Olivia?” he asked.

  “The investigators from Scotland Yard.”

  He groaned. All it would take was the slightest twist of his wife’s arm, and she would spill everything about their work. And she’d take down Eddie and Lady Ricker with her.

  He opened a gate, and they slipped into the secluded woods of the deer park. Only the herd and birds were behind these gates, both too busy rummaging for food to care about them. If anyone asked about their walk, he would say that Lady Ricker wanted an account of her animals.

  But he doubted anyone would ask. Most of the staff knew he and her ladyship had a relationship that crossed a line or two. If the truth came out, he guessed none of them would be surprised.

  In the seclusion of trees, he turned toward Lady Ricker. The lines fanning out from the woman’s eyes had deepened, her skin a gray pallor in the forest light. “Are you certain they have Olivia?”

  She nodded. “A friend phoned this morning.”

  He wrung his hands, pacing between the mossy trees. They must come up with a way to stop her from talking. “Perhaps your friend—”

  “He’s already taken care of it.”

  His nod was firm. Brisk. Olivia had soldiered alongside them for four years, attempting to gather information from Winston Churchill himself before he became prime minister. Then she’d reluctantly agreed to help Lady Ricker. Her work the past few years had proved to be invaluable.

  But sometimes soldiers had to be sacrificed for the common good.

  He’d never intended to continue on as a married man after Hitler invaded anyway. He’d sacrificed much for the cause as well and was ready to reap all that he had sown without a wife in tow.

  Eddie leaned back against the trunk of a tree. “Our work is compromised.”

  Lady Ricker nodded. “An investigator is planning to return here in the morning to search for you.”

  He ripped off a spindly branch and broke it into pieces. The man had already said, the last time he met with Eddie, that he thought Eddie as guilty as men like Oswald Mosley and William Joyce. It was only the small matter of time and facts, he’d said, before he uncovered the truth.

  Lady Ricker reached for his hand, her voice light again. “You needn’t worry, Eddie.”

  “What if Olivia already talked?”

  “The only significant thing she said was that you’d left Breydon Court. You’re supposed to be working at a farm near Manchester now.”

  He pushed away from the tree. “Good girl,” he muttered. Olivia had been faithful until the end. “If I’m supposed to be in Manchester, why is an investigator coming here?”

  “Because he had no luck finding you up north, just as he’ll have no luck finding you here.” She paused. “But we sti
ll have a problem.”

  “There’s always a problem.”

  “The investigator is planning to search the Mill House as well. My acquaintance said no one mentioned finding Rosalind, but if she’s still there, I suspect she’ll be glad to talk to him, as long as the spotlight is shining on her.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me about Rosalind before she arrived here?”

  “I can’t tell you every detail of my life.”

  “That’s more than a detail.” He kicked the dirt. “She’s like one of those delay-action bombs. Heaven help us when she detonates.”

  Lady Ricker removed a cigarette from her reticule, her hand shaking ever so slightly when she lit the match. The fug of smoke curled around her neck like a gray stole, and she looked up at him in the familiar way he knew before she asked him about taking on another job.

  “She’s not going to detonate.” She took another drag on the cigarette. “At least not publicly.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because you’re going to pay her a visit early tomorrow, before the inspector arrives. And not the kind involving biscuits and tea.”

  “You want me to—”

  “Hush,” she snapped.

  Unbidden, his feet paced to the tree across the knoll and back again. He was an innovator. A photographer. And a gardener for Lady Ricker. But an assassin?

  Plenty of people had died as a result of his work, but he was much more comfortable in his role as an accomplice. Even if he despised Rosalind—and he did hate the woman for her utter disdain—he’d never directly taken a life before.

  “It’s imperative that you do this, Eddie,” Lady Ricker implored. Then she removed a brown bag from her reticule and held it out to him. “Here’s enough money for you to disappear until the war is over.”

  He stared at the bag. Blood money.

  “If you don’t stop her, Scotland Yard will have more than enough evidence to hang you and me.”

  Eddie sighed, resolute. He had no other choice. “I’ll leave at first light.”