Lady Ricker patted his face, not like a lover but as a mother would do for her child. And in that moment, he knew she was saying good-bye. At least for now. They would keep each other’s secrets until they celebrated together under Hitler’s reign.
“I will find you, after the war.”
“Perhaps you will,” she said, but her words lacked conviction.
They’d had plans for their future, to share the bounty of treasure from Hitler’s cache. He wouldn’t be dismissed with a bag of pounds sterling for killing her daughter.
“I will find you,” he repeated so she would understand. He expected much more for all he’d done—and was about to do.
When she turned to walk away, he called out. “What should I do with the German girl?”
She glanced back. “Whatever you’d like.”
Leaning against the tree, he glanced into the bag at the stack of crisp new banknotes.
At least there was a lining of silver in this situation.
After Rosalind was gone, he could do exactly what he wanted with the girl.
CHAPTER 41
_____
Annie, the Newhaven librarian, yanked out a long drawer from the catalog file and began searching through hundreds of cards for a reference on Eddie Terrell. “Did you find your street?”
“I did,” Quenby said. “It was close to the River Ouse.”
“You never know what you’re going to find along that river. Or in it, for that matter.”
“I prefer to stay above the water.”
“I don’t blame you. Did you know Virginia Woolf drowned in the river, up near her home in Rodmell?”
Quenby shook her head.
“She filled her pockets with stones during World War II and stepped right into the current.”
Quenby shivered. She’d known the writer had committed suicide, but not the details. The thought of it only added to the creepiness of the river, the ghosts that lingered.
“Here.” Annie plucked out a card. “What name did you say again?”
“Terrell. Eddie Terrell.”
“There’s no Eddie recorded in here, but I have a card on an Olivia Terrell.” She held it out. “Would you like to see it?”
“Very much.” Quenby took the handwritten card. In 1943, it said, there was a newspaper article recording Olivia’s death.
Had Eddie and Olivia died together that year?
“Do you want me to retrieve the microfilm?” Annie asked.
“Yes, please.”
“It will take me a few minutes.”
As Quenby waited in a chair, she checked her e-mail again. Alexander had replied to her note, confirming that he could meet her tomorrow, early afternoon, at a tearoom near the riverfront in Jacksonville. Seconds after she replied, Annie returned with a reel containing the Sussex Express.
“Do you want me to set up the reader for you?” she asked.
Quenby shook her head. “I can do it.” She might not know how to operate a microscope, but she had plenty of experience with microfilm.
“The article ran the second week of April.”
After threading the film, Quenby turned on the light and began ticking through the pages. It didn’t take long to find the story. Three paragraphs to commemorate the life and death of Olivia Terrell. It was longer than an epitaph, she supposed, but it still didn’t seem nearly long enough to remember someone’s life.
According to the article, Olivia had been residing at a house near Camford Mill. She was taken into custody on suspicion of treason, though she was never convicted of this charge. Several days after she arrived at London’s Holloway Prison, she hanged herself in her cell. No one knew how she obtained the rope.
Mr. Williams, the postman, said Mrs. Terrell had been living at the Mill House for approximately two years while her unnamed husband was soldiering for the British army. She received regular parcels, packaged with no return post. And he told investigators that, to his knowledge, she never sent any mail.
According to Mr. Williams, Mrs. Terrell had a daughter living with her, though upon inquiry, a child was never found. Police requested any additional information as to Mrs. Terrell’s activities be directed to them.
Perhaps Mrs. Douglas was confused, like Mr. Knight. Perhaps she’d remembered her mother’s story wrong, and it was actually Olivia who’d died instead of Eddie that year.
Yet Mrs. Douglas said that there were rumors Eddie had been murdered. And Lady Ricker, Quenby felt certain, would put up an ironclad curtain between her and the woman suspected of betraying Great Britain.
Did Olivia—like Virginia Woolf—really choose to kill herself, or had someone helped her along?
Quenby turned off the machine, rubbing the chill that crept up her arms.
Lady Ricker, it seemed, would do anything to keep her secrets. Would she also kill the German girl who had translated her words?
Fog veiled the River Ouse early the next morning as Quenby drove back up the road where she’d dodged Kyle Logan and his tractor.
Last night, the innkeeper had eyed her curiously when she walked into the lobby with two plastic bags, filled with a fresh change of clothes and toiletries from Boots chemist, and requested the same room she’d had two nights ago. But like all good innkeepers, the woman kept her questions to herself and handed over a key to the room.
Quenby waited in the SUV by the river until the fog lifted. When sunlight finally made its debut, she sprayed herself one more time to repel, she hoped, both bugs and men, though she kept her phone in hand as she trekked into the forest.
When she texted Lucas last night, he’d promised to keep his phone beside him this morning. Not that it would help if she slipped out of service again, but it made her feel better knowing that she could contact him near the river.
In and out of the trees. That’s all she had to do. The cemetery had been along one of the overgrown paths, and if she found the pasture for the Logans’ farm, on the other side of the woodlands, she’d turn back.
The running app on her phone traced her steps past the mill, along the winding path. When she got to the Kelmore crossroads, she hiked left instead of right. And about twenty minutes later, she found the cemetery.
Scraps of wooden gravestones were scattered in the weeds, but five slate stones were still intact. She brushed aside the weeds on the stone closest to her, a weathered gray slate engraved with a cross, to read the epitaph. It was the grave of a Kelmore man who’d died in 1882.
She ducked under the crawling branch of an elm tree and read the inscriptions on four more Kelmore family graves, each one including a Bible verse or kind sentiment in recognition of the man or woman buried there. But Lucas was right—there was no grave for Eddie Terrell.
And no marker among the trees for Brigitte, either. Not that Quenby expected the Terrells to put a stone on her grave, but she was still clinging to the hope, for Mr. Knight’s sake, that the girl’s life had extended far beyond the Mill House, blossoming into womanhood.
She snapped several pictures of the cemetery, of its raw beauty and isolation. Nature sprouting new life to replace what had been lost. Then she hiked back to the Mill House and took a panoramic picture encompassing the broken house, the limbs of beech trees, and what appeared to be an old garden nearby.
Something cracked in the branches behind her, and Quenby jumped. As she scanned the trees, Lucas’s words from yesterday seemed to hammer in her head. The ones he’d said about taking care.
She couldn’t tell what was in the forest. Perhaps one of the cows had wandered beyond the pasture. Or was it Kyle, watching for her?
At the moment, it didn’t particularly matter. She wasn’t staying here any longer.
Chapter 42
Mulberry Lane, April 1943
Baby girl had cried for hours last night. Rosalind’s body, Brigitte feared, wasn’t giving her the nourishment she needed, but they had no milk in the house or even a bottle. The baby sucked on Brigitte’s finger for comfort, but it didn’t
soothe the pain in her belly.
When Brigitte was a child, Mama used to send her outside to play, saying the fresh air would do her some good. So she and baby girl went on a walk this morning, and as they strolled in the forest, Brigitte told her stories about her childhood in Germany, sang her the German songs that Mama used to sing.
She wished the baby had a proper name like other children, but Rosalind hadn’t concerned herself yet with a name. It wasn’t Brigitte’s place to name her, but she pretended the baby had a beautiful name, a name with wings. Like Princess Adler.
Soon, she prayed, they could all fly far away from here.
The girl was four days old now. After Olivia left, Brigitte and Rosalind had labored together to deliver her. Brigitte had never seen so much blood before and then—the miracle of life. The scream of a child no longer harbored in Rosalind’s womb.
But Rosalind had retreated into her own shell after the birth, not sure, it seemed, what to do with a baby. She’d been reluctant even to feed her, as if she wasn’t certain that she wanted the child to live.
Baby finally slept as Brigitte carried her toward the cemetery. The markers there, with their Scripture verses, reminded her of the yard around her father’s church in Moselkern. God might not be in the Mill House, but she hoped that His presence lingered here among His saints.
So she stopped by the tombstones to pray, begging Vater Gott to save this baby’s life. For the baby must live. Before they left the cemetery, she knew what she must do. Defy Rosalind, if necessary, to make sure her daughter survived.
As she and baby drew close to the house again, beside the garden plot, Brigitte paused. There was a motorcar in the drive, but unlike the investigator’s vehicle, this one she recognized. It was the dark-blue Wolseley that Herr drove.
What would the man do when he realized his wife had been taken away?
Even though Frau didn’t like her, she’d been a sliver of a shield between Brigitte and her husband. Now that she was gone, Brigitte feared he wouldn’t have any use for her or Rosalind. Or for a baby.
“Wait for me,” she whispered, laying baby girl in a tuft of grass beside the garden. The baby stirred but slept, exhausted from her sleepless night and hunger pangs.
Brigitte wouldn’t let Herr touch this child.
“I’ll return,” she promised, like Dietmar had done with her long ago. Then she reached for the mud-caked hoe beside a tree, the one Herr had brought them to plant a garden.
Clutching the handle, Brigitte crept through the front door and past the fireplace. Herr was talking to Rosalind inside the bedroom. His voice was calm, and it scared her more than his yelling.
“Where were you in Germany?” he asked.
“I wasn’t in Germany. I was in Austria.” Rosalind wasn’t commanding this time nor did she seem scared. She sounded bored, as if she’d already tired of talking. “With the father of my child.”
“I don’t care about the child’s father. I want the name of the man who fathered you.”
Her laugh was hollow. “Are you going to kill him too?”
“Tell me his name,” he repeated, the calm in his voice tightening into a demand.
“Ask your lady.”
“She won’t tell me.”
“That’s because Mummy loves him much more than she’d ever love you.”
Brigitte stood at the bedroom door, her fingers washed purple as they clenched Herr’s hoe. But he didn’t turn around. His eyes were fixed on Rosalind, and in his hands he had something as well, pointed at her friend. Like Roger when he’d pointed his gun at Brigitte.
Herr stepped closer to her. “Too bad your mummy wants you dead.”
“Dead or fed,” Rosalind said with a shrug. “It won’t be long before she wants you dead too.”
“Lady Ricker needs me.”
Rosalind laughed again. “She doesn’t need anyone, except my father.”
“Where’s the girl?”
When he glanced toward the window, Rosalind signaled Brigitte forward with her finger, ever so slightly. “Which one?”
“The—”
Brigitte cringed at the vile word on his lips, but in that moment she found her English voice. Rich and strong. Calm and controlled. “I’m right here.”
When Herr swiveled, she hammered him in the head with the hoe, and he fell like one of the toy knights in Dietmar’s army, crashing onto the wood floor.
Rosalind swept the gun out of his hand, and as he groaned, Brigitte raced out of the room, out of the cottage, and retched in the brush. A blast of gunshot reverberated through the trees, and in that instant, she knew she’d been fully liberated from the Terrell family and this miserable house.
Rosalind stood at the front door, her black dressing gown whirling like a storm cloud around her. “We have to leave.”
Wiping off her mouth, Brigitte followed her back into the house, stepping over Herr’s body as she reached for the sack with cloth diapers in the bureau and the extra layette Lady Ricker had sent before the birth.
Her hands shook as she packed Dietmar’s wooden knight and a change of clothing for herself, but Rosalind didn’t seem to tremble at all as she slipped the key for the Wolseley out of Herr’s pocket.
“Should we bury him?” Brigitte asked, unable to look at Herr again.
Rosalind shook her head. “The rats can have his body.”
Brigitte felt as if she were drowning in the rusty smell of blood, the lingering smoke from Herr’s gun.
“We must hurry,” Rosalind urged, her suitcase in hand. “My mother will kill us both if she finds us.”
Apparently Lady Ricker no longer wanted to feed any of them.
Brigitte froze on the doorstep, images swirling in her mind. For more than two years, this cottage had been her den. An unsafe place, and yet she could hardly remember the world on the other side of these trees. The outside seemed large and looming. Impossible and terrifying.
How was she going to live out there?
Rosalind was in the driver’s seat of the car, starting the engine. And Brigitte heard baby girl crying in the garden.
Lauf.
She could almost hear Dietmar whispering to her again. And she knew she had to run, for her life and for this baby.
Gears grated as Rosalind began reversing the car, and Brigitte pounded on the hood.
“Wait,” she demanded before rushing to the garden.
If she hadn’t stopped her, Rosalind would have driven off, without Brigitte or her daughter.
CHAPTER 43
_____
A steel-colored Porsche was parked along the river road, beside the Range Rover. As Quenby stepped out of the forest, the door opened and a man in his early sixties emerged. She stared at him in shock.
“Mr. Graham?” No one at the syndicate called him Evan to his face.
He rounded the car, dressed in jeans and a short-sleeved plaid shirt. She’d never seen him wearing anything except a business suit.
“Good morning, Quenby.”
“What—?” She forced her words to form. “What are you doing in Newhaven?”
“I was over in Brighton,” he explained. “Chandler said you came here on your holiday.”
She opened the door to Lucas’s SUV and tossed her backpack inside, trying to recover. Then she turned back to the man who could make or break her job. “Do you typically check in with your employees on vacation?”
“Of course not.” He slid on his sunglasses. “It’s just that I have a particular interest in the story you’ve been working on.”
“Chandler said you killed it.”
“At the time, there didn’t seem to be enough information to run an article.”
“And Mrs. McMann’s attorney called you.”
He leaned against the car, a casual position more forced than natural. “Mr. Fenton wasn’t very pleasant about the whole business either, but I’m not afraid of a lawsuit. As long as you do your job right, there won’t be any litigation.”
�
��I was doing my job—”
“You’re a brilliant journalist, Quenby.”
“Thank you,” she said, though her words sounded more like a question. He was leading this conversation, and she wasn’t certain to what end.
“I’m reconsidering this story.” He drummed his fingers on the door. “Chandler said that your research is focused on the Ricker family.”
Quenby nodded. “Lady Ricker organized a network of people who worked for Hitler during the war.”
“But you need proof.”
“I have plenty of proof.”
When his eye twitched, she decided to take a step back from her allegations. “I’m still working to gather all the facts.”
“So nothing concrete yet?”
“I’m verifying what I’ve found.”
“I’m intrigued, but your article has to be different from any other story written on German espionage.”
“It will be,” she said. “It’s about an American-born woman who operated a safe house for German infiltrators. She opened up the door to England and invited the country’s enemies inside.”
“This network,” Evan said slowly. “Are you still gathering information about them as well?”
“I am.”
“And you think there’s some proof at this abandoned mill?”
She hesitated. “I’ve been doing some hiking during my holiday.”
“Of course,” he said, though he didn’t seem to believe her.
“I’ll ring Chandler if I find anything pertinent before I return to work.”
“Please contact me directly if you have any new leads,” he said before giving her the number for his mobile. “Are you staying in Newhaven for the next week?”
With that question, he crossed the line. Quenby loved her job, but she was on a mandated holiday, free to do what she liked whether it was walking the woodlands or searching for a lost woman or flying off to Florida.
She climbed into the SUV, the door propped open. “I’ll be around,” she said as she started the engine.
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