A Dangerous Goodbye: An absolutely gripping historical mystery (A Fen Churche Mystery Book 1)

by Fliss Chester

  Sophie ducked and shimmied into the very middle of the ring, where she took the hands of the central couple and started spinning the circle around. In a moment, another couple had ducked under their arms and were now spinning away in the middle. The whole dance was chaotic and seemed arbitrarily made up by whoever had the most energy and enthusiasm. A tea dance at the Spread Eagle, it was not. But despite all the chaos around her and the thoughts buzzing through her head, Fen started to enjoy herself.

  The music reached a crescendo and the dancers whirled faster and faster in their circles, skirts twirling, faces puffed, hair frizzled and loosened, the whole effect was one of joyous excitement until the band came to the final chords, the guitars strummed a final time and the drums stopped. The lights at that moment, strung up along the trees and from poles in the corners of the square, flickered and died. The dancers were plunged into silence and darkness and no one uttered a word until a shriek shattered the spell and the lights, luckily, flickered back on.

  ‘What was that?’ Fen wasn’t the only one to ask the question of a neighbour, then suddenly there was a cry of ‘Over here!’ and ‘Help her!’

  To Fen’s horror, as she rushed in the direction of the shouting to see if she could help in any way, she saw it was Sophie. She was lying there in the middle of the town square, silent and still, a crumpled heap on the floor.

  Nine

  ‘Sophie!’

  Fen watched as Pierre ran over to his still and silent wife. The crowd collectively held their breath before there were murmurs of ‘She’s talking, look!’ and ‘Eh, a bad fall, she’ll be hobbling for weeks…’

  ‘Thank the Lord,’ whispered Fen to no one in particular, realising Sophie was all right, but she pushed her way through some of the crowd to see if there was anything she could do to help. She’d taken part in a few training sessions with the Wrens in the local parish rooms back in West Sussex and Mrs B had taught her how to tie a bandage properly, having nursed poor old Mr B before his wounds from Ypres got the better of them both. ‘Can I help?’

  ‘Mama?’ Benoit had found his mother collapsed on the floor, but she was at least now resting in her husband’s lap.

  ‘Shush shush, little one,’ she was unhurt enough to comfort him and stroke his hair but looked relieved when Fen appeared. ‘Fen, could you take him? And find Jean-Jacques. It’s time for them to go home. Where is Estelle?’

  ‘I don’t know, Sophie, but yes, of course. I’ll find him. Come along, Benoit.’ Fen genuinely didn’t know where Estelle had gone, but then Pascal was nowhere to be seen either, so she assumed they had made use of the chaos to slip out of sight for an assignation.

  All’s fair in love and war, Fen thought, then tried to not to think too badly of her room-mate for selfishly slipping away while her mistress was hurt.

  Fen had found Jean-Jacques quite easily – he and his friends were all throwing squishy plums at each other from one of the fruit trees by the church. She’d told him of his mother’s injury, which had made him stop larking around instantly and start to cry, so now she had both him and Benoit held by their grubby hands as she walked back towards the house, luckily only a few paces behind Pierre and the injured Sophie.

  ‘Ah! Ooh! Pierre, be careful!’ Sophie reprimanded her husband as he carried her in his arms towards the château.

  ‘It’s not like you to turn your ankle, Sophie,’ he admonished her, although there was no real malice in his voice. ‘You’re usually so sure-footed.’

  ‘If you compare me to a mountain goat, Pierre, I shall wallop you with my handbag.’

  He chuckled at his feisty wife and shifted her weight in his arms. Fen wondered if she should offer to get James to help, but Pierre walked on, all of them in silence, listening to the festivities still carrying on in the village behind them. He navigated past the vast stone buttresses of the church’s southern wall and carried Sophie through the little orchard, with her occasionally moaning and chastising him for clumsily knocking her against a straggling branch or unkempt topiary bush.

  ‘It really is swelling, I can feel it. Oh hell!’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Pierre paused to think and shifted Sophie’s weight in his arms, ‘Mademoiselle Churche can be spared from the harvest and run the kitchen and you can then rest for a few days, ma chérie.’

  Fen’s ears picked up at the mention of her name and she listened, relieved that at least her new role didn’t sound too onerous. She wouldn’t mind learning to cook a cassoulet from an immobile Sophie.

  ‘Rest! As if we women ever rest,’ Sophie teased him. They bickered like this as the group moved towards the terrace, across the dried-out lawns that had once been so beautiful and up the broken and chipped stone steps. Changing the subject, Sophie commented, ‘I’ll work on these gardens next year, but it’s not such a bad old place, eh?’

  Pierre shifted her weight in his arms and agreed with her. ‘The gardens are a mess to be sure, chérie, but at least we have the grapes this year. Wine we can sell and then we can buy vegetables. And now the occupier’s boot is no longer at our throats, we can sell the wines we hid, too.’

  ‘They were not all so bad— Ahhhhoowwww!’ Pierre had dropped Sophie with little warning by the door of the château. ‘You brute, what did you do that for?’ The threatened wallop from the handbag came at last.

  Fen had to chuckle. Sorry as she was for Sophie’s injury, she was enjoying this music-hall-style sketch.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Pierre had lost whatever passion had suddenly overwhelmed him at the mention of the Germans and held his arms up to parry his wife’s blows. ‘Ma petite chou-fleur, I’m sorry. How can I say sorry enough?’

  ‘Get me inside, you idiot, and I’ll think!’

  Dutifully, Pierre opened the kitchen door and scooped his wife up.

  ‘Fenella, can you put the boys to bed? I cannot see myself moving!’ Sophie called out to Fen over Pierre’s shoulder.

  ‘Of course, Sophie. Come on, chaps.’ Fen took it as her cue to let the Bernards go up ahead of her as she found some milk in the kitchen and warmed it over the stove for the boys. She caught snippets of the rest of the conversation between the Bernards as they gradually walked up the spiral staircase.

  ‘… I know how… sorry… favourite pastries… Monsieur Fracan will have one or two… breakfast, please?’

  With them firmly upstairs and the boys now relatively calm drinking their milk, Fen sat down and tried to think about what had happened that night. Clément Bernard and Father Marchand’s words kept coming back to her. The Baker Street Irregulars? They sounded more like a Conan Doyle plot. But whatever they were called, it was now certain that secret agents had operated in the area and, more likely than not, her Arthur was one of them, along with James.

  Speak of the devil, she thought to herself as the big kitchen door swung open and James and Estelle appeared from the darkened hallway beyond.

  ‘What ho,’ she called over to them.

  ‘Hallo, we thought we’d lost you in the dancing.’ James stepped back into the hallway and took off his cap and started undoing his work boots.

  ‘Didn’t you notice the kerfuffle? No more dancing for Sophie, I’m afraid, and I was tasked at bringing these vagabonds home,’ Fen smiled at the boys.

  ‘What happened?’ Estelle asked as she bustled over and took over looking after the boys, wiping off their milk moustaches and generally tidying them up.

  ‘It looked quite dramatic, but Sophie took a tumble is all,’ Fen replied.

  ‘You all came back here?’ James came into the room, stood by the stove and warmed his hands.

  ‘Slowly, yes,’ Fen answered as she was waved to the boys, who were being taken upstairs by their nanny. ‘Goodnight, you two,’ and then to Estelle, ‘I won’t be long.’

  Estelle shrugged and ushered the boys up the stairs.

  ‘Something’s got her goat,’ Fen whispered to James.

  ‘Probably Pascal, he’s a funny old thing. Nice enough, but when you deal in c
hemicals all day…’ James twisted his finger against his temple to indicate looniness.

  This made Fen snort a little with laughter and she was pleased when James left the stove and sat down next to her.

  ‘I’m sorry I left you mid-dance, it was exceedingly ill-mannered of me, it’s just…’ James paused.

  Fen wanted to ask him all about Arthur, but something held her back.

  Before she could speak, James carried on. ‘There’s nothing left for me back in London now, you know. Perhaps I should be a French peasant, as I obviously have the manners of one.’

  ‘Did you know—’ Fen was about to ask the question she’d been dying to since she got to France when the kitchen door flew open and Clément and Hubert, who was fast becoming Fen’s nemesis, burst in, full of song.

  ‘Allons enfants de la Patrie. Le jour de gloire est arrivé…’ The two men belted out the familiar tune of ‘La Marseillaise’ at full volume.

  James got up and pulled out his chair for the older man and let him slump into it, while Fen quickly exited her seat for the inebriated Hubert. James shook his head slightly and ducked back into the hallway to close the large front door.

  ‘Assuming you’re bedding down here for the night, Hubert?’ James called and Fen heard the large bolt being drawn across the door. She thought back to Little Miss Polka-Dot and reckoned she had escaped a fate – or a fête – worse than death.

  ‘Yes, of course he is!’ Clément then hummed more of the well-known tune. ‘He still has the stench of the Germans in his house, he must stay here whenever he wants! Another glass of pastis, Hubert? And, James and Fenella, you will join us?’

  Fen looked at James, who suddenly seemed so much more at home. This bonhomie must have been what kept them all going through the war and she watched as he pulled three small glasses out of the dresser. He looked over to her and raised his eyebrow in a question, but Fen shook her head. As much as she wanted more information from James, she knew now wasn’t the time to do it.

  Clément probably knew everything too, but Hubert remained an unknown to her, and she wasn’t entirely sure if she wanted to share a drink with the man who ran her into a ditch. What stung, though, just a little, was James’s nod of agreement at her refusal. Tonight, this was the boys’ club.

  Fen waved at the men from the tower door and tried not to be slightly put out that there were few protestations at her leaving. She let herself into her and Estelle’s room, as quietly as possible in case the other woman was already asleep.

  ‘Not a sausage,’ she whispered to herself at the sight of two empty beds and she let herself sink down onto her own cacophonously creaky one. She unpinned the brooch and placed it on her nightstand, the familiarity of it cheering her up. ‘Thanks, Ma.’ She touched it and much happier memories of a time before the war came to her: her parents dancing in their apartment in Paris, the meals they’d shared, her brother’s sense of humour and her mother’s perfume. In that moment she wondered if she’d ever be happy again like that, and if she did, would it be a huge betrayal. ‘I wish you’d met him,’ she spoke to the brooch as if it was her mother. ‘You would have loved him really, almost as much I do.’

  It was testament to Fen’s strength of character that she managed to resist lying down and falling asleep in the clothes she was wearing, but as she undressed and washed her face in the large porcelain bowl of cold water, tears started to fall and one word persisted in going round and round her mind… did.

  Ten

  Fen woke with a start. The noise of Estelle leaving the room, no doubt heading to the old thunderbox down the corridor, roused her from her dreams. She rubbed her eyes – crying before bed always made them puffy and she had bits of ‘eye crumble’, as her mother used to call them, trapped in her lashes. At least one thing was looking up – Captain Lancaster – James – was treating her more like a fellow human being now. What had he said? There was nothing left in London for him any more. The thought of not feeling wanted back home made Fen feel terribly sad for the lost soldier, although the fact that he was now a friendly face in this stark corner of rural France was something of which she was rather glad.

  ‘Don’t be a pill,’ she said to herself, trying out one of those Americanisms that had so amused her when she’d heard the local GIs use it back in West Sussex.

  She got out of bed and went over to the washbasin, assuming Estelle would still be occupying ‘the best seat in the house’, as her brother used to say. She must add him and her parents to her list of letters owed – though Lord knows if he was back from North Africa yet.

  Once washed as well as she could be in the circumstances, she donned her workwear and headed down to the kitchen for breakfast.

  The kitchen was empty and Fen had to double-check the large wooden clock that she hadn’t accidentally woken and dressed before dawn, but no, it was 7.30 a.m. and the sun was already up in the autumn sky. Hearing a gush of water come down through the pipework reminded her that a trip to the bathroom might not be a bad idea either, so she took the opportunity while no one was around to explore the ground floor of the other wing of the house. It was decorated much like the floor above, the one that housed the bedrooms, and, to Fen’s relief, it was home to a lavatory, as well as a smart morning room and a library.

  From the look of the formal rooms, she deduced that they were rarely used; the library even had a dust sheet covering what looked like a large central table or desk, and a glass-fronted cabinet of trinkets was home to quite a few cobwebs, as well as what looked like a selection of dusty family heirlooms and Great War memorabilia. The morning room’s oriental carpets were neatly rolled up and leant against the panelled wall. Both rooms smelt musty and unused, Fen even ventured to think unwelcoming, so once she’d made use of the WC, she headed back into the kitchen and from there to the small hallway, where she pulled on her work boots.

  Outside, the air was cool, especially in the shade of the buildings, and dew lay heavily on the grass on the central courtyard. The day would be a fine one though, she thought, as she peered up past the roof of the château and its tower to see a perfectly blue sky, scudded here and there with fluffy white clouds. A perfect autumn day. There wasn’t a soul about, however, and Fen wondered if it was due to last night’s revelries and resulting sore heads. She remembered how greedily the men had all looked at the pastis bottle last night before she had turned in and she knew from her own experience that the aniseed-flavoured spirit could slip down all too easily and have its revenge the next morning.

  ‘Serves them right,’ she muttered to herself, a little upset at how quickly she’d been dismissed from the bonhomie in the kitchen, and then walked over to the far side of the courtyard, where the sun was now high enough in the sky to peer over the château’s roof. She sat down on an old stone bench and turned her face to the sun, soaking up its already warm rays and enjoying the peace. A quick movement next to her jolted her out of her reverie.

  ‘Oh, hello, monsieur.’ The fluffy black and white cat had jumped up onto the bench next to her. He was a handsome beast, all fluff and whiskers, which made him look more like a Parisian house cat than some farm scally who was more likely to sleep under the stars than be treated like one. ‘I think we’ve got the right notion.’ She stroked the soft fur on top of his head and smiled at the resulting purr. Perhaps the day was looking up after all.

  She closed her eyes and leant back against the cool stone. Soon enough she’d be back in amongst the vines, or, if Sophie commanded it, scrubbing the kitchen floor or peeling potatoes, but for now she sat and took stock of where she was and why she was there.

  Gradually, her sense of duty outweighed quite how much she was enjoying the catnap in the sunbeam and she opened her eyes. A glint of light coming from one of the turrets at the top of the tower caught her eye and she moved her head from side to side trying to make out what it might be.

  ‘Any thoughts?’ she asked the cat, who replied by jumping off the bench in pursuit of a fly.

&nbs
p; Fen sighed and pushed herself up and off the bench and headed back into the kitchen, where, to her surprise, there wasn’t a sign of anyone else and she was quite alone.

  ‘No time like the present then,’ she told herself as she took a leaf of paper from a stack that was sitting on the dresser. I hope they don’t mind, she thought as she quickly penned a missive to Kitty and co.

  Kitchen table, Château Morey-Fontaine,

  September ’45

  Dear Mrs B, Kitty and Dilly,

  Quite a lot has happened in the last couple of days, so I thought I’d fill you in. No sign of Arthur yet – well, that’s not strictly true, but nothing concrete. I’m pretty sure he was here and operating as a secret agent under the code name ‘Setter’! The trail has gone cold though for now, until I find the opportunity to quiz James (Captain Lancaster) – a former soldier who has stayed out here (I’m not sure why) – about what he knows. And yes, Kitty, I think you would find him rather handsome, but I fear he’s a lost cause and terribly grumpy.

  Last night was the fête of the local church, but it was quite unlike any we have at home – much more like a medieval banquet, with raucous dancing and folk music. I can’t pretend it wasn’t fun, but it wasn’t exactly tea, cake and a nice coconut shy either!

  Fen paused and absent-mindedly sucked the end of the pencil she was using to quickly scrawl her thoughts. Would it be good for their morale back in West Sussex to know more about what life had really been like out here, the things Estelle had been telling her last night, and the reality of the Weinführer, or best to keep it light-hearted and jolly? The decision, at that moment at least, was taken from her as she heard the clattering on the stone spiral staircase of little boys.