Journey to Munich
Page 26
Soon after Maisie’s return from Munich, she had received an invitation to lunch from John Otterburn, and two subsequent requests to meet. She had declined, each reply courteous, but lacking the warmth she would have extended to a friend. Two days after Neville Chamberlain’s broadcast, she received another letter from Otterburn.
Dear Maisie,
I cannot say I was surprised by your refusal to meet. Perhaps that was too much to ask of you, in the circumstances. I appreciate your note of thanks, but I must confess my reason for assistance in procuring the aircraft in Munich was purely selfish. I wanted my daughter home, and you gave me the perfect opportunity. The gratitude should be all mine, because you kept your word.
This letter is by way of a confession, and the contents reflect what I would have spoken to you about, had we met in person. I would therefore appreciate it if you would be so kind as to destroy this letter after reading.
I fear I contributed to the arrest of Leon Donat in Munich. I allowed it to be known that he was in the city and, more to the point, that he was vulnerable. My wife and I enjoy a happy marriage, but I am not an easy man, nor was I attentive to her for many years. Indeed, our grandson has helped bring us together again. Leon bettered me in business on several occasions, and for a while in the past he bettered me in my wife’s affections. I discovered she was providing him with funds to pass on to Elaine, and though I never confronted her, I realized that Leon and my wife had something I could not have—contact with Elaine. Lorraine had turned to another man before me, and had kept details of my daughter’s communications from me. My pride took the upper hand—I had the ear of men in Germany who wanted to see Leon Donat fall, so I sowed a seed of information, and allowed it to flourish.
That is my confession. Any apologies I make will never absolve me of my actions. My punishment is that Leon Donat is and always will be the better man—he would never, I know, have stooped so low.
Yours, with regret,
John
Maisie read the letter once, then took it to the fireplace, where she placed it in the grate and held a lighted match to the paper, taking a brass poker to ensure every scrap of John Otterburn’s handwriting burned.
Maisie looked at those gathered around the table in the dining room at the Dower House, her home on the Chelstone estate. It was mid-October, and the monthly Sunday lunch had become a firm entry on the calendar of all present. From the first invitation, she had instructed each and every person invited, “There will be no standing on ceremony, children will be present and we’re there to enjoy ourselves. There might well be games.” To their credit, Lord Julian and Lady Rowan walked up from the manor house for that first luncheon, and proved to be good sports when it came to sitting down in a dining room where two tables had to be pushed together to accommodate everyone who came. All told, seventeen people sat down to lunch, twenty if Leon Donat was well enough to make the journey with his housekeeper and Andrew.
At first Maisie had worried that her idea might fail, but she went on—it was time to go about her days in a different way. So much had conspired to change her in recent years, but losing James, and then her work in Spain and Munich, had altered her perspective, and not only of the world. Time had brought her back to herself. Yet she had felt as if her way of seeing life had taken on a growth of its own, and it had begun in a hospital close to the Tajo River, when she held a small newborn babe named Esperanza—Hope—in her arms. And then there was the vision that would come back to her time and again, of two little girls playing together in Munich—how they held hands in friendship, and let go when they feared they might be seen. Those things told Maisie it was time to hold on to those she loved, to bring them together, closer to her, no matter the outcome—and to take her chances as to whether they, in turn, would accept her efforts, for she was asking each to step out of his or her own world and into that of another.
With Leon Donat she had listened to the prime minister’s promise of “peace for our time” and now she remembered the cautionary words from the man she had journeyed to Munich to bring home, as he raised his glass to her. She could hear others in their company chatting and laughing around the table, and saw her father deep in conversation with Douglas Partridge. Little Margaret Rose Beale clambered onto Lady Rowan’s lap and patted a dog—Maisie wasn’t sure whose dog it was—who begged for food from a plate. There had been toasts to celebrate the reopening of Maisie’s business, discussions about motor cars and schools, about the rambunctiousness of boys, whose heart Margaret Rose would break in a few years, and the merits of a new horse in the pasture. Maisie could hear Priscilla’s voice ricocheting back and forth between Doreen and Sandra, Billy and Lord Julian, so that soon everyone was leaning forward to join in the joke. Maisie lifted her glass toward Leon Donat, not least to let him know she had heeded his message.
Maisie, we have our freedom, both of us. We are lucky, very lucky. Make sure you use it well.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
JOURNEY TO MUNICH was inspired by a story told by my mother of a man she worked for in 1944, when she was seventeen years old. He had taken her into his confidence—perhaps because she reminded him of a daughter who had died—and told her that before the war he had been set free from a German concentration camp into the hands of the British government after they had paid for his release. The German authorities did not know that he was an inventor who had come to the notice of the British intelligence services when they were informed that he had ideas of “some interest” to them—certain circles of government were preparing for war, and therefore had the need for development of specialist transportation. As soon as the plans were drawn up and handed over to the authorities, this man was given funding for a completely new business, one that would take him into a peaceful retirement. Journey to Munich is not his story, but it only takes one small nugget of an idea to create a whole novel. My mother’s story was the nugget.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
JACQUELINE WINSPEAR is the author of the New York Times bestsellers A Dangerous Place, Leaving Everything Most Loved, Elegy for Eddie, A Lesson in Secrets, The Mapping of Love and Death, and Among the Mad, as well as five other national bestselling Maisie Dobbs novels. Her standalone novel The Care and Management of Lies was also a New York Times and national bestseller, and a finalist for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. She has won numerous awards, including the Agatha, Alex, and Macavity awards for the first book in the Maisie Dobbs series, which received seven award nominations, including a nomination for the Edgar Award for Best Novel. Maisie Dobbs was also named a New York Times Notable Book. Originally from the United Kingdom, Jacqueline now lives in California.
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ALSO BY JACQUELINE WINSPEAR
Maisie Dobbs
Birds of a Feather
Pardonable Lies
Messenger of Truth
An Incomplete Revenge
Among the Mad
The Mapping of Love and Death
A Lesson in Secrets
Elegy for Eddie
Leaving Everything Most Loved
The Care and Management of Lies
A Dangerous Place
CREDITS
COVER DESIGN BY ARCHIE FERGUSON
COVER ILLUSTRATION BY ANDREW DAVIDSON
COPYRIGHT
JOURNEY TO MUNICH. Copyright © 2016 by Jacqueline Winspear. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
FIRST EDITION
ISBN: 978-0-06-222060-8
EPub Edit
ion MARCH 2016 ISBN 9780062220622
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