by Jan Jones
He grinned. ‘It’s the only thing that reconciled my mother to my absconding from the family home without so much as a walking stick. She thought I’d have to be sensible if he was nearby. I don’t follow her logic myself.’
Leo had a mother? Of course he had a mother. Everyone had a mother. Everyone except her. ‘I expect she cares about you,’ she said, her voice too loud.
She felt his eyes on her. ‘Drink your nice tea and relax.’
‘You realise this is kidnap?’
He sighed. ‘Do you never do anything spontaneous?’
‘Never.’ And heard Aunt Bridget’s voice, clear as day. ‘I worry about you, Penny. You’re in a rut.’ It was a nice rut, she thought rebelliously. You knew where you were in a rut.
The grounds at Thwaite Hall sloped down to the river. Leo tied up at a jetty and gave Penny a helping hand out of the boat. As they walked across the springy lawn towards the fine Georgian facade of the house, Penny felt more and more out of her depth. Great-uncle Charles was discovered on the terrace with other residents, compiling a crossword in the late sunshine.
‘You’ll never guess what I’ve been doing,’ said Leo. ‘For the past few days I’ve been chasing a story in ever decreasing circles – and it’s led me to you!’
The elderly eyes were a near-transparent grey. ‘Good afternoon, my dear,’ he said to Penny. ‘Do forgive my nephew’s execrable manners.’
Leo fetched a couple of wooden chairs. ‘This is Penny, Uncle Charles. She’s an Astley. Lives in Salthaven. I think you may have known her grandfather. She’d like to know about her jigsaw. Do you recognise the cut at all?’
Leo’s great-uncle filled in another word on his grid. ‘I’m more of a crossword chap myself.’
‘You’re anything you put your mind to, you old fraud. The Salthaven puzzles. What were they for? The war is long over now. You can tell.’
He got an unexpectedly beady look in return. ‘That’s what they all say, lad. Got your memory back, have you?’
‘No. Don’t try and distract me.’
‘What’s wrong with your memory?’ said Penny.
Leo glanced at her in exasperation. ‘It’s nothing to do with this.’
‘I’d like to know, though.’
Leo spoke rapidly. ‘I can’t remember anything at all about the week leading up to the crash. I woke up in hospital with seven or eight days missing from my life. I’m not happy about it and I don’t want to talk about it.’ He turned to his uncle. ‘But I do want to talk about the jigsaws.’
‘Jigsaws?’
Leo swallowed an imprecation. ‘If the one I’m thinking of isn’t still in your room I’ll turn in my NUJ card!’ He strode into the house.
‘Always was impetuous,’ murmured the old man.
When Leo came back he had a bag of jigsaw pieces and two trays. ‘Told you,’ he said and gave a tray to Penny. ‘Fancy a race?’
Penny put her family jigsaw together again and watched Leo until he placed the last tile in a photograph of a pre-war picnic. ‘I see what it is now,’ he said quietly. ‘It’s the lawn at Outlook House.’ He tapped his thumb on a willowy young man seated on a rug handing a plate to a beautiful, dark-haired young woman. Both of them were smiling at the camera as if they hadn’t a care in the world. ‘And that’s you, Uncle Charles. So what’s the story?’
The old man’s see-through gaze rested on the jigsaw. The pen was slack in his hand. The deliberate devilment that had been in evidence when he was crossing swords with his nephew was gone. ‘They don’t make summers like they used to,’ he said, and sighed. ‘I think I’d like to go inside.’
Penny followed behind with the jigsaw trays as Leo helped his uncle up the ramp and across a thickly-carpeted drawing room towards the lift. Residents murmured. Staff were in discreet attendance. Penny felt her eyebrows soar into her hairline. This place cost a lot of money.
Uncle Charles’s room was large and cluttered. Books, papers, and photos were strewn around over handsome furniture that went with an earlier age. While Leo settled his uncle in a chair, pulled up a side table and mixed drinks from the cabinet, Penny’s eyes ranged over the photographs. There was one of a young Leo with a woman who must be his mother. There was one of Leo older, a smart blonde attached to his arm and the small boy she recognised from the boat photo leaning against their legs. There was a crowd of young men in flannels and blazers in front of Outlook House, a school group, a rowing eight … and a studio portrait of a beautiful dark-haired woman.
Penny turned her head. ‘What was her name?’ she asked.
The grey eyes met hers. Great-uncle Charles’s faded charm was still there, along with heartbreak and loss. ‘Arlette,’ he said. ‘So bright, she was. So clever. Like a skylark, flying high and beautiful. She wasn’t just academic, she was artistic too. Other girls embroidered for recreation. Arlette made patterns in wood. I said once that it looked as though she was cutting runes. She laughed and replied that it would have to be a binary code, then, there not being scope for much more. So very clever, we were. So privileged. We thought our way of life would last for ever.’
He stared into his drink. Beside him, Leo was watchful. ‘What happened?’
‘In those days young people followed their parents’ wishes. None of us really thought there would be a war. Arlette’s parents wanted her home for a while, so she went. It wouldn’t have been for long. She was coming back.’ He turned his head to gaze at her photograph. ‘But the Germans arrived first.’
Penny glanced at Leo. He was sitting quite still, all his attention on his uncle. How could he be so detached? Penny’s heart was tearing up, listening to the halting narrative.
‘It wasn’t in Arlette to stand idly by,’ continued Uncle Charles. ‘She had contacts everywhere and she made more. She ran an escape route for refugees and prisoners of war from Lyons to Geneva, right under the Germans’ noses. She collected information from her sources about strategic sites and passed it back to us by radio. Then the local operative was caught and tortured, and after that Arlette wouldn’t risk more lives. After a couple of weeks of silence, I received an envelope, purportedly from the Red Cross, containing that jigsaw. No note. No explanation. It took me a day to work out the code.’
‘What did it say?’ asked Penny.
‘I love you. Send me more. Plus safe address.’
‘So you advertised in the Messenger.’
‘I sent her photos, prints, anything. She sent grid references and defences.’
‘How?’ asked Leo, frowning.
The old man in the chair smiled. He traced the cuts as Frances had done. ‘An upwards loop for a ‘one’ and a downwards loop for a ‘zero’. A gentle wave for a space. If you express numbers in binary that’s all you need.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Penny apologetically. ‘I don’t quite understand.’
She saw him consider how best to explain and got an inkling of the intelligence still there in his mind. ‘In our decimal system of counting we have units, tens, hundreds, so as soon as you reach nine, you add one to the ‘tens’ column and start again from zero on the units. Binary is to the base two. There are only the figures zero and one. Each new column is a power of two: units, twos, fours, sixteens, and so on. So in Arlette’s jigsaws one up-loop and two down-loops, for instance, equals one ‘four’ plus no ‘twos’ plus no ‘ones’. Four in total. Three up-loops would equal four plus two plus one – making seven. Letters A to Z are numbers one to twenty-six. Arlette gave grid references for bridges, factories, camps – anything she thought the Allies might find useful. They were followed by codes indicating how heavily defended the places were. If a jigsaw fell into the wrong hands, it would simply look like some poor chap’s memento of home. That’s why I preferred to use photographs. I borrowed them from everyone I knew, your grandfather amongst them. The adverts were boxed up to make them appear as if they were toys to sell. I suppose Arlette smuggled everything across the boundary the same as she did her airmen.’
Another brief silence. ‘She fell ill. Worked herself too hard. There wasn’t enough food. She didn’t have the reserves to fight. I never saw her again.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Penny softly.
Great-uncle Charles ran a gentle hand over the pre-war picnic. ‘Good memories don’t ever fade, my dear. I daresay you’ll find that out for yourself in time.’ He looked at his nephew. ‘Going to make a story out of it?’
Leo cleared his throat, his eyes suspiciously bright. ‘If I may.’
‘You’ll do it with or without my say so. But don’t glamorise war, boy.’
‘I won’t.’
‘Sad story,’ said Penny as they walked back across the lawn to Leo’s boat.
‘The Jigsaws That Went To War. Excellent for circulation figures.’
‘Leo! I meant sad about your great-uncle and his Arlette.’
‘Oh. Yes. But they probably wouldn’t have made a go of it. He’s always been wrapped up in his work.’
‘You think a job is sufficient to make up for lack of daily companionship?’
‘It works for me.’ He eyed her as he started up the engine and cast off the mooring ropes. ‘Except when it comes to that first cup of tea in the morning and eggs for breakfast.’
Penny’s head whipped round. Was he suggesting …? ‘Forget it,’ she said, possibly with a little too much vigour. ‘You can drop me off at my car.’
Later, after she’d told Frances all about Charles and Arlette and they’d shared a sympathetic tear, she made her original jigsaw one last time. The scene grew out of the tumble of pieces: a sunny afternoon in 1935 that no one would ever see again. Good memories never fade, Leo’s uncle had said. Penny looked at the carefree, untidy infant who would one day be her mother and felt a tiny flame of comfort.
Well? said the young Aunt Bridget’s accusing stare. Have you found new and interesting things to do yet? Booked a sleeper in the Orient Express or a parachute jump over the Grand Canyon?
Penny narrowed her eyes at the jigsaw. ‘I’ve been to the pub at lunchtime. I’ve been kidnapped and taken for a river trip. I’ve had a look at how the other half live and I think I might have turned down an indecent proposal. That do for now?’
‘Who are you talking to, Ma?’ called Frances from the stairs.
‘No one, love.’
Anyway, it was all over. Tomorrow she’d pack up the rest of Mum’s stuff and move it out of the way. Then she’d have to get ready for the opening of the new extension at her friend Rosamund’s art gallery. Back to normal. Life goes on. The only regret was that she hadn’t really ‘solved’ Leo. He was just much too dynamic for provincial Salthaven. He was a puzzle all in himself. What had he been doing when he crashed, for instance? Why didn’t he want to talk about that missing week of memory? She’d never get a chance to find out now.
The phone rang just as she sat down to watch Miss Marple.
‘Hi,’ said Leo’s cheerful voice.
‘Go away,’ said Penny, even as her heart gave the tiniest, tiniest fillip.
‘I don’t suppose you know anything about the Salthaven Heights Art Gallery, do you? Only I happened to notice your name on the guest list for the opening of the Retrospective Exhibition and there’s been a really unusual break-in there …’
Chapter Three
Penny laid her clothes for the opening of the retrospective exhibition at the Salthaven Heights Gallery on the rear seat of the car and came back indoors to make herself a substantial breakfast. She knew from past experience that it was no use expecting Rosamund to have anything of practical value in the fridge at the gallery. Her friend had lost interest in cooking the moment she discovered bread came ready-sliced and that it was possible to buy meals in boxes from the freezer section of the supermarket. The oven hadn’t been used in anger since.
Penny glanced at herself as she went past the hall mirror. She nodded. She looked casual, unplanned, and natural. Perfect.
‘Morning, Ma.’
‘Frances!’ Penny nearly had a heart attack as her daughter came down the stairs. ‘What are you doing awake? You usually sleep until mid-afternoon on Saturdays.’
‘I said I’d help Marissa set out her jewellery at the gallery.’
‘And that’s going to take all day?’
‘Oh, Ma, you know there’s never anything to eat there. If I come with you I get breakfast and a lift. Are those new jeans?’
‘Goodness, no, I’ve had them ages. You could always cook for yourself.’
Frances ignored this flight of fancy. ‘I knew that necklace would look good on you,’ she continued complacently. ‘And the cut of that top really makes the most of your –’
‘One egg or two?’
Her daughter hitched herself up on the kitchen table, swinging her legs. ‘I thought I could ask Dad about a holiday job while we were there. What do you think? He’s bound to be around early, isn’t he? Being as how it’s his extension that’s housing the new exhibition.’
‘Your father? I suppose he might be,’ said Penny with a convincing air of disinterest. ‘Go and get your outfit for the opening, then. I’m not running you back here again just because you’ve forgotten the right feather for your hair.’
All the same, Frances mentioning Julian had unsettled her. It wasn’t that they didn’t get on, they did – after a fashion. And she certainly didn’t want to turn the clock back to when they were married, because she was revelling in the freedom of being herself after all these years. It was just that he was still in the background, still in Salthaven, not quite letting her go. His life was still brushing against hers.
She doubled the quantities of food in the pan. A ‘full English’ might not be the breakfast of choice for the weight-conscious, but Frances had inherited her father’s irritating ability to eat like a horse and not put on an inch – and Penny had the feeling she’d be working most of her own calories off during the day. She knew that the extension itself, converted by Julian from a disused wing of Rosamund’s eccentric Art Deco house-turned-gallery, would be in perfect order. It was the rest of the place that would need the cleaning abilities of an army of domestics.
*……* ……*
As Penny turned onto the road to Salthaven Heights, she saw a familiar figure ahead of them. ‘Leo,’ she said with resignation. As if today wasn’t going to be complicated enough.
‘Who?’ said Frances. ‘Oh, your reporter friend. Look, he’s waving.’
‘There’s a surprise.’
‘What does he want?’
Penny knew exactly what Leo wanted. He was aware that she was going up to the gallery this morning and he wanted an entrée that didn’t shriek journalist. She pulled into the kerb.
‘That’s a bit of luck, seeing you,’ said Leo through the window. ‘You don’t know how far up the hill the Salthaven Heights Art Gallery is, I suppose?’
Frances’ eyes widened at this coincidence. ‘We’re on our way there!’
Penny banged her head gently on the steering wheel. Her daughter was going to have to lose the incredulity factor before she went to university. ‘Hop in the back, love, otherwise he’ll crush the clothes.’
Frances scrambled out and Leo got in.
‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘You look nice.’
‘You don’t have to flatter me. I’m already giving you a lift. I do hope you haven’t been loitering around here for long.’
He grinned, completely unfazed at being rumbled. ‘I was on my way to ask about their strange break-in. The one where nothing was stolen.’
‘It’s only Rosamund who says it was a break-in. The police are reserving judgement. I can’t help feeling she’d rather you did a nice feature on the new extension and the retrospective exhibition.’
‘That’s boring. Anyone can write a story from a press release. I’ll mention it, of course, but this would be a different angle.’
‘There have been two break-ins,’ said Frances from the back seat. ‘Mariss
a told me.’
Leo twisted to look over his shoulder. ‘Two? That’s interesting. Who is Marissa?’
‘Rosamund’s her mum. We’ve been friends for ever. She makes jewellery. Sells it too, lucky thing.’
‘You’ll sell your clothes eventually, Frances. Why are you interested, Leo? Nothing was taken.’
He eased his legs as best he could in the car. Penny had a twinge of worry that his injured one might be hurting.
‘Old reporting adage,’ he said with a wicked grin. ‘If there’s smoke and no fire, someone’s got a very good reason for hiding the tinderbox. And that’s a story.’
Penny snorted. ‘Not in Salthaven. I hate to disillusion you, but the non-thieves probably broke in by mistake. They were misled by the idiotic amount of money being spent on the extension into believing that there might be something of value inside.’
Leo eyed her speculatively. ‘I couldn’t help noticing that the architect for this new wing was Julian Plain.’
‘Amazing what you can learn from the internet.’ Penny changed down a gear. ‘Hold on, this is the steep bit. Bet you’re glad we showed up, eh?’
She could sense more questions on the tip of his tongue but either her repressive comment or the fact that she was driving up a one-in-six incline stopped him voicing them. Good. Solving one small mystery together didn’t make them anything more than occasional colleagues. Certainly she didn’t know him well enough to suffer a catechism on the charms and ambitions of her ex-husband.
‘Stunning view,’ he said diplomatically.
‘Isn’t it? Sky, sea, and the whole of Salthaven laid out below you. Just wait, though. The view is as nothing to your first sight of the gallery itself. Did you never come up here before?’
‘No. Whenever I was here on holiday, Uncle Charles gave me the run of the house and the beach, then went back to his inventions and forgot about me. Besides, this is East Salthaven and we were up on the cliff in West Salthaven. Too much effort to go down into town, across the river, and then back up again just to see a few old paintings.’