The waiter returned, placing two large glasses on the table. ‘Will you be eating?’
‘Pork please—for both of us,’ Violet said.
‘Very good,’ he replied.
Elsie frowned. ‘How did you know what I wanted?’
Violet shrugged. ‘When life is on the ration, you need to snatch the opportunity for some good food. Cheers.’ She raised her glass.
‘To Sicily,’ Elsie toasted.
Another shrug from Violet. ‘I’ve no idea why we’re toasting a tiny, Nazi-occupied Mediterranean island, but it will do for me. To Sicily.’
Elsie’s glass met Violet’s above the table and she took a large lug of the drink.
Violet pulled a packet of Wild Woodbine cigarettes from her handbag. She handed one to Elsie, then lit them both. ‘So, anything more from your husband? I see you’re not wearing your wedding ring any longer. Very brave. What’s the news?’
‘I gave it to a Maltese pauper.’ Elsie laughed and examined her left hand. The sensation—so strange at first—at having a naked ring finger no longer bothered her. ‘Nothing more from Laurie. He could be dead or alive—I’ve no idea.’
Violet took a sip of drink. ‘And how do you feel about that? I assume there’s a reason that a Maltese pauper is now legally bound to your husband?’
‘Woody.’
Violet shifted in her chair and drank some more. ‘Woody?’
‘The baby’s father. He turned up when I was in Malta—he came looking for me.’
‘Really?’ Violet blurted. ‘Christ. Tell me everything.’
‘It’s a terribly long story,’ Elsie warned.
Violet smiled, took another glug of drink and finished the glass. ‘I’ve got the time.’ She turned to the waiter, leaning on the bar at the far end of the restaurant. ‘Two more, please.’
It took the entire duration of their meal and three further glasses of gin and lemon for Elsie to bring Violet up to date with her complicated life. ‘Golly,’ was all that Violet had to say at the end of it all.
‘And what about you?’ Elsie finally quizzed. ‘Have you found anyone yet?’
Violet shook her head. ‘Nobody to speak of. Maybe tonight’s going to be my lucky night, but not,’ she said, casting her eye around the empty restaurant, ‘if we remain here. Come on, let’s go. I’ve got a much dingier rotten pub in mind.’
‘But I thought we might go to the ballet. Robert Helpmann is performing at Sadler’s Wells.’
‘Don’t be so dreary, Elsie Finch. Come on, let’s settle up and get famously drunk.’
Elsie knew better than to argue with her friend.
‘Oh, well that’s just great,’ Elsie complained. It was later than they had realised. Much later. The last tube to Stanmore was long gone and the driver likely tucked up in bed by now. They were standing in some street or other in some part of London that neither of them recognised, the evening passing in a drunken blur.
‘Let’s just find the tube station at least,’ Violet suggested, slurring her words.
‘Then what? Sleep down there like those other poor rats?’ Elsie demanded. ‘No, thank you—no public sheltering for me. I’m going to find a nice hotel.’ She began to struggle along the pavement with Violet at her heels.
‘What about hitch-hiking?’ Violet called.
‘Look, over there—The something or other Arms.’ Distance and drunkenness muddled the words on the sign. Elsie didn’t care now, she just wanted to sleep. ‘Come on.’
They crossed the road and entered the grimy lobby. It was a cheap dive—the type used by married soldiers for illicit liaisons. From somewhere behind the reception desk came the thump-thumping of a band.
‘No, Violet,’ Elsie warned, knowing full well what was coming next.
‘Just one more drink?’ she pleaded.
Elsie looked at the stern woman staring at them from behind the desk. ‘Good evening. Do you happen to have a room available for the night? You see, we’ve missed the last—’
‘—No, fully booked,’ the receptionist snarled, barely looking up from whatever she was doing behind the counter. Elsie leant over to see. Knitting.
Violet seemed to have heard something entirely different from that which Elsie had understood and her eyes illuminated. ‘Come on—just one more gin.’
And so, Elsie found herself squashed in a dark pokey room crammed with all manner of servicemen and women jitterbugging to the upbeat tunes of a poor band sweltering in the corner.
Violet pushed through the crowds to a small bar and ordered two more drinks.
‘To Sardinia! Or Sicily! Or wherever,’ she shrieked.
‘Well, good evening, ladies,’ a beefy American serviceman greeted. ‘My name’s Charlie and this is my good friend, Clay.’ The man he introduced stepped out of his shadow and grinned.
‘Violet Christmas. Absurd name—you don’t need to say. This timid little flower,’ she said, pointing at Elsie, ‘Is Miss Elsie Danby.’
Elsie squirmed uncomfortably at being addressed in such a manner, but smiled politely.
‘She won’t want to play, though,’ Violet continued, ‘she’s besotted by a pilot, but he’s not all that.’
‘What do you mean?’ Elsie retorted. ‘You don’t even know him.’
Violet shrugged and turned her back on Elsie, offering one hand to Charlie and one to Clay. The three of them merged into the squashed throng of dancing.
Elsie took a sip of her drink and immediately regretted it, her stomach reacting with a bitter gripe. Any more alcohol and she knew that she would be sick. Pushing the glass back across the bar, she shoved her way across the dance floor and back out into the reception.
‘Please,’ Elsie begged the receptionist, ‘have you got anywhere for my friend and me to sleep—even an old cupboard will do. Anything to avoid sleeping underground or in some shop doorway. Please.’
The receptionist grunted, set down her knitting and slid around the desk, unlocking a door opposite to the bar. She held it open and Elsie peered inside.
‘The billiard table?’
‘It’s that or nothing.’
‘We’ll take it—I’ll just go and rescue my friend.’
Elsie re-entered the bar. It took a moment to search among the crowded dance floor to spot Violet. She was in full-swing mode, jitterbugging with Charlie and Clay. Elsie marched over and grabbed her hand. ‘I’ve found us a bed for the night.’
‘Just one more dance,’ Violet stammered, trying to shake off Elsie’s grasp.
‘No, we’re going now. We’re both on duty tomorrow lunchtime. Come on,’ Elsie insisted.
Violet complied and allowed Elsie to lead her away from the dance floor and into the billiard room.
‘Is that where I’m supposed to be sleeping?’ Violet asked.
The receptionist had been in and placed a thin mattress on the table with a bolster and eiderdown. It actually looks vaguely comfortable, Elsie thought, as she began to strip to her underwear.
‘Violet,’ Elsie started, waiting for her friend to focus on her. ‘What did you mean a while ago when you said that Woody ‘wasn’t all that’?’
Violet waved a hand in the air. ‘He just seemed not all that.’ She shrugged and removed her dress. ‘Which side am I sleeping?’
Elsie stopped undressing and stared at her. ‘When have you seen him?’
‘Pardon?’ Violet stammered, barely able to stand up.
‘When have you seen him to know that he ‘wasn’t all that’?
Violet climbed up onto the billiard table, either deep in thought, or ignoring the question.
‘Answer me, Violet,’ Elsie insisted.
Violet threw back her hair and huffed dramatically. ‘I don’t know…He came looking for you while you were wherever you were—Malta. It’s really no big deal, Elsie Finch. Now come and lie down.’ Violet fell backwards onto the pillow.
The conversation with Woody in Captain Caruana’s flashed into Elsie’s head. ‘Your friend was very p
ersuasive…’
He hadn’t been referring to Rosemary at all.
‘What did you do?’ Elsie demanded, a dark thought lurking in the back of her mind, as snippets from hers and Woody’s conversation in the Westminster Hotel flooded in. ‘Listen, Elsie, there’s something I need to tell you. Something I need to say if we’re…’
‘What did you do?’ Elsie bellowed.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
12th July 1943, London
Violet was gone.
Elsie ached all over. She propped herself up on the makeshift bed on top of the billiard table and rubbed her eyes. Shredded oddments from last night’s events rolled into her sober mind for processing. Violet’s exact words were now lost in an alcohol-infused haze, sketchy and irretrievably gone, but the gist and the appalling nugget of truth remained like a cold stone in her stomach.
She jumped down from the table, hurried over to a dustbin in the corner of the room and was sick. The more she thought of last night, the sicker she became.
She sat on the balding, stained carpet and cried. Everyone had been right about Violet. She had absolutely no morals and cared for nobody but herself.
Elsie cradled the dustbin in her arms and sobbed.
After some time, there was a firm knock on the door. Elsie stood up, dried her eyes and whipped the eiderdown from the billiard table, pinning it below her chin to cover her modesty. ‘Come in,’ she called, trying her best to cover the distraught notes in her voice.
The receptionist from last night peered around the door. ‘Morning. I’m afraid you’re going to have to leave shortly. Your friend paid on her way out, so don’t worry about that.’
‘Oh, right,’ Elsie said. ‘When did she leave?’
The woman grimaced. ‘About an hour ago, I should think.’
‘Did she leave me a message?’
The receptionist shook her head. ‘She was in too much of a rush to catch a train.’
‘A train?’ Elsie queried. ‘Did she say where she was going?’
‘Folkestone, I think. She said she was heading to Charing Cross.’
‘Oh, God,’ Elsie murmured. ‘Right, I’m going!’
‘I didn’t mean you had to leave right this moment.’
Elsie ignored her, dropped the eiderdown to the floor and fumbled to put on her dress. She ran her fingers through her messy hair, not caring how she looked. She pulled on her shoes as she was still hobbling out of the room.
She had to get out of here right now and find a way of getting to Folkestone before Violet did something stupid in her misguided way of trying to make amends for her appalling revelation last night. As Elsie stumbled from the hotel and out into the cold London morning, she thought of what Violet had finally blurted out: that she had convinced Woody that Elsie was back with Laurie and that there was no possible future for him with her. Then Violet had slept with Woody. Weeks later, she had aborted his baby.
Elsie clambered out of the taxi at the bottom of the driveway to Cliff House. She had managed to procure an illegal ride from London to Folkestone in the back of a Royal Mail van, sitting atop sacks full of mail. The journey was an uncomfortable one, horribly whisking together her alcohol-induced nausea with Violet’s devastating revelations. She had spent the entire journey staring at the road ahead through a tiny crack behind the driver’s seat. They had arrived in Folkestone town centre and the driver had pulled over in a quiet side street and helped Elsie jump down before promptly scarpering. She had never even got his name. From there, she had run to Folkestone train station, losing her cartwheel hat en-route, hoping to have arrived before the train. But she was too late. The only possible train that Violet could have caught had arrived fifteen minutes earlier. Elsie had hastily summoned a taxi and had sat smoking nervously in the back, trying to stop her thoughts from wondering what Violet was planning on doing.
‘Thank you,’ Elsie called to the driver, tossing him the fare. ‘Keep the change.’
Hitching up her dress, she ran flat out towards the house. She arrived struggling for air, and banged hard on the door. Nothing. She banged again. ‘Come on.’
Elsie stepped back and peered up at the house. There was no movement. Nothing. The house stood eerily silent and she was reminded of the strange malaise the place had always cast over her.
She banged on the door again and tried the handle, but it was locked.
Maybe they’re in the back garden or in the shelter for some reason, Elsie thought, hurrying around the side of the house. She gazed through the kitchen window and tried the back door.Nobody was home.
Elsie kicked the door in anger, then stood back, wondering what to do next. If Violet hadn’t come here, then where had she gone? Why take the train to Folkestone, if not to come to Cliff House?
She turned from the building, facing out to sea. The turquoise sky was daubed with thin white patches. The opposing white cliffs of France were clearly visible. Somewhere on that part of the continent, where masses of Allied troops were now landing, were Laurie and Woody, their fates as yet undecided. Their respective futures, inextricably linked with Elsie’s, were as yet unwritten.
Elsie sniffed as a solitary tear rolled down her cheek to the corner of her mouth.
She watched as a herring gull glided silently above her, suddenly buffeted by a change in the direction of the wind. On that wind, Elsie caught the sound of something. Shouting. She cocked her head and strained to listen. Her time cowered over receiver sets, listening intently, meant that she was able to filter out the extraneous noises that came on a windy cliff top. Someone was shouting. Elsie couldn’t quite get the words but she recognised the voice: Mr Falkirk, an elderly neighbour from along the cliff path.
She craned her neck and searched the direction of the shouting, but couldn’t see any sign of him.
Then, another voice: Agnes.
Elsie hurried to the edge of the garden, climbed over the low wooden fence and began to move as quickly as she could along the narrow path cut into the cliff. Brambles and nettles reached out for her bare legs, snatching at her dress as she went.
As she reached the low rise in the hill that brought Mr Falkirk’s small bungalow into view, she saw Agnes and him exchanging words at the edge of his property.
Elsie crouched down behind a gorse bush and watched the pair’s heated discussion. She was aware that her bright blue dress made her highly visible should either party turn in her direction.
Slowly peering around the side of the bush, Elsie watched Mr Falkirk throw up his arms in a defeatist manner, turn and stride back towards his house. Agnes marched onwards along the cliff path, clutching something in her right hand. Where could she be going? Elsie wondered. The path wound its way towards the parish church before continuing out of Capel-le-Ferne, eventually arriving in Dover. Agnes had never been much of a walker and the determination in her stride told Elsie that she wasn’t out for a nice stroll along the cliff tops. She thought of Violet’s arrival in Folkestone and tried to make sense of it all, to form a picture, but it all refused to link together. Maybe Violet hadn’t taken the train in the end. Or maybe the receptionist had been mistaken. Either way, Elsie was here now and needed to know what was going on with her mother-in-law.
She continued along the path, hurrying past Mr Falkirk’s property, praying not to be seen. The path ahead had veered around a corner and Agnes had momentarily disappeared from view. Elsie ran on. At the corner, she paused and gasped.
Agnes had stopped with one hand on her hip and the other still clutching whatever was in her hand. Violet was stomping towards her from the opposite direction.
Words were exchanged, but Elsie was too far away to hear.
She had to get closer, but without being seen. There was only one way. She lay flat on her stomach and began to drag herself along the trench path towards the pair, pausing momentarily as she went, trying not to cry out at the scratches that lacerated her face and arms. More and more words filtered through to her but they made no sense. She rai
sed her head above the line of bushes that concealed her, just as Violet barged past Agnes, heading in her direction.
She was about to be caught; she had to move.
Elsie began to wriggle backwards but stopped instantly and watched with incredulity at what was happening in front of her.
Agnes raised the implement in her hand—a metal torch, Elsie realised—then brought it down towards Violet’s head, but Violet was quick and ducked out of the way, the torch silently crashing down on her right arm.
Violet yelped in pain and grabbed Agnes by the wrist, reaching out with her other hand for the torch, which she launched over the edge of the clifftop. With a quick violent motion, Violet spun Agnes around, holding both of her hands behind her back, pushing her towards the edge of the cliff.
Elsie gasped.
Garbled, hurried words were exchanged between the two women.
Elsie was transfixed. She should stand up and stop this from happening. What was she waiting for? She stood up hurriedly and shouted, ‘Violet!’
But Elsie was too late.
With one gentle, effortless push, Violet had sent Agnes over the cliff to her certain death.
Elsie’s legs were suddenly very heavy, refusing her brain’s request to move. Her lungs suffocated, refusing to form the dry words that she tried to speak.
Violet stood stationary, gaping out to sea, her red dress an absurdly glamorous juxtaposition to the setting and context of what had just occurred. Her face glanced sideways at Elsie. ‘Your baby’s gone from here. They sold her. Your mother-in-law’s last words will tell you where to find your baby.’
Elsie walked slowly along the path, cutting a striking figure. Flaps of her ripped blue dress danced gaily in the breeze and slow streams of bright red blood flowed down from an abundance of scratches on her exposed arms and legs.
She edged forward, to the spot of flattened grass that, just seconds before had been where her mother-in-law had stood. Elsie leaned over as far as she dared and peered below. She gasped and stepped back in horror; the body had fallen to a ledge part way down and was now motionless, lying broken and entwined in great ringlets of rusting barbed wire.
The Spyglass File (The Forensic Genealogist Book 5) Page 30