CHAPTER 8 

March 1960

“Hazel!” Barnaby called from the living room. She closed her eyes and steadied herself. Had he already told the police? Had her calm, principled boyfriend told the truth?

She walked into the living room to see Barnaby smiling and laughing with a bobby in his dark blue uniform and hat in his hand. Hazel stood quietly, nodding at the bobby.

“Detective Martin has a complaint from your neighbor above about a barking dog.”

Hazel laughed, a jittery sound. “Well, since I don’t have a dog…” She smiled but felt it shake.

“Sorry to bother you, ma’am.” The bobby rolled his eyes. “As if we don’t have more important things to worry about than a dog keeping a young child from going to bed. Seems the child believes some yappy dog is a werewolf, and the mum can’t get her to settle.”

“At least the kid has a good imagination.” Barnaby clapped the bobby’s shoulder before walking him out and shutting the door, locking it with the top bolt.

Hazel dropped to the couch and buried her face in her hands. The rush of fear and tears rose in one hiccup of a sob.

“It’s all right,” he said. “He’s gone.”

Hazel looked up. “No, it’s not. Not one bit all right.”

“Oh, Hazel.” Barnaby stood over her and held out his hand. She took it, rising to face him. He drew her closer, running his hand up the back of her neck and grasping her hair. Desire rose hot and nimble. “I can make it all right for you,” he said, flicking his tongue against her earlobe. Before she could make sure his cigarette had burned out in the ashtray, they were in bed.

The thrill of protecting her seemed to energize him. Their lovemaking was as urgent as in those early days. Momentarily, the troublesome world faded away for Hazel. Fear translated to desire, lies to truth. As he came inside her, her legs spread and her hips arched to meet him, she melted into him.

This was love.

The past was an anchor; she needed to cut the line.

The past. Harry.

God, no. Not here, not now. She would not think of Harry as Barnaby rolled over and pulled her closer, spooning his body around hers. “God, I love you,” he said.

“I love you madly,” she said seconds later, but he’d already fallen fast into sleep.

She was wide awake, as if she’d drunk too many cups of tea. Whisperwood had pried open a closed and decaying memory box filled with thoughts of Flora, Oxford, the woman who took them in, and Harry—the boy she lived with during the evacuation; the boy who’d been with her when she lost Flora, the boy who’d become her best friend, and the one she’d never forgotten but also desperately tried to forget.

She slipped from bed, jittery and jangled.

She walked into the blue bathroom with the tall silver mirror and stared at her face. Hazel never thought of herself as beautiful, although others had said so. But sometimes, when the light was just right and she caught a glimpse of her unguarded self in the mirror, she believed she could be beautiful. Or at least maybe in some other era, she might have been, when the style would suit her brown eyes and wavy tawny hair, wild about her freckled face.

She turned on the shower and stepped into scalding water. She soaped up, washed her hair until she felt the cigarette smoke was gone, the lather slinking down the drain in thin spidery lines as moonlight sifted through the bathroom window. She climbed out, wiggled her toes in the bathroom rug, and lifted her pink bathrobe from the hook behind the door. She was quiet even though she knew it would take a good hard shake to wake Barnaby. He slept like the dead, especially after whiskey and lovemaking. She belted her robe and tiptoed into the living room.

Now that she was calmer and the world dark and quiet, she realized what was at stake: not only being arrested but losing the Sotheby’s job. All of it had been jeopardized with an impulsive decision and a knock of whiskey.

She searched for solutions. Only two of the twenty illustrations were damaged. She might return them as if they’d never been gone. If Edwin ever noticed two were missing, he’d blame the sender.

But Hazel could not lie to him or to Tim. She couldn’t sneak it all back in the dark iron safe like nothing had happened. She would have to face Edwin and the truth.

Just not yet.

She thought of those who believed Flora’s story was over: Aiden Davies had been the one to ring her and Mum in 1956. It had been sixteen years since Flora disappeared and Aiden Davies was the one to call and say, “We believe we’ve found her.”

They’d found the skeletal remains of a young girl, looking to be the same age as Flora. Hazel had rushed to Oxford with Mum, listened to Aiden’s regretful explanations of facts and figures: 213 miles of River Thames, and every week someone was found dead in it. As he’d promised after Flora disappeared, Aiden had walked the shoreline from Binsey to Wallingford hundreds of times, searching the steely waters for a hint or clue to Flora’s whereabouts, asking local townspeople, leaving photos. But on the sixth of December, 1956, a group of teens had snuck out under the full moon with a bottle of Jameson and came across what remained of a body at the marshy edge of the river.

In the stuffy office at the Thames Valley Police Station in Oxford, Mum and Hazel sat in metal chairs, rusting at their edges, and faced Aiden across his cluttered desk. “You can’t prove it’s her,” Mum had said clearly, clinging to her black patent leather purse on her lap.

Neither of them had looked at the body, or what remained, for who could do such a thing? There was nothing to identify so why gaze on a small decomposed body? No rabbit-eared birthmark or curly blond hair.

“She’s about the right age and—” said Aiden.

“How can you know that?” Hazel had sprung up. “You say you searched miles and miles of river, you would have seen Flora years before now.”

Aiden’s voice was patient and tinged with his own sorrow. He didn’t want this to be the end of their story any more than they did. “The width of the river, the strength of the current—that river does not surrender its secrets easily. I am so sorry.”

Hazel and Mum had left Aiden Davies, both of them stoic in their belief that this body did not solve the mystery of Flora. They had no proof but their own feelings, and for Aiden that wasn’t enough.

And maybe Aiden Davies was right; that child’s skeleton and remains found on the riverbank could have told the truth: Flora might have perished. But deep down Hazel didn’t believe it. True, she could damn well be fooling herself to avoid the despair of acknowledging Flora’s death. But until there was proof, she was going to continue to live with the hope that Flora had survived.

Hazel shivered. The oak grandfather clock in the hallway ticked its metronome: eleven o’clock.

Hazel calculated the time in New York City—six p.m. She entered the kitchen, picked the phone from its cradle, turned the dial, and was transferred through a few switchboards. Then came the swishing noise of the sea, really just the static reception, and at long last a man answered a phone at what was likely a tall building in Manhattan. She wasn’t sure why she’d expected a woman.

Hazel calculated that each minute of this conversation was costing more than she could afford, but then again, she’d stolen a first edition book and original artwork. What was an international phone call in the scheme of things? “My name is Hazel Linden.” She cleared her throat as she slipped into a stronger British accent she hoped would impress this American. “I am a bookseller at Hogan’s Rare Book Shoppe in London.”

“And?” His tone was brusque.

“Well, today, I unpacked the extraordinary book by your author Peggy Andrews. I am hoping you might put me in touch with her.”

“I can get you whatever materials you might need. Why do you need to be in touch?”

For this, Hazel was unprepared, so she blurted out, “I need to talk to her about her book.”

“Is this for an interview?”

“Yes.” Hazel fell into the excuse with relief. “We publish a bookshop newsletter.”

“Ms. Andrews is extremely private. I am not permitted to give out her information in any way. But you can write her, care of us at Henry-Todd Publishing.”

“Would you mind so very much just asking her to return my call?”

“She doesn’t have a phone, or if she does, she hasn’t given me the number.”

“Oh.”

“Listen,” the man said, sympathetically noting her disappointment. “Write her at our address, and your letter will be forwarded.” He rattled off the address of some skyscraper in New York City, along with the name of a publicist.

“Thank you,” Hazel said. “In the meantime, I have a few questions I’m hoping you can answer,” she pressed, even as she heard other phones ringing and the shuffling of paper.

“Maybe, if you can make it quick.”

“Of course. Can you tell me how old Ms. Andrews is?”

“It says here that she’ll be twenty-five in April.”

Flora’s birthday was in July. Peggy Andrews was at least a year younger than Flora would have been.

“And what does she look like?” Hazel asked.

Now he was thinking Hazel was creepy; she felt the shift in his silence. “Can you mail me a photo? Please.”

“If you want to contact the author, mail a letter here to the publishing house.” He hung up. Just like she imagined a busy New Yorker might do.

She slammed down her own phone.

Maybe she’d just jump on an airplane and fly to America, or book passage on a ship and find this woman who lived somewhere in Massachusetts. More information—that’s what she needed.

She clicked on the small lamp at the edge of the hutch, retrieved a sheet of her best fine linen stationery and her nib pen. Find the author and she would find Flora. Or at least find out about Flora.

What was she to say in a letter? How much of the truth to tell? Whisperwood is my story. It is my sister’s story. It is not yours and how did you come by it?

No. Hazel could not be aggressive, or Peggy Andrews might become even more elusive. Hazel had to be kind and inquisitive.

Curious.

She set her pen to the paper. When I was a child, I made up this very story with this very same name: Whisperwood and The River of Stars. I am curious how…

When finished, she sat back and read it twice, satisfied that it hit the right notes. Respectful so that maybe she’d receive a response and then… maybe… Peggy Andrews would tell her more.