“A swastika on the back door?” Wallace shrugged. Grace realized that was his answer to a lot of things. “We can’t chase down every kid who plays a prank these days.”
Grace had expected her colleague to be more concerned. But then what did she know about him? This Saturday was only her second day on the job. She had reported to Wallace because Sergeant Baines was late arriving. “But surely this sort of thing affects morale, not to mention flouting law and order?”
“You’re right, but in this case the only morale it’s going to affect is our own. Most likely it was aimed at you, being connected with the police. Quite a few of us have had stones through our windows and rude words scrawled on our doors. Not much comfort, I know, but the best I can offer.”
It hadn’t occurred to Grace that she might be the target or that her presence could put Mavis in danger. “Too bad mischief-makers can’t be shipped off to throw stones through Hitler’s windows.”
“They will be if the war continues long enough.”
The young officer manning the counter clacked away at his typewriter, paying their conversation no attention. Already Grace had become less of an object of curiosity. How would her colleagues react when they found she’d never learned to type?
“What should I do about it? It’s upset my landlady.”
“Best thing to do is keep your eyes and ears open. Write a report. Mind, the chances are it was a local kid and the neighbors won’t say a thing.”
“They’re all as close-mouthed as the people living near the temple?”
“I’m afraid so. Then again it’s likely no one saw anything. The blackout, you know.”
Was it always going to come down to that? It was dark and the curtains were drawn. Let’s move on to the next case. That and a shrug?
“I’m afraid I didn’t find out very much yesterday,” Grace began. “Perhaps I wasn’t questioning people the right way? Conversations kept drifting away from the topic.”
“Nonsense! How do you think you should be questioning them? Ask them where were you, missus, on the night of the murder between the hours of six p.m. and three a.m.?” Wallace laughed. “People won’t stand for being interrogated in their own homes or at their favorite pubs. At the station, that’s different…especially if they’re charged with a crime. But in their own surroundings? They’ll clam right up on you.”
“You think so?”
“I know so from years of experience. However, you did find out that odd character Rutherford is over at the ruins every night. He could turn out to be very important. He might well have noticed something useful.”
“Still, it seems as if I talked myself hoarse for nothing.”
“Well, that’s the way it works. If you talk to twenty people and find a single useful piece of information, count yourself lucky. Now go back and see if you can winkle out Rutherford.”
“Now?” Grace was eager to be back out on the street. A dusty sense of futility hung in the air of this corner shop masquerading as a police station.
“Not right away. First I have another assignment for you. We’ve been told vandals have been at work in St John’s Cemetery too. Talk to the watchman. Not that we can do anything but, as you say, we need to keep up civilian morale, look like we’re on the job. Which we are, only not enough of us.”
“Could it be related to the vandalism at my lodgings?”
“It’s possible, I suppose.” From his tone he clearly considered it impossible. He gave her directions. “It will give you a bit of exercise and a chance to see more of the area.”
***
Grace took one of the station’s bicycles. Cars were not used for routine work due to petrol shortages. That disappointed her. Hardly anyone in Noddweir had dreamed of owning a car. One thing Grace had wanted to do when she left the countryside for the city was to learn to drive. Evidently it would have to wait until after the war, like so many other things.
Her thoughts as she pedaled along were decidedly sour. “Exercise and a chance to see more of the area,” Wallace had told her. Was that the real reason he’d sent her? Because it wasn’t an important enough job for anyone else to waste time on? Was Wallace simply a more polite version of Sergeant Baines, convinced women had no business in the police force?
The day before she was congratulating herself on being assigned to conduct interviews involving a mysterious death. This morning it was clear to her that Wallace had concluded the death was accidental. A prostitute had fallen and cracked her skull in the dark. At worst, one of that class of woman had been assaulted by a client. Criminals preying on criminals would not be a high priority. And at any rate it was the kind of crime where the perpetrator was never caught until, eventually, he happened to be hauled in for something else. If anything came of the case it would have to start with checking missing persons reports to discover the dead woman’s identity.
All of which meant that the real reason Wallace had sent her to investigate was to allow her to acclimate herself, to see the locals and be seen by them.
The realization stung her pride.
The watchman’s surly reception did nothing to restore it. “About time you got here,” he growled.
He was waiting for her beside the cemetery’s northern entrance, a dark, forbidding stone archway. He was old, not surprisingly. Much of the country’s work was being done these days by old men as well as women. His coat was too big and so were his dentures. With his rough voice and bristly jowls, he was more Charon than Saint Peter.
Grace produced her pencil and notepad.
“Come and see,” the watchman said. “Come and see what the little buggers done.”
He led her through the archway and down a short, steep drive. The cemetery was huge. Past the open space and its monuments and gravestones she could see over the factories a few blocks distant, then through plumes of smoke across the Tyne to more roofs and beyond rolling hills.
“It’s a disgrace, it is,” the watchman complained. “It’s sacrilege. But what can one man do? I canna be everywhere at once, can I? You’d think there’s enough destruction in the world as it is, wouldn’t you? But no, the little buggers come in at night and turn over the gravestones of them that’s trying to sleep peacefully.”
An unassuming monument caught Grace’s eye, an engraved pedestal topped by a cross decorated in bas relief with a bird perched over a scroll bearing a Latin motto. Stopping to look more closely she saw what had drawn her attention.
“John Hunter Rutherford,” she read the inscription.
“Went to one of his schools when I were a lad,” the watchman said. “He was a great one for founding schools, he was.”
Remembering the mysterious Mr. Rutherford at number sixty, Grace asked whether his descendants remained in the area.
“That I wouldn’t know. They move in different circles than I do, I’m sure.”
In the cemetery’s dismal atmosphere the bird reminded Grace of a popular fortune-telling rhyme her grandmother often recited to her, based on sighting blackbirds.
One for sorrow
Two for mirth
Three for a wedding
Four for a birth.
Although some Shropshire versions substituted “death” for “birth,” which had puzzled Grace. Did spotting a single carved bird foretell sorrow? That would be a safe bet when war brought new sorrows to Newcastle every day. Did it signal worse sorrows to come, perhaps the long delayed mass bombing everyone in the city expected?
“I don’t suppose you know what that means?” Grace said. “I can’t read Latin myself.”
“Neither can I, but the vicar at St Martha’s can. I asked about it when he was here for a funeral. Told me it says ‘by neither chance nor fate,’ whatever that might mean. Everything’s either by chance or fate, isn’t it?”
They continued on, passing fallen stones lying half-propped up against their bases, or flat in the wet grass. Most looked as if they had been that way for many years. In places long rows of stones faced each other, leaning this way and that, none of them vertical.
“Look here, Constable. Look what they done.”
They had come to a monument topped by an angel. Red covered one wing, ran down the frozen folds of her robes, and spattered the hard, blank-eyed face. Was the red paint—the same color as the swastika on Mavis’ door—a coincidence? The maisonette was only a half hour’s walk from the cemetery.
“Looks like she was pulled out of a bombed house, don’t it?” The watchman grimaced, showing his ill-fitting teeth.
“Did you see or hear anything?” Grace asked hopefully.
“I’m only one man, miss. One old man, alone in the dark, to protect all these graves and report any incendiaries or high-explosive bombs that disturb the peace of the dead. T’ain’t time for the graves to give up their dead, though Hitler’s lot are having a good go at adding more stones for them needing burial here, curse him.” He paused and shook a thin fist at the sky. “I only seen this mess when it got light.”
Grace scribbled on her pad. The monument belonged to a man and his wife. An English name. Both had died before the turn of the century. It was unlikely the vandal had anything against them personally. The worst family feuds could last only so long until they eventually died out. Literally.
“Has anything like this happened before? Where the vandals used paint, I mean.”
“Usually they tip the stones over, like I was saying. The police need to patrol the cemetery at night. It isn’t right. What can I do on me own?”
Grace was sure no one could be spared to protect the residents of a cemetery. She pretended to make another note.
“You’ll get after the little buggers, won’t you, Constable?”
“I’ll file my report with my superior. We’ll do what we can.”
In other words, nothing.
Grace and the watchman both knew it. Both pretended they didn’t.
“What’s the world come to? There are times I wish I’d joined all them before the war started.” He gestured at the countless graves surrounding them. “They’re lucky they never had to see this bloody war. But since I’m still here I have to see it out. Once the Germans are put back in their place I can die happy. Now I need to be getting on with my rounds.”
“I can find the way out myself. The police appreciate your efforts,” Grace added, but the man was already moving away, muttering to himself.
Policing city streets promised to be frustrating. In Noddweir such incidents were quickly dealt with. Half the village would have been whispering the perpetrators’ names before Grace’s father received the complaint. No papers were filled out, no arrests made, no trial held. The miscreant would get the sharp side of the constable’s tongue. Then he’d get the sharper side of his father’s razor strop on his backside.
Grace was feeling the effects of her recent travel and lack of sleep. She looked around. The morning sky was relatively clear. Above the Tyne, barrage balloons protecting the Vickers factory caught the feeble sunlight.
She decided to walk around the cemetery before returning to work. She was already tired of city streets. Here the grass underfoot remained green, and glossy vines climbed over grave stones. One stone was entirely overgrown, a leafy hummock.
She kept a brisk pace, eyes down, occasionally stopping to try to make out inscriptions on the more interesting gravestones, many of them blackened, their writing eroded. Lifting her gaze she was surprised to see a solitary figure standing over a flat grave marker. A man, not a boy who might be intent on mischief. His hands were in his coat pockets, his head bowed down. At the sound of Grace’s footstep on the gravel path he looked up and turned, spectacles glinting momentarily.
“Sergeant Baines.”
Baines was not in uniform. His eyes were redder than the morning before, his broad forehead an expanse of polished marble. Grace could smell alcohol on him.
Her superior looked at her sheepishly. “I’ve no doubt you’ve been told my wife and child were killed in an air raid. I visit them here sometimes.”
“No, sir. Nobody said anything.”
“Ah, well…now you know…know what everyone else knows….”