“A slumming society girl who made her fortune marrying the sole heir to Bainbridge millions,’” read Lady Carolyne. “‘Now, she fixes up other social climbers with ambitions of joining their betters. Unfortunately, her latest customer, a lovely East End lass, met her Waterloo in the guise of a petty Croydon Lothario by the name of Dickie Trower.’”
She tossed the newspaper into the fireplace.
“Utter trash,” she said. “With you wallowing right in the midst of it. Working with murderers, are you?”
“I don’t believe that he did it,” said Gwen.
“He’s been arrested for it, hasn’t he?” sniffed Lady Carolyne. “Scotland Yard seems to think he killed that poor girl.”
“I know what they think,” said Gwen.
“How?”
“Because they interviewed us, of course,” said Gwen. “How do you think they got on to poor Mister Trower?”
“Poor Mister Trower, is it?”
“We think he’s innocent.”
“We? You mean you and that sordid little minx you work with?”
“Don’t you dare call her that!” said Gwen. “You have no right to belittle my friends.”
“I have no right? My dear daughter-in-law, let me remind you that you live under our roof, purely upon our charity. If I wish to describe that wretched Sparks woman in that manner, then I shall. Given her record of broken engagements and God knows how many affairs—”
“Leave her out of this,” said Gwen. “You don’t want me under your roof? Then give me back my child and I will happily leave here.”
“That will not happen,” said Lady Carolyne. “And considering the tarnishing of the Bainbridge name by your conduct, I do not see that you have any hope of improving your chances in the future.”
“What if Dickie Trower turns out to be innocent?” asked Gwen. “What if we are right?”
“And the rest of the world is wrong? Doubtful to say the least. Who is going to take his side?”
“We are,” said Gwen. “We already have.”
“Two silly girls against the world,” scoffed Lady Carolyne. “What could you possibly do to change this?”
“Investigate,” said Gwen. “Find the truth.”
“Nonsense.”
“We’ve already begun,” said Gwen.
“What? What do you mean, you’ve already begun?”
“We are investigating the—situation,” said Gwen.
She was going to say “case,” but realized how strange it would sound.
“Investigating?” laughed Lady Carolyne. “First you thought you could be a businesswoman. Now, you fancy yourself a detective? Utter madness!”
“Nevertheless—”
“Madness,” repeated Lady Carolyne more thoughtfully. “I am beginning to wonder…”
“Wonder what?” asked Gwen, a sudden chill falling over her.
“I wonder if perhaps this behaviour of yours is symptomatic of a deeper mania,” said Lady Carolyne. “When is the last time you spoke with Doctor Milford?”
“Two weeks ago,” said Gwen.
“Before all of this happened,” mused Lady Carolyne. “No wonder that he missed the signs. I think that I shall have a little talk with him.”
“Stay out of that,” said Gwen. “You have no right to interfere with my treatment.”
“My dear, it concerns the welfare of your child,” said Lady Carolyne blandly. “I would be in dereliction of my duties as his guardian if I did not see to the mental welfare of his mother. Perhaps more extensive measures need to be taken.”
“You cannot—”
“It would be such a shame if the Mirror were to hear about that portion of your past,” continued Lady Carolyne. “We’ve managed to keep it from the press so far—”
“You wouldn’t dare,” said Gwen.
“I will make an appointment to see Doctor Milford,” said Lady Carolyne. “I will listen to what he has to say. It would be in your interest to co-operate. I am done with you. Go fetch Percy and tell him that I am going out tonight.”
Gwen stood, on the verge of screaming at the other woman, then forced it back down and fled the room.
“You were particularly enthusiastic tonight,” commented Andrew.
“Was I?” said Iris.
They were sitting side by side on her bed, propped up against the pillows, eating something grey and fishy straight from the tins. Two partially filled glasses of claret sat on the nightstand.
“You came in keyed up,” he said. “I felt positively overwhelmed by the onslaught. Remarkably enjoyable, by the way.”
“Thank you, kind sir,” she said, digging out some more and shoving it into her mouth greedily. “Any idea what this was when it was alive and swimming?”
“I suspect whale of some kind,” he said. “Thank God for the claret. Otherwise, we’d be revisiting the flavour all night.”
“You’re staying overnight?”
“I’m flying back tomorrow,” he said. “Told Poppy it was an early plane, so staying in town was the easiest way.”
“Awfully short notice. When did you find out?”
“Last night.”
“So, this is our farewell fling,” said Iris.
“Yes.”
“And you’re spending it with me instead of your wife. I’m flattered.”
“I much prefer it here,” he said.
“Did you give her a proper send-off as well?” asked Iris, reaching over him for her wine glass.
“Excuse me?”
“Fulfill your husbandly duties,” said Iris, taking a sip. “Give her something to remember you by while you’re off fighting the secret wars.”
“That’s really none of your business,” he said.
“None of my affair, you mean,” she said. “Oops, sorry. I’m the affair, not her. I forget that sometimes. Especially when we’re in the throes of it.”
“Where did this come from?” he asked. “Are you having second thoughts about our arrangement?”
“Long past second,” said Iris. “Deep into double digits by now.”
“What brought this on?”
“I watched Gwen turn down a perfectly good opportunity to lose herself to a very acceptable specimen of the male species tonight.”
“So?”
“So her reasons spoke of her love, her loss, her mourning—her passion.”
“Passion.”
“Yes, passion,” repeated Iris. “What am I to you, Andrew? Is this passion?”
“I’ve told you that I love you,” he said. “Many times.”
“In here,” she said. “In one or two other rooms before you arranged for this flat. Would you say it outside?”
“Where?”
“I don’t know. Piccadilly Circus. On the Serpentine. In Covent Garden. Shouted from the rooftops would be nice.”
“I’ve told you—”
“That you can’t be seen with me, I know,” said Iris. “The question for me is can there be passion when there is also caution and secrecy?”
“You agreed to all of this when we began,” said Andrew.
“I did,” said Iris. “Part of the thrill at the time was the clandestine nature of it all. I said yes, and I think that I have held up my end of the bargain adequately.”
“More than adequately,” he said. “God, now it’s sounding entirely mercenary. What is it that you want?”
“Would you consider divorcing Poppy and marrying me?” asked Iris.
“Are you proposing, Sparks?”
“I asked you a question.”
“Would I consider it? Yes.”
“Consider,” she repeated. “Damn that word. It gives you all manner of escape routes, doesn’t it?”
“You and I always need room for a fast exit, don’t we, Sparks?”
“All right. Let me ask this properly. If I said that I wanted you to marry me, would you? Would you divorce Poppy?”
He didn’t reply.
“It’s astonishing how a man who risks life and limb nearly every day for his country could be such a coward,” she said bitterly.
“That’s not fair,” he said. “My marriage is complicated.”
“And I am simple,” said Iris. “I am a simple woman with simple needs, but I’m wondering if I should be asking for complexity. I look at Gwen and all that she has had and lost, and how it’s nearly destroyed her, and do you know? I envy her. She’s had more happiness in a few short years with one man than I have had in all of my life, and I don’t know if I can even attain that anymore.”
“Did you ever have a chance for it with any of them?” he asked.
It was her turn to be silent. He laughed, suddenly.
“Mike,” he said. “Mike Kinsey.”
“Maybe,” she said. “I didn’t realize it at the time if so.”
“He comes back into your life, betrothed to another,” said Andrew. “As a result, you are filled with regrets for what might have been, but what in actuality probably would not have been. And all of those regrets are now being projected onto me.”
“My regrets about you are entirely independent, I assure you.”
“Right,” he said, getting up.
“What are you doing?”
“Getting dressed. Leaving.”
“I thought you were going to spend the night.”
“So did I,” he said, grabbing his shorts from the floor and pulling them on.
“Where will you stay?”
“I’ll find a nice hard chair at the airfield and have a kip there until my plane,” he said.
She watched him as he dressed, sipping her claret. He finished, then picked up his glass and downed the rest of his.
“I was wrong,” he said, staring at the dregs. “The bad taste doesn’t go away.”
“When do you return?” she asked.
“Don’t know. It doesn’t matter. Look, if you want to reconsider what you and I have said tonight, that’s fine,” he said. “But if you wish to see other men while I’m gone, feel free.”
“That was about the worst thing you could have possibly said to me,” she said.
“The rent on the flat is paid for through the end of the year,” he said, picking up his bag. “I’ll hang onto my key for now, if you don’t mind.”
She waited until she heard the door open and close behind him, then got up to make certain that it was locked. Then she poured the remainder of the claret into her glass and gulped it down.
She woke the next morning sprawled across the bed, her head throbbing. She made herself coffee instead of her usual tea. It didn’t help.
She decided to see Mike Kinsey in person rather than call him. Telephones could be hung up. Of course, he could refuse to see her, but she liked her chances better if she could confront him directly, especially if there were other witnesses around forcing him to be polite.
She took the bus to Westminster, got off before the bridge, and walked down Victoria Embankment to the entryway to New Scotland Yard. The two old buildings with their rounded brick towers projected an air of solidity, but Mike was in the newer Curtis Green building.
She walked through the arches to the interior, staying to the side in case any Flying Squads had to peel off in their Wolseleys, but it was relatively quiet. A constable at the front desk directed her to Mike’s office, which was the anteroom to Parham’s in the Homicide and Serious Crime Command. She saw her ex sitting behind a desk, typing laboriously away at some report.
“You still can’t type any faster than that?” she remarked.
He looked up at her and grimaced.
“What do you want, Sparks?” he asked.
“To make your life easier,” she said.
“Then turn around and walk away.”
“I need to talk to you about something,” she said, taking a seat by his desk. “I figured that if we met on your turf, there would be no unseemly displays.”
“That is something for which I should apologize,” he said. “It was an unforgivable action on my part.”
“And yet, I forgive you,” she said, reaching across his desk and grasping his hand for a second. “Given all that I need to be pardoned for, one kiss—a very good kiss, by the way—is scarcely worth mentioning.”
He pulled his hand away, sat back in his chair, and looked at her.
“You’re not here about that, are you?” he asked warily.
“What makes you say that, Detective Sergeant?”
“You came here and you’re being nice to me. Which means that you want something.”
“Yes, Mike, I do. As much as I would like to reminisce about the good times, I am here about the present. I have a new suspect for you for the murder of Matilda La Salle.”
“No, no, no,” he said. “That’s over and done with. We got our man.”
“And the Yard is never wrong.”
“We have the knife. We have motive and opportunity. It’s a strong case.”
“Still circumstantial.”
“Not our problem. We have enough to charge him, and we have done so.”
“What if I told you of someone with stronger motives, a longer history with her, and, moreover, a criminal background?”
“If you’re thinking about any of that gang of spivs she used to run with—”
“Not just any of them. A particular one. One who followed her to our office, who had a relationship with her before she decided to seek greener pastures, who saw our setup and could therefore figure out how to use our files to divert Mister Trower from his date. And who also would have known Trower’s address from those same files, which would have given him a chance to plant the murder weapon in such a blindingly obvious place.”
“You’re saying a spiv showed up—”
“On our very doorstep, right after she left, probably listening as we interviewed her.”
He picked up a notepad.
“Tell me,” he said.
She recounted what she knew about Manners/Pilcher, leaving out the near knife fight. When she was done, he stared at the pad, then slid it across.
“Sign that,” he said.
She read it over, then put her signature at the end and dated it. She gave it back to him.
“I’m not saying you’re correct,” he said. “I still don’t think that there’s anything here. But I’ll look into it.”
“Thank you, Mike,” she said. “I appreciate it. I honestly thought you would put up more resistance.”
“Whenever I resisted you, you would bring out the wheedling tone,” he said. “I thought we could forego that dance for once.”
“I never did!”
“Every single time,” he said. “I don’t think I could take the wheedling tone anymore.”
“I had no idea I was such a terror to you,” said Iris, getting to her feet. “Well, that’s all I have. You will call me if you turn up anything?”
“I will,” he promised, coming around the desk to hold the door for her. “And Sparks?”
“Yes?” she said, turning back to him.
“It’s good to see you again,” he said. “Regardless.”
“Likewise, Detective Sergeant Kinsey,” she said. “Now it’s back to the matrimonial mines for me.”
She gave him a bright smile that she didn’t feel, and left.
She sat by a window on the bus, staring at the parade of Londoners going about their lives.
Andrew was gone, maybe for good. Mike was getting married.
She was twenty-nine, and this was how things were.
She wondered how Sally’s second visit to the Cornwalls had gone. The Right Sort dearly needed the cushion that payment would provide if they were going to survive any lengthy period without new customers. At least their investigation was over, and they could concentrate on the business of matching up potential couples. Unless those potential couples refused to accept their introductions for fear of filleting.
One good thing, she thought. I would like one good thing to happen to me today.
Maybe she would keep her appointment with Archie and buy a new pair of black market nylons. Maybe she’d take him up on his offer to go dancing. Dancing with a gangster might be exactly what she needed.
God. How had she turned into a woman who thought that dancing with a gangster was what she needed?
Still.
It might be fun.
Gwen had her box of index cards open on her desk when Iris finally arrived at the office.
“There you are,” she said. “I have been thinking about Mister Robertson. I have some candidates in mind for him.”
“Any new business?” asked Iris.
“A few more attempts to cancel,” said Gwen. “I assured them that even if they wanted to give up on their chances for a lifetime of happiness, we certainly would not.”
“Any word from Sally?”
“Not yet. How did things go with Mike?”
“I reported our findings,” said Iris, unpinning her hat and hanging it on the coat-tree. “He sounded interested. He said he would look into Mister Pilcher.”
“And that was that?”
“What did you think would happen?”
“I don’t know,” said Gwen. “It sounds so anticlimactic after everything we did. In my imagination, the two of you jump straight into a squad car and roar off, sirens screaming and flashers flashing.”
“We have no actual proof that Pilcher did it,” Iris pointed out.
“No, but—I don’t know, I expected more somehow.”
“There will be,” said Iris confidently. “Mike’s a good man.”
“He’s a good man now?”
“In terms of being a detective, yes.”
“You’re basing this upon what, exactly?” asked Gwen.
“I am assessing him solely on what I know of his abilities, apart from whatever biases against him that I may have accumulated because of our history.”
“You are being remarkably generous to him this morning,” observed Gwen. “Quite the change of heart. Tell me that you haven’t become sweet on him again.”
“No, that ship sailed long ago,” said Iris.
“Besides, you have your current man in your life.”
“That plane flew this morning,” said Iris.
“Oh?” said Gwen.
Then she looked more closely at her partner’s face.
“Oh,” she said sympathetically. “It was like that, was it?”
“It was like that,” said Iris. “A good thing, in the long run. It was inspired by you, by the way.”
“Me? How was I in any way responsible for this?”
“You made me realize that I wanted something better,” said Iris.
“How did I do that?”
“By turning down Des,” said Iris.
“My goodness,” said Gwen. “I had no idea that I was setting an example. So, you confronted your unnamed paramour and threw him out on his ear instead of making love? Well done!”
“Actually, after we made love,” confessed Iris.
“Oh,” said Gwen. “Not quite the same thing.”
“I mean, he was already there.”
“I really don’t want the sordid details.”
“He brought a bottle of claret. And snacks.”
“How thoughtful. Of both of you.”
“Yes, well, it’s over now, in any case.”
“Are you all right?” asked Gwen. “Seriously?”
“I am, I think. Or will be. It was time.”
“What now?”
“The corpse of our relationship is barely cooled, and you’re pushing me onto the next one?”
“No. I mean, what do we do now? Do we still pursue our investigation?”
“I think we have to give the police a chance. We don’t want them to feel like we’re doing their job for them.”
“That’s too bad,” sighed Gwen. “I made rather a loud show last night of how we were going to catch the killer ourselves.”
“Lady Carolyne again?”
“Yes.”
“Well, if it works out, we’ll take all the credit,” said Iris. “That should put a cork in her.”
“If only it were that simple,” said Gwen. “I wish—”
The telephone rang. She picked it up.
“The Right Sort Marriage Bureau, Mrs. Bainbridge speaking,” she said.
Then her expression grew troubled.
“No, it’s not—when?” she said. “Today? But I—no, no, I’m not trying to cause—Yes. Yes. Two o’clock. I’ll be there. Good-bye.”
She hung up and stared at the telephone.
“I have an appointment this afternoon,” she said. “Can you handle the office without me?”
“Of course,” said Iris. “Anything wrong?”
“So many things,” said Gwen. “Well, enough gloom and doom. Let’s talk about Mister Robertson. I have a candidate for him.”
The telephone rang around noon. Gwen answered it.
“Right Sort Marriage Bureau, Mrs. Bainbridge speaking. Yes, she’s here. One moment.”
She passed the telephone to Iris and mouthed, “Mike.”
“Hello, Sparks here,” said Iris.
“It’s Detective Sergeant Kinsey,” said Mike. “I have some information for you.”
“Yes, Detective Sergeant?” replied Iris, wondering at the formality.
“We’ve looked into your proposed suspect, and we are satisfied that he is not the killer.”
“Oh,” said Iris, her shoulders slumping. “Is the Yard permitted to tell me how it reached that conclusion?”
“I’m afraid not,” he said. “There is one more thing. You and your partner are specifically directed not to pursue this any further. Any attempts to investigate this matter will be regarded as interference with an ongoing police matter, and will be treated severely. Are we clear about this, Miss Sparks?”
“Quite clear, Detective Sergeant,” said Iris. “Thank you for your time. Good-bye.”
She hung up.
“Damn it,” she said. “They’ve ruled out Pilcher as a suspect.”
“Oh, no,” said Gwen. “Why?”
“He wouldn’t say,” said Iris. “He was being so curt. So formal with me.”
“Perhaps someone was with him while he made the call,” said Gwen. “Maybe he overstepped by looking into it.”
“Maybe.”
“What do we do now?”
“We’ve been officially warned away from doing anything more,” said Iris.
“Say for the sake of argument that we ignored that directive,” said Gwen. “What would we do next?”
“He threatened us with prosecution.”
“Last night, a man threatened us with a switchblade and you didn’t back down,” said Gwen.
“For which I earned your well-deserved scolding. And one man with a switchblade is easier to battle than an entire metropolitan police force.”
“Doing nothing for Mister Trower at this point is far worse than risking prosecution in pursuit of his exoneration.”
“True enough,” said Iris. “So, if we were to throw caution to the winds, then the next step would be to beard the lion in his den.”
“You’re going to the warehouse.”
“Yes.”
“Then I should—oh, blast. I have that appointment.”
“Something you can’t break?”
“Not without—”
She stopped.
“What?” asked Iris.
“The appointment is with my psychiatrist,” said Gwen.
“You’ve never had an afternoon appointment with anyone since we’ve started,” said Iris. “Why today? Why did he call you?”
“That wasn’t him calling,” said Gwen. “That was Lady Carolyne. Or her secretary, rather. Lady Carolyne likes to delegate her dirty work.”
“What’s going on?”
“She saw the article in the Mirror. She wasn’t happy about it. She thinks my desire to clear Mister Trower is a symptom of an increased mania. That’s her justification, in any case. Hence the emergency appointment.”
“Since when does one’s mother-in-law force treatment on one?”
“They have custody of Ronnie,” said Gwen, looking down at her lap.
“What? How?”
“It happened while I was—away,” said Gwen. “No, Gwendolyn, call it by its name. While I was confined, strapped to a bed to keep from doing myself an injury, injected with God knows what to make me docile. They went to court to assume custody of the sole heir to the Bainbridge holdings, and they have not relinquished it. Every now and then, they construct a new hoop for me to jump through.”
“This is horrible!” exclaimed Iris. “Why have you never told me before?”
“What did you do in the war, Iris?” Gwen asked sharply, looking at her in a way that made the other woman flinch. “I don’t discuss certain portions of my life with you. With anyone.”
“Do you have someone advising you? Representing you legally?”
“I am still a ward of the court,” said Gwen. “They appointed me a guardian, and I suspect that he is in the pocket of my in-laws.”
“We should call Sir Geoffrey.”
“We should do nothing of the sort,” said Gwen. “This is none of your affair.”
“I am between affairs at the moment,” said Iris. “I don’t mind taking yours on.”
“There are no characters that you can portray nor accents you can use that will help me here,” said Gwen. “I have to plough through it myself. Which is why I want to continue the investigation. I have a personal stake in showing that we were right so that I may retake the high ground that I’ve lost.”
“Where is your doctor?”
“On Harley Street.”
“Of course. That’s not far from my flat. You could come by after for the post-mortem.”
“I was going to come back to the office,” said Gwen. “There’s still time left in the day for me to get some work done. Or to stare out the window and scream at the walls. I can’t do that at home.”
“I had no idea. Would you like me to go for a walk and let you get in some therapeutic howling now?”
“Not today, thank you,” said Gwen. “I might take you up on that offer in the future.”
“Well,” said Iris, glancing at her watch. “I have a rendezvous with some spivs.”
“Be careful,” said Gwen. “If that Pilcher fellow is there, we don’t know how he’ll react to your return to the fray.”
“It would be interesting to see his response,” said Iris.
“Even though he’s no longer a suspect?”
“He’s no longer CID’s suspect,” said Iris. “He’s still mine. What do you think about him, given his conduct last night?”
“I was so wrapped up in not wanting to be on the wrong end of a knife that I hadn’t really thought about it,” said Gwen.
“Think about it. Put his performance through your magnifying lens. Give me the morning-after impressions.”
“Performance,” said Gwen thoughtfully.
“What?”
“It was a performance,” said Gwen. “Both times that we’ve seen him, he was putting on a show of some kind.”
“Well, we know he wasn’t a dustman.”
“Yes, and I had a nagging sense of that even then—remember my commenting on how nice he smelled? It didn’t seem important at the time. So many of our clients present themselves at the first interview as something better than they are.”
“Which is only human.”
“Of course. The interesting thing about last night was that he backed down so easily.”
“Easily?” said Iris indignantly. “We had to resort to knives and whistles!”
“Nevertheless, it was a show,” said Gwen. “He wanted to present himself as something worse than he was.”
“Braggadocio? Talking big in front of the rest of the spivs?”
“Men always carry on like baboons when they’re in groups,” said Gwen. “But our Mister Pilcher has something else which he is concealing with this display of masculine force.”
“Maybe he’s a poet at heart,” suggested Sally, who was standing at the doorway.
“Sneak!” exclaimed Iris. “How long were you listening?”
“Just a minute or two,” said Sally, coming in. “I didn’t want to interrupt your analysis. Sounds like a fascinating afternoon the two of you had while I sat cajoling my Muse in this lonely office.”
“We lived to tell the tale,” said Iris. “How goes the playwriting?”
“I need more conflict,” he said. “Have you any to spare?”
“More than you know,” said Gwen glumly.
“In any case, I am the bearer of good news,” he said, reaching into his pocket. “More important, I am the bearer of cash.”
He pulled out a handful of bills and coins and placed them triumphantly on Iris’s desk.
“Forty pounds, less my commission,” he said. “The Cornwalls send their abject apologies and thank you for services on their behalves.”
“No, they didn’t,” said Gwen.
“No, they didn’t,” agreed Sally. “But they paid up, so I thought I’d sugarcoat the transaction for you.”
“You must tell me all the lurid details when Gwen isn’t around to disapprove,” said Iris.
“Sometimes I like lurid details,” said Gwen.
“Nevertheless, we’ll postpone the telling until we have the chance to hear it properly with drinks,” said Iris, scooping up the money. “I’m going to deposit this straight away before I go shopping for stockings.”
“Do you want me to go with you?” asked Sally.
“If I show up with a bodyguard, it would be extremely out of character,” said Iris, scribbling on her notepad. “Here’s the address. If I don’t telephone here by five, send in the cavalry.”
“Here?”
“Yes, here. Could you fill in for one more day, please, dear Sally? My Bar-Let would be glad of the company.”
“I’ll be back at some point midafternoon, so it needn’t be a full shift,” added Gwen.
“Well, as it happens, I have my script in progress with me,” said Sally, patting a well-worn leather satchel at his side. “I shall put the time to good use. It’s quiet here.”
“Unfortunately,” said Iris.
The waiting room at Doctor Milford’s office was thickly carpeted, as was the office itself. Gwen suspected it to be sound-proofing. That and the doubled doorway to the inner officer kept those outside from hearing any shouts, sobs, or curses. The patients went in and out, rarely making eye contact with the others waiting. Conversation among them never happened, other than the muttered “Good days” springing from habitual courtesy.
There were more men waiting at this time of day, Gwen noticed. Young men, sitting rigidly upright staring into space rather than availing themselves of the magazines in the stand at the end of one of the leather-covered couches. Gwen picked up an old, well-thumbed issue of the Illustrated London News. It was their centenary issue from ’42, with a lovely full-page black and white photo of Princess Elizabeth in her ambulance driver gear, the cap tilted jauntily on her head, her curls slightly wind-blown. There was a colour spread of the Royal Family “at home,” as if being at home for them was a normal way of life for anyone else. The Queen and the two princesses wore matching light blue suits while the King was in military dress, of course. Yet it was the black and white photo of Elizabeth, the Heir Presumptive, that kept drawing Gwen back. She stared at it for a good long time, feeling inadequate.
Even before Ronnie’s death, she had spent most of the war away from London. They had evacuated to the Bainbridge country estate south of Bolton, where the family owned two munitions factories. Bolton escaped the Blitz for the most part. One wayward bomb landed on an eating house near the station, killing two, but other than that, it was a peaceful existence. So peaceful that to wake up and hear nothing but birds and the distant lowing of cattle was positively surreal, knowing that the man she loved was risking life and limb in North Africa and Italy.
They had taken in children from London at the house; later from Manchester and Liverpool. They had set up a temporary school in the ballroom, and Gwen taught them how to read and write and do sums while her son ran screaming with joy with the others too young for school yet, chasing chickens and gaping at the horses.
She wondered how much he remembered his father. He had seen so little of him, but there was a trove of letters that came weeks late. Chatty, uninformative accounts meant to cheer them both up while appeasing the censors. I saw Bedouins riding camels! Just like in Boys’ Own, only the camels are very nasty fellows who do not like one to pet them. I learned this the hard way.
Even now, Ronnie wanted that one read to him over and over while he gazed at the photograph by her bedside.
Did he hear his father’s voice? Or had the voice of the letters become Gwen’s over time?
She wished there was some recording that she could play. There was a brief bit of footage from their wedding, made by one of Ronnie’s friends who was an amateur movie enthusiast, but it was silent, and wearing out from repeat projections.
Her appointment time came, and Doctor Milford’s secretary, Rita, showed her into his office. He sat behind his desk, studying a file, then looked up and motioned her to a seat.
“And how are we today, Mrs. Bainbridge?” he asked.
“Fine, thank you,” she said.
“Let me get a few vitals, then we’ll get down to the clockworks,” he said, coming around the desk.
He took her pulse and blood pressure, jotted them down, then sat in a chair across from hers.
“Appetite good?”
“Yes.”
“Everything else happening when it should?”
“Yes.”
“How’s the old perkiness? Any unusual fatigue?”
“I am working full-time and I am the mother of a six-year-old boy. Yes, there is fatigue, but nothing that I would describe as unusual.”
“Mothers have more energy than all of us.”
“Not true. We just need more.”
He smiled at that, then continued.
“Any unusual dreams?”
There it is, she thought.
“I had one about Ronnie again,” she said.
“Just the one? None besides it since your last visit?”
“No.”
“Tell me.”
She described it, the panic seeping into her voice as she did.
“When did this happen?”
“Last Sunday night. Monday morning, more precisely. It was odd.”
“How so?”
“It felt like a warning. A premonition. Of course, that’s utter nonsense, I know it, but then—”
She stopped.
“But then?” he prompted her.
“We came in to find that one of our clients had been murdered the night before.”
“So I am given to understand. Did you feel that there was a connection between your dream and the murder?”
“It was an odd coincidence.”
“Not necessarily,” said Doctor Milford. “Let me ask—when did you first meet the poor girl?”
“Let me think. It was Monday of the week before. We interviewed her, went through possible prospects, found one we thought suitable, and put them in contact with each other.”
“That’s how you usually work, is it?”
“Yes,” said Gwen.
“Was there anything that struck you about the woman that caused you any unease?”
“Well, I thought—in fact, we both thought that there was something shady about her. We were following up on it, but didn’t hear about anything before she was killed.”
“And now, according to your mother-in-law, you have decided to investigate this matter.”
“Yes,” said Gwen reluctantly. “That’s why she called you ahead of schedule.”
“Oh, she’s called me about you many times,” said Doctor Milford, chuckling. “You’d be in here nonstop if I acted upon every one of them, or they’d need to reopen Bedlam with a special ward just for you in a straitjacket if she had her way. I might need another for myself if Lady Carolyne keeps calling.”
“I had no idea,” said Gwen, the colour rising in her cheeks.
“How does that make you feel?” asked Doctor Milford, watching her closely.
“Furious,” said Gwen. “Quite livid, in fact.”
“What do you intend to do about it?”
“I’d like to—” Gwen started.
Then she held herself back.
“Go on,” urged Doctor Milford.
“The problem is that I don’t know where you stand in all of this,” said Gwen.
“Given that I was hired and continue to be paid by your husband’s family.”
“Yes.”
“You don’t trust me.”
“I’m sorry,” said Gwen.
“No, no, perfectly understandable,” said Doctor Milford. “I’d be the same if I were in your shoes. In fact, not only understandable, but in terms of self-preservation, an intelligent choice.”
“Then what are we doing here?” asked Gwen.
“Excellent question,” said Doctor Milford. “It is time to tell you my life story.”
“Will it be very long?” asked Gwen. “You’ve lived a great deal longer than I have.”
“Cut me to the quick, will you?” he growled in mock chagrin. “Well, let me sum up the important bits, and you can decide after whether or not you wish to continue with me.”
“All right. Go on.”
“I trained as a surgeon,” said Doctor Milford. “I was damned good at it, in fact. When the previous war broke out, I volunteered my services immediately. I spent the next four years at various field hospitals, so close to the front lines that we caught the occasional overshot artillery, not to mention the odd whiff of gas.”
“How horrible it must have been,” said Gwen, shuddering.
“It was, it was,” he said. “We started seeing more and more men suffering from what we were calling shell shock then and combat neurosis now. The prevailing wisdom at the time was to treat them and get them back to the front as quickly as possible. The top brass, none of whom had any background in psychiatry, saw these poor blighters as ignorant bumpkins trying to cry their way out of combat duty. They put a few of them in front of firing squads to make an example for the rest.”
“How dreadful,” said Gwen.
“I protested all that I could, but it was not a popular position,” continued Doctor Milford. “Nor did the prevailing wisdom change much when they looked at the question after the war. There was a report on shell shock in ’22 by the War Office that essentially repeated the views of the top brass. I was, quite frankly, outraged, but as a surgeon, I carried little influence. So, I went back to school and became a psychiatrist. Haven’t touched a scalpel in twenty years.”
“My goodness,” said Gwen.
“I devoted much of my practice to ex-soldiers trying to cope with civilian life,” he continued. “Saw more than my share of thousand-yard stares, I assure you. And then comes the new war, and it’s happened all over again. But what a few of us realized is that it isn’t only the soldiers who suffer from this. It can be anyone who undergoes a severe and sudden trauma.”
“Like losing a husband,” she said softly.
“Like losing a husband,” he agreed. “The more intense the love, the more catastrophic the loss.”
“Yes.”
“You loved him a great deal, Mrs. Bainbridge.”
“I did,” she said. “I do.”
“You would have saved him if you could.”
“Yes. But I couldn’t.”
“Is that why you are so set on saving this Trower chap?”
He asked the question gently, but she jerked her head up as if she had been slapped.
“Do you think that’s why I’m doing this?” she asked.
“Do you?” he returned.
“Doesn’t his innocence count for anything?”
“It would if he were innocent,” said Doctor Milford. “He doesn’t appear to be innocent, however.”
“Based upon what you’ve read in the newspapers.”
“Yes,” he conceded. “But do you have any information that they do not?”
“My knowledge of the man himself,” she said. “And there are circumstances—”
“Such as?”
She looked at him.
“This remains confidential,” she said. “Not a hint to my mother-in-law.”
“That is my professional duty,” he said. “Now, persuade me that this is not a fool’s mission.”
“Very well,” she said.
She summarized the events of the previous few days. By the end of her account, he was leaning forward in his chair. She finished, and looked at him expectantly.
“Well?” she asked.
“Total conjecture and speculation,” he pronounced, then he held up his hand to forestall her burgeoning burst of rage. “Yet not without validity.”
“And the premonition?”
“If the dream was truly premonitory in nature, don’t you think that it should have come in time to warn that poor girl beforehand?”
“I should have thought of that,” she said. “It’s blindingly obvious when you put it like that. So, what did that dream mean?”
“Premonitory dreams are usually disguised anxieties,” he said. “Somewhere in the archives of your subconscious, your brain analyzed the visits of Miss La Salle and your devious dustman and came to the conclusion that something was wrong. It then gave you the message by means of a nightmare.”
“I wish my subconscious could write things down instead,” she said ruefully. “Send them by pneumatic tube or winged cupids or something.”
“That would be much more convenient,” he agreed. “On the bright side, you’re having these nightmares less frequently.”
“Have I? I hadn’t noticed.”
“But I have, Mrs. Bainbridge. I keep careful track of their occurrences, and they are clearly on the decline. Take that as progress.”
“So, my wish to investigate Miss La Salle’s death doesn’t strike you as odd?”
“No,” he said. “No, indeed. I have no interest whatsoever in the guilt or innocence of Mister Trower, mind you, other than the general well-meaning desire to see justice done, whatever that entails. My concern is whether or not what you are doing is based upon sense or nonsense.”
“And your verdict?”
“I don’t think that this is a symptom of any disease, Mrs. Bainbridge,” he said. “I shall assure your mother-in-law of that opinion.”
“Then I am sane.”
“Oh, my dear woman, far from it,” he said, smiling.
She actually laughed at that, and it felt good.