not the sort of case you’re used to,” he continued, “but you were the first person I thought to call.”
Maisie nodded, lifting her glass of Chianti to her lips. She sipped the wine, then put down her glass with one hand as she reached for her shoulder bag and took out a small writing pad with the other. She made several notations, then circled a number before tearing off the sheet and passing it to her supper companion. “I assume my fee is acceptable to you.” It was a statement, not a question.
James Compton smiled. “There’s another thing that’s changed, Miss Maisie Dobbs. I do believe you’ve become a canny business proprietor.”
Maisie inclined her head, as James took a checkbook from his pocket. “An advance against expenses.” He scribbled across the check and passed it to Maisie. “You’ll have your work cut out for you. Hop-picking’s about to start, and the place will be teeming with outsiders.”
The investigator nodded. “Then it’s the perfect time, James, the perfect time. We’ll have your report ready in a month—at the latest.”
LATER, AT HER flat in Pimlico, as Maisie sat in her favorite armchair looking at the check, she breathed a sigh of relief. Business was still ticking along but wasn’t as brisk as it had been. The summer had been slow, and she was grateful that her assistant, Billy Beale, was planning to take two weeks’ holiday to go hop-picking himself—it was, after all, a tradition among East Enders. She wouldn’t have to pay his wages for those weeks, and at least he’d be earning money and taking a break from the Smoke—the streets of London—and getting his wife and boys away to the country. They needed it, for the family was still grieving for young Lizzie Beale, who had been lost to diphtheria at the beginning of the year. Yes, James had come along at the right moment, the answer to a prayer. In fact, one of the reasons she had indulged in Marta Jones’s class, was to do something different and not fret about a certain lack of custom for her business. To balance the expenditure, she’d even minimized use of her MG, understanding the importance of frugality in uncertain times. And she could never forget she had the mortgage on her flat to consider.
Yet, despite the pressures of being a sole proprietor, Maisie knew that the curtain of darkness from her past was lifting. Not that she forgot, not that she didn’t still have nightmares or close her eyes and see images from the war in stark relief. But it was as if she were on firmer ground, and not at the mercy of memory’s quicksand.
She checked her watch, marked the file of notes that now rested on her lap, and made ready to go to bed. As she reached for the cord to close the blinds, she remembered a dream she’d had twice this week. Dreams that came more than once demanded attention, and even though this was not a fearful dream, she reflected on it and wondered what it might mean. She had been walking through a forest and came upon a clearing bathed in shards of light splintering through the trees. As she walked into the clearing, she saw the still-enflamed embers of a fire, yet there was no one there, no traveler or tramp claiming a home for the night. There was only a loosely tied bunch of Michaelmas daisies set aside upon a fallen tree.
TWO
Maisie Dobbs sat alongside Billy Beale at the table in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows of the one-room office in Fitzroy Square. There had been a pause in their conversation, during which documents were passed back and forth, along with a page of notes sent by messenger from the office of James Compton.
“So, what you want me to do, Miss, is to recce this village to get the lay of the land and let you know what’s going on.”
“Yes, in the first instance. You’ll fit in nicely, being one of the London hoppers, down for the picking.”
“Well, that’s all very well, but we’ve been taken on by a farmer a few miles away, not this one. You can’t just up and get work at any old farm, not for the ’oppin’; it don’t work like that.”
Maisie turned to Billy. “Oh, dear. Would you explain to me how it works, then?”
Billy leaned forward and began to scribble a diagram onto a length of wallpaper pinned to the table. These offcuts, from a painter and decorator friend of Billy’s, were reversed to form a background for each new assignment’s case map, a diagram created with colored pencils upon which Maisie and Billy set down hunches, clues, information and any other points that might help them usher an investigation to its close. Thus far this length of paper had remained untouched.
“You register with a farmer, one who knows you, usually at the end of pickin’ the year before. My family’s been goin’ down ’oppin’ since before my grandfather was a boy. The farmer knows which families ’e wants back, the good workers. Then, in spring or thereabouts, you get your brown envelope, with a letter telling you to come on such and such a date for the ’oppin’ and that you’ll get your hut to live in. So when you get on the train, with all your family and everything from yer sheets down to the tin kettle, you know you’ve got work and a roof over yer ’ead.”
Maisie was silent for a moment. “Do you know anyone going to”—she paused to consult her notes—”Dickon’s Farm on the Sandermere Estate? Couldn’t you sort of swap with another family?”
Billy shook his head. “No, I don’t know anyone goin’ to Dickon’s Farm, not off the top of me noddle.” He paused, rubbing his chin. “But you know what I’ll do, I’ll ’ave a word with a few blokes I know, see if it can be done. It ain’t normal, though. The farmers don’t like messin’ about with their allocations.”
“Good man.” Maisie smiled and reached for a file. “Look at this, just like the number twelve bus—none for ages, then three, one after the other. It never rains but it pours, and about time too!”
“More work comin’ in?”
“Yes. I came back to the office yesterday evening and there were two postcards and a telegram, all with jobs for us. I’ve set appointments with the new clients already. There’s nothing huge, but it’s a good sign and means that, along with my private clients, the business will go along nicely for us, probably right up to Christmas.”
“You were worried there for a bit, weren’t you, Miss?”
Maisie nodded. “Yes, just a bit.” She flipped open the Compton file again. “Billy, I’m anxious to have my planning for this case settled, so here’s what I’d like you to do today—after you’ve completed the notes on the Jacobsen case so I can send our report and issue an invoice. I want you to find out if you can get onto the Sandermere estate as soon as you can.” She paused. “I won’t have this case eat into your holiday time, and I’ll obviously pay you for the work you do while you’re down there, so keep a good record of your hours. I just want you to give me initial impressions, based on James Compton’s concerns. Then I really want an in for myself—you might find me picking hops with the Beales, if I have to.”
Billy laughed. “Miss, I can’t get over it—you a Londoner and never been down to Kent pickin’ ’ops.”
Once Maisie might have nipped such informality in the bud and not encouraged frivolous repartee on a working morning, but since she had known Billy, they had seen much together—not least during their first brief meeting, when he was brought into the casualty clearing station in France where she was working as a nurse in 1916. Her first love, a young army doctor, Simon Lynch, had saved Billy’s life, and the man who was now her assistant had
