Waite said nothing but gave a loud
The door slammed, to be quickly opened by Harris, who escorted Maisie and Billy out. Billy was holding the driver’s door of the MG open for Maisie when they were both startled by the sound of furiously flapping wings overhead as a flight of doves rose from an old-fashioned dove-cote in the corner of the gardens.
“Lawd, would you look at that!” said Billy.
“Oh, my, they are beautiful!” said Maisie.
Billy shuddered.“Can’t see it meself. Rather look at a mangy old dog.”
The doves returned in ones and twos, landing on the dove-cote and entering it through tiny doorways.
“Look at that, ‘noses out,’ Miss!” said Billy, joking again.
“Come on, we’d better be off.”
Neither of them said a word as they drove steadily toward the main gate, which was opened by the young man who had let them in on their first visit. Each breathed a sigh of relief upon leaving the Waite residence behind.
“I tell you, Miss, that Joseph Waite really is a study, i’n’t ’e?”
“No doubt about that.”
“ ’ere, do you think ’e was tellin’ the truth, y’know, when ’e said that ’e never knew about them two women bein’ murdered?”
Maisie accelerated the car confidently and replied, “Not in a million years, Billy. Not in a million years.”
As soon as they returned to the office, Maisie and Billy set to work, adding new information to the Charlotte Waite case map as well as reviewing other cases in hand. While Maisie was away from London, Billy would complete reports for two clients, in addition to his other duties. Issuance of a final report also meant submission of an invoice, and with clients tending not to pay “on the button,” as Billy observed, timely presentation of a final account was vital.
They worked together until six o’clock, when Maisie sent Billy home. For her part, Maisie would return to Ebury Place to prepare for the short visit to Kent. She had planned to leave early Saturday morning for the drive down to Chelstone. The next few days would be busy indeed: A letter had arrived from Dame Constance in the afternoon post, informing Maisie that, despite nursing a heavy cold, she would be delighted to see her again, and there was time to be spent with Maurice and with Lady Rowan before leaving for Camden Abbey. As she made her way back to Belgravia, Maisie added another task to her trip: Chelstone was only an hour or so from Hastings on the Sussex coast, and she had ascertained that Rosamund Thorpe had lived in Hastings.
Traffic was mercifully light as Maisie made her way to Ebury Place. As rain spattered across her windscreen, compounding the dregs of a yellowish-green smog, Maisie thought not of the work ahead, but of her father, Frankie Dobbs. Whenever she visited her him, he assured her, “Me? Don’t you worry about me, love. I’m awright, like a sheep in clover down ’ere.” But Maisie did worry, yet was ashamed that her concern had not led her to visit him more often.
She entered the house by the kitchen door. When the Comptons arrived back in town she would resume using the front door, which would once again be opened by Carter, the Comptons’ long-serving butler. And once again Mrs. Crawford, who had put off retirement for just one more year—to add to last year and the year before’s “one more year”—would be mistress of all she surveyed in the kitchen. Maisie would straddle two levels of household life and knew only too well that her good standing both upstairs and downstairs was was terrain to be negotiated with great care.
She placed her document case on the writing table in her sitting room and slumped down into the armchair by the fire, which was already burning brightly. Home. Was this home? Had she been too easily persuaded by Lady Rowan to reside at Ebury Place because she did not want to refuse the woman who had given her so much? When had she last felt truly
Sighing, Maisie moved to draw back the long curtains and looked out at fog swirling around a streetlight. Soon the days would be longer and, she hoped, warmer. London’s smog would dissipate as coal fires were extinguished and hearths cleaned out for the summer. As she looked at the streetlight illuminating the twists and curls of fog in front of her, Maisie remembered the small soot-blackened terraced house in Lambeth where she had lived with her parents. With both parents, that is, until she was thirteen, when her mother died in Frankie Dobbs’s arms, her last words instructing him to do right by their girl. Her last true home, she remembered, had been with her father, until he had done his best for her by finding a place in service at the Ebury Place mansion of Lord and Lady Compton.
There was a knock at her door. Maisie called out, “Come in.”
Sandra opened the door quietly and smiled. “Good evening, M’um. Would you like supper in your rooms or in the dining room, M’um?”
Maisie smiled. She was M’um again, upstairs. Maisie checked her watch. Seven o’clock. A plan was forming in her mind, inspired by the prospect of an evening alone in her rooms. Though she could not identify a place that was now home, there was a person who was home, and Maisie acknowledged her yearning to be with him.
“Sandra, I wonder if you could pack me up something for me to eat in the car, perhaps a piece of pork pie, or a cheese sandwich—and a bottle of Vimto or something like that?”
“Oh, M’um, you aren’t going out in this, are you?” Sandra nodded toward the fog, which seemed to be growing thicker outside.
“I don’t think it will be any better first thing in the morning, do you? I’ll collect my supper on my way to the motor car. I just have to pack a few things, then I’ll come straight down to the kitchen.”
“Right you are, M’um. I’ll have it all ready when you come down.”
“Thank you, Sandra.”
Maisie edged the MG out of the mews behind Ebury Place and into the damp London night. She drove through south London carefully, making her way along the Old Kent Road, and on toward Sevenoaks, Tonbridge, and from there along narrow country lanes to Chelstone.
