major's eccentricities, he is an extraordinarily acute man.'
Dawson rapped on the door, this time with more force. A loud 'Come!' was bellowed in return. Maisie was shown into the room, and could not hide her surprise at the interior. A window at the far end of the room, not unlike the floor-to-ceiling windows in her office, was flanked by bookcases that extended to cover walls to both left and right. On the wall behind her, a map had been pulled down from a roller. A special case had been built alongside to house rolls of maps, the extent of which indicated that Major Whitting was a serious collector. But the focal point was the large square table in the center of the room. Maisie thought
'Miss Dobbs. Do come in.'
'It's good of you to see me, Major Whitting.'
The man before her was as much a surprise as Dawson and the 'workroom' itself. Despite the fact that she had been told Whitting might still have some military connections, she had envisaged meeting a portly man in his sixties, retired with his cats and with little interest in the world outside his club, his old officer friends, and a hearty snifter of brandy at the end of the day. In reality, he was probably much younger, and was also what her friend Priscilla might have called 'a bit of a dish, for his age,' but at the same time he did not smile, and in his manner did not welcome his guest with an air of warmth.
Whitting was not overly tall-perhaps only a couple of inches taller than Maisie herself-but was far from portly and moved with a quick ease that suggested he engaged in some exercise each day. His dress was casual: beige woolen trousers, a fawn check Viyella shirt, with the top button open at the neck, and a V-neck pullover. A gold watch with several dials adorned his wrist, as if it were crucial for him to know not only the hour, but the very second at which he consulted the timepiece. He wore nut-brown brogues, polished to a shine, and his graying hair was combed back in the fashion of the day, but it seemed he used only the smallest amount of oil to keep it in place.
'You seem rather surprised by my workroom.' Whitting's tone was abrupt, almost curt, as if to challenge his guest.
'It's quite awe-inspiring, I must say.' Maisie moved closer and looked down at the model landscape laid out on the table. 'It's more than a map, isn't it? It's as if you've laid out the whole of Belgium and France in miniature.' She looked up at Whitting, who came to her side.
'And you're wondering what I do with this, aren't you?'
'It crossed my mind.' She smiled, suspecting that her host might be one who looked for an argument where none might otherwise exist. A composed demeanor on her part would do much to calm Whitting's agitation.
'It comes down to the fact that I'm still trying to learn-what we did right, what went wrong, and, of greater importance, what might happen in the future. This hasn't been finished long, and I can change it to reflect the way in which the region has altered with the regrowth of forests, the reestablishment of agriculture, and the new buildings that have been going up.'
'I see.'
Whitting paused. Maisie was aware he was looking at her as she stared at the map. She reached out and laid her finger close to a small French village, not far from the Belgian border. 'I was right there, in the war.'
'Nurse?'
Maisie nodded.
'Bit young, weren't you?'
'I lied. I wasn't the only one.'
'No, and you won't be the last. War does that-until people realize that it isn't a game to be played'-he held out his hand towards the map-'like draughts or chess. It's a matter of life and death. Chiefly death.'
'I know.'
At that moment, Dawson arrived with a tray set for tea. He brought it to a low table between two armchairs situated on one side of the room, close to the fireplace.
'Miss Dobbs, do take a seat. We'll have tea, and you can tell me in more detail why you're here to see me.'
Whitting showed Maisie to one of the armchairs, which were covered in a woven tapestry-like fabric; comfortable enough for a lady, but with a masculine austerity about them. Coals were smoldering in the fireplace, and as Whitting was about to sit down, she noticed a large calico cat asleep on his chair. He swept up the cat, placed her on the arm of the chair, and waited while Dawson handed a cup of tea to Maisie before accepting a cup himself. After they were each handed a slice of cake on a fine china plate, Dawson left them alone to their conversation.
'Lieutenant Colonel Davidson thought you would be the best person to tell me more about the role of cartographers during the war.'
When Whitting smirked, the right side of his mouth tweaked upward. ''Lieutenant Colonal Davidson'-that's one for the books. Promoted to keep him out of trouble, if his record's anything to go by, then sent out to the far reaches of the Empire.' He shook his head. 'But with the way things are going over there in India, heaven only knows what trouble he'll cause. And no wonder he sent you to me; he probably wouldn't know where to begin to describe the work of the cartographers. In any case, why do you want to know?'
Maisie remained calm in the face of her host's attack on a fellow officer, placing her cup on the table before she reached into her document case, which she had laid at her feet. 'I beg your pardon, I should have given you this when we were introduced. I am an inquiry agent, among other things, and I am working on behalf of a client.' She went on to tell Whitting about the Cliftons' search for the woman with whom their son had formed some sort of liaison.
'He was an American, you say?'
'Yes, that's right.'
He shook his head. 'I wonder why we accepted him.'
'I thought you might be able to tell me.'
'Our cartographers and surveyors are, in general, trained at the School of Military Engineering, in Chatham. It could have been that your chappie, though an American, satisfied the enlistment officers regarding his British connections, and of course, it sounds as if he was quite highly qualified in his field, so he would have been snapped up. In a time of war, we can't be picky when it comes to keeping the clever ones.'
Maisie had heard Maurice say as much, though perhaps not in such blunt terms.
'He sailed to Southampton in August 1914. Apparently, he'd heard about the declaration of war whilst working in California and booked passage straightaway. Then in 1916 his parents received a telegram with news that he was missing. His remains, and those of other members of the survey party, were discovered by a farmer at the beginning of the year.'
Whitting set down his cup and stood up, his back to the fire, whereupon the cat slipped into the warm seat vacated by her owner.
'We had our work cut out for us from the Battle of Loos onward-and that was a debacle. On the face of it our cartographers seemed to be doing a brilliant job. They were printing maps over there, distributing them, developing special sheets for commanders and top-secret sheets for the intelligence boys. As fast as our cartographers could work, we were pushing the fruits of their labors into the hands of the people who needed them.'
'So what went wrong?'
'Too much to tell, but suffice it to say that it started when we took over significant stretches of the line from the French, and began basing our maps on those we'd been bequeathed by our predecessors. In a nutshell, our armies were fighting a battle for which the commanders were using incompatible maps, with different scales. In hindsight, the distortions were dramatic.' Whitting paused. 'But you don't want to know all that, do you, Miss Dobbs? You want to know how a cartographer works.'
'If you have time, Major Whitting.'
'You're here now, might as well get the job done. Let's start with the equipment.'
Whitting's desk was neat, clear except for a pile of three books, several pages of an unfinished letter laid out on the blotting pad, and various items of equipment set on the edge of the desk, almost like ornaments. He picked up
