The answer came within a message received the next day.
UNCLES MARSH SIDNEY LIONEL ALISTAIR PHILIP RALPH JAMES IVO AND THREE NEIGHBOURS STOP ALL WELL HERE STOP CLERK ARRESTED ADMITS NOTHING STOP HAIG NO MEMORY OF LETTER OR GABRIEL STOP HUNT CONTINUES COMMA GOOD SAILING END.
Philip, I recalled, was the name of Gabriel’s grandfather’s brother, hence the boy’s great-uncle, who moved to South Africa and was never seen again; I thought it doubtful that Gabriel had ever actually met him, although he could have remained an “uncle” for reference purposes, and his sons, if any, might also qualify for the title. Ralph- pronounced-Rafe was Alistair’s brother, who had gone to Australia at the age of nineteen and perhaps died at Gallipoli. Gabriel would have been nine or so when Ralph disappeared, so could have retained an active memory of the man. James, I knew, was the husband of Alistair’s sister, Rose, father of the farming nephew who would eventually take over Badger Old Place. All of which made it conclusive that for Gabriel, “uncle” was a broadly applied honourific. I shouldn’t have been surprised had he used it for close friends of his parents, as well.
The huge passenger liner ploughed its luxurious path through the waves and against the headwinds, putting in at New York late on Tuesday. Although we both had friends in the city, we went to our hotel unannounced, and passed out of the city the following day without getting into touch with any of them. Neither of us felt much inclined for light social banter.
The journey north was tedious to the extreme, and I cursed Holmes silently every time the train slowed, halted, and sat waiting for the track to clear. The snow never quite forced abandonment and taking shelter in an hotel, but it did fret us all the way to Toronto. My only bright spot came with a small article in the corner of a discarded day-old newspaper that I picked up, informing its readers of the temporary closure of the London War Records Offices due to an “infection of unknown origin.” Reading between the lines, I thought the infection bore some names that would be familiar to me: Closing the whole place so that the records might be more readily searched had Mycroft’s stamp all over it.
The address I had been given for Philippa Helen O’Meary was in a small town named Webster, to the west of Toronto. I began to worry that the only means of reaching the place would be by dog-sled, but in Toronto the storm suddenly tired of us. By Thursday morning the skies were clear and our hotel reassured us, with jaunty Colonial confidence, that we’d have no problem on the train.
Somewhat to our surprise, we did not. The tracks were clear, the carriage warm, and by the middle of the afternoon we were pulling up to a small brick building on which hung the sign, WEBSTER. We climbed down onto the freshly swept platform, took a deep breath of furiously clean air tinged with smoke from the train, and looked out across an expanse of pristine white countryside. After the well-hedged fields of southern England—or indeed the countryside around Paris—the land here seemed to go on for a long, long way. We exchanged an apprehensive glance, and went to find an hotel.
The rooms were basic but clean, the odours from the dining room promising, the arrangement of motorcar and driver nearly instantaneous, but no-one knew Philippa O’Meary. Nor Phil nor Helene. Finally the hotel’s owner took pity on us and suggested the manager of the local bank. There was only one in town, he said, so he’d be certain to know anyone with a savings account or a mortgage. We spent the evening in the tiny town, taking dinner in the hotel dining room with the good citizens of Webster, and for lack of entertainment, went early to bed.
Thus, the following morning we were at the bank’s door at ten o’clock, and were ushered in to the manager’s august presence. I looked at his rotund features, then looked again in annoyance.
“You were dining at the hotel yesterday night,” I accused.
“Why, yes I was. Were you there as well?”
“We were. And the hotel owner knew we were looking to see you today. He might have introduced us then.”
“Oh no. He knows I never work outside of hours. Now, what can I do for you?”
Other than kicking me for the fool I am, I thought, not to recognise a banker—even of the rural Canadian variety—when I am across the room from one? I resolved never to tell Holmes of my failure.
“We are looking for a woman named Philippa O’Meary,” I told him. “She may go as Phil, or Helene. It’s about an inheritance,” I added, although it was possible that the only wealth to change hands would be a few old letters. Bankers need to hear that money is involved before they take any interest in a matter.
“I don’t believe . . .” His voice trailed off dubiously.
“She has green eyes and was an ambulance driver in France during the—”
“Oho!” the banker interrupted, transformed by recognition. His eyes sparkled, and he all but slapped his knee with pleasure. “You mean Mad Helen!” And we watched in astonishment as he burst into laughter, then thumbed the toggle on his desk telephone to bring in his secretary. “Miss Larsen, would you have Booth run these two ladies up to Mad Helen’s place?”
“Mr Booth is out at the Grimes farm this morning, Mr Cowper. I could see if Mr Rhoades is available.”
“Rhoades is fine. He can leave the ladies there; they’ll telephone to the hotel for a car to fetch them back. Or Mad Helen can, shall we say, drop them there?”
This last baffling remark caused a great deal of merriment on the part of the manager and, to a more subdued degree, his secretary. The latter ushered us out and, obedient if confused, we entered the Rhoades motorcar and were driven out of town.
When we had seen neither barn nor cross-roads for a quarter-hour, and I was starting to wonder if Mr Rhoades might not be entirely honourable in his intentions, a barn appeared on the white-blanketed horizon. A large barn—enormous, in fact, although it lacked the normal complement of silos and farm buildings.
All was explained when we turned in to a drive past a sign proclaiming this the WEBSTER AIR FIELD. The barn was a hangar. Rhoades pulled up next to the front of it, opened our door, and then the three of us stopped dead as the sound of a screaming engine came from overhead. We gaped into the clear sky, and there saw a bright red fighter plane, to all appearances out of control and aiming to crash straight into the hangar. Or into the Rhoades motorcar. On it came, roaring full-throatedly, and at the last possible instant it pulled up, passing so close its wind buffeted our hats.
“There was something in the diary about an aviator’s jacket,” I recalled. “And Dorothea Cobb told me that Helene’s brother was a Canadian fighter pilot. That must be he.”
The pilot, having scared us out of our wits, had circled and was lining up his plane with the runway.
“How does one land on the snow?” Iris wondered aloud.
“With care,” came a new voice. We looked at the small door to the barn, over which hung the sign OFFICE, and then lowered our eyes to the figure in the wheeled chair. The hand with which he was shielding his face was slick with old scar tissue, although he grinned as he watched the red machine drop lower and slow in the sky.
As one, Iris and I looked at each other, then at the aeroplane.
“Yep,” said the man. “You’re looking at my sister. Hi, Jimmy,” he added.
Young Mr Rhoades tore his eyes from the flying daredevil and shook his hand. “Morning, Ben. This here’s Miss Russell and Miss Sutherland. They’ve come looking for your sister. You mind taking care of returning them to town when they’re finished? I’ve got a pile of work.”
“Happy to. Good day, ladies. The name’s Ben O’Meary.”
O’Meary’s right hand was less disastrously scarred; close up, his face showed signs of a less comprehensive brush with the flames.
“Crashed in the War,” he told us, a phrase so matter-of-fact, he must have begun a thousand conversations with that same blunt explanation. “They scraped me out and sent me home, to teach my sister to fly. I run the business, she teaches the classes and does the stunt shows. Exactly the opposite of what we’d planned, but ain’t that life? You want to come in? She’ll be a minute.”
But we chose to wait in the open air for the pilot of the red fighter, and he manoeuvred his chair back through the doorway and left us in the cold.
The aeroplane taxied slowly on the slick surface, neared the barn, and then the engine coughed into silence. In a moment, the plane’s pilot climbed out of the cockpit and jumped easily to the ground.
She was a tall woman, as tall as I but broader in the shoulders, and I could well imagine her slinging a wounded Tommy across her back. Then she began to remove the layers of clothing that kept her from freezing. Thick scarf unwrapped from her neck and face, the helmet and goggles. Yes, there were those famous emerald eyes, that ebony hair, but something else as well, a small fact that Gabriel had failed to record.
She was what the boy’s parents would no doubt have termed a half breed. Ireland lay in her eyes and her
