“Oh, of course. Where are my manners, keeping you standing in the door like that? Come through to the parlor. Would you like some tea?”
He’d love some tea—he hadn’t had anything to eat since breakfast—and he’d love to take the weight off his foot, but he didn’t want to do anything to encourage her to talk longer than she already was. “No, thanks, I have a train to catch. You said these two men came into the pub asking for me.”
Daphne nodded. “Twice. The first time they asked everyone in the pub if they knew a war correspondent named Mike Davis, and Mr. Tompkins said I did, and they asked me if I knew how they could get in touch with you.”
“And did you tell them?”
“No. I remembered what you said about letting you know straightaway if anyone came round asking for you. That’s why I wrote to you instead of giving them your address.”
address.”
Mike groaned inwardly. “Did they say why they were trying to get in touch with me?”
“No, they said it was something to do with the war, and that it was very important that they contact you, but they didn’t say what it was.”
“Did they tell you their names?”
“Yes. Mr. Watson and Mr.…” She frowned and bit her lip. “I can’t remember, it began with an H, like Hawes or …”
“Mr. Holmes?”
“Yes, that was it. Mr. Watson and Mr. Holmes.”
That cinched it. It was the retrieval team.
“They knew all about you having been at Dunkirk and in hospital,” Daphne said. “They said one of the nurses told them you might have gone to Saltram-on-Sea.”
Which meant they’d traced him as far as Orpington, but they obviously hadn’t talked to Sister Carmody or she’d have told them he was in London. “What did they look like?” he asked. “Were they in uniform?”
“No. Civilian clothes. Very posh, and very posh accents, and they were both terribly handsome”—she cocked her head flirtatiously—“though not so handsome as you, speaking quite impartially. I’m a married woman, you know.”
Yes, I know.
“You said they came in twice,” he said, trying to get her back to the subject at hand. “The same day?”
“No, they came in on, let me see, when was it? The first Saturday in December, I think.”
When he was in Oxford, trying to find out whether Gerald Phipps had been there.
“And then they came in again the next night, and that was when Rob got jealous and told me to stop flirting with them, and I said, ‘I wasn’t flirting, and even if I was, you’ve got no call to tell me not to, Rob Butcher. I’m not your wife,’ and he said, ‘I wish you were,’ and the next thing you know he’s been to Dover and got a special license so the vicar could marry us straightaway. Dad wanted us to wait, but Rob said no, who knew what might happen tomorrow or how much time we might have together, and then he found out he was being sent here, and—”
“When the men came the second time,” Mike finally managed to get in, “what did they say?”
“They said if I did hear from you, to contact them immediately, and they wrote down their address for me. I meant to send it on to you, but then in the excitement of the wedding and all, I forgot. Oh, it was a lovely wedding. Rob looked terribly handsome in his uniform, and the church was all decorated with holly and—”
“Do you remember the address?”
“No.”
Of course not.
“But I’ve got it. I put it”—she frowned in consternation—“now, where did I put it?”
Please don’t say you stuck it behind the bar, and now I’ll have to trudge all the way back across the country to Saltram-on-Sea for it, Mike thought.
“I put it … oh, I know,” she said. “I put it in my vanity case so I wouldn’t go off without it. It’s upstairs. Hang on.” She started up and then turned to look at him over the railing. “You’re not in any trouble, are you?”
Not anymore, he thought.
“I mean, the authorities aren’t after you or anything?” she asked, concerned.
“No. I think I know who the men were. They’re a couple of guys who were on the boat with me coming back from Dunkirk. Reporters.”
“Oh, I wish I’d known they’d been at Dunkirk. I could have asked them about the Commander and Jonathan. They might know what happened to them.”
“I’ll ask them when I see them,” Mike lied. “You were going to go get the address?”
“Oh, yes,” she said, and pattered up the stairs, turning as she ran to give Mike one of those over-the-shoulder smiles that had no doubt snared her new husband. “I’ll only be a moment.”
She was as good as her word, reappearing almost immediately with a sheet of lined paper torn from a notebook like the one he carried. “Here it is,” she said, handing it to him.
He looked down at the address. It was in Edgebourne, Kent. That must be where their drop was.
“It’s near Hawkhurst,” Daphne said.
Hawkhurst. Well, he wouldn’t have to go all the way back to Saltram-on-Sea, but almost. He’d have to make
