“It’s his heart,” I said.
“Well, you don’t need me then, do you?” Brisbane pulled open Cosgrove’s shirt and listened with his stethoscope. I decided against further diagnosis as I gathered up the files on the floor. Brisbane checked his eyes, spoke to the major, and got the same insistent rejoinder about sedatives. He and the others got Cosgrove onto the stretcher, and we each took a corner to carry him across the street. He was a big guy.
“Boyle,” he rasped out. “Call the number, the one I gave you. No sedatives, remember.” His eyes went to the file tucked under my arm, and for the first time since we’d found him, he seemed to relax. “No sedative.”
Doc Brisbane got Cosgrove settled in his examination room. I reminded the doc about Cosgrove’s insistence on no sedation, and vaguely hinted at state secrets.
“If he rests quietly, there will be no need,” Doc Brisbane said. “It does look like a heart attack, you were right. Not much we can do beyond bed rest. He could stand to lose some weight, though. I’ll keep him here overnight and check his vital signs. You’ll see about getting him picked up?”
I said I’d attend to it, then asked Inspector Payne to drop Tree off at his battalion, and to explain the situation to his CO, and to let me know if that wasn’t enough.
“Thanks, Billy,” Tree said before he got into the car. “I owe you.”
“What are friends for?” I asked. “Take it easy, I’ll let you know if we come up with anything.” Payne and I made plans to meet at the building society at nine o’clock the next morning, and I went back to the station to make the call.
I sat at Constable Cook’s desk and dialed the number on the piece of paper. It rang twice, and a female voice answered, repeating the number. I said I was calling for Major Charles Cosgrove.
“He is unavailable.”
“No, I’m calling on his behalf. He’s ill, probably had a heart attack.” More questions about who I was, where I was calling from, and how I got this number. I promised to call with an update and the woman said someone would be in Hungerford by morning. Then she hung up, no goodbye, no “tell Charles to get better.” Nice bunch he worked for.
I hadn’t mentioned the file, and they hadn’t asked. No one had told me not to look in it, but MOST SECRET stamped in red on the cover was a pretty strong warning. I’d had to look at the papers when I picked them up, I told myself, so another glance wouldn’t hurt, would it?
They looked like personnel files. Sergeant Eugene Jackson, Inspector John Payne, and me. Photographs, service records, a local address for Payne. My photo was from my identification papers. Tree’s wasn’t so formal, a bit blurry, like it was taken with a telephoto lens. Was MI5 spying on Tree?
Carla and George Miller were there too, along with their son, in his naval uniform, and their daughter, Eva. Lots of details about their lives, but no conclusions, no assessment of their loyalty. Sergeant Jerome Sullivan was pictured arm in arm with Eva Miller.
There was Michael Flowers of the Newbury Building Society, along with Miss Gardner, the helpful secretary. Razor Fraser and Ernest Bone. Laurianne Ross and the missing Sophia Edwards. Jack Monk from the pub, and old Tim Pettigrew. Can’t tell the players without a scorecard.
But what was the game?
CHAPTER TWENTY — THREE
It was still light when I arrived back at the Prince of Wales Inn. The sun was down, but the clouds were backlit from the sunset, casting a soft golden glow over the landscape. It shouldn’t be so pretty, I thought, with a young girl dead and another missing, the innocent behind bars, and a good man dying. I found Kaz, Diana, and Laurianne Ross from the school seated outside, the flagstones warm from the day’s sunlight. I’d half forgotten that Diana and Kaz had paid a visit to the Avington School for Girls today. Diana was in her brown wool FANY uniform, which I guessed she’d worn to interest the kids, since her brass buttons and leather belt were polished to a gleam.
“Billy,” Kaz said as I sat down on the wooden bench. “You remember Miss Ross?”
“Of course,” I said. “What brings you here?” She looked nervous, twirling a half-empty glass of what looked to be brandy, the same as Kaz and Diana were drinking. It had to be serious.
“We brought her back with us, Billy,” Diana said, patting her on the arm. “It was a bit of a shock. And we thought it best for you to hear it directly from Laurianne.”
“Okay,” I said, slowly, holding back my curiosity. “Tell me about it.”
“When the baron and Lady Seaton came by today, I of course thought they were bringing news of Sophia,” Laurianne said. Kaz used his title whenever he made restaurant reservations or needed to gain entry. Evidently it worked. “But they wanted to question the girls, as you know. We thought it best if we treated it as a visit, with the baron speaking about his native Poland and Lady Seaton talking about her experiences with the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry. The girls were thrilled, especially about the FANY. So many of them want to sign up as soon as they are old enough.” She took a sip of the brandy, and I watched Diana nod encouragingly.
A roar of engines announced a low-flying pair of fighters, P-47 Thunderbolts by the sound of their growling radial engines. They swooped over the village, probably headed back to Greenham Common air base. It was a routine event, but Laurianne jumped in her seat.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Ever since I saw that picture, my nerves have been on edge. I can’t help but feel guilty.”
“Tell me about the picture,” I said.
“Lady Seaton-” Laurianne began again, taking a deep breath. “Diana, please call me Diana. That lady business is frightful, really.”
“Thank you, Diana. Well, Captain Boyle, Diana asked the girls a few simple questions about Sophia, what she was like and so on. Then one of the girls said she looked like that girl who had come by asking for food. Similar hair, that sort of thing. Both were slender girls.”
“Wait,” I said, trying to understand. “What girl? Not one of yours?”
“No. She rode up on a bicycle one day and asked for food. She said she was traveling to Southampton and would work for a meal. She looked like a runaway so I invited her in and went to my office to call the constable. She must have overheard me on the telephone, because when I came out, she was gone.”
“You didn’t mention this before,” I said.
“No, I hardly recalled it. I wasn’t certain she was a runaway, but thought I should place the call just in case. Then she was gone, and there were a hundred other tasks to attend to. I quite forgot about it until the girls reminded me today.”
“I showed her the picture of Margaret Hibberd,” Kaz said, taking the photograph out of his pocket. “It was her.”
“She’d be alive if I hadn’t called the police,” Laurianne said. Her chin quivered and she looked ready to fall apart.
“Whatever happened to Margaret easily could have happened after a good meal,” I said. “We know she was making her way to London to search for her parents. She said Southampton to throw you off.”
“I keep telling myself that,” Laurianne said. “But if she had stayed, she might not have met up with whoever killed her. Isn’t that right?” Her dark eyes were watery, tears about to cascade down her cheeks. I searched for the right thing to say, and came up empty. She had spoken the truth, and there was no dancing around it.
“What fates impose, that men must needs abide; It boots not to resist both wind and tide,” Kaz said quietly.
“Shakespeare,” Laurianne said. “
“Yes,” Kaz said. “A story of another doomed girl. Margaret was set upon a course to find her parents, only she could not know they were both dead. Fate led her to them, not you.”
“Thank you, Baron,” she said, and finished her brandy.
“Did she say anything at all, other than asking for a meal?”
“She had some story about working on a farm, but being called back to Southampton by her father. She did say he found a place in the country for her because Southampton was so heavily bombed, which is true
