Catching the Wind(29)
After her husband’s death, Lady Ricker and her two young children relocated to a town house in the affluent St John’s Wood, a district of northwest London. The Dragues, a prestigious family from London, purchased Breydon Court with the contingency that the two Ricker children could keep an apartment in the house for the remainder of their lives if they wished.
Was this why the interviewer had asked Lady Ricker about Admiral Drague during her interrogation? Or was there a personal connection between the Ricker family and the Dragues?
Louise McMann, Quenby had read, married in 1968. After the death of her husband, she’d returned to live in her family’s former home.
Quenby couldn’t search the census records for the Ricker or Terrell families—those were closed to the public in Britain for one hundred years—but before she left Maidstone, she’d asked the clerk for records of Tonbridge evacuees in late 1940 and early 1941. The woman assured her that she’d e-mail Quenby anything she found in their archives. Thousands of children were evacuated to this area at the beginning of the war, until the Luftwaffe began bombing Kent. Then they had to be evacuated from Kent as well.
A silver Volvo pulled up to a curb near the bridge, and the Uber driver confirmed Mrs. McMann’s address before driving Quenby north, past fields with docile cows and brilliant-yellow blooms.
Until the policeman took them to Tonbridge, Brigitte and Dietmar would have walked for miles through pastures and trees like this, searching for the skyline of London. They’d been so close— But if they had found Dietmar’s aunt, both children might have been killed in the Blitz as well.
A jet flew overhead as her driver turned west.
“Is there an airport near here?” she asked.
He nodded. “Biggin Hill is about ten miles north.”
“I didn’t realize there was an airport so close.”
“It’s mostly for private airplanes now, but it was an RAF base during the war.”
Quenby scooted forward on her seat. “Do you know the World War II history of this area?”
“A little,” he replied. “German soldiers and downed pilots were housed over at a prisoner of war camp on Pembury Road. Many of the prisoners worked on local farms to supply the rest of the country with food.”
She looked at a half-timbered house outside the window, sitting above a fruit orchard and a field of ewes guarding their lambs. “Are the buildings still there?”
“No, there’s a grammar school on the property now.”
“Have you ever been to Breydon Court?”
He flashed her a curious look in the mirror. “Most people have never even heard of Breydon Court.”
She shrugged. “I’m doing some research for a story.”
“I took a passenger there once,” he said as he swerved into the other lane to avoid a pack of cyclists. “I had to drop him off at the front gate.”
They drove through a neighborhood and then down a quiet street that ended at an ornamental gate made of wrought-iron slats. On the other side, tufts of white-and-fuchsia rhododendrons padded both sides of a driveway.
“There’s an intercom.” The driver pointed toward the stone pillar on the right of the gate. “Do you want me to wait?”
“No,” she said. “I’m hoping to be here for a while.”
The gates were locked, so Quenby tried the intercom. When no one answered, she found a seat on the curb, hoping a vehicle would come in or out of the estate this afternoon. In the meantime, she decided to review her notes again on the Ricker family.
In her research, she’d discovered there were dozens of reasons why men and women became traitors—money, power, politics, devotion to a lover or family member. But it didn’t seem like the Rickers needed any of Germany’s reichsmarks, and they were already powerful in England.
If Lady Ricker had committed treason, why had she risked death by hanging to cripple the country where she lived? Or was her hatred for the Jewish people so extreme that she would do anything to exterminate them? The interrogator had said Lady Ricker’s aunt was German. Perhaps her ladyship supported nationalism, like so many others at the time, because of her Germanic roots.
Quenby closed the case over her iPad. She couldn’t fault someone for their loyalty, as long as they didn’t hurt others under the guise of allegiance. Her own grandmother had been born in 1945, while the citizens of Germany were searching for a new identity, recovering from the catastrophe of hatred and loss. Once, Grammy had told her that she followed no one but her Lord. Germany, though, held sweet memories for her, the innocent ones of a child protected by a loving mother who’d been widowed in the last year of the war.
Grammy had wanted to protect Quenby as well. She couldn’t protect her from everything, but she’d introduced her to love and forgiveness, both at home and in a man who’d also felt abandoned as He died on a cross. A man who loved her so much that He gave His very life for her.
She’d forgotten that over the years—that Christ had been left alone in the darkness. He’d suffered horrifically in those last hours because of His love, but instead of bitterness, He chose to forgive.
And it was His forgiveness that changed everything.
A blue coupe pulled in front of Quenby, and she stood as the front gate opened. Sighing, she hurried to the driver’s side of the car, hoping that Mrs. McMann was inside. Confrontations like this were her least favorite part of the job, but necessary if someone refused to communicate with her via e-mail or phone.