Catching the Wind(71)

Perhaps Mrs. Douglas was confused, like Mr. Knight. Perhaps she’d remembered her mother’s story wrong, and it was actually Olivia who’d died instead of Eddie that year.

Yet Mrs. Douglas said that there were rumors Eddie had been murdered. And Lady Ricker, Quenby felt certain, would put up an ironclad curtain between her and the woman suspected of betraying Great Britain.

Did Olivia—like Virginia Woolf—really choose to kill herself, or had someone helped her along?

Quenby turned off the machine, rubbing the chill that crept up her arms.

Lady Ricker, it seemed, would do anything to keep her secrets. Would she also kill the German girl who had translated her words?



Fog veiled the River Ouse early the next morning as Quenby drove back up the road where she’d dodged Kyle Logan and his tractor.

Last night, the innkeeper had eyed her curiously when she walked into the lobby with two plastic bags, filled with a fresh change of clothes and toiletries from Boots chemist, and requested the same room she’d had two nights ago. But like all good innkeepers, the woman kept her questions to herself and handed over a key to the room.

Quenby waited in the SUV by the river until the fog lifted. When sunlight finally made its debut, she sprayed herself one more time to repel, she hoped, both bugs and men, though she kept her phone in hand as she trekked into the forest.

When she texted Lucas last night, he’d promised to keep his phone beside him this morning. Not that it would help if she slipped out of service again, but it made her feel better knowing that she could contact him near the river.

In and out of the trees. That’s all she had to do. The cemetery had been along one of the overgrown paths, and if she found the pasture for the Logans’ farm, on the other side of the woodlands, she’d turn back.

The running app on her phone traced her steps past the mill, along the winding path. When she got to the Kelmore crossroads, she hiked left instead of right. And about twenty minutes later, she found the cemetery.

Scraps of wooden gravestones were scattered in the weeds, but five slate stones were still intact. She brushed aside the weeds on the stone closest to her, a weathered gray slate engraved with a cross, to read the epitaph. It was the grave of a Kelmore man who’d died in 1882.

She ducked under the crawling branch of an elm tree and read the inscriptions on four more Kelmore family graves, each one including a Bible verse or kind sentiment in recognition of the man or woman buried there. But Lucas was right—there was no grave for Eddie Terrell.

And no marker among the trees for Brigitte, either. Not that Quenby expected the Terrells to put a stone on her grave, but she was still clinging to the hope, for Mr. Knight’s sake, that the girl’s life had extended far beyond the Mill House, blossoming into womanhood.

She snapped several pictures of the cemetery, of its raw beauty and isolation. Nature sprouting new life to replace what had been lost. Then she hiked back to the Mill House and took a panoramic picture encompassing the broken house, the limbs of beech trees, and what appeared to be an old garden nearby.

Something cracked in the branches behind her, and Quenby jumped. As she scanned the trees, Lucas’s words from yesterday seemed to hammer in her head. The ones he’d said about taking care.

She couldn’t tell what was in the forest. Perhaps one of the cows had wandered beyond the pasture. Or was it Kyle, watching for her?

At the moment, it didn’t particularly matter. She wasn’t staying here any longer.





Chapter 42




Mulberry Lane, April 1943

Baby girl had cried for hours last night. Rosalind’s body, Brigitte feared, wasn’t giving her the nourishment she needed, but they had no milk in the house or even a bottle. The baby sucked on Brigitte’s finger for comfort, but it didn’t soothe the pain in her belly.

When Brigitte was a child, Mama used to send her outside to play, saying the fresh air would do her some good. So she and baby girl went on a walk this morning, and as they strolled in the forest, Brigitte told her stories about her childhood in Germany, sang her the German songs that Mama used to sing.

She wished the baby had a proper name like other children, but Rosalind hadn’t concerned herself yet with a name. It wasn’t Brigitte’s place to name her, but she pretended the baby had a beautiful name, a name with wings. Like Princess Adler.

Soon, she prayed, they could all fly far away from here.

The girl was four days old now. After Olivia left, Brigitte and Rosalind had labored together to deliver her. Brigitte had never seen so much blood before and then—the miracle of life. The scream of a child no longer harbored in Rosalind’s womb.

But Rosalind had retreated into her own shell after the birth, not sure, it seemed, what to do with a baby. She’d been reluctant even to feed her, as if she wasn’t certain that she wanted the child to live.

Baby finally slept as Brigitte carried her toward the cemetery. The markers there, with their Scripture verses, reminded her of the yard around her father’s church in Moselkern. God might not be in the Mill House, but she hoped that His presence lingered here among His saints.

So she stopped by the tombstones to pray, begging Vater Gott to save this baby’s life. For the baby must live. Before they left the cemetery, she knew what she must do. Defy Rosalind, if necessary, to make sure her daughter survived.

As she and baby drew close to the house again, beside the garden plot, Brigitte paused. There was a motorcar in the drive, but unlike the investigator’s vehicle, this one she recognized. It was the dark-blue Wolseley that Herr drove.