The Chilbury Ladies' Choir(61)

“What if it were something deeply humiliating, something ruinous?” I said softly.

He stopped. “I know everything, you wretched woman. Now leave me alone.”

“No, you don’t know everything,” I spat. “You don’t know that your eldest daughter is pregnant with Slater’s child.”

I thought he was simply going to keel over in front of me. His face turned purple, and his hand went up to his heart. He staggered, then let out a long, hard bellow. “How dare you suggest such a thing?”

“It’s true,” I mumbled, edging back. I thought he was going to lunge at me. Take his anger out on me.

“It can’t be true,” he yelled. “It can’t possibly be true.” And he began storming up the hill. “We’ll see about this.”

“What about my money, for keeping your dirty little secrets?” I asked, scurrying beside him to keep up.

He stopped sharply, his bony hand gripped on my upper arm, his fingers digging into my flesh. “You stay out of this, Paltry,” he growled. “Or you’ll be a dead woman.”

The whites of his eyes glistened murderously in the moonlight. He was out of his mind with rage. I hadn’t thought this through properly. He could murder me for even suggesting such a thing.

“If you breathe a word of any of your abominable lies I will have your pointless life cut short, my woman. So you’d better make yourself scarce.”

With that he shoved me back onto the road, where I fell badly on my hip, paralyzing me briefly with pain. When I pushed myself up, he was gone into the blackness.

I struggled to my feet and staggered home, feeling sorry for myself. My plan had gone wrong. My tactics were flawed. I never imagined he wouldn’t believe me, that he simply couldn’t bear for it to be true to the extent that he would rather slaughter me.

As I sit here in my little front room, counting the half of the money, I know, dear sister, that I’ll have to cut my losses and leave first light tomorrow. The Brigadier will kill me one way or another, especially with Elsie talking loose. I have sealed my doom.

I will be with you in a few days, and we will make good our plans.

Edwina





Thursday, 1st August, 1940





My Very Own War Effort


More bad news today. The Nazis invaded our Channel Islands. They took the younger men away to fight and began starving everyone else. We know it’s us next. Which is why I decided it was my duty to tell someone about seeing Old George and Mr. Slater in the woods, and adding what I suspect about Proggett, who is certainly not just butlering. Perhaps I’ll end up with a medal, the hero of the village.

At first I considered cycling to Litchfield Police Station, but it’s quite a long ride, and I’m rather busy with singing practice at the moment. Then I wondered if I should ask Mrs. Tilling what to do, as she’s the most helpful person around here, and then the answer struck me. Mrs. Tilling has an important Colonel from Litchfield Park staying with her, and he quite liked my singing at the competition. Surely he would be able to give my information the proper attention it deserves.

So this evening, after dinner, I told Mama that I was to go to Prim’s house for a special singing lesson, grabbed my torch, and headed down to the village in the purple and amber light of dusk. All was deadly quiet, not a stir of a bat or the usual foxes tiptoeing across to the wood—it was as if something horrid was going to happen tonight, something evil was snaking silently into our world.

I began running, and reached Ivy House short of breath, scared of invisible villains chasing me. I pulled the bell and within a minute the door opened a few inches and Mrs. Tilling whisked me inside.

“Kitty, what in the world are you doing here?”

I stood in the hallway, relieved to see the familiar flowered wallpaper, the kitchen door open at the end of the passage, the smell of a casserole wafting around.

“I’ve come to see the Colonel,” I said boldly. “Is he here?”

Mrs. Tilling looked surprised for a moment, then shrugged. “Come on into the living room,” she said. “He’s eating dinner. I’ll make a pot of tea, and he can come when he’s ready.”

The Colonel was enormous. I’ve seen him in the village and at the choir competition, but being so close to him, in Mrs. Tilling’s living room, made me inch back in fear of suffocation. He was easily the tallest man I’d ever met, heavily built, with broad shoulders and a chest as big as a bear’s.

“Gosh, you’re frightfully big,” I blurted before I could stop myself.

He smiled. “Yes, I’ve been this way since I was a little older than you. Mrs. Tilling said you needed to see me about something.”

“Yes,” I stammered. “I’m Kitty Winthrop, from Chilbury Manor, and I think I have found a”—I glanced around and hushed my breath—“a spy in our midst.”

He smiled briefly before quickly coughing and adopting a more serious expression, sitting down on the floral sofa and beckoning me to sit on the armchair opposite. “Why don’t you tell me all about it.”

“Well, when we were in Peasepotter Wood, Silvie—that’s our evacuee—and I saw a black marketeer called Old George, and he has a bush that he uses to store all the black-market goods he has, and he was there with Mr. Slater, the artist who moved into the house on Church Row next to Hattie, and I’m sure they were doing business, and then Silvie told me she keeps seeing Proggett, our butler, in Peasepotter Wood, too, and I saw him once there as well, and I wonder if he’s a spy or has anything to do with Mr. Slater and the black market, too.” I stopped and looked at my hands, clasped together on my skirt.