To Die but Once (Maisie Dobbs #14)(65)

“All right, Miss Dobbs?” Murphy called to her.

“Just another minute, Inspector. I’ll be ready soon.”

She stood up and looked down. To one side she saw a stick, which she picked up and used to move stones and gravel. Then it caught her eye—a glint as the sun emerged from behind a cloud. She knelt again, using her fingers to pull out a small metal disc from between two pebbles. She turned it in her fingers and read the word engraved upon it. Magni. Magni, the Norse god of strength. It was meant for Joe’s pup. She wrapped her fingers around the disc, and came to her feet. Was there any meaning in her finding the small round of silver metal? Or did Joe simply want his dog to have the name on his collar lest he be lost, and the disc had fallen out of his pocket as he fell? Or was he clutching it, for the comfort, and perhaps in the hope that he might live? She looked at the name again, and turned the disc. Joe Coombes, Moorwood Farm. It appeared Hutchins was right—Joe had never intended to go home.



This time she was not followed on the journey back to London. As tempted as she was to go directly to Chelstone, there were other matters to attend to. The first was Priscilla. Though it was evening by the time she arrived in Holland Park, she went to her friend’s house first.

When Maisie was shown into the drawing room, she found Priscilla sipping a gin and tonic and smoking a cigarette, which was pressed into the long holder she had favored since she first began flirting with tobacco in her late teens.

“At last!” said Priscilla, coming to her feet. Still holding her cocktail and cigarette, she fanned her arms out to each side so as not to burn Maisie or spill her drink, and pressed her cheek to Maisie’s.

“Sit down, Pris, before you lose your G and T,” said Maisie.

“Want one?”

“Small—more tonic, less gin. Thank you.” Maisie took a seat at the opposite end of the chesterfield while Priscilla poured a drink for Maisie and refreshed her own.

“We’ve been cast into the ambulance driver failure pit, you know. I made a point of telephoning to tell our supervisor that due to personal reasons—my son is missing, possibly on a boat going back and forth to Dunkirk, and that you are in pursuit of the truth, as always—we would not be at drill this week, and next week looks dodgy.”

“What did he say.”

“Let’s just leave it that we’re still on the roster, by the skin of our teeth. They need us, Maisie, but they need us back soon.”

Maisie nodded and sipped her drink, then looked at Priscilla, who had taken her place on the chesterfield.

“It was bloody dreadful, Maisie. I know we shouldn’t have been there, and it was a nightmare, but I had to go. There were men coming off those boats who looked as if they had seen into the jaws of hell. They were utterly exhausted, filthy, many emaciated and yet they were holding up the wounded.” She raised her free hand to her eyes, as if to banish the images, then continued. “But to a man they were doing their best to remain of good heart—raising a smile as they said thank you for a blanket and a cup of tea. I had to go there just to find out, Maisie, and then it was clear we had to leave—there were so many people there, and most seemed to have a job and know what they were doing. We were just in the way. Douglas has been my rock, and Billy’s miracle gave me hope—no one could believe it happened. It was heartbreaking, Maisie, seeing him try to run, stumbling toward his boy—and it might not even have been him. It could have been an hallucination driven by hope. To be honest, at first I thought Billy was imagining it, because they all looked the same. Tired beyond measure, relieved, streaked with oil—and so many coming off the ships with that long stare, as if there was nothing but emptiness behind the eyes. We used to see it in France, didn’t we? When men came back down the line from the front. The doctors called it the ten-thousand-yard stare.” She looked down at her drink, turned toward the ashtray on a side table, and extinguished the cigarette. “Bloody things. I know I must smell like a chimney at times. I should give them up.”

“Priscilla,” said Maisie.

“Yes?”

“I think Tim and Gordon will come back into Rye. I just feel they will set a course for home, and home means Rye—it’s where they sealed their friendship while sailing, and the place they know.”

“According to Gordon’s father—before he left for France in his other launch—he was told that no boats were officially sent from Rye to Dunkirk. Mind you, we know of one, don’t we? I can’t see them out on the ocean wave this long for a pleasure sail, can you? And this could go on for days. Days! If I know my boy, he won’t come back before he’s done what he set out to do. Stubborn since the day he was born, that one. Tom’s a gentleman, Tarquin is tractable and Tim is bloody stubborn. My mother said she had to watch my middle brother more than the others.” Priscilla rested her head back on the chesterfield.

“Trust in Tim, Priscilla. Trust in him. He will be home. I know it.” She took a breath and exhaled, reaching for Priscilla’s hand. “And anyway, Anna said so.”

“Oh, I would trust that girl of yours before I would put my faith in anyone else I’ve met, and that’s no exaggeration.” She looked at her now empty glass, then at Maisie. “I’m going to telephone the coastguard again and get on their nerves. I’ve sent Tarquin off to stay with a school friend to take his mind off his brother and his mother, and Douglas is up to his eyes with work at the ministry, which is good for him—if he’s writing about this bloody disaster making it seem all very under control, then it gives him hope.” She sighed. “When shall we go to Rye, Maisie?”