To Die but Once (Maisie Dobbs #14)(74)

“I know about war, Miss Dobbs. I fought in the war.”

“Yes, I’m aware you were in Flanders. As was Billy, and I was a nurse in a casualty clearing station, so I know how it was.” She paused. “In fact, Billy showed me that newspaper cutting today—you were a local somebody for a short while, after appearing in the South London Press. How many of you came home, from the lads in that photograph?”

“You had that photo?” said Coombes, his face registering surprise.

“Arthur Beale. Artillery. Passchendaele, 1917. He was my cousin,” said Billy.

“Oh blimey,” said Coombes. “I never knew.”

“No need for you to have known. I’ve got a common name, and it’s not as if we talk about it, is it?”

Coombes stared at the ground and nodded. “Not as if we do.” He looked up. “Only two of us came back, of the lads in that photograph,” said Coombes.

“Yes, I already know,” said Maisie. “I’ll be in touch—and thank you, Mr. Coombes. Mrs. Coombes.”

They began walking back to the office without speaking, until Billy broke the silence. “Not like you to be so hard on someone, miss. Never heard you talk like that to people grieving. Fair surprised me, it did.”

“Sorry, Billy. There’s a time for everything, and this was a time when I needed to poke with a knife instead of a gentle touch with a fingertip.”

“Why?”

Maisie sighed. “Let’s just see what happens next. Then I’ll explain.” She stopped and turned to her assistant. “Trust me, Billy.”

“Always have, miss. I always have. But what do you want me to do next?”

Maisie began walking again. “There is something, before you start on the next three cases that came in. I want you to find out more about Teddy Wickham.”

“What about him?”

“His parents—mother’s maiden name, that sort of thing. Uncles, aunts, brothers, sisters. School. Best friends—though we know his very best friend is Archie Coombes.”

“Right you are, miss. Good as done.”



Walter Miles emerged from the downstairs flat and greeted them as they reached the steps leading to the office. He was wearing a cream linen summer blazer with beige trousers and brown leather shoes, and wore a white open-neck shirt. He carried a brown leather document case, and used a cane to steady his walk. Passing the cane to the opposite hand, he raised his cream straw fedora. Maisie realized that, despite the scar along his jawline, Miles was a very handsome man, and somewhat reminiscent of her late husband.

“Good day to you, Miss Dobbs, Mr. Beale.”

“Good morning,” Maisie and Billy replied in unison.

“You’re like the number thirty-six bus,” continued Maisie. “We don’t see much of you—and then here you are several times in a row.”

“I’m on my way to the university now,” said Miles, his smile broad as he regarded Maisie.

“What do you teach?” she asked.

“Botany, usually, though with a few colleagues being called up, I’m now teaching other sciences as needed—and I’m often at Bedford College as well as Malet Street. Anyway, I’d better be off, or I’ll be late.” He lifted his hat to signal his departure and gave another smile.

Maisie watched as Miles made his way toward Warren Street.

“Seems to be a good bloke, eh miss?”

“Yes, very nice indeed.”

“He might be sweet on you,” added Billy. “I haven’t see him much, then—like you said—there he is a few times in a row.”

“That doesn’t mean anything, Billy.”

“It meant something that day Mr. Stratton came to take you out to lunch. Last month, it was.”

“I don’t understand—what do you mean?”

“Oh, you two were off across the square, going out to have lunch somewhere, and I was leaving to see one of our new clients. Up comes Mr. Miles from his downstairs flat, and says, ‘Miss Dobbs seems to have a nice gentleman.’ Of course, I told him Mr. Stratton was only a friend, someone you’d worked with. And then he asked what he did, and so I told him Mr. Stratton used to be with the police, before he left to become a teacher, but has to come into London for war work now. I think Mr. Miles was a bit downcast, you know, as if you were walking out with Mr. Stratton and he was sad about it.”

“Hmmm, I think you’re seeing things, Billy,” said Maisie.

“P’raphs he’ll come up and invite you down for a cuppa.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that, really I don’t.”

Later, in the office as she packed papers she might need during her absence, Maisie walked across to the window to look down at the garden Walter Miles had created. She found it calming to stand there. Perhaps it took a botanist to have such luck in a postage-stamp yard where sunlight only seemed to flash through at certain times of day.





Chapter 15




“I felt quite bad about going to Ramsgate, to tell you the truth,” said Priscilla, flicking ash from her cigarette out of the open passenger side window. “I mean, there I was, jumping up and down, talking to anyone who looked official, trying to find out if they knew where my son was. And they had enough on their hands dealing with the men coming off the boats, without a lunatic mother screaming at them.” She coughed and patted her chest. “I don’t know whether that’s the gasper I’m puffing away on, or all this fresh air. Lovely to have a motor car with a roof you can put down though—I adored driving with the wind in my hair when we lived in Biarritz.” She paused. “Sometimes I wish we’d have bloody well stayed there, because now I have a son in the air force and another who thinks he’s Lord Horatio bloody Nelson.”