Elegy for Eddie (23 page)

“Perhaps he wanted to write something about his mother and the photograph inspired him in some way,” suggested Maisie.

“Yes. Yes, perhaps you’re right.” Evelyn placed the photograph on the desk. “Well, I don’t want it. Anyway, I’ll nip out to see if I can scrounge some boxes, or at least let someone know I’m coming back with them.”

As Evelyn left the room, Maisie was already removing the back from the photograph a second time. Again, nothing. She replaced the cardboard behind the photograph and within another minute it was as if the photo had never been tampered with. There may have been nothing but an old photograph of the woman who had been Eddie Pettit’s teacher held within the simple frame on Bart Soames’ desk, but both the image of the young schoolmistress of yesteryear and its recent presence in the room among benign piles of papers and rows of books told Maisie something she knew already—that she would have to make another visit to Brighton as a matter of some urgency. When she visited Pauline Soames the first time, she could not escape the thought that something was being kept back. Now she felt she wasn’t wrong in the least. It was as if, in positioning that specific photograph on the desk when he did, Bart Soames had left a message of some sort, and she thought she knew what it might be. She also had to consider Douglas again, for she could not help but wonder if it was he who had come into Bart Soames’ quiet retreat after his death, and if he knew what he was looking for as he left the desk tidier than it had ever been during the younger man’s tenure.

A
fter dropping Evelyn at the flat, Maisie returned to the office.

“Hello, Sandra. Off to work for Mr. Partridge?”

“Yes, Miss. I’ve two messages here for you, and the invoices typed up from yesterday, and the letters.” Sandra handed Maisie a leather-bound ledger with blotting-paper pages; a document awaiting signature had been placed between each page. “There was a telephone call from a Mr. Buckle, who said he was the head gardener at Chelstone. He told me he was using your father’s telephone as he wanted to find out about a man called Mr. Dawkins who had just been to see him about a job.”

“Oh good, at least that’s one question answered.” Maisie removed her gloves and hat, placing them on the desk. She pulled up a chair and sat down opposite Sandra. “I wondered—” She shook her head. “No, not to worry. Thank you for the letters. I’ll put them in the pillar-box myself as soon as I’ve signed them. You should be on your way now—you’ve a busy week ahead, what with the move.”

“Is everything all right, Miss?”

“Yes. In fact, I’m just going to clear up a few matters here and I’ll be on my way to see Billy. He’s fully conscious and he wants to see me. I just hope Doreen takes it well when she learns I’ve visited.”

“I’m sure she will, Miss.” Sandra gathered her own coat and hat, and picked up a cloth bag full of books.

“Goodness me, Sandra, that looks fit to break.”

“Oh, it does the job, Miss. It’s good enough.” Sandra smiled and waved. “See you tomorrow then.”

“Bye, Sandra.”

Maisie listened to Sandra’s footsteps as she made her way downstairs, then the door opening and closing as she left the building. Maisie leaned forward at her desk and rested her head in her hands. She had caught herself just in time, stopping herself from launching in and organizing Sandra’s books. “You need a nice strong leather bag,” she had almost said, already thinking of the lovely leather shop in Burlington Arcade where she would order a briefcase for her secretary. Indeed, it was as if Sandra had known exactly what was coming, had intuited that Maisie was about to come to her aid, and in that moment had staked a claim for independence.
It does the job. It’s good enough.

She drew the ledger towards her, uncapped her fountain pen, and began going through the letters and invoices, putting her signature to each document, often with a brief note thanking the client for their business. Having returned the ledger to Sandra’s desk, she put on her hat and gloves again—she hadn’t bothered to remove her jacket—gathered the letters to be posted, and left the office, taking care to lock the door.

B
illy, you’re looking . . . yes, you’re looking well. There’s a bit of color in your cheeks.”

Maisie set a small bunch of daffodils on top of the locker at the side of Billy’s bed, which were soon whisked away by a nurse.

“There’s a bit of color all over my face, if you’re telling the truth, Miss. There’s the blue and black around my eye, the purple going on yellow around my jaw, and as for this scar down here—” He used his bandaged hand to indicate a scar across his scalp above his right ear. “It’s a very nice shade of raspberry and blue.”

“Oh, Billy, it’s all my fault. I am so sorry. I am so very sorry.”

“Just joshing, Miss. You weren’t to know, were you?”

“I think the fact that Eddie Pettit was dead should have told me a lot more than it did. How do you feel?”

“Me head hurts at times, but I try not to take anything for it—I don’t want trouble with that morphia again, not like I had before. But I’ve been worried about my nippers, though, and Doreen.”

“She’ll be at home by now, I should imagine. She was discharged today, so I daresay she wanted to see the children, and will be back here to see you in next to no time.”

“I don’t know how my mum coped.”

Maisie was quiet, looking down at her hands. “Billy, I know it was probably not my place, and I realize that now, but your mother had help. As luck would have it, Mrs. Partridge was able to send her boys’ nanny, Elinor, over to help—Sandra had been lending a hand for a day or two, but Elinor knows more about caring for a baby. So everyone is well, and in good heart. I know that’s what you wanted to hear, but I also understand that I probably overstepped the mark a bit too. I’m sorry.”

Billy nodded, his movement slow, his eyes showing pain. “You always take care of things, Miss. I don’t know what we’d do without you. Don’t know how I can ever repay you.”

“You don’t need to. Doreen was rightly very upset and angry with me. You shouldn’t have been at that pub, should not have been at the mercy of Merton, or anyone else who would do you harm.”

“Well, it weren’t Jimmy Merton, for a start.”

“I beg your pardon?”

Billy squinted at Maisie through swollen eyelids. “I just don’t think it was Merton. I mean, I was talking to him all right, in the pub. I went in and got into a bit of conversation, said I was looking for work—it’s all a bit hazy, to tell you the truth, but a little bit comes back to me every day. Anyway, I was asking him about the union, how there isn’t one, and he told me that they ain’t allowed there, but then, the company looks after its own, so they don’t need one anyway. He said it was his job to look out for agitators, looking to make trouble.”

“Did he think you were looking for trouble?”

Billy shrugged, wincing as he moved his shoulders. “I forget myself, at times. I forget what hurts and where—then I move and it’s agony.” He sighed. “Anyway, I don’t think he thought that at all. Well, he might’ve wanted to keep an eye on me, if I’d gone to work there. But cosh me and turn me over like that? No, I don’t think so. But I reckon he knew who’d done it, or that I’d been set upon. You see, it’s a bit like fog at the moment, the memory sort of goes in and out, like a sound you think you’ve heard in the night, only the more you listen the more you can’t hear it. I sort of remember lying there, with this taste of blood in my mouth, and my head pounding and knowing I was slipping away somewhere else, like one of them mornings you just can’t open your eyes for the tiredness, only it was worse. And I thought I heard him shaking me. It sounded like him anyway, saying, ‘Billy Beale. Beale, wake up. Come on, mate, get up, open yer eyes.’ Then this voice, if it was him, said, ‘Oh, what’ve they done? What’s been done to you?’ Then he said, ‘I’m sorry for this, mate, but I’ve got to leave you, got to get out, before they find me.’ ” Billy’s eyes filled with tears. “It probably wasn’t exactly like that, Miss, but that’s sort of how I keep remembering it. And to think he left me. Left me for dead, and me with three nippers and a wife at home. What would have happened then, eh? What would have happened to them?”

“Shhh, Billy, don’t make it harder on yourself than it already is. You’re on the mend. You’re going to get well again—you’ll be amazed how quickly you pick up, now you’re awake and talking.”

“But I keep thinking about it all.”

Maisie touched Billy’s arm. “Hush. Hush now. As soon as you think one of those thoughts, put your mind to something else. There will be plenty of time to recount what happened, and when you’re better, that’s the best thing to do—get it out of your system. In fact, you might have to tell the story a few times, to bring it from the darkness and into the light, so you can see it and not be scared by it anymore. But in the meantime, help your body to heal—think of your children playing. Think of Doreen at home with little Meg. Get well, Billy. That’s your job now.”

“I should tell you something, Miss.”

“What’s that?”

“That Caldwell told me Jimmy Merton was dead, that he’d taken his own life. And I didn’t tell him what I thought, that Jimmy might not’ve been the one to do me over. I reckon I just wanted to keep quiet about it, because I wasn’t sure what I was remembering, even yesterday.”

“That’s all right. I’ll get to the bottom of it all. You just get better.”

“Thank you, Miss.”

“No need to thank me, Billy—you’ve done a lot for me, and for the business. You almost gave your life.”

Billy smiled, a crooked black-and-blue smile. “Got nine lives, I reckon. Trouble is, between this and the war, I reckon I’ve run through a few.”

Maisie shook her head. “You’re one of a kind, Billy, and that’s a fact. Take care, now.”

M
aisie sat in the MG for some minutes after leaving the hospital. She was wondering if she had the courage to go to John Otterburn’s Fleet Street offices, march in, and demand to know exactly what was going on, and what Eddie Pettit and Billy Beale had ever done to upset him. And as soon as the thought had crossed her mind, she examined it again, for it had come to her almost unbidden. She had been trying not to leap to conclusions, trying to keep the line of questioning open, so she could better see how Eddie Pettit and John Otterburn might be linked, and how Jimmy Merton fitted into the picture, with Bart Soames’ shadow behind them—but now she knew that she had been veering in Otterburn’s direction since her visit to Bookhams.

She checked the time on Big Ben as she crossed Westminster Bridge. It would take her nigh on three hours to get to Brighton at that hour, so instead she decided to pay a visit to Douglas Partridge. Brighton could wait until tomorrow. They had elected to drive down to John and Lorraine Otterburn’s Surrey estate on Saturday. If she had more pieces of the puzzle in her hands, perhaps she could have that conversation with him then.

Douglas was not at his office when she arrived, and it appeared that Sandra had already left for the day. Stopping at a telephone kiosk, she placed a call to the Partridge home, and was informed by the housekeeper that the couple were out for the evening, although if she wished, a message could be inscribed for them to read upon their return.

Frustrated, she reconsidered the drive to Brighton—she was anxious to act upon her suspicions and obtain answers to her questions, but she knew the true need was to feel as if she were doing something instead of waiting, to make use of her time, to be in control, instead of marking time. Given the hour she would arrive in Brighton, she would have to stick to her plan to go tomorrow morning first thing, and be back in London by mid-afternoon. There was James to consider, and she knew it would cause more ill-feeling if she had decided to cancel their evening together.

She found it hard to put the day behind her when she arrived back at the flat. Thoughts still swirled around in her mind, though she welcomed the silence, the peace that seemed to envelop her. She had stopped at a small grocery shop on the drive back to the flat and bought ingredients for a soup of vegetables and chicken, some bread, sharp cheddar cheese, and liver pâté. It would be their favorite supper—a picnic of sorts, but indoors, with a glass of wine.

Having made a cup of tea, she fried cubes of chicken, chopped the vegetables, made a stock and brought the soup to a boil before lowering the flame to simmer. At that moment the doorbell rang. Sighing, she turned off the gas and ran to the door, wondering who might be calling on her.

“James—why didn’t you use your key?”

James Compton shrugged. “I didn’t feel I ought,” he explained. “Just in case you weren’t in the mood to see me after all. I thought I would leave it up to you whether you answered the door or not.”

“Oh, come in. Let’s not act as if we’ve only just met each other.” She looked up at him and took his hand in hers. “We might have had a row, James, and I spoke harshly, I know, and for that I am sorry—but let’s not harbor fear of each other.”

“Maisie, I believe that’s exactly what we’ve been doing.”

“Come on. Hang up your coat and hat. I’ve soup on the hot plate, a fresh loaf, and some very nice pâté.”

James smiled. “I wouldn’t want for more, at this moment.”

Maisie laid the table with a cloth and cutlery while James put out two glasses and poured from the bottle of wine he had brought with him. Soon they were seated, each with a bowl of soup and slices of toasted bread.

“Not much soup left in the saucepan, but I can make enough toast to plug a leaking ship if you’re really hungry.”

“This is plenty, Maisie.” James took a spoonful of soup. “I think I’ve made a terrible mess of everything. I shouldn’t have made such demands of you. I’ve no excuse, except perhaps that I’m at my wits end, Maisie, not knowing how we might go on together, how we might, well, make a life . . . or not, because I just don’t know what you want or what I want or if we want the same things, and . . . I feel I’m floundering, and I don’t want to do that anymore. I’ve done it before, after the war, and I don’t want to flop around like a fish out of water, and I had such hope . . .”