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By Root 449 0

station there was a light rain, for which she was somewhat glad. Waiting in the heat of the day would not be comfortable, though this kind of surveillance always seemed to hurt somewhere in her body. She changed her position frequently, once or twice getting out of the motor car to walk up and down for a few steps, until she noticed a surge of passengers exiting the station, and took her place behind the wheel again. At one point a policeman came to ask why she was waiting for so long, and she explained that she was expecting a friend who’d had an accident and was using crutches. The constable laughed and made a comment to the effect that he wished her good luck getting the friend in the two-seater tourer. The exchange was light, but Maisie knew he might come along again and move her on. Another hour passed and another surge of passengers streamed out, then thinned, and at once she saw a woman whom she believed to be Francesca Thomas. The woman stopped for a second to survey the line of people waiting outside, then walked to a taxi-cab and climbed in. Maisie could not be completely sure it was her, but she knew she had to take a chance. She was slipping the MG into gear when the constable knocked on the window again.

“Still waiting, Miss? You’ve been here a bit now.”

“I think she must have missed her train, constable. Not to worry, I’ll get my motor out of the way and telephone her mother.”

“I’ll keep an eye on your motor if you want to run in—”

“Oh, I’m sure she should have been here by now. Thank you! I’ll be off now.”

And with that, Maisie stepped on the accelerator pedal, anxious to catch up with the taxi-cab carrying the woman she believed to be Thomas.

“Blast! Where are you?”

People were crossing the road, and traffic seemed to be converging on the station from all directions. “Blast!” she said again, striking the steering wheel with her hand. Then the crowd parted for a horse and cart to come through, and she realized that the taxi-cab had stopped not far in front of her. A coster had tipped his barrow and was hurrying to load up the fallen fruit and vegetables. Some people stopped to help, for traffic was snarling up, and Maisie saw the cabbie lean out and shake his fist at the coster.

“You shouldn’t be on the bleeding road with that old nag.”

“Don’t you call this ’orse a nag, you and that filthy thing you’re driving there. Scum of the earth on the streets, you are.”

The taxi driver was about to get out, when Maisie saw the silhouette of the passenger inside lean forward, as if to caution him. In time, the horse and cart moved on, the coster shaking his fist back at the cabbie, and traffic began to snake along once more. Maisie’s doubts about following the right taxi-cab and whether indeed the passenger was Francesca Thomas were laid to rest when the journey took them closer to Belgravia. They soon approached Eaton Square, at the same point at which the driver she was with before had lost her quarry. Now she realized why. The taxi-cab’s route was circuitous, along smaller parallel streets and cutting back and forth. With traffic easing as they moved into the smaller streets, Maisie maintained her distance, but kept the black vehicle in sight as it doubled back to Eaton Place. The driver stopped, and Maisie pulled over in the shade of a tree. Francesca Thomas alighted from the taxi-cab, paid the fare, then walked along the street and entered one of the grand mansions. Maisie watched and waited for the taxi-cab to be on his way again before slipping the MG into gear and parking on the other side of the square. Pulling her cloche hat down close to her eyes, she walked back to the mansion Francesca Thomas had entered. She looked up at the building, then back and forth along the street, and at that point a man wearing a black suit, white shirt, and bowler hat, and carrying an umbrella, walked towards her. When he was just a couple of steps away, Maisie smiled in his direction.

“Excuse me, sir—may I trouble you for a moment? Do you know this area?”

The man nodded. “Yes. I work here.”

“You work here?” Maisie