A Lesson in Secrets_ A Maisie Dobbs Novel - Jacqueline Winspear [19]
As she settled on a window seat cushioned with needlepoint pillows, she looked out at the lawns, where a man—wearing brown trousers and a tweed jacket with leather elbow patches—and a young blond woman were walking along another path that led into woodland. From the manner in which she used her hands to express herself, together with the way she kept turning to her companion, as if for reassurance, Maisie judged the woman to be in her early twenties. The man was older. Maisie watched as he moved alongside the woman; his stance seemed to imply some level of intimacy—perhaps a father visiting his daughter. He placed a hand on the woman’s shoulder at one point and they turned towards each other. As Maisie watched, both the man and the woman looked around as someone whom she could not yet see approached; they stood apart, with the man lifting his chin slightly in greeting, while the woman began to turn away, half-opening a book—Maisie thought it an attempt to suggest that the page in question was the topic of conversation, a hurried movement born of momentary panic. Maisie leaned forward in time to see Miss Linden approach the man. They spoke for just a moment, then the man bade a hasty farewell to the young woman and followed Liddicote’s secretary. It came as no surprise when, ten minutes later, Miss Linden returned to the meeting room with the man, Dr. Matthias Roth, and informed them that Dr. Francesca Thomas would join them shortly.
“Miss Dobbs,” said Roth, with just a trace of a German accent. “Welcome to our own League of Nations. The neutral Swiss will be here as soon as she’s finished her tutorial.”
Maisie Dobbs. What have you got for me—you’ve been a bit quiet, I thought you might have gone off to the Riviera with your friends from Biarritz, or wherever it is.” The fact that MacFarlane had deliberately pronounced it “Beer-itz” was not lost on Maisie.
Maisie opened the door of the telephone kiosk just enough to allow fresh air to circulate. “My Beer-itz friends are back in London now; their boys are back in school. But you knew that anyway, didn’t you, Robbie?”
The detective laughed. “Too-chay!’ His pause was brief. “Got the job yet?”
“Waiting to hear. I’ve just had my interviews and the powers that be have sent me off for a walk while they put their heads together. This is the way it’s done in colleges—they see all the candidates on one day, then they meet and discuss and the final decision is made. My sense is that Liddicote goes through the motions of including other members of staff in his deliberations, but when it comes down to it the decision is his alone.”
“Anything out of the ordinary?”
“He gets on his secretary’s nerves, but that could be part of his role as the absentminded professor—when he wants to play it. He’s a very acute man—despite being genuinely hard of hearing, I think—his stock-in-trade seems to be pressing the unexpected question.”
“Anything you know that I don’t know about him?”
“Not yet.” Maisie coiled the telephone cord around her fingers.
“Who else did you meet?”
“Dr. Roth. He lectures in philosophy and German literature in translation—and in some quarters that’s seen as just one subject, not two. And Dr. Francesca Thomas. Roth said she was Swiss, but there is no trace of an accent; she speaks as if she attended Roedean.”
“Have you met anyone else?”
“No.”
“We already had a staff list, so we know about Roth and Thomas—and as far as we know, there’s nothing to concern us about either one. But we’ll have another look at Roth, just in case. What did you think of them?”
“Both very approachable,” said Maisie, reflecting upon their meeting. “It was more conversational than an interview for a job at the school. Neither of them seemed out to question my shortcomings, or test me in any way, though obviously they asked about