A Lesson in Secrets_ A Maisie Dobbs Novel - Jacqueline Winspear [42]
“You’re a valuable employee, Billy, and if you’re constantly worried about your family, that doesn’t serve either of us. Anyway, it was time, and it’s a good place for my nest egg, too.”
Having settled the arrangements, Maisie could return to Cambridge, knowing that one concern was off her plate, for the moment. In the meantime, though, she just wanted to go back to the flat—to sit in the quiet of her own home, gather her thoughts, and make plans for her next move. True, she was not supposed to be directly involved in the search for Greville Liddicote’s murderer, but she did not see how she could separate one investigation from the other—though she was sure that she, MacFarlane, and Stratton would, at some point, be falling over one another’s feet in their quests to unearth the truth.
It was mid-afternoon when she arrived back at the block of flats in Pimlico, parking the MG close to the path that led from the street up to the front door. Her keys in hand, she made her way along the pavement, but at once felt a cold shiver across her neck. She had been wounded in the war when the casualty clearing station where she was working, close to the front, came under enemy fire. The resulting scar, which ran from her neck into her scalp, no longer ached as much as it once had; yet it came alive with her senses, and if it bothered her, she trusted that there was something to be bothered about.
A man was walking towards her, and she knew it was this pedestrian who had tweaked her senses. He seemed an ordinary man. His suit was neither new nor old; his shoes did not shine, though they were not dirty; and though he wore a clean shirt and a tie, the shirt was not as white as it could have been and the tie was of a color that was not quite black and not quite blue. His face was forgettable, and his hat looked as if it had been steamed over a boiling kettle many times to keep its shape. He was a man who would not be remembered by a passerby. As he approached Maisie he brought out a packet of cigarettes from his pocket, opened the top, and without using his fingers, took one between his lips. He returned the packet of cigarettes to his pocket, then patted up and down his jacket as if searching for matches. He looked up at Maisie at the very point when they would have passed each other, and removed the unlit cigarette from his mouth to speak.
“Trouble you for a light, Miss?”
“I’m sorry, sir, I do not smoke, though you might try the gentleman opposite.”
“He doesn’t look like a smoker to me.”
“But sir, he has brown fingertips. Don’t all smokers have that stain?”
He nodded, looking down at the pavement as he made to walk on. They had each spoken their lines in a prearranged script, one of several she’d been tasked to memorize following her meeting with Huntley. The man who had asked for a light was now satisfied that she was the person he was looking for.
“Around the corner. Black motor.” The words were spoken without missing a beat. Then he was gone, pushing his hat back on his head as if it would help him find someone with a light for the cheap Woodbine he now held between two fingers.
Maisie stopped, then went back to the MG. She rummaged behind the front seat of the motor car as if she had forgotten something, locked the door again, and this time walked past the block of flats and around the corner, where a black motor car was parked, with engine idling. The passenger door opened as she walked alongside and she stepped in.
“A delight to see you, Miss Dobbs.” Brian Huntley turned to the driver and knocked on the glass partition. “Scenic tour, if you don’t mind, Archie.”
The driver, with his oversteamed hat back in place, pulled away from the curb and set off down the road. Huntley turned back to Maisie.
“Bring me up to date, Miss Dobbs. I’ve had a full report from Robbie about Liddicote’s murder—a spanner in the works, as far as we’re concerned, I must say—but I want to know what, if anything, you’ve observed thus far; and don’t worry, I appreciate you’ve only been on the job a week.”
Maisie gave Huntley