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By Root 538 0

she had met or heard of during the past two weeks was listed, with lines linking the names if there was a link. She pinned the photographs found in Greville Liddicote’s office to the growing case map—the two children in the professional photograph, and the family in the other, more natural pose. She believed the two children to be Liddicote’s children by the wife who divorced him, but who were the children in the second photograph? She circled Rose Linden’s name and linked it to Rosemary Linden with a question mark on the red line between the names, and she wrote three more words close to Rose Linden: Ursula? Conscientious objector? Then she sat back and looked at the case map, as a chess master might look at the board. The pawns were in place, but who—or what—was moving them? People, she knew, could be controlled by others, but the controllers were secondary. There was often some weakness, some emotion—an aspect of personal history, a deep love or an abiding hatred—that set a person on a given path, and often into the hands of someone who might then push that person to and fro. And, she knew, human beings were quite capable of moving in this or that direction, without interference from anyone else.

Her thoughts turned to her personal life. What was driving Sandra? Why did she not confide in Maisie? It was clear she was suspicious regarding her husband’s death. Then there was James.

“Oh, James,” said Maisie, aloud, to the room. She dropped the red pen onto the case map and closed her eyes. James had been gone now for over six weeks, and while she missed him, she also felt some confusion. She knew he loved her, though when she tried to distinguish her feelings for him, she felt a knot in her chest. She had loved Simon, the young doctor who had suffered devastating head wounds in the war and then had languished in a home until his death a year earlier. Maisie realized with a start that she had forgotten the day of his death, though she could never forget the day of his wounding, and his last words to her before a shell hit close to the casualty clearing station, where they were working together. But the bittersweet truth of their time together was that she had always known there was no future for them, that she could not “see” them as a couple beyond the war. And though she was in more control of her innate intuitive gifts, she knew that the only reason she could readily not see herself and James together in the future was that she had deliberately blocked such images—because she was afraid of what a union with him might mean. She had yet to trust happiness, that much she knew. It had been so fleeting with Simon, and she wondered what it might feel like for happiness to be a constant, so that she could rest in its cradle, rather than looking across the parapet for a marching army ready to shoot her contentment down in flames. And letters with Canadian stamps and a smudged London postmark made her uneasy, for it was as if one of her sentinels was asleep at his post and had failed to warn her that James Compton might break her heart.

Maisie did not see Francesca Thomas the following day—again, she thought she might ask Thomas to cover her class on Friday morning. Thomas was on the premises, that much she knew. She had inquired with Miss Hawthorne if any word had come from Dr. Thomas, and asked if she was well again. Miss Hawthorne had looked at Maisie over her spectacles, and replied, “Miss Dobbs, kind as you are, I really do not have time to answer questions regarding the well-being of a member of staff who cannot see through the common cold to attend to her duties. As far as I can tell, Dr. Thomas is now well and in command of her timetable, thank heavens!” She looked down at her work again and, as if remembering that it was Maisie who had stepped in to accommodate the absent teacher’s class, added, “Though I thank you for not succumbing to the plague, and for dealing with the additional students at such short notice yesterday. Very good of you.”

“My pleasure, Miss Hawthorne.”

Teaching invigorated Maisie, and she remembered