Messenger of Truth (9 page)

Maisie stood back to look at the mural in its entirety. The infamous eighteenth-century Kent gangs given life, given color, by the hand of the artist. She moved in toward the wall and held the light to the finely drawn faces, to marvel at the detail, even that of the dog cowering to one side as the horse reared up. Nick Bassington-Hope was indeed talented, that much was evident even in a whimsical scene depicting life gone by in the place where he had established his retreat.

She checked her watch and sighed. She would remain awhile longer, searching. It was already past four and dark outside, but she decided that she could not leave until she had conducted a thorough search of the cottage, even if it meant driving later in less-than-safe conditions, picking her way with care along the rough roads. As the air around her seemed to become accustomed to her presence, it occurred to Maisie that those who came before her might have visited in search of something of great import.

She moved the MG to a place behind the second carriage, where a surprisingly strong lean-to had been constructed and sheltered not only a carefully stacked pile of driftwood, but a privvy, and a barrel where water was collected from a clever gutter system. Maisie was able to park under the lean-to, and smiled as she walked around to the front of the cottage. It would seem that, contrary to Stratton’s assessment, this was one artist with a very practical streak, if one took into account the work involved in adapting the two carriages—work that she suspected Nick had completed himself.

Locking the door behind her again, Maisie pulled the blinds, made up a fire in the cast-iron stove and put the kettle of water on to boil. As the room warmed, she opened the door to the studio to allow heat to circulate so that she could move around in comfort. She looked around the home that Nick Bassington-Hope had created. No, none of this was the work of a man who would have had a slap-dash attitude toward the construction of a scaffolding platform.

RETURNING TO THE
sketchbooks she had just opened when Amos White banged on the door, she saw they contained work from Nick Bassington-Hope’s early days—charcoal drawings and watercolors that lacked the mature interpretation of later years—and also more recent work that seemed to demonstrate a more confident hand. Maisie looked through the sketchbooks and felt certain that there should be more. Calculating that Nick would have used perhaps more than a hundred, or two hundred books, she began to search again, though there were precious few places for storage in the carriages. It was under the bed that she found a series of apple crates containing more sketchbooks, along with the many works of fiction and nonfiction he had acquired over the years. On hands and knees Maisie pulled out the crates, set them alongside the fire, and, sitting on the floor with the lamp on a side table, she began to leaf through their contents.

Unlike the rest of the cottage, in which everything seemed to have its place, the sketchbooks had not been catalogued or kept in any order, and if Maisie had to guess, she would have concluded that they had been worked through quite recently. Recalling her conversations with Georgina, she wondered whether the Bassington-Hopes had expected to find something that might indicate the location of the lock-up—something she rather wanted to find herself.

Nick’s early sketches were of pastoral scenes, of horses in Kentish fields, of farms and oasthouses, of cattle ambling toward the milking shed in late afternoon and of women gathered outside farm buildings, their jackets secured by string, laced boots muddied under heavy cloth skirts with pinafores. Strong as men, they were running newly washed hop-pokes through a mangle, two turning a giant handle, two feeding the sacking through twin rollers. There were detail sketches, a face here, a nose there, the arm of a farmworker or a child’s dimpled hand held by the worn, working hand of her father. And then came the war.

Maisie could barely bring herself to look at the sketches, and as she did so her head began to throb, the scar on her neck aching in unison. She could not continue, but turned instead to work completed in the time following Nick’s return from France, the time when, still recuperating from his wounds, he was called upon to work for the cause of war in designing propaganda literature. This time the sketches inflamed Maisie. She moved back from the fire, so heated was her response to the slogans revealed as she flicked through the pages. A small boy sitting on his father’s knee, and the words,
WHAT WAR STORIES WILL YOU TELL
,
FATHER
? A young man with his sweetheart, the woman looking away toward a man in uniform:
ARE YOU STILL HER BEST BOY
? Then another, a German soldier breaking down the door of a family’s home:
YOU CAN STOP HIM NOW
! Maisie had seen the posters herself in the war, but had never questioned who might have drafted each idea, never thought of the man who had challenged others to join the fight and who compelled those at home to push them toward service.

And here in her hands were the ideas as seeds. For each poster she had seen on a railway station, at a picture house or on a board outside a shop, there were ten, fifteen sketches, if not more, with the design at a different stage of development. At first she felt anger toward the artist. Then she found herself wondering if he’d had a choice, and, if not, how he might have felt, knowing the ultimate, deadly outcome of his work. As the fire inside abated, Maisie moved closer to the stove again and wondered what remorse, if any, might have shadowed Nick Bassington-Hope each day.

The sketches from his time in America were most interesting to Maisie, not only because they illustrated a land far away, but because they revealed a man who seemed to have found a peace of mind. Magnificent canyons backlit by a sun high in the sky; trees of such grandeur that she could barely imagine walking through the forest; then the plains—even in mere sketchbooks, with pencil and charcoal, with pastel chalks, with watercolor, she could almost smell the heat, the breeze pressed against fields of corn or whipped up spray on a river as it was forced downward across fearsome rapids. Again, Nick Bassington-Hope had drawn segments in detail, perhaps one of water rushing across a single rock, or of a branch, perhaps part of an eagle’s wing. And there, penciled into the corner of a single page, the artist had written, “I can dance with life again.” As Maisie closed one sketchbook and reached for another, she realized that tears had fallen, that the work of an artist she never knew was touching her deeply. His travels to the other side of the world had saved Nick Bassington-Hope’s very soul.

Taking up a collection of sketchbooks tied with string and marked
CONSTRUCTS
, Maisie dried her eyes and was intrigued as she flipped through the pages, for it appeared that not only had the artist planned his murals and triptych pieces with utmost care, but he had anticipated each step involved in exhibiting them, even down to the last bolt and anchor required to secure a piece. So, she was right, he was no fly-by-night who took chances, but a careful executor of his work. One might also remark that such attention to minutiae was an obsession. Flicking through, Maisie noted that the details here were of past exhibits and that there was nothing pertaining to the unveiling at Svenson’s Gallery. Had it been removed? Or was it still here? Or at the lock-up?

Maisie pushed the books to one side, rose to her feet and placed her hands on the back of first one chair, then the other. She smiled, for as she touched the chair on the left of the fireplace, it felt warm against her fingers—but not in a way that would indicate proximity to the embers. It was a different heat, a sensation that another person would likely not feel. As she rested her hand on the leather chair, Maisie knew it was Nick Bassington-Hope’s preferred seat, that he would have chosen this chair before the other, always. She sat in his place, closed her eyes and, with her hands resting softly in her lap, took three deep breaths, each time inhaling to the extent of her lung capacity before breathing out. Then she sat in silence, with only the crashing of the waves outside and closer crackle of burning driftwood for company.

Banishing all thoughts from her mind, she waited. In time—though she would not have known how much time, for Maisie had been taught that the moments and hours spent in silence without intellectual thought give the seeker the opportunity to transcend such human measurements—an image came to her of the artist in his home, moving from one room to another. The living room, this room in which she was sitting, was cozy and warm, as it was now, though instead of winter, it’s high summer and light is streaming through the windows. Now Nick is in his studio, a palette in his hand, his trolley of brushes along with a selection of paints at his side, and he is working. The image blurs, and there he is sitting on the chair alongside the chest of drawers. He is sketching, yet as he puts charcoal to paper, tears fall and he brushes the back of his hand against his red-rimmed eyes. Though it is a bright day, he is wearing the greatcoat, drawing it around him as he works, as he struggles with the emotion his work inspires. He stops and looks around the room, puts his work to one side, paces the floor, then takes a piece of paper from his pocket. He looks at the paper for just a moment, then returns it to his pocket. Then the picture becomes blurred and he is gone. The sea crashes against the shore, the seagulls screech and wheel overhead.

Opening her eyes, Maisie rubbed her temples and looked around to regain her bearings. Half past seven! Standing up, she moved as if to go to the studio, but suddenly stopped, for it struck her that to hear seagulls whooping in such an excited state was unusual at this hour of darkness. Her weekend visits to Andrew Dene’s home in the Old Town had given her a sense of the rhythms of coastal life. She stepped to the window, and as she did so, extinguished the lamp so that she stood in darkness to draw back the blind, just slightly.

Lights went back and forth, and there was a flurry of activity close to the shingle bank where a fishing boat had just been drawn up. Maisie watched as men—there must have been three, perhaps four—unloaded a haul. She had waited many a time for the fishing boats to come in with the morning’s catch, but what she was seeing now seemed strange to her. There were no nets, as far as she could see, no barrels for the fish, and it was late for the catch to come in. A rumbling, heavy sound distracted her as a lorry appeared, backing up as far as the driver could take the vehicle to the shingle bank. She squinted; it was hard to see in the dark, though the scene was illuminated by Tilly lamps. Yes, perhaps it was a late catch. Shadows could be misleading, tricksters of light and imagination. And she was weary, with work to do. But not so weary that she would not take precautions to protect herself, even if such protection were not necessary.

Extinguishing the fire, Maisie carried the lamp into the studio where she relit the wick and, with one hand, searched down into the folds of the armchair’s seat. Her slender fingers teased out a few pennies and even a florin, a dried-up paint tube and a pencil. Pushing her hands down farther, Maisie was frustrated to find nothing of consequence, when she had been so sure that her meditation would yield the clue she needed. She returned to Nick’s living room, pulled on her hat and coat, washed the cup and saucer and placed them on the dresser. Then she waited. Waited until the only light on the beach came from the lighthouse, until the coast was clear and she could leave. With her hand held out to guide her from the carriage, she crept back towards the lean-to and claimed the MG. The engine seemed loud, but—she hoped—was probably drowned out by crashing waves as she again made her way slowly along the shingled track out to the main road.

Her route was one that took her across Kent toward Chelstone. But it was as she left the marshes that her headlamps illuminated, just for a second or two, the back of a lorry as it pulled off the main road and down a lane. She thought that the driver had probably not seen her, though she recognized the lorry immediately. It was the same vehicle she had seen at the beach.

Maisie made a mental note of the place where the lorry had turned, and, as she drove along in the darkness, she knew she would be back.

Maisie had arrived late at Frankie Dobbs’s home, yet despite the hour, father and daughter sat together until the small hours, sometimes saying nothing, at other times speaking of Maisie’s work or, as now happened increasingly, talking of the past. Frankie Dobbs would begin a sentence with the words, “Do you remember when…” and continue with a story of someone he’d known as a young man while working at a racing yard, or perhaps it was a story about one of his customers, the people to whom he’d delivered fruit and vegetables on his rounds as a costermonger. But since 1914 Frankie had lived in Kent, though his dialect was easily recognizable as being from within the sound of the tolling bells of Bow, marking him as a true cockney.

Frankie no longer asked Maisie about Dr. Andrew Dene and whether their courtship might lead to him welcoming a son-in-law to their family of two. As he commented to Mrs. Crawford, the cook at Chelstone, just before she retired at Christmastime, “Well, I like the boy—London born and bred, you know. Good sort. Got feet on the ground, and does right by Maisie, but, I dunno, she never seems to…” And with that he looked into the distance, so that Mrs. Crawford touched him on the shoulder and said, “Don’t you worry about our Maisie. She’s different. I’ve said all along: The girl’s different. And she’ll find her own way. Always has, always will. No, she’s not one to worry about.” Though as she spoke, Mrs. Crawford reflected briefly on the many times she herself had worried about Maisie Dobbs.

“There you are, fresh eggs this morning and two rashers of bacon! That’ll keep you going, my girl.”

“You spoil me, Dad.” Maisie admonished her father as he sat down to tuck into his own hearty breakfast.

Frankie looked at the clock. “I’ve got to get out to the horses a bit sharpish this mornin’. I tell you, we’re doing well, with another mare due to foal soon, though it’d sit better with me if it weren’t so cold for a young ’un to come into the world. Spend all my time makin’ sure the stables’re warm.” He turned back to his breakfast, dipping bread into fried egg.

“As long as you’re not overdoing it, Dad.”

Frankie shook his head. “Nah. All in a day’s work.” Deflecting any further harking back to injuries sustained in an accident the year before, Frankie repeated some gossip heard on the estate. “Well, you’ve certainly set the cat among the pigeons, haven’t you?”

“Me?” Maisie set down her knife and fork. “What do you mean?”

“There’s talk that, what with you moving out of Ebury Place, ’er Ladyship won’t keep it on because you’ve left and there’s no one she trusts to keep an eye on the property, that she’d be better off mothballing it, you know, until that James comes back to England.”

“But she didn’t keep it on for me, Dad. I was just there as a sort of overseer, and I admit it was handy. Helped me to get some savings in the bank. I’m sure this is just hearsay, you know how they all talk.”

Frankie shook his head. “No, I reckon there’s something in it this time. Costs a lot of money to keep a house like that going, and even if they just close it up, it’ll save a bit.” Frankie paused to take a sip of tea. “But I don’t think it’s the money, myself. No, I think that ’er Ladyship just doesn’t want to spend much time up there in the Smoke. And she doesn’t want to be out with them types anymore, you know, them what don’t know there’s a slump on. Reckon the only people she ever ’eld in account were the ones like old Dr. Blanche, them with a bit of nouse.” Frankie pushed back his plate, then tapped the side of his head with his forefinger. “She don’t much mind what station a person is, as long as they’ve got something to say for themselves. So I reckon it’s on the cards, especially with Mrs. Crawford gone to ’er brother and ’is wife in Ipswich. They’ve already brought that Teresa down to work in the kitchen, but it’s not as if anyone wants a big staff anymore, not like it was years ago.”

“I hope no one really thinks this is all my fault,” said Maisie.

“No, not your fault, love, just all come at the same time. And like you said: People talk.” Frankie looked at the clock again. “You’re off in a minute, I know, so I’ll say my good-bye now. Better get over to the stable.”

Maisie kissed her father and waved him off, watching him walk slowly down the path. Frankie hated to see his daughter drive away, so she had expected him to leave before she departed the cottage. It was time he retired, and Maisie was grateful for the fact that Lady Rowan had assured her that the Groom’s Cottage would be her father’s home for the rest of his life; she had never forgotten that Frankie Dobbs had saved her horses from requisition in the war.

After tidying up the kitchen, Maisie packed her bag and left before nine, with the intention of reaching Hastings by ten o’clock. In the solitude of the journey down to the Sussex coast, she could consider the case of Nicholas Bassington-Hope against the cold light of day. And it was most certainly cold, and bright, for a clearing wind had swept across the south leaving blue skies but frosty ground underfoot.

Maisie liked to work methodically through a case, while at the same time allowing for intuition to speak to her, for truth to make itself known. Sometimes such knowledge would be inspired by something as simple as an unfamiliar scent on the air, or perhaps uncovering information regarding a choice made by one of the victims. And Maisie had found that the perpetrator of a crime was often every bit as much a victim. Yet this case seemed to beg for another approach, requiring her to “work both ways at once” as she had commented to her father, when he had asked her about the assignment that had brought her to Dungeness. Not that she had said anything else about the case, simply that it demanded something quite different from her.

That something different was the need to build up a picture, an image of the victim’s life without, perhaps, some of the usual information that might have been available. As she drove, she reflected upon the fact that she had not had the advantage of being present soon after the accident, so the immediate environment was clear of that energetic residue she always felt in the immediate presence of death. She thought she might in any case visit the gallery again soon, alone. Thus far she was only just beginning to fill in the outline of Nick Bassington-Hope’s life. She had first to sketch in her landscape, then, as she uncovered new information, she would add color and depth to her work.

Maisie changed gear as she decreased speed down the shallow hill into Sedlescombe. Her thoughts were gathering pace. Wasn’t this whole case like creating one of those murals, building a picture across uneven terrain, telling a story by adding detail to give life and momentum to the masterwork?

She had her broad charcoal sketch of the artist’s life, now to the finer points. First Dungeness: Had she seen something untoward or had the eerie silence of the coast at night ignited her imagination? Perhaps Nick’s carriage-window mural had teased her, led her to see something that wasn’t there, as hardworking fishermen brought their catch ashore against the unrelenting winter weather. Perhaps the lorry ahead of her on the road was not the one she had seen at the beach, or perhaps it was the same vehicle going to a warehouse or rural factory where fish were packed in ice for transit to London. Maurice had often warned her that the emotional or unsettled mind could interpret an innocent remark into a cause for argument, could change a happily anticipated event into an outing to be dreaded. And hadn’t she been unsettled by the greatcoat, by the weight of a garment that had been dragged though Flanders’s mud, with sleeves covering arms that, perhaps, had lent support and final comfort to the young officer’s dying men?

As Maisie pulled into the narrow road that led to the outer edge of the Old Town, above the slum of broken-down beamed cottages on Bourne Street, and along to the houses that commanded views across the Channel, she knew that she had a list of detailed sketches to create: the Bassington-Hope family; Nick’s friends and associates; those who collected his work and those who hated it; the mysterious lock-up. She wanted to know why her client had argued with Stig Svenson at the gallery. Looking back to that first meeting, she remembered Georgina’s observation that if someone had murdered Nick, they might also prey on her. What event, what situation gave cause for such a fear, or was it a throwaway comment meant to egg on the investigator? Was she being played for a fool by Georgina as well as by Stratton?

It was early yet, only two days had passed since the first meeting with Georgina Bassington-Hope, but now there was work to do in earnest—if not for her client, then for herself. For she was now quite convinced that even if Nick Bassington-Hope was killed in a terrible accident, and possibly as a result of his own negligence, it had given Svenson a cause to argue with his client’s executor, had resulted in a rift between the Bassington-Hope sisters and was leading to some very strange behavior by Detective Inspector Stratton.

“Maisie! By golly, I thought I would never see you again—and why, might I ask, are you sitting in your little red car staring out to sea?”

Maisie shook her head. “Oh, sorry, Andrew, I was miles away.”

Dene opened the door of the MG, took Maisie’s hand and pulled her to him as she alighted. “You’ve been avoiding me, I think,” he said teasingly, though the statement clearly begged for contradiction.

Maisie smiled, and blushed. “Of course I haven’t. Don’t be silly.” She turned her head toward the sea. “Let’s go for a walk. I have to leave at about two o’clock, you know, so let’s not waste the morning.”

For just a second Dene’s expression revealed his disappointment, then he smiled in return. “Grand idea, Maisie. Come on in while I put on my coat.” He held out his hand for Maisie to go ahead into the house. “Just a pity you aren’t staying until tomorrow.”

Maisie did not reply, did not turn back to offer an explanation or even an apology. And Dene did not repeat the sentiment, thinking his words had been caught on the wind and swept away, which, he considered, was probably just as well.

IT TOOK ONLY
fifteen minutes to amble down to the High Street and then on to Rock-a-Nore toward the tall fishermen’s net shops at the Stade, where the couple stopped to watch a boat being winched ashore. Nets from other boats had been heaped in piles, ready to be cleaned out, mended and stowed for another day’s fishing. Though Dene was an orthopedic surgeon at the nearby All Saints’ Convalescent Hospital, he traveled to London regularly to lecture medical students on matters concerning injuries to the spine and the rehabilitation of those who are adversely affected by accidents, disease or the wounds of war. A protégé of Dr. Maurice Blanche, Dene thought that this connection in common with Maisie might promote their fledgling courtship, but after a promising start, he now wondered if he had not been rather optimistic. This morning he had opened his mouth to speak several times, hoping to open a deeper dialogue, only to remain silent.

Strolling along, Maisie and Andrew Dene watched as the womenfolk of the Old Town sold fish, winkles and whelks to winter day-trippers from London, who would take them home, a special treat with a bit of bread and dripping for their Sunday tea. Then there were those who paid a few pence for a white saucer of jellied eels or whelks to eat while leaning against the counter, a delicacy when washed down with a cup of strong tea.

All around them conversations could be heard, but little passed between the pair. Dene was about to try another tack, start another conversation, when he noticed Maisie looking across the Stade at one of the fishing boats. She was squinting, holding a hand across her forehead to shield her eyes from the light.

“What is it, Maisie? Seen one of the boys unload a fish you’d like?” quipped Dene.

She barely moved, still staring in the direction of the boat, then looked back at him. “Sorry, Andrew, what did you say? I was rather preoccupied.”

Dene replied in a clipped manner. “If you don’t mind me saying so, Maisie, you have been rather preoccupied since you arrived. What’s the matter? Can’t we even have one afternoon together without you seeing something that sparks a thought that clearly takes you back to your work—or to somewhere other than here, with me, in any case?”

Maisie did not address his comment, but instead asked a question. “Andrew, do you know the fishermen here? Are their names familiar?”

Dene suspected that Maisie had barely even heard him. “I—I…yes, I do, Maisie. I know most of the families, simply because I’m a doctor and I choose to live close to Bourne Street, where the ordinary people live.” He felt tension rise as he spoke, a mixture of annoyance at her avoiding his observation and fear that she might have used the moment to speak of her feelings—feelings he wasn’t sure he was ready to hear. He was relieved when she laced her arm through his and continued to walk in the direction of the men she’d been watching.

“Come on, let’s wander back to the tea shop. I’d love a cup before I leave for Tenterden.” With that she smiled, though Dene was quick to notice that, although she continued speaking, her attention had been drawn to three fishermen now standing alongside their boat. They were deep in discussion, backs against the wind, heads almost touching. As the couple passed by, Dene saw the men look up in unison, then turn back to resume their talk. Maisie was facing him now, as if, he thought, she did not want them to know she had seen them. They crossed the road.