Among the Mad (2 page)

“Miss, Miss . . . ” Billy picked himself up from the
hard flagstones and staggered back to where he had last seen Maisie. The
silence became a screaming chasm where police whistles screeched, smoke and
dust filled the air, and blood was sprayed up against the crumbling brick and
shards of glass that were once the front of a shop where a man begged for a few
coins outside.

“Maisie Dobbs! Maisie . . . Miss . . .” Billy sobbed
as he stumbled forward. “Miss!” he screamed again.

“Over ’ere, mate. Is this the one you’re looking for?”

In the middle of the road a costermonger was kneeling
over Maisie, cradling her head in one hand and brushing blood away from her
face with the kerchief he’d taken from his neck. Billy ran to her side.

“Miss . . . Miss . . . ”

“I’m no doctor, but I reckon she’s a lucky one—lifted
off her feet and brought down ’ere. Probably got a nasty crack on the back of
’er noddle though.”

Maisie coughed, spitting dust-filled saliva from her
mouth. “Oh, Billy . . . I thought I could stop him. I thought I would be in
time. If only we’d been here earlier, if only—”

“Don’t you worry, Miss. Let’s make sure you’re all
right before we do anything else.”

Maisie shook her head, began to sit up, and brushed
her hair from her eyes and face. “I think I’m all right—I was just pulled right
off the ground.” She squinted and looked around at the melee. “Billy, we’ve got
to help. I can help these people . . . ” She tried to stand but fell backward
again.

The costermonger and Billy assisted Maisie to her
feet. “Steady, love, steady,” said the man, who looked at Billy, frowning.
“What’s she mean? Tried to stop ’im? Did you know there was a nutter there
about to top ’imself—and try to take the rest of us with ’im?”

Billy shook his head. “No, we didn’t know. This is my
employer. We were just walking to see a customer. Only . . . ”

“Only what, mate? Only what? Look around you—it’s
bleedin’ chaos, people’ve been ’urt, look at ’em. Did she know this was going
to ’appen? Because if she did, then I’m going over to that copper there and—”

Billy put his arm around Maisie and began to negotiate
his way around the rubble, away from the screams of those wounded when a man took
his own life in a most terrible way. He looked back into his interrogator’s
eyes. “She didn’t know until she saw the bloke. It was when she saw him that
she knew.” Maisie allowed herself to be led by Billy, who turned around to the
costermonger one last time. “She just knows, you see. She knows.” He fought
back tears. “And thanks for helping her, mate.” His voice cracked. “Thanks . .
. for helping her.”

“COME ON IN HERE, bring her in and she can sit down.”
The woman called from a shop just a few yards away.

“Thank you, thank you very much.” Billy led Maisie
into the shop and to a chair, then turned to the woman. “I’d better get back
there, see if there’s any more I can do.”

The woman nodded. “Tell people they can come in here.
I’ve got the kettle on. Dreadful, dreadful, what this world’s come to.”

Soon the shop had filled with people while ambulances
took the more seriously wounded to hospital. And as she sat clutching a cup of
tea in her hands, feeling the soothing heat grow cooler in her grasp, Maisie
replayed the scene time and again in her mind. She and Billy crossed the road
behind the horse and cart, then ran to the curb as a motor came along the
street. They were talking, noticing people going by or dashing in and out of
shops before early closing. Then she saw him, the man, his leg stretched out,
as if he were lame. As she had many times before, she reached into her bag to
offer money to someone who had so little. She felt the cold coins brush against
her fingers, saw the policeman set off across the street, and looked up at the
man again—the man whose black aura seemed to grow until it touched her, until
she could no longer hear, could not move with her usual speed.

She sipped her now lukewarm tea. That was the point at
which she knew. She knew that the man would take his life. But she thought he
had a pistol, or even poison. She saw her own hand in front of her, reaching
out as if to gentle his wounded mind, then there was nothing. Nothing except a
sharp pain at the back of her head and a voice in the distance. Maisie Dobbs .
. . Miss. A voice screaming in panic, a voice coming closer.

“MISS DOBBS?”

Maisie started and almost dropped her cup.

“I’m sorry—I didn’t mean to make you jump—your
assistant said you were here.” Detective Inspector Richard Stratton looked down
at Maisie, then around the room. The proprietress had brought out as many
chairs as she could, and all were taken. Stratton knelt down. “I was on duty at
the Yard when it happened, so I was summoned straightaway. By chance I saw Mr.
Beale and he said you witnessed the man take his life.” He paused, as if to
judge her state of mind. “Are you up to answering some questions?” Stratton
spoke with a softness not usually employed when in conversation with Maisie.
Their interactions had at times been incendiary, to say the least.

Maisie nodded, aware that she had hardly said a word
since the explosion. She cleared her throat. “Yes, of course, Inspector. I’m
just a little unsettled—I came down with a bit of a wallop, knocked out for a
few moments, I think.”

“Oh, good, you found her, then.” Stratton and Maisie
looked toward the door as Billy Beale came back into the shop. “I’ve brought
back your document case, Miss. All the papers are inside.”

Maisie nodded. “Thank you, Billy.” She looked up and saw
concern etched on Billy’s face, along with a certain resolve. Though it was
more than thirteen years past, the war still fingered Billy’s soul, and even
though the pain from his wounds had eased, it had not left him in peace.
Today’s events would unsettle him, would be like pulling a dressing from a
dried cut, rendering his memories fresh and raw.

“Look, my motor car’s outside—let me take you both
back to your office. We can talk there.” Stratton stood up to allow Maisie to
link her arm through his, and began to lead her to the door. “I know this is
not the best time for you, but it’s the best time for us—I’d like to talk to
you as soon as we get to your premises, before you forget.”

Maisie stopped and looked up at Stratton. “Forgetting
has never been of concern to me, Inspector. It’s the remembering that gives me
pause.”

A POLICE CORDON now secured the site of the explosion,
and though there were no more searing screams ricocheting around her, onlookers
had gathered and police moved in and out of shops, taking names, helping those
caught in a disaster while out on Christmas Eve. Maisie did not want to look at
the street again, but as she saw people on the edge of the tragedy talking, she
imagined them going home to their families and saying, “You will never guess
what I saw today,” or “You’ve heard about that nutter with the bomb over on
Charlotte Street, well . . . ” And she wondered if she would ever walk down the
street again and not feel her feet leave the ground.

DETECTIVE INSPECTOR RICHARDSTRATTON and his assistant,
Caldwell, pulled up chairs and were seated on the visiting side of Maisie’s
desk. Billy had just poured three cups of tea and filled one large enameled tin
mug, into which he heaped extra sugar and stirred before setting it in front of
his employer.

“All right, Miss?”

Maisie nodded, then clasped the tea as she had in the
shop earlier, as if to wring every last drop of warmth from the mug.

“Better watch it, Miss, that’s hot. Don’t want to burn
yourself.”

“Yes, of course.” Maisie placed the mug on a manila
folder in front of her, and as she released her grip, Billy saw red welts on
her hands where heat from the mug had scalded her and she had felt nothing.

“How does your head feel now?” Richard Stratton’s brows
furrowed as he leaned forward to place his cup and saucer on the desk, while
keeping his eyes on Maisie. The two had met almost three years earlier, when
Stratton was called in at the end of a case she had been working on. The
policeman, a widower with a young son, had at one point entertained a romantic
notion of the investigator, but his approach had been nipped in the bud by
Maisie, who was not as adept in her personal life as she was in her
professional domain. Now their relationship encompassed only work, though as an
observer, it was clear to Billy that Richard Stratton had a particular regard
for his employer, despite it being evident that she had brought him to the edge
of exasperation at times—not least because her instincts were more finely honed
than his own. Regardless, Stratton’s respect for Maisie was reciprocated, and
she trusted him.

Maisie reached with her hand to touch the back of her
head, a couple of inches above her occipital bone. “There’s a fair-sized bump .
. . ” She ran her fingers down to an indentation in her scalp, sustained while
she was working as a nurse during the war. The scar was a constant reminder of
the shelling that had not only wounded her but eventually taken the life of
Simon Lynch, the doctor she had loved. “At least it didn’t open my war wounds.”
She shook her head, realizing the irony of her words.

“Are you sure you’re up for this?” Stratton inquired,
his voice softer.

Caldwell
rolled his
eyes. “I think we need to get on with it, sir.”

Stratton was about to speak, when Maisie stood up.
“Yes, of course, Mr. Caldwell’s right, we should get on.”

Billy looked down at his notebook, the hint of a grin
at the edges of his mouth. He knew there was no love lost between Maisie and
Caldwell, and her use of “Mr.” instead of “Detective Sergeant” demonstrated
that she may have been knocked out, but she was not down.

“I’ll start at the beginning . . . ” Maisie began to
pace back and forth, her eyes closed as she recounted the events of the
morning, from the time she had placed the cap on her pen, to the point at which
the explosion ripped the man’s body apart, and wounded several passers-by.

“Then the bomb—”

“Mills Bomb,” Billy corrected her, absently
interrupting as he gazed at the floor watching her feet walk to the window and back
again, the deliberate repetitive rhythm of her steps pushing recollections onto
center stage in her mind’s eye.

“Mills Bomb?” Stratton looked at Billy. Maisie stopped
walking.

“What?” Billy looked up at each of them in turn.

“You said Mills Bomb. Are you sure it was a Mills
Bomb?” Caldwell licked his pencil’s sharp lead, ready to continue recording
every word spoken.

“Look, mate, I was a sapper in the war—what do you
mean, ‘Are you sure?’ If you go and fire off a round from half a dozen
different rifles, I’ll tell you which one’s which. Of course I know a Mills
Bomb—dodgy bloody things, saw a few mates pull out the pin and end up blowing
themselves up with one of them. Mills Bomb—your basic hand grenade.”

Stratton lifted his hand. “Caldwell, I think we can
trust Mr. Beale here.” He turned to Billy. “And it’s not as if it would be
difficult for a civilian to obtain such ordnance, I would imagine.”

“You’re right. There’s your souvenir seekers going
over to France and coming back with them—a quick walk across any of them French
fields and you can fill a basket, I shouldn’t wonder. And people who want
something bad enough always find a way, don’t they?”

“And he hadn’t always been a civilian.” Maisie took
her seat again. “Unless he’d had an accident in a factory, this man had been a
soldier. I was close enough to judge his age—about thirty-five, thirty-six—and
his left leg was in a brace, which is why people had to walk around him,
because he couldn’t fold it inward. And the right leg might have been amputated.”

“If it wasn’t then, it is now.” Caldwell seemed to
smirk as he noted Maisie’s comment.

“If that’s all, Inspector, I think I need to go home.
I’m driving down to Kent this evening, and I think I should rest before I get
behind the wheel.”

Stratton stood up, followed by Caldwell, who looked at
Maisie and was met with an icy gaze. “Of course, Miss Dobbs,” said Stratton.
“Look, I would like to discuss this further with you, get more impressions of
the man. And of course we’ll be conducting inquiries with other witnesses,
though it seems that even though you were not the closest, you remember more
about him.”

“I will never forget, Inspector. The man was filled
with despair and I would venture to say that he had nothing and no one to live
for, and this is the time of year when people yearn for that belonging most.”

Stratton cleared his throat. “Of course.” He shook
hands with both Maisie and Billy, wishing them the compliments of the season.
Maisie extended her hand to Caldwell in turn, smiling as she said, “And a Merry
Christmas to you, Mr. Caldwell.”

MAISIE AND BILLY stood by the window and watched the
two men step into the Invicta. The driver closed the passenger door behind
them, then took his place and maneuvered the vehicle in the direction of Charlotte Street, whereupon the bell began to ring and the motor picked up speed toward the
site of the explosion. Barely two hours had elapsed since Maisie saw a man
activate a hand grenade inside his tattered and stained khaki greatcoat.