Pardonable Lie (26 page)

“I see.”

“No, not quite; let me continue.” Maurice reached for his cup again and took a final sip of his now-lukewarm tea. “Peter’s safety was already in question even before the debacle of the aviator who crashed, but that disaster made it even more urgent that he be moved into a new field of operation, from IC—the intelligence corps—to a secret service assignment that was both deep and broad.”

“So he didn’t die in Sainte-Marie?”

“No, Peter died in Germany.”

“In Germany?” Maisie’s eyes revealed her surprise.

“Yes. Even before the end of the war, the enemy’s morale was faltering. Desertion, mutiny, soldiers shocked, wounded, and hungry. And affairs in Germany were desperate, with people—women and children—starving to death. Along with the burden of grief there was mass unemployment. Peter’s job was to report on the situation and, more especially, to keep us informed regarding the plans and actions of antigovernment and other dissenting groups that were coming together even then. The knowledge was essential for victory—and to know what might befall us all following an armistice.”

“What do you mean?”

Maurice stood up and moved toward the fire, holding his hands out to the warmth, splaying his fingers as if blessing the flames. “The tentacles of war reach into the future, Maisie. We may think conflict is over, that we can mourn our dead, build our houses again, take up our tools, fashion our tomorrows, and watch the grass grow over the trenches, but the truth is somewhat more complex. There are always the disenfranchised, those who feel they have lost too much and that the only way to regain their due is through control and ultimately another fight. War debt on all sides, the economic and moral bankruptcy that comes from conflict—any stability in our world since the war is only a myth.”

“How did Peter die, then—and when did he die?”

“Peter died in Germany in 1918, in a food riot. Along with other civilians, he was crushed under the weight of people running from the army, which had been brought in to quell the demonstrators. It was most sad, especially as he was to be brought back to England in a matter of days. He was to be demobilized, and eventually his ‘missing’ status changed to reflect repatriation from a prisoner-of-war camp. I have no doubt that Peter would have become the teacher of languages he had always aspired to be and would have put his wartime work behind him, having never spoken a word of it to a soul. That is the role of an intelligence agent. And Peter was one of our finest.”

“Do you know where he died?”

“Yes.”

“But I cannot know.”

“No, Maisie. You know too much already, though I have persuaded my colleagues of your integrity.”

Maisie and Maurice sat in silence for some moments, until Maisie spoke again. “And who was the local recruit in Sainte-Marie? Speaking of the town, I should tell you that Priscilla—”

“Ah, yes, now we come to the question of Sainte-Marie, of Pascale Clement.” Maurice looked at his watch, then turned to Huntley. “I think we are ready for our guest now, Brian.”

Huntley rose and bowed slightly to Maurice before leaving the room. Maisie turned to Maurice, who was now standing with his back to the fire, awaiting the entrance of his other guest. Darkness had fallen outside. Maisie stood up and walked to the window, where she remained for a moment to watch the street, the rooms illuminated in the mansion opposite, the motor cars below, and the warm glow of streetlamps. There was still much to speak about, and Maurice was bound to ask what Maisie had discovered while in Sainte-Marie and Biarritz. It was as she remembered her promise to Pascale that Maurice interrupted her thoughts.

“I should also tell you, Maisie, that Mrs. Partridge will arrive tomorrow morning here in Paris.”

“How—”

Maurice raised his hand as the doors opened following a gentle knock. Huntley entered, holding the door open for the elegant Chantal Clement.

“Maisie, I understand you know our agent in Sainte-Marie, Madame Chantal Clement?”

Chantal Clement was dressed in suit of pale gray knitted fabric, and though Maisie was not familiar with the couture houses, she was sure Chantal was a patron of the famous Coco Chanel. The dignified woman came to Maisie and, instead of taking her hand, held her by the shoulders and leaned forward to kiss her on each cheek. Maisie felt her complexion redden.

“You have walked far in the dark, my dear. I am glad that we can speak openly now.”

Maisie pulled back as Madame Clement released her grasp on her shoulders. Turning first to Maurice, then back to Madame Clement, Maisie trembled as she spoke. “Walked far in the dark? You have deceived me, both of you.” She swallowed, attempting to modulate her voice. “I want only to bring my friend Priscilla together with Pascale, her niece. She has lost so much, has suffered so deeply from loss, I appeal to you—”

Madame Clement smiled again and set one finger against Maisie’s lips. “Shhhh. Do not worry anymore, Maisie Dobbs. You are a good friend to have. Indeed, I wish I had such a friend.” She turned to Maurice, smiled, and turned back to Maisie. “Pascale is with me here in Paris. I have already spoken with her regarding her father, and she knows now that her family extends beyond myself alone. She was young to bear such news, but the time had come. I had to reflect that at her age I had already met the man I was to marry, though neither of us knew it at the time.” Madame Clement shook her head and addressed her next comment to Maurice. “I believe it is to our detriment that age gives us a certain mistrust of those younger than ourselves, and we fail to see the strength within them to assume the burden of truth.”

Maurice nodded as Madame Clement spoke.

“When will they meet?” asked Maisie.

“Tomorrow, in this room.” The woman held her hands together in front of her waist in a manner, Maisie suspected, taught by a strict governess. “I will be here with Pascale, who is most excited.”

“And what about Priscilla; who will be here for her? Wasn’t her beloved brother a ‘good friend’ to France? Isn’t she to be respected and cared for?”

Maurice came forward, placing his hand on her shoulder. “Maisie, it is time that we left France. Mrs. Partridge will be secure here with Madame Clement. Your work is done.”

Pulling away, Maisie looked back and forth between Madame Clement and Maurice. It was clear the decision had been made; it was settled. But there was more for her to accomplish before leaving France.

“May we speak privately, Maurice?”

Chantal Clement smiled, touched Maisie on the arm, nodded toward Maurice, and left the room, accompanied by Huntley.

Maurice watched them leave. “You know, Madame Clement is most trustworthy.”

“I do not question her, Maurice. I wanted to speak to you alone, now that all decisions about tomorrow have been made.”

“It was her place to decide what was best for Pascale.”

“Of course. I understand. But it is not your place to dictate when I should leave France.”

Maurice frowned as Maisie walked to the fireplace to warm herself.

“I must go to Bailleul, the place where I served in the war. I must go back.”

“I see. Shall I come?”

“No. I must go alone.”

“As you wish.”

“And there’s more, Maurice.” Maisie turned to face her teacher, mentor, and friend. “I want to know if that man has tried to kill me.”

“Huntley? Of course not.”

“Then your intelligence friends have not sent out an agent to ensure my silence?”

“I have vouched for you.”

“And you are that important here?”

Maurice smiled. “Yes. I am.”

Maisie sighed.

Maurice spoke quietly. “Maisie, you have taken on so much lately. A personal dimension to a case can take a toll. Are you
sure
that your life is in danger? Could not the pressure of your undertaking have altered your thinking?”

Maisie sighed again in frustration, turning once more to the fire.

Maurice touched her shoulder. “I will have Marie-Claude show you to the room that has been prepared for you. You may join me in the dining room in half an hour, or you may wish to have supper served in your room.”

“I think I prefer to be alone.”

“I understand.”

“And I will leave for Bailleul tomorrow.”

“I will await your return to Paris so that we may travel back to England together.

“You don’t need—”

“But I
do
, Maisie. Now then, let me summon Marie-Claude.” Maurice reached for the bellpull alongside the fireplace, turning to Maisie as he did so. “Maisie, before you retire, I wish to underline the import of what has been revealed to you. When you leave here tomorrow, you must act as if you have never been in this place. Chantal Clement’s role remains active. Should a tragedy befall this country in future, her expertise, her knowledge will be invaluable—as will the dedicated people who worked alongside her. In addition, am I correct in thinking that you have met with a Mr. Daniel Roberts?”

Maisie nodded, saying nothing.

“It is sufficient to say that our department has no interest in him.” Maurice paused. “But one more thought occurs to me.”

“Yes?”

“In reflecting upon who might wish you dead, it would perhaps behoove you to consider this: If you were to die, what would your demise give to another? What currency is attached to your life?”

“I’m not sure I know what you mean.”

“If you are right and someone has been trying to bring your life to an end, how might your death serve that person? The insights resulting from such a question may well provide you with some protection.”

Maisie shook her head. “Good night, Maurice.” She stepped away as if to leave, then stopped and turned back. Reaching out she took both his hands in her own and leaned to kiss him on both cheeks. “I remain unsettled by our conversation, Maurice, and I think there is still much to be said between us. But I must thank you for your part in bringing Pascale and Priscilla together.”

Marie-Claude entered the room and held the door to escort Maisie to her guest suite. As he heard the women’s footsteps become distant, Maurice reached for the bellpull and summoned Huntley. His work concerning Maisie Dobbs was not over yet.

TWENTY-FIVE

Maisie left early the following morning, again chauffeured in the black motor car, again with blinds pulled to obscure her view of the street. She did not see Priscilla, which, upon reflection, might be just as well. Chantal Clement was, without doubt, the one to make decisions about matters concerning Pascale’s well-being. Maisie knew it was not her place anymore. She had kept her promise to Priscilla and must now move on to her next task and, when that was done, her return to England and the search for answers to more questions, along with a report to Sir Cecil Lawton.

It was late afternoon when Maisie arrived in Bailleul, the driver of her taxi-cab taking her to a small pension run by a Frenchwoman named Josette and her husband, an Australian. As she signed her name in the guest register for one night only, the man, Ted Tavistock, told Maisie he had met his wife during a visit to France and Belgium soon after the war.

“I was supposed to go back to Sydney, but stayed in Blighty for a while. Thought I might have a bit of a look-see before going home, though I was supposed to go back with the regiment—what was left of it, that is.” He had led Maisie to a small sitting room, where he reached down to light the fire. “Bit nippy this afternoon, eh?” Ted poked at the flames as they licked up toward the chimney, then stood leaning against the mantelpiece. “Then I came back over here to pay my respects and—to tell you the truth—to see where it had all happened. I wondered what I was up to at first; what was it all about? I mean, I lost my boyhood, my mates, I lost my heart here.” He shook his head as if to shake off the past. “Then I found it again when I met Josette. Now of course we do a fair business with all the families who come over to visit the cemeteries.”

“Yes, of course.” Maisie smiled at Josette, who brought her a cup of milky cocoa.

“So, Miss Dobbs. I bet you were in London during the Armistice, weren’t you?”

Maisie stared into the flames, squinting into the past, to a day she would never forget. “You know, I was. I had recovered from a long convalescence and had just started work at a hospital in Camberwell. I remember I was off-duty at the time. One of the nurses rushed into our hostel and told us that the war was over. So we all decided there and then to go straight to Trafalgar Square.”

“Well, wouldn’t you know it! I was there too!”

Maisie smiled, then laughed, her memories drawn along on the coattails of Ted Tavistock’s story. “I remember there were lots of Australian soldiers, and they all linked hands and danced in circles, and then everyone started dancing and shouting. It was so wonderful. The war was over!”

Ted laughed with Maisie. “I tell you, I was one of those blokes! Big old ring-o’-ring-o’-roses, it was. And we were all waving flags and seeing who could find a girl to dance with. Small world, really. It’s a small world.”

The laughing abated and they both stared into the crackling fire again. Maisie knew they had shared the same thought, that the Armistice did not herald days of joy but was instead short-lived in the face of a collective realization that those lost really would not be coming home again.

“I suppose that’s why I had to come back, really, to pay my respects to my mates and say goodbye one last time. Now, of course, I do what I can for the families who come.”

Maisie nodded. “Then perhaps you can help me, Ted.”

“I’ll try, Miss Dobbs.”

“I was a nurse close to Bailleul, at a casualty clearing station. But nothing looks the same now. I have no idea where to start and I have only one day before I must return to Paris and then to England. Do you know where the casualty clearing station was? There should be a cemetery—”

“You were there, miss?”

“Yes. As I said, I was a nurse.”

Ted shook his head. “One of the saddest stories I heard, that one. Lost some of the doctors—and weren’t there a couple of German doctors killed too, prisoners of war who were working with the RAMC docs? Five nurses killed, orderlies, and the boys, of course.”

Maisie nodded.

“You were there?”

She pressed her lips together and nodded again.

“You poor love. You poor, poor love. Come on, let’s get you settled in your room. It’ll be getting dark soon, but I can take you there. Or it might be best to wait until tomorrow morning.”

Maisie shook her head and set her cup on a side table. “No, Ted. I have come all this way. I want to go now.”

T
ED
T
AVISTOCK HELPED
Maisie into his old Renault motor car and drove along narrow streets until they were on the outskirts of the town. They passed a smattering of houses, then some fields. Rain had continued a slanting assault across the land, and as they drove Maisie continually wiped condensation from the window. The detritus of war was still there, rotting and rusting into the ground until someone saw fit to remove it. Hulks of tanks and rusting barbed wire were constant reminders, and as rain filled the potholes along their route, Maisie felt her feet and hands grow icy cold, the chill of death reaching out from the past to finger her skin and touch her soul.
This is my underworld; this is the place where my girlhood was lost. This was my hell on earth.

She wiped the windows again.

“Nearly there, Miss Dobbs. I know this place like the back of my hand, love. Made it my business so I could help the families when they come over, tell them where their boy was lost. I’m what you’d call a bit of a battlefield detective, you know.” Tavistock smiled and winked at his passenger.

Maisie nodded, clutching her elbows to keep warm.
I should have waited. The weather might have cleared; it might have been sunny, not like this, not like it was.

“Here we are then.” The car pulled up alongside a row of small houses, each with a vegetable garden. The houses looked old, yet Maisie could not recall houses nearby. She frowned.

“Is this really the place, Ted?”

Tavistock closed Maisie’s door behind her as she stood on the grass verge, pulling her old cloche farther down to protect her face from the stinging rain.

“Don’t be fooled by the houses. They rebuilt them just a few years ago. See where they used the old foundations? You can always tell by the old bricks at the bottom.”

Maisie nodded. From the windows of trains and taxi-cabs she had observed the flurry of house-building all over northern France, villages growing up again where there had been a barren shell-shocked landscape in 1918. The giants had raged across this land, and now it was fertile again. Yet the scars were still visible.

“So, where was the casualty clearing station?”

“Over here, Miss Dobbs.”

Tavistock opened a gate into a no-man’s-land dividing two houses, and then to the back where, between the two gardens, a Cross of Sacrifice rose toward the dark clouds, ever watchful over a small walled cemetery. She pressed both hands to her mouth and gasped as tears filled her eyes. Wind funneling between the houses whistled past her ears, and she barely heard Tavistock when he told her that he’d wait for her in the motor car. And she didn’t hear the crunch on gravel as another, larger, motor car came to a halt behind the Renault.

Walking slowly, Maisie approached the cemetery. This was the place where she had stood, day after day, night after night, in the operating tent, where she had watched blood flow from the terrible wounds of war, where she had seen young lives ebb away, and on each boy’s lips a cry for mother, wife, or sweetheart. Rain mingled with her tears as she pulled her coat even closer in a bid to drive back the cold. She unlatched the gate and entered the cemetery, already reading the plain stone markers with so many names she knew. It seemed as if the clouds were enveloping her, the biting wind now a wail between the houses, the rain still slicing into the earth. Reaching out, she touched one stone after another, each time feeling as if she were touching the very flesh of a soldier of the Great War. She fell to her knees and allowed the full weight of her terrible grief to break through the dam of self-will that had taken years to build.
Oh, my God, why now? Why now? Why me, why did I live? Why did they die and I live; why was Simon lost and I spared? Why? Tell me why.

She could feel the cold rain-soaked soil seeping into her clothing as she remained on the ground, clutching the grass as if to tear into her memories. And as she felt herself sinking lower, felt her shoulder and then her face touch the earth, she knew there were voices above her. She tried to open her eyes against the rain, against her tears, but could not; she could only hear the voices of men. She began to curl her body as if she were a child again, ready to be picked up and held to her mother’s heart. A hand touched her fiercely hot cheek, and as she slipped deeper away from the cannonade that now tore into her mind, her last memory was of the warm hand touching her forehead and a soft voice saying her name:
Maisie.

D
REAMS CAME AND
went, and, though her eyes were heavy as she slipped in and out of consciousness, she would hear voices coming and going, feel soft hands and a warm damp cloth on her brow; then the light beyond her eyelids became dark again and she would commence her descent down the long staircase once more. In one dream each step led her closer to a court surrounded by flames and gunfire. The judge was seated before her in long red-and-black robes, his silvery wig obscuring his face as he reached for the square black cloth to place on his head, then he pointed his index finger at her while uttering just one word:
Guilty.
Then his face was revealed: Sir Cecil Lawton. In another dream, as she turned and clambered upward to escape the court of accusation, a woman and a girl were silhouetted at the top of the stair with a bright light behind them. The woman reached out her hand and with the other pulled the girl toward her, to protect her, yet Maisie could not reach the hand, could not drag herself from stair to stair, slipping backward instead toward the inferno.

Then she was in the operating tent, pushing a mop back and forth, back and forth, trying desperately to clean the blood-soaked floor.

“What are you doing, Maisie, love?”

“I’m trying to get this floor clean, Mum, but every time I think it’s done I turn around and I’ve missed a bit. Then another puddle of blood appears, and another.” She looked up, distraught. “I just can’t get it clean.”

The woman took Maisie in her arms. “Hush, love, hush. Leave it now, let it be. You’ve done your best.”

“But it’s not clean! The floor’s not clean. I’ve got to—”

“Shhhh.” Her mother pressed two fingers against the center of Maisie’s forehead. “Your gran was right; she saw that crinkle the day you were born and she told me, ‘She’ll be a worrier, that one. She’ll never rest.’” She placed an arm around Maisie’s shoulder and led her from the operating tent and into a long corridor. A speck of light in the distance shone like a single star in the sky. “Come on, love, it’s time. Come with me.”

Maisie felt the mop slip from her hands as her mother led her along the corridor. She felt small and vulnerable and allowed herself to be led, easing into the protective comfort of her mother’s love. The light became brighter, and as they approached she could see the silhouette of a man at the entrance. “You’re nearly there, Maisie. Nearly there.”

As they reached the end of the corridor, the woman slowed, releasing her grip. “It’s time to say goodbye now.”

Maisie clung to her mother’s pinafore, pushing her head into the comforting place where her neck and collarbone met. “No!”

“It’s time to go back, Maisie. Go on, I’ll watch you.”

As if pulled, Maisie began to walk toward the man, turning only to watch her mother vanish into the unlit corridor. As she slipped back into unconsciousness, a man’s deep but gentle voice spoke.
Maisie. Maisie.

L
IGHT CAME, AT
first slowly as she opened her eyes, then quickly as she began to focus on the room. A creamy lace counterpane covered a soft eiderdown, warm blankets, and white cotton sheets. She turned her head toward a vase of fragrant lavender on the side table and breathed in deeply.
I am awake. I am not dead. I am back.
She swallowed, her throat dry. A tray bearing a crystal flagon filled with water and a glass topped with a lace cover had been placed on the table with the lavender. Maisie tried to pull herself up, but a sudden throbbing pain at her temples caused her to lie back again. She waited a moment and tried again, eventually sitting up sufficiently to rest on her left elbow while reaching for the flagon. At that moment, the stairs creaked, the door opened, and Josette entered.

“Ah, mademoiselle, you are awake! Come, let me help you; then I must tell your friend.”

Maisie shook her head, her vision becoming blurred again. She rubbed her eyes. “What friend?”

Josette poured a glass of water and sat on the bed to support Maisie as she quenched her thirst. “Monsieur Blanche; he has been by your side for many hours. Monsieur Huntley waits also.”

“Oh, God.” Maisie leaned back on the pillows. “How long have I been here?”

“Just two days.”