He picked his drink up off the bar and the pain in his left elbow reminded him that he’d not long since used it to smash through a window. It was just a bruise, he’d been told, but it hurt just the same every time he tried to use it. He swivelled around on the stool and switched hands. Then he took a big slug from the tumbler, rattling the ice, thinking of all the answers that must have died along with Edward Buckley.
He couldn’t help but question the odds of Buckley being murdered on the same morning that he was due to meet him and he wondered if what he was doing in England had somehow helped to bring Buckley’s murder about, in which case he figured they weren’t such great odds at all. He’d been to see several people over the weekend and he’d asked some potentially sensitive questions - stirred up the past. Or maybe he’d simply arrived in the middle of something that was going to happen anyway and that his arrival had just sped things up. He ordered another drink, thinking that it wouldn’t be the first time that had happened.
As his drink arrived he heard the theme tune to
Anything Goes
coming from his pocket - and so it seemed did everyone else in the bar. He took his drink out into the lobby and answered the call, seeing on the display that it was Jonathan. He sounded upbeat about something.
“How are you?” Jonathan said.
If Tayte was honest with himself, he didn’t feel all that great. He’d pinned a lot on being able to talk to Edward Buckley and everything that had happened at the house and afterwards with the police had left him feeling in need of the second drink he was holding.
“I’m fine, I guess,” he said, not wanting to dampen Jonathan’s mood.
“You don’t sound it. How’s the elbow?”
“It’ll mend.”
“Good,” Jonathan said. “Anyway, I’ve found something that should cheer you up. I went into the attic again this afternoon - into crawl-spaces I never knew were there - and I’ve found something I’m sure you’ll be interested in.”
“Go on,” Tayte said. “What is it?”
“A tin box. It was locked and I had to break it open.”
“What was inside?”
“Papers.”
Tayte was smiling now. “What kind of papers?”
Jonathan didn’t answer straight away. When he did he said, “I think it would be better to show you. Can you come over in the morning?”
Tayte checked his watch. It was still early: not yet seven-thirty. “Is it too late to come over now?” He really wanted to see those papers.
“It’s not the hour so much,” Jonathan said. “But we’re just on our way out. Geraldine’s got this thing about Pilates and I said I’d give it a try. She’s been on at me for weeks.”
Tayte didn’t want to wait until morning, but it seemed he had no choice. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll come by in the morning.”
“I expect you could use an early night,” Jonathan said.
Tayte didn’t feel much like sleeping. He still needed to calm down first. “I was going to look into Danny Danielson some more first.”
“What have you discovered?”
Tayte told Jonathan what he knew.
“Missing-in-action?” Jonathan said. “Poor chap.”
“Maybe,” Tayte said, wondering again whether Danny could have gone AWOL for Mena. “He was listed in November, 1944,” he added, and for the first time he considered how close that was to the time Mena left home. “I should be able to tell you more in the morning.”
“Tomorrow then,” Jonathan said. “Come as early as you like.”
When the call ended, Tayte sat back and continued to sip his drink, thinking that he would be at the Lasseter house bright and early to see what was on those papers Jonathan had found.
“
Family history starts at home,” he told himself.
It was a reminder to him that it was essential to talk to the family first, and it wasn’t just the information and the memories they could share, but the photographs and the documents that were so often hidden away, waiting to be found. He knew it could save time later on and he hoped it would now.
He considered everything he’d learnt about Mena so far. According to Joan, Mena had said that she’d been raped and Joan was of the impression - garnered from Mena herself - that it was Danny who had raped her. Then Mena had fallen pregnant and as if to confirm things, she was telling everyone that she was carrying Danny’s baby.
But what about the letters?
They clearly conflicted with the idea that Danny could have raped Mena, not least because it was also clear from everything he’d heard and read that Danny and Mena had fallen in love during the summer of 1944. Tayte thought that Mena might not have become pregnant when she was raped, but had later become romantically involved with Danny and had conceived her baby as a result of that relationship. But it was all speculation and it didn’t account for why Joan - until she had read Danny’s letters - believed from Mena herself that it was Danny who had raped her. It all came back to that.
Joan had also suggested, from the gossip that had been circulating in Oadby at the start of 1945, that Edward Buckley had helped Mena to run away and he wondered again why Edward might have done that. He thought it could have something to do with the reason he and Mary never married, but it was just more speculation for now. He thought about Mary then, or Grace, as she had become, who in many ways had run away herself soon after the war. And there was her grandson, Alan Driscoll, who was clearly bitter towards the much wealthier side of the family - towards the Ingrams - because of an earlier family rift.
Tayte sighed as he got up and headed over to the reception desk to order his room service meal, thinking that it was all good background information to have, but he couldn’t see how it was going to help him find Mena. He needed facts and as soon as he’d been to see Jonathan in the morning he was going to explore the archives at the local record office - although as Mena had run away from home he knew she could have gone just about anywhere. The local record office might not hold any information on her post 1944.
As he arrived at the reception desk he turned his thoughts back to Danny and the further research he wanted to conduct. He didn’t expect to discover much, but he wanted to confirm his earlier findings and he thought that if there was more to Danny’s story then it could take him closer to Mena, too.
Chapter Thirty-Four
T
ayte couldn’t stop smiling all the way to the Lasseter house the following morning and it wasn’t because of the sun on his face or the promise of learning more about the documents Jonathan had found. It was because he’d made a discovery of his own and for Tayte there was no better tonic. He arrived around eight-thirty just as Geraldine was leaving for work. Ten minutes later he was in the sitting room with Jonathan, shoes off by the fire with a mug of coffee in his hand. Before he got stuck into Jonathan’s find, he wanted to talk about last night’s research while the details and his excitement about what he’d found were still fresh.
“I wanted to see if I could find out anything more about Danny Danielson before I went to bed last night,” he said. “I’ve had a feeling that there was more to his missing-in-action status in light of everything I’ve heard and it turns out I’m not the only one.”
“Interesting,” Jonathan said, raising an eyebrow.
Tayte sipped his coffee, which was too hot to drink so he set it back down on the table. “I’ve had the notion that Danny might have found his way back to Mena,” he said. “And I figured if he had then he must have generated a few records by now. Anyway, I wanted to see if I could turn anything up.”
“And judging from your much improved tone this morning, I’d say you have,” Jonathan said.
Tayte nodded. “I thought I’d Google Danny first. I got almost seventeen thousand results for his name, but things narrowed down when I added ‘82nd Airborne’ to the search. There were only seven results then and one was for a website about a member of the 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment.”
“Danny’s regiment,” Jonathan said.
Tayte gave another nod. “When I read the name of the person who’d set the website up, I had no doubt that I was looking in the right place. It was created by a man called Mel Winkelman. He was mentioned in a letter Joan showed me a couple of days ago. By all accounts, he and Danny were best buddies during the war. Mel died several years ago, but his grandson keeps the site running.”
“And Mel didn’t think Danny went missing-in-action?”
“No,” Tayte said. “And he had a very good argument. You see, in November 1944, when Danny was listed missing, Paris was in allied hands - had been since the liberation in late August. Mel was with Danny and a few others from their company while they were there on leave. Apparently, it was the party capital of Europe at the time - a safe haven for battle-weary troops to get some well earned R&R.”
“So the ‘action’ part of missing-in-action is somewhat at odds?” Jonathan said.
“Entirely. Mel says their unit went wild on the streets of Paris and generally made a bad account of themselves as far as the locals were concerned. After going through plenty of booze and French girls, the latter of which Mel was quick to report that Danny did not indulge in on account of his sweetheart, they split up for one reason or another. That was the last time Mel saw him, during or after the war.”
“So why is Danny listed as MIA?”
Tayte tried his coffee again and this time he held on to it. “Mel goes some way to explaining that,” he said. “Apparently, Danny was down as AWOL for a time, but Mel thought there must have been some mix up, or that someone was covering for him. He was concerned that Danny never said anything to him about going AWOL, and knowing him the way he did, he was certain that his friend wasn’t the kind of soldier to walk out on a fight and leave his unit behind.”
“Did he ever challenge Danny’s status?” Jonathan asked.
“He did, but he goes on to say that no one in authority was ever keen to open an enquiry.”
Tayte reached into his briefcase and pulled out several photographic printouts that he’d made at the hotel before he left. He passed them across the table to Jonathan.
“Mel spent years after the war gathering all kinds of information himself - conducting his own enquiry. He even went back to Paris on a number of occasions, talking to people, trying to retrace his and Danny’s footsteps.”
Jonathan was studying one of the monochrome printouts. “Gay Paree, indeed.”
Tayte went over and sat beside him so he could see the images. “That’s Danny there,” he said, indicating a blonde-haired GI sitting at a table outside a café with several other soldiers. Everyone was laughing and drinking with a girl between each of them. “Someone in Danny’s unit took that photo,” Tayte added. “The rest of the pictures were taken by other soldiers in the area at the time. Mel said he’d found out who got passes to Paris that same week. Of those who survived the war, he’s contacted most over the years and that’s how he managed to gather all these pictures together. “There’s a full-face portrait of Danny in there somewhere.”
Jonathan flicked through them and found it. “Good looking boy,” he said. “I’m not surprised Mena fell for him.”
“That sharp dress-uniform must have helped, too,” Tayte said.
Jonathan went through the rest of the images while Tayte looked on. They were happy scenes of people caught in the moment as if they hadn’t a care in the world: a bottle of champagne being shaken over a crowd in celebration of just being alive - the cost of that bottle meaning so little at a time when the man holding it couldn’t know whether he would live long enough to spend his pay. There was another soldier engaged in a kiss like he knew it might be his last, held for all eternity by the click of a camera shutter.
Tayte stood up and went back to his briefcase. “There’s another image I want to show you,” he said, and he was smiling to himself as he brought it out. It was attached by a paper clip to the morning newspaper he’d picked up in the hotel lobby on his way out. It was the main reason for his excitement. He handed the image to Jonathan, keeping the newspaper back for now. It showed a smaller group in the corner of a smoke-filled bar: two soldiers having a drink together, one with white-blonde hair who was clearly Danny. The other could have been just about anyone. Only Tayte knew now that it wasn’t just anyone.
He let Jonathan study the image for a while to see if he could recognise the other man. When he didn’t, he held the newspaper up in front of him and let it fall open on the front page. “He’s with Edward Buckley,” he said.
Jonathan looked at the newspaper and back at the image. “My goodness, I think you’re right.”
Tayte had no doubt. The photograph of Edward and Mary, which Jonathan had previously shown him, was small and less memorable, but the newspaper headline of ‘Slain war hero!’ and the full-page image of Captain Edward Buckley of the British 1st Airborne Division, made the comparison clear.
“So...” Jonathan said. “Edward Buckley was in Paris at the same time as Danny.”
Tayte nodded. “And it could be more than just a coincidence. Mel had singled this photo out. It was the last picture he’d found of Danny before he went missing.”
“Do you think Edward has something to do with Danny’s disappearance?”
Tayte sat down again. “I don’t know,’ he said. “I really don’t. Maybe he helped him go AWOL - helped him get back to Mena. Joan Cartwright told me there was a rumour going around that Edward had helped Mena leave home. Maybe he hooked the pair of them up.”
“Maybe it has something to do with why Edward Buckley was murdered yesterday,” Jonathan said, glancing at the newspaper again.
“Yes, maybe it has,” Tayte said.
He’d been thinking about the connection since putting Edward and Danny together in that scene, but he hadn’t really drawn any conclusions. Being with Danny at or around the time he went missing from his unit offered him no reason as to why anyone would want to kill Buckley. And why now, over seventy years later? Tayte didn’t know. He thought there might be something to it, but he knew he didn’t have enough information to take it anywhere, so he planned to focus on finding Mena now. As he figured he’d seen everyone he was going to see, he hoped Jonathan had something good for him.