The Consequences of Fear by Jacqueline Winspear (the best electronic book reader TXT) 📗

Maisie must have dozed in the armchair for a while after Scott left the flat, but she was nudged awake by the rumble of bomberspassing overhead. She knew she should go to the cellar and shelter until the all-clear sirens sounded, but as she glancedat the clock, it occurred to her that there was just enough time to read through the additional files that MacFarlane hadpassed across his desk before she left Baker Street—her “homework.” The first candidate was a young man named Giles Mason,who had been awarded honors in French literature from Cambridge and was fluent in the language. She ran her finger down hislist of accomplishments, along with notes from the scout who had spotted Mason in a bookshop in London and struck up a conversationwith the young man, who was at the time in the process of purchasing a novel in the original French.

“Clever lad, aren’t you, Giles?” said Maisie, as she closed the file and put it to one side.

She opened the second file and studied the name.

Charlotte Bright.

Maisie held her breath, and felt herself tense.

“Oh no you don’t, Robbie,” she said aloud. “I’ve had enough of your bloody tests, and this one won’t fly. Why are you doingthis to me?”

She took a thick red crayon from a pocket in her document case and scrawled “Rejected” in large letters across the front ofthe file.

“If you don’t like it, Robbie—I know where the door is. I don’t care which of your official bloody papers I’ve signed either.”

She returned the files to her document case, switched off the lights and went to bed, where she lay awake for hours, listeningto the bombers overhead, and the crump-crump-crump in the distance as they dropped their lethal loads.

“Been a few days since we were both here in the office together, eh, miss?” Billy handed Maisie a mug of steaming tea, thenjoined her at the long table situated perpendicular to her desk. Several files were already laid out for attention, alongwith a rolled-up case map.

“It has indeed,” agreed Maisie. “Let’s go through every case and see where we are with them.”

Over the next ten minutes, they discussed cases in progress, all of which, bar one, Billy was dealing with. Maisie studied her assistant as he responded to each of her questions, and remembered the man who’d introduced himself to her when she moved into the shabby office around the corner some twelve years earlier. He was the caretaker then, yet he had recognized her straightaway: she had assisted the surgeon when Billy was brought into the casualty clearing station during the Battle of Messines, in 1917. Having helped with her first case following Maurice’s retirement, Billy became her assistant, and though others thought her mad to take on a man untrained in investigation, he had proven himself through diligent, if sometimes slow work on one case after another. Perhaps it was time . . .

“Let’s talk about Freddie Hackett,” said Maisie, reaching for the case map, which she passed to Billy.

As Billy pushed the closed files to one side and pinned the case map out on the table, Maisie took a jar of colored wax crayonsfrom the top of a filing cabinet. She began adding lines to the map, and notes—all leading to the center of the case map,which, as always, was created on the reverse side of an offcut of wallpaper.

“Sounds like a bottle of cheap wine, that one,” said Billy, pointing to the name Maisie had added after striking out a questionmark above the words “Deceased from River.”

“MacFarlane made the same observation.” Maisie did not look up as she added a name here, a note there.

Billy looked at the map and rubbed his chin. “I can see what you’re thinking, miss, and it’s all very well—but how did thebody get moved, and so fast?”

“Two possibilities,” said Maisie. “Well, more may emerge, but I’ve two so far. Number one is that this was indeed a plannedassassination, though I don’t yet know what our d’Anjou might have done to deserve that sort of extreme attention. If it was,then the killer would likely have made arrangements to dispose of the body.”

“Charming bloke,” said Billy.

“Indeed. The other possibility is that he was being followed anyway, and when he was murdered, perhaps by a common criminalfor his money—remember the wallet was empty of cash—the people on his tail made sure the body was removed.”

“Why would they do that?”

“If—and it’s always an ‘if’ at this point—his movements were being monitored by the people he worked for, or even an enemy, I would imagine that when he was killed, the officials might well have wanted his body removed for security reasons so there would be no more questions asked.” She looked up at her assistant. “Billy, he was working on the periphery of the Free French and he wasn’t quite up to snuff—rather a drinker, apparently—so we have to consider the variables.”

“Hmmm—not exactly what you might call cut-and-dried, is it?” Billy furrowed his brow. “All right, let’s say he was assassinated.What would he have to do to get himself topped by a professional killer, aside from being a drinker and a security risk?”

“I paid a visit to a woman named Gabriella Hunter—she knew Maurice and is also half French. Anyway, she had a lot to say aboutthe French sense of honor, so I thought it would be worth keeping it in mind. It sounds as if it could also be a weakness,dependent upon the circumstance, and it made me wonder if the man Freddie saw murdered lacked honor—or perhaps he just upsetsomeone.”

“That’d get your throat cut in the East End, never mind France.”

“Be that as it may, Billy—I think ‘honor’ is going to be part of the answer here. The fact that the victim couldn’t hold hisdrink could have led to him being unable to keep a secret, which could be fatal for a good many souls if he was mouthy andthe wrong people were listening.” She