“But I had no idea she was married,” said Maisie.

  “Hmmm,” said Chester.

  “What do you mean? Hmmm?”

  “It occurred to me that she might not have told anyone. That the union had been kept something of a secret.”

  Maisie nodded. “Did she tell you anything else, anything in confidence that might help me find her killer?”

  “No, I’m sorry. I didn’t actually encourage her to speak to me in so frank a manner, but perhaps Americans are different. Having said that, I’ve worked alongside doctors specializing in neurasthenia, so I think I might have helped her without trying particularly hard. Given what you’ve indicated about her family, and reading between the lines, perhaps it was soothing for Miss Saxon to speak to someone detached, someone who would not cast judgment upon her. And above all, someone who was bound by the Hippocratic Oath to keep her secrets.”

  “What might she have been judged for?”

  “For a start, remaining in a country torn by war when she was expecting a baby.”

  Maisie nodded again, though she neither agreed nor disagreed with Chester’s summation. She wanted to leave the physician’s office, and she wanted to go home. But the home she wanted to go to was not her flat in Holland Park. She wanted to go to Chelstone. She wanted to hold the child she loved in her arms, and she wanted to be close to her family. She wanted to go to Priscilla, to care for her friend’s sons, and to offer support to Douglas. Yet Catherine Saxon was as real and present to her as if she were in the room, listening.

  “Thank you for your time, Mr. Chester. I appreciate your candor and your willingness to discuss this confidential matter with me. I know you are acting in the interests of helping me find Miss Saxon’s killer—and to that end, please do get in touch if you think of anything else.”

  “Of course.” Chester escorted her to the outer office, where Miss Handle was slipping a sheet of paper into a typewriter. “Would you see Miss Dobbs downstairs please, Miss Handle?”

  “Yes, certainly. Do come this way, Miss Dobbs.” Handle offered only a cursory “Good-bye” when they reached the door, and did not wait for Maisie to reply or extend her thanks.

  As she turned away, Maisie regarded the house opposite, casting her gaze from floor to floor, while considering the path Catherine Saxon had followed before reaching England. So much loss and yet she had an abundance of energy, of wit and charm—and she was brave, with a passion for her work. Now unexpected information was starting to be revealed, rendering Saxon something of an enigma. Maisie focused on the windows, and observed several things that interested her. Pamela Lockwood must have returned from work early, for Maisie was sure the figure who backed away from the second-floor window was the well-dressed widow. And at the same time, Polly Harcourt was looking down at the street. Maisie’s attention was then drawn to the ground floor, where Mrs. Marsh could be seen adjusting her curtains. Maisie looked at her watch. She was sure she would soon hear the air raid warning, but if she was not mistaken, she had just enough time to go to Broadcasting House—then she would go home, to rest.

  Having asked if an engineer named Bob Walkinshaw was available, and showing the police identification card to a receptionist, it was only a few minutes before Walkinshaw appeared to speak to her.

  “Mr. Walkinshaw, you must be terribly busy, so I’m grateful for your time.” Maisie lifted her hand to take his, then drew it back, afraid the light throbbing pain would escalate with his touch.

  “You’ve come to talk about Cath, haven’t you?”

  “I have—I understand you were very friendly with her.”

  Walkinshaw nodded, and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Sorry. We’re all still shocked about it.” He looked around him, then brought his attention back to Maisie. “Look, you’re right, I have got my hands pretty full, but I can talk for a bit. Do you mind coming with me? I’m in a soundproof area, so no one will hear us.”

  “Of course—it’s probably better insulated than the interview rooms at Scotland Yard.”

  “Yeah, but people leave here with all their teeth,” said Walkinshaw, leading the way along a windowless corridor.

  Maisie raised an eyebrow, but did not reply, though she took stock of Walkinshaw as they walked. Of average height—perhaps a couple of inches shorter than Mark Scott—Walkinshaw wore gray trousers and a pale gray shirt topped with woolen sleeveless pullover knitted in a Fair Isle pattern of grays and blues. He carried his gray herringbone tweed jacket. Maisie wondered why so many men seemed to be wearing gray. Was it a fashion she had missed, or was it an easy color to wear when there was so much debris in the air? She’d noticed that even during a short walk from Warren Street underground station to the office, she had seemed to be a magnet for smuts of ash and dirt that adhered to her clothing.

  “You look like you got into something bad yourself,” said the engineer, pointing to her hands.

  “Too long a story,” said Maisie.

  Walkinshaw opened a door to a small room, revealing what Maisie assumed was a controllers’ domain of some sort. Wires led from one end to the other, and then to a panel of knobs and buttons which took up an entire wall. Sound was indeed muffled; she could not hear anything beyond the room.

  Walkinshaw hung his jacket on a hook behind the door, took out a chair for Maisie to be seated, and looked at his watch. “Right then, what do you want to know?”

  “Tell me about Catherine,” said Maisie.

  “Cath was a great girl. Everyone here liked her from the minute she walked in the door. She was energetic, affable, and she got the story—and Mr. Murrow saw that, which is why he gave her a chance. And if she hadn’t been killed, she would be one of the boys.”

  “I heard you were a rather special friend,” said Maisie.

  Walkinshaw laughed. “No, let me put that right, and I’ll be honest with you though you’ll probably think I’m a right one. I’m a married man but I liked Cath’s company—she was a laugh.” He blew out his cheeks and for a second cast his gaze away from Maisie. “And Cath wasn’t interested in me, but I’ll be honest with you—might as well be honest in a murder investigation, eh? The truth is, I might have been persuaded to stray if she’d been interested. I’m not a saint—got married too young for that, and at the end of a shotgun, if you know what I mean. So, yes, we went out a few times, but I will tell you right now, she kept her work and her private life separate, and I wouldn’t know anything about the latter.”

  “When you went out—where did you go?”

  “For a drink. Sometimes a bite to eat. But the fact is that our hours are not exactly set up to encourage fraternization. She was new working here, but I met her when she came in one day—snooping around to see if she could get in with the broadcasting reporters. I took her out for a drink, and we kept in touch.”

  “Did she talk about her work—I mean, the stories she was writing?”

  “A bit here and there. Over the summer, when there were all those dog-fights going on, before the London bombing really started, she was out in Kent and Sussex, talking to airmen and to the people who’d been watching it all happening from their back gardens, and in the villages where bombs had been dropped.”

  “I understand she was working on a story about American airmen who were flying with the RAF and Canadian air force.”

  Walkinshaw nodded. “She was, yeah.” He laughed. “I tell you, everywhere Cath went, you can bet some bloke with a puppy-dog smile would try it on with her.” He held out his hands, palm up. “And look at me—I was one of them!” He paused, pinching the bridge of his nose again, as if to stem the emotion reflected in his eyes. “But she became my friend. We were mates and we had a laugh together—though she was that much younger than me. I used to tease her about needing a pa. She thought that was funny. ‘I’ve got one of those, and two big brothers—and I’m glad I’m over here and they’re over there,’ she said.” Walkinshaw looked from his hands to Maisie. “Here—has anyone from her family been over since it happened?”

  “Not as far as I know,” said Maisie.

  “She wasn’t keen on them, that’s one thing I knew about Cath. She didn’t like her people at all—though she talked about her mum. Said she was more like that side of the family than her father’s lot.”

  Maisie scribbled in her notebook.

  “Mr. Walkinshaw, do you have the names of anyone she was acquainted with here who might be able to give me some more information about her?”

  “Not getting very far?”

  “I have a lot of information,” Maisie paused. “But in my line of work there’s always that snippet, that little nugget that spills out, and it’s a bit like a hook—once I have that hook, the fish seem to become more plentiful.”

  “And you think I’ve got the hook,” said Walkinshaw.

  “I thought you might have it,” said Maisie.

  Walkinshaw leaned forward. “And I might. But I work with reporters, Miss Dobbs, so I know you have to be careful, even though the reporters are supposed to check and recheck their sources if they’ve got a big piece of news under their hats. I am guessing you have to check and recheck too.”

  “Probably more than your average reporter,” said Maisie. “If I get it wrong, an innocent person could go to the gallows, or at least be incarcerated for a long time at His Majesty’s Pleasure.”

  “That’s true of a newspaperman too,” said Walkinshaw. “They can put people away.”

  Maisie leaned forward, lowering her voice as if someone might overhear whatever might come next. “What do you want to tell me, Bob,” said Maisie, using the engineer’s Christian name.

  Walkinshaw took a deep breath. “We’d gone out to the pub one night, and came back—not late, because Cath didn’t like a late night, not when she had to get up early in the mornings. As we walked along the street—I always insisted on escorting her to her door, even though I live in Islington—anyway, as we walked along the street, there was a bloke standing outside the house where she lived. She stopped, took another look at him, and said, ‘Bob, you go home now. I can see the house, so I’ll be okay from here.’ I asked her if she was all right, and whether that bloke would be a bother, and she laughed. ‘No,’ she said. ‘It’s work—a lead on a story.’ Now, Miss Dobbs, I can tell you now, I didn’t believe a word of it. I let her go, and heard her say, ‘Scotty, don’t you ever take no for an answer?’”

  “His name was Scotty?”

  Bob Walkinshaw shook his head. “No, it wasn’t—well, it was, but I found out who he was.”

  “I’m not following you,” said Maisie. “How did—”

  “I followed him. I hung around until he came out, and I followed him. Now, I’m no spy, but I managed to stay back and I kept a bead on him. I was surprised he didn’t go by cab, but perhaps he wanted a bit of a walk—and he walked all the way to Oxford Street and then over to Park Lane, where he walked right into the Dorchester.”

  “The Dorchester?”

  “Yes, all very nice if you can afford it.”

  “And?” prompted Maisie.

  “He goes to get his key, and I didn’t even have to eavesdrop much—I heard the bloke on the desk say, ‘Good evening, Mr. Saxon—I trust you had a good day.’”

  “Mr. Saxon? But—”

  “The older brother. Name of Clarence, like the dad. Only his middle name is Scott, and in the family they called him Scotty, so father and son didn’t both answer when someone shouted out, ‘Oi, Clarence.’ It’s his nickname.”

  Maisie leaned back in the chair. Her eye was throbbing and her hands hurt. Now she felt as if she had a brass band tuning up inside her head. “Scotty is her brother.”

  “You knew him?”

  “No.” She shook her head. “But I should have known about him—I’ve spent a few days pinning the name on someone else.”

  “Another suspect?”

  “No.” She paused. “Well, to tell you the truth—I don’t know.”

  “Was that the hook though?” asked Walkinshaw.

  Maisie exhaled, feeling as if she had held her breath from the split second Walkinshaw had uttered the word Scotty. “It might be the hook—the line is certainly worth following.”

  She was about to ask another question, when a sudden knocking at the door startled both Maisie and Walkinshaw. The door opened.

  “Oh sorry, Bob.” The young woman gave a brief smile. “The air raid siren’s just started.”

  “The buggers,” said Walkinshaw. “All right, Rosie. I’m going down to get the studio ready.” He looked at Maisie. “You’d better come with me—you can’t go anywhere now.”

  Maisie looked at her watch. “I lost track of time.”

  “Happens around here—that’s why there are clocks everywhere. Come on.” He led the way out of the room. “Follow me—and you never know, you might find it interesting, because the Americans will start broadcasting this evening—not many people are in the studio when their bit goes out.”

  Later, seated in the corner of a tiny studio, close to Bob Walkinshaw as he worked, Maisie listened to the American broadcaster read his prepared message to his fellow countrymen. He held several sheets of paper before him and leaned in close to a square black microphone. Looking up, he waited for a sign from the engineer, and began to read from his prepared report, ending with the words “Good night, and good luck.”

  If we talk at times of the little flashes of humor that appear in this twilight of suffering, you must understand that there is humor in these people, even when disaster and hell come down from heaven. We can only tell you what we see and hear. . . . Between bombing one catches glimpses of the London one knew in the distant days of peace. The big red buses roll through the streets. The tolling of Big Ben can be heard in the intervals of the gunfire. . . . In many buildings tonight people are sleeping on mattresses on the floor. I’ve seen dozens of them looking like dolls thrown aside by a tired child. In three or four hours they must get up and go to work just as though they had had a full night’s rest, free from the rumble of guns and the wonder that comes when they wake and listen in the dead hours of the night.

  It was almost five o’clock in the morning when Maisie was shaken awake by a young woman holding a cup of tea. At some point in the evening, Walkinshaw had called out to that same young woman, asking her to show Maisie to a room with mattresses cast across the floor, rendering it a dormitory for those who worked through the night at Broadcasting House. Though it was pitch-black, she heard people coming and going, and the occasional illumination from a match or a torch as another member of staff looked for a place to lie down, or to swap with someone just getting up. She had remained awake for a long time, feeling the building shake when a bomb came too close, or a distant crump-crump-crump of falling bombs that permeated even the many soundproof areas of the British Broadcasting Corporation. Her thoughts ricocheted between worry for Anna, her father and Brenda, and pain from her hands reminding her time and again of pulling Priscilla away from the flames, of the weight she could not bear on her own and, against her better judgment, the constant nagging what if . . . what if . . . what if. And now, awake to face another day, Maisie’s attention was again focused on the death of Catherine Saxon. Her brother had been in London, and it appeared his presence was not welcomed by the reporter. But when did he leave? And what if he had not left England, but was still in the country? What did that mean? Was Walkinshaw trustworthy? And was the information he’d given her a hook? Could she start to wind in the reel and bring in the killer? Not without bait—and she had to find just the right bait. Mark Scott might have it, but so might Jenny Barrington—Catherine’s friend from college was a missing link thus far.

  Maisie sipped the hot, sweet tea. She would see Jenny Barrington today. And Mark Scott. Then she would go home—to Kent, home to those she loved. Home to the people she thought about constantly and who were causing her to reconsider everything she might have assumed about her future. But first, she would make her way to a small Italian restaurant in Marylebone Lane where a man named Pete would be serving hot food for people who had not slept, people who now had to go to work as if today was another normal day in the life of a Londoner. People who, for just a few hours until the next blitz, would be free from the rumble of guns and the dread that enveloped them when they lay awake and listened in the dead hours of the night.

  Chapter 11

  “Hello, madam—I can’t remember your name, but I remember you were here with Mr. Scott. What would you like this morning? We don’t have bacon, but we can fry an egg or two for you, and serve it with our own bread, toasted.” Pete stood before Maisie, his smile broad as he waited for her order. “And can I bring you some ice for that eye? Believe it or not, we have ice.”

  “A couple of scrambled eggs on toast would really be lovely. And some coffee—strong and no milk.” Maisie lifted her hand to brush hair from her eyes. “And my name is Maisie Dobbs.”

  “What have you done to yourself, Miss Dobbs?” He pointed to her hands with his pencil, and tut-tutted. “And that eye’s looking a bit dodgy. Come with me—here, I’ll tip the chair against the table so no one else will be given your place.”

  The kind restaurant owner who had served Maisie and Mark Scott lunch only a few days earlier escorted her to the back of the restaurant, and through the kitchen to a storage room where there was also a sink. With a gentle touch he removed the gloves and the dressings, turned on the tap, and asked her to hold her hands under the running water.

  “Keep the water running—I’ll be back in a minute.”

  Maisie remained alone in the room, feeling as if she had been left to languish in a broom cupboard. She wondered how many people would have to help her with her hands before they were healed. Pete returned clutching a glass jar filled with a bright ochre cream.

  “My granny makes this and she won’t tell anyone what’s in there, which is a pity as she’s getting on—she’ll probably spill the secret when she’s on her deathbed and we’ll all be rushing round looking for a pencil and paper to write it down sharpish before she goes! But it works—we get a lot of burns and scrapes in the kitchen and this always does the trick. You’ll be right as rain in next to no time, and with hardly a scar.” Pete took each of Maisie’s hands in turn and dried them on a clean towel, which he then threw into a basket for soiled laundry.