“How did MacFarlane sound, when he telephoned?” asked Maisie, pulling a chair up to Sandra’s desk.

  “How does he always sound? Like a bull with a sore head. He said you could speak to Miss Chalmers, but he would be in the room with you.”

  Maisie chewed her lip. “Hmmm. I suppose that’s better than nothing, but I would prefer to be alone with her—MacFarlane is enough to intimidate anyone.”

  “Unless she already knows him, or she’s quite important herself, so she won’t be distracted by that oaf.”

  “He has a good heart, Sandra—he’s just a bit gruff.”

  “And rough around the edges.”

  Maisie looked at her secretary, a woman she had known since she returned to the Ebury Place home of Lord Julian and Lady Rowan Compton more than ten years ago to live in rooms she had once cleaned as a maid in that same mansion. Sandra was a maid then, but had left Ebury Place upon her marriage. Following the death of Sandra’s young husband in a suspicious accident, Maisie had encouraged the grieving woman to continue her education. Sandra later married her employer at the publishing company where she had found suitable work, and now with a child, she had returned to help Maisie with the administration of her business for a few hours each week. Maisie suspected Sandra’s patience had been stretched by sleepless nights in a cellar with a baby not yet a year old—who was currently dozing in his carry-cot in a corner of the office.

  “I’d better go over to Whitehall to see MacFarlane and Miss Chalmers. In the meantime, Sandra—take Martin and go home now.”

  “But I’ve still got—”

  “No. You haven’t got anything. This work will all wait—just a few invoices and a report to type up. If a bomb drops on the building, it will all be lost anyway. Go home, try to get some rest in the hour or so before the air raid warning, because you’ll be hard-pushed to sleep tonight, if they come again.”

  “Lawrence can sleep through anything. And he says I should go to the country.”

  Maisie nodded. “Sandra—I think he’s right.” She pushed back the chair and came to her feet. “What about staying with Lawrence’s aunt?”

  “That’d be worse than a bomb!”

  “Then I’ll see what I can do. Mr. and Mrs. Partridge are living in a cottage on one of the Chelstone estate’s farms. It needed a bit of work and a lick or two of paint, but it seemed to be just the ticket for Tim to continue his recovery. Tarquin’s there too. It’s nothing like the size of house they’re used to, but there are three bedrooms, a small sitting room, dining room and kitchen. I could ask if there’s another cottage available in the area.”

  “That would be lovely—the train station’s not far, and there’s also the coach stop in Tonbridge, so Lawrence can get back into town for work easily enough, though the coach does rattle along the road a bit.”

  “All right—I’ll see what I can do. I must go—I’ve to question this woman before reporting for duty. Go home now, Sandra—just leave things as they are and get on your way. I am sure Billy will be doing the same.”

  “At least he doesn’t have a boy in the air, like Mrs. Partridge. They must be relieved that young Billy is now in Singapore—sounds like a jammy posting to me.”

  “I think a few more of the boys who were stuck on those Dunkirk beaches could do with a jammy posting, don’t you?”

  “Miss Chalmers, it’s very good of you to agree to see me. I’m sure Mr. MacFarlane brought you up-to-date with the details. I’m currently looking into the death of Catherine Saxon—given her status as an American citizen in London during a time of war, her murder is being investigated as a joint case with a representative from their embassy.” Maisie looked at Isabel Chalmers as she spoke, taking in the woman’s demeanor and the way she presented herself.

  Chalmers was of average height, around five feet, four inches. She wore an austere navy blue costume comprising a tailored jacket and a skirt that draped to two inches below her knee. She had dark hair pulled back into a French pleat, and secured with a tortoiseshell comb. Her black shoes had been polished to a bright shine.

  Chalmers smiled, but said nothing. Maisie thought it was the ready smile of someone quite nervous, someone who was fearful. She endeavored to put the young woman at ease—for she was probably no older than twenty-two or twenty-three years of age, and somewhat younger than Mrs. Marsh had suggested.

  “Anyway, thank you very much for putting your work to one side to see me.” She glanced at MacFarlane, then brought her attention back to Chalmers, who was staring at Maisie, her eyes wide. Maisie suspected Chalmers had hardly absorbed a word of her introduction, so she repeated her connection to the inquiry. “I know you must be terribly upset about Miss Saxon’s death—it’s so unsettling. As Mr. MacFarlane has no doubt informed you, I am the investigator personally working with the American embassy to find the person who took her life.”

  Chalmers nodded, her right hand massaging her left elbow, as if all feeling had gone from the limb.

  Maisie drew her chair an inch or two closer to Chalmers, and leafed through a file of papers on her lap. She had no need to consult the report, but wanted to give the woman a chance to settle. She looked up and smiled. “It’s all right, Isabel—you can breathe in here.”

  Chalmers swallowed as if her mouth were dry. “I can barely think about it—that someone came in and did that to her while we were all there, while we were all asleep. Though I suppose, when I think about it, we weren’t all there, were we? Because of the bombing.”

  “It’s very unsettling, I know. But perhaps by putting together snippets of information from her friends and colleagues, we can find out who took Catherine’s life.”

  As Maisie uttered the victim’s Christian name, she noticed Chalmers’s shoulders drop, almost as if Catherine Saxon had entered the room and said, “I’m all right really. Don’t worry.”

  Maisie consulted the papers again, and looked up, meeting Chalmers’s eyes. MacFarlane remained seated behind a desk close to the window about six feet away from the two women.

  “Isabel—I take it I may call you ‘Isabel’ and not ‘Miss Chalmers’—it makes these conversations a little easier, in my experience.”

  “Yes, that’s perfectly all right.’

  “Good. Now, could you tell me how long you’ve worked here, in Whitehall?”

  “Since the war started. I applied to join the Civil Service straight from Oxford—I’d done a secretarial course afterwards, and then the Civil Service examination.”

  “What did you study at Oxford?”

  “PPE—Philosophy, Politics, and Economics.”

  “Not for the faint-hearted, that choice,” said Maisie, again smiling, putting the woman at ease.

  “It was a bit hard. But great fun at Sommerville.”

  “Ah, those idyllic days at college! I was at Girton. I studied the Moral Sciences—long before your time though.” Maisie’s smile was brief. She consulted her notes before asking the next question, looking up again as Chalmers cleared her throat. “Are you at liberty to tell me what you do here?”

  Chalmers turned to MacFarlane, waiting for him to nod his accord.

  “I’ll let Miss Dobbs know if any question is too close to the mark.”

  “Thank you.” Maisie drew her attention back to Chalmers. “Your role here?”

  Chalmers seemed to sit straighter, as if her job bestowed a greater level of importance upon her shoulders.

  “I’m in a department concerned with our work in the United States of America.”

  “Can you describe that work?”

  MacFarlane looked at Maisie, holding up his hand with his thumb and forefinger just a quarter of an inch apart. Be careful—you may go too far. With a single nod, Maisie indicated she had understood his silent instruction.

  Chalmers cleared her throat. “Informally, we deal in what we call ‘soft propaganda.’ For example, we have sent a group of men to Washington, pilots who have been wounded—they’re walking wounded, so almost recovered. They’re acting as sort of ambassadors for what we’ve endured here. They’re attached to the embassy, and their job is just to be there, in Washington, so that when the ambassador holds parties or any sort of function with American politicians and men of commerce and influence present, they’re there too. And it’s very important when these powerful men have their wives with them, because women can see the human side, can’t they? Our pilots talk informally about what they did, and how we sent the Luftwaffe packing over the summer. That’s why we’re being bombed now—because Hitler thought he could destroy our fighters and then invade. Our boys in Washington are letting people know that Hitler’s trying to wear us down now, and that we’re holding the fort against his ambitions to take over the world—that we stand between him and America.”

  Maisie did not give in to the desire to look at MacFarlane, but instead inclined her head as she took a moment to compose her next question, all the while keeping eye contact with Chalmers. “Yes, I think I have the picture. Essentially, your department has selected young men—probably rather dashing young men, I would imagine—who currently cannot fly or otherwise be engaged in combat due to wounds sustained during an altercation with the enemy. Those men have the necessary experience, bearing and intelligence to become tools of propaganda on the other side of the Atlantic, indeed America’s seat of power.”

  “Yes. They’re hand-picked. Very bright. Very engaging.”

  “And I take it they all have the required level of security credential.”

  “Yes.”

  “And what part do you play?”

  “I receive their reports—sometimes it’s over the telephone line, or in a cable, coded of course, and sometimes I receive a handwritten letter in a diplomatic purse. I type the reports, and I am authorized to give priority to certain items if I consider them more important—which only means I type that bit first. I also make arrangements for them to get to and from the United States, invariably by aeroplane from Croydon via Lisbon.”

  “This sounds like very important work to me, Isabel. Why do you think you were selected for this job?”

  “It’s only clerical, Miss Dobbs.”

  Maisie shook her head. “Not quite, Isabel—it’s a bit more than that. You are supporting a plan devised at a high government level to effect the possible entry of America into the war, via her citizens. Who do you know?”

  Chalmers looked at MacFarlane, who was staring out of the window—he did not meet her gaze. She cleared her throat. “My father is with another government department, and he spoke for me. But I still had to pass those exams, and be good enough for the job of liaising with our people in Washington.”

  “Yes, of course. I just wanted to know the connection. Can you tell me which department your father works in?”

  “No, she can’t. That’s not on the table.” MacFarlane spoke without turning to face the women.

  Maisie smiled again at Chalmers. “Tell me about Catherine—start where you like.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “When did you first meet her? Were you already living at the house when she moved in?”

  Chalmers nodded. “Yes—I’ve been there since just after war was declared last September. Polly moved in a month or two before me, I think, but Pamela—Mrs. Lockwood—had been there for some time, probably about ten years. Yes, that’s it—she was living with her parents in Surrey following her husband’s death in the last war, and then came up to London after they upped sticks to live by the coast due to her father’s bad chest. She goes down on the train once a month to see them. The girls at the top of the house—Elizabeth and Helena—are both students, and they’d been in rooms for about a year, I think. They might not be there for long, because they’re joining the Wrens, if they get in. They’re like Siamese twins—they go everywhere together.”

  “Yes, I’d heard that might be the case.” Maisie leaned forward. “And I understand Catherine was particularly interested in your job.”

  Chalmers laughed. “She was like a little terrier. She wanted to know everything, and she kept picking, picking, picking. I never wanted to tell her outright to mind her own business, though I tried to make a joke of it—telling her it was too boring to discuss. Or I’d say, ‘Pushing paper, Cath—your job is so much more exciting, got any room for me at Broadcasting House?’ That’s what she was after, a job on the wireless.”

  “On the other hand, I suppose she might have been useful to you in a way—after all, she was also telling Americans at home what the battle has been like over here. Different job, same end in sight, I would imagine.”

  “Oh no, what I do is very different, I mean, I have to instruct our men—”

  “That’s enough, Miss Chalmers,” MacFarlane interjected. He raised his chin. “Miss Dobbs, another tack perhaps?”

  “Right you are, Mr. MacFarlane.” Maisie turned to Chalmers again. “Can you describe any visitors Catherine might have had in recent weeks, or anyone who ever visited or who she talked about, perhaps, who caught your attention.”

  “Cath knew so many people. She was always busy, most often out getting a story or up in her rooms writing. From the time I knew her she said her ambition was to become one of the ‘warcasters.’ Apparently, that’s what they call themselves, the reporters who get on the wireless. Once she was in with the American wireless people, she would be over at Broadcasting House, or down at the post office sending a telegram to a newspaper somewhere. She was often off interviewing people too. But people coming to the house?” Chalmers brushed a stray hair from her face. “There was her friend from home, the woman she was at college with. Her name’s Jenny. Then there was the RAF fellow—but he was an American.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes, there are quite a lot of them here—well, more than just a few.” Chalmers looked down. “That sounded terrible—I didn’t mean that, after all, Mr. Churchill said we owed so much to ‘The Few.’ But a lot of people don’t realize there were Americans up there fighting with our boys over the summer. Some joined the Canadian air force, and some just came over to fly with the RAF. They were all aviators at home, perhaps for the postal service, or on a farm or something. This one was based in Kent somewhere. Cath met him when she was writing about Americans over here who are already doing their bit.”

  “Do you remember his name?”

  “We nicknamed him ‘Johnny.’ That was because Polly bumped into him outside once and said, ‘Hello, who’s this—a stage-door Johnny?’ He was on leave and came up to see Cath, only she was out working, so he was waiting until she came home.”

  “You say he’s based in Kent? Any idea which aerodrome?”

  Chalmers shook her head. “Careless talk costs lives, doesn’t it? Before I was transferred, I worked in the department where they drew up the anti-gossip campaign. The American had seen the posters, so when I asked him where he was based, that’s what he said. ‘Careless talk costs lives.’ I had to laugh—it was so funny, coming from a foreigner—and, of course, he could have been a spy himself, for the Americans. But that would be ridiculous, wouldn’t it?”

  Maisie raised an eyebrow, smiled, and continued. “And you don’t know his real name?”

  “No. He was ‘Stage-Door Johnny’ from the time we first knew him—and it’s not as if I saw him loads of times. Just once or twice. After all, let’s face it, he was in the air more than on the ground. For all I know, he could be dead.”

  “He could indeed.” Maisie closed her file. “To recap—Catherine wanted to know what your work entailed, yet you did not tell her. You were friends, but you know only two of her associates—is that correct?”

  “There was another man came once, but she never invited him in. I know because I have the downstairs rooms—the one that leads out into the garden. You’ve been to the house, so you know I can see up into the street from my downstairs front window. I was just home from work and heard voices coming from the front of the house. I looked up and saw a man standing there talking to Cath. She had one arm across her middle, as if she would have folded her arms had she not been holding a cigarette in the opposite hand. It wasn’t a jolly conversation—she was frowning. Then she took one last draw on the smoke, threw it down and stepped on it. She turned and went back in, but he stayed there, then lifted his hat and walked off down the street.”

  “Could you describe him?”

  Chalmers shrugged. “He was just ordinary. An ordinary man, with an ordinary suit—gray, and you don’t get more common and ordinary than gray—and an ordinary hat, and ordinary shoes. He was carrying a mackintosh, which was a bit odd, because it was a warm evening and didn’t look like rain at all. But you never know. Could have been another one of those Americans, being careful!”

  “It could indeed,” agreed Maisie. “Now, I understand you had nothing really to report regarding the day Catherine’s body was found.”

  “I was asleep. Sometimes I have to work late because there’s a time difference between Washington and London, and a report might come in after six o’clock. I’m the one who has to type it up and forward instructions. I didn’t come home until after the all clear, and I think that wasn’t long before the police came. I’d put cotton wool in my ears so I’d get some sleep when the other girls came in again, but I wasn’t asleep for half an hour, and that’s when I knew something terrible had happened on account of the voices, and the black van outside. I thought something had happened to Mrs. Marsh at first, then I heard her crying. To be honest, I was worried she might have had a heart attack or fallen on the stairs. Would have served her right—she creeps around at all hours, standing outside doors, listening in case you’ve got a man friend in there with you. I think she only keeps away from Liz and Helena’s rooms because she thinks they’re best friends of a different order, if you know what I mean.”

  MacFarlane cleared his throat. When Maisie looked in his direction, he was staring out of the window again, as if determined not to turn.