An Incomplete Revenge (7 page)

From the way he moved, Maisie estimated Webb’s age to be about twenty-eight or twenty-nine, just a few years younger than herself, yet in the features she was able to discern he seemed much older. His wife was about nineteen, perhaps twenty. Webb glanced up at his mother every few minutes, as he stooped to light the fire, or when dragging over the heavy cast-iron pot for the women to make a stew of rabbit, with vegetables bought in the village and tasty greens from the forest that anyone other than a gypsy might ignore. Without making her interest obvious, Maisie could tell much about the man from his demeanor. Though she could not emulate his carriage from her seat on the log, she could see the feelings he carried within him, as if a weighted sack were tethered
to his body. Webb was not only enraged, he was fearful. Maisie could see both emotions as plain as day. And when she turned to Beulah, she realized the old woman had been watching as the visitor took the measure of her son, and it was clear in her narrowed gypsy eyes that she had seen the conclusion the investigator had reached.

“You here about them gorja boys, from up there.” It was a statement put to Maisie with a wave of the hand in the broad direction of London.

Maisie nodded. “That’s one of the reasons, yes.”

“We di’n ’ave nothin’ t’do with it.” Beulah took a mouthful of tea and winced as she swallowed the scalding liquid.

“Do you think the London boys did it?”

Beulah looked into the fire. “Not my place t’say. What they do is their business, what we do is ours.”

“Your son was seen close to the house on the day of the burglary. Did he see anything?”

“Not my place.” She nodded toward Webb, who was splitting logs with an axe. Two other men with him sawed trees that the wind had blown down last winter, wood that would crackle and burn easily, seasoned by nature and a hot summer. “Talk to ’im if you like.”

Webb looked up from his work at just that moment, and Beulah beckoned to him. “The
rawni
—woman—wants to talk to you, Webb.”

Without first putting down the axe, and with just a few easy steps, Webb came to stand in front of Maisie. Instinct instructed her to come to her feet, for in height she was almost a match for the matriarch’s son and she would not be unsettled by him. Her own eyes of the deepest blue could flash a look as intimidating as any glance in her direction.

“Mr. Webb, I am looking into the burglary at the Sandermere house on behalf of the parents of the boys who stand accused of
the crime. Though it appears there is more than enough evidence to charge them, I understand that you were in the area of the estate and might have seen what happened.”

The man did not move, either to shake his head or nod in accordance with her supposition. He stared for every second of one minute before responding. Maisie did not break connection with his stare, nor did she add any comment to encourage him to speak. Eventually, he chewed the inside of his lip, then began.

“I didn’t see anything. I was just walking along, with the dog.” His voice was unlike his mother’s, lacking the rough guttural low-gypsy dialect.

“He bin to school.” Beulah’s voice caused Maisie to turn, as the woman deflected her thoughts with an unsolicited explanation. “Learned
your
words, he did. And Webb can write. He does our letters, our doc’ments, and reads for us, so we ain’t ignorant of what’s said and what’s been writ.”

“A useful man to have in the tribe, eh, Aunt Beulah?” Maisie smiled, then turned back to Webb. “Do
you
think the boys did it? Do
you
think they broke into the house, stole the silver, and made off with it?”

Again Webb waited, steady with his reply. “Lads are from the streets of London. They’re not stupid, even if they are boys. If they did what the police said, they wouldn’t’ve been caught. Boys like that are light on their feet. I remember when I was that age. I was quick. Had to be.” Then he turned and walked back to his task—set a large log on top of another, raised the axe high above his head, and swung it down with force, so that the splitting of wood in one fell swoop echoed throughout the forest.

Beulah sipped her tea, elbows resting on knees set wide as she watched her son in silence. Then she turned to Maisie.

“You from up there?” Again she nodded in the broad direction of London.

“Born and bred.”

The woman smiled. “Born but not bred, girl.”

Maisie said nothing but looked into the fire, now a heap of blazing wood where there had been sleepy embers just this afternoon.

“Which side, your mother’s?”

Maisie nodded.

“But not your mother.”

“My grandmother. She was of the water folk. Her family had a narrow boat which, once, they brought into the Pool of London. My granddad was a lighterman, a youngish man, I think, though long out of boyhood. She was barely more than a girl. He asked for her hand, and her father eventually agreed. Her people said it would come to an end, because she was a strong-willed girl, my grandmother. But they were together for the rest of their lives and died within days of each other. I was eight years old.”

“And the daughter?”

“My mother died when I was twelve, going on thirteen.”

Beulah sipped her tea again, then bent to stroke her dog’s head. “Come tomorrow, as the sun goes down. A bit of tea will be here for you.”

DURING THE DRIVE
to her father’s house, Maisie reflected upon her dismissal. She had been asked questions of her life with honesty, without guile, and she had answered in kind. The invitation for tea the following day was more than a request, it was a summons. She would be able to ask more questions, delve more deeply, during the second visit.

Reaching the village of Chelstone, Maisie slowed the motor car and turned left into the grounds of Chelstone Manor, where she turned left again down a small gravel thoroughfare that led to her father’s cottage. She had a plan for the following day in mind now: In the morning she would go to Maidstone, to the solicitors acting for the two boys. While there she would visit the local newspaper
office, to check on old stories about the village. Then she would come back to Heronsdene, simply to walk along the High Street and gain a sense of the community—and perhaps gather a clue as to why such a dour mood prevailed. Much of what she planned to do revolved around legwork that Billy might have done if they were in London, but Maisie looked forward to getting back to some of the nuts and bolts of investigation that had so immersed her when she was an apprentice to Maurice Blanche.

She made a few notes on her pad before emerging from the MG, wondering, in particular, why Webb had been watching the Sandermere mansion with such interest, what it held for him, and what was at the root of his curiosity, if that’s what it was. She put her pencil and pad away and gathered up her knapsack; as she stepped from the motor car, her father was already walking toward her, ready to embrace the daughter he loved so dearly.

LATER, AFTER THEY
had eaten a tea of corned beef, carrots and potatoes and had washed and put away the china and cutlery, the pair sat together in the small beamed sitting room.

“Soon be time to light a fire of an evening, won’t it, love?”

“Oh, let’s not rush the summer away, Dad. Winter’ll come before we know it.”

Frankie leaned back in his armchair and closed his eyes.

“Tired, Dad?”

“No, love. I was just thinking of your mother. She’s been dead—what, twenty-one years now, come April? Sometimes it feels like just yesterday that she was with us, eh?”

Maisie fidgeted. If it was Time’s task to diminish the yearning for one who has passed, then Time had done a poor job, for Maisie could still see the ache of loneliness for his wife’s company reflected in her father’s eyes. It was a sadness that caused her to think of Simon again, though she had been determined to push all
thoughts of him to the back of her mind until she visited the hospital in Richmond, a journey she expected to make on Sunday. A brief sojourn away from Kent in the midst of her work would also allow her to reflect upon her findings thus far in what she had come to think of as the Compton case, an investigation that now extended beyond the brief given her by James Compton. During the drive she would also be able to consider evidence regarding the recent burglary at the Sandermere estate.

“Working hard, love? Got much coming in?” Frankie was sometimes uneasy when it came to sparking conversation with his daughter. He was never sure whether such a question might not be prying, or whether she could tell him what she was doing anyway. Sometimes he thought that everyone would have been better off altogether if she’d married and settled down or taken up an ordinary position, something he understood. But on the other hand, he loved Maisie for her individuality and was fiercely proud of her accomplishments.

“It was a bit touch and go over the summer, Dad, but now there’s work coming in at a more respectable clip. I’m working for James Compton, looking into matters for him over in Heronsdene. And a couple of other jobs have come in, which will keep us busy for a while.”

“Nothing dangerous, I hope.”

Maisie laughed. “No, in fact they’re all more than safe, so please don’t worry.” She paused, then added, “I have to say, though, Heronsdene’s a funny place. I have a sense that all is not as it should be in the village.”

“Can’t say as I’ve ever really been there, not to stop. No reason to go unless you know folk or you’re passing through, I’d say. It’s not like you’d go there to do a bit of shopping.”

“That’s what I thought. Ever heard of this man Sandermere?”

Frankie shook his head. “Not really. I mean, I know he hunts, because I’ve heard talk about him, and I remember hearing there’s folk who think the estate is going to rack and ruin since he inherited.
Had some fancy ideas and spent money on expensive machinery that wasn’t needed at the brickworks and got on the wrong side of a couple of big customers—your big building firms. Not a businessman like they said his brother was, even as a young man.”

Maisie sighed and was about to ask Frankie about the horses in his care when he began speaking again.

“Of course, they had it rough in the war, a bit of a close shave, over in the village.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, you wouldn’t’ve known about it, being as you were over in France, but there was a Zeppelin raid—I reckon the old Boche come over too low on their way to London and thought they’d have a bit of target practice. Anyway, they dropped a couple of bombs—three people killed, far as I know. You never heard much about it, though, not once it was done. Just that it’d happened, and then they just got on with it. I remember thinking it was a bit odd that there wasn’t more said at the time—you know how any news is big news in these villages—but I s’pose that was all they could do, really. Just get on with it.” Frankie shook his head. “First of all they thought the brickworks was the target—looks a bit like it could be some other sort of factory from the outside—but then, as I said, you didn’t hear much more about it.”

“When did it happen?”

Frankie shook his head. “Can’t say as I remember, rightly—though I think it was during the ’opping season, so probably September 1916.” He looked up and nodded. “Yes, it must’ve been about then, because there was one shot down over London just a week or two before that—you could see the fire for miles and miles—and this wasn’t so big, not by comparison.”

“I’m going to Maidstone tomorrow, so I’ll see what I can find out.”

Frankie nodded, and there was silence between them for a few moments.

“Dad, I’ve been thinking about Nana.”

“Your mother’s mother? Once seen, never forgotten, old Bekka.”

“Didn’t you like her? I’ve only a few memories of her, but they’ve stuck in my mind.”

“She scared the daylights out of me when I first met ’er.” He smiled and appeared to look into the distance, as if in squinting down Time’s shadowy tunnel he could pluck out memories. “But she loved your granddad, and he liked me, so we were alright, your mother and me, when it came to getting permission to be wed.” He laughed. “There she would be, hands on her hips, complaining about this or that, and your granddad would just grin, with a twinkle in his eye, and let her get on with it. Roma, she was, of the water gypsies. She loved your mother, and you were her favorite—even called you Little Bekka when you were a nipper, or Boosul, or one of them names.”

“Do you think she missed her people—you know, when she married Granddad?”

“Your mother would’ve been the one to answer that question, but I remember Granddad saying once that when the water gypsies came through the lock her eyes’d light up and she’d often take a ride with them to the next lock; she’d trail the horse on the tow-path behind the barge horse and ride him back home again.”

“Did they ever have people turn on them, because of her blood?”

“Oh, yes, according to your mother they did, though Bekka stopped wearing the old gypsy clobber and dressed more like one of us, if you know what I mean. She wouldn’t let go of them earrings, though. And your mother said that, when she was a girl, your gran would keep an eye on her all the time, in case she was set upon for her looks. Your mother did that for you, when you first went to school, on account of your hair and the way you might have been seen, but she made sure you spoke proper—she knew
how a lady should speak. Mind you, it’s a wonder you weren’t tormented for that.”

“I know, Dad. But I also knew how to use the right tone and turn of phrase at the right time. Mum might have been disappointed, had she heard me at school.” Maisie paused. “Did Nana die of old age?”

Frankie shook his head. “No. I mean, she was getting on, but not as old as your granddad. When he went, it was as if there wasn’t anything to live for, so she just let go and died. And she was brokenhearted about your mother.” He turned to Maisie. “Your mother was poorly then. Old Bekka said she’d seen it coming, that’s why she didn’t want us to be wed at first. She reckoned it was all her fault, having a child up in the Smoke—as you know, when your granddad was a lighterman they lived in Rotherhithe, before she had her way and he got the job as a lock keeper and they went to live out in the country. She wanted to take your mother back to live with them when you were just a nipper, so she could be near the water and out in the fresh air, but your mother wouldn’t move. She took it all on herself, did Bekka, saying it was down to her your mother was ill and still so young. Of course, she didn’t say it in front of your mother, but she knew, I swear she knew, that her daughter was dying, even before the doctors said she was.”