Birds of a Feather (20 page)

The door that led in from the corridor swung open, and a young nurse entered, nodded, and smiled. She quickly checked to ensure that her patient was showing no distress in the presence of his visitor, and then left silently.

And as the nurse departed, Maisie wondered what she was thinking as she observed a woman in her early thirties with the broken man who had once been her true love. Did she see futility—she who would later place food in the man’s mouth and watch as muscles moved in physical response to the stimulus, without any obvious recognition of taste or texture? Or did the young nurse, probably a girl at the close of the Great War, see Maisie as one unwilling to open her heart to another, while her beloved was still there in body, if not in mind?

Maisie looked out at the gardens. How to remain loyal, but still open her heart anew? It was as if she was required to be in two places at once, one part of her in the past, one in the future. She sighed deeply and allowed her gaze to wander. She watched as two nurses walked along a path, each pushing a veteran of war in a wheelchair. In the distance, an older woman supported a man who walked in an ungainly fashion, his head lolling to one side. As they came closer, Maisie saw that the man was gazing into space, his mouth open, his tongue rolling back and forth between his lips. They moved toward the patio in front of the glass-paned conservatory.

The woman was as plainly dressed as she had been at their first meeting, when she opened the door to greet Maisie and Billy at Joseph Waite’s home in Dulwich. In fact she had been so plainly dressed and pedestrian in manner that Maisie had not thought twice about her. Yet here she was again, with this man whose mind was clearly as lost in the wilderness of his past as Simon’s. Who was he? A son? A nephew?

As she steered her charge toward a door to the side of the conservatory, a nurse came to her aid, taking the young man’s weight on his other side while Mrs. Willis kept her arm around his waist, her hand clutching his.

Maisie remained for a while longer, then bade Simon a solitary farewell. She stopped at the reception desk on the way out.

“Lovely day to visit, eh, Miss Dobbs?”

“Yes, it has been nice, especially to see the tulips coming up.”

“See you in about a month, then?”

“Yes, of course, but I wonder, may I ask you a question about another visitor today?”

The receptionist frowned slightly, and pressed her lips together. “Another visitor? Well, let’s see who was in today.” She consulted the visitors’ book on the desk in front of her and tapped a red finger along the names. “Whom were you interested in?”

“I thought I saw an acquaintance of mine, a Mrs. Willis. Could she have been visiting a family member, perhaps?”

“Oh, Mrs. Willis. Very nice woman. Quiet, doesn’t say much, but very nice indeed. She’s here to see Will, her son. Will, short for Wilfred, Wilfred Willis.”

“Her son? Does she come once a month?”

“Oh my goodness, no! Once or twice a week. Never fails, always on a Sunday and, more likely than not, on a Wednesday or Thursday as well. She comes as often as she can.”

“And she’s been coming since the war, since he was admitted?”

The receptionist looked at Maisie and frowned again before speaking. “Well, yes, she has. But then, it’s not surprising. She’s his mother.”

“Of course, of course. I’d better be off.”

“We’ll see you in a month then, Miss Dobbs?”

“Yes. A month. See you then.” Maisie turned to leave, but the receptionist spoke again.

“Oh, Miss Dobbs, you might see Mrs. Willis waiting down at the bus stop. I don’t know if Dulwich is on your way, but I thought you’d like to know. It’s a long journey for her by bus.”

“Of course, Mrs. Holt. If she’s still there, I’ll give her a lift home.”

“Blast!” said Maisie, as she exited the main gates of the hospital. Mrs. Willis was not at the bus stop, nor was there a queue waiting.

It was still only two o’clock in the afternoon, so Maisie decided to back-track. She was well aware that her curiosity regarding the murders of two women, and the suspected murder of another, had surpassed her interest in the Charlotte Waite “missing person” case. In truth, she was excited that she had discovered a link and that she had reason to investigate further. Maisie had a sense of who Lydia Fisher was, and how she lived, but she wondered about Philippa Sedgewick, the woman murdered in Coulsden. Detective Inspector Stratton had pronounced Lydia Fisher’s murder “identical” to Sedgewick’s. Were they unlucky victims of coincidence? Evidence suggested that her killer had been known to Lydia Fisher. Had Philippa Sedgewick known
her
killer? And if
her
death was murder rather than suicide, then Rosamund Thorpe had taken tea with her murderer as well. Yet in her case, there had been no vicious post-mortem knife attack. While steering with one hand, Maisie nibbled at the nail on the little finger of the other. Charlotte was the key.

In the meantime, while Maisie waited for an audience with Charlotte at Camden Abbey, she would see what she could find out about Philippa Sedgewick. Nothing could take the place of collecting information and impressions personally.

Maisie drove toward Kingston-upon-Thames, following a route that took her through Ewell as she made her way to Coulsden. A stop on her way from Kent to Richmond would have been a more judicious use of time and petrol but she hadn’t planned to visit Coulsden when she set out this morning. Now she felt more anxiety than she had since the death of Lydia Fisher. The killer might strike again soon. If the deaths were random, with the killer soft-talking his way into victims’ homes, then no woman on her own was safe. But if the killer was known to his victims, there might be more links in the chain that connected them.

As she entered Coulsden, Maisie pulled over to the side of the road and reached into her document case. She quickly turned to the second page of last week’s
Times
until she found what she was looking for. COULSDEN WOMAN MURDER INVESTIGATION, followed by a subheading POLICE SEARCH FOR KILLER. Her eyes scanned the columns, the work of reporters feeding the story. As the words “merciless,” “plunged,” and finally “butcher” leapt out at her, Maisie finally found what she was looking for: “The dead woman, Mrs. Philippa Sedgewick of 14 Bluebell Avenue. . . .”

Maisie parked the car in the road opposite Number 14 and shut off the engine. The houses were not old, built perhaps in 1925 for the new commuter class, the men who traveled into the City each day on the train, and the women who waved them goodbye in the morning and greeted them with dinner on the table when they returned. Children would be in pajamas, bathed, and ready for bed as soon as father had placed his hat and coat on the stand by the door, kissed each girl on the head, and squeezed each boy on the arm along with the words, “Good man.”

Young sycamores grew on each side of the street, planted with the intention of creating an opulent canopy to shade the family homes. Each house was identical, with a broad bow window at the front, an asymmetrical roof with a cat’s-slide sweep on one side, and a small turreted bedroom under the eaves of the other. The front door had a stained-glass window, and the same glass had been used in a border that ran along the upper edge of every other window at the front of the house. But this house was special. This was the house where Philippa Sedgewick had spent her days waiting for her husband to return from his job in the City. This was the house where a woman of thirty-two had been murdered. Maisie took out a small pack of index cards from her document case. She did not alight from the car, but simply described the house on a card, and penciled questions to herself:
Why have I assumed husband worked in the City? Find out about husband. Job for Billy?

The curtains were closed, as was the mourning custom. The house seemed dark and cold, shadowy against the low sun of a spring afternoon. Yes, thought Maisie, death has passed over this house and will linger until the woman’s spirit is at rest. She sighed, allowed her gaze to settle on the house again and slipped into a deliberately relaxed observation of the property. It appeared a very sad house, set in a street of homes for families with children. Already she could imagine them walking home from school, girls with satchels banging against hips, boys holding their caps in one hand, with arms out to balance as they returned a football or ran to tease the girls, pulling hair so that screams drew a mother into the street to admonish every one of them. According to the newspaper, there had been no children in the Sedgewick marriage, though perhaps children were hoped for, otherwise why live in such a place? Yes, a sad house.

The curtain moved almost imperceptibly. At first it was just a sensation at the corner of her eye. Maisie focused on the curved window of the turreted small bedroom to the left. The curtain moved again. She was being watched. Maisie stepped out of the MG and set off briskly across the road, unlatched the waist-high gate, and continued along the path to the front door. Taking up the brass door knocker, she rapped loudly, ensuring that anyone inside the house would hear her summons. She waited. No answer.
Rat-tat-tat
again. She waited, listening.

The door opened.

“Can’t you people leave me alone?! Haven’t you got enough stories? You’re vultures, all of you. Vultures!”

A man of medium height stood before Maisie. His brown hair was in need of a comb, his face sported a rough salt-and-pepper shadow of beard, and he was dressed in baggy tweed trousers, a gray flannel shirt topped with a knitted sleeveless pullover in a pale gray with flecks of green and purple woven into the yarn. He wore neither shoes, socks, nor tie, and looked, thought Maisie, as if he could do with a good meal.

“I do beg your pardon, Mr. Sedgewick—”

“Don’t ‘pardon, Mr. Sedgewick’ me, you nasty little piece of—”

“Mr. Sedgewick, I am not a member of the press!” Maisie stood to her full height, and looked him in the eyes.

The man shuffled his feet, looked down, rubbed his chin, then looked again at Maisie. His shoulders, which had been drawn up tensely, almost touching his earlobes, now drooped, making him look as broken in body as he was in spirit. He was exhausted. “I am sorry. Please forgive me, but I just want to be left alone.” He began to close the door.

“But please . . . I need to speak to you.” Maisie reminded herself that Philippa Sedgewick’s husband might also be her killer. While she doubted that this man was a murderer, she had to proceed with caution.

“Be quick, and tell me what you want, though I doubt I can help anyone. I can’t even help myself!” said Sedgewick.

“My name is Maisie Dobbs.” Maisie opened the flap of her case and pulled a card from an inner compartment, not breaking eye contact with Sedgewick. “I’m a private investigator, and I think there is a connection between a case I am working on and your wife’s murder.”

For a few seconds, silent incredulity was visible on the man’s face: His lips seemed frozen open, his eyes did not even blink. Then Sedgewick began to laugh almost hysterically. He laughed and laughed and laughed, bending over, his hands on his knees before raising his head as he attempted to speak. The thin line between emotions was being breached. This man, who had so recently lost his wife, was indeed in crisis. Maisie was aware that a neighbor was standing on her front doorstep looking across at the house. Then, as she turned again to Sedgewick, she realized he was crying. She quickly helped him inside his home and closed the door behind her.

Maisie illuminated the hallway with electric light and, still holding Sedgewick’s arm, directed him to the back of the house, to the kitchen. Maisie connected a kitchen with warmth, but as she turned on another light, she felt her heart sink at the sight that confronted her. Helping Sedgewick to a chair, Maisie opened the curtains, unlocked and opened the back door to the garden, and looked back at the cups and saucers piled on the draining board, along with dirty saucepans and one or two plates. The dregs of stale brandy and half-smoked cigarettes swirled against one another in crystal glasses, perhaps originally given to celebrate the marriage of the young couple years earlier.

“Oh, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, you must think me—”

“I don’t think anything, Mr. Sedgewick. You’ve been through a horrible time.”

“Tell me again who you are and why you are here.”

Maisie identified herself again and explained the purpose of her visit to the house of—as far as the authorities knew—the first victim of the “Heartless, Bloodless Killer,” named for his use of poison before the knife.

“I can’t see how I can help. I’ve spent hours, literally hours, with the police. I have spent every second of every day since my wife was murdered asking myself why and who. And, as you can imagine, for some time the police thought that I was the ‘who.’ They probably still do.”

“They have to explore all avenues, Mr. Sedgewick.”

“Oh yes, the police line, I know it.” Sedgewick rubbed his neck and as he did so, Maisie heard bones crack in his shoulder and back.

“Will you help me?” she asked.

Sedgewick sighed. “Yes, yes. If helping you ends up helping me, I’ll do what I can to answer your questions.”

Maisie smiled and, feeling once more like the nurse she had been so long ago, she reached out and squeezed Sedgewick’s hand. “I appreciate it, Mr. Sedgewick.”

The man seemed to falter, then continued. “Miss Dobbs, would you mind using my Christian name? I know it’s rather a cheek to ask . . . and I perfectly understand if you decline my request, but . . . I have been nothing but Sedgewick or Mr. Sedgewick for weeks now. My neighbors are avoiding me, and I have been given leave from my work until the killer”—he seemed about to double over again—“until the case is closed. My name is John. And I am a man who has lost his wife.”

They moved into the drawing room. Maisie watched John Sedgewick as he eased himself into an armchair beside the fireplace. She opened the curtains just enough to allow some natural illumination to enter. Sudden light might startle Sedgewick, who would feel a needle of sunray to be piercing and painful. The room was untidy, with unread newspapers in a pile, cigarette ends mounting in ashtrays, and dust layered on the mantelpiece, the small writing desk, and the side tables. Spent coals in the cold grate made the room even less inviting. As if pressed inward by his discomfort, Sedgewick sat forward on the edge of the chair, hunching his shoulders and gripping his elbows. Maisie shivered, remembering Maurice in the early days of her apprenticeship
:
“ Watch the body, Maisie; see how the posture reflects the state of mind.” John Sedgewick was clutching his body as if to save himself from falling apart.