“I had a feeling that we were not alone, Mr. Watson. Is someone else in the flat?”
Watson looked at his feet as the sound of a door opening caused Maisie to turn around.
“I’m sorry, Maisie—it was the only way to see you face-to-face.” The voice was deep, its mid-Atlantic rhythm giving away the identity of the man who stepped into the drawing room through a doorway to the right. “How sharp of you to know that someone else was here.”
Maisie felt color rush to her cheeks, and she struggled to keep her voice calm. “Mr. Otterburn. I might have known you would find a way to see me.” She turned to Watson. “And to think I put your manner down to first-day-on-the-job nerves. You’ll have to answer for this breach of my privacy, Mr. Watson.”
“I—I—but . . .” Watson could not even stutter his words.
Maisie turned to leave. “Oh, just leave me alone—both of you.”
“Maisie—stop! I need your help. Lorraine and I—we’re desperate.” Otterburn’s voice was strained.
Maisie turned to face the man she held responsible for her husband’s death. The shock of witnessing the small experimental fighter aircraft James was testing fall to earth over farmland in Canada, had led Maisie to lose the child she was expecting; her daughter had been delivered stillborn, and Maisie bore physical scars of the fight to save the babe’s life and her own. James should not even have been flying. Otterburn’s two children—both adults—were accomplished aviators, and his indulged daughter, Elaine, was rostered to be in the cockpit that day. Instead, she was nursing a hangover, so James had stepped up in her place.
And now John Otterburn had used his contacts to corner Maisie.
Watson slipped out of the flat as she faced her nemesis. She noted the gray pallor, the drawn look to his face, the bluish pockets under his eyes.
“I wish I could have met you in a different place, Maisie. Somewhere we could sit in comfort.”
“There is no comfort for me in your presence, Mr. Otterburn.” She walked to the window. Outside, trees bare of leaves were picking up a cold wind, blowing back and forth. It seemed to Maisie as if they were fingering the sky, scratching toward bulbous gray clouds to bring rain. She turned back to Otterburn and sighed. “You might as well tell me what this is all about. Then we can be done with it.”
“My daughter has vanished. We don’t know where she is.”
“That’s not news. I understand from Mrs. Partridge—who is far more au fait with these matters—that the whole of a certain strata of London society knows about Elaine abandoning her husband and child.” Maisie pressed her lips together. She wished she could sound less bitter. It was an unwelcome feeling, as if she could sense her heart becoming harder with every word.
“No, it’s not news. But I do need your help.”
“Oh, spare me the intrigue. You have people everywhere who can find anyone and—as I know only too well, you can even have them murdered.” She could not help but refer to Eddie Petit, whom she’d known since childhood, an innocent man who had become an unwitting victim of Otterburn’s undercover machinations to strengthen Britain’s security.
“I cannot seem to find my own daughter, and I understand you will soon be in the place where I believe she is now residing.”
“As I said, you have people everywhere,” countered Maisie.
“She appears to be very good at either avoiding discovery, or when approached, refusing to come home. We understand she is in Germany, most likely Munich. Her child needs her, Maisie.”
There was silence in the room. Maisie bit her lip and felt her jaw tighten. She turned away toward the street again, toward a windowpane spattered with raindrops racing down to the sill.
“I suppose I should not be surprised that you have knowledge of my travel outside England.”
Otterburn was silent.
Maisie raised a gloved hand and wiped away the condensation where her breath had caught the window. “I don’t know what I could do anyway. Elaine has no reason to listen to me, even if I found her. She has her own plans and her own life. If she has abandoned her child, that is her loss.” Her voice caught at the last word.
“Please, Maisie. I was never a good father to my daughter—an indulgent father, but never a good father.”
“That makes no difference. She’s a grown woman.”