“Could you telephone me?” asked Maisie, offering a calling card.
“We’ve not a phone here, but we’re getting one put in soon. Fortunately, there’s a kiosk across the street—someone could give you a ring. There’s a telephone up in my residence, but if I start using it for this, then my bills will be most unfortunately high. I dare not allow the habit to begin.”
“I understand.” Maisie opened her handbag, took out her purse, and offered enough pennies to place a call to London.
“Thank you. It will help us enormously.” Thorpe took the proffered coins and stood up. The interview was over, and Maisie was none the wiser.
Chapter 6
From Tunbridge Wells, Maisie chose a route that took her through the villages of Frant and Wadhurst, then on to Ticehurst before reaching Etchingham, just a few miles from the town of Battle. Any motor car, let alone a fast motor such as the Alvis, would have attracted attention—in every village it seemed a small gang of children stopped their playing and ran to the side of the road, waving as she passed. When she reached Church Hill, Maisie pulled over to check the address and was happy to note that she was very close to her destination. She continued on, slowing down so as not to miss the property, and soon brought the Alvis to a halt on a low grass verge outside a Georgian detached house. A stone wall limited her view of the house, though she could glimpse the roof through an ivy-covered archway above a single corroded cast-iron gate, beyond which was a flagstone path.
Leaving the Alvis, she walked along the road to another entrance which—had the ornate double gates not been locked—opened to a carriage sweep meandering to the side of the house. The mansion was clearly visible, and Maisie could see it was probably only a little larger than the Dower House at Chelstone. Retracing her steps back along the verge, she entered the grounds through the single gate.
A housekeeper answered the door and asked Maisie to wait while she presented her card to Mrs. Hartley-Davies. It took only three minutes for her to return and bid Maisie follow her to a drawing room with French doors overlooking the garden. Mrs. Hartley-Davies was standing just outside the drawing room, on the terrace. She was a woman of medium height, lithe in build, dressed in a sleeveless white cotton blouse, a pair of elephant-ear jodhpurs that looked as if they had seen a cavalry charge or two, and Wellington boots. She dropped a wooden trug filled with weeds at her feet. Her smile was broad as Maisie approached.
“Miss Dobbs—so lovely to receive a visitor, even one you don’t know.” She threw a pair of secateurs on top of the weeds and pulled off the worn leather gardening gloves she was wearing. “It’s not often someone emerges from London to pay a visit. Especially someone of your ilk—a gentlewoman is always welcome.”
Maisie would have put Hartley-Davies’ age at about fifty at most, which meant she would only have been in her mid-twenties when she had been involved with displaced refugees. She believed she had already guessed why the woman might have committed so much time to volunteer work during the war, though she would wait for the reason to be revealed when they sat down to talk. Maisie suspected Hartley-Davies was a straightforward woman; there was something about her that reminded her of Priscilla.
“Let me just pull off my boots, and then I’ll join you.” Hartley-Davies looked at her housekeeper, who was standing by the door. “Coffee would be a treat, Mrs. Bolton—and something to nibble. I’m starving, and it’s not even lunchtime.” She looked back at Maisie. “I’m a late luncher, so I’m afraid it’s just coffee and whatever Mrs. Bolton can come up with to stave off the animal in my tum.”
“Thank you for agreeing to see me, Mrs. Hartley-Davies,” said Maisie. “And a cup of coffee would be lovely.”
“My pleasure—though I was about to send Mrs. Bolton back to the door with a firm refusal because I thought you might be a traveler for a company trying to sell me something. But then I saw on your card that you were an investigator, and Mrs. Bolton said you were a well-turned-out woman, so I thought better of it. My curiosity was piqued. And believe me, when your day concerns nothing more exciting than a battle royale with all manner of garden pests, the arrival of an inquiry agent is thrilling!”
Her Wellingtons removed with the help of a boot jack, Hartley-Davies stepped into the room and shook hands with Maisie, inviting her to take a seat on a chesterfield set perpendicular to the fireplace, which was covered by a summery needlepoint screen. By the time they were seated, the housekeeper had returned with cold lemonade and a tray of biscuits, which she placed on the low table in front of the chesterfield.
“I thought something cold would be better for you, mu’um,” said the housekeeper.