“Let’s all sit down,” said Brenda. “I’ve made a pot of tea.”
Frankie sat at the head of the scrubbed thick wooden table, with Maisie and Brenda flanking him. He spoke first. “Brenda had a look in the girl’s case—it worked, you taking her for a walk with that dog. Tell her, Bren.”
“There was a change of underclothes in there, nicely folded—a couple pair of knickers and two liberty bodices—and two pair of white socks. She had another dress—looked like it had been run up out of curtaining. But there was no room for a winter coat or anything like that.”
“Any identification?”
Brenda shook her head. “Nothing to speak of. Except this.” She pushed a piece of paper towards Maisie.
“Oh dear, I hope she doesn’t notice it’s missing.”
“She might not have even known it was there. Tucked down in the pocket—I almost missed it.”
Maisie took the paper. The handwriting was in pencil, and difficult to read—the sheet of paper was about three by four inches and had been folded several times, so it seemed no bigger than a sweet wrapper.
“‘My name is Anna. I come from London. I will be five years old on October 21st. I can read and write and I can clean myself. I can be a help in the house, and I know how to wash my clothes. I’m a good girl.’”
“Needle in a haystack,” said Brenda.
Maisie rubbed her forehead. “I just don’t understand—it’s as if she was abandoned. No one could possibly leave a child to her own devices.”
“Plenty have, love. Five years of age was always considered old enough to get on and take care of yourself, and she’s no exception. P’raps she was looked after by someone—her mum, or an aunt, or even a father who might have been crippled in the war—and had to do for herself without much help.”
“The handwriting is a bit shaky, as if the note were written by someone who had poor dexterity,” said Maisie. “It could have been someone elderly—or ill.”
“We’ve got to report it to the billeting officer in any case,” said Brenda. “It might give them a clue to who she is, and now they have a birth date to get on with. That’ll help.”
Maisie nodded, and turned away.
Later, in the library, Maisie sat for an hour, a notebook on her lap. She heard Frankie and Brenda climb the stairs, their voices low as they made their way to bed. They now slept in Maisie’s room, though for a time each day they returned to their own bungalow in the village, and a couple of evenings a week a girl came up from the manor to look after the children, allowing Frankie and Brenda to remain at home—though as Brenda pointed out, Maisie’s father had taken to being at the manor again, and setting jobs for the boys after school at the week’s end. A bed had been set up in the library for Maisie.
The library had not changed since Maurice was alive, which was a comfort to Maisie, as she leaned back in his leather armchair, remembering days past when she would sit in the wing chair opposite his, perhaps sipping a glass of sherry as he savored a measure or two of single malt whisky. She could just about detect the lingering aroma of his pipe tobacco, mixed with the fragrance of the lavender-and-beeswax polish Brenda used on the table. How many hours had she spent in this room, talking to Maurice, answering his questions, listening to him urge her to heed the voice that counseled her from within? They had discussed so many cases, pulling apart testimonies, passing postmortem reports back and forth, Maurice encouraging her to look at each word, each phrase, every aspect of evidence from a different perspective. “Even this room will seem different from each corner—you must make your mind look through a new lens every time you read. And to do that, Maisie, you have to move—go to another room, step out on a walk, or drive to a place fresh to you. Move yourself, and you move your mind. Look at the evidence from different angles.”