“I’ll jump to it. And remember, I went over to the City last week, after you left, and I’ve a few things to report there. What with the banks being closed last Monday on account of war being declared, it was a bit of chaos all week—you’d’ve thought a bomb had dropped!” He looked at Sandra, as if waiting for a smile, but she did not respond. He turned back at Maisie, his cheeks flushed with embarrassment that his joke had fallen on stony ground. “Anyway, I went back to St. Pancras.”
“And I did some more checking on refugees from the war, when I came in on Thursday,” added Sandra.
“Let’s get it all on the map. You first, Billy.”
“Well, I went along to St. Pancras Station, as I said, and I saw the woman with the flower stall. She said she knew Addens because he was always one to pass the time of day with her and would buy a bunch of flowers once a week to take home to his wife, on a Friday. She said she knew something was wrong when he didn’t come back for the blooms he’d picked out when he came outside for a smoke during his dinner break at twelve o’clock. He’d been at work since about six in the morning, and they stop for a quick smoke and cuppa at nine, if they can, and then at noon they have another break. That’s when he asked her to keep the flowers for him to pick up later.”
“Did she say anything about his demeanor?”
Billy sighed and ran his fingers through his hair, pushing an unruly fringe from his eyes. “Sort of, and not really. She said he appeared a bit worried, but that he’d been like that for a little while, and she thought there might be trouble at home with their son. He’d told her he was wondering what would happen to the boy if war came—and let’s face it, miss, we’ve all been like that, us who’ve a son of fighting age. Not that you can stop them if they want to go. Hotheaded, they are—like I said before, they come over all mannish and start talking big before they fit their boots.”
Maisie looked at Sandra, who raised her eyebrows. Maisie would speak to Billy about his own worries later.
“So he had been preoccupied, but we don’t know why,” she summarized. “Let’s speculate that whoever he met was the reason for his concerns. Did the woman see him leave to meet a friend? The attack seems to have happened as he was taking a breather between the usual end of his working day and starting his overtime.”
“She said she was suddenly very busy, what with it being the end of the working day and people rushing home. She saw him step out at about five o’clock—she could not be sure of the time—but only caught sight of him for a second, and didn’t think any more of it until she was packing up a couple of hours later and he still hadn’t come back for his flowers.”
Maisie tapped the case map, though she had nothing to add. “I think that to get anywhere on this case, we have to speculate more than in the past. First the easier part—and let’s face it, we could be wrong—that the same man or woman killed our victims. What might have caused someone to kill each of these people? Frankly, we can’t help but come to the common denominator, that of Belgium. We could assume that something that happened before they reached our shores is at the root of this case.”
“What about the woman in Sussex, and her housekeeper?” asked Sandra.
“If she knew Addens and Durant, then we could posit she knew the killer. But did she know this person was a killer? Or did she believe she was speaking to a friend, or someone who should know the other men had died?” Maisie lifted her hand. “Perhaps we shouldn’t try to answer the questions now—let’s just note them down. Maurice always said the power in a question is not in the answer, it’s in the way the imagination gets busy when the question is at work.”
“I didn’t get much joy from anyone who knew Durant over where he worked in the City,” said Billy. “I think banking types are more up your street when it comes to an investigation, miss. I mean, they hear me, and you can see it on their faces—what with my accent, they think I’m nothing more than a barrow boy in a suit. And I’m not going to start adding me aitches for the likes of them. I reckon they’re all blimmin’ crooks anyway—let’s see how they look when it comes to putting on a uniform.”
“But Billy—coming back to something you said last week, about Addens.” Maisie leaned forward, tapping her pen on the paper again. “You thought Addens had been a soldier, didn’t you? Now look at this photograph.” She pushed the photograph taken from Hartley-Davies’ home towards Billy. “What do you see? And what about Durant? This was probably taken not long after he came here as a refugee. I would imagine we were still at war in any case, that it was before the Armistice.” Maisie stood up and went to her desk. She picked up a magnifying glass and passed it to Billy as she returned to the table.