“You won’t lose your job?”
The woman shrugged. “It’s not for the money—my parents left me well provided for, and I was the fortunate beneficiary of a maiden aunt on my father’s side. I suppose it’s the sunny side of being the only one left to carry the family name. I go to work to stop the walls drawing in and pressing me into the past.” She looked towards the photograph on the mantelpiece, then back at Maisie. “But who would have believed it would come to this, twenty-odd years after the Armistice? I don’t see how someone could commit murder, not when there’s been so much death and going to be more. Goodness, how on earth do you do your job?”
Maisie rested her hand on the door handle, ready to leave. “I do it for the dead, Miss Littleton, and for those left behind. And when I’ve done my job, Justice has to carry the weight.”
Maisie did not at once leave the neighborhood. There was a small park opposite the street where Clarice Littleton lived, so Maisie chose a seat and watched the entrance to the flats. There were several passersby, none who drew special attention. All were carrying gas masks. A few raindrops fell, and Maisie wished she had brought an umbrella. But she remained in place, partly protected by the canopy of tree fronds overhead. Once again she looked at the barrage balloons bobbing in the sky above the buildings, finding their apparent lightness surprisingly soothing. It was just at the point when Maisie stood up to leave that she saw Clarice Littleton step out of the front door of the converted mansion, carrying a small case, her gas mask in its box with the strap over her shoulder, and a handbag. Littleton hailed a passing taxicab and was soon on her way. Maisie suspected the woman had elected to go to Norfolk sooner rather than later, a decision she considered sound. There had been a moment of recognition when Littleton reached the top of the stairs and saw her. Among the letters Littleton held in her hand was one written on stationery Maisie recognized. It was of course not an unusual stationery, but the smooth cream vellum was familiar, and used by at least one office of the Belgian embassy.
Before leaving Maida Vale, Maisie looked up the address of Albert Durant in her notebook and then took out her London map. The street was not far, and overlooked the Regent’s Canal. Fortunately, the clouds had all but cleared and showers had passed. The address proved to be that of a grander terrace of mansion flats, not smaller conversions of what was once home to one well-to-do family. The property was significantly larger than the one that housed Clarice Littleton’s abode.
The flat she was interested in was on the first floor above ground level, offering a residence of considerable size. Maisie imagined it to be light and airy, comprising a spacious drawing room with doors through to a dining room. Bedrooms would be on the other side of a wide hallway, and in recent years there would have been the addition of a bathroom and perhaps an additional separate lavatory. There would be a kitchen and even a scullery for the washing of clothes and other heavier chores. Maisie doubted the residents had a live-in housekeeper, though in all likelihood there was a daily, a woman who came in at six in the morning and remained until late afternoon, a woman who would cook and clean, who could wash some laundry and sort the rest to send out. And there would of course have been a nursery, decorated in anticipation of the new arrival. Maisie thought she knew how Durant must have felt following his wife’s death in childbirth, for hadn’t she returned to an apartment in Toronto following the passing of her husband and stillborn child? And hadn’t she broken down on the threshold of the nursery, a sweet room painted in shades of shell and sky, with a crib empty, and the counterpane drawn back, as if awaiting the child who would never come home?
And she wondered, now, if the killer had known of his victim’s sorrow. Had he known this man might well have welcomed the bullet that took his life, that put an end to the terrible thoughts and nightmares that must have tortured him? Or could she be projecting her own emotions, because she had endured a similar loss? While Maurice had always encouraged imagination, he had also cautioned against such leaps of creative thought, telling her that just because she would feel a certain way in a given set of circumstances, she must not conclude that her feelings were universal. It was sometimes hard to reconcile his lessons, but in time she had come to understand the importance of grounding intuition and speculation in truths she discovered along the way.