“I’ll speak to her about it.”
“There’s no need. I’m used to it.” I leaned back in the comfortable seat. The motorcar was nice, the seats rich leather. “I rather like it, in fact.”
“Are you going to tell me what the hell Mabry was doing at the house this morning?”
I glanced at him. His gaze was on the road before him, his jaw set in an angry line. “I told you he pretended to be interested in Dottie’s art. Today he pretended he wanted to look at paintings in order to talk to me.”
The idea quietly enraged him, I could tell, from that tired anger he had begun to show. “To you alone? What about?” he said.
“He wanted me to encourage you to go work for him again and fight communism.”
Alex swore. “That’s a fine decision for the two of you to make. What did you tell him?”
“I told him to go away and leave us alone.” I watched him for a moment. “Do you want to go fight communism?”
“I don’t see how I could,” Alex replied. “I know just enough Russian to ask the way to the loo.” He paused. “But to answer the question, what I want is to be my own man. I don’t even know if that’s possible, or for how long, but that’s what I want. Does that make sense?”
“Yes,” I said, miserable. “If you’d rather go fight communism in order to be happy, please just tell me first, won’t you? Please don’t disappear again.”
He glanced at me, then back at the road before him. “I don’t think you’ve been listening.”
“I had to say it. What will you do, then? Have you thought about it?”
“A little. I have some contacts in government, and I believe I could get a decent sort of job. Would you mind moving back to London?”
For the first time it truly sank in that he was home, that we were going to build a life together again. “London would be fine,” I said. I hadn’t wanted to go back there without him, but with him, I could manage.
“Then I’ll see what I can do. What arrangements were made for your mother?”
We talked of practical matters the rest of the way—my mother’s burial, my letting go of the Chalcot Road apartment, Mother’s final hospital bills. Alex had always been good at solving problems, and two years in RAF airplanes and three years in a double life as Hans Faber hadn’t changed that. In this strange, unreal world I could not have imagined three days ago, we tentatively began to speak of our future. But as I looked out the windshield at the foggy road before us, I couldn’t see very far.
? ? ?
Petra Jennings lived in a small, tidy cottage on the outskirts of Anningley. The garden was well kept, the walk clear of leaves, the windows scrubbed clean. When Alex knocked on the front door, a woman of about thirty appeared, wearing an everyday housedress, her long thin blond hair woven into a braid down her back. From the house behind her came a damp, soapy smell, steaming the air.
“We’re sorry to bother you, Miss Jennings,” Alex said to her, removing his hat. “I believe you recognize me?”
From the expression on her face—vague panic laced with unhappiness—she did. “Yes, sir,” she said, never taking her eyes from him to look at me. “You’re Mrs. Forsyth’s nephew. I saw you last on the day Miss Frances died.”
“That’s right. Alex Manders,” said Alex. I could tell he recognized her as well. “This is my wife, Jo. I’d like to ask you a few questions, if you can spare the time.”
Petra Jennings stood for a moment, plainly torn. Mrs. Baines had said she never spoke about the family—but Alex was the family. Besides, I could tell she was busy doing some kind of washing. But she finally stood back and swung the door open. “If you please,” she said, not kindly.
We stepped inside and found the inner rooms as neat and tidy as the outside, though the steamy smell was pervasive. “I’m sorry,” Miss Jennings said, leading us down the corridor past a cozily furnished sitting room. “I’ll have to talk to you in the kitchen. I take in washing for a living, and I have the iron on.”
The kitchen was piled with clean clothes—shirts, trousers, dresses, shirtwaists, underthings. An ironing board was set up at one end of the room, and a steam iron was resting on it. We took a seat, and Petra Jennings promptly turned her back to us and went back to work.
“You worked for my aunt and her family for a time,” Alex said.
Miss Jennings’s narrow shoulder blades worked busily beneath the fabric of her day dress. “A year or so, yes. I never talk about the family, if that’s what you’re asking. I’m the type to keep to myself. I don’t know where all the awful rumors come from, but it isn’t from me.”
“Which rumors would those be?”
“Miss Frances being locked in a room. Her having some kind of dog that roams the woods and eats bad children. I just did my job, that was all, until Mrs. Forsyth dismissed all of us and shut down the house.”
“And you’ve taken in washing since?”