“My flat,” Hilda answered simply.
Sumner Street was one of the many London streets sporting rows of elegant white Georgian houses with pillars, on which the house numbers were painted in black. Each house was indistinguishable from the other, unless its residents had done something with the patch of concrete that stood in for a front garden. They didn’t need a garden, really, having ready access to the square around the corner. And the houses themselves boasted their own beauty.
Hilda chivvied Maisie inside number thirty-one just as Torquhil hurtled down the stairs and flung himself on Hilda, barking and wagging his tail in danger to the Staffordshire likenesses of himself on the coat rack shelf.
“There’s my favorite lad. Had a good day?” Hilda crooned. “Not all by your lonesome, are you? Hallo, anyone in?”
“You don’t live alone?” Maisie asked, following Hilda downstairs into the kitchen. She could certainly afford to.
“Landlords aren’t especially keen on renting to lone women,” Hilda said, loading a tray with bread, cheese, and fruit. “Though I could have had my father or brother stand for me, but it’s not a bad thing, having other people about. We can look out for one another, and it means I’ve been able to buy a car. Gorgeous beast. I’ll show you sometime. Yes, you’re a gorgeous beast, too,” she assured Torquhil, and opened a tin of meat for him. After several jetés and a circle around Hilda, he settled to his food.
“I’m feeling some affinity to him,” Maisie remarked. Hilda laughed, set the tray in a dumbwaiter, and rolled it upstairs. They followed their supper to Hilda’s domain, a large sitting room with a bedroom beyond. Hilda stoked the fire and tossed cushions on the floor.
The room was as bright and warm and cheerful as Maisie could have imagined. But she remembered why they were there and what she had discovered in Simon’s flat that morning, a thousand years ago. Hilda handed her a glass of sherry just as she started to cry.
“Your photos were developed with great haste and I’ve had a look at them, so I have somewhat more of a sense of what’s bringing on the great floods. I’m so very sorry.” She pressed a handkerchief into Maisie’s hand. “You have notes, too?”
Maisie passed her pad to Hilda, and shoved a chunk of Wensleydale in her mouth.
“Isn’t it possible,” she asked through the cheese, “that Simon doesn’t know what he’s doing, or who he’s involved with? He wants to run a newspaper. He’s said so a dozen times. And now here’s his chance. Maybe he doesn’t know the rest.”
“I hope so. And I’m sure you would have noticed if he has Fascist inclinations.”
“He can’t have. He was so horrified at that meeting I brought him to.” Maisie hesitated, remembering. “Actually, he thought it was hilarious. And they were talking about wanting to control the press.” She paused. “And Grigson was there, looking at him. But then we left before they could talk. Or . . . I wonder. I suppose he could have gone back in after I left?”
Hilda lit a cigarette and slid a cake tin off a shelf. Victoria sponge. Maisie laid a slice of Wensleydale on the cake. They went together nicely.
“It’s possible,” said Hilda. “It’s also possible Grigson recognized him. I knew who he was myself, remember? He’s been plastered over the society pages at various and sundry times. A big man in business would know of someone like that, especially when the aristocrat in question is trying his hand at journalism.”
“But he . . . he can’t . . .” Maisie slugged down some sherry. “He’s made a lot of remarks about newspapers—calls them ‘bourgeois,’ actually—and definitely wants to show them how to do the job, but of course he believes in a varied and free press. He must, surely.”
Hilda refilled Maisie’s glass. “There’s a sort of man who thinks he ought to have power. As of the divine right of kings. Hideously atavistic, of course, but impervious to evolution. And it’s a media baron who can wield real power. Think of William Randolph Hearst.”
“Must I?”
“It looks to me as though Grigson—and likely Hoppel too—courted him more with power than money. He runs the one paper they start with. Then they buy more, and he remains the voice behind them all. And then it’s easy to disseminate whatever information you like. ‘Nothing to fear from Fascism. The real fear is, et cetera, et cetera.’ Once that’s the majority opinion in all the respectable papers, anyone disagreeing looks foolish. You don’t have to silence them by aggression. Much more civilized.”
Torquhil nosed his way in and assayed the cheese plate. Hilda snapped her fingers and he withdrew to lay his head in her lap.
“How can he like someone like me if that’s the sort of power he really wants to wield?”