Maisie wound down the window and slowed the motor car. She held out a coin for the man to take. “No need for change, Mr. Barker,” said Maisie as she placed the newspaper on the passenger seat. “I bet you miss your helper.”
“I do at that, Miss Dobbs. I had another one of ’em lined up to give me a hand, only he was evacuated to Wales. But I reckon he’ll be home soon. His mum keeps saying that what with this Bore War, there’s nothing happening. But I’ve told her—there’s war happening all right—it’s just not reached us. I reckon your Mr. Beale must be worried sick—knowing what he went through in the last war, and now his eldest is over there with the expeditionary force. He must be losing sleep over it. According to the Express, the Germans have marched right across the Ardennes, through Holland and now they’re into France—too blimmin’ close to us, for my liking.”
Maisie nodded. Her assistant, Billy Beale, was indeed losing sleep worrying about his son, who was serving with the army in France, but he was also concerned for his wife, Doreen. Years before they had already lost a little girl, Lizzie, who had died after contracting diphtheria—Doreen had suffered a breakdown following the tragedy. Billy had therefore decided it was best for her to take their youngest child, Margaret Rose, to stay with an aunt in Hampshire, leaving him at home with his second son, Bobby, an apprentice mechanic.
“Did you see they’ve put more sandbags around the station?” said Barker. “Before long there won’t be room for me out here on the pavement.”
“Oh, they’ll make room for you, Mr. Barker—what would we all do without you!” replied Maisie, turning her head to check for traffic as she moved away from the curb.
Barker laughed and waved, but Maisie’s smile faded as she rolled up the window. While the newspapers kept up a stream of positive rhetoric, she had heard from Douglas Partridge, who now worked for the wartime Ministry of Information, that the expeditionary force in France was considered to be in a precarious position.
She drove along the street, passing the Prince of Wales pub, where the landlord, Phil Coombes, had just emerged and was ambling along to a caff just a short way down Tottenham Court Road. Maisie thought she could set a clock by Phil Coombes, for he left the premises at the same time each morning to walk to a nearby caff, where he would order a bacon sandwich and a cup of tea. It was his one break in the day, otherwise he never left the pub because he was either behind the bar or, when the doors were locked for the night, in the flat above. Coombes and his wife had raised two sons and a daughter in the flat, but now only Vivian, the middle child, remained at home.
Even before Maisie raised her hand to wave, and to receive from the landlord a desultory lifting of the hand in response, Maisie knew that all was not well. The way Coombes carried himself—with shoulders drooping and his head forward, as if trying to set a pace for his lagging feet—indicated a troubled man. As she turned left onto Fitzroy Street to park the Alvis, Maisie wondered if she should approach Coombes, ask him what was wrong and perhaps offer help of some sort. But had she not learned her lesson time and again, that not everyone in straitened circumstances wants to be helped? Yet when she looked back at Phil Coombes, she felt an ache of concern in her chest, as if the man’s emotions had traced a direct line to her heart.
She was just about to set off in the direction of the caff on Tottenham Court Road, hoping to catch up with Coombes, when Billy Beale walked around the corner, his gas mask in its box hanging over one shoulder by the strap, and bouncing up and down on his hip.
“Mornin’, miss.” With a deft pinch to the lighted end, he extinguished the cigarette he was smoking, and put the stub in his pocket.
“Did you come up from Hampshire this morning?” asked Maisie.
Billy nodded. “Makes all the difference, not having to come into work until late on a Monday, or even a Tuesday morning. I miss my girls, so it’s been handy, you giving me the extra time so I can get down there once a week. And you should see little Margaret Rose—all apple cheeks and growing like ivy. She’ll be almost as tall as the boys, make no mistake.”
“I thought as much when she was a toddler—she was like a mannequin even then.” They fell into step toward the office on Fitzroy Square. “Have you heard from young Billy?”
Billy shook his head. “Boys of his age are not exactly known for writing, are they? Doreen sends a letter or card once a week—keeping it short because she knows he won’t read anything too long—but even when he was over here in barracks, it was as much as he could do to pick up a pencil and write a quick note home. I know—I was like it myself at that age. It was only when I came back from over there that it occurred to me that it wouldn’t have hurt to write a bit more—but then there’s the censor peering at everything, so half the letter would have been blacked out anyway.”
They reached the front door of the gray, smoke-stained mansion that housed the first-floor offices of Maisie Dobbs, Psychologist and Investigator.
“I don’t like him being in France though,” Billy continued. “And I reckon it was a shock to him. He only joined up because he wanted to drive a tank. Well, he’s driving something, but I don’t know how far they’ll get with it—I heard talk in the Prince that they could be in the thick of it, if Hitler’s boys get any farther into France.” He shook his head. “My worst fear since the day he was born—and his brother—was that they would be in uniform. By the way, miss, where’s your gas mask?”
“As usual I’ve either left it at home or it’s still hanging on the hook behind the office door—I keep forgetting it, which means I’m in good company with almost half the people in London,” said Maisie.
As they made their way up the stairs, and Maisie unlocked the door to the two-room office, Billy went on talking about his sons—not only Billy, who was named for his father, but sixteen-year-old Bobby, now an apprentice mechanic who was proving to be very good at his job. And it seemed Billy always had a story to tell about his role with the local Air Raid Precautions station—as an ARP man, he patrolled his neighborhood after dark to ensure that people had blackout curtains closed, and that everything was as it should be in case of an attack by Hitler’s Luftwaffe.
“Talking about the Prince—Billy, have you spoken to Phil Coombes lately?” said Maisie. “I saw him this morning, and he seemed troubled. I—I’ve been thinking about him all the time you’ve been talking about Billy and Bobby. Do you know anything about his sons? Perhaps he’s worried about them.”
“Don’t know what he has to worry about. The youngest is an apprentice painter and decorator who managed to cop himself some jammy job where he won’t have to enlist when his time comes, and the older boy is in some other reserved occupation, so he can sit out the war too, for as long as it lasts. I’d feel a lot better if my Billy were home on British soil.”
“I know you would,” said Maisie as she pulled a sheaf of papers from her bag and placed them on the desk used by her part-time secretary, Sandra. “But I can’t get Mr. Coombes out of my mind. I might . . . well, we’ll see.”
Billy looked up from leafing through the post he had picked up on the hall table at the foot of the stairs. “Don’t mind me saying so, miss, but when you have one of your thoughts like that, there’s usually something to it. Do you want me to have a word with him? I can go in for a swift half o’shandy come twelve o’clock.”
Maisie nodded. “Would you? That’s a good idea. Just to put my mind at rest, and—”
She was interrupted by the bell above the office door—a short blast, then a second’s silence before two longer blasts, as if the caller had at first been reticent, but had then drawn upon a strength of resolve.
“Bit early for a visitor. Were we expecting anyone?” asked Billy.
Maisie shook her head. “Go and let him in, Billy.”
“Him?”
“Yes. I’m sure it’s Phil Coombes.”