MONDAY 31 AUGUST
NORTH-WESTERN ESSEX
Andrew leaves Debden just after the blackout ends for the day, without even going to the mess for breakfast. He will eat on the way to Hastings, he decides. He hitches a ride to the motor coach station, where he finds the canteen all but stripped bare but does manage to get a seat on the 8.15 to Victoria.
HASTINGS
8.00 a.m. – Twenty-three years old today. Best possible birthday gift – I go back to work today! Very glad today is Monday, as well – makes it feel all the more like starting new chapter and putting past few months behind me. (Mixed metaphor? Ought to avoid.)
'There are some things I need to warn you about before either of us goes in there,' Mr Foyle begins, after Sam has pulled the Wolseley up in front of the police station, 'and I'm afraid you're not going to enjoy hearing any of this.'
Sam protests Brindley's strictures just as fiercely as Foyle expects her to do.
'He did tell me the same thing,' she admits, 'but honestly, sir, I feel fine! This is absolutely unnecessary.'
'I think we should let Dr Brindley be the judge of that, Sam. You were close enough to dying that I was starting to think about what I was going to say to your family. That was only a fortnight ago. There's no point in taking chances, is there?'
'Oh, well, I suppose not,' Sam sighs. 'How long will this go on, though?'
'Let's say through Friday to begin with. No debates,' Mr Foyle goes on in a warning tone. 'The second thing I need to tell you is that Dr Brindley isn't the only person who's had something to say about your illness. I heard from Miss Pierce on Friday. It seems that – and please don't ask me to explain how this was done, because I've no idea – in addition to being carried out by Army Intelligence, and therefore classified to begin with, the experiment that led to your contracting anthrax has only last week been brought under the aegis of the Special Operations Executive, and so it's now covered even more thoroughly by the Official Secrets Act.'
'All the better, then, that I've told some people that I had bronchitis and will tell everyone else that it was pneumonia!' Sam says excitedly. 'If no one is meant to know what I really had, then it would be good to create some confusion about it. Miss Pierce would approve of that, don't you think?'
'Hilda Pierce has caused sufficient trouble for this department that I'm not sure we need to concern ourselves with what she would or wouldn't approve of,' Mr Foyle responds, with some heat.
Even so, Sam thinks that he looks rather impressed.
'The third thing,' he goes on, and then stops suddenly.
'Well, look,' he begins again. 'You can do whatever you want to with this news. Or do nothing at all with it. It's no business of mine,' he tells Sam, finally saying aloud the words he has been repeating to himself since Friday night. 'But I think it'll be for the best if you know about this sooner rather than later, and if you don't find out by, um, by accident.'
He begins choosing his words carefully.
'Late on Friday,' he continues, 'I learned on very good authourity that at the end of next week the R.A.F. is going to leave the airbase at Debden. The Defence Ministry are transferring it to the United States Army Air Force. I was also informed that 605 Squadron are being moved to Hastings,' he goes on, 'and all three of the instructors from Debden are being transferred here with it.'
Now he is speaking to Sam's profile; she is looking straight ahead out of the windshield.
'At least one of them has been given a substantial pre-transfer leave, and is using that time to relocate to Hastings early, arriving sometime today. I ought to add that I've been advised that none of this is meant to be generally known until next Monday, for safety's sake.'
'I see. Thank you for the information, sir. Of course I won't repeat it,' is all Sam says at first. 'They'll be wondering in there where you are,' she goes on, nodding toward the building and speaking now in a voice that announces The subject of Andrew is not open for discussion. 'I'll see you inside, then.'
'Yes. Oh, one other thing, Sam,' Foyle adds. 'I think I'll walk home tonight. I could use a bit of extra excercise.'
'Welcome back, Miss Stewart,' Sergeant Brooke exclaims, 'and many happy returns of the day!'
'Thank you, Brookie. I'm very, very glad to be back,' Sam tells him. Then she presses close to the sergeant's desk and leans her head forward conspiratorially.
'Brookie, do you know why I was gone?' she whispers as quietly as she can, so that Brooke must lean forward as well.
'Yes, I do, Miss Stewart, what an awful thing! I hope you realize how lucky -'
'Shhh! If anybody asks about it, or brings it up at all, I had pneumonia. That's all you need to say. Now then,' she says aloud, 'do you happen to have a dictionary back there?'
9.15 – Aegis (ee-jiss – no wonder I had trouble finding it in the dictionary!). n. The auspices, backing or support of a particular person or organisation.
Looking something up in dictionary really ought not to mean that you must then straight away look up something else!
Auspices (aw-spiss-is). pl. n. Patronage, umbrella, protection, guidance, support, backing, guardianship, trusteeship, sponsorship, supervision, influence, control, charge, responsibility, keeping, care.
Awfully quiet here this morning. Must find something to do. Need quite badly to keep mind occupied.
Brookie just took report over telephone – burglary?
'Is there something I can help you with, Sister Ashford?'
Edith tries not to jump. Matron has a trick of sneaking up on the ward sisters, bad enough at the best of times but worse now.
'Oh, no, thank you, Matron, I was just trying to see something in the visitors' register. I have a patient, Miss Edwards – this is her fourth day here and it seems to me that she's had no visitors at all, and I was just rather concerned.' True, actually, Edith reminds herself.
'Well, you won't find out about it in there,' Matron tells her. 'The visitors' register is here; that's Dr. Brindley's appointment book.'
'Yes, of course. How silly of me!'
But Edith already has what she needs. Dr. Brindley's list for the previous Thursday is short, just five patients, all but one of them with rather long names. The exception is the first one: just one syllable, an easy name to remember.
Visiting a burgled shop and interviewing the proprietor is normally a detective sergeant's job, in Sam's experience, but after Brooke tells Milner what the shop is, Milner tells Foyle about it.
If Sam is puzzled to be driving both Milner and Foyle to the site of what sounds to her like a routine petty crime, she does not say so. Perhaps she is just happy to be out in the car again.
If she notices that the shop they are visiting looks out at the south-east end of Swan Terrace, the glorified alley that connects the High Street directly to the lower end of Steep Lane, she gives no sign of that, either.
Mr Foyle doesn't actually tell her to wait in the car, so she follows them in.
Fry and Son, stationers and engravers, is a fairly old Hastings business, established in the last full year of William IV's reign. Sam bought her diary here, and last year's as well.
And jolly dear they were, too. Highway robbery, really. I ought to ask Mr Foyle to investigate this place on suspicion of profiteering.
Mr Fry can't recall the shop ever having been the victim of a burglary or any other crime until this morning, when he arrived to discover the rear entry forced open and his entire remaining stock of rag paper – sheets, card stock, envelopes, in all sizes from foolscap folio up – gone.
'Rag paper,' Mr Foyle wants to know, 'as contrasted with what?'
'Wood pulp paper, or mixed stock,' Mr Fry explains. 'Rag paper is made from cotton or linen, or both, although cotton is what one usually finds. It lasts much longer than wood pulp, but it is also much costlier.'
He explains that it is used for, among other things, official documents of all kinds – the Hastings Borough Council, in fact, has been his only significant client for this type of product since the war began.
'Church documents – baptismal certificates and such – they're done on rag paper, too, so that they'll last,' Sam puts in.
'What sort of ink would be used for that kind of thing?' Foyle asks, ignoring her.
'Oh, I couldn't say, I'm sure,' Mr Fry replies, his tone dismissive. 'we sell ink for for fountain pens, of course, but you would have to ask a dealer in printers' or artists' needs. There is such a shop in the High Street, at the north end – Pilbeam & Co.'
'Ah. Yes. Thank you,' says Mr Foyle.
While Mr Foyle and Milner are outside examining the rear approach to the building, Brooke telephones the shop to announce that another burglary has just been reported. Sam takes down the information and rings off.
'I fear that another crime has occurred,' Mr Fry announces when the detectives return.
'Sgt Brooke just telephoned,' Sam explains. 'It's the oddest thing – we were just speaking of Pilbeam & Co., and they've been burglarized as well.'
'That's just up the street, as Mr Fry mentioned. We should go there before we head back to the station,' Mr Foyle says evenly.
It looks to Sam as though he's steeling himself for something.
LONDON
At Victoria Andrew learns that he will have to wait for the 1335 local. He buys a ticket and manages to get a cup of tired tea and something claiming to be a ham sandwich. Now he has nothing to do but wait.
You can always write something, Sam herself had written last Christmas, when she'd given him a notebook. It's a small sketchbook, really; he can remember his mother carrying blank books bound just like this one, though hers were larger. If you don't feel like writing a letter to me, Sam told him then, or to somebody else for that matter, then keep a diary. It's a great comfort, I find.
It's a great comfort that the King's Regs strictly forbid, though Andrew knows that a lot of chaps in the R.A.F. do that very thing. And Sam had been absolutely right. The notebook is buried too deep in his kit for him to pull it out, though, and in any case that isn't what he wants.
He finds the last of his letter paper and sets to work. By the time he boards his coach he has something to show for his effort and feels a bit better.
HASTINGS
From in front of the shop it is almost impossible to avoid looking up the short length of Swan Terrace. Foyle watches as Sam goes around to the driver's side of the car, lowering her head as she does so.
No point in using up our petrol ration by moving the car, he thinks. But if we leave her here, she'll have nothing to do other than...
'Sam, do you feel up to a short walk? It'll be uphill a bit on the way back, but it isn't far.'
Pilbeam & Co. has taken to closing on Mondays for the duration, but Mrs Pilbeam discovered the burglary when she came in this morning to do some bookkeeping. Sam can't recall seeing her the only other time she's been in this shop, last December, when she'd bought a notebook ...
No. Don't think about it. She watches Mr Foyle instead.
He looks as though he'd rather be almost anywhere else, she thinks. Why?
A large quantity of rag paper of various weights and sizes has been stolen. Ink has been taken as well: India ink, various colored drawing inks, and some printing ink. Some pen nibs and holders are also gone. The nibs are of various sorts, some for drawing, some for lettering.
The forced entry is once again from the rear – actually much easier here than at the other end of the street, Milner observes. From the Bourne you can walk right up to the back of the building.
Like Mr Fry, Mrs Pilbeam can't recall her family's business ever having been burgled or robbed before this. After her statement has been taken and a request made for contact to be maintained, she looks at Foyle for a moment, glances at the card he has just handed her, then looks back at him.
'Please forgive me if I'm speaking out of turn, Superintendent,' she says, 'but I have to say that your name rings a bell. Are you a client of ours?'
Artists' materials! Oh, of course, how sad, thinks Sam.
'Not me,' Foyle answers. 'My wife – her professional name was Rosalind Howard – bought a lot of her supplies from you.'
It begins to rain on the way back to the station, and is coming down steadily by the time Sam has seen to the car.
She goes to the canteen and eats lunch.
Milner goes to his office and writes a report on the two burglaries.
Foyle, in turn, goes into his office and answers three messages that are waiting for him. One is from Assistant Chief Constable Rose.
Sam returns to the waiting room and sits down behind the desk.
After lunch – Two shops in High Street burglarized this a.m.: Fry and Son (where I bought this) and Pilbeam and Co (artists's supplies). Reams of good-quality paper stolen from both; also from P+Co, ink and pens. Paper in short supply, so possibly black-marketeers. Have not heard of shortages of other writing supplies – who would take?
Mr F's telephone has rung several times since we returned to station.
The walk from Hastings Station leaves Andrew deflated. The rain doesn't help matters, nor do the errands he does on his way home. He is afraid to ring the bell at the first place where he stops, but at least it's still there: buildings that were intact when he left for Debden stand as bombed-out husks or are simply gone. He registers for the week at his father's grocer, where a complete stranger is behind the counter.
Unable to think of anything else to write, Sam puts her diary away and reads a memorandum that Brooke gives her about recent changes to service in the canteen.
She stares off into the middle distance for a time.
She tries to read the Hastings and St. Leonard's Observer, then The Times, and then the Daily Mail, but finds her mind wandering.
Author's note:
Nova Pilbeam (1919-2015) died while I was writing the first draft of this chapter. As a young actress in British films of the 1930s and '40s, she often played characters who share Sam's pluck, steadfastness, and candid gaze at the world.
