Sunday 7 February 1943
I DO NOT LIKE being blown up.
Not that I spose anyone does but it does seem rather as if explosive devices are positively LOOKING for me.
One minute I was opening a perfectly ordinary door and the next I was flat on the floor under Mr F and J and trying to work out why the air was full of smoke. I would have been a goner if Mr F hadn't realised what was happening. Scraped off the wall as Mr S said. Ugh. And poor Mr F's leg! I'm not sure that it wasn't worse than he let on and he just didn't want to say because he remembered what I said about my First Aid training but HONESTLY I'm much better now at bandaging.
Had rather too much practice.
Mr F made me go to the infirmary altho' I was quite alright except shall have MASSIVE bruises tomorrow but not worse than hockey really. Was not having any of his suggestion one of the soldiers drive us home THANK YOU and after we got back to the vicarage eventually had to say was tired and hide in bedroom to avoid excessive cups of tea from him and Uncle. Expect Uncle A to FUSS but Mr F frowning and asking if I was QUITE sure I was alright every two minutes did rather get on nerves.
That is unfair was not more than every half-an-hour really.
But does usually remember I am grown-up and can be treated as such not as china doll. DO hope he is not working up to deciding It Is All Too Dangerous For A Girl.
If so, shall have to remind him I Could Quite Easily be Blown To Smithereens in Own Bed as anywhere else and Very Nearly Was.
Under normal circumstances, Foyle would have gone fishing.
The peace and quiet of a river, the gentle murmur of water, always helped him think. Fishing took concentration and attention, but not so much that he could not let the details of a case turn over beneath the surface of his thoughts as the fish he pursued turned over beneath the surface of the stream.
At this point in a case, with the feeling that he knew everything he needed to know to reach a solution if he could only put the pieces together correctly nagging at him, he would usually have taken rod and basket and let the problem work itself out in the back of his mind.
His leg, however, while not acutely painful, was still sore enough to make the prospect of standing for a long period unattractive. Nor did he particularly want to leave Sam with no-one but her Uncle in case … in case of in case, despite her protestations of good health.
Instead, he took himself to the churchyard, within earshot of the house if he should be needed.
The afternoon was drawing to a close and the headstones cast long shadows over the threads of green grass struggling up through last year's sere growth. Foyle leaned against the low stone wall, shifting his weight from his injured leg, and watched the shadows grow as the evening fog began to gather in the hollows and beneath the hedges. Perhaps Axel Brink would be buried here, his life commemorated by a simple stone by a country church. Less, perhaps, than the man deserved, but Foyle could not imagine Hilda Pierce permitting any public recognition of either his service or his death.
She had confirmed, before he left Hill House, that Brink's key to the classroom was missing from his possessions. That was, in a way, reassuring: the booby-trap might easily have been set anytime in the past few days, and Jean Marcus may well have been the target.
Foyle would have preferred it if she had been neither intended victim nor possible perpetrator … but if I'm forced to choose between those two, I would prefer her not to be a killer.
He thought about that, and amended it. Not this killer.
What was it Jen had said? If you had asked me a week ago the most likely murder in Hill House, I would have said it would be myself the victim, and Axel the murderer.
He hated me that much.
Could Axel Brink have wired that grenade, expecting Jen to trigger it, before he died?
But why? Sam had pointed out that people often killed for stupid reasons, and by everyone's account Brink had been profoundly troubled and highly volatile, but Foyle found the idea of him planning to blow Jen to pieces because he believed she had been careless in the field unconvincing. Had they both been the target of a third person? The hatred he had seen on Wintringham's face had been the kind of emotion that might easily motivate someone to plan such a vicious trap. And if Miss Pierce has a key to the room … perhaps she is not the only one in that shared office who goes through a colleague's possessions.
But does Wintringham have the practical skills?
Stafford would know.
Stafford would know how to wire that door, as well.
There was, Foyle felt, still a piece missing. A piece missing in France, he thought, not sure why he was convinced of it, and then: Miss Pierce was very quick to distract me with Wintringham's safe and his secret documents.
A display of utter candour, from a woman who lives in a world where it is unnatural to honestly answer whether you prefer sugar in your tea.
He found himself smiling, ruefully amused at how deftly she had manipulated him into believing she was keeping nothing back, complete with ostentatious display of her own vulnerability in the difficulty she'd had rising from the floor. God help us if she ever decides on a life of crime.
"Sir!" Sam's voice came from behind him, and he turned. She was standing a short distance away, arms tightly folded against the evening chill, and he straightened.
"Should you be out here, Sam?"
"Well I wouldn't be," she said sensibly, "except I've come to tell you dinner's ready. And you looked rather thinking so I didn't want to interrupt. Have you solved it, sir?"
"No-ot quite yet," he said, limping toward her.
"Oh," Sam said, turning to walk beside him to the vicarage. "Only - Miss Marcus is here and I rather hoped you'd proved she hadn't done it. Because I've invited her to stay and eat."
"I see," Foyle said.
"She did give us a rabbit," Sam pointed out. "And I know it's not done to have dinner with suspects but if she did do it, I bet she had a jolly good reason like self-defence or something."
"Sam …" Foyle said warningly.
"You think so too," she said. "I know you do."
He took her arm and drew her to a halt. "I don't think anything of the sort. Even people we know can surprise us, Sam. And war changes people."
"That's what she said," Sam said unexpectedly, "about Milner. And she was wrong about him and you're wrong about her. I can just tell, sir."
"Can you."
Even Sam usually took the hint when he used that tone, but tonight she met his gaze steadily. "Yes, sir. I can."
He paused, and glanced back across the churchyard. "We-ell, then," he said. "Why?"
She looked puzzled. "Why? I just - how does anyone know anything? How do you know where the fish are going to be when you fish? How do you know the sun's going to rise in the morning?"
"I know where the fish will be," Foyle said, "because years of experience - and quite a few pieces of advice - have taught me to recognise the signs. If you know that Jen didn't murder Axel Brink-" Sam opened her mouth and he held up one finger to stop her. "If you do, then how do you? What have you recognised?"
"Golly, sir," Sam said. "I don't know."
"Think about it," Foyle said, touching her elbow to get her moving toward the vicarage again. "Think about it, and let me know when you work it out."
She hung back a moment. "Do you know?" she asked.
"No," Foyle said, adding gravely: "But then, you're the one who's very perceptive."