L'Aimant – Chapter 41
Summary:
A group outing to the flickers proves to be a revelation—in more than one sense.
Set after "Broken Souls". November 1944 onwards.
Chapter 41: Ellen rattles Foyle.
Disclaimer:
The creative rights to the characters and plotlines in "Foyle's War" belong to Anthony Horowitz. This story is a not-for-profit homage to the television series, to the talented actors who bring its characters to life, and to a fascinating era.
Author's Notes:
Thanks to dances for polishing this chapter.
Previously, in "L'Aimant"
They'd strolled as far as East Parade before he asked: "What did you tell her about you?"
"Well, as I said before, she seemed to know a lot about me—us—already."
Foyle halted, squinting closed one eye in puzzlement. "So, what's her game? That walking around in the buff. And the lending of the book. What's her interest in you?"
"Oh, that?" Sam waved her hand dismissively. "I think I overreacted. Ellen went to art school." She looked at Christopher triumphantly, as if that actually explained it.
He answered with a look of scepticism that bordered on derisive. "You're going to have to do better than that," he said.
"I mean," Sam clarified patiently, "they're quite relaxed about that sort of thing. The 'body beautiful', you know. In any case, she isn't interested in me..."
Sam paused and took a breath. "She's actually interested in you."
"Me?" Foyle looked at her as if she'd lost her senses. "For what?"
Whatever breed of answer he might have been expecting, the one he actually got was quite a different animal.
"For Rosalind," said Sam.
Chapter 41
Friday morning, 9th February, 1945
"Oh no you don't." Sam cast him an exasperated glance. "I warned you last night not to come, and here you jolly well are, again."
She wheeled her bike across the street to where her husband stood against the church wall, keeping the same vigil that he had on Wednesday morning.
Foyle smiled in some relief when she leant in with a show of warmth to kiss him. In return he ran his hands affectionately down the upper arms of her thick overcoat, and was about to take the bicycle in charge when, without uttering a further word, Sam mounted the saddle and pushed off with her right foot, pedalling away to leave him standing.
"See you back at home!" she called behind her cheerily, and disappeared around the corner with a wave.
Her thwarted husband stepped into the road and stared mutely after her, his lower jaw jutting in annoyance.
"Your devotion does you credit." A soft, clear voice behind him made it plain that Ellen Chance was party to the scene of his humiliation. He turned to find two grey eyes peering sympathetically into his.
"You're worrying because of her condition?" she pressed him. "Sam has told me she's expecting."
Foyle blinked. This woman clearly had Sam's confidence on short acquaintance. He hadn't even shared that news with Milner—a situation he resolved to rectify that very day.
"Yes, well," he cleared his throat, "that's part of it, certainly." He gazed ahead in the direction Sam had taken. "I, ah, do wish she hadn't done that," he admitted, lavishing attention on his shoes.
"Well, quite. You know, if it would help at all," she offered pensively, "I'd gladly see her home as far as George Street, if Sam would let me. I also have a bicycle, but prefer to walk when wearing these." Miss Chance indicated her smart Cuban-heeled court shoes. "However, I could certainly pack a pair of flatties with my bicycle, and change them on arrival at the shop."
"That..." Foyle considered saying 'won't be necessary', but the sentence changed twixt mind and mouth to "…would be very kind. Yes. Thank you." If Sam was going to refuse his help, he'd accept whatever substitute he could.
He took a moment to assess the woman at his side. In heels, a little taller than himself, and well wrapped-up against the cold; but he discerned the crisp white bow protruding from her topcoat at its fur-trimmed neck. Again, she was turned out for duty: smart, businesslike, and undeniably feminine in her attire.
"Seafront, or Carlisle Parade?" Ellen addressed him confidently, with lifted chin. "I prefer Carlisle Parade myself. This time of year, the walk along the seafront tends towards a certain choppiness." She cast him quite a winning grin.
Foyle met her gaze. Miss Ellen Chance had occupied his mind in no small measure in the past two days. It was an invitation which, in view of what he'd learned from Sam on Wednesday morning, he knew that he should not refuse.
"Why not?" he painted on a trace of smile, and signalled his companion to precede him on the narrow pavement.
Sam hadn't told him much, except that Miss Chance had considered Rosalind a friend. And this had baffled him. After he'd learned of their acquaintance in this way, the tenor of his thoughts had veered between the curious and the wary. He had been confident that all of Rosalind's friends were personally known to him; this news was therefore an anomaly. And such anomalies were apt to bother his policeman's brain.
Once they had turned onto Carlisle Parade and could advance more easily abreast of one another, Foyle broached the subject that hung heavily between them.
"I, ah, understand from Sam that you knew my late wife?" He canted his head so that he could catch her next expression. "I... don't recall she ever mentioned you?"
"Yes. Rosalind was a talent," began Ellen. "We met at a small exhibition of local artists in 1931. You might recall the modest occasion? At the town hall?"
Foyle squinted to recall, then nodded. "Yes, in fact I do. But excuse me if I don't... your work was...?"
"Life sculpture was my hobby," supplied Ellen, adding dismissively, "I could hardly expect you to remember my offerings."
"I, uh, wandered in to support Rosalind, mainly," he admitted.
"I modelled in clay, for the most part," Ellen continued. "The expense of casting them in bronze, I reserved for just a few especial favourites. I do so little now..." She held out her gloved hands, and Foyle noted that the smaller fingers of both hands were bent. "The onset of arthritis, as you see. What mobility of fingers I still have, I save for the millinery."
Foyle gave a frown of sympathy for an artisan denied. Dexterity was something he himself was grateful for. The ability to tie an intricate lure or delicate fly was a facility he took for granted, and to lose that thing which gave him pleasure would have been burdensome indeed—and even more so, were he not now fortunate in other ways.
"I'm very sorry," he offered simply, beginning to relax his guard a little, now that Rosalind's common ground with Ellen Chance showed every indication of being purely artistic.
"Thank you. But the artist is still here, Mr Foyle, though the craftswoman's no longer fit to wield her tools. To tie a ribbon on a hat, perhaps; but clay is less forgiving as a medium."
Their stroll had brought them back along the seafront for a stretch, and both walkers turned their collars up to ward off the cold breeze urging at their backs.
"You became friendly at that time?" he prompted.
"We did."
Foyle took a breath. "And, Rosalind... was aware of your... proclivities?"
"I do not hide them from my friends, Mr Foyle." An edge crept into her voice, and Ellen looked away. "Nor have I hidden them from you. Or from your present wife."
"Well, yes," Foyle's tone was wry without being cruel, "quite the opposite, in fact. One has the sense that they've been shoved into our faces. Why might that be, precisely?"
Ellen's tension was apparent in the way she now pressed her gloved hands together. "I wanted you... to understand that Rosalind became my friend in that adversity. And that in spite of it, I had her confidence, and love.
"You had her love?" Foyle came to an abrupt halt, and the irritation in his voice attained a pitch that sent two roosting pigeons flapping, startled, from a nearby chimneystack.
His eyes hardened. "I don't appreciate invention of this kind."
Ellen hovered at his side, regarding him with steady concern. "There are many kinds of love," she offered mildly. "Rosalind's loving friendship was a thing I treasured. Perhaps—and I admit it now—too selfishly... to the extent that I was reticent to offer my condolence in your loss. And by the time I had gathered in my selfishness sufficiently to do so... the interval had long since passed in which I could have come to you expressing sorrow. It would have done no more than resurrect the heartache you were trying to suppress."
The pained bewilderment on her companion's face moved Ellen to be merciful. "She was a friend, and treated me more kindly—yes, more lovingly than I had ever had the fortune to experience before. No one would know more than you, her gentleness and sweetness. But though my own wish might have been for more, you had her heart, without a shadow of a doubt. She spoke of you with such devotion, and of Andrew, I could only think of you with envy in that year when she and I were close."
Foyle's mind was whirling from a sudden access of resentment. "I can't conceive of why," he spat, "she would have kept all mention of you to herself, if things were as you say."
"My profession as a teacher..." said Ellen quietly.
"My wife and I had no secrets," he protested bitterly. "None."
But it was as much an effort to convince himself that he was dealing with a liar. To learn of such a covert friendship did not sit well with his unchallenged view of his relationship with Rosalind. The straw he clutched at now was that the news came from a not-unbiased source.
Ellen kept her calm in the face of what she recognised as shocked denial. "Come now, Mr Foyle. It's likely she omitted me from her account to you because she wouldn't wish to lie about the... difficulty. And also..." she offered brightly, "that she wanted to surprise you."
Foyle's eyelids lowered like blinds and sent his eyes into a squint of rank displeasure. By all criteria considered reasonable, this news should not unsettle him; but unsettle him it did. This was not a reaction he could control. He felt at once blindsided and invaded by this woman who, unknown to him, had been observing his routines and progress; who had quietly been on intimate terms with his late wife; and, for all he knew, had now latched onto his current wife with similar intentions.
A snort of incredulity escaped him, spurring Ellen into hurried explanation.
"Rosalind posed for me," she told him quickly, then waited for the implications of the statement to sink in.
Foyle's narrowed eyes softened just barely. The question forming in his mind was 'Naked?', but as his expression mellowed from hostile to curious, the inquiry on his lips emerged as, "Unclothed?"
"Well, certainly. In the great tradition of life sculpture, Mr Foyle." Ellen's frown was one of anxious reassurance, and was rewarded with a cautious nibble from Foyle at his upper lip, accompanied by a single, curt nod.
"How often?" was his next question, delivered under a raised brow.
"On Wednesdays. Every week for a few months. Until..." Ellen's eyes filled before she could cast them downward.
Foyle inclined his head. "I see."
"Rosalind fell ill while you were all away on holiday?"
Foyle blinked, then after a short pause, he nodded affirmation. Clearly, his family's movements had been an open book to this woman.
"She had told me that you were all going to visit relatives . But after that first week when I knew I wouldn't see her, she missed our next week's sitting too, and so I called at your home to find her. And I learned... a woman told me on your doorstep... that she..."
Miss Chance's gaze again drifted to the pavement.
Alice, thought Foyle. Alice, who had come to help, and deal with things and be with Andrew while he went to work; be with their quietly brooding son while he—he left the house, and drove to the station, closed the office door behind him, and vomited his grief into the metal waste-bin by the desk. In those awful first weeks after Rosalind, a woman—an acquaintance—on the doorstep would be neither here nor there. Whatever Alice might subsequently have mentioned to him about Ellen's visit, the information would have slipped through his fogged brain like quicksilver.
Now, on the Hastings seafront, on a winter's morning more than a dozen years after Rosalind's death, a stranger was laying claim to a piece of his late wife's affection; and whatever kind of love that might have been, this woman Ellen Chance had suffered the loss privately, alone; devoid of any public sympathy or recognition, and without anyone to share the sorrow.
He shifted on the pavement uncomfortably. "Why now?" he breathed. "Why break your silence now?"
Ellen considered. "Well... when I discovered that Samantha was to be my fire-watching partner, I concluded it was time. One tires of equivocation, Mr Foyle. You've found your happiness again. Samantha is a kind and lovely girl. And I've been lucky in the interim, as well."
Foyle slowly resumed their route, with Ellen following behind him.
"It's time to give you something back of Rosalind," she continued. "The something I've been keeping all this time. But... before I gave it to you, I wanted you to understand the way I felt about her. Why I kept it for so long. The reasons, I see now, were selfish ones. And now, I'd like to make you a present of it."
And so it was that Ellen Chance and Christopher Foyle continued on their walk to the millinery shop in George Street, and that half an hour later, Foyle emerged sporting a new olive-green fur-felt trilby, trimmed with a darker green grosgrain ribbon band; and in his arms, a heavy parcel wrapped first in a large terry towel, then carefully enveloped in brown paper and secured with string. His older hat was swinging from one finger in a paper carrier.
Miss Chance's eyes followed him through the window of her shop front until he reached the corner which would hide him from her line of sight. Foyle halted, turned, and raised a hand in valediction—a gesture which she smilingly returned. And then he disappeared from view.
As Foyle trudged up Steep Lane, the awkwardly distributed weight of the unwieldy package in his arms caused him to break a light sweat. Snippets from his conversation with Ellen were still coursing through his mind in a jumble. "I wouldn't deny my inclinations to the Head, and was discreetly removed from post." "The millinery? I have to earn a living, Mr Foyle." "All artists are artisans to some degree, though not all artisans are artists. But my hands have let me down." "I thought that if I failed to make you understand, Samantha might then intercede. And that is why I lent the book for her to read."
Now that he considered matters in a bout of quiet time, he fancied that Rosalind might even have spoken of a friend of similar artistic bent—a teacher at the High School. But he had never pressed her for the details, and she in turn had never offered them. And Rosalind's art had never so involved him that he would have expected her to. They had lived busy lives, quite separate in the working day. In fact, if he were honest, her creative passion had remained a thing apart in their relationship. He would no sooner have interposed himself there than he would have expected her to stand next to him in waders, casting lures across the surface of the river. If Rosalind had irrigated that artistic impulse in herself through a close friendship, he only had himself to blame. It was a sobering realisation, and one which was still exercising his brain when he struggled up the front steps of his home and stood the heavy parcel in the corner by the coat stand.
Georgie, ready in her uniform, poked her head out of the kitchen. "Ooh! You're back, Chris—" she corrected herself—"Sir."
"I am. Where's Sam?" he asked, pushing his new hat distractedly onto the peg.
"Oh, she's in the bathroom. What's in the parcel?" Georgie wandered over to drag an inquisitive finger down the wrapping paper.
"It's, um. Leave it for this evening, and I'll... er..." Foyle trailed off, and walked on past her to ascend the stairs. "Start the car," he called over his shoulder, "and keep the engine ticking over, hmm? I'll be out shortly."
Georgie's eyes trailed after him. She was a trifle miffed at what had been a veiled but unmistakeable dismissal, but she wasn't one to hold a grudge, and sauntered over to the mirror by the coat stand, where she secured her cap in place, then shrugged into her overcoat and skipped down the front steps to start the Wolseley.
Samantha was relaxing in a warm, albeit shallow, bath when the knock came at the door. She hadn't locked it—there was hardly any need, all girls together; she never locked it against Christopher in any case. The door edged open to reveal her husband in his overcoat.
"No quarrels, Darling," she pre-empted him, closing her eyes to settle back against the sloped end of the tub. "I warned you I wouldn't be babied. Anyway, I suppose you used the opportunity to learn some more from Ellen?"
"Sam..." he closed the door and lowered himself onto his knees beside the tub, resting fully-clad arms on the curved white vitreous enamel edge.
She searched his face. "You aren't angry?"
He shook his head, tongue creeping out to run across his upper lip. "No. Listen... What I need to know is this: if you had an interest and I wasn't, say... showing it enough attention, you would tell me, wouldn't you?" His eyes were soulful.
Sam frowned and sat up. "Darling, if you talk in riddles... Pass the towel," she sighed, and rose out of the water.
He squired her from the tub with one hand, chewing away at his favourite cheek spot, and observed her movements glumly as she dried herself.
"If this is about Rosalind and Ellen," Sam resumed, lifting one foot onto the toilet seat to dry her calf, "I wish you wouldn't. Ellen falls in love with women, but you aren't going to tell me you believe that Rosalind loved her back in that way?"
Christopher slumped against the bathroom door, and trained his eyes upon her wearily.
"I can't help but wonder if I failed Rosalind in some way," he declared after a moment.
Wrapping the towel about herself, Sam reached around him and unhooked her dressing gown.
"From personal experience, Christopher, I can't imagine that of you."
She tied the belt around her middle, then, seeing that he lingered in some need of consolation, leant back against him, feeling for his arms and drawing them around her waist.
"I know the things you're capable of," she told him easily, "and failing women whom you love just isn't one of them."
They stayed like that some little while: Sam smiling in contentment as he held her closely in his arms; Christopher ruminating gravely on the lessons of the day. Eventually he broke the silence.
"I wouldn't ask it of you this year," he ventured, hesitantly, "but if ever you feel you'd like to learn how it's done..."
Sam frowned. The phrase had come from nowhere, and she couldn't guess the sense of it.
"...I've got an extra pair of waders," he continued, for all the world as if it were supposed to solve the mystery.
So that was it.
"It's not my cup of tea," she patted him apologetically. "But picnics by the river can be lovely. We can still spend time together."
He squeezed her hand to show his gratitude. "And if you wouldn't mind, Sweetheart... I've no desire to see you sculpted in the buff."
...
Georgie cast a surreptitious eye upon her passenger. He'd been a long time in that bathroom with Samantha, and though it was none of her business what went on behind closed doors, she couldn't help but notice. Turning off the engine to save petrol, she'd nipped out of the Wolseley at least twice, up the front steps into the hall and cocked an ear while she waited for The Boss to join her. There'd been silence. In the sense of no-voice silence. A heavy sort of silence, as if other things were going on.
She'd poked a curious finger at the parcel standing next to where the coats hung. It was padded out with something soft, but the core of it was hard—that much she could tell. She thought of loosening the string and peeking, but concluded it would be too difficult to do up again. Therefore she made do with feeling up and down the outline of the thing with both hands. If she weren't too much mistaken, this was probably a human figure. Perhaps a statue for the garden. Experimentally, she hefted it, finding it reasonably liftable, but she wouldn't want to carry it too far.
Bored with that, she wandered down into the kitchen and raided the biscuit barrel. She couldn't be expected to hang on this long entirely without sustenance; breakfast had been more than an hour ago. They would be late at the station and this was her normal time for tea and broken biscuits with Brookie.
Brookie was a tonic. Much more fun that Mr Milner, who tended to regard her with a cross between bewilderment and caution. Georgie had yet to make him crack a smile when they were on their own. He wasn't rude or snooty with her. Just seemed ever-so preoccupied, as if he had no time to waste on being kind. But Brookie was a different matter. Brookie...
"Sam says a letter came from Andrew?"
The Boss's question shouldn't have surprised her. She'd meant to bring the matter up herself. The morning post had come while she was waiting for him to get back from meeting Sam, and she had read the letter several times already, meaning to discuss it with the others—well, whichever one of them showed interest first. But Sam had gone straight upstairs before Georgie had the chance to share the contents, and Christopher... well he had barely given her the time of day.
Now he was interested, was he? Well, maybe she would make him sweat a bit. Not much. She wasn't a vindictive girl, but sometimes he could make her feel a tad as though she were a trial—you know—'under his feet'.
"Mmh," she offered lightly. "Didn't want to bother you when you were busy."
Foyle's glance crept sideways. He was learning slowly to interpret his new driver—Andrew's fiancée. There were sensitivities to negotiate: as Sam had warned him, in his son's absence, Georgie had appointed him to the role of Andrew by proxy. Not in any untoward way, but as her living link to him.
"I'm not busy now," he sent her a cajoling look. "Are you busy?"
Georgie grinned at the overture, and pulled out to avoid a cyclist. "I can drive and talk. They neither of them use much brainpower, really."
"Good to hear." His pursed lips made light sport of her beneath a barely-arched brow. "Care to tell me what my son's plans might be?"
"I... don't mind if I do." Georgie squared her shoulders and renewed her grip on the wheel. "He's coming home on Tuesday next. And for at least a week. I'm so excited." The wriggle in her seat conveyed how much.
Satisfied, Foyle nodded once and leant against the door. "Can't guarantee time off for you," he warned. "If Milner wants to go to Hythe or Ramsgate, you'll be required."
"Ah." Georgie clenched her jaw and took it bravely. "Well, obviously I can't expect..."
"... but any day he doesn't need you, you can take as leave."
"Oh, you old darling!" Georgie squealed and scrunched her shoulders; then she checked herself and added, "Sir."
"Rright. That'll be enough of that," said Foyle. "Now give a man a glimpse into the state of mind—and health—of the son he brought up?"
...
"Is this it?" Foyle could barely hide his disappointment as he leafed through the report. "So what's the plan for next week?"
"Back to Hythe on Monday, Sir. Ask a few more questions." Milner stood awkwardly. "Been through the post mortem reports line-by-line with Grindley. There are commonalities. Except for Pauline Sansom—as you say, a stabbing. But there were certainly shared elements in all of them. The profile of the victims. Age. Appearance. The strangulations were with some sort of twisted flex, from what we've gathered from the nature of the neck abrasions."
Foyle shifted in his seat. "It's not a lot. What's the setup like at Hythe these days?"
"No replacement found for Fielding yet, Sir. They're surviving on uniformed resources. My contact's still Patricia Dale."
Foyle stacked the pages he'd been reading, tapping them edge-first into an ordered bundle on his desk-top. "I'll take a ride there with you," he announced. Seeing Milner's disappointment, he stretched his eyes and added, generously, "Got a little errand of my own. Concerning Fielding. So you can relax. My finger's still out of your pie."
"Right, Sir." Milner's previously worried stare softened. "I'll let them know at Hythe, at any rate, so if there's anything you need..."
"Fielding's home address would be a start. It's not a thing I've ever had a call to use."
His sergeant nodded and prepared to leave, but Foyle detained him.
"Paul, sit down a moment." He eyed the young man, reading in his serious features all the signs of stress that came with professional ambition twinned with the imminent financial burden of providing for a family.
He indicated the chair across from him, and Milner installed himself there, hitching up his trouser legs at the knees, and submitting to his boss's scrutiny a trifle anxiously.
"How's Edie?"
Relieved that this was not to be the third-degree about the murder cases, Milner's face relaxed, and broke into a broad grin. "Blooming, Sir."
"Good news," Foyle nodded affably. "So… remind me when the baby's due?"
"About three months to go yet, but the doctor says her health is good. Complains of swollen ankles and a bit of backache, and she's tired in the evenings, so I have to put the pinny on myself from time to time." His eyes danced.
The prospect of fatherhood clearly agreed with his sergeant, thought Foyle, for as Milner spoke, his face grew warm and animated.
"Well, no shame in that," his boss smiled back at him.
There was a pause, and Milner's brows furrowed as he tried to gauge the motive of the conversation. Mr Foyle was genuinely interested—that much was clear—but he was leading up to something. Milner leant forward, clasped his hands, and waited.
"Got some news to share," continued Foyle, and took a moment to straighten the pens in his pen tray.
"Oh yes, Sir?" Here it came.
"Sam... well. Sam's expecting." Foyle took in the young man's genuine unspoken pleasure at the news, and nodded silent thanks.
Eventually, Paul found his tongue. "So happy for you, Sir." He rose and offered Foyle his hand. "Congratulations. What does Sam say?"
His boss stood to accept the gesture, and gave a philosophical shrug of the mouth. "Taking things in her stride. Planning how to do her bit around it all... Um... Putting up with no nonsense from me, whatsoever."
Paul read the anxiety behind that last bit of humour. "Well, Sir, it's natural for you to be concerned. I worry about Edie. But Sam… well, knowing what we do about these other women..."
Foyle conceded with a light tilt of the head. "Notwithstanding which, I, um, might have been a little hard on you, on Monday."
"No, Sir." Paul shook his head gravely. "You were quite right."
The two men stood face to face, and pensive for a moment, then Milner brightened. "Could I... Should I tell the men? They'll be as pleased as punch for both of you."
Foyle scratched his ear. "Mwell, be my guest."
...
Milner strode up to the front desk, face aglow with the good news. "Sam's expecting! Mr Foyle's just told me."
From her seat in the back office, Georgie glanced up from her magazine. "Ooh! I'm glad he's telling people. Lovely, isn't it?"
Brooke allowed his jaw to drop theatrically. "Well ain't that a turn up for the books, eh?
"Davis!" he called over his shoulder, "howsabout that, then? Mrs Foyle's expectin'." As he spoke, Brooke turned his back on Milner, and pinned his constable with a warning glare.
Davis took the hint obediently. "Ain't that something, Sarge? Yeah. Blimey. Fancy that. Well, knock me down with a fevver. Who'd've thought it? That was bloomin' quick..."
Brooke's face, which had been signalling encouragement and approval at the young man's reasonably credible expressions of surprise, declined suddenly into an eye-roll of exasperation.
"None of your business 'ow quick it was, Davis," he supplied steadily, with a look of pointed menace. "'Cos that's life, innit? That's what 'appens, don't it?" He gave a prompting nod to Davis, back still turned to Milner.
Davis' features illuminated in the manner of a caveman who'd discovered fire. "Oh. Yeah. Yeah, course it does, Sarge."
"Very happy for the pair of them, Mr Milner," Brooke swivelled round to face his counterpart. "And Mrs Foyle'll make a lovely mother. Thinkin' back to how she had those salvage kiddies followin' her like a line of ducklings. Fair brings a tear to the eye. She's a natural."
"Yeah," piped Davis helpfully from behind. "And Mr Foyle's a natural, as well."
****** TBC ******
More soon.
GiuC
P.S. Stand by for the final instalment of The Crash by dancesabove!