Seconds passed. Time was suspended. Instead of seeing the room in which she stood, she saw the one Charlotte Waite had left so hurriedly five days earlier. Some emotion was shared by the two women, and though she was quick to consider loneliness, which she would find so easy to understand, Maisie knew a more elusive feeling she was as yet unable to name linked them.
Maisie opened her eyes, and the connection with Lydia Fisher began to ebb. She heard Stratton’s voice coming closer. He had obviously thought that she’d had time enough to commune with whatever Lydia Fisher had left behind. Maisie took one last look, but just before she opened the door she felt drawn toward the window where Stratton had stood earlier. Leaning on the sill, she wished she could raise the window for air. A sudden warmth in her hands caused her to look down. Perhaps the radiator underneath had heated the wood. She ran her hands along the sill, then knelt to see if she could turn down the heat. To her surprise the iron pipes were cold. Running her hands down the wall, then along the floorboards, Maisie searched with her fingertips. There was something here for her, something of consequence. Just as she heard Stratton’s footfall outside the door, Maisie felt a hint of something both soft and prickly brush against her forefinger. She leaned closer. The item was tiny and white, so small, in fact, that it could have been swept up by the cleaners. It would be of no interest to the police. It might have fallen to the floor at any time, a small, stray wisp.
“Miss Dobbs,” Stratton knocked at the door.
“Come in, Inspector.”
As Stratton walked into the room, Maisie was folding a linen handkerchief.
“Finished, Miss Dobbs?”
“Yes, Inspector. I was rather saddened; do excuse me.” Maisie sniffed as she placed the handkerchief in her pocket.
Stratton and Maisie left the house and continued their conversation in the car.
“Your thoughts?”
“I’d like to know more about Mr. Fisher, wouldn’t you, Inspector?”
“Absolutely—in fact, I’ve got my men on the job now.”
“Where is he? What does he do?”
“Ah, well, it’s what he does that directly affects where he is. He’s some sort of traveler, an explorer if you like. According to the maid, he’s rarely home. He spends most of his time going off to some far-flung locale with a group of interested individuals—all wealthy—who pay him handsomely to be dragged off into British East Africa, the Gobi Desert, or some such place to be photographed with animals that you could quite easily see at Regent’s Park Zoo!”
“So that explains it.”
“What?”
“Her loneliness.”
“Hmmm.” Stratton looked sideways at Maisie.
“Inspector, I wonder if I could ask a favor?” Maisie smiled.
“Miss Dobbs, I fear that your request may be for something else that will bring me near to losing my job.”
“Not if it helps to find the murderer. I wonder if I could see any belongings taken from the Coulsden victim’s home?”
“Look, Miss Dobbs, though I am grateful for any interpretations you can give me from your ‘woman’s perspective,’ I am intrigued as to why you are interested in that case. The Fisher woman is understandable, given the ‘tenuous’ link to one of your own private cases. But there can be no reason for you to examine Mrs. Sedgewick’s effects. It would be most irregular.”
“I understand perfectly, Inspector.”
They sat in silence for a moment.
“I can have my driver take us right to your door, if you wish.”
“No, Inspector, that will be quite all right, I have other errands to complete before returning to my office.”
The car drew up outside Victoria Station and once again Stratton alighted first to offer Maisie his hand.
“Thank you, Inspector.”
“Miss Dobbs. While I am sure that your assistant’s meeting with Mrs. Fisher went exactly as you have described, I must question him tomorrow morning. You will appreciate that in normal circumstances the procedure would be more formal. However, in this case I will simply ask you to instruct him to present himself at the Yard for questioning at ten o’clock.”
As he departed Stratton wondered what Maisie Dobbs might have gleaned from the minutes spent alone in Lydia Fisher’s house. What could a nice young woman like Miss Dobbs possibly know about the life of an inebriate partygoer like Lydia Fisher?
It was eleven o’clock in the morning when Maisie left Stratton. Before making her way to Fitzroy Square, Maisie hurried back to 15 Ebury Place. She used the staff entrance at the side of the mansion, walked quickly through the kitchen, which was late-morning silent, and went directly to her rooms, using the back stairs. Once there, she took off her blue jacket, removed the white linen handkerchief from the pocket and,without looking at the wisp that was now secure within its folds, placed it in the left-hand drawer of her writing table. It would be safe there.
CHAPTER SEVEN
“Not bad for a Friday morning, is it, Miss?” Billy took off his overcoat and set it on the hook behind the door. He rubbed his hands together and smiled at Maisie. “Missed seeing you for our little meeting at five yesterday, though I got your note that you were visiting Miss Waite’s hairdresser and her seamstress in the afternoon, after your mornin’ with D.I. Stratton. I’ve been checking on more names in that address book, not that there’s much else there to be getting on with.”
“I thought that might be the case, but we must leave no stone unturned.”
“Too right, Miss. Did the hairdresser say anything interesting?”
“No, not really. Only that Charlotte’d changed in recent weeks. Apparently she used to have her hair set once a week, sometimes more often if she had parties to go to. But she’s only been in for one cut in the past six weeks, and she wanted it very plain, so she could draw it back in a bun.” Maisie reached for a folder on the desk. “And the seamstress hadn’t seen her for some weeks, which was unusual, because apparently she was always having alterations made to her very expensive clothing.”
“Well then, as we’ve got to see Mr. Waite this afternoon, p’r’aps we can get some more information from ’im. Bet you’re glad it’s the weekend, ain’t you?”
“My weekend is going to be taken up with the Waite case, and with driving down to Kent. And your weekend is a long way off, Billy; I hate to tell you this, but you’ve to be at Scotland Yard at ten sharp.”
Billy’s countenance changed immediately. “Scotland Yard, Miss?”
“Don’t worry, Billy, it’s in connection with the Fisher case.” Maisie looked up from her desk, where she was removing papers from her document case and setting them on the blotting pad in front of her. “Why? You haven’t done anything else they’d be interested in, have you?” She smiled but looked at him intently.
Billy turned toward the tea tray and replied with his back to Maisie, “Nah, not me, Miss. Tea?”
“Yes, that would be lovely, Billy. We both have a busy day, especially as I’ll be away early next week and we’ve to leave at two for our three o’clock appointment with Joseph Waite. I don’t want to be late for him.”
“Right you are, Miss.”
“And before you ask, my lunch has been canceled, so I won’t be seeing the Detective Inspector today, which isn’t surprising seeing as you will be with him for a couple of hours. We need to make faster progress in our work on the Waite case. Charlotte has absconded before, though we both think she’s old enough to be off on her own anyway. But the fact is that our opinions don’t count, and what goes on in the relationship between Joseph Waite and his daughter is for them to worry about—at this stage anyway.” She held her hand up to silence Billy, who seemed about to comment. “Yes, I know we’ve gone as quickly as we could, but I’m concerned that Lydia Fisher might have been inadvertently or deliberately misleading you about Charlotte’s desire to become a nun. We have to ensure that our client is satisfied, and satisfied as quickly as possible, but there are now more pressing reasons to locate Charlotte Waite quickly. We may be compelled to bring in the police.”