It came to a halt beside them, and Jeremy got out. “My God, I came as soon as I heard,” he said. “We saw the fire last night, but we thought it was that plane that crashed in a field. Then this morning one of the servants came from the village and told us. How much damage was there?”
“Not too bad, really,” Livvy said. “Part of the roof was destroyed. The attic was damaged. Grandmama’s hideous Victorian monstrosities went up in smoke. You know stuffed birds and dried flowers and things. The ceiling came down in some of the servants’ rooms. But we were extremely lucky having the whole regiment on hand. They put it out in no time at all.”
“And what about all of you? Any casualties?”
He was looking at Pamela.
“No, we’re all fine, thank you. At least I’m fine, thanks to Ben. I went up to rescue Phoebe’s governess in the east turret. I found her passed out and lying under the bed, and I couldn’t move her. The room was rapidly filling with smoke, and the ceiling was coming down. I didn’t know what to do. Then Ben arrived, and we were just pulling her out when a great beam fell. He flung himself”—Ben was sure she was going to say “on top of me,” but she corrected and said—“he pushed me out of the way just in time, and together we dragged Miss Gumble to safety.”
Jeremy looked at Ben and grinned. “Not bad, old chap. So you’re having your share of excitement after all. Maybe I shouldn’t have underestimated you.”
“No,” Ben said calmly. “You should never do that.”
“So all’s well that ends well here. Jolly good,” Jeremy said. “I say, Pamma. Want to come out for a drive? I’ve finally been allowed to get my hands on the motorcar, on the pretext of checking up on you all.”
Pamela looked across at Ben.
“I have to go up to London and report in at work,” he said. “I just wanted to make sure that everything was all right here.”
“Can’t do without you at work, eh, Ben?” Jeremy asked.
“Jeremy, don’t be so horrid,” Pamela said. “See how you’ll feel if they don’t ever let you fly again.”
“I didn’t mean . . .” Jeremy said.
“Yes, you did,” Ben replied. “But you’ll find I’m quite thick-skinned these days. Have a nice drive, you two.” He went over to his bicycle, started to wheel it away, then decided to go and see Miss Gumble in her stable quarters. The room was spartan, to say the least. A single bed, a chest of drawers, and some hooks on the wall for clothes. Every surface was currently piled high with books. She was, as Phoebe had reported, a bit weepy.
“It is so good of you to come and visit me, Mr. Cresswell,” she said. “I can’t thank you enough for saving my life, but so many of my precious books have been destroyed. My whole life taken from me.”
“I’m so sorry,” he said. “Maybe more of them will be salvageable than you think.”
“But my papers . . . I had hoped to finish my thesis. My former Oxford tutor said that he would petition for me to present it to the examiners. I had to leave Oxford, you know, when my father died and my brother turned me out without a penny to my name.”
“Yes, Phoebe told me,” he said. “I’m very sorry.”
She nodded. “Life isn’t always fair. Why should Farleigh be hit by a bomb?”
Ben was looking around the room, trying to bring the subject back to telescopes.
“I don’t see your telescope,” he said. “I hope you managed to salvage that.”
“Oh yes, thank you. It’s hard to destroy a telescope. It was my father’s. Good solid British brass.”
“Were you studying the stars?” he asked.
She laughed. “Oh, goodness gracious, no. It’s just a little telescope. I indulge in a little bird-watching. I had it trained on a blackbird’s nest in a big oak tree. There was a cuckoo in it. I find cuckoos fascinating, don’t you? They lay their eggs in other birds’ nests, and then their young one is so much bigger, and it pushes the real chicks out so that the poor blackbirds have only it to feed.” She shuddered. “Life is so cruel. I shan’t bother to set my telescope up here. There is no view of the woods, only the stable yard.”
Ben was glad to make his escape. The telescope and the papers all sounded completely plausible. But then he had been told during his briefings that women make good spies. As he was wheeling his bicycle away, he remembered the papers that were drying in the conservatory. Miss Gumble was busy arranging things in her new quarters, so he had a good chance to take a peek at them. He made his way around the house to the conservatory on the other side. In the old days, before the war, there would have been a pack of gardeners. Now, there were only a couple of old men trying to keep things going. There was no sign of either of them as he approached the conservatory and let himself in. Inside was the sweet, moist smell of growing plants. He noticed small grapes on the grapevine in the corner and small tomato plants with yellow blooms on them. And there on the long table were the books and papers. Some of them still a soggy mess beyond hope. On others, the ink had run. He bent over them, trying to read the writing. Then he stiffened. He read the words Wars of the Roses. He didn’t find a date, but words leaped off the page. “Struggle to replace a weak king with a more vibrant branch of the Plantagenet dynasty. Two branches of the royal line. Final battle. Outcome of the battle was defeat of the royal . . .”
Was it just coincidence that he had taken the numbers 1461 to be a date during the Wars of the Roses? Or was it possible there was some hidden message here? Two branches of the royal family. Defeat of the weaker line . . . the king who stammered? The king who was anti-Hitler? Was there possibly a plot to get rid of the king? He looked through the rest of the papers, but couldn’t find anything that was obviously incriminating. Then he wondered if Miss Gumble might be working for the other side and sending and receiving messages with a hidden radio. In which case, why did they find it necessary to have someone parachute down with a photograph in his pocket?
Back at the vicarage, he changed into city clothes and then cycled to the station. By now, word had spread around the whole village, and Ben was bombarded with questions about his role in last night’s drama as he came upon a group of women chatting outside the bakery.
“So it really was a bomb, was it?” one of the women called out to him. “We wondered if it was just a normal house fire.”
“No, it was definitely a bomb,” Ben said.
“Why would anyone want to bomb Farleigh?” a woman asked.
“Maybe because it’s one of them stately homes,” another woman muttered. “You know what those devils are like. They want to scare us into capitulating by bombing everything that matters to us. But they’re mistaken. We can end up with rubble all around us, and we won’t give in.”
Ben looked at her weathered and wrinkled face. A woman whose life had been of the uttermost simplicity, who had probably never ventured past Sevenoaks or Tonbridge, and yet willing to stand up to a mighty enemy against all odds.
We might even beat them someday, Ben thought.
He was just mounting his bicycle again when a van drew up beside him. “Baxters Builders” was painted on the side. Billy Baxter wound down the window and leaned out.
“Going somewhere, Ben?”
“To the station,” Ben replied. “I have to report in to work.”
“Jump in. I’ll give you a lift.”
“It’s all right, thanks,” Ben replied. “I’m quite capable of riding my bike to the station.”
Billy grinned. “What, that old thing? Looks like it will fall to pieces before you get round the bend.”