Oliver put his shoulder against the wood and pushed hard. It popped open and he burst into the tea shop’s front room.
“Desdemona!”
He searched everywhere around her shop, and then upstairs where her living quarters were, just to make sure she had not fallen asleep in bed and not heard the sirens. He then ran down to the basement. While many Londoners, like Macklin, preferred to shelter in place, he also knew that Macklin had rheumatism and bad lungs, and thus he always tried to get her to come to the shelter. She almost never consented to go, but this was the first time she had not answered his knock.
He found her in the basement. And it was now clear why she hadn’t come to the door. She was dead, and her death had not been natural. He was not speculating on this; the knife was still sticking out of her chest.
He knelt beside her. “My God.”
Her limbs were heavy, her skin still somewhat warm, but cooling rapidly. An explosion that rocked the tea shop brought the shocked Oliver back to the present.
He grabbed a blanket from a small cot in the corner and covered her body with it. He ran back up the steps and out of the shop, and sprinted down the alley as more detonations sounded in the distance.
He had one more person on his list. But the house where he lived was empty. The man must have headed to the shelter. At least Oliver hoped so. He looked up again; the sky was filled with aircraft, and the ack-ack raining upward was so intense that what had been a clear night sky was nearly opaque with smoke. He could hear the rapidity of machine-gun fire and the scream of aircraft engines, and he knew that meant RAF pilots were thousands of feet up there engaging the enemy.
As he rushed toward the shelter, two planes suddenly swooped low out of the dark sky. One he recognized as a British Beaufighter, the other a German Messerschmitt. The Messerschmitt was in the lead and the British plane was racing to catch up.
“Go get ’em,” Oliver called to the RAF pilot.
The German pilot must have spotted the uniformed Oliver because he pointed the Messerschmitt in his direction. A blistering salvo of bullets then raced at him, forcing Oliver to dive headlong through the glass door of a shop. He slid across the shard-littered floor, slammed into a counter, and lay stunned, as the two planes shot down the street, barely twenty feet off the ground.
Oliver rose and slip-slid over the broken glass to poke his head out of the shattered doorway. In the distance he saw an explosion. It was not a bomb; he had just seen the German plane veer out of control and slam into a building, as the Beaufighter soared upward to take on the Luftwaffe fleet once more.
Oliver breathed deeply and gingerly felt his sore arm. Before this war would I have ever imagined seeing two planes engaged in combat flying down the streets of Covent Garden!?
He walked to the next street, turned, and a minute later was in the shelter, closing the door securely behind him. He found Charlie and Molly, who were seated in a far corner.
“You okay, Mr. Oliver?” asked Charlie, eyeing the man’s dirty and cut-up clothing.
“Fine, Charlie, considering the alternative would have been extremely unpleasant.”
Hours later, when the bombing was over, Oliver took the children back straightaway to The Book Keep and then made a phone call.
Thirty minutes later the police showed up along with what looked like a doctor with his bulky medical bag. While Molly and Charlie watched in confusion, Oliver led the men over to the tea shop and inside.
When the police finally departed, Oliver returned to the shop, where both Molly and Charlie assaulted him with queries.
He calmed them down, locked the front door, and led the pair into the study. “All right, I will tell you what happened. The fact is that, well, someone killed Mrs. Macklin. I found her body in the basement when I was checking on her for the air raid.”
“Bloody hell,” exclaimed Molly, causing Charlie and Oliver to shoot her a surprised look.
“Yes, it is quite shocking,” Oliver said.
“Was she robbed?” Charlie asked.
“It didn’t appear to be a robbery.”
“Who would want to harm her?” asked Molly.
“I’m not sure. Certainly crime has increased in the city since the war started. It could be put down to that. They might have thought she would have been in a shelter. Then she may have stumbled upon them and they... did what they did.”
For some reason Molly glanced over at the bookshelf and her gaze came to rest on the copy of George Sand’s Jacques, with the cut-out pages, which was the only item on that shelf. When she looked back at Oliver, his gaze slowly came round to her.
The man did not seem pleased at all.
A Crisis of Discovery
A few days later the tap-tap on the glass came right at the stroke of midnight. There was something mystical about that hour, Oliver thought as he slowly walked to the door. Both in the pages of a book, and sometimes in real life.
Oliver drew aside the blackout curtains and saw Cedric standing there. He unlocked the door and motioned him in, but put a finger to his lips and whispered, “Please keep very quiet, I have others here with me.”
“I know that you do, Ignatius,” hissed Cedric. “And I do not like it.”
Oliver led Cedric to the study, closed the door, and turned to his visitor. “Well?”
“What are those children doing here?” demanded Cedric.
“Don’t worry. I’m looking for a place for them. Now, tell me about Mrs. Macklin.”
“Who?” said Cedric.
“Busybody across the alley who ran the tea shop.”
“What of her?”
“She’s dead. Someone stabbed her.”
“Interesting.”
“You’re saying you know nothing of it?” said Oliver incredulously.
“Well, if someone did kill her, you might have already struck upon the reason. Perhaps she saw things that had nothing to do with her. And something had to be done before she could take her foul suspicions and do damage with them. Damage to you, I might add. I am, of course, just speculating here. I really know nothing of the matter.”
“Do you really think she suspected me?” asked Oliver.
“Let me put it this way. If certain inquiries were made, discreet ones, and those inquiries indicated that the woman might have been preparing to alert the authorities about certain things she had seen, certain people she had witnessed doing certain suspicious-looking things, then, yes, I think there was the potential for important plans to be disrupted. And, of course, that could not be allowed.”
“I see. Well, the police did come. And the questions were very uncomfortable.”
“And what do the police think?” Cedric wanted to know.
“I told them about the attempted robbery of my business. But it would have helped if her till had been raided.” He stared pointedly at Cedric. “That would have made my theory more plausible.”
Cedric shrugged and gave a superior smile. “I never thought of that. You see, there is no crime in Germany. Der Führer will not allow it.”
“How commendable. So what do you want now?”
“As you know, D-Day caught us by surprise. And now with the Allies having retaken France, Belgium, and most of the Netherlands, we have lost nearly the whole of western Europe. And your latest offerings have not been particularly illuminating. You must, how do you say, enhance your performance.”