They continued talking as they went up the staircase to the first floor.
"I managed to find to three of them who were in London, but it didn't take an awful lot for their stories to crumble, I can tell you. Two of them were alone, one living in a bed-sit and one at a ladies' boardinghouse. One was looking for a way out of her circumstances, and the other one said her friend put her up to it, and she didn't want to get into any trouble. The third was a nanny to two nippers. She looked a bit pale, I must say-they were a right pair of tearaways. Little villains who could talk proper. I tell you, Miss, my boys might not sound upper-crust, but they know their manners and would put those two to shame. Anyway, she was another one looking for the golden path to another life."
Maisie unlocked the door and pushed it open, walked to her desk and took off her hat.
"Blimey, Miss, what've you done to your face? You look like you'd stopped at one of them boxing clubs down the Old Kent Road for a few rounds with a heavyweight. Ow, I bet that hurts."
Maisie touched her cheek. "You know, it's funny you mention it, but it stopped stinging today, so I forgot about it for a while-yet the officer I saw at the School of Military Engineering didn't blink an eye, didn't say a word. He could have been trying not to embarrass me, though."
"Nah, Miss. That's a nasty old scrape, is that. You'd have to mention it to stop yourself looking at it. What happened? Did you fall?"
"Actually, Billy-I was pushed. And robbed."
While they sat alongside the case map, Maisie recounted the events of the past two days to Billy.
"I reckon we should be looking out for this Mullen. Want me to see what I can find out? I can ask around some of my old mates, you never know, someone might know something, 'specially with all of us being sappers. I can do a bit of snooping to see if I can locate his medical details. And then there's that other bloke, Jeremy Whatsisname. I know them mapping blokes were sitting ducks, so it don't surprise me that he was caught by a sniper. But you never know, he might've been the one that Michael Clifton had words with-unless he wrote it in his journal when it first happened, when he had a head of steam, and it wasn't much more than a storm in a teacup."
Maisie nodded. "Yes, do what you can to find Mullen, and more on Jeremy Lockwood." She picked up a wax crayon and made some notations on the case map, linking two names with a red line. "Be on the lookout for anything that doesn't seem right regarding Lockwood's death. I don't know what you might find, but I think you'll know it when you see it-pay attention to your gut."
"My gut?"
"Yes. Most people don't realize that they feel something is wrong before they think something is wrong, but by the time they've finished trying to ignore the physical sensation, they've pushed that particular nudge from their mind."
"I know what you mean, Miss. I did that with my Doreen. I could feel it here." He touched his belt buckle. "I knew she wasn't right in the head. Felt it before I ever admitted it to myself, and by then it'd got a lot worse. I just kept saying to myself that it was all normal, that she would get over it and be as right as rain the next day."
"She's getting better now, that's the main thing. How is she faring at home?"
"She has her bad days, but nothing like before," replied Billy. "Mind you, I wish I had a little book with instructions in it. Whenever I get worried, if I see her doing something that looks dodgy, like folding only half the laundry, then leaving the rest while she sits by the fire or something-I wish I had something to go back to, you know, a manual that could answer my questions: 'Is this all right?' 'Is she going backward?' Or, 'Is this normal?'"
Maisie nodded, thinking of the searchlight sunbeams across Kent's undulating terrain. She nodded. "Wayfinding…," she said, her voice almost a whisper.
"I beg your pardon, Miss?"
"Oh, just thinking out loud. I was reading about maps, when we first took on the Clifton case, and it said that the primary role of the map is in wayfinding." She looked at Billy. "It seemed such an interesting word: wayfinding. Not 'to find our way' but 'wayfinding.' It occurred to me that that's exactly what you need-a wayfinder of sorts, to negotiate the journey ahead with Doreen. But you don't have such a thing to fall back on. There's no map, just the doctors' knowledge of previous similar cases, so they can only advise you to a certain point along this road. You have to depend upon your sense of what is right and what is wrong-and as I said, you'll feel that before you think it."
"I reckon I see what you mean, Miss." Billy scratched his head.
"It's what we're trying to do with this map, isn't it?" Maisie tapped the case map with the red crayon. "Wayfinding." She paused. "I wish I had one for life," she whispered to herself.
"Sorry, Miss?"
"Oh, nothing, Billy. Nothing at all. Let me know if I can be of any help with Doreen." She looked down at the map and circled Priscilla's name. "And in the meantime, I'll see if Mrs. Partridge has managed to wheedle an introduction to Lady Petronella!"
Billy stood up and stepped towards his desk. "You shouldn't have any trouble getting her on the dog and bone. I did the job over at her house to last a lifetime, and she can hear the ring from any room in that house."
Maisie smiled as she moved from the case map table to her desk in the corner. "You're a good man, Billy. Now then, let's see if we can cover more ground in this case-I want to know who attacked me and why, and I want to know why half the people I've spoken to seem to be lying to me. Call that a gut feeling."
As she was about to take her seat, the telephone on her desk rang.
"Miss Dobbs-Detective Inspector Caldwell here. Have you a moment?"
"Of course, Inspector. Do you have some news for me?"
"Some good and some not quite so good."
Maisie sat down, curious regarding possible developments in the case, while at the same time pleased that relations with Caldwell seemed to be moving in a positive direction. Even on the telephone she felt his manner was more conducive to collaboration than it had been in the past.
"I'm not sure which I'd like to hear first."
"Let's start with the good: We've found your case."
Maisie shivered. Her senses heightened to the darker side of Caldwell's purpose for calling.
"And now you have to tell me about the circumstances in which it was recovered."
"I'm afraid so."
"Go on."
"The police were called to a flat just off the Edgware Road where a disturbance had been reported. I'll be frank, it was a miserable cold-water flat, a right slum-and I've seen a few glory holes in my time, I can tell you. Anyway, the men had to force entry-the door was locked-and when they broke in they found the body of a man, close to which was your case."
"Have you identified him yet? And what was the cause of death?"
"Multiple wounds to the skull, your usual blunt object wound-might have been a cosh, a poker, you name it. Something heavy, no doubt about it. Dr. Barrow-the examiner-will be able to give more information, though I can tell you now, he's no Maurice Blanche, so we don't expect the same sort of breadth of speculation in the report that we were used to when your former employer was advising us. I can tell you there was extreme loss of blood, and most of it seems to have washed across your nice leather case, I'm afraid."
"Oh-"
"And the deceased goes by the name of-" Maisie heard Caldwell turn pages as he looked for the name. "Sydney Mullen."
"Mullen?" She looked across the room at Billy, whose eyes were wide.
"Small-time market trader and even smaller-time crook. More of a tea boy to certain higher-up villains over in the East End that we'd like to have longer let's-get-to-know-you conversations with, if only we had something to pin on them. Know him?"
"Not personally. But he knew Michael Clifton in the war. He owed his life to Clifton."