blue eyes.
A dancer from a young age, she was now a chorus girl at a local nightclub. It was probably where she’d met Thomas Harden.
“Hello, Maudie. How have you been?”
“Oh, all right. How about you? I … I heard about Toby.”
I nodded. “We hope to hear something soon.”
“I’m sure you will.”
I had decided before knocking that I would just have out with my question, so I stuck to the plan. “I … well, it may sound a bit odd, but I’ve come to talk to you about Thomas Harden.”
Her smile faltered ever so slightly. She glanced around, past my shoulder, and then pulled the door open. “You’d better come in.”
I followed her through the entryway into the flat’s living room. It was decorated in a very modern style, with satin and floral-patterned furniture. Very fashionable.
“Would you like some tea?” she asked, when we were settled on a comfortable pair of rose-printed chairs.
“No, I’m fine, thank you. I don’t mean to intrude. I just…”
“What do you know about Thomas Harden?” she asked. Her tone wasn’t sharp, but there was a certain wariness in her.
“I saw in the paper that he’d been killed by burglars, and I remembered that the two of you were going together.”
“I stopped seeing him several weeks ago,” she said. It was meant to put an end to the conversation, I think, but I had the sense she wanted to say more.
“Well, you have my condolences, all the same. It’s always a shock when someone one knows dies suddenly.”
Her eyes met mine. “A lot of people are going to die suddenly in this war.”
It was a grim truth, but it was clear there was a deeper meaning in her words. She was speaking in riddles and waiting for me to solve them.
“But Mr. Harden wasn’t going to war,” I said, trying to edge her forward.
She shook her head. “He had an important job. He worked at a factory up north.”
“Oh?” I asked. I was sure this wasn’t common knowledge, and I didn’t intend to show my hand.
“I … he wouldn’t tell me anything, of course. But I think they were making something up there … related to the war effort.”
I leaned forward slightly as though we were exchanging secrets. I knew now what she was getting at, which was, of course, what I had been waiting for her to say all along. “You don’t suppose that had something to do with why he was killed?”
Now it was she who leaned forward, though I didn’t know who was likely to hear us in her empty flat. “There were strange things that happened several times we went out together.”
“Like what?”
“Like people following us. More than once, we dodged them in his car, though he tried not to let on that’s what was happening. And then there were strange, secretive phone calls Thomas would receive. I thought at first he had another girl, but I picked up on the other phone once and it was a man.”
“What were they talking about?”
She looked abashed. “Something to do with the factory, I think. I hung up because I didn’t want to hear anything I oughtn’t.”
I nodded, and she continued.
“Then once we were out to dinner, and he excused himself from the table. He took his time about coming back, and when I went to look for him, he was talking to a man.”
I felt suddenly on the cusp of discovery. “What did the man look like?” I asked.
She shrugged. “His back was to me, so I didn’t get a good look at him. He was a tall fellow in a dinner jacket. Dark hair.”
It wasn’t much help.
“Anything else?” I realized I was pressing her rather hard, but now that she was revealing her secrets, they were coming fast and loose.
She shook her head. “I didn’t think too much of it all, at the time. I figured it was to do with the factory work, things he couldn’t tell me. We weren’t very serious, after all. But when I’d heard he’d been killed, I began to wonder…”
There was more coming. I held my breath and waited.
“Once, after one of those phone calls, he asked me something very odd. He asked how recognizable I thought handwriting was. If I could compare two letters and tell the differences.”
“Handwriting?” I repeated, perplexed. That wasn’t what I’d expected. “Did he show you two letters to compare?”
Maudie shook her head. “He asked it in kind of a philosophical way. I didn’t go on seeing him long after that.”
“Perhaps that