“Dr. Grainger has one, but he’s not here either. He’s visiting his sister in Norwich, and the vicar donated the tires on his to the rubber drive. And what with the petrol rationing, I—oh, here’s Miss Fintworth,” she said as a thin, frowsy-haired woman came in. “Our postmistress. Perhaps she’ll know when Mr. Powney’s coming back.”
She didn’t. “Would you give this to him when he arrives?” she asked, handing Daphne a letter. Daphne stuck it with several others behind the bar, and Miss Fintworth went out, brushing past a toothless old man on his way in.
“Mr. Tompkins will know,” Daphne said. “Mr. Tompkins,” she called to him, “do you know when Mr. Powney’s coming back?”
Mr. Tompkins muttered something Mike couldn’t make out at all, but Daphne apparently understood it. “He says Mr. Powney told him he planned to start back as soon as it was light. So he should be here by nine or half past.”
Nine-thirty, and then it would take them at least two hours to drive to Dover, which would put him there by noon. If Powney didn’t have to put his new bull away first or milk the cows or feed the chickens or something.
“Here, I’ll make you a nice cup of tea while you wait,” Daphne said, “and you can tell me all about the States. You said you were from Omaha? That’s in Ohio, isn’t it?”
“Nebraska,” he said absently, trying to decide whether he should walk north of the village and try to hitch a ride or whether he was better off waiting here.
“That’s in the Wild West, isn’t it?” Daphne asked. “Are there red Indians there?”
Red Indians? “Not anymore,” he said. “How many—?”
“Do you know any gangsters?”
She was clearly not an historian. “Nope, sorry. How many vehicles go through here in a day, Daphne?”
“A day?”
“Never mind,” he said. “I will have that cup of tea.”
“Oh, good. You can tell me all about—where did you say you were from? Nebraska?”
Yes, but thanks to Dunworthy changing my schedule, I didn’t have time to research it, so I don’t know anything about it. It was obvious Daphne didn’t either, but he’d still better avoid the subject. “Why don’t you tell me about the village instead?”
“I’m afraid there’s nothing to tell. Scarcely anything happens in this part of the world.”
Less than fifty miles from here the British and French armies were being pushed into a desperate corner by the Germans, a makeshift armada was being organized to go rescue them, and the outcome of the entire war depended on whether that rescue was successful or not, and she didn’t know anything about it. He guessed he shouldn’t be surprised. The news of it had been kept out of the papers till the evacuation was nearly over, and the only contemps who’d known about it were those who’d seen Dunkirk’s smoke on the horizon or the trains full of wounded and exhausted soldiers arriving home.
And Saltram-on-Sea didn’t have a train station. But it did have boats, and Mike was surprised the Small Vessels Pool hadn’t been here. Its officers had driven up and down the Channel coast commandeering fishing boats and yachts and motor launches and their crews to go pick up the stranded soldiers.
“I suppose you’ve been in lots of exciting places,” Daphne said, setting a cup of tea in front of him. “And seen lots of the war. Is that why you need to get to Dover? Because of the war?”
“Yes. I’m writing a story for my paper on invasion preparations along the coast. How has Saltram-on-Sea prepared?”
“Prepared? I don’t know… we’ve the Home Guard…”
“What do they do? Patrol the beaches at night?”
“No. Mostly they practice drilling.” She dropped her voice to a whisper. “And sit in here bragging about what they did in the last war.”
So whatever had kept the drop from opening last night, it hadn’t been the Home Guard. “Do you have any coastwatchers?”
“Dr. Grainger.” Who was in Norwich, visiting his sister.
Mr. Tompkins piped up from his table with a string of unintelligible syllables. “What did he say?” Mike asked Daphne.
“He said our boys will never let Hitler get to France.”
Yes, well, right now Hitler was in France, had taken Boulogne and Calais, and was about to take Paris.
“Dad says our boys will chase Hitler back to Berlin with his tail between his legs,” Daphne said. “He says we’ll have the war won in two weeks.”
Doesn’t anybody ever see a disaster coming? Mike wondered. This was just like Pearl Harbor. In