in a bowl. Perhaps that’s what happened if you had only one God to watch over you. Yes, she was wise to honor the gods of her childhood.
Usha had left her customer’s house with a silver coin in her hand, a coin she would place in a velvet drawstring bag kept well inside her mattress, along with other coins earned. Whenever she added a florin or half-crown—riches indeed—it seemed to Usha Pramal that as she looked into the money nestled in the rich red fabric, it began to glow, like coals in a fireplace. And how she had worked to build that fire, to keep it alive. Soon she would have her ticket. Soon she would feel the damp heat of her own country, thick against her skin.
It was a tight little gang of street urchins, rambling along the canal path, who discovered the body of Usha Pramal. At first they aimed stones at the globe of colored silk that ballooned from the green slime of city water, and then they thought they would use a broken tree branch to haul it in. It was only as they hooked the fabric that the body turned, the face rising in the misery of sudden death, the dead woman’s eyes open as if not quite understanding why there was a raw place on her forehead where a bullet had entered her skull. That morning, as Usha Pramal had painted a vermilion bindi to signify the wisdom nestled behind the sacred third eye, she could not have known that she had given her killer a perfect target.
Chapter One
Romney Marsh, September 1st, 1933
Maisie Dobbs maneuvered her MG 14/28 Tourer into a place outside the bell-shaped frontage of the grand country house. She turned off the engine but remained seated. She needed time to consider her reason for coming to this place before she relinquished the security of her motor car and made her way towards the heavy oak door.
The redbrick exterior of the building appeared outlined in charcoal, as the occasional shaft of sunlight reflected through graphite-gray clouds scudding across the sky. It was a trick of light that added mystery to the flat marshlands extending from Kent into Sussex. The Romney Marsh was a place of dark stories; of smugglers, and ghosts and ghouls seen both night and day. And for some years this desolate place had offered succor to the community of nuns at Camden Abbey. Local cottagers called it “the nunnery,” or even “the convent,” not realizing that Benedictines, whether male or female, live a monastic life—thus in a monastery—according to The Rule of Benedict.
It was the Abbess whom Maisie had come to see: Dame Constance Charteris.
Whether it was for advice that she had made the journey from London, or to have someone she respected bear witness to a confession of inner torment, she wasn’t sure. Might she return to her motor car less encumbered, or with a greater burden? Maisie suspected she might find herself somewhere in the middle—the lighter of step for having shared her concerns, but with a task adding weight to the thoughts she carried. She took a deep breath, and sighed.
“Can’t turn around now, can I?”
She stepped from the motor car, which today did not have the roof set back, as there was little sun to warm her during the journey from London. Her shoes crunched against the gravel as she walked towards the heavy wooden doors. She rang a bell at the side of the door, and a few moments later a hatch opened, and the face of a young novice was framed against the ancient grain.
“I’m here to see Dame Constance,” said Maisie.
The nun nodded and closed the hatch. Maisie heard two bolts drawn back, and within a moment the door opened with a creaking sound, as if it were a sailing ship tethered to the dock, whining to be on the high seas once more.
The novice inclined her head, indicating that Maisie should follow her.
The small sitting room had not changed since her last visit. There was the rich burgundy carpet, threadbare in places, but still comforting. A moldering coal fire glowed in the grate, and a wing chair had been set alongside another hatch. Soon the small door would open to reveal a grille with bars to separate the Abbess from her visitor, and Dame Constance would offer a brief smile before bowing her head in a prayer. Maisie would in turn bow her head, listen to the prayer, and echo Dame