Messenger of Truth jw-2 Read online

  Opening the door, Maisie faced a heavyset man no taller than she was herself. He wore a long jacket of rubber-covered cloth and a woolen cap atop his graying red hair, which was drawn back in a long, thick braid. His trousers of the same rubbered cloth were tucked into boots that had been turned over at the top. Maisie wanted very much to smile, for she had no doubt as to the identity of this man.

  “You must be Mr. White.” She spoke before he had a chance to open his mouth, to quell any questions he might have about her right to be in the house of a man not long dead.

  He stared at her for some time, it seemed, as if taken aback by her forthright manner. Then he spoke, with the rounded brogue of the Kentish fisherman. “Just thought I’d look in, don’t want strangers looking into Mr. ’ope’s matters.”

  “I’m not a stranger, Mr. White. I am a friend of Mr. Bassington-Hope’s sister Georgina. She asked me to look in as I was in the area.”

  “Funny area to be in, bit out of the way for the likes of anyone, not a place you pass through, Dungeness.”

  “No, I know, it was just a bit out of my way.” Maisie smiled again, though she felt her polite responses were having little effect on the fisherman. “I know the Marshes and was going to Hastings, so it seemed a good opportunity to help Miss Bassington-Hope.”

  He shook his head. “Strange lot, them ’ope’s. You’d’ve thought they’d’ve been down a bit more, not just the one visit. Three of ’em just came in, then left as soon as they got ’ere. Funny lot.” He shook his head, moved as if to leave, then turned again. “You’d be best to move that little motor car be’ind the carriage, out to the back. Come mornin’ you won’t ’ave a roof on that thing, what with the wind.” He regarded Maisie without speaking, then continued. “You knowin’ the Marshes, I would’ve thought you’d’ve parked round the back to begin with.”

  Maisie checked her watch. “Well, I didn’t expect to stay very long.” Maisie felt the sting of cold rain on her cheeks, and the lamp flickered. “Gosh, I really should be on my way.”

  Amos White turned, speaking as he walked away. “Just remember to put that little motor to the lee of the cottage.” Then he was gone.

  Maisie closed the door behind her and shuddered. Perhaps she ought to stay here in Dungeness, especially as she had barely started her search of Nick’s property, though she knew she would feel like an interloper, sleeping in a bed that was not hers, in a house she had not been invited to use as overnight accommodation. There was little time, and already more questions were lining up to be given voice, to be answered. Who were the three family members? Could it have been Georgina and her parents? Or perhaps the three bereaved siblings? She looked around the room. Either Nick was a tidy person, or someone else had come in and seen fit to ensure that the house was neat. Someone who had managed to escape the canny eyes of Amos White.

  It was when Maisie stepped into the center of the room again that she allowed herself to push all questions to the back of her mind and studied the mural painstakingly crafted on the former railway carriage windows of the opposite wall. Each window, painted in a base of white to form a canvas, depicted a scene that was pure Romney Marsh, from the trees forced to lean inland by the wind, to isolated churches set in flat hedge-divided fields, with sheep grazing and, above the water-meadows, silvered clouds scudding across a gray sky. Maisie drew the lamp closer and smiled, for as her eyes moved from left to right, from the calm of the marshes to sea crashing against shingle, with some images larger than others to create an illusion of distance along with the immediacy of detail, she saw that the story told in the mural was one that had been part of the coast’s history for centuries. In the middle of the tale, day had drawn into night and the scene was of a fishing boat beached. Men were unloading their catch by lantern light, scarves drawn around their heads gypsy-style. Atop a black horse with wild eyes, a man in a tricorn hat and mask wielded a pistol while watching over the haul, which was not cod, nor plaice, huss, rock or haddock, but barrels and chests bursting open to reveal a bounty of gold and spices, silk and rum. Moving along the mural, the men had taken flight toward the church with their booty, where a welcoming vicar bid them enter, enabling their escape to a place beyond the pulpit. The next scene saw dawn break and the excisemen—as feared today as in ancient times—searching for the smugglers, to no avail. In the final scene, situated above the bed’s footboard, daylight has returned to the marshes once more. Sheep were grazing, the wind blowing against inland-leaning trees, and the thunderous sky had given way to blue. It was a scene of peace, of calm.

  Maisie stood back to look at the mural in its entirety. The infamous eighteenth-century Kent gangs given life, given color, by the hand of the artist. She moved in toward the wall and held the light to the finely drawn faces, to marvel at the detail, even that of the dog cowering to one side as the horse reared up. Nick Bassington-Hope was indeed talented, that much was evident even in a whimsical scene depicting life gone by in the place where he had established his retreat.

  She checked her watch and sighed. She would remain awhile longer, searching. It was already past four and dark outside, but she decided that she could not leave until she had conducted a thorough search of the cottage, even if it meant driving later in less-than-safe conditions, picking her way with care along the rough roads. As the air around her seemed to become accustomed to her presence, it occurred to Maisie that those who came before her might have visited in search of something of great import.

  She moved the MG to a place behind the second carriage, where a surprisingly strong lean-to had been constructed and sheltered not only a carefully stacked pile of driftwood, but a privvy, and a barrel where water was collected from a clever gutter system. Maisie was able to park under the lean-to, and smiled as she walked around to the front of the cottage. It would seem that, contrary to Stratton’s assessment, this was one artist with a very practical streak, if one took into account the work involved in adapting the two carriages—work that she suspected Nick had completed himself.

  Locking the door behind her again, Maisie pulled the blinds, made up a fire in the cast-iron stove and put the kettle of water on to boil. As the room warmed, she opened the door to the studio to allow heat to circulate so that she could move around in comfort. She looked around the home that Nick Bassington-Hope had created. No, none of this was the work of a man who would have had a slap-dash attitude toward the construction of a scaffolding platform.

  RETURNING TO THE sketchbooks she had just opened when Amos White banged on the door, she saw they contained work from Nick Bassington-Hope’s early days—charcoal drawings and watercolors that lacked the mature interpretation of later years—and also more recent work that seemed to demonstrate a more confident hand. Maisie looked through the sketchbooks and felt certain that there should be more. Calculating that Nick would have used perhaps more than a hundred, or two hundred books, she began to search again, though there were precious few places for storage in the carriages. It was under the bed that she found a series of apple crates containing more sketchbooks, along with the many works of fiction and nonfiction he had acquired over the years. On hands and knees Maisie pulled out the crates, set them alongside the fire, and, sitting on the floor with the lamp on a side table, she began to leaf through their contents.

  Unlike the rest of the cottage, in which everything seemed to have its place, the sketchbooks had not been catalogued or kept in any order, and if Maisie had to guess, she would have concluded that they had been worked through quite recently. Recalling her conversations with Georgina, she wondered whether the Bassington-Hopes had expected to find something that might indicate the location of the lock-up—something she rather wanted to find herself.

  Nick’s early sketches were of pastoral scenes, of horses in Kentish fields, of farms and oasthouses, of cattle ambling toward the milking shed in late afternoon and of women gathered outside farm buildings, their jackets secured by string, laced boots muddied under heavy cloth skirts with pinafores.
Strong as men, they were running newly washed hop-pokes through a mangle, two turning a giant handle, two feeding the sacking through twin rollers. There were detail sketches, a face here, a nose there, the arm of a farmworker or a child’s dimpled hand held by the worn, working hand of her father. And then came the war.

  Maisie could barely bring herself to look at the sketches, and as she did so her head began to throb, the scar on her neck aching in unison. She could not continue, but turned instead to work completed in the time following Nick’s return from France, the time when, still recuperating from his wounds, he was called upon to work for the cause of war in designing propaganda literature. This time the sketches inflamed Maisie. She moved back from the fire, so heated was her response to the slogans revealed as she flicked through the pages. A small boy sitting on his father’s knee, and the words, WHAT WAR STORIES WILL YOU TELL, FATHER? A young man with his sweetheart, the woman looking away toward a man in uniform: ARE YOU STILL HER BEST BOY? Then another, a German soldier breaking down the door of a family’s home: YOU CAN STOP HIM NOW! Maisie had seen the posters herself in the war, but had never questioned who might have drafted each idea, never thought of the man who had challenged others to join the fight and who compelled those at home to push them toward service.

  And here in her hands were the ideas as seeds. For each poster she had seen on a railway station, at a picture house or on a board outside a shop, there were ten, fifteen sketches, if not more, with the design at a different stage of development. At first she felt anger toward the artist. Then she found herself wondering if he’d had a choice, and, if not, how he might have felt, knowing the ultimate, deadly outcome of his work. As the fire inside abated, Maisie moved closer to the stove again and wondered what remorse, if any, might have shadowed Nick Bassington-Hope each day.

  The sketches from his time in America were most interesting to Maisie, not only because they illustrated a land far away, but because they revealed a man who seemed to have found a peace of mind. Magnificent canyons backlit by a sun high in the sky; trees of such grandeur that she could barely imagine walking through the forest; then the plains—even in mere sketchbooks, with pencil and charcoal, with pastel chalks, with watercolor, she could almost smell the heat, the breeze pressed against fields of corn or whipped up spray on a river as it was forced downward across fearsome rapids. Again, Nick Bassington-Hope had drawn segments in detail, perhaps one of water rushing across a single rock, or of a branch, perhaps part of an eagle’s wing. And there, penciled into the corner of a single page, the artist had written, “I can dance with life again.” As Maisie closed one sketchbook and reached for another, she realized that tears had fallen, that the work of an artist she never knew was touching her deeply. His travels to the other side of the world had saved Nick Bassington-Hope’s very soul.

  Taking up a collection of sketchbooks tied with string and marked CONSTRUCTS, Maisie dried her eyes and was intrigued as she flipped through the pages, for it appeared that not only had the artist planned his murals and triptych pieces with utmost care, but he had anticipated each step involved in exhibiting them, even down to the last bolt and anchor required to secure a piece. So, she was right, he was no fly-by-night who took chances, but a careful executor of his work. One might also remark that such attention to minutiae was an obsession. Flicking through, Maisie noted that the details here were of past exhibits and that there was nothing pertaining to the unveiling at Svenson’s Gallery. Had it been removed? Or was it still here? Or at the lock-up?

  Maisie pushed the books to one side, rose to her feet and placed her hands on the back of first one chair, then the other. She smiled, for as she touched the chair on the left of the fireplace, it felt warm against her fingers—but not in a way that would indicate proximity to the embers. It was a different heat, a sensation that another person would likely not feel. As she rested her hand on the leather chair, Maisie knew it was Nick Bassington-Hope’s preferred seat, that he would have chosen this chair before the other, always. She sat in his place, closed her eyes and, with her hands resting softly in her lap, took three deep breaths, each time inhaling to the extent of her lung capacity before breathing out. Then she sat in silence, with only the crashing of the waves outside and closer crackle of burning driftwood for company.

  Banishing all thoughts from her mind, she waited. In time—though she would not have known how much time, for Maisie had been taught that the moments and hours spent in silence without intellectual thought give the seeker the opportunity to transcend such human measurements—an image came to her of the artist in his home, moving from one room to another. The living room, this room in which she was sitting, was cozy and warm, as it was now, though instead of winter, it’s high summer and light is streaming through the windows. Now Nick is in his studio, a palette in his hand, his trolley of brushes along with a selection of paints at his side, and he is working. The image blurs, and there he is sitting on the chair alongside the chest of drawers. He is sketching, yet as he puts charcoal to paper, tears fall and he brushes the back of his hand against his red-rimmed eyes. Though it is a bright day, he is wearing the greatcoat, drawing it around him as he works, as he struggles with the emotion his work inspires. He stops and looks around the room, puts his work to one side, paces the floor, then takes a piece of paper from his pocket. He looks at the paper for just a moment, then returns it to his pocket. Then the picture becomes blurred and he is gone. The sea crashes against the shore, the seagulls screech and wheel overhead.

  Opening her eyes, Maisie rubbed her temples and looked around to regain her bearings. Half past seven! Standing up, she moved as if to go to the studio, but suddenly stopped, for it struck her that to hear seagulls whooping in such an excited state was unusual at this hour of darkness. Her weekend visits to Andrew Dene’s home in the Old Town had given her a sense of the rhythms of coastal life. She stepped to the window, and as she did so, extinguished the lamp so that she stood in darkness to draw back the blind, just slightly.

  Lights went back and forth, and there was a flurry of activity close to the shingle bank where a fishing boat had just been drawn up. Maisie watched as men—there must have been three, perhaps four—unloaded a haul. She had waited many a time for the fishing boats to come in with the morning’s catch, but what she was seeing now seemed strange to her. There were no nets, as far as she could see, no barrels for the fish, and it was late for the catch to come in. A rumbling, heavy sound distracted her as a lorry appeared, backing up as far as the driver could take the vehicle to the shingle bank. She squinted; it was hard to see in the dark, though the scene was illuminated by Tilly lamps. Yes, perhaps it was a late catch. Shadows could be misleading, tricksters of light and imagination. And she was weary, with work to do. But not so weary that she would not take precautions to protect herself, even if such protection were not necessary.

  Extinguishing the fire, Maisie carried the lamp into the studio where she relit the wick and, with one hand, searched down into the folds of the armchair’s seat. Her slender fingers teased out a few pennies and even a florin, a dried-up paint tube and a pencil. Pushing her hands down farther, Maisie was frustrated to find nothing of consequence, when she had been so sure that her meditation would yield the clue she needed. She returned to Nick’s living room, pulled on her hat and coat, washed the cup and saucer and placed them on the dresser. Then she waited. Waited until the only light on the beach came from the lighthouse, until the coast was clear and she could leave. With her hand held out to guide her from the carriage, she crept back towards the lean-to and claimed the MG. The engine seemed loud, but—she hoped—was probably drowned out by crashing waves as she again made her way slowly along the shingled track out to the main road.

  Her route was one that took her across Kent toward Chelstone. But it was as she left the marshes that her headlamps illuminated, just for a second or two, the back of a lorry as it pulled off the main road and down a lane. She thought that the driver had probably not seen her, though
she recognized the lorry immediately. It was the same vehicle she had seen at the beach.

  Maisie made a mental note of the place where the lorry had turned, and, as she drove along in the darkness, she knew she would be back.

  Six

  Maisie had arrived late at Frankie Dobbs’s home, yet despite the hour, father and daughter sat together until the small hours, sometimes saying nothing, at other times speaking of Maisie’s work or, as now happened increasingly, talking of the past. Frankie Dobbs would begin a sentence with the words, “Do you remember when…” and continue with a story of someone he’d known as a young man while working at a racing yard, or perhaps it was a story about one of his customers, the people to whom he’d delivered fruit and vegetables on his rounds as a costermonger. But since 1914 Frankie had lived in Kent, though his dialect was easily recognizable as being from within the sound of the tolling bells of Bow, marking him as a true cockney.

  Frankie no longer asked Maisie about Dr. Andrew Dene and whether their courtship might lead to him welcoming a son-in-law to their family of two. As he commented to Mrs. Crawford, the cook at Chelstone, just before she retired at Christmastime, “Well, I like the boy—London born and bred, you know. Good sort. Got feet on the ground, and does right by Maisie, but, I dunno, she never seems to…” And with that he looked into the distance, so that Mrs. Crawford touched him on the shoulder and said, “Don’t you worry about our Maisie. She’s different. I’ve said all along: The girl’s different. And she’ll find her own way. Always has, always will. No, she’s not one to worry about.” Though as she spoke, Mrs. Crawford reflected briefly on the many times she herself had worried about Maisie Dobbs.

  “There you are, fresh eggs this morning and two rashers of bacon! That’ll keep you going, my girl.”

  “You spoil me, Dad.” Maisie admonished her father as he sat down to tuck into his own hearty breakfast.