A Dangerous Place

  “Was Sebastian a Communist?” asked Maisie.

  “His family held that there should be equality, that we should all have the same chance, whether peasant or prince.”

  Maisie studied the girl as she answered, then pressed her again. “Was he doing anything dangerous, do you think?”

  Rosanna sighed in response, rubbing her hand across her forehead, revealing fingertips angry and red from mending fishing nets. “I don’t think he would have done anything he thought might bring harm to his sisters.”

  The fisherman’s beach was quiet again, though in the distance Maisie could see specks in the sky she believed to be aircraft. She wondered what it meant, to have these aeroplanes flying overhead. And she knew enough by now—after months in Canada, often privy to long conversations about new aircraft design, when John Otterburn and James would talk of such elements as air speed and lift, of trim and maneuverability—to know that the German aircraft were bombers. She looked at her watch and decided to leave Catalan Bay now. She would walk back to Main Street—with any luck she would find Vallejo there. He might have the answer.

  Maisie watched Rosanna as she in turn looked out to sea, and to the fishing boats being pushed out, perhaps to gather in another catch.

  “Thank you,” said Maisie. “For your honesty.”

  Rosanna smiled. “I’m glad someone is trying to find out who took Sebastian’s life. The police are too busy with refugees to bother.”

  Maisie took her hand. “I’ll find out who wanted him dead. Time is not on my side, but I will not leave Gibraltar until I discover the truth behind Sebastian’s murder.”

  The walk back into town seemed longer, even though Maisie felt as if she were walking faster. She was anxious to see Miriam Babayoff again, to see whether she had managed to develop her brother’s last roll of film. Perspiration ran down her temples and between her shoulder blades. Approaching Grand Casements Square, she stopped and closed her eyes. In her mind’s eye she saw the aircraft above her head, then making their way out across the straits and looping back again. To do what? Were they en route to an airfield, perhaps in North Africa? And why fly over Gibraltar? Because they can. She sighed, another image coming to mind, this time a small fighter aircraft unknown outside the cadre of aviators and engineers John Otterburn had gathered around him. The aeroplane swooped low over the escarpment, followed by a retort from the guns on board. The wings tilted this way and that, and the engine spluttered, coughing as if fuel were blocked. The pilot struggled to keep aloft, and then it was over, the small aircraft spiraling down, down, down, and blown into tiny pieces on impact.

  Maisie held her hand to her mouth and began to weep anew. She would be happy never to see anything other than a bird in the sky for the rest of her days. Walking on, half stumbling, she recalled seeing a church nearby. Though all faith had left her during the war, she half staggered into St. Andrew’s Church. She wanted to feel the touch of prayers fanning around her like butterfly wings, and she wanted to be held safe in the still coolness of the familiar building—it could have been a church anywhere in the British Isles, though there was a certain Moorish influence. She took a seat in a pew at the back of the church and closed her eyes. Help me, she whispered. Please help me.

  The sound of the door opening and closing caused her to look up, and she realized that others had entered the church, their footfall light and voices low before slipping into silence as they knelt with bowed heads. There was no service, yet the minister was present, in prayer at the altar. Most visitors did not remain long in the church, as if they wanted only to petition the Lord and then be about their business once again, yet they had come, and perhaps for the same reason as she had sought a place inside—the aircraft overhead had unsettled her.

  Half an hour later Maisie stepped out into the shadows cast by the church, and walked in the direction of Main Street. She was only half surprised to see Professor Vallejo walking toward her. She forced a smile as he approached.

  “Miss Dobbs. How are you?”

  “I went into the church to . . . to be in a cool place for a while. I have been walking, and I’m rather warm.”

  “Did you see the aeroplanes? German and Italian?”

  “I did, yes, and they seemed rather low—I thought they were German and Italian. Not that I am an expert on aviation, by any means,” she added as an afterthought.

  “I am troubled by them,” said Vallejo. He looked up as if he had heard the distant drone of an engine aloft, but only seagulls swooped and called.

  “You said they fly over Gibraltar.”

  “Aircraft such as those have only one purpose, and that is to cause damage—to wage war. In any game there is a winner and a loser, and the purpose of those planes is to increase the chances of winning. But in war there are no real winners—too many lives are lost, too much pain to endure. How can we look back at any war and say, ‘We won’?”

  They began to walk toward Main Street at a slow pace. Maisie fell into step with Vallejo, and focused on the way he carried himself as he put one foot in front of the other. His shoulders were hunched, just a little; as if he had caught a glance of his reflection in a mirror, he began to draw himself up, pulling his shoulders back. There’s something he wants to tell me, she thought, though it occurred to her that anything the professor might choose to tell her had a very definite purpose, and she wondered how she might respond to whatever he had to say.

  “Spain was neutral in the war, wasn’t it, Professor Vallejo?” asked Maisie.

  He nodded. “As much as any country can be neutral, when such terrible fighting is going on across the border. I was here in Gibraltar in 1915 and saw the hospital ships coming from Gallipoli, and we knew about the disasters not only in the Dardanelles, but in France and Belgium. That was when I decided that I could not stand by and do nothing. I went to Belgium as a volunteer, and I drove an ambulance, back and forth to the front from hospitals and aid stations. Never have I seen so much pain, so much blood. I gave up my position at the university to serve.”

  “That was brave of you, and good.” Maisie felt the anger emanating from Vallejo. The dragon is alive inside him. And if I allow it, he will bring me down further. It was an idle thought, tagged on to the realization of Vallejo’s memories, red-hot like coals fallen from a fire.

  Vallejo shrugged. “There were many who came—as they have to Spain. People with good hearts and worthy intentions, but alas, most of us could never have been prepared for such hell on earth.”

  They walked in silence for a minute or two before Vallejo spoke again. “Miss Dobbs, it occurred to me, when you said you had been a teacher at a college in Cambridge, that you might have met an old friend of mine who also taught there.”

  Maisie shrugged. “Well, there are many colleges in Cambridge—it’s teeming with students and lecturers, with teachers who only come in for one term or even a day or so a week.”

  “Yes, of course. But in any case, it occurred to me that you might know Professor Francesca Thomas—that’s her name now.”

  Maisie caught her breath, trying to hide any sign that she recognized the name. Should she admit to knowing Dr. Thomas? She decided to feign ignorance.

  “I’m afraid it doesn’t ring a bell, but I’ll rack my brain and see if I can shake anything out.” She laughed, then looked at her watch. “Oh, dear, I have to run—I’m due to see someone in about five minutes, so I had better crack on.”

  Vallejo gave a half bow. “I hope we meet again—perhaps at Mr. Salazar’s little café.”

  “I’m sure we will,” said Maisie. She waved her farewell and turned up a narrow street she had not taken before, feeling for her map in the leather bag as she stepped along the flagstones. Dipping into a doorway, she sighed with relief. “What just happened?” she said aloud, though there was no one on the street to hear her. She leaned against the stone wall to catch her breath. She was thirstier than ever, and would have loved to go to the café, but she had to get away from Vallejo.
br />   “Blast!” she admonished herself. “Damn and blast!”

  She knew her mind had not been limber enough. She had lied, and she was sure he knew she had lied. But perhaps she had to give him the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps he was uanware his arrow in the dark had hit a bull’s-eye. Maisie remembered, once, laughing with James as she read out part of a letter from Brenda. Her stepmother had asked if, now that she was in Canada, she had ever come across an uncle of hers who had crossed the ocean in search of his fortune, finally to settle in Alberta. “It’s always the way,” said James. “People just cannot fathom how big this place is. They think we all know each other, expats from the mother country—but we’d be hard-pushed to bump into him if he lived in Toronto, let alone Alberta!”

  Had Vallejo made a similar leap, assuming a teacher from one college in Cambridge must know all others? But no, that was not an error; Maisie was sure she had never mentioned that she had been in Cambridge, let alone the college where she had worked. He knows. And there was much to know—her position had been a cover for an investigation on behalf of the Secret Service and Special Branch, during which time she reported to none other than Robert MacFarlane. The same Robert MacFarlane who was biding his time in Gibraltar, probably waiting for just the right moment to approach her.

  But more than anything, it was the mention of Dr. Francesca Thomas that had taken her aback. A senior professor at the same college—the College of St. Francis—Thomas had been educated at Oxford University and the Sorbonne, in Paris. Maisie remembered taking the woman’s file from the college office so she could read it at her lodging. There had been precious little to support the feeling she had at the time that there was more to the professor of French literature and philosophy than met the eye. When Maisie visited one of the woman’s former professors at Oxford, she had been described as passionate, an expert with languages, a woman who had worked in something “hush-hush” during the war. And there it was again, that phrase. Hush-hush. Maisie smiled to herself. If Maurice had been with her, he would have said, once more, that she should pay attention to coincidence, that coincidence was a shadow cast by truth.

  It was Thomas who had in the end taken Maisie into her confidence, having seen her outside a building belonging to the Belgian Embassy. Francesca Thomas had worked for the British Secret Service during the war, before moving on to Belgium, where she became an agent with La Dame Blanche, a resistance network supported by the British. La Dame Blanche—“the White Lady”—was an organization of mainly women and girls involved in sabotage, assassination, and reconnaissance in occupied Belgium. Their bravery was beyond measure. Thomas had proven her mettle time and again, and bore a deep scar across her throat where she had fought the Hun in hand-to-hand combat—and won, though it almost cost her life. She considered herself a soldier, perhaps no more than on the dark night when she murdered her husband’s killer with her bare hands.

  Now, as Maisie made her way along the street, following the map’s zigzagging directions to Miriam Babayoff’s home, she remembered Francesca Thomas’ parting words to her as if they had been spoken only yesterday. They won’t let you go, you know. And we will meet again, Maisie.

  “They” were the British Secret Service, and they had found her, Maisie knew that much. But were they playing her as if she were a fish on the line, teasing her in any direction they pleased? Perhaps it was time for her to find MacFarlane. Perhaps it was time for the fish to pull on the hook.

  As Maisie approached the house shared by Miriam Babayoff and her sister, it was evident that something was wrong. A cluster of four men, all without jackets and with sleeves rolled up, appeared to be inspecting the door and its frame. She could see that Jacob Solomon was one of them. Each of the men was wearing a black broad-brimmed hat, and one had curling earlocks that reached his collarbones. Miriam stood to one side, holding two of the jackets, while a woman seated in a chair outside rested her hands on another two jackets laid across her lap. Miriam held her hand to her forehead, and appeared to have been crying, while the other woman—Maisie assumed it was Chana, the sister—stared at the flagstones.

  “Miss Babayoff,” Maisie called to Miriam. The young woman turned to face Maisie, revealing her reddened eyes. “Miriam, whatever has happened?”

  The men continued to work, giving each other instructions as one stepped aside to rest a piece of wood on a small trestle and began to smooth it using a folded piece of sandpaper. Another worked on the door, removing a broken lock and fitting a new one. The two others measured the glass, and all agreed that the pane in the upper part of the door should be replaced with wood, and made very strong.

  “But Miriam won’t be able to see who’s there,” said one of the men.

  “She can look out of the window,” said another.

  “She shouldn’t open the door to anyone unless they call out to let her know who’s there first—we’ll spread the word so people identify themselves. She must not open the door to anyone else.” The man looked at Maisie, as if to appraise whether she was friend or foe.

  Solomon glanced up from sanding the frame. “Miriam and Chana should not be alone, two women on their own in this house. It is not good, and—”

  Miriam began to weep. Maisie put an arm around her shoulder and the woman leaned in to be soothed. Chana looked up from holding the coats and, seeing her sister upset, also began to whimper, holding out her hands toward her sibling, making little fists, opening and closing her fingers as a child might reach out to her mother. Miriam went to her sister and wiped her tears with a handkerchief she took from her pocket. Maisie noticed Chana tapping her feet, one after the other, up and down in her distress.

  “She should go to her room and rest,” said Miriam. “She only gets like this if she’s very upset. I thought that with the men helping, it would be good to get them to bring her down to see some sunshine. But now she’s tired.” She looked up. “Mr. Solomon, would you help me?”

  Maisie watched as the man left his task and came to Miriam’s side.

  “I can help, Miriam,” he said. He knelt in front of Chana Babayoff and spoke to her in a low voice. “I’m going to take you up, Chana. Now then, give the jackets to this lady, and then reach up with your arms and put them around my neck.”

  Maisie took the coats and stood back as Chana clasped her arms around Jacob Solomon’s neck, allowing him to lift her up and carry her to the door. The men stood back as he stepped through, followed by Miriam. Maisie looked at the men. “I’ll put these on the kitchen table and then make tea—would you like tea?”

  Maisie set out the thick tea glasses on saucers, and placed cubes of sugar to the side of each cup. She measured several spoonfuls of the fragrant black tea from the caddy into the pot, and poured in the boiling water. She allowed it to steep and began to pour as Miriam returned to the kitchen and the men came for the refreshment, each of them setting a cube of sugar between their teeth and drinking the strong brew through the sweetness of sugar.

  “How long will it take?” asked Miriam.

  “Not long,” said one of the men. “Another hour, maybe a little more. Do not worry, Miriam, you will be safe in your home tonight. And we will make sure one of us walks by the house every hour, to check that you’re safe.”

  “Solomon will probably sleep outside the door,” said another man, looking toward the shopkeeper, who, having taken Chana upstairs to her room, now continued with his task.

  Miriam blushed.

  “Can we talk somewhere private, Miriam?” asked Maisie.

  “Come with me,” she replied. “We’ll go down to Sebastian’s darkroom—I have something to show you in any case.”

  The women left the men to the task of strengthening the door and replacing the lock. They stepped into the darkroom, and when Miriam switched on the light, Maisie turned to her.

  “What happened? And when did it happen?”

  “I was down here, Miss Dobbs, working on the film you brought. I had locked the door, and the bolts were across
. But I heard a crash, and a noise upstairs, so I ran up—I was worried about Chana, you see. If it were just me, I would have locked myself in down here, but Chana . . .”

  “It’s been a dreadful shock for you, Miriam. It’s such a violation, and you cannot expect to feel safe yet. Did you see anyone? A face at the window, perhaps?”

  Miriam Babayoff shook her head. “I came to the kitchen as a hand was coming through the window. The fingers were groping around for a lock, for a way to open the door, so I screamed. And it was a very loud scream, and it started Chana off, so whoever it was ran away, down the alley. Then help came. Mr. Solomon was first to arrive—I think one of the women called out to him—many of the men were still at work, you see, but Mr. Solomon is just down the street.” She blushed. “It is not accepted for these men to be alone with an unmarried woman, but who else could help?”

  “You were lucky,” said Maisie. “But it seems as if you will be in safe hands.”

  There was an hiatus in the conversation. Finally Maisie spoke again. “Did you manage to get anywhere with the film?”

  “Oh, forgive me, Miss Dobbs—but yes, I have developed the film. It’s not quite dry yet—but handle carefully, and you can look. It seems very ordinary to me, photos taken at a party at the hotel. Just people.”

  Maisie stepped over to a darker part of the room, where a collection of photographs had been pegged to a line that ran along one wall.

  “Just people?” Maisie smiled. “I have discovered that there is no such thing as ‘just people’ when a man’s life has been taken.”

  She began scrutinizing the photographs, then shook her head and reached for her leather bag, which she had set on the floor. She took out her own magnifying glass, which she had brought with her.

  “Sometimes I need a little help,” she said, and began scrutinizing the prints once more.

  They were indeed, for the most part, images of a party. It seemed that everyone gathered was holding a cocktail, and some of the women were grasping cigarette holders. Maisie thought of her dear friend Priscilla, of the way she would flourish the cigarette holder when she was making a point, waving it around like a wand to emphasize her opinions. She missed Priscilla, missed her bossy caring, her informed comments, her knowing. Many thought Priscilla light, as if she were some sort of sparkling dust invited to a party to infuse people with joy. But Maisie knew another side to Priscilla, the deep wounds that war had left upon her soul, her fears about the future—especially for her three sons, who seemed to be growing ever faster toward manhood. Maisie missed Priscilla perhaps more than anyone else, aside from James.