Chapter 5: Down to Earth

WAAF Sergeant Margaret Livings and my assistant Mary Jones appeared to have become firm friends by the time we reached the railway halt for our return journey. There was only a period of five minutes before the next train, there being no waiting room at the tiny halt, so we remained sheltering in the unheated car while the chilly driven rain beat down on us, until we could see the plume of smoke that heralded the imminent arrival of the tiny engine pulling its two mean and grubby carriages along behind.

We said our goodbyes, me shaking hands formally with an embarrassed Margaret, she and Mary embraced and exchanged a slip of paper from Margaret, while Mrs Jones handed her a printed card, on the back of which she had scribbled a message with her smart fountain pen.

On the short train, which was quite crowded with people travelling back to the nearest town, we managed to find seats next to each other.

I enquired with a whisper about the card. She laughed and handed me one from a small number in her purse. It was a thick, high quality, smooth white card with impressively embossed printing on it. I would say it was by far much better quality than my own business or visiting cards that I had printed up a few months earlier when forced to move offices. It was inscribed, “Mrs M. Jones, Assistant Detective”, followed by my telephone number (yes, my public call box telephone number!), and “c/o” her posh hotel address.

“How?” I asked, marvelling how she could have this produced in time.

“Oh, the concierge at the hotel can get almost anything done for you overnight. Anything at all, no questions asked.” She smiled sweetly, and rather innocently, which was completely convincing, even though she was still using that young middle-class English accent that I knew was false.

“But we only spoke about you accompanying me late last evening, and there you were at the station by 6.15 in the morning.”

“I know, I had to put a rush on it, but these cards were waiting for me in a neat parcel outside my hotel door by 5 o’clock this morning, when the hotel receptionist gave me my morning call and advised when my cabbie was due to collect me. Do you know, this raised writing isn’t properly engraved, though it looks really impressive. No, those engraved type of cards, even on a rush, would have taken at least two days because the soft steel die has to be sent off to Birmingham to be hardened in a furnace after engraving. But these cards are printed as normal flat ink, then covered in a special powder which sticks to the ink. Then they blow the excess powder off and a heater like a hair salon drier passes over the card, bubbles up the ink to this raised surface and dries it so the card can be stacked and packed for use immediately. Marvellous, isn’t it? In the rush, though, I completely forgot to put on there the time slot for your public telephone box.”

“My public telephone box?”

“I was in your office, freezing for 15 minutes because you were late, do you remember?”

“Yes, I am sorry.”

“You’ve already apologised and I accepted your apology, Edgar. It is now my turn for apologies ... I am a woman, so naturally I snooped. I opened all your drawers except the locked one. By the way, you really should lock the drawer above where you keep your loaded revolver, you know?”

“My loaded revolver?” My head was spinning.

“Yes, Edgar!” she said in that same Home Counties accent, but now using a deeper, older voice, like an English governess might use, teaching a rather slow child, before reverting to her younger voice again, “An unlocked drawer can simply be removed entirely so that the locked drawer can be accessed from above, unless, of course, each of the locked drawers are completely enclosed in boxes. The drawers on that cheap desk in your office are not enclosed. As for your telephone, well, your office simply doesn’t have one. I looked everywhere for it. So I checked the phone booth on the corner of your street before I hailed my cab, and immediately recognised your number.”

She leaned back in the carriage seat and beamed with satisfaction, while I sat stock upright with my mouth open.

“I think now is the time,” she said, “when I say, ‘Elementary, my dear Onslow’!”

Then she laughed, yes, at my expense, but she swiftly deflected me from hurt feelings by tucking her arm in mine, using that and her other hand to pull me back into our seats, where she rested her lovely head on my shoulder.

“I had such fun today, Edgar. And we learned so much. Margaret was saying that a lot of the WAAF girls and the WAAF officers for that matter, threw themselves at Brad when he first arrived, but none of them got anywhere.”

“Well, that eliminates one possible angle, which I assume you are pleased about?”

“I suppose ... yes, of course I am,” she replied. “You know, Edgar, I have had a simply wonderful day today playing your assistant. Thank you for allowing me to accompany you.”

She closed her eyes, resting, as if the effort of performing her rôle was exhausting. I guessed it was, as I too, felt relaxed and I closed my eyes for a minute or two until we stopped at the next station and more people got on.

While I looked around me, she serenely napped, looking innocently, effortlessly, beautiful. I felt like an old fool, old enough to be her father the way she looked, even thinking that she was beautiful and whatever was blurring our relationship.

I knew there was nothing more between us than the status quo of client/detective and even that was severely time limited to no more than a period of ten days at the very outside, before she returned to her normal life of movie stardom and the adoration of her many followers.

We must’ve looked an odd couple, me looking about 55, I remember all too clearly her over-estimating my age only yesterday (only yesterday! The very thought!) and Mrs Jones looking like a fresh secretarial college intern. But then I had to accept what was and simply enjoy the moment, so I nodded with a smile at the supposed knowing looks aimed our way and they turned away in their own embarrassment. Perhaps those who weren’t embarrassed had assumed the sleeping girl was my loving daughter.

“Mary,” I said softly in her ear, when we pulled into the mainline station, where we were to change trains and catch our train back to London, “we’re here.”

She opened her eyes and lifted her head, smiled, and when she spoke she was once more completely in character, as if she had only closed her eyes for a moment.

“Thank you, Edgar, I needed that nap. It has been a long day, but a lovely one.”

At the station I checked the timetable with the Station Master, a gruff old gent who updated us without apology for the muddled service. Our train was supposed to arrive at the station in twenty minutes, but he’d heard on the telegraph that it was running an additional twenty-five minutes late.

‘Mrs Jones’ declared that she wanted to freshen up and, somehow, the mother hen of the Station Master’s wife was delighted to take her next door to their modest house rather than use, “the station facilities wot is a bit rough for a gentlewoman, dear”.

The Station Master rolled his eyes at me, while his wife and my assistant departed arm in arm, but he softened his earlier pomposity by inviting me into his office, warmed by a roaring coal fire, and brewed us each an enormous enamel mug of tea upon his stove, stirring in three heaped spoonfuls of sugar, no doubt obtained from a non-rationed source.

The carriages in our London-bound train had the same simple non-corridor compartments as before. As far as I knew, it may have been the very carriage we used to travel down the line earlier.

There were more people aboard than first thing this morning though. We selected a carriage that had three people in it that looked like they were together, a couple with a boy aged about ten years old. They spoke in hushed tones, but they were clearly returning home following a serious conversation with the boy’s headmaster. The boy was sullen and looked defeated, certain that his next few days were likely to be a torture to endure. I knew they must therefore be local and, sure enough, two stops down the line they all got off and we were alone, sat opposite each other this time, again with my back to the engine.

“My ‘loaded’ revolver, Miss Jones?” I started, continuing our earlier conversation before she’d slept on my shoulder.

“Don’t look at me like that, you are not my father,” she said, even as I groaned inwardly at her stinging words, “I grew up on a ranch, so we carried guns whenever we rode out of sight of the ranch-house. I was in no danger of mishandling your handgun. I was pleased to see that, while it was quite an old pistol, and of a make that I’ve never seen before, it was clean and oiled and, when I emptied the chambers and tried the mechanism while it was unloaded, I felt that the gun has a sweet action and was exceedingly acceptable for a man in your line of work as a detective. I assure you I put it back exactly how I found it.”

“Do you have a revolver, Mary?”

“Not here, no. Nor do we have one at our Burbank house, before you ask. And the reason for that is simply that Brad doesn’t want them in the house. The theatrical industry is filled with artistes who have to live with many extreme highs and lows, and we have both lost friends who have permanently solved their temporary problems with an all-too-convenient handgun. Nor do we need guns in Burbank, it is well ordered and not a hostile environment.”

“I am glad to hear there are no bears in Burbank.”

“No, we do have snakes and wolves in my state. I do have several hand guns and rifles at my ranch, where Brad never goes, well hardly ever, as he is by nature a city person. He feels the loneliness of such a place quite acutely, while I am a country girl by nature and by choice. I suppose that is where I will desire to live and work once my short film career is over, whatever happens in the meantime between Brad and I. I assume that he does not have a gun in the New York apartment, where I rarely stay unless we have to do publicity. And I do have a hunting rifle, actually three, at my little hideaway cabin in the Sierras. There we do have bears. I am quite a good shot. My husband can use a gun, obviously, but I wouldn’t say he was very good with it. I embarrassed him by my marksmanship at the first shooting range we went to together and he never accompanied me again. Because of his film rôles he has to handle a number of guns, some of them dummy weapons, and others capable of firing live or blank rounds, but even a blank can inflict some serious damage, so he has been well coached in the safe handling and use of firearms.”

“So your husband is more comfortable living in a city?”

“Yes, he has a New York apartment near the Central Park in Manhattan and there’s our house in Burbank, which is only a short ride into the city.”

“It was quite wide open countryside around the airfield we have just visited. I’m sure all airfields are the same and he may have felt uncomfortable there. He was stationed there for five or six months and it was his choice to apply for transfer.”

“You heard his fellow officers and one of his men, Edgar. Were they talking about a man who doubted his abilities, that felt he was a failure?”

“No they didn’t, Mary.”

“He was looking to a future in fast single-seater fighters with more challenges to stretch his flying abilities. As for that squadron base, well a city man stranded in cattle country with five people in it and fifty miles from the nearest town, in a state one-and-a-half times the size of Britain, with around 95-times smaller population, is one thing, a gregarious man unable to cope with life on a busy airbase, full of pilots and aircrew numbering nearly a hundred, a ground crew just as big plus all the guards, auxiliaries, cooks and cleaners and fire crews, is another. There must be in excess of 300 people on that base, plus the regulars within walking distance down the pub.”

“I agree, you’re right. I do not believe he is in danger of committing suicide.”

“That’s why I believe he is still alive.” Her face looked full of hope.

I nodded. “I can’t help noticing that both your lives are divided into compartments. You share the house close to your Studio work, which Mr Gold also uses for the same work. You called it a house not a home. He has his city apartment, where he appears to be more comfortable, that you do visit, but only occasionally. You have the ranch that you actually call your home, that he only visits rarely, and you said ‘you’, not ‘we’, when you said you have a cabin where you keep your favourite gun. Is that a place where Mr Gold never goes?” “My favourite gun is a rifle, Edgar, a hunting rifle. What are you hunting with this line of questions?”