James Benn - A Blind Goddess

There was Michael Flowers of the Newbury Building Society, along with Miss Gardner, the helpful secretary. Razor Fraser and Ernest Bone. Laurianne Ross and the missing Sophia Edwards. Jack Monk from the pub, and old Tim Pettigrew. Can’t tell the players without a scorecard.

But what was the game?

It was still light when I arrived back at the Prince of Wales Inn. The sun was down, but the clouds were backlit from the sunset, casting a soft golden glow over the landscape. It shouldn’t be so pretty, I thought, with a young girl dead and another missing, the innocent behind bars, and a good man dying. I found Kaz, Diana, and Laurianne Ross from the school seated outside, the flagstones warm from the day’s sunlight. I’d half forgotten that Diana and Kaz had paid a visit to the Avington School for Girls today. Diana was in her brown wool FANY uniform, which I guessed she’d worn to interest the kids, since her brass buttons and leather belt were polished to a gleam.

“Billy,” Kaz said as I sat down on the wooden bench. “You remember Miss Ross?”

“Of course,” I said. “What brings you here?” She looked nervous, twirling a half-empty glass of what looked to be brandy, the same as Kaz and Diana were drinking. It had to be serious.

“We brought her back with us, Billy,” Diana said, patting her on the arm. “It was a bit of a shock. And we thought it best for you to hear it directly from Laurianne.”

“Okay,” I said, slowly, holding back my curiosity. “Tell me about it.”

“When the baron and Lady Seaton came by today, I of course thought they were bringing news of Sophia,” Laurianne said. Kaz used his title whenever he made restaurant reservations or needed to gain entry. Evidently it worked. “But they wanted to question the girls, as you know. We thought it best if we treated it as a visit, with the baron speaking about his native Poland and Lady Seaton talking about her experiences with the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry. The girls were thrilled, especially about the FANY. So many of them want to sign up as soon as they are old enough.” She took a sip of the brandy, and I watched Diana nod encouragingly.

A roar of engines announced a low-flying pair of fighters, P-47 Thunderbolts by the sound of their growling radial engines. They swooped over the village, probably headed back to Greenham Common air base. It was a routine event, but Laurianne jumped in her seat.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “Ever since I saw that picture, my nerves have been on edge. I can’t help but feel guilty.”

“Tell me about the picture,” I said.

“Lady Seaton-” Laurianne began again, taking a deep breath. “Diana, please call me Diana. That lady business is frightful, really.”

“Thank you, Diana. Well, Captain Boyle, Diana asked the girls a few simple questions about Sophia, what she was like and so on. Then one of the girls said she looked like that girl who had come by asking for food. Similar hair, that sort of thing. Both were slender girls.”

“Wait,” I said, trying to understand. “What girl? Not one of yours?”

“No. She rode up on a bicycle one day and asked for food. She said she was traveling to Southampton and would work for a meal. She looked like a runaway so I invited her in and went to my office to call the constable. She must have overheard me on the telephone, because when I came out, she was gone.”

“You didn’t mention this before,” I said.

“No, I hardly recalled it. I wasn’t certain she was a runaway, but thought I should place the call just in case. Then she was gone, and there were a hundred other tasks to attend to. I quite forgot about it until the girls reminded me today.”

“I showed her the picture of Margaret Hibberd,” Kaz said, taking the photograph out of his pocket. “It was her.”

“She’d be alive if I hadn’t called the police,” Laurianne said. Her chin quivered and she looked ready to fall apart.

“Whatever happened to Margaret easily could have happened after a good meal,” I said. “We know she was making her way to London to search for her parents. She said Southampton to throw you off.”

“I keep telling myself that,” Laurianne said. “But if she had stayed, she might not have met up with whoever killed her. Isn’t that right?” Her dark eyes were watery, tears about to cascade down her cheeks. I searched for the right thing to say, and came up empty. She had spoken the truth, and there was no dancing around it.

“What fates impose, that men must needs abide; It boots not to resist both wind and tide,” Kaz said quietly.

“Shakespeare,” Laurianne said. “ Romeo and Juliet , wasn’t it?”

“Yes,” Kaz said. “A story of another doomed girl. Margaret was set upon a course to find her parents, only she could not know they were both dead. Fate led her to them, not you.”

“Thank you, Baron,” she said, and finished her brandy.

“Did she say anything at all, other than asking for a meal?”

“She had some story about working on a farm, but being called back to Southampton by her father. She did say he found a place in the country for her because Southampton was so heavily bombed, which is true enough.”

“Anything else? Anything unusual?”

“No. She was friendly. She had confidence. It took some nerve to bicycle up and ask for a meal. I imagine she saw the girls and felt comfortable enough about it, but still, it would be hard for any girl her age to do that.”

“She was trusting,” Diana said.

“Yes. Open and trusting,” Laurianne said, clasping her hands around her empty glass. “Now she’s dead, isn’t she? So much for confidence.”

Kaz offered to drive Laurianne back to the school, and Diana and I stayed outside in the cool air under the feeble lamplight. I hadn’t had a chance to tell her or Kaz about Cosgrove’s heart attack, much less pass on his warning.

“Diana, I-” She held up her hand, watching as Kaz helped Laurianne into the jeep and started the engine.

“Wait, Billy,” Diana said, “but there’s something else. Before I left, I had a chance to speak to several of the girls alone. They all saw Margaret ride in on her bicycle. They were coming in from the playground when she knocked on the front door. But none of them actually saw her leave.”

“Where were they? Could they have seen her?”

“They’d come in through a side door from the playground. The girls I spoke to were in a classroom at the front of the house with a clear view of the drive. They saw Margaret waiting in the foyer as they entered, and then never saw her again.”

“Is there another road or path leading away from the house?” I asked, leaning back in my seat, trying to remember the layout of the place.

“I don’t know,” Diana said. “Laurianne escorted us throughout the building, so it seemed impolite to wander about. I thought it best to tell you. Perhaps Margaret hid herself there.”

“I’ll check it out,” I said. “Good work.”

In my experience, runaway girls don’t end up tucked safely away in a girl’s school, but no reason not to let that remote possibility stay with us. Chances were the girls missed seeing her leave, or she went out a different way. Miss Ross didn’t seem the type to store bodies under the floorboards, but I knew I had to look into the possibility that Margaret had come to grief not far from the school. Or at the school, which was much more sinister. Laurianne Ross was in charge at the school, she had the run of the entire building. She could have brought Margaret wherever she wanted, and quietly disposed of the bicycle. But why? There was no motive I could think of. Still, it was odd that she had forgotten to mention Margaret Hibberd until one of her schoolgirls brought it up. With one child missing, why not report a runaway who showed up and then disappeared?