James Benn - Rag and Bone

“Kind of a small, round mouth,” I added. “A smart kid, too.” She had to be.

“Visiting here in Shepherdswell?”

“Yes, that’s what we were told,” Kaz said.

“Humph. Sorry, can’t help you there. Sounds a bit like Miss Pemble, but she’s not visiting anyone, and not named Sheila either. Been here off and on for some time now.”

“Miss Pemble?” Kaz said, inviting more comment.

“Aye. Margaret Pemble. She’s a nurse. Rented a cottage out on Farrier Street a fortnight or more ago. She stayed here-we have a couple of rooms upstairs in case you gents need a place tonight-for a few days while she looked around. Nice young woman, I’d say a bit older than the girl you described.”

“Much call for nurses around here?” I asked.

“No, not much. We have the village doctor, that’s all we need. She’s a private nurse, specializes in rehabilitation, she said. Needed a place with plenty of room downstairs, to care for a crippled flier who hired her on. Some rich bloke, I’d say, after a quiet place in the country instead of a crowded hospital ward. I’d do the same myself, if I had the money.”

“So the place on Farrier Street, it’s his then?” I asked.

“I guess so, not that it matters. She’s the one doing everything, getting it all ready. He’s had several operations on his face and legs. Can’t walk much, that’s what she’s going to help him with. Don’t know what’s hidden under the bandages. Some of those pilots get burned something awful.”

“Yeah, we just saw a B-17 belly-land in a field,” Big Mike said. “It came in with three engines on fire. They were lucky to make it down in one piece.”

“Aye, we’ve seen plenty of crashes here, since 1940. A Hurricane came down not a quarter mile away, poor bloke dead at the controls. The Home Guard lads have rounded up a few Jerries as well, most of them glad to give up after a night in the woods. We had a Polish pilot-one of your lot, Lieutenant-he had to bail out, in September 1940, I think, and it took a while for him to convince the constable he was one of ours. He had a thick accent, just like Miss Pemble’s patient.”

“He’s a Polish flier?” Kaz asked.

“Aye, from the Kosciuszko Squadron, so he told me. Famous lot, those boys. He was a bit hard to understand, with his accent and the bandages to boot, but I got that much.”

“Perhaps I should stop and give him my regards,” Kaz said. “Miss Pemble and he are at home?”

“No, they left for London this morning. I think she has to bring him back for treatments at the hospital. We don’t see that much of them. She said it would be a while before he could stay full-time.” He briskly took our orders for lunch, gave Kaz directions to Miss Pemble’s cottage, and went off to pull Big Mike’s next pint.

“I think we should take a look at this cottage,” Kaz said in a low voice.

“What, you think Sheila Carlson is moonlighting as a nurse?” Big Mike said. “Sounds out of character.”

“Why not, as long as we’re here? She fits the description,” Kaz said.

“Look, you’re already wanted by Scotland Yard,” I said. “You want the local constable to throw you in the hoosegow for breaking and entering, too?”

“Hoosegow?” Kaz said, unfamiliar with the term.

“Clink. Pokey, the big house,” Big Mike said.

“Ah, the slammer,” Kaz said. “We must be careful then. I am only looking for my wounded cousin, Luboslaw. I am distraught, am I not?”

“Not responsible for your actions,” Big Mike said. “We tried to stop you.”

“Sure, that’s believable,” I said.

After a lunch of bangers and mash in apple cider gravy-two helpings for Big Mike-we drove along Farrier Street, past three small cottages, until we came to Miss Pemble’s, marked by a large weeping willow. We knocked at the front door, and were greeted by the silence of an empty house. Big Mike looked in the bay window, and shook his head. No one home. We went around back, and Big Mike worked his knife-blade magic on the rear door. Ten seconds and we were in.

“Poor Luboslaw,” I said to Kaz. “He’ll never know of your grief.”

“You guys search the joint,” Big Mike said. “I’ll be on watch. If you hear me start up the jeep, it means someone’s coming. Go out the back, lock up, and say you were just knocking at the door. OK?”

“OK.” Kaz and I went through the rooms. Margaret Pemble’s room was upstairs, and she had a lot more stuff than Sheila had had on her last time I saw her. A few dresses hung in the closet, nothing fancy. A chest of drawers held the usual feminine stuff, and her dressing table was decorated with perfumes and makeup. No wads of cash hidden under the mattress, no oleander plant being cultivated. Downstairs, we went through the meager belongings of her patient. A couple of worn suits. One RAF uniform, a leather flying jacket, shirts, and corduroy trousers.

A small table by the window was stacked with bandages and dressings, along with a few bottles of medicines. A pile of books, one in Polish, rested on the nightstand.

“Stefan Grabin ski,” Kaz said. “He’s called the Polish Poe. Demon ruchu. The Motion Demon. Horror stories, not to my taste.”

“There’s horror enough,” I said. I flipped the pages of the other two books. One was a paperback, The Saint Goes On, by Leslie Charteris. I’d read a few of his books, and knew they were fairly easy reads. Maybe he was trying to improve his English. The other was a thicker hardcover, Selected Poems, by W. B. Yeats. That was heavier going, and I flipped through the pages, wondering at his wide-ranging interests. It opened to a bookmark at “The Circus Animals’ Desertion,” a poem I’d not heard of.

“Ah, Yeats,” Kaz said. “A famous Irish poet. Are you familiar with his work?”

“Not really. I don’t get this poem about circus animals, that’s for sure.”

“The meaning is in the last lines,” Kaz said, reciting them from memory.

Now that my ladder’s gone

I must lie down where all the ladders start

In the foul rag and bone shop of the heart.

“He wrote it near the end of his life, about trying to recapture the creativity of youth,” Kaz said. “It speaks about returning to the elemental truths, I think.”

“He has those lines underlined,” I said, feeling easier talking about concrete truths.

“Poles have a deep understanding of poetry,” Kaz said, taking the book from my hands. “He knows Latin, too, if this is in his hand. Corpora dormiunt vigilant animae.”

“What’s that mean?” I asked, as Kaz showed me the inscription on the first page of the book.

“The bodies are asleep, the souls are awake.”

“Interesting guy,” I said. “Not that it matters.”

The nightstand also held a fountain pen and three small pebbles. Souvenirs of Poland, maybe? We looked under the bed, behind the chest of drawers, and found nothing but dust balls. Magazines and a radio in the sitting room. Coal in the bucket by the fireplace. Well-stocked larder and a few bottles of vodka to ease the pain. Nothing suspicious, just a chilly rural cottage with a decent stock of booze, books, and bandages.

“See anything out of the ordinary?” I asked Kaz.

“Nothing. It has a temporary look, no personal effects, but that fits with what we were told.”

We left, checking to be sure nothing was disturbed, and that we had locked the door behind us. The only evidence of our visit was a few scratches around the lock, where Big Mike had used his blade. Nothing a nurse or crippled pilot would notice.

“Waste of time,” I said to Big Mike.

“Worth checking out,” he said, like any good cop would. You never passed up a lead, no matter how slim. That’s how cases were solved. We drove back to the main road, turning south for Dover, belly landings and wild-goose chases behind us.