James Hawkins - Missing - Presumed Dead

Everything suddenly fell into place in Bliss’s mind and he held up his hand, beaming, “I’ve got it now, you were a nurse; Queen Alexandra’s I bet; went in with the troops on the front lines — hence the O.B.E. No wonder you like looking after people, taking birds under your wing.”

“Detective Inspector,” she started, getting his title right for once, pointing up the gravity of what she was about to divulge. “It’s rather sweet that you should imagine me in a blood covered apron, comforting the wounded, but it would be dishonest of me to let you go on believing that, and it wouldn’t be sensible in the long run.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m sorry to disappoint you but I wasn’t a nurse — my job wasn’t to save lives.”

“What did you do?”

Daphne appeared not to hear as she stroked the wooden cat. “I hope you don’t put the General’s nose out of joint, he can be very jealous at times,” she said, then, without changing tone or taking her eyes off the statue, asked, “Do you ever tell lies, Dave?”

“Sometimes.”

“That’s very honest,” she looked up quizzically, “unless you’re lying.”

“Daphne — What on earth are you rambling about? All I wanted to know was what you did during the war.”

With a final stroke of the cat she seemed to make up her mind. Fixing Bliss with a hard stare she stunned him. “I killed people.”

Bliss choked — seriously choked. He’d taken a sharp involuntary breath at the wrong moment and inhaled a flake of pastry from a cheese stick.

“Water,” he coughed, and took several slurps before trying to speak through the spluttering — “You … killed … people?”

“I knew I should have lied … Here, have some more water, you’re going red.”

The waiter was back. “Something wrong, Madam?”

“He’s choking.”

“Don’t make a fuss,” Bliss pleaded, gasping for air.

“More water, Sir?”

He waved the glass away and doubled over with coughing and retching. The lights were going out — fading into a fuzzy haze, his eyes were streaming, his oxygen-starved brain was struggling for a solution and all he could think was — this sweet little old lady’s a killer.

A dozen pairs of hooded eyes sneaked a look, conversations drifted to a standstill. Time held it’s breath. Waiting for what? Then Daphne leapt out of her chair, ran around the table and smashed her fist into his back. Bliss exploded in a fit of coughing, panting and wheezing as he forced his lungs to inhale, but the obstruction had cleared and he gasped himself back to normality.

“You nearly choked to death,” said Daphne, her voice full of concern as she re-sat.

“What d’ye expect after what you just told me?” he replied accusingly.

“I’m not proud of what I did. And quite honestly I’d rather you kept this just between us.”

“But who did you kill? When? Why? — I don’t understand.”

She shut him out again, going back to the cat, then reminding him. “We came to talk about the Major.”

“You can’t do that — You can’t give me a heart-attack then change the subject. This isn’t the Women’s Institute — ‘You can finish the crochet at home ladies, now we’re starting the strawberry jam.’”

“You are funny, Chief Inspector.”

“No, I’m serious. I want to know.”

Daphne spent a few moments brushing crumbs off the table then her eyes locked onto one of the table’s growth-rings and she followed it around until it disappeared under Bliss’s left hand. “People do things in wars,” she began sombrely, concentrating on his fingers. “Disgusting things; things they’d never dream of doing normally; things they’d never admit having done …” The turmoil of indecision slowed her speech. “I wish I hadn’t said anything …” she paused then looked up, pleading with her eyes. “Don’t say anything, will you?”

He wouldn’t, he assured her.

“I belonged to a special unit during the war,” she began, explaining calmly. “French-speaking men and women trained for a specific mission during the invasion of France. The Allies were concerned the French would side with the Germans after D-Day and turn on our troops.”

“Why should they?”

“Fear mainly — the Gestapo had rounded up many Frenchmen and sent them to concentration camps. Almost every family had at least one member who’d been arrested and imprisoned and the threat was clear — cooperate or they die. But the French had other reasons.”

“What reasons — surely we were liberating them?”

“That’s true, though some still hadn’t forgiven us for deserting them at Dunkirk and don’t forget we’d destroyed their fleet at Oran — killed thousands of sailors to stop the Vichy Government handing the ships over to the Germans.” Checking to make sure she wasn’t being overheard, she lowered her voice a couple of notches. “And they never liked us very much in the first place.”

“I still don’t understand. What were you expected to do — kill Frenchman before they could kill our people?”

“No — of course not. We were trained to prepare the way for the invading forces — let the French know we were coming as allies to free the country, not turn it into a British colony like the Germans claimed in their propaganda; to warn them to keep away from the coast; persuade them to dig in or hide in the cellars. We were supposed to galvanise the resistance to co-ordinate the blowing up of bridges, derailment of trains, blocking roads, that sort of thing. But the main task was to get behind enemy lines and vector artillery fire onto concentrations of German troops. Once the battle started our people wouldn’t have a clue where the fleeing Jerries were and the danger was we could have wiped out the local population without even scratching the enemy. So you see, it was my job to kill people.”

The first course arrived and the interruption gave Bliss an opportunity to get his thoughts together.

This wasn’t bad, he thought, this wasn’t the admission of some deranged old biddy who had wiped out half the inmates of an old peoples home with arsenic in the soup; this wasn’t a rampaging granny mowing down the queue in the post office because her welfare cheque hadn’t arrived; this wasn’t a mobster in a mask …

“It was wartime — people die. You said so yourself,” he began, offering absolution, but she sliced into a mushroom with such fierce concentration that he backed off and centred on his pate.

“How did you get there?” he tried conversationally after a few minutes.

“Parachute.”

“You parachuted into France?”

“Yes.”

“Wasn’t that dangerous?”

“Yes.”

“Was it during the day or at night?”

“Night.”

“Did you have a reserve?”

“No.”

“Are you going to keep this up all evening? … I said, are you …”

“I heard you, Chief Inspector, but sometimes it’s best to leave old skeletons in the cupboard.”

“That’s exactly what Jonathon said.”

“He was right then.”

Bliss sat back with an admiring smile. “I can’t get over that. You — parachuting out of a plane over enemy territory in the middle of the night.”

“I sometimes wonder if it was a dream myself.”

Bliss took a few moments to finish his pate’ and used the hiatus to study her with deepening respect, realising that if it were anyone but Daphne talking he’d probably not believe a word of what they were saying. But there was something so totally sincere in her manner. “So what happened?” he asked eventually.

Daphne toyed indecisively with the remaining mushroom — shunting it back and forth across her plate.

Then she edged it onto the rim and started working it around.