Sam Bourne - Pantheon

He said none of this of course. He simply shook her hand and said, ‘And so am I, Mrs Goodwin, so am I. Where on earth did you see me?’

‘In church, Dr Zennor: the Battell Chapel. I was there with Thomas.’ She tilted her head in the direction of the boys, who were now extending their arms and legs in a series of rhythmic star jumps.

‘On Sunday? During that debate about joining the war?’

‘Quite so.’

So that explained that fleeting sensation he had had, the nagging feeling that somewhere in that congregation he had glimpsed a familiar face. He had thought it was a trick of the light, or exhaustion after his journey, but it had been real. Not that he had any idea where or when in Oxford he had seen Mrs Goodwin. Was she another friend of Florence’s he had all but ignored?

‘I must say, I found the event rather sobering,’ she went on. ‘It seems our little island is to fight this war all alone, wouldn’t you say?’

‘Joining the war hardly seems popular in America, if that’s what you mean.’ He cleared his throat. ‘Mrs Goodwin, I’ve come here to Yale to find my wife. Do you have any idea where she is?’

‘You mean, you don’t know?’

‘I’m afraid, I don’t.’

She looked away, embarrassed. ‘It’s odd, but I had an inkling that that was the case. When I saw what I thought was you in church, I dismissed it at first. I assumed I had just glimpsed someone who looked like you. Such things do happen, you know. But then I was buying some cigarettes at the Owl Shop and the young man there mentioned an Englishman on his own, looking for his wife, and I began to wonder. I called in at the Elizabethan Club really on the off-chance-’

‘Mrs Goodwin, do you know where she is?’

‘I did know. She was with the rest of us at the Divinity School when we arrived.’

‘The Divinity School?’

‘Yes, that was where we were first received. Before they allocated us to our respective host families.’

‘And where was Florence allocated?’

‘Well, that’s just it, you see. I don’t know. She was still there when I was picked up by the Swansons last Friday. They’ve been terribly nice. And settling in took a few days, inevitably, and before I knew it everyone had been scattered to the four winds. A few ladies are in Pennsylvania.’

‘Do you not know where any of the others are?’

‘I do know where some are staying. A few of us have made contact with each other. Plenty of our hosts know each other of course. Especially those of us who have been housed here in New Haven. But there’s not many in that position, you see. Others are with professors who live away from here, or else have summer houses in the country.’

‘I understand.’

‘But surely the university must have records, Dr Zennor? What about that committee that arranged everything for us, have you spoken to them?’

‘Not exactly. But I have… ’ James hesitated. ‘I have consulted their records, as it were. And Florence and Harry are the only ones about whom there is no information.’

‘What about the Dean, Preston something, I forget his name-’

‘Dr McAndrew?’

‘That’s it. He’s been perfectly wonderful. He was the driving force behind the whole scheme, I hear. He’s in charge, he must know.’

‘He’s drawn a blank too.’

The woman bit her lip. ‘That really is most odd.’

‘Can I ask, Mrs Goodwin, when is the last time you saw Florence?’

‘As I say, at the Divinity School. We were there together for the first day or so.’

‘And can you remember anything that happened there, anything my wife might have said, that could perhaps explain where she is?’

Just for a second, the woman looked at her feet, a fleeting aversion of the eyes that suggested — what? — guilt, embarrassment, James was not sure. ‘Anything at all, Mrs Goodwin.’

‘Well, it’s rather awkward but-’

At that moment she gave a slight jump, shaken by a sudden bellowed roar from the exercise ground as the boys shouted a slogan: ‘Straight backs and good posture are essential to good health!’ The instructor cupped his ear, a pantomime gesture suggesting they had shouted too quietly. They tried it again, this time at the tops of their just-broken voices.

‘They’re very serious about all matters physical here, I’ve noticed,’ Mrs Goodwin said with a smile. ‘If they’re not hiking, they’re wrestling or playing basketball. Thomas always enjoyed playing cricket, but this is-’

‘You were about to tell me something, Mrs Goodwin. About Florence at the Divinity School.’ He paused. ‘You said it was awkward.’

‘Yes, I did.’ She looked towards the boys, about to embark on a run around the perimeter. ‘It’s a question, really. Tell me, Dr Zennor, have you ever written to your wife?’

‘What? Yes, of course. Every day, as soon as I knew she had come to Yale. I sent several letters from Liverpool, then perhaps a dozen from Canada. I’d stored them up on the ship. I’ve sent some from here too, not that I’ve got an address. I’ve just been sending them “care of Yale University”.’

‘Oh I see.’ Her brow furrowed. ‘That confuses me rather.’

‘I don’t understand. Why?’

‘I don’t like to be rude, Dr Zennor. And this really is none of my business.’

‘What? Tell me.’

‘Well, my husband’s been doing the same. Addressing his letters “care of Yale”. And they’ve all arrived, every one of them. There were several items of post waiting for me and the children at the Divinity School. But I’m afraid… ’

‘Yes?’

‘Florence had nothing from you. Not even a card. She was quite distressed about it. We all sympathized as best we could. Now that I see you here, having travelled all this way, I realize we must have got the wrong end of the stick. But I’m afraid at the time we did think it a rather poor show.’

He sprinted back to the school office, asking the secretary to order him a taxi as soon as she could. His head was pounding.

He was not paranoid, he was not deluded: something dark and dangerous and awful was going on here and, God knows why or how, Florence and Harry were at the centre of it. An image of his son, cowering and terrified, entered, unbidden, into his mind. Little, beautiful Harry. Oh God, what on earth had they done to his boy? And what did they want with the woman he loved?

There was no writing this off as a coincidence. At first, maybe, it could have been just that. A missing document in the files, a mislaid sheet of paper: it could happen to anybody. But this: concrete proof that his letters to Florence had been intercepted. Who would want to do such a thing? And why?

As he paced by the school entrance, round and round that sign — ‘The Breeding up of Hopeful Youths’ — he could feel again the clamminess of Lund’s hand as the man, sweating frantically, had clutched his own. You have no idea what you’ve walked into here, do you? You’ve stumbled into something much bigger than you realize. Bigger and more dangerous.

The poor bastard wasn’t deluded. He was damn right. This was something dangerous enough to have cost Lund’s own life — and perhaps, who knows, it posed an equally grave threat to James’s wife and child. Unless it was already too late…

He shook his head, as if the action would shake away such an insupportable thought. He had been such a fool and the worst kind, a clever fool; foolish, indeed, because clever. The signs had been there from the beginning: that rattle of the letterbox the morning after Florence had disappeared. They had been tampering with his post even then, getting to the card from his wife before he could, deliberately depriving him of the few hours in which he might have got to her in time. He should have suspected a plot then — a careful, meticulous plot. But did he? No. He was too bloody rational for that, too reasonable. There had to be another explanation, that was what he had kept telling himself. Another, more sensible, rational explanation for why his wife was missing from those files, why Lund had latched onto him, why Lund had ended up dead. James had been a prisoner of his own damned rationality. But he had been wrong. If only he had been stupider, thought with his gut rather than his head, he would have got to the truth so much faster.