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I talked to Michael Stanhope for a while and he remarked on how beautiful he thought Gloria looked and what a lucky man Matthew was. For once, he didn’t say anything nasty about the war. Betty Warden, who had managed to wangle an invitation somehow, sat with her nose in the air most of the night, disapproving of everything and everyone, but I must say that when she danced with William Goodall, she seemed like a different person. So did he, for that matter. Almost human, both of them.
Alice Hill was cheerful and talkative as ever, and I rather think she developed a fancy for Eric Poole that very night. They certainly danced closely together often enough.
Gloria came up to me at one point – she had changed now into a long flared skirt and pink blouse – with a little sweat beaded on her brow and upper lip from dancing too energetically. Her eyes were shining. I think she’d had a drink or two.
She rested her soft, delicate hand on my arm. “This is the happiest day of my life, Gwen,” she said. “Do you know, just six months ago I thought I would never laugh or dance again. But thanks to you, your mother and, of course, dear Matt… Thank you, Gwen, thank you so much.” Then she leaned forward quickly and clasped me to her bosom, giving me a little peck on the cheek. It was awkward, and with her being so small, I had to bend. I could smell the gin on her breath. I’m sure I blushed, but she didn’t remark on it.
“I haven’t seen you dancing,” she said.
I shook my head. “I don’t. I mean, I can’t.”
“I’ll teach you,” she said. “Not right now, of course… but I’ll teach you. Will you let me?”
I nodded stupidly. “Yes. If you want.”
“It’s the least I can do.”
Then she excused herself and went to talk to Mother and Cynthia, smiling on everyone she passed with those Hardy-heroine eyes of hers.
I did my bit, moving from table to table, being polite to my distant relations, removing Uncle Gerald’s hand from my knee without drawing attention to the fact that it was there.
The local people started to drift home around sunset to make sure they had all got their blackout curtains in place. Our relations were staying with friends in Harkside, so they began to leave, too, before it got too dark to see their way across the fields.
Matthew and Gloria went to Bridge Cottage for their first night together as man and wife. Whether this was their first time together, I have no idea. It may be hard to believe now, when everyone seems to be very sophisticated about sex, but I knew very little of such things back then. I had no idea, for example, what men and women actually did when they made babies.
The next day they were going to Scarborough for a three-day honeymoon. Matthew had already booked a room at a guest house in St. Mary’s near the castle. After that, it was back to university for Matthew – with his finals coming up soon – and back to Top Hill Farm for Gloria, though she would live at Bridge Cottage and walk or cycle to and from work.
Mother was talking to Sue and Olive at the door when I finally excused myself through tiredness and set off home alone. It had been a long, hard day.
Though it was late, a deep purple-and-vermilion glow still lit the sky in the west, behind the dark mill. The streets were quiet, though I could still hear music coming from the church hall behind me. Back home, I made sure the blackout curtains were drawn tightly, then, weary to the bone, I went to bed.
It was only when I was on the very edge of sleep and heard the thrumming and droning of the bombers taking off from Rowan Woods RAF Base that I remembered what had bothered me so much outside the church after the wedding.
Not only had there been no confetti, there had been no wedding bells, either. All the church bells had been silent since 1940 and were only supposed to ring if there was an invasion. The thing was, I hadn’t even noticed at first because I had got so used to the silence.
I thought that was very sad, and I cried myself to sleep that night.
A
“Inspector Harmond told me you were down here,” Banks said.
A
“Don’t worry. One day it’ll all be on the computer.”
“When I’m long since dead and buried.”
Banks smiled as he ducked under an overhead pipe and walked over to join her. “Anything yet?”
“Quite a lot, as a matter of fact. I’ve been on the phone most of the day, and I was just checking some missing-person files.”
“And?”
“It’s a bit of a confusing period for that sort of thing. Just after the war. There were so many changes, so many people coming and going. Anyway, most of the ones who went missing seemed to turn up eventually, either dead or alive, or in the colonies. There are a couple of young women who fit the general description still unaccounted for. I’ll follow up on them.”
“Fancy a pint? The Black Swan?”
A
Comfortably ensconced on a padded bench just a few minutes later, legs stretched out and crossed at the ankles, pint already half finished, A
“I checked the Voters Register first,” she said, “but the clerk in the council office told me it was frozen at the start of the war. The last person they’ve got listed for Bridge Cottage is a Miss Violet Croft. I had a bit more luck with the Land Registry. Violet Croft rented the cottage from the Clifford estate, and the manager kept impeccable records. She lived there between the fourteenth of September, 1919, and the third of July, 1940, so she must be the old lady Ruby Kettering remembered, the one the village kids thought was a witch. The cottage remained empty until June 1941, when a Mr. and Mrs. Shackleton took up residence there. It might have been requisitioned for the billeting of evacuees or military perso
“I doubt that many places stayed empty for long during the war,” said Banks. “Maybe some soldiers got billeted there, killed a local tart in a drunken orgy and then decided to cover their tracks?”
“It’s possible.” A
“We’re talking about wartime,” Banks went on. “Army camps and air force bases sprang up overnight, like mushrooms. Evacuees came and went. It was easy to disappear, change identity, slip through the cracks.”
“But people had identity cards and ration books. The council clerk told me. He said there was a National Registry at the begi
“I imagine those sort of things were open to a fiddle easily enough. Who knows, maybe we’re dealing with a Nazi spy done in by the secret service?”
A
“Maybe. Anyway, what happened to Miss Violet Croft?”
A