papers and files fall from his overladen desk, then a scuffle as he tried to retrieve them and listen to her at the same time.
“—but I will come to Hastings on Saturday morning.”
“Excellent. I’ll take you out for fish and chips on the beach, if you play your cards right!”
“Oh, how could I turn down an offer like that?”
“You couldn’t. Righty-o, I must dash. I’ve got a new patient this morning, a youngster crippled with polio, I’m afraid. See you Saturday.”
“Until then, Andrew.” Maisie replaced the receiver and stared out of the window for a moment. In truth, she suspected that Dene had fallen in love with her but would not ask her to marry him until he felt confident that her answer would be yes. And they both knew that time had not yet come. For her part, the relationship had been an easy one, given Dene’s happy-go-lucky character. Yet one aspect of her response to their relationship bothered Maisie: the fact that, when apart, she seldom thought about Dene; then, when she saw him again, she was quick to remember how charming she found him to be. He, too, had risen above difficult circumstances—the death of both parents at an early age—and he had worked hard to put himself through medical school. After serving in the war, he was now an orthopedic specialist with a bright future at a rehabilitation and convalescence hospital high on the cliffs above Hastings Old Town, in Sussex. Maisie sometimes envied the way in which Dene refused to allow the weight of his past to be a burden, though she suspected he used his lightness and good humor as an antidote to his own sufferings and those of his patients.
She turned to the papers once more and made a notation on an index card. She glanced at her watch. Lawton had given her the names of three women claiming to be psychics whom his wife had consulted, and she planned to visit each woman today. She remembered only too well the many psychics and others like them who feigned a special relationship with the dead and claimed to have heard from a son, father, brother, or husband who had been killed. She also remembered the grieving, those whom her mentor, Maurice Blanche, had counseled following such disappointments—and the practitioners he had challenged and effectively put out of business.
During her apprenticeship they had worked together to break a ring of fraudulent psychics who took money from the bereaved in return for bogus messages from the dead. It was a landmark case that tested Maisie to the core, not least because it was the first time she was personally required to give evidence in court. According to the newspapers, it was the youthful innocence of one of the witnesses, Miss Maisie Dobbs, that swayed the jury to find Frances Sinden, Irene Nelson and Margaret Awkright guilty, a result that would pack them off to Holloway Prison for a very long time indeed. Now, having checked to see whether there had been any previous convictions or complaints against the women on Lawton’s list, or whether she and Maurice had investigated one or all of them years ago, she set off.
B ARROW R OAD , I SLINGTON , was on the cusp of change. The large Victorian houses had been divided into flats, some of them run-down, some clinging to a haughty grandeur despite paint that was beginning to peel. The downstairs flat at number 21 might have seemed gray and damp if someone who cared less than Lillian Browning was in residence. The soot-blackened exterior was made bright by window boxes with pink and red geraniums, and on each step down to the flat a medium-sized terra-cotta flowerpot over-flowed with brightly colored blooms. Mrs. Browning had planted an ivy in a larger pot, and it was now furiously making its way along the recently replaced iron railings, the original railings having been torn up for use in the armaments factories at the outset of war in 1914.
Maisie knocked at the door.
Lillian Browning was about forty years of age, with light hazel eyes
“—but I will come to Hastings on Saturday morning.”
“Excellent. I’ll take you out for fish and chips on the beach, if you play your cards right!”
“Oh, how could I turn down an offer like that?”
“You couldn’t. Righty-o, I must dash. I’ve got a new patient this morning, a youngster crippled with polio, I’m afraid. See you Saturday.”
“Until then, Andrew.” Maisie replaced the receiver and stared out of the window for a moment. In truth, she suspected that Dene had fallen in love with her but would not ask her to marry him until he felt confident that her answer would be yes. And they both knew that time had not yet come. For her part, the relationship had been an easy one, given Dene’s happy-go-lucky character. Yet one aspect of her response to their relationship bothered Maisie: the fact that, when apart, she seldom thought about Dene; then, when she saw him again, she was quick to remember how charming she found him to be. He, too, had risen above difficult circumstances—the death of both parents at an early age—and he had worked hard to put himself through medical school. After serving in the war, he was now an orthopedic specialist with a bright future at a rehabilitation and convalescence hospital high on the cliffs above Hastings Old Town, in Sussex. Maisie sometimes envied the way in which Dene refused to allow the weight of his past to be a burden, though she suspected he used his lightness and good humor as an antidote to his own sufferings and those of his patients.
She turned to the papers once more and made a notation on an index card. She glanced at her watch. Lawton had given her the names of three women claiming to be psychics whom his wife had consulted, and she planned to visit each woman today. She remembered only too well the many psychics and others like them who feigned a special relationship with the dead and claimed to have heard from a son, father, brother, or husband who had been killed. She also remembered the grieving, those whom her mentor, Maurice Blanche, had counseled following such disappointments—and the practitioners he had challenged and effectively put out of business.
During her apprenticeship they had worked together to break a ring of fraudulent psychics who took money from the bereaved in return for bogus messages from the dead. It was a landmark case that tested Maisie to the core, not least because it was the first time she was personally required to give evidence in court. According to the newspapers, it was the youthful innocence of one of the witnesses, Miss Maisie Dobbs, that swayed the jury to find Frances Sinden, Irene Nelson and Margaret Awkright guilty, a result that would pack them off to Holloway Prison for a very long time indeed. Now, having checked to see whether there had been any previous convictions or complaints against the women on Lawton’s list, or whether she and Maurice had investigated one or all of them years ago, she set off.
B ARROW R OAD , I SLINGTON , was on the cusp of change. The large Victorian houses had been divided into flats, some of them run-down, some clinging to a haughty grandeur despite paint that was beginning to peel. The downstairs flat at number 21 might have seemed gray and damp if someone who cared less than Lillian Browning was in residence. The soot-blackened exterior was made bright by window boxes with pink and red geraniums, and on each step down to the flat a medium-sized terra-cotta flowerpot over-flowed with brightly colored blooms. Mrs. Browning had planted an ivy in a larger pot, and it was now furiously making its way along the recently replaced iron railings, the original railings having been torn up for use in the armaments factories at the outset of war in 1914.
Maisie knocked at the door.
Lillian Browning was about forty years of age, with light hazel eyes
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