Messenger of Truth

Prologue Romney Marsh, Kent, Tuesday, December 30th, 1930 The taxi-cab slowed down alongside the gates of Camden Abbey, a red brick former mansion that seemed even more like a refuge as a bitter sleet swept across the gray, forbidding landscape. "Is this the place, madam?" "Yes, thank you." The driver parked in front of the main entrance and, almost as an afterthought, the woman respectfully covered her head with a silk scarf before leaving the motor car. "I shan't be long." "Right you are, madam." He watched the woman enter by the main door, which slammed shut behind her. "Rather you than me, love," he said to himself as he picked up a newspaper to while away the minutes until the woman returned again. The sitting room was warm, with a fire in the grate, red carpet on the stone floor and heavy curtains at the windows to counter draughts that the ancient wooden frame could not keep at bay. The woman, now seated facing a grille, had been in conversation with the abbess for some forty-five minutes. "Grief is not an event, my dear, but a passage, a pilgrimage along a path that allows us to reflect upon the past from points of remembrance held in the soul. At times the way is filled with stones underfoot and we feel pained by our memories, yet on other days the shadows reflect our longing and those happinesses shared." The woman nodded. "I just wish there were not this doubt." "Uncertainty is sure to follow in such circumstances." "But how do I put my mind at rest, Dame Constance?" "Ah, you have not changed, have you?" observed the abbess. "Always seeking to do rather than to be. Do you really seek the counsel of the spirit?" The woman began to press down her cuticles with the thumbnail of the opposite hand. "I know I missed just about every one of your tutorials when I was at Girton, but I thought . . ." "That I could help you find peace?" Dame Constance paused, took a pencil and small notebook from a pocket within the folds of her habit and scribbled on a piece of paper. "Sometimes help takes the form of directing. And peace is something we find when we have a companion on the journey. Here's someone who will help you. Indeed, you have common ground, for she was at Girton too, though she came later, in 1914, if my memory serves me well." She passed the folded note through the grille. Scotland Yard, London, Wednesday, December 31st, 1930 "So you see, madam, there's very little more I can do in the circumstances, which are pretty cut and dried, as far as we're concerned." "Yes, you've made that abundantly clear, Detective Inspector Stratton." The woman sat bolt upright on her chair, brushing back her hair with an air of defiance. For a mere second she looked at her hands, rubbing an ink stain on calloused skin where her middle finger always pressed against the nib of her fountain pen. "However, I cannot stop searching because your investigations have drawn nothing. To that end I have decided to enlist the services of a private inquiry agent." The policeman, reading his notes, rolled his eyes, then looked up. "That is your prerogative, of course, though I am sure his findings will mirror our own." "It's not a he, it's a she." The woman smiled.[read more]