‘Your char’s getting cold, love,’ said Gladys Forthright, churning the contents of her mug with the end of a pencil. ‘They never leave enough chain on the teaspoon to give you a good stir, do they?’
Neither of them had slept. Biddle was angry and confused, but invigorated by the action of the night before, newly hooked on the case and on the unit. ‘I mean, you outrank him,’ he said finally. ‘Can’t you do something?’
‘It may have escaped your notice, Sidney, but although I have the rank, I’m still a woman. Davenport won’t even talk to me. He acts as if I’m not there. My appointment was approved because women have to be drafted into the force. We’re fine for driving fire engines and ambulances, tracking aircraft and manning switchboards, but they don’t want to give us jobs that involve strategic decisions. You won’t find policewomen in positions of power. The men want to keep those for themselves.’
Biddle took a sip of his tea. ‘Why does Bryant always come here? PC Crowhurst told me he sits at this spot nearly every day at sunset.’
So that’s it, thought Forthright, he wants to understand.
‘You don’t know the story?’ she asked, surprised. ‘I thought someone would have told you by now. I know it’s hard to believe, but our Mr Bryant was once a man in love. Back then he was still training out of Bramshill on a one-year intensive. So many were pushed through the courses because of the approaching war. He was very young, of course. Boys leave school at fourteen in the East End, and they marry early. By the time I came up from Hendon as a DC he had met the love of his life and become engaged to her.’
‘Bryant had a fiancée?’
‘Nathalie was from France, Marseille, I think. She was dark and rather beautiful. Not easy, mind you—very independent. When they met, she was working in ground command, co-ordinating air-support units. There were so many rehearsals for war that I was relieved when it finally happened.’
Forthright warmed her hands round her enamel mug. ‘This is where she died, on the evening of her eighteenth birthday, May nineteen thirty-seven. She fell from the bridge, just in front of us. She’d climbed up onto the balustrade and was walking along it. They’d been out drinking, celebrating, and were both a bit tipsy. He’d asked her to marry him. She would probably have been fine, but at that moment a bus horn sounded behind them, and it made her start. She lost her balance, and when he turned round to grab her, she’d gone. Arthur jumped into the water and tried to save her, but the tide was going out, and the current was too strong. He was wearing his overcoat and hobnailed police boots. He nearly drowned as well. Underwater search teams dragged the river for weeks, but they never did find her body. The river widens here. There’s nothing between us and the sea.’
She rested the mug on her strong, shapely knees and sighed. ‘He was taken very bad for a while, tried to enlist when war was declared, but the War Office looked at his mental health record and wouldn’t take him. They marked him down as unstable. He was training to spend his life helping others but hadn’t found a way to save the girl he loved. She was the point of his life, the one he felt fated to be with for ever.
‘That was three years ago, and although he never talks about her, he never looks at anyone else either, not in a serious way. Oh, he thought he’d fallen in love with me for a while, but I could see it was just a crush, and put him straight. As far as he’s concerned, he was given his chance for happiness and buggered it up. It’s something he’ll never find a way to make amends for. That’s why none of this touches him.’
‘I wish someone had told me.’
‘We all have our private tragedies. You can’t change the past. You keep going.’
Biddle swallowed from his mug. ‘I’m not part of your past. You all seem suited to each other. I don’t think I’m the right person for your kind of operation.’
‘That’s where you’re wrong. We’re all so different. They say all the good men have gone to war, that only the unemployables are left. That’s why we were lucky to find Mr May. He’s practical, he’ll give Arthur the grounding he needs. We’ve no permanent staff over the age of twenty-five. I’m the oldest person in the unit. The Home Office will close us down as soon as the war ends. Davenport hates us, thinks we’re a bunch of academic pansies. Now he’s got all the ammunition he needs.’
‘I don’t see what I can do.’
‘You’ve got Davenport’s ear. You can protect us if you stay.’