Mr.Churchill's Secretary(40)

Here lies Mary Pyne, wife of Victor, after a long illness, rest in peace, read one limestone headstone with elaborately carved clasped hands, nearly obscured by glossy ivy. Henry David Atwood, 1870–1873, beloved baby boy was etched in pocked black marble above an engraved broken rosebud. On another, a serpent swallowed his tail in an endless circle while the moss-covered stone proclaimed, In memory of Robertson Worth, dearly loved husband and father. You are in our hearts always.

She was using a map she’d found at Highgate’s entrance. After a few false starts, missed turns, and tripping over some gnarled ancient tree roots, she found herself at the grave she sought.

She saw her mother’s name and dates with engraved wings on the gray marble headstone: Clara Louise Hope 1892–1916. She knelt down on the grass and touched the etched letters with her gloved fingers for a long moment. Hello, Mother, she thought. I’m here. Your daughter is here.

After wiping away her tears and giving her nose a good blow with her handkerchief, Maggie busied herself by emptying water from the vase and throwing some long-dead roses into the compost pile, then filling the vase with fresh water from a nearby fountain. She returned to the grave, arranged the dark purple violets in the vase, then knelt down once again on the grass.

It hurts to be here, Maggie thought. It hurts to see her name on the stone. Lord, how it hurts.

And then, Who’s been here and leaving flowers on her grave?

She rose to her feet, then looked around. And where was her father’s grave? Surely they were buried together? Or at least near each other?

She looked and looked but to no avail.

In the distance was a cemetery worker, a stooped man with ruddy sunburned cheeks and brown-splotched hands, pushing a red wheelbarrow.

“Lovely flowers, those, miss,” he said, releasing the wheelbarrow and touching his hand to his felt cap.

“Yes,” she replied. “Thank you.”

“Nice to see someone tending to that one,” he went on. “It’s been a while.”

“Are you familiar with all the graves? There are so many.”

“Been ’ere since just after the war—back in ’eighteen. Lots of friends ’ere, died over in France. Work every day except Sunday, miss.”

“I’m wondering if you could help me, then. That grave over there, Clara Hope, is my mother’s. But I can’t find my father’s.”

“What’s ’is name?”

“Edmund Hope. Edmund Charles Hope.”

The man took off his cap. “No one ’ere by that name, miss. And I’d know.”

It can’t be. He has to be here, Maggie thought. And yet … Even though the day was warm, she felt a chill as the stillness of the cemetery permeated her skin.

It felt like a warning.

“There were dried flowers on my—on Clara Hope’s grave when I got here. Do you know who left them?”

“Gentleman used to come ’ere regular. Used to leave white roses.” The man rubbed his whiskered jaw with his large hand. “But I ain’t seen him ’ere in a long while.”

The old gardener again touched his hand to his hat, then picked up the handles of his wheelbarrow. “I’d best be getting on, miss.”

“Of course,” Maggie replied quickly, mind whirring. “Thank you.”

Maggie returned home, mind racing, heart pounding. First, a phone call.

“Margaret! What’s wrong?” Aunt Edith’s voice on the other side of the transatlantic call sounded tinny and faint.

“I have a question for you.”

There was a pause. “Of course.”

“Where is my father buried?”

A longer pause. “Oh, Margaret—I never thought …”

“You never thought what? That I’d ever go looking for their graves? Well, I did. And I found my mother’s. But not my father’s. So where is he?” Maggie clutched the receiver tightly.

Silence.

“Well?”

“Margaret, do you have to—why can’t you just let the past alone?”

“Why won’t you answer the question?”

Edith sighed. “Some things, well, it’s just easier if you let them be.”

Why isn’t she answering me? What’s going on?

There was static crackling over the line.

“Margaret, I think our call is breaking up—” There was silence and a click, then the broad whine of the dial tone.

Professor Edith Hope sat in her large, comfortable office in ivy-covered Science Hall. It was mid-June, and she was catching up on some of the endless administrative paperwork she had to do. Outside, red-breasted robins were chirping and the lush grass sparkled in the sunshine. She looked, unseeing, out the lead-glass windows over Wellesley’s vast lawns at the neo-Gothic spires of Green Hall’s immense bell tower and contemplated her last phone call with Maggie.