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Chapter 17

About twenty minutes into the ride, keeping well back from her, my legs turn to jelly, and I realize that the sugar rush from three slices of lemon cake has worn away. Still I press on, knowing I’ve got miles to go. I know this because I can guess where she’s headed.

Ursula hadn’t meant to tell me she rides her bicycle the eight miles to Bloxham, and it would have slipped past me, but I’d taken the bus there just the day before, and it was over a thirty-minute ride. On a bike that’s at least an hour of hard uphill pedaling.

“Why would you not take the bus?”

A sudden stillness prickled up my spine and I instantly realized my mistake. Usually I don’t insert myself into Ursula’s stories, as it’s best when I let her words float by as we work. It’s a lesson I learned from her practicing it on me. To be fair, I am not sure she was “practicing” anything. I simply noticed that in the thrum of working side by side, her asking only a few questions could draw out a long story from me with far more detail than I usually share. So I tried it on her. Not with much success, but occasionally she did relax and open up. At least that’s what it felt like.

But this time I was too interested. I was paying too much attention. Her eyes sparked, and I could see the gears of her brain clicking into place, fast as lightning, before her large toothy grin burst forth.

“I could run my errands closer, but Bloxham has the most delicious bakery on the corner of Edward and Causeway. The kids are mad for it and I’m not much better. Don’t tell Len.” She pursed her lips and touched a finger to them as if sharing a great secret with me. “He’d be so disappointed by my lack of willpower, but I love their pastries and am trying to replicate a few myself.”

It strikes me as I ride a good distance behind her that her story that day was as detailed and extravagant as the one she gave Peggy when Peggy mentioned seeing her in Kidlington.

We approach the town, but she doesn’t stop at the corner bakery. She continues past a few more blocks to the train station. She doesn’t go into the depot, however. She props her bicycle against a lamppost and takes the stairs down to the paths beneath its raised platforms. I follow her to the edge of the stairs and watch as, at the bottom, she turns towards the park and the river.

I let her get far away before I risk descending the stairs behind her, and once I reach the bottom, she’s nowhere to be found. I search, I walk in circles, and just as I’m about to give up, I see her near the river at a large tree. I duck behind one near me and watch as she reaches into it, then returns back the direction from which she came.

I’m not directly in her path, but I’m not too far off, either, so I sneak down an adjacent walkway and, when out of sight, start racing away. When I emerge, now much closer to the tree she visited, she is gone. I dart back and up the steps to the platform to see where she parked her bicycle. It, too, is gone.

I rush down the stairs again and make my way to the tree by the river, and upon finding a hole, I reach inside. There’s a note. I pull it out and unfold it to discover a series of numbers.

15038547399099

They mean nothing to me. Nevertheless, I write them down in a light pencil on the inside cover page of Josephine Tey’s The Man in the Queue, another selection I’d brought for this morning. I refold the note and settle it once again within the tree’s hole. After all, if she’s leaving a note, she expects it to be picked up.

I circle back to my more discreet hiding place to wait, but I soon realize the person scheduled to pick up Ursula’s note doesn’t need to do it within hours. It could be days, even weeks, before it’s picked up. Perhaps not weeks, but the thought drives the point home. Waiting is pointless.

I climb onto my bike and start to pedal home. I push my pace a bit as I expect Ursula is far enough ahead of me that I won’t catch her, but I keep focused just in case. She could be riding more slowly home. She could have stopped in that bakery after all and end up behind me.

As I ride I also try to piece together what it all means, to reconcile the disparate gossip I’ve heard about the supposed affairs, the stories about Len and his Communist ties, the note in the tree, the radio. I recount her stories and try to remember the order in which she’s told them. I even see in my mind’s eye the empty shopping basket I caught a couple of times when she rode by after her Kidlington “shopping day.”

I’m so fixated on my thoughts that I don’t notice the car parked along the road until I’m almost upon it. So much for paying attention, Gemma.

“Miss Brown, what luck you coming upon me.” A woman waves and calls as I approach.

“Lady Marchmont?” I pull up beside her.

She rests against a stunning black Bentley Mark VI, in equally stunning black heels and a full skirt. Her coat, some fur I can’t name, is pulled tight around her, and she looks, as usual, like she’s stepped from the pages of Vogue.

“Did something happen? Do you want me to ride to the village and call your chauffeur?”

“Goodness, no. I don’t want to bother him. I was driving to a friend’s house for the afternoon.” She pushes off the car. “I suspect it’s nothing serious, but it just started to rattle and sputter. Do you know anything about automobiles?”

My mind draws a blank. I know nothing, but I also can’t leave her. “Can you open the bonnet?”

“Of course.” She bends through the car’s open window and pulls a lever. The bonnet pops open, and she’s by my side in the next moment.

We both peer inside. I have no idea if anything is wrong rather than right and suspect she’s in the same boat. Yet we study every inch of the gleaming motor. And, after a few minutes, something strikes me. A bit of water is gathering around four knobs and a thin thread of steam shoots from one.

I point to them. “These are loose. I’m sure they should be tight, right? Nothing should be loose. I mean, water and steam should not be here.”

“Definitely not. And so they are.” She pulls a handkerchief out of her coat pocket and reaches in. She tightens each of the four knobs, then straightens. “Thank you. So simple. I can’t understand how Gilbert missed those. I’ll need to talk to him about that.”

“It could be the threading is loose.” I point back to my bicycle. “I asked Mr. Sornell at the mechanics to service my bicycle because no amount of tightening helped the brakes to grip. He said it never would as the threading had worn down. He had to replace the whole mechanism.”

She smiles at me. “How very clever. I’ll ask about that too.” She lifts her chin down the road. “This is an awfully long way for a bicycle ride.”