Dozens of expectant faces stared back at her.
“Why am I here?” The words tumbled out.
Silence trembled in the opulent space.
Mrs. Armbruster gathered Aleida’s notes and held them out to her.
Aleida ignored the offer. “I’ll tell you why I’m here. A year ago today, I fled the Netherlands. Due to my husband’s cruelty, I was separated from my young son. After my husband’s death, I came to London to find my child. I searched in orphanages and hospitals, and I took a position at the Ministry of Health so I could search for him amongst the evacuees.”
She directed her gaze past Beatrice, seeking souls who cared, finding them. “I saw the plight of the children, and I recorded their stories, the idyllic stories of children thriving in loving homes and fresh country air, and the horrific stories—far less common but not to be overlooked—the children neglected or mistreated.”
Men gave grim nods. Ladies pulled handkerchiefs from evening bags.
“One day,” Aleida said, “a billeting officer took me to a hostel, one of fifty hostels and camps established for children who are difficult to place in homes. Some of the children need medical care. Some have delinquency problems. Some have emotional problems. And some are refugees. The hostels are clean and comfortable and safe. The staff care for the children well. But a hostel is a poor substitute for a home.”
A woman at a table to Aleida’s left grumbled and nodded.
Aleida rubbed the polished wood podium. She’d been asked to discuss the needs of the refugee children, but another topic bubbled to the top of her mind. How disorganized to veer from her plan. How spontaneous. How like Hugh.
And how right. “Something curious arose. A billeting officer informed me—and others confirmed—that when the ladies of the Women’s Voluntary Service escorted children to the country, they often told the billeting officers to take the refugee children straight to a hostel. The billeting officers were perplexed—many foster families are willing to take children from foreign lands. The WVS ladies were just as perplexed and bothered, but said they’d been informed it was Ministry of Health policy.”
Sitting to Aleida’s side on the platform, Mr. Armbruster gasped.
Those conversations had occurred after Aleida wrote her report. “The WVS ladies had been told foster homes were reserved for English children.” She glanced to Mr. Armbruster.
His mouth hung open, and he shook his head.
Certainty and decisiveness coursed through her veins. “It was not—itisnot—Ministry of Health policy. Rather it is the opinion of one person, passed along as policy.”
That one person’s eyes burned with vitriol. Murderous vitriol?
Aleida wrenched her gaze from Beatrice to the MPs and officials who made policy. “For the children of Britain’s allies to be treated negligently is beneath the honorable character of this great nation, a nation known throughout the world for her courage, tenacity, and compassion.”
A year ago, a coiled spring had burst inside her in the face of cruelty, leading her to break away from Sebastiaan and to freedom.
Now came that same crack and release and sense of rightness. “But there are those who fight against such virtues, those who are willing to neglect refugee children to prevent more refugees from coming. Perhaps even willing to kill.”
Gasps circled the ballroom.
Aleida locked her gaze with Beatrice. She’d do it. She’d name Beatrice Granville as the person who had strangled Nilima Sharma in a trench.
The same way Filip Zielinski had been killed. Could she have murdered him too? He was a foreigner, a refugee, a communist, a man who had crossed her lover.
A love affair Elliott Hastings had been willing to expose.
An affair François Jouveau had discovered.
All four? Had Beatrice Granville killed four people?
Sickness churned in her stomach, green as Beatrice’s dress, vile and hateful as her glare.
Tonight it would end. Aleida opened her mouth.
A wail rose—but not Aleida’s.
She frowned.
All around, people sighed, rose, gathered evening bags.
