She read Rosalie’s name out loud. ‘Surely it must be her? Rosalie Delacroix.’
The letter was from someone called Group Captain Robert Beresford, written in 1942 asking the priest to read the bans for a wedding to take place in late May between himself and Rosalie Delacroix.
He glanced at it and grinned. ‘Good grief. That is a find.’
‘Let’s see if we can find out when the wedding took place.’
They searched the vestry, but the register of weddingsappeared to be missing. Destroyed or moved elsewhere? They didn’t know.
‘Did they get married?’ she muttered over and over. ‘Did they? Oh, I feel so tantalisingly close. To get this far and draw a blank would be so disappointing. I need to check the registry of marriages in the town hall, again. There has to be something. Doesn’t there?’
‘Agreed.’
‘Come on then,’ she said, tugging at his elbow. ‘Let’s go. I want to find Jack.’
Half an hour later Cam had gone back to his office, and Florence and Jack arrived at the registry but there they ran out of luck.
The officious pimply clerk shook his head and told them they only had records from 1944 onwards, as all the rest had been destroyed during the war.
‘Can you just check the names please?’ Florence said. ‘We think the marriage would have been in May 1942, but it might have been delayed.’
He nodded reluctantly and took them through to a gloomy room where everything was recorded in date order. ‘You can look for yourselves,’ he said.
But even though they searched every entry, they found nothing.
‘They may have gone back to England,’ Florence said. ‘Left Malta and married in England after the war. Or France I suppose.’
She felt deflated. To come this far but be left no closer.
‘When we go back to England,’ Jack suggested, ‘we can check the records there.’
She thought about it and shook her head. ‘First,’ she said, ‘I want to find out more about this Group Captain Robert Beresford. If the War Office here is still open. They’ll know.’
In the morning the girl who greeted them at the reception desk of the War Rooms frowned when they enquired about Beresford.
‘I’m so sorry. I’m new. Most of us working here are civilians brought in just to wind things up. The military have gone, taking their confidential records with them.’
They thanked her and were about to leave when an older woman walked in carrying some files.
‘Could you update these?’ she said and briskly turned to go back to wherever she had come from.
‘Oh Linda, hold on a minute,’ the younger woman piped up. ‘These people are asking about a Group Captain Beresford. I wondered if you knew him. You were here during the war, weren’t you?’
Linda nodded. ‘I was a plotter and yes, I did know him.’ She turned to Florence and Jack. ‘Why are you asking?’
‘I’m looking for someone,’ Florence said. ‘I think he may have been going to marry my aunt.’
‘What was her name?’
‘Rosalie Delacroix.’
Linda shook her head. ‘No. I don’t think he ever married someone of that name. Not that I heard anyway. It was all rather tragic. Hewasinvolved with a woman here though. Riva, a fine woman with whom I worked. But he was killed outright. An unexpected bomb you know, just when things were really going our way. Sodreadfully upsetting. Now if you’ll excuse me.’ She took a step away.
‘I’m sorry to hear that but do you happen to know where Riva is now?’
‘No. I’m afraid I haven’t seen or heard from her since 1943. That’s when Robert Beresford died.’
‘Did she marry him?’
