Free Ashes to Ashes by Barbara Nadel Page A

his face came into the full glare of the fires once again. ‘With Mr Ronson and his er, his accident, plus this child . . . Mr Hancock, we have much to contend with here, as you can see, but I am also aware that things are happening in my cathedral that are additional to the bombing.’ He smiled just slightly. ‘Opponents inside and out, as it were.’
    What he seemed to be saying was very close to something that Mr Ronson had said to me earlier, about fighting enemies both outside and inside the cathedral. We shared a look of what I supposed was understanding. I knew something was up and so, I thought, did he, and then he said, as if to confirm this, ‘I haven’t seen Mr Phillips myself, although I am told that he signed in downstairs.’
    I wanted to tell him what I’d heard Mr Andrews say to his wife about Mr Ronson’s death, but I had the feeling the Dean knew about this already.
    ‘The Devil has many faces and they do not all wear Nazi uniforms,’ he said. In spite of the heat from the fires I felt cold. If anything, this confirmed what Mr Ronson had said. Dean Matthews leaned in towards me and said, ‘When you find young Milly, bring her to me, won’t you? She needs looking after.’
    Terrified, although exactly what of I didn’t know, I nodded my head. While London was being destroyed, with St Paul’s clearly the Nazi’s main target on this occasion, something extra, something disturbing, was happening inside the cathedral. Somehow Mr Ronson’s death and the sinister appearance of what was not a nice little girl were connected – or so I felt at the time. I was also not at all comfortable about the elusive Mr Phillips either. Was he, in fact, still about or even still alive? He’d come in with Milly, and then he’d vanished. Everyone had been so caught up with where the child had gone, that Mr Phillips had been almost overlooked. Was he, maybe, laying dead or injured somewhere in the vastness of the cathedral? The strange Mr Andrews, whose position in the cathedral I didn’t understand, had said that I could go and look for Milly anywhere I wanted. The whole place was open, was what he had said.
    Now the Dean, too, was asking me to continue to look for the girl. He seemed to be placing some trust in me, although I couldn’t for the life of me think why. Neither the Dean nor Mr Andrews knew me from Adam. Mr Andrews hadn’t wanted me here at all when I’d first fetched up at the cathedral doors. Now it seemed that I was important in some way, and this was peculiar. I have never been, nor wanted to be, important. Important people, in my experience, do far too much harm to others.
    I went back to the crypt. I didn’t want to look for kids or have anyone ask me to do anything. I wanted to be what I usually am, nothing special to anyone except my own family and friends. It wasn’t like me to want to be under the ground but at that moment I just needed to be with people. Anonymous, but amongst people. When I arrived I found that there were a lot more of them in the crypt than there had been before. Some of them were even trying to get some kip amongst the monuments.
    Hitchcock, Williams and Co., the textile wholesalers in St Paul’s churchyard, was now burning furiously and all the fire watchers and employees from the shelters over there now decamped to the crypt. They came with as much as they could carry in the way of records and ledgers. Would I be that conscientious if my shop was on fire? I don’t know. But my office girl Doris probably would be. These women who keep companies running to a large part these days are marvellous. Doris Rosen is a young widow with a sad past and an uncertain future, but in spite of all that she’s always there for Hancock and Co. Maybe our little firm is what helps to keep her going? Maybe these ladies from Hitchcock’s with their arms full of hot, smoking ledgers were of the same type?
    The wives of the cathedral staff gave the newcomers, and me, cups of cocoa.