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To follow a person is an invasion of the right of that individual to privacy. If I take on this case—and I do have a choice in the matter—I am taking on more than the question of who did what and when. I am taking on a responsibility for both you and your wife in a way that you may not have considered. Tell me, what will you do with the information I provide?”
Those Londoners who lived just south of the river always said they were “going over the water” when they crossed the Thames, never referring to the river by name unless they were speaking to a stranger. It had been the lifeblood of the city since the Middle Ages, and no people felt the legacy more keenly than those who lived with it and by it.
“Never follow a story with a question, Maisie, not immediately. And remember to acknowledge the storyteller, for in some way even the messenger is affected by the story he brings.”
The feeling inside that she experienced when she saw the books was akin to the hunger she felt as food was put on the table at the end of the working day. And she knew that she needed this sustenance as surely as her body needed its fuel.
So Maisie Dobbs—daughter of a costermonger from Lambeth, just south of the water that divided London’s rich and poor—began to learn in the way that Maurice had intended, from the centuries of wisdom accumulated by Khan.
It was the first time she had ever been to a party that had not been held in a kitchen.
She remembered him looking into the distance and speaking, very quietly, almost to himself. “Such is the legacy of war . . . the discarded dreams of children . . . the waste. The tragedy.”
Dawn is a time when soft veils are draped across reality, creating illusion and cheating truth. It is said, Maisie, it is darkest just before dawn.”
Her name was Maisie Dobbs. She was a psychologist and investigator, and at one time had been a nurse on the battlefields of WWI France. And—as readers later learn—she is as shell-shocked as any man who went to war.
World War I is often thought of as the first modern war, the first conflict of such sophisticated weaponry and catastrophic human casualty that its repercussions are still very much felt today.
turns sarcastic and argumentative, then compassionate and caring.
Change is woven into the fabric of my stories, probably because when I was a child the dueling senses of belonging and being out of place were ever-present, along with a fear that the rug could be pulled out from under us at any moment.
This deep love of place is part of my family mythology, a delicate web across my heart.
