The Comfort of Ghosts

London, 1945. Two men, unidentified, are each struggling with demons inflicted by his part in the recent World War; one just demobbed from the British Army, and the other having returned from a secret mission. The first man finds shelter in an unoccupied London mansion, but there are already squatters living there, four orphans who have their own dark story. They have nowhere to go so the Belgravia home of Lord and Lady Julian Compton, Maisie Dobbs' former in-laws, seemed as good a place as any for them – and the man – to bed down. Maisie goes to the mansion in the hope of finding a solution to the squatting problem which is plaguing London after the war. She is drawn not only into the story told by the youngsters, but she knows she has to help the very ill soldier. This quest brings to light a decades-old mystery, one concerning her first husband, James Compton, who was killed while flying an experimental fighter aircraft. The deeply personal inquiry leads her to the second man, who is fighting the darkness of his own conscience. It is an inquiry that will challenge so much of what Maisie understands about her life and forces her to look at the past and the many mirrors that could have been reflecting something other than she had come to believe was truth.