Glenveagh Mystery. Lucy Costigan

15. Soldiers removing art works from Cathedral in Reims, c. 1918.

      From Rheims and the Battles for its Possession, Illustrated Michelin Guides to the Battle-Fields (1914-1918) (Clermont-Ferrand: Michelin & Cie, 1919; published in eBook format by Project Gutenberg, 2011), p.23.

      Before crossing into Italy, Kingsley met up with Monsieur Hubert and was given a busy workload, to visit churches and monuments in Dijon,¹¹ Bourg-en-Bresse¹² and other devastated regions of eastern France. He also tried to secure a pass for Lucy to allow her to travel within the war zone in Paris so that she could make an assessment of the damage inflicted on some of the churches and monuments.¹³

      Kingsley and Lucy corresponded on a daily basis. Some days they wrote several letters to each other as well as sending telegrams and postcards. The separation was acutely painful to both. Their letters were passionate and romantic, written by two people who were very much in love and evidently distressed at being separated. Kingsley had just parted from Lucy when he wrote to her from Dijon, calling her ‘My Bobbie’, in a state of deep loneliness:

      My Bobbie,

      If you know how long and weary the moments of this our first (and may it be the last – until that final one comes) separation. I reached the station at eight o’clock and thought the half hour until the train left would never pass... I never so wished for time to pass before as I do now. To see you again!

      ... Even you will not guess how much love goes with it. Tonight I know what homesickness is like – but it is not home, it’s you.¹⁴

      When he reached Bourg-en-Bresse, Kingsley was disappointed not to find a letter from Lucy waiting for him, but he surmised that she was sending the letters on to Rome.¹⁵ He wrote to her instead, telling her of the places he had visited and of the boxes of damaged art objects that he had been assessing: