A Lesson in Secrets

  "I should have telephoned, I'm sorry." Maisie smiled, anxious to bring a sense of calm to what was obviously a very pleasant lunch--until she arrived. She reached down and ruffled Jook's ear; the dog had emerged from slumber to greet her. "Well, if there's any left, I wouldn't mind some myself--though if it puts me to sleep like Jook, I will be out for the count for the rest of the day."

  "Here you are, love." Frankie pulled out a chair. "Bren--Mrs. Bromley made a fair old pie there, and even though I came back for more, there's plenty for another helping or two."

  Mrs. Bromley put a plate of cottage pie and vegetables in front of Maisie, while Frankie poured tea from a large brown teapot.

  "I suppose I'd better be off now--" Mrs. Bromley untied her apron and reached for her basket.

  "Oh, no, don't go--I'm sure you've already got a pudding ready, Mrs. Bromley, I know you too well. My father will not wish to miss a sweet. Come on, sit down."

  Frankie poured again, fresh cups of tea for himself and Mrs. Bromley, while the housekeeper placed a bowl with a slice of apple pie with custard in front of Frankie, and the same in the place where she had been sitting before Maisie arrived.

  "This is lovely, Mrs. Bromley, just what the doctor ordered."

  "You look a bit drawn, love," Frankie spoke up, as he often did when he was worried about his daughter.

  "Oh, busy, Dad. Busy. Driving a lot, too." Maisie pushed another piece of pie onto her fork. "Did you tell Mrs. Bromley about the time you caught the stable boy from another trainer putting something in your horse's feed?"

  "Oh, that was a fine to-do. It was the third race of the day at Newmarket . . . " Frankie leaned forward, and as Maisie tucked into the pie, she smiled, watching him look from her back to Mrs. Bromley as he told the story of a day's racing when he was a stable lad at Newmarket in the years before he'd met her mother, before he'd become a costermonger, and before the much-wanted child had been born. And as he spoke, Maisie felt a tear in her heart--one she had become so very used to accommodating--begin to mend again, as the glue of her father's intermittent laughter sealed the jagged edges of unspoken grief.

  Later, Maisie returned to The Dower House, excusing herself while Mrs. Bromley assured her that she would be up at the house as soon as she'd finished with Frankie's kitchen. She'd asked if Frankie might be joining her for supper, to which Maisie replied that of course he would--in fact, why didn't they take supper together, all three of them, in the kitchen? In truth, she was still trying to get used to being at The Dower House, and was now quite thrown when she considered the unusual nature of her domestic arrangements. She had often spent the day at the house, only to return to her father's cottage in the evening, except when James was at home.

  She had, eventually, arranged for the large bedroom at the back of the house to be redecorated in a color that reminded her of smooth buttermilk, and had pale-yellow curtains made to add light to the room. She and Mrs. Bromley had moved the furniture around, though they had summoned a couple of the gardeners from Chelstone Manor to help with the bed and an armoire of some girth that had been brought from Maurice's house in Paris several years before. The housekeeper had made a skirt of the same yellow silk as the curtains, to surround the dressing table, and soon the room was rendered more feminine, without resorting to frippery.

  Now Maisie lay down on her bed for a few minutes' rest before going down to the library, where many of the boxes containing Maurice's papers had been consigned. There were still more boxes in the cellar.

  In all, The Dower House had four upper rooms: three bedrooms on the first floor, then another large attic room on the second floor. Maurice had chosen the large bedroom at the back of the house to be his own, as it overlooked the land he had come to love. There was another room of equal dimensions at the front of the house, and smaller rooms along the shorter sides of the house; one of those rooms had been converted to a spacious bathroom some years before, at the same time as part of the large bedroom had been sectioned off to form an en-suite bathroom for the Dowager Lady Jane Compton, when she was an invalid. When Maisie lived at the house as a girl, she had been assigned the smaller bedroom to the side of the house, so that she could attend to the Dowager--Lord Julian's mother--if she called in the night. Now, lying on her bed for a few moments, Maisie could hardly believe that such a house was hers; it was a thought she pushed to the back of her mind, for when she considered all that she now owned, she became overwhelmed. She had learned to take each day as it came. Though her wealth was considerable, she knew that Maurice had intended her to be a responsible steward of that wealth, so already she had begun to consider the financial arrangements Maurice had made to support the less fortunate, not only through his clinics in impoverished areas, but in providing educational opportunity for young people with talent who might otherwise languish, caught within the boundary of a life with limitations.

  "This will never do," said Maisie to herself as she swung her legs off the bed. She slipped on her shoes and went downstairs to the library, where she switched on the light above a mound of boxes she had left there on her last visit. With her head inclined to one side, she perused the outside label on each box until she finally came to the one she wanted to start with: London, 1914-1916.

  Maisie had known Maurice since she was thirteen years of age, and for some nine years, until his retirement in early 1929, she had been his assistant. She was well aware of his connections before, throughout, and following the war; however, it was during work on a case that had taken her to Paris in 1930 that she realized how deep and broad his reach into matters of security among the Allies had been. Maurice had received commendations and medals from Belgium, France, and Britain for services rendered, and she knew his influence extended from the Secret Service to the army's Intelligence Corps. He had contacts in Naval Intelligence, and was called upon to advise on the recruitment of agents working in clandestine roles overseas. And he had been involved in liaising with the brave civilians involved in underground resistance to the enemy occupiers in France and Belgium. He had also spent some time in the Netherlands, and she had been aware of the important role that the Dutch had played in intelligence during the war. But little of this had ever been discussed between them, and it was only now that many of his secrets were being offered up. She could never have read through the many papers except as she now approached the task--either on a "need-to-know" basis, or on a quiet Sunday afternoon, when the stillness inside the house seemed to bring him into sharper focus in her mind's eye. It gave her a sense that she only had to call and he would be there with her, advising her, prompting her, or bringing insight and clarity to a case that had become more opaque as facts, clues, and suppositions clouded the way ahead.

  She opened the box, lifted a good handful of papers onto the desk, and began to read, thinking that if there were ever a market for a review of intelligence in the early years of the war, she would have enough background material to write a worthwhile tome. Page after page cataloged meetings, interviews with prospective employees--many of whom, Maisie thought, would have gone on to become agents working on behalf of His Majesty's government. Then a few sentences took her attention.

  To Whitehall again, this time to see Giles Sheffield. I was taken aback to see so many young women working in the offices, and at all levels of seniority. Girl Guides have been brought in to run messages--apparently the Boy Scouts had been tried out but were found wanting when they put play before work. In walking about the building I came upon a room where the Guides awaited the summons to take a message here or there. Some were called upon to go across London, and all had to swear to the greatest levels of secrecy, for they were in possession of the addresses of every secure building used in the array of intelligence services during a time of war. In the waiting room, the girls read or diligently completed their homework. There was no idle chatter, but a clearheaded willingness to wait until called upon, then to execute their duties as befits the uniform of a Girl Guide.

  Maisie went
on to the next paragraph, where Maurice remained on the subject.

  Women and girls are employed in all aspects of intelligence. In observing their work I am convinced they are the most loyal of workers. Not for them a long lunch at Simpsons, or drinks at their club. They remain at their posts until the job is done and it is clear they understand the gravity of their responsibility, from the most lowly girl at a typewriter to the woman who is charged with breaking a code. Increasing numbers of women are being brought into the service, in particular as more men are required to bear arms on the battlefield. However, I have concerns, which I have voiced in my capacity as an adviser on the temperament and character required for intelligence work, though the concern is not directly in connection with the traits necessary to be a holder of secrets, or the ability to withhold the truth of one's origins when assigned a duty that requires one to live under the enemy's nose. There has traditionally been a tendency for the recruitment of agents and intelligence staff to be done at random; there is little investigation into the background of a person; indeed, it seems to me that the club a man belongs to has more bearing upon his employment in the service than other, more significant, traits.

  I have suggested that there should be deeper investigation into the origins of a person, and therein will be found something of their sensibilities and loyalties. Does the fact that a young woman has a German great-grandmother have bearing on her work? It might. The women and girls recruited are loyal and hardworking, but we cannot rule out the risk of enemy approaches towards an impressionable young person--man or woman. I have also advised that there should be a comprehensive record of the skills of those who work in the service, women in particular. I have discovered a tendency among the men to assume that a woman knows only that which she has revealed in her interview; however, I have pointed out that a man might tell everything, recount every success and any skill, but a woman will not necessarily share her worth. A brief conversation with one young woman revealed that she was fluent in several languages, given her education overseas. Her supervisor was surprised, as were the men who interviewed her for her clerical position. Now she has been placed in a department where her linguistic ability can be put to better use. My prediction is that the Secret Service will be built upon the work of these women and girls--they should be taken on with great care and deep attention to the many abilities they bring to our remit.

  Maisie straightened the pile of papers, then leaned back in the chair and rubbed her neck. The afternoon sun had moved across the land, and she thought she might walk around the garden before tea. She realized her throat was dry. There were other boxes to go through today, but for now she wanted to think about the girls and women who had worked in secret throughout the war. And she thought back to the conversation with Jennifer Penhaligon, and her comments about Francesca Thomas:

  . . . First-class languages, excellent student--diligent, and thoughtful. Passionate, is how I would describe her . . . about the things she believed in . . . she came back to see me once after she'd left . . . she said she couldn't really speak about her job--hush-hush, apparently. . . .

  Maisie wondered what Francesca Thomas was passionate about now, and whether there was still much in her world that was hush-hush.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Maisie returned to Cambridge on Sunday afternoon. She wanted time to prepare for her lessons in the coming week, and welcomed the extra hours she would have in the morning, before her classes started. More urgently, she wanted to see if a letter from the Records Office in Ipswich had been delivered to her lodgings.

  It was nine o'clock in the evening when she stood up from her writing desk and stretched her arms. Her back was sore from driving and sitting bent over papers, and now there was another line of investigation to follow. She wanted to know more about Robson Headley. How invested was he in Delphine Lang's politics? Had he become interested in the Ortsgruppe simply because she was a member? Hans Wilhelm Thost was known to have links with Oxford, and it seemed there was a real attempt to spread the word regarding their leader's political message. Among the aristocracy and landed gentry, there was support for, indeed a fascination with, the tenets of fascism. Maisie wondered if it was simply a new political game to play along the sidelines of government. Clearly Huntley already knew about the group's activities throughout the British Isles, especially in London, yet his advisers were informing him that the group presented no cause for concern; on the contrary, the members were welcomed in certain quarters and asked to speak publicly of the rise of the Nazi Party in Germany, presenting their leader as one with a good deal of charisma. Maisie shook her head, recalling the frustrating conversation with Huntley. Yes, she would have to find out a little more about Robson Headley. And she wanted to speak to Matthias Roth again, to ask him why he countered Greville Liddicote's decision to take an active part in the Cambridge debates.

  The letter from Ipswich did not arrive until Monday morning. The clerk who responded to her questions about Rose Linden's family invited her to return to the county offices, as he had some names that might be of interest to her. He indicated that there had been two nephews, though both were now dead. The name of the family was not Linden, however, but Thurlow, owing to Rose Linden's sister's marriage to John Thurlow. One son, also John, died in 1914, at Mons. The other, David, died early in 1915; no other details were listed. The clerk said he would give her more information when she came in.

  Maisie borrowed her landlady's bicycle again on Monday, arriving at the college at lunchtime. She set the bicycle in a rack at the side of the main building and made her way to the staff dining room, but was stopped on the way by Miss Hawthorne, who was as flustered as ever.

  "Miss Dobbs, just a quick word to let you know that there's a meeting of the college--all staff and students--in the assembly hall at two; everyone else knows, as the message went round at coffee, so I'm glad I caught you."

  Maisie thanked the woman, then continued on to the staff dining room. Lunch was not a formal affair at the College of St. Francis, usually a buffet with one hot dish and vegetables, and a sweet course. A coffee urn was placed at the end of the table, though Maisie would have loved a cup of the rich, dark coffee which Maurice had preferred, and which was still delivered to The Dower House from an importing company in Tunbridge Wells. She helped herself to baked cod and vegetables, and a glass of water, then walked across to the table where Francesca Thomas sat looking out at the gardens.

  "May I join you, Dr. Thomas?"

  Thomas pressed a half-smoked cigarette into the ashtray on the table, giving the fleeting smile that Maisie was becoming used to. "Of course--do sit down." She waited until Maisie set her lunch down on the table. "You've heard that our esteemed leader will be speaking after lunch?"

  "Yes, I was told when I arrived this morning. Do you know what it's about?"

  "Apparently, the college will be closing from Wednesday until next Monday. Those dreadful policemen--the Scot and the other one--have been making it rather difficult to continue teaching while they conduct their inquiries. So, staff will be expected to furnish classes with sufficient homework to last until next week, though I am sure our students will welcome the opportunity to enjoy the last of the summer."

  "Isn't the memorial service for Dr. Liddicote on Sunday?"

  "Yes, it is. And the debate team will continue to practice in the interim."

  Maisie looked for some sort of reaction, something that would reveal how Thomas felt about the debate. There was none, so she continued.

  "I don't think Dr. Liddicote liked the idea of the debate."

  "Did he tell you that?

  Lifting a forkful of the milky cod, Maisie feigned indifference. "I was waiting outside his office and heard him talking about it. He seemed far from enthusiastic to me--but then, I didn't know him as well as other members of staff." She thought her words must sound as bland as the cod tasted.

  "Greville Liddicote hated the idea of the debate, Miss Dobbs. He did not want our college to
be involved."

  Maisie set down her knife and fork and reached for her glass of water. "Why do you think he didn't want us to take part? He wanted the college to be taken seriously by the Cambridge academic establishment, and on the face of it, the debate offers the ideal opportunity. I'm a bit confused on that score."

  Francesca Thomas sat back and looked at Maisie. "Greville was no fool, Miss Dobbs. The topic is one that will bring out a lot of spectators--the debates usually draw a goodly number, in any case. But this is one that he didn't want to take part in, did not want the college to be involved with, because he did not want to support any gathering where the name of our college would be allied with an issue he found controversial. The university is a powerful academic institution and can weather the storms of speculation--indeed, it thrives on having the cat among the pigeons. But this is a small college, a college dependent upon funds brought in from people--wealthy benefactors--who share our ethos. The party of Herr Adolf Hitler is not an ideal representative of peace and inclusion."

  "But surely our team's performance will reflect what the College of St. Francis stands for."

  Thomas shook her head. "I do believe you are playing devil's advocate with me, Miss Dobbs. If not, I can only say that you are pressing a naive point of view. If anything negative is allied to our institution, then we stand to lose donations. This college will not survive without a healthy stream of money coming in."

  Maisie felt her color rise. "But isn't Dunstan Headley one of the main funders? And his son is on the debating team."

  "Another huge error."

  "Because it smacks of nepotism?"

  "No, Miss Dobbs." Francesca Thomas stood up and collected the pile of books sitting alongside her place at the table. "Because Robson Headley is a Nazi, and while it may seem fashionable at the present time, I believe it will prove to demonstrate very, very poor judgment in years to come. And young Headley has his father wrapped around his little finger, even though he knows what's going on, and does not like it at all. Now, if you will excuse me, I'd like to get a breath of fresh air before the assembly."