The Enigma Game

by Elizabeth Wein

  He hung about long enough to grill us all, and then he poked around in the Jerry pilot’s room, like a terrier sniffing out rats. After his wee nosy he came downstairs and went straight to the gramophone case and tested its working parts. Finally he pawed through Jane’s records, emptying all the album sleeves and checking with Louisa about which ones the Jerry had played. He didn’t say what he was looking for, and as far as I could tell, he didn’t find anything.

  Last thing before he went, he turned his sticking-pin gaze on Louisa, standing quiet as a mouse at Jane’s shoulder by the big old mantelpiece.

  ‘That is quite the collection of wishing coins,’ he said. ‘Aren’t airmen a superstitious lot! Well, perhaps the hoodoo will help you to feel at home, Louisa. Thank you, my dear Mrs Campbell, for being so patient while I shifted the furniture about upstairs. And you, Mrs Warner, for allowing me to disturb your recordings. You have a very youthful taste in music! I apologise if I haven’t put everything back in its proper place – mustn’t leave any stone unturned. I shall dash now before the weather closes in. I am damnably disappointed. Volunteer McEwen, is your utility vehicle at my service?’

  As if I had a choice. At least he wouldn’t pull a gun.

  It wasn’t until later, back at the Limehouse, that I realised how unpopular he’d made himself.

  ‘All right, Louisa?’ I asked her. She was rinsing crockery behind the bar, her pretty heart-shaped face pinched and frowning. I added, ‘Where is everybody?’

  ‘Mrs Campbell is putting things right in Room Four, and Jane is supposed to be having a rest. She spent ages fussing over her records, and she made me go with her to the village shop to try to find sticky tape for a torn album sleeve. Now her bad hip is hurting. She won’t say, but I’m learning to guess.’

  ‘Does it make you cross?’

  Her frowning brows went smooth. ‘I’m not cross.’

  I said gently, ‘But I can see that you are.’

  She pressed her lips together and shook her head.

  We’d only met the day before, but we’d shared a great trial that morning and it made us closer than we would be otherwise. I knew she wasn’t happy. ‘Was it something Nan said? Don’t let her fash you,’ I told her. ‘She’s not too old to change her ways, but she’s slow to learn.’

  I lived in fear Nan would twig what I was and we’d have a bitter fight over whether I should leave her house. I didn’t think she’d prefer me to raise a tent in her garden, but I wasn’t ready to find out.

  ‘If she said something rude, it was ignorance,’ I said. ‘She’s crabbit, but she doesn’t mean to be hurtful.’

  ‘Oh!’ Louisa gasped, and I saw I’d hit close to truth. ‘It wasn’t Nan. It was that awful Intelligence officer going on about hoodoo! Why? Do I look like a fool-fool country gal? Is that because I’m only fifteen? Or because I’ve left school without finishing? Because I’m not doing a skilled job? Or is it just because I’m from Jamaica?’

  She rattled the cups like a rebel. ‘My mum taught music in an English school. She played the harp at weddings, and the church organ for two different congregations. I hardly know what he meant, and anyway it’s Mrs Campbell who’s superstitious, not me!’ She waved at the coins over her head. ‘Have you heard her going on about these? “That’s dead men’s money. Leave it where it is.” She knows the name of every airman every penny belonged to. She talks as if they’re her own children!’

  ‘I’ll wager she didn’t like that filthy Jerry leaving his wish up there with the rest,’ I said. ‘Let’s take his penny out and see if she misses it.’

  Louisa raised her eyes to the wooden beam.

  She might not be superstitious, but she knew exactly which one of those silver wishes belonged to that Jerry pilot.

  I saw where she was looking, and reached up to pick it between my fingernails. It had a raised rim and came out easily when I pulled on it.

  I held it on my open palm so Louisa could see, and we stared.

  It was no coin.

  ‘That’s a typewriter key,’ said Louisa.

  It was a wee black enamel disc, just big enough to set your fingertip on, with a shiny, smooth nickel edge. The edge made a sort of lip around the key, like a pot lid. The letter on it was an L: L for Louisa.

  And aye, yes, I am sure he chose it on purpose.

  Louisa blinked up at the ceiling again, and I remembered Nan in the room above. We stood quiet as mice, listening, but she didn’t come down.

  ‘It’s off that thing in the box,’ Louisa whispered. ‘It was a sort of electrical typewriter. I saw inside it when he put it on the piano and the lid fell open. The keys were just like that.’

  I rolled the disc between my fingers. I wondered why he’d left it.

  Louisa held out her hand, and I could see she wanted it for herself.

  I dropped it into her palm. She closed her fingers like a gamekeeper’s iron trap snapping shut, and caught me frowning.

  She said, ‘He played so beautifully.’

  ‘You weren’t at all afraid,’ I said, remembering how sick I’d felt. ‘You came along brave as a king going into battle.’

  ‘No, I was terribly afraid,’ she contradicted. ‘But I wanted to help you! I want so much to do something useful. I didn’t believe he’d hurt us – he hated bullying us. He did it because he had to. Like airmen dropping bombs.’

  ‘I worried he’d take one of us with him,’ I admitted.

  ‘So did I, until I saw how tight a fit it would be!’

  We shared a shaky laugh. It felt good to have it behind us.

  ‘We won!’ I said. ‘Our first battle together! Keep that wee charm for luck.’

  ‘What did I say about superstition?’ Louisa exclaimed, and I laughed again.

  ‘Och then, keep it as a trophy! Don’t let Nan spy you, though.’

  ‘I won’t,’ Louisa said.

  Louisa:

  Mrs Campbell flounced downstairs, carrying a heather broom in one hand and a feather duster in the other. Her wispy hair coiled in sweaty frills around her face. She looked like she’d just finished one battle and was ready for the next.

  Though she didn’t see what we’d been up to, my cheeks heated up. I slipped Felix Baer’s typewriter key into my skirt pocket. Tea, I was supposed to be making tea for Jane. I’d lit the burner for the kettle ages ago, and it still hadn’t boiled.

  ‘The flame needs to be higher,’ Mrs Campbell said, turning it up. ‘Goodness, Louisa, you were in London three years already, did no one teach you how to make tea? Leaving the gas low just wastes it!’

  ‘Don’t have a go at her for not knowing her way about your kitchen, Mrs C.,’ said Ellen, straightening her cap in a way that told you she was enlisted. ‘She’s not been here a day, and we’ve all had a fright.’

  Mrs Campbell harrumphed and made the tea herself. She loaded a tray for me to carry up to Jane.

  Then it came out why she was cross about the wasted gas. She was just blaming it on me because the real culprit had already left.

  ‘That Robert Ethan left the fire on in Room Four, despite all I said to him, and it’s been roaring away all day with no one in there,’ she grumbled as she poured boiling water. ‘And he got the last of the milk as well; there isn’t any more till tomorrow. Aunt Jane’ll have to have her tea black.’

  Nan gave me the tray and turned around to check she’d turned off the burner. Then she lifted the wooden gate for me to get out from behind the bar.

  ‘When you go upstairs, Louisa, would you run into Room Four and close the window? It was much too warm in there by the time I’d swept and put everything back.’ She added, I think to herself, ‘I must get the collection man to check that gas-fire fitting when he fetches the money from the meters. It has come loose. That can’t be safe, and it’s my best room.’

  Away I went upstairs feeling assaulted by frustration. I was angry at Nancy Campbell, who was paying me but who was clearly going to be difficult to get along with – and I was angry at my
self, too, for not standing up to her. I didn’t understand why I was so moved by the strange German pilot I should by rights have hated, and why I so disliked the British officer who was supposed to be on my side.

  It was after three o’clock. In another hour, this far north, it would start to get dark. I lit the fire in our room and left Jane with the tea tray while I went to close the window in the room down the passage.

  Number Four wasn’t like ours at all – I could see why Nan said it was her best. It faced south-east, like ours, but had a big Victorian bay window. The room was tidy but freezing, because the middle sash was open wide, and wind made the curtains float and stir like ghosts. I had to hang my weight on the window frame, giving a jump that got my feet off the ground, before I could shift it to close it.

  I stood looking out for a moment at the beautiful, bleak brown-and-grey view of the moor and village rooftops and North Sea. It wasn’t raining, but the wind made the Scotch pines bow on the ridge above the old house. Somewhere in the far sky a storm was blowing over, bad weather rushing west from Norway, across Scotland, out to the Atlantic.

  My mind followed the wind west to the blue Caribbean Sea and back five years to Mummy’s thirty-fifth birthday. Daddy borrowed a rowboat and took all three of us across the water from Port Royal for a picnic on the coral beach at Lime Cay, and a storm rolled in late in the afternoon when we were on our way back. Daddy rowed for ages and couldn’t get any closer to the mainland, so he and Mummy each took an oar. I was at their feet bundled in the picnic blanket. We were all soaked to the skin, and I had to bang the aluminium coffee pot with a spoon and sing ‘Land of Hope and Glory’ to set the rhythm for their rowing.

  It should have been terrifying – thinking about it, I saw that it might really have been terrifying, especially for Mummy. But for me, it was wonderful, a big adventure, helping them to fight our way home together.

  So proud of my girl, Daddy had said. A real voyager, not a bit scared.

  I turned back to the cold room. I stood there for a moment – not long, only two or three seconds – and thought about Felix Baer playing records in here for half the night. What was in his mind all that time? Was he a professional musician, like my mother, before the war? What was his family like? Did he have a sweetheart? What would happen to him if the Luftwaffe found out he’d sneaked off to Windyedge when he was supposed to be shooting down British planes?

  And why had he pulled a key off his typewriter, an L for Louisa, and stuck it in the ceiling of the Limehouse?

  I shook my head to clear it. Then, just before I went back to Jane, I checked to make sure the gas tap was off. The gas fires in Mrs Campbell’s rooms were just like the one Mummy and I had in our London flat, and Mummy had dinned it into my head to make sure the gas was always off when I left the room.

  Mrs Campbell was right – one of the Victorian panels around the new fire was loose. I rattled the fixture under my hand, worrying. What if the pipes came disconnected? Town gas was deadly when it leaked. I looked more closely, and saw there were fresh dents on both the new fire and the old frame, as if someone had forced a wedge between them and tried to pry the fire out of its setting.

  I stared at the gas fire, small and neat, not as secure as it should have been. In the old fireplace behind the Victorian panels, there would be a dark, hollow space where you could hide anything. Secret plans. Vials of poison. A bomb, perhaps.

  Surely Felix Baer would have made noise getting the panels off.

  But no one would have heard anything over the music.

  I picked at that shaky cast iron panel with my fingernails. I couldn’t get enough grip on it to pry it loose.

  I ran back to Room Five. Jane sat calmly drinking tea. She looked at me in surprise; I was fizzing with excitement.

  ‘What in the world, Louisa?’

  ‘I’ll be back in a moment, just a moment,’ I panted. ‘I need—’

  I opened my flute case and grabbed the thin steel rod for cleaning the flute.

  ‘What’s Nancy want with you now, girl?’ Jane enquired. ‘You’re not to run her errands; you’re here for me. You mustn’t let her order you about. I’ll have a word if you like.’

  ‘It’s not her. It might not be anything. I’ll tell you in a minute. Wish me luck!’

  ‘What in the world?’ she said again, and laughed. Now she was curious. She saluted me with her teacup. ‘Off you go and hurry up! Good luck!’

  I was not sure what I’d do if Nancy Campbell discovered me taking her fireplace apart, the day after I arrived in her house. What was the worst that could happen – might she fire me with no pay? I knew how desperate she was for someone to look after Jane. I could talk my way out of this.

  I went back to Room Four, wedged the steel rod into the fireplace, and pulled. The panel came off easily, falling into the tiled hearth with a crash. I caught my breath, but no one seemed to hear.

  I peered inside the hole I’d made in the wall of the Limehouse.

  In the back of the fireplace was an old deep-set stone hearth that went right into the full thickness of the wall. The gas line came up through a pipe in the floor and ran behind the grate to connect to the new fire. It wasn’t at all disturbed by the panel being out. In the dark, sitting in the two-hundred-and-fifty-year-old hearth, was Felix Baer’s wooden case.

  At first I was confused. I was sure I’d seen him carry it out of the house and put it in Ellen’s van yesterday morning. How could it be here behind the fireplace in Room Four?

  I tried to remember what I’d seen, and realised I’d seen nothing. He’d used the gramophone as a decoy, and by some wizardly sleight of hand he made us think he’d put his own case in the Tilly ready to fly back to Norway with him. It was dark, and nobody checked in the back of the van to see if he’d put anything there or not, and he’d made sure Ellen and I were standing on the side of the plane where we couldn’t see him unloading before he took off again.

  So clever. And so desperate! What exactly was this thing he’d taken such risks to deliver and leave here?

  There was a small cardboard box in front of the case, not much bigger than my fist. I reached in and grabbed the box and the case, and then, as fast as I could, I fit the iron panel back in place. It was easy to take apart and put back together, because Felix Baer had done the hard work of prying the panel loose in the first place. He must have broken it free of its fixture.

  I closed up Room Four behind me and went back to Jane with Felix Baer’s wooden box.

  The old woman’s pale blue eyes flew wide when she saw what I was carrying. She didn’t tell me off.

  ‘I suppose you’d better lock the door,’ she said.

  I don’t think Nancy Campbell would have ever allowed us near each other if she’d guessed what collaborators we’d become.

  Jane rubbed her hands together. I sat the wooden case and cardboard box on the bed and, remembering Felix Baer and his records, turned on the wireless. It took half a minute to warm up. It felt like the longest thirty seconds of my life, longer than waiting for bombs to explode during the Blitz.

  But at last we were in the middle of a lovely swing tune, and I turned up the radio – not too much, as I didn’t want to arouse suspicion, and our operation ought to be a quiet one. I opened the case.

  I had thought it was some kind of typewriter when I caught my glimpse of it on the piano. But it wasn’t. There was no place to fit paper. Instead, above the keyboard was a plate of letters that exactly matched the keyboard itself. Above the letter plate were three dials and a switch.

  Jane was out of her chair, hanging on to the headboard of the bed so she could get closer. The front flap of the box came unlatched and fell open as she sat. We both saw the brand name printed on the inside: ENIGMA.

  Jane bent to read the metal card, all in German, that was screwed into the inside of the top lid.

  ‘It says it is a cipher machine,’ she breathed. ‘It must be for creating code. Or translating code.’

  ‘Are
those instructions?’ I gasped.

  ‘Not useful instructions,’ Jane answered. ‘Just cleaning instructions! But it tells a bit about the moving parts …’

  She kept reading, and I bent alongside her to get a closer look at the machine.

  The last keypad in the bottom right corner of the keyboard was missing.

  I took the L key out of my pocket and tried to place it over the empty peg. It didn’t fit, but as I pressed the peg down, a Q suddenly lit up in the letter plate above the keyboard.

  ‘It’s battery-powered,’ Jane said. She straightened up and tapped at other keys. Random letters lit in the display plate. Each time they lit, one of the dials moved along a notch. ‘It’s in perfect working order.’

  ‘The letters don’t match!’ I exclaimed.

  ‘It mixes them,’ she said. ‘Then they’re in code. The lid says to refer to instructions we don’t have.’

  ‘Maybe we can figure it out,’ I said.

  Jane opened the cardboard box. Inside it, wrapped in a flannel cloth, were two notched steel gears each about the size of a tin of shoe polish.

  ‘I think these are extra dials,’ Jane said. ‘You turn the dials to change the way you scramble the letters. If you put different dials in, you get even more ways to mix them up. This will keep us busy!’

  I saw that you could set up the machine to turn your message into nonsense, and then someone with the same machine, or one like it, could decode your nonsense by using the same setting.