“He shouldn’t let people know of my whereabouts.” She’d suspected it was him.
“I am not ‘people,’ Saorise Laura India Mary,” Lady Johnson said using Slim’s entire name.
“I’m here on business. I’m sorry, I’m afraid that I don’t have time to have dinner tonight,” Slim said weakly.
“You will make the time. Your mother is coming.”
Slim showed up at eight on the dot in an elegant mid-calf black dress by Jeanne Lanvin that she’d ordered in a fit of extravagance. England was still using clothing coupons, so she knew that Gran didn’t expect her to arrive in an evening dress. Rationing still had an iron grip on postwar Britain. The global conflict had drained every last penny out of the dwindling empire.
Even with those deprivations, Lady Johnson lived as though she was from another age. Barnaby, the butler Slim had known nearly all her life, opened the door to her Kensington house, bowing slightly as he waved her in.
“You’re looking well, Barnaby.”
“Thank you, Miss Slim.”
She was lying about how well Barnaby looked. He had aged in the year since she had last seen him, and she detected a noticeable muscle tremor in his hands as he led her into the drawing room. Her mother was by the window in her wheelchair, drooling into a bib while her ever-present nurse, Bracken, hovered over her. Slim sighed angrily and cursed her grandmother. Why keep up this charade year after year?
Slim had only one memory of her mother before what her grandmother called “the unfortunate accident.” It was of her mother picking her up to blow out the candles on her birthday cake. That’s all she had left of her mother before she’d become a “drooling halfwit.” Slim knew it was unkind to think of her mother in such a way, but her state was her fault. Having been humiliated one too many times by the feckless husband whom she had recklessly married, she’d tried to kill herself with a hunting rifle shortly after Slim’s fourth birthday. She had survived her suicide attempt, but the bullet was still lodged in her brain.
Lady Johnson had concocted a story of her only child tripping on her gun while out with the hounds, but no one bought it. As time went on, neither did Slim, but she did know that had her mother not done this one misguided act, her life would have been markedly different. Lady Johnson had begged Tyrone to allow her to raise Slim, but he’d insisted on taking her back to the states as far away from her “mess of a mah” as possible. So four-year-old Slim had boarded the SS Normandy with her father to live in Los Angeles. Whether out of guilt or the desire to entertain some old lovers, Tyrone did bring Slim to London every Christmas, and every year Lady Johnson insisted that Slim spend time with her disabled mother. Slim could see that this visit would not be any different.
“Say hello to your mother, Slim,” Lady Johnson said, entering the room and surveying the uncomfortable mother/daughter reunion.
Slim went over, kissed her mother on the cheek, and said, “Hi, Mummy.” She nodded to Bracken and then turned to her grandmother for inspection.
“Let me take a good look at you. Turn around.” Slim did as she was told. “You look well, Slim.”
“So do you, Gran.” Slim wasn’t lying. Although stout, Lady Johnson was a handsome woman, even if she had a tongue so sharp, it could slice a piece of paper in two.
“So you’ve said hello to your mother. She will be dining in the nursery with Bracken.”
Slim smiled wanly as her mother was wheeled out. When they were out of earshot, she turned to her grandmother and said, “Why do you do that?”
“Do you mean why do I insist that you spend time with your mother each time you visit?”
“It seems cruel.”
“To whom?”
“To me, to you, to her.” Seeing her mother made her long for something that she was missing in her life.
“She’s your mother, Slim, and I don’t know what she can or cannot understand—that we will never know—but if she’s locked up in there and can understand, then I will be able to go to my grave knowing that I didn’t deprive her of seeing the child she so adored.”
“Adoring me didn’t stop her from nearly killing herself. I wish she’d succeeded, and we could be done with this farce.”
“Stop being maudlin, Slim. It doesn’t suit you. Come now, let’s go to dinner.”
Dinner was a desultory mash of gray meat and root vegetables. Food, too, was still being rationed. The wine, however, was excellent, as Lady Johnson’s cellar had an apparently seemingly endless supply of Slim’s favorite, prewar Châteauneuf-du-Pape.
“So what have you been doing? I know you were frightfully disappointed when the Red Cross shut your office down. Barnaby, more wine, please.”
Barnaby shakily refilled both glasses and then stepped back. The days of footmen were gone, and Lady Johnson had been reduced to a staff of four: Barnaby, the cook, her maid, and the chauffeur—although the continued rationing of petrol limited her Bentley’s use.
“I’ve opened an agency with my friend Daniel.”
Lady Johnson’s ears perked up at the name.
“Don’t get too excited, Gran. He’s Jewish, and he doesn’t want to marry me.”
“Thank God. It’s bad enough that your father insisted upon raising you Catholic. What does your agency do?”
“We find people who have been lost in the war. I’ve been asked to find a British spy who disappeared in France.”
“Did you find him?”
“I think I might have found her.”
“Are you telling me that our government used women as spies?”
“Yes, she was a wireless operator.”
“I take it she’s not among the living.”
“No, she’s not.”
“What happened to her?”
“She was given an injection of some kind to kill her, but it didn’t, so she was shoved into an oven still alive.”
Lady Johnson put down her fork. “I don’t understand what made the Germans such barbarians.” She paused and then said, “How do you know this happened to her?”
“I have proof that she is dead. The stoker for the crematorium gave me her shoe and handkerchief.”
“A shoe and a handkerchief are all that’s left? How terribly sad that is.”
“Yes, it is. I think I’m going to say good night, Gran. I need to get up early tomorrow,” Slim said, suddenly tired. She got up from the table, walked over to her grandmother, and bent down to give her a perfunctory kiss.
The old woman grabbed her by the shoulders and asked, “Slim, don’t you think this frost between us should finally thaw?”
“Gran, please. I’m tired, and I have to get up early.”
“Let me finish.” Lady Johnson stared into her granddaughter’s green eyes. “Your father ruined your mother’s life, but he didn’t ruin yours. If you’re in love with Daniel, then get him to marry you. Oh, I don’t care if he is a Jew. At this point in my life, I just want to see you happy. Yes, I know you have the agency, and I’m glad that you’re doing something you like, but I want you to be loved.”
“Gran, I don’t know if Daniel can love anyone. He lost his whole family in Auschwitz.”
“Everyone? Surely someone must be left?” Lady Johnson asked incredulously. “I saw the newsreels of the camps, but there must be someone?”
“No one,” Slim said. “Gran, I don’t know if he’s capable of love. I hate how I feel with him. I feel so damn vulnerable.”
“Sit down,” said Lady Johnson. “Barnaby, bring us two glasses of port, please, and then you can leave us.”
“Right away, ma’am.”
Slim sat glumly in the chair. She was trying not to cry, but the tears fell, anyway. It was all too much: her mother, Daniel, the case . . . She felt overwhelmed. Barnaby handed them each a snifter and bade them good night. Lady Johnson grasped Slim’s hand.
“Now this isn’t the first time you’ve been in love, Slim. You had that fighter pilot who disappeared. Weren’t you in love with him?”
“That was different then what I feel for Daniel. This is . . . I don’t know how to describe it. It’s like I’m obsessed, but not in a right way.”
Lady Johnson smiled. “Oh, darling child, that’s not love. That’s loneliness finding loneliness.” She handed Slim a handkerchief.
“It’s not just that, Gran. It’s the case. Something doesn’t feel right about it.”
“You said she was a British agent. Is that correct?”
“Yes, she was part of the Special Operations Executive. It was founded by Churchill to set Europe ablaze.”
“My old friend, Princess Marina Oblenskya—you remember her, don’t you? She used to come to tea when you’d visit for Christmas.”
“Of course.” Princess Oblenskya was the one who had told her about the gruesome remains of the Sokolov box.
“She has a son a bit older than you, Prince Pavel, who did something secretive in the war. Maybe he could help you in some way.”
“Maybe,” but Slim doubted it. All that she had ever heard about him was that he was a charming playboy.
They sipped their port in silence until Lady Johnson broke it by saying, “Whatever you do, Slim, don’t become your mother.”
Those words would haunt Slim Moran for the rest of her life.
That night Slim dreamed of her mother. She was in her wheelchair, drooling like she had been earlier that evening. But unlike earlier, she spoke clearly in a voice Slim couldn’t remember as hers. She asked only one question, over and over again: “If you find people, then why haven’t you found me?”
Slim woke up in a sweat with her mother’s question ringing in her ears. Unnerved, she turned on the light next to her bed and took out her notebook to read through her notes. Amelie had Marie Claire turned in to the SD at Avenue Foch. From there, she had gone to Karlsruhe and then Natzweiler, presumably to her death. Michel had told her that she had died in Dachau, which obviously was not true, and then Dennis had tried to scare her off the case for no discernible reason.
Yet, most puzzling of all, why had London continued to transmit to whomever it thought was Marie Claire after the first message left out her safety word? Maybe Dennis was right, and Miss Chapman was the mole inside the SOE. On the other hand, it could have been her superior, Colonel Graham. The latter had lost two sons in the war; there would be little sympathy for the Germans on his part.
On the surface, the case seemed solved. Yet Slim had such a bad feeling that it was not as cut and dried as it seemed. She opened her Sokolov box and first took out the shoe and then the handkerchief. She unfolded it again, tracing her finger over the swastika. The edges had been trimmed with red rickrack. Then something caught her eye. She folded over the trimming and saw faded blue words, barely visible around the edges. Moving the bedside lamp closer, she tried to decipher the tiny words. Then she saw it: Ne rien dire, je vais vous aider. Je suis médecin. Who had written Be quiet. I will help you. I am a doctor? Perhaps it was Dr. Brandt, the man Stefan had identified as the murderer of Marie Claire. If he had written this, it was possible that Marie Claire hadn’t been burned alive. Stefan said Brandt had escaped from a British prison after the war. Maybe she could locate him. She needed to find out who had written the note.
Slim put the handkerchief aside and decided she would show Miss Chapman only the shoe. The handkerchief might be just a red herring, but until she knew for sure that Miss Chapman wasn’t the mole, she would keep it in her possession.
At 9:00 a.m., Slim found Miss Chapman in her office surrounded by boxes marked Official Secrets/Archives.
“So what news do you have for me?” Chapman asked, handing Slim a cup of tea.
“First, I need to tell you who has been making those calls in Morse code to you.”
“I take it you’re going to tell me that it’s not Marie Claire.”
“No, it’s Amelie. Do you remember her?”
“She was one our French operatives. I never quite trusted her, but even so, why would she do such a thing?”
“Amelie found out Marie Claire was sleeping with Françoise—she’s the woman I introduced you to. She runs the bar downstairs.”
Chapman nodded and said, “I forget how young those women were whom we sent into the field.”
“Amelie wants to turn herself in.”
“What good will it do? You said you had news of Marie Claire. What is it?” Miss Chapman was suddenly all business.
Slim told her what she had found out in Natzweiler and pushed the small box toward Chapman, who opened it and took out the wooden-soled shoe. “Did this belong to Marie Claire?”
“Yes, Françoise identified the shoe. She bought it for her.”
“Now Marie Claire’s mother can die in peace knowing that she will see her daughter on the other side. Is there anything else you have to show or tell me, Miss Moran?”
“Yes, one more thing. When I spoke with the wireless transmitter from Avenue Foch, he told me that when he first transmitted as Marie Claire, he left the safety word out.”
“Sometimes our agents were careless.”
Slim studied Miss Chapman’s face to see if there was any trace of guilt. She didn’t believe for a minute that her agents were ever careless.
“Thank you for finding out what happened to Marie Claire,” she said, dismissing Slim.
“Would you mind if I paid Marie Claire’s mother a visit?”
“Why?” Miss Chapman seemed taken aback by this request.
“It’s just that I feel like I’ve come to know Marie Claire, and maybe I could tell her mother something to put her mind at ease.”
“I think it’s best that you not visit her. Now, if you don’t mind, I’ve got a lot of work to do sorting through all these files.”
“Yes, of course. I’ll send you an invoice for my final charges and expenses.”
“Please send it to this address.” She handed Slim a card that said Chip Chase, Rye. “I will be out of here by the end of the week.”
Slim took in all the cardboard boxes. “Where will this information go?”
“War Department. There the boxes will be sealed for a hundred years. If there’s nothing else, Miss Moran . . .”
“Just one last thing you can answer for me.”
“Go ahead, but I am still bound by the Official Secrets Act, even though the war is over,” she said, referring to the 1939 Act of Parliament that prevented her from revealing anything that might be detrimental to the defense of Britain.
“What are you going to do now?”
“Retire in the house I bought in the countryside and live in some peace now that I know what happened to all twelve of my girls.” There was a pause, and then Miss Chapman said begrudgingly, “Thank you for a job well done.”
With that, Slim was dismissed, and she headed off to Putney to have tea with Lennie. It was a route she knew by heart, having taken it so many times when she was a girl in Lennie’s charge.
Taking the underground from Waterloo to the Overland station, she walked along the heath until she came to a white Georgian house where Lennie’s family had lived for generations. In her forties now and still unmarried, Lennie, as far as Slim knew, was still working as a math teacher at the St. Paul’s School for Girls in London. They hadn’t seen each other since the outbreak of the war, and Slim was excited when Lennie threw open the door and hugged her.
“Slim, you still live up to your name,” Lennie said after taking a good look at the woman she’d known as a child. “So how are you, my dear sweet girl?”
“I’ve been better.” Slim smiled weakly. She knew she couldn’t hide how she felt in front of Lennie.
“Come in. We’ll have tea, and you’ll tell me all about it.”
Lennie led her into the drawing room that was as exactly as Slim remembered it. There was the sun-faded chintz sofa flanked by the two blue-striped accent chairs aligned on the large, worn embroidered rug. Above the fireplace was the oil painting of Lennie as a pudgy, pink-faced girl of six and her equally robust
mother. Slim had spent many warm evenings with the Lennon family here, playing Chinese checkers while listening to the wireless. Sometimes, Mrs. Lennon would take out sheet music and play the latest naughty ditty from Noel Coward on the upright piano by the window. They were what Slim had thought a happy family looked like, and she’d loved spending time with them. She looked around, expecting them to burst into the room.
“Where are your parents, Lennie?” Slim asked as she sat down on the sofa.
“You’ll never guess. Not in a million years will you guess,” Lennie said as she handed her a cup of fragrant Darjeeling tea.
Lennie’s parents loved to travel. On the table of the drawing room were bound leather photo albums of their trips around the world. Having retired on a headmaster’s pension, the two of them “roughed it,” as they liked to say, and traveled with rucksacks and their clothesline.
“I don’t know. Tell me.”
“Oh, do try and guess.”
“New Zealand?” Slim said, thinking of the one place that seemed as far away as possible. She instantly regretted saying that when she saw the pout on Lennie’s face. “You can’t be serious? They’re not in New Zealand?”
“Close, Australia. They’re thinking of moving there. It’s warm, and it will be a new adventure for them. They went first class this time.”
“They must’ve been saving up for years.”
“They figured it’s their final trip, and they might as well splurge.”
“Lennie, you’re not going to join them, are you?” Even though Slim hadn’t seen Lennie in so long, the thought of her moving halfway around the world made Slim a bit sad.
“I’m afraid the answer is yes. I’ve gotten a position in a girls’ school in Sydney. I adore my students here, but with the rationing and the weather, I need a change as well.”
“I’ll miss you. Have you sold the house?”
“It’s been quite hard to let go of it, but in a month, everything here will be packed up and en route down under. So did you see your Gran? Did she drag out your mother for show and tell again?”
“Yes, but I think we’ve finally come to an understanding about that.”
“It’s about time. I remember how traumatized you were as a child when she insisted you see her. Do you remember when she used to make you play piano for her?” Seeing Slim’s face, she quickly changed the subject. “Slim, you wrote that the Red Cross closed down the displaced center. What are you doing?”
The Lost Spy (Slim Moran Mysteries) Page 15