The 9

by Madalyn Morgan

  Ena fell into her chair, shocked at the way the officer had shouted at her. She looked at the telephone in the middle of the table and whispered, ‘Could I telephone the factory in Lowarth?’ The intelligence officer ignored her. ‘I just need to know Mr Silcott’s all right.’

  ‘I’m afraid that won’t be possible.’ Ena looked at him, her eyes blazing. ‘I understand how you must be feeling, Miss Dudley,’ the intelligence officer said, ‘And in due course you will be able to use the telephone. But it is very important that we know everything about the journey, who you met on the train, how you arrived at Bletchley. So please, just answer the questions.’

  Ena looked down and nodded. ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered, ‘of course.’

  ‘Tell me what happened on the train.’

  ‘As I said, the man I thought was Mr Silcott boarded the train by a door at the opposite end of the carriage, so I went to join him – Mr Silcott that is, not the man.’ Ena stopped speaking with shuddering breath and began to cry again. ‘What if he’s lying hurt somewhere? Please won’t you ask someone to telephone to make sure he’s all right?’

  ‘The sooner you tell us everything that happened on the train the sooner you’ll be able to telephone yourself, Miss Dudley.’

  Ena shook her head in disbelief. ‘I went into the compartment and there was a man in it. It wasn’t Mr Silcott. I asked him if a man had entered the compartment at Rugby, and he said no. I asked him if he was sure and he said, or at least he implied, that he hadn’t seen anyone fitting Mr Silcott’s description before or after Rugby, which I took to mean he had boarded the train at one of the stations between Birmingham and Rugby. I think that is where the train came from.’ Ena paused and frowned. ‘But that didn’t make sense.’

  The man sitting opposite leant forward, as if to hear more clearly what Ena was about to say. ‘The man was wearing a corduroy jacket, which at first I thought was odd in such bad weather. I noticed a heavy outdoor coat, camel in colour, on the rack above him, and his shoes were wet.’ Pleased with herself for being observant, Ena said, ‘If he had been sitting in that compartment all the way from Birmingham his shoes would have been dry, wouldn’t they? If not dry, there wouldn’t have been wet patches under them, and there were.’ The man made no comment. ‘Anyway, I went back along the corridor, looked in all the other compartments, asked everyone if they had seen a man fitting Mr Silcott’s description, but no one had.’

  ‘Where was the case containing your work while you were looking for your boss?’

  ‘With me. I would never leave it anywhere,’ Ena said, tersely. ‘That’s why I’m sure that the man sitting opposite me in the end compartment must have drugged me somehow and stolen it.’

  Ena looked down and closed her eyes. Concentrating on events in the compartment of the train to Bletchley, she fought the throbbing pain in her head to get her thoughts in order. Tears threatened. She fought them too. The officer sitting across the table from her opened his mouth to speak, but Ena’s eyes snapped open and she put her hand up. ‘I’m sorry, but I needed to get the facts straight, and now I have.’

  She looked at both men, and smiled for the first time since entering the room. ‘That’s it!’ she shouted, ‘That’s it! I get travel sick. I suck pear drops in cars, buses, trains – especially on long journeys, to stop feeling sick.’

  The officer opposite pushed his chair away from the table, leant back, balancing on the chair’s back legs and blew out his cheeks. ‘Is this relevant?’

  ‘Yes it is relevant. It is very relevant!’ Ena said. ‘What I am about to tell you is the reason I went to sleep.’

  ‘Go on, Miss Dudley,’ the officer sitting next her said.

  ‘I offered the man a pear drop.’ Ena shook her head. ‘No. That isn’t right. Sorry!’ The officer opposite was staring at her, a look of bewilderment in his eyes. If he was trying to make her feel uncomfortable, he was succeeding. Ena began again, this time directing her answer to the officer on her right. ‘I didn’t offer him a pear drop, as such, he hinted that he’d like one. He said he remembered that my friend and I sucked pear drops when we travelled.’

  ‘So you knew him?’

  ‘No. He said he had been on a train that we were on once, and that he remembered me because of the pear drops.’ Ena felt her cheeks flush. The more she said, the more ridiculous the scenario on the train sounded.

  ‘Go on,’ the officer opposite said, finally showing some interest.

  ‘I took the pear drops out of my handbag and asked him if he would like one. He said yes, but instead of taking a pear drop from the packet, he took the packet out of my hands. He said they looked good, and joked about which he should choose, before taking one. Don’t you see? He held onto the sweets for… oh, I don’t know, but it was a good few seconds before giving them back to me.’

  ‘What did he do with the pear drop?’

  ‘Put it in his mouth, of course.’ Ena closed her eyes and took in a sharp breath. ‘Oh, my God.’ She looked earnestly from one man to the other. ‘Putting a pear drop in my mouth was the last thing I remember until I woke up with a blinding headache at Euston Station.’

  ‘Have you still got the pear drops?’

  ‘Yes. They’re in my handbag. I felt queasy on the way out of Euston and took them out, but I didn’t have one. And thank goodness I didn’t.’ The man sitting next to Ena who had taken her handbag from her earlier, left the table. He returned a minute later and handed it to her.

  Ena thrust her hand into the handbag and produced the packet of pear drops. The officer sitting opposite reached over to take it. ‘No, wait. These are not the sweets I bought in Lowarth.’ Both men looked at her quizzically. ‘Firstly, there are eight pear drops in a quarter. My packet would have four sweets missing.’ She tipped the sweets into the table. ‘I had one as soon as I bought them, I had one in Mr Silcott’s car on the way to the station, I gave the man on the train one, and I had one myself on the train. ‘Look – there’s five left. If this were my packet, the one I bought in Lowarth, it would only have four pear drops in it.’

  ‘Perhaps the shopkeeper made a mistake, put an extra sweet in.’

  ‘Not possible, the bags aren’t big enough. She looked at the packet and smiled. ‘And it has been folded wrongly. The paper has been turned down at the top, you can see the ridge. It’s the way the confectioner folds it. I twist the top after I’ve had one, to stop the rest from falling into my handbag. Look,’ she said again, handing the packet to the man sitting opposite. ‘The top has been carefully folded over, like they do in the sweet shop, but if you look closely you’ll see the creases where I twisted the top after taking a sweet out in Mr Silcott’s car.

  ‘The man on the train couldn’t have known that when he folded the packet,’ Ena continued. ‘He must have bought pear drops, poisoned them with some sort of knockout drug, and after taking one of my pear drops, swapped the packets, giving me the packet containing the poisoned pear drops.’ A cold shivered ran through her as the realisation of what had happened on the 9:45 to Bletchley hit her. Ena looked from one intelligence officer to the other. ‘Don’t you see? I didn’t have one of my pear drops, I had one of his, one that he had poisoned. That’s why there’s still five sweets in my packet. Then, when I was out for the count, he swapped them back again, closing the top of my packet by folding it over, the way the confectioner had folded his, which is not the way I close it. Look--’ Ena demonstrated, ‘I twist the top.’

  Showing no sign of agreement, or even that he understood what Ena was saying, the man sniffed the packet. ‘Pear drops have a distinctive taste. Didn’t you notice anything different in the taste of the one you had on the train compared to the one you’d had in the car?’

  ‘Not at the time. I don’t remember anything after putting the pear drop into my mouth.’ Ena trembled. Fear of what might have happened to her if she hadn’t eaten the sweet, hadn’t slept, engulfed her. Her stomach churned. She thought again that she was going to be sick. ‘Cou
ld I have a drink of water, please?’

  The officer next to her nodded to Tilly, who got up and went out of the room. She was back in a matter of minutes, with a jug and three glasses. She poured a glass of water and Ena drank it down.

  ‘What do you remember about this man? How old was he? What did he look like?’

  Ena looked up at the ceiling, trying to bring the man’s face to mind. ‘It’s a bit of a blur, but he was around twenty-eight, thirty, with light hair… Blond. Yes, he had blond hair. I only saw him sitting down, but he looked fit – you know, muscular. And he was quite tall. At least he was taller than the other man, but not by much.’

  The two officers looked at each other. ‘What other man?’ The officer opposite asked. ‘This is the first we’ve heard about a second man.’

  ‘That’s because I’ve only just remembered him.’ Ena squeezed her eyes shut and tried to remember. ‘I’m only getting snatches, glimpses, of two shadowy figures. Sorry.’

  ‘You’re doing well, Miss Dudley,’ the officer next to her said, pouring more water into her glass. ‘Tell us what happened in London?’

  Ena took a drink and wiped a droplet from her chin. ‘When I woke up I was numb. I tried to move, to sit up, but my head felt as if it weighed a ton – and it ached. I had a terrible pain in my head and behind my eyes. Eventually I pulled myself up and looked out of the window in disbelief. I was in Euston. The first thing I did was look round for the case. I couldn’t see properly, everything was blurred, looked wavy as if it were swaying. Anyway,’ she said, ‘my vision was good enough to see that the case had gone.’

  Ena shook her head. ‘It’s hard to explain. It was a horrible feeling. I felt dizzy and disoriented, and I had this awful headache. It was as if my head was packed with cotton wool pressing on my temples. And my mouth was really dry. Anyway, I managed to get to the buffet on the station and I bought a cup of tea.’

  ‘Did you speak to anyone?’

  ‘Yes, but--’

  ‘What did they say?’

  ’I only passed the time of day with a young American. The buffet was busy and there was only one spare seat. He asked if he could sit down and I said yes.’

  ‘Did he ask you any questions?’

  ‘No, not really. I had been crying and he gave me his handkerchief. And when he bought himself a cup of coffee, he bought me another cup of tea.’ The officer sitting across the table from her raised his eyebrows. ‘He was just being kind. Apart from his accent, he was just an ordinary young man.’ Ena was dreading the questions that would follow. They were bound to include, What did you talk about, and did you tell him you were going to Bletchley? She was saved by the telephone ringing.

  The man opposite reached into the middle of the table, pulled the phone towards him, and picked up the receiver. Still looking at Ena, he said, ‘Yes?’ A couple of seconds later, he replaced the receiver. Shuffling his papers into a pile, he put them into his attaché case and stood up. ‘Time for a break. If you’d accompany Miss Dudley to the canteen, Miss Anderson?’ Without waiting for Tilly to reply, he said, ‘We’ll resume in an hour.’ He left the room. His associate followed.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The noise and clatter of hundreds of people met Ena and Tilly as they approached the canteen. Ena leant against the wall. She felt dizzy at the sight of so many people, and the smell of cabbage was making her feel sick. She closed her eyes, letting several women enter ahead of her.

  ‘Would you rather have lunch in the interview room?’ Tilly asked. Ena nodded. ‘I’m not supposed to leave you, so you’ll have to come with me to the counter. Will a sandwich and a cup of tea do?’

  ‘Just tea for me, thanks,’ Ena said. ‘I don’t think I could keep any food down.’

  Waiting for her interrogators to return felt like an eternity. Tilly must have thought so too, because she looked at her watch several times.

  ‘I’m sure you have better things to do than sit around here with me,’ Ena said. Tilly smiled and shook her head. Blinking back her tears, Ena stood up and walked around the table. ‘How long are they going to keep me here, Tilly?’

  ‘I don’t know, but they shouldn’t be too long. If you want to talk, Ena, I’d be happy to listen.’ Ena shook her head. ‘I’m here if you want to get anything off your chest?’

  Ena looked at Tilly, her eyes wide with disbelief. ‘Get anything off my chest?’ she said, with incredulity. ‘I haven’t done anything to get off my chest!’ Ena’s eyes filled with tears – and she didn’t blink them back. ‘I thought you believed me.’ She fell into her seat and buried her head in her hands.

  ‘I love my job,’ Ena said, when she finally lifted her head. ‘Not many people can do the job, because it’s so complex, so…. intricate.’ A hint of a smile crossed Ena’s face as she thought about her work. ‘It’s a bit fiddly to tell you the truth. The fine wires-- I shouldn’t be talking about it, I’m sorry. It’s just that Mr Silcott… Oh God,’ Ena cried, ‘What will Mr Silcott say – and my friend, Freda. What will Freda think of me?’

  Tilly Anderson put her hand on Ena’s arm. A gesture that told Ena the young Wren was sympathetic to her predicament. ‘I do believe you, Ena. I just thought, if you had mentioned your work to someone… Walls have ears, and all that.’

  ‘But I haven’t. And for the record, I wouldn’t tell anyone. No one knows what I actually do in my job, not even my parents. They think I’m an apprentice engineer, which I am. I was only taken off the factory floor because I’m good at precision work, and I’ve got a knack with numbers and can work out stuff. And I couldn’t tell them what happens here because, other than it having something to do with communications, I don’t know.’ Ena began to cry. ‘I love my job, Tilly. I don’t want to lose it. To tell you the truth, I am proud that I’m trusted to do sensitive work for a place like Bletchley Park.

  ‘It’s ironic,’ Ena continued. ‘I’m in trouble, suspected of all sorts by Commander Dalton, but if his people had sent the petrol coupons, as they should have, I wouldn’t even have been on the train. Mr Silcott and I would have brought the work down by car.’

  Lifting her head, Ena rubbed her eyes with the heel of her hands and turned to Tilly. ‘What if the Ministry of Defence takes the contracts away from Silcott’s? What I do is only a small part of the work the factory does for the different branches of the armed forces. If they don’t give us any more contracts a lot of people will lose their jobs. Most of the workforce are women, mothers, whose husbands are away fighting. They depend on what they earn at Silcott’s to pay the rent, the bills, and feed their children. What if--’

  There was a sharp rap on the door. Tilly got up to answer it. Ena, worn out with emotion, leant back in her chair and closed her eyes. She could tell it was a man’s voice, but she was not able to hear what he was saying because he spoke in a whisper. She wiped her hand across her face, too distraught to care.

  ‘Commander Dalton would like to see you, Ena,’ Tilly said, returning to the table. She picked up Ena’s coat and handbag and offered her her hand. ‘I’ll take you to his office.’

  Exhausted, Ena pushed back her chair, pulled herself to her feet, and let Tilly lead her out of the interrogation room.

  Commander Dalton stood up when Ena entered. ‘Sit down, Miss Dudley.’

  Without looking at him, Ena sat heavily on the chair in front of his desk.

  ‘One of our intelligence people has telephoned Silcott’s Engineering.’ Ena sat up, eager to hear news of her boss. ‘On the pretext of requiring a quote for work in the future, he asked to speak to Herbert Silcott and was told by Miss King that Mr Silcott was away on business, not expected back in the office until later in the day.’

  Ena’s hand flew up to her mouth. ‘Where is he?’

  ‘Our man said he had spoken to a Miss Dudley on a previous occasion and asked if he could speak to her. Miss King told him that Miss Dudley had accompanied Mr Silcott and wouldn’t be in the office until tomorrow. She asked if she could take a message
. Our man thanked her and said he was getting quotes from other factories and would ring back. He then telephoned Mrs Silcott in case her husband had missed the train and returned home.’ Ena crossed her fingers. ‘He hadn’t.’

  Ena’s eyes widened. ‘The man with the wet shoes!’ The commander tilted his head and looked at her curiously. ‘Mr Silcott didn’t return home because the man in the compartment must have kidnapped him or something. How else would he get Mr Silcott’s hat and coat? I didn’t see his face because he was holding onto his hat, Mr Silcott’s hat, and his face was hidden. I thought the man who left the Gents’ lavatory and ran for the train was Mr Silcott because he was wearing Mr Silcott’s hat and coat. I didn’t see the hat in the compartment but that only means he got rid of it. He could have thrown it out of the window for all I know. Or he could have put it under the coat. He’d tried to disguise it by turning it inside out, but I saw Mr Silcott’s camel-coloured coat on the overhead rack.’

  A worried frown crept across Commander Dalton’s face. ‘I suspect you are right, Miss Dudley. I also suspect the man was a spy.’ The commander gathered up the folders on his desk and stacked them into a neat pile. ‘You were targeted, Miss Dudley. Targeted.’ Ena felt fingers of ice grip her spine. She shivered. ‘And, if what you say is true, you were lucky you were only drugged. These people can be dangerous.’ Only half taking in what the commander was saying, Ena nodded mechanically. ‘I’m sorry we had to interrogate you, but I’m sure you understand why it was necessary.’

  Still thinking about Mr Silcott, Ena nodded again.

  The commander pushed back his chair and stood up.

  Ena took his cue. Then, realising what he had just said made her heckles rise. ‘What do you mean, if what I say is true? Of course it’s true.’ The commander’s eyes narrowed, but Ena was not going to be intimidated. ‘What is it? What is it that I have told you that you don’t believe?’

  ‘Pear drops! The man in the compartment knew you had pear drops in your handbag. How could he possibly have known that?’