“But some new information has come to light that might help in determining precisely what happened,” I continued, brushing a stray trickle of water from my cap off my brow.
“Then why isn’t someone from the War Office speaking to me?”
It was a legitimate question, and one I didn’t truly have a satisfactory answer for.
“They hopefully will be in short order.” My gaze met Sidney’s. “But they may need a bit more convincing that there’s adequate reason to reopen the case.”
He ruminated over this for a moment, his fingers tapping on the edge of the desk in obvious agitation. Sidney extracted his battered silver cigarette case—a gift from me before he set off for war—from inside his inner coat pocket and extracted a fag before offering one to Williams. He accepted, nodding his thanks, before both men went about the rituals of lighting them.
As he exhaled a stream of smoke, Williams’s shoulders dropped and he seemed to decide in our favor. “What do you want to know?”
“The initial explosion. The one that sent me flying through the air. What do you remember about it?”
He frowned. “I’m not sure I understand what you mean.”
I clasped my hands more tightly in my lap as I tried to find the words to explain. “I was so dazed.” Both from being hurled through the air and from the fact that, immediately before the blast, the man who had escorted me from the temporary headquarters after I’d delivered C’s missive to General Bishop had then pulled me behind an adjoining shed and slammed my head against the wall in his quest for information about my presence there. “My ears were ringing. I couldn’t even hear you screaming at me directly in my face.”
“I’d forgotten that,” he admitted. “We had to pull the roof of that shed off you. And then all hell broke loose.”
Sidney visibly flinched. “Go on,” he urged, though his complexion was a shade paler than normal.
I stared at the potted plant on the corner of the desk as I thought back. “I remember running to that makeshift trench with you. I remember the other bodies. And I remember the shells.” We’d lain in that ditch for hours, waiting for the bombardment to end, just a small taste of what these men, what all our boys, had endured for years. “But I don’t remember much of anything about the explosion that destroyed the HQ.” I searched Williams’s face. “I thought it was caused by a shell because of what happened after, but I’ve since begun to doubt that. Do you know . . . ?” I couldn’t seem to complete the sentence, and fortunately he didn’t need me to.
“It wasn’t a shell,” he stated definitively, his gaze stark.
I exhaled, only just realizing I’d been holding my breath. This was proof, then. Before now I’d had to rely on my own doubts, prodded by the nightmares of the event I’d kept reliving, and the word of Major Scott—the man who had accosted me outside that temporary HQ. That Scott had accused me of planting the bomb, while I had believed he was the traitor among General Bishop’s staff we’d been warning him about, only muddied the waters further. But Williams’s account could be considered impartial testimony. Or at least as impartial as could be found, under the circumstances.
“What else do you remember?” I prodded again when he didn’t continue.
“Not much.”
“Just go back over it anyway. Tell us anything you can recall, even if it seems inconsequential.”
He looked to Sidney as if for confirmation from a superior officer, which I supposed he was, even now, and my husband nodded.
“How did you come to be there?” I prompted.
Williams sank deeper in his chair, taking another drag on his cigarette. “We were being sent up the line as reinforcements. The brass expected the Germans to resume their push that night, and we’d been sent at the last to shore up a weak spot along the line. We’d been marching for hours and the captain had just ordered us to halt and given us our ease for a few minutes while he conferred with some other officers. I was leaning against a stack of crates, smoking a fag . . .” He gestured with the one currently gripped between his fingers. “When we saw a woman emerge from the hovel across the road we later learned was a temporary HQ.” He nodded at me. “You.”
“Did you have a clear line of sight to the door?” Sidney asked.
He shrugged one shoulder. “Clear enough, as there was a bit of a lull in the traffic marching up and down the road at that moment. In any case, despite all the refugees we’d passed fleeing the Germans’ advance, the sight of a female in those surroundings did not go unnoticed. Especially when the officer she emerged with yanked her behind an adjoining shed.” His gaze dipped as he tapped the ash from his cigarette into a pewter dish and then pushed it forward to the edge of the desk so that Sidney might use it. “I’m afraid some of the men started making rather crude insinuations about why you were there, and I didn’t stop them. They were all keyed up for what was to come, and I figured it was better to let them blow off a bit of steam.”
This last was evidently said for Sidney’s benefit. I could only guess what lewd remarks had been made, but I was certain my husband was fully aware.
“Though it didn’t look to me as if you’d gone willingly.” There was a question in his eyes and I answered it.
“I didn’t.”
He nodded. “But then another man exited from the HQ.”
I sat forward at this pronouncement.
“I didn’t get a clear look at him because a pair of wagons came rattling past, but he was an officer. That much was clear.”
His uniform would have differentiated him, and in any case, if he’d emerged from the HQ after me, he would have had to have been one of the officers on General Bishop’s staff.
“Was he in a hurry?”
He shook his head. “No, he just strode out of it past the sentries, even paused for a moment to speak to our captain, who was approaching. Then he walked on. I would say it was only a matter of five seconds later that the HQ exploded. Knocked us all flat.”
“Did your captain identify the officer?” For surely, he’d been questioned.
Williams’s expression turned grim. “The old man was killed in the blast, along with another officer of the line and the sentries. As well as the men inside,” he amended.
I sat back in shock. I had known about Bishop and his five subordinates, but none of the others. Then ten men had lost their lives in that explosion. Just moments after another officer had walked away.
I looked at Sidney, still trying to grapple with this revelation. “And you reported all this when they interviewed you after the incident?” I asked Williams.
“Aye. Not wot they seemed to do much about it.” He leaned forward to tap off some more ash. “Though, as you said, I suppose with the shells having blown everything to pieces and the Jerries having overrun it all, it complicated matters.”
Yes, but surely the testimonies they did have, attesting that the explosion had not been a shell, but a bomb, and Williams’s and possibly others’ assertions that they’d seen an officer leave the HQ just moments before the blast, would have been enough to detain the man. Had they at least interrogated him? And if so, why hadn’t Alec alerted us to his existence when he’d found Williams’s name in the records?
Unless he hadn’t gained access to the official records, but uncovered Williams’s identity another way.
Whatever the case, we needed to view those records. Who knew what other revelations they might contain, including this mystery officer’s name.
“The rest I think you know,” Williams said, taking one last drag before stubbing out his cigarette.
I met his gaze levelly across the expanse of the desk. “I never got to say it before, but thank you.” I took a shaky breath as emotion began to stir in my breast. “Thank you for helping me that day. I’m glad you were there.”
If he’d noticed the waver in my voice, he was kind enough not to mention it, responding with a simple nod.
We pushed to our feet, and Sidney stepped forward to shake his
hand while I took a moment to compose myself.
“Hopefully we won’t be the only ones to speak to you about this, but if you should think of anything else in the meantime, please send word.” I passed him one of my calling cards. “You can reach us at this number and address, and if we’re not in London, they’ll know where to forward your message.”
He glanced at it before sliding it into his trouser pocket. “I will.”
Sidney and I were silent as we motored away from Kendal, each of us lost in our own ruminations as rain steadily drummed on the roof of the Pierce-Arrow. For my part, I was already composing what I was going to say when I telephoned the number given to me by C from the train station. The number I was to use whenever I needed to report anything urgent or schedule a meeting in my unofficial capacity as an agent for C and the Secret Service.
“I’m still grappling with the fact that an officer was witnessed leaving the temporary HQ just moments before it exploded and yet the matter was still left unsolved,” I huffed in astonishment, gazing out at the gloomy landscape of fields and forest.
“Yes, but consider the facts from the investigators’ standpoint,” Sidney replied. “They had no physical evidence to speak of, it all being lost or destroyed by the shells and advancing Germans. What statements they did have from witnesses were conflicting.” He glanced at me. “Presumably you weren’t the only one to believe the HQ had been destroyed by a shell. I imagine that officer claimed the same thing to cover his tracks.” He tipped his head to the side. “Add to that the fact that shells did begin to fall soon after, and the realization that there were much more pressing matters to contend with—namely halting and repelling the Germans’ advance—and I think it’s easy to understand why the inquiry was never resolved.”
“I take your point,” I grumbled. “Though now that I recognize that the HQ wasn’t destroyed by a shell, a fact corroborated by Williams and Scott, I think the case against this unnamed officer needs to be reexamined. He might be the very traitor C had sent me there to warn Bishop about.”
Sidney adjusted his grip on the driving wheel, narrowing his eyes to peer more clearly through the rain-splattered windscreen. “Yes, but what of the bomb itself? Did this mystery officer simply have it on hand, ready to be used at a moment’s notice should his identity be threatened or discovered?”
I could appreciate that he was playing devil’s advocate, but I stiffened in affront all the same. “Why not? He could have kept it stored with his dispatch case or his kit. Somewhere near his person. And after seeing me and surmising my reason for being there, put his plan into motion.”
“So he set some sort of timed explosive, a pencil detonator or what have you—without anyone noticing—and then simply waltzed out the door?”
“Why not?” I countered again. “If Bishop and most of his staff officers were absorbed with going over the plans for the night’s offensive, as they seemed to be when I barged in on them minutes before, then why couldn’t it have happened that way? Perhaps he made some excuse to leave the HQ or maybe just walked out of his own accord. I don’t know. What was the general’s reaction likely to have been? Would he have ordered his sentries to detain him or even shoot him?”
Sidney gave the matter some consideration. “If, as you suggested, Bishop and most of his staff were distracted, then he wouldn’t have noticed until the officer was already at the door or out of it. He might have called after him, or even sent one of the other staff officers after him, but it’s highly doubtful he would have ordered the sentries to abandon their posts or open fire. Depending on his relationship with the officer in question, he might have even given him the benefit of the doubt and decided to call him on the mat for his behavior later.”
“Even after he’d just been informed that he had a traitor among his staff?”
Sidney’s resigned gaze shifted to meet my more skeptical one before returning to the road. “Even then. I had no direct experience with General Bishop, but if he was like many of the officers of his rank, then he believed his knowledge and opinions were superior to what anyone else might tell him. Especially about his own men. He may have taken the information in the letter you delivered under advisement, but given the fact that he knew he was on the cusp of battle, it’s doubtful he would have taken any action.”
I felt mildly stunned. For such a revelation was not just baffling to me, it was infuriating. After all, I’d risked my life to relay that intelligence to General Bishop. Did he honestly think that C would have sent an agent, a female agent, into the very heart of the line of retreat without being certain of the information contained in his missive?
Perhaps I spluttered, or perhaps my pale complexion betrayed my fury. Either way, Sidney seemed aware of it, for he tempered the matter-of-fact tone of his voice in an attempt to console me. “It’s just the way things were.”
I swallowed the scathing retort that had been building at the back of my throat, knowing Sidney was not to blame, and did not deserve the sharp edge of my tongue. Instead I focused my gaze on the rain-washed fields and undulating hills beyond the window, the tips of the fells lost in the gloom and low cloud cover.
Several moments passed before Sidney ventured his next comment. “So we’ve proven it’s possible this mystery officer is responsible. But do we have any idea who he was? He would have to be a cool cucumber, striding out of the HQ as Williams described, and pausing to speak with that captain. He must have known precisely how much time he would have before the bomb went off.” He braked as we rounded a curve to be confronted with a lumbering lorry. “You entered the HQ. Do you recall any of their faces?”
Rather than answer immediately, I continued to stare out the window, though what I saw before me was not the English countryside but rather a hovel in France lit by the yellow glow of lanterns swinging from their hooks on the wooden beams overhead. I could see General Bishop’s face before me, measuring, scrutinizing. But as for the other men, they all melted together in a blurry haze. Even those who had drawn their pistols and pointed them at me as I rushed past the sentries and down the three short steps into the temporary HQ.
I waited until Sidney had maneuvered the Pierce-Arrow around the lorry at a place where the road widened before speaking. “I don’t.”
His gaze darted toward me before returning to the road.
“Surprising, isn’t it?” I turned back to the window. “All that training. All those missions during the war where I can still recall every minor, insignificant detail. And yet, I can’t recall something that might prove to be so important.”
“No one is infallible, Ver,” he said gently, though I could still sense the curiosity lurking at the edges of his words as he wondered why this incident was different. Why I’d failed to note all those fine particulars.
It was only a matter of seconds before he would recall that the incident had occurred a few weeks after I’d received the telegram informing me of his supposed death. By all rights, I shouldn’t have been charged with such a fraught task, but I had begged C to let me keep working. I’d argued that it was what he would have demanded of the men on his staff, and so I should be no different. I’d been desperate to distract myself from the hollow, aching pit of my grief by doing something useful, and so he’d relented.
But I’d realized soon enough that it had been a mistake. I wasn’t ready. I was distracted and reckless, tempting fate to end my suffering. In truth, had Major Scott not pulled me aside to question me, had that bomb not exploded and the shells begun falling, had I been escorted to the rear of the line of fleeing refugees as I was supposed to be, I’m not sure I wouldn’t have just lain down in a ditch and stayed there until death claimed me.
However, Sidney didn’t need to know all that. He didn’t need those memories of my misery heaped on his head, not when I’d already accepted his deception as necessary and forgiven him. So I swiftly turned the subject.
“Well, fortunately the records should contain the information we seek. When we reach the tra
in station at Garsdale, I’m going to telephone London and find out what they can dig up for us. I’m sure C will want to know.” If he didn’t know already.
The cynical thought lodged in my brain, for C was nothing but thorough. After everything that had happened with Major Scott a month prior and the information I’d brought to him, I couldn’t imagine he hadn’t already read the investigation reports. And if he’d done so, he should already be aware of the mystery officer and Sergeant Williams’s claims about him. But then why hadn’t he informed me of it? And why hadn’t the inquiry been officially reopened?
CHAPTER 17
The train station itself was all but deserted when we arrived at half past three, even though the rail yard and accompanying buildings still bustled with activity. As such, the stationmaster said he was more than happy to allow me to use the telephone. He even accepted Sidney’s offer to step out with him for a smoke, the rain having stopped falling about thirty minutes prior. I flashed my husband a smile of gratitude, grateful for the privacy. I’d been trained how to relay my coded number and letters through what seemed to be normal sentences, though nothing could prevent them from sounding stilted and at times bizarre.
Having rung up the private number set aside for just such a purpose, and requested a return call to this number, all I could do was wait. I imagined the secretary who’d transcribed the message passing it off to her superior, who then delivered it to an errand boy to be run over to Kathleen Silvernickel’s desk. As C’s secretary, Kathleen read all such correspondence first, often deciding what urgently required his attention and what did not.
At one time, my desk had been positioned next to hers as I’d analyzed and correlated the CX reports from the field before passing on the data to C and the other officers. At least, that was what I’d done before I’d taken on increasingly more frequent and demanding field work. Until I’d been demobbed earlier that year like most of the women who had worked for the various intelligence agencies. Kathleen was one of the few to remain.
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