Princess Elizabeth's Spy

by Susan Elia MacNeal

  Maggie looked up at him, not comprehending.

  “Well, you’ll understand when you read it,” he said gently. “I’m sorry for your loss, Miss Hope.”

  Maggie turned her attention to the second paper. The headline read “Two Dead from Accident on Icy Road, Another Injured.” Maggie smoothed the brown and crumbling edges and began to read.

  London, Sunday, May 1—Two people were killed and one seriously injured shortly after midnight Thursday in an automobile accident at the intersection of Grosvenor Road and Vauxhall Bridge Road.

  Clara Hope, age twenty-four, was taken to London Bridge Hospital and died from injuries sustained in the crash. Neil Wright, age thirty-two, died on the scene. Professor Hope, a noted economist at the London School of Economics, was taken to London Bridge Hospital and is in stable condition.

  “From the look of the accident scene, it appears that Professor and Mrs Hope’s car swerved on Grovesnor Road and hit a lamppost. Mr Wright’s car, following close behind, crashed into theirs,” a spokesman for the Prefecture of Police said.

  There, in stark black and white, was a picture of Neil Wright next to a picture of Maggie’s mother and father.

  Neil Wright, the agent who was investigating my father, died in the same car accident as my mother, Maggie thought, shocked, saddened, sickened. She read the article again.

  Then she sat down to think. Neil Wright was an MI-6 agent, charged with protecting Britain from foreign threats. If he was pursuing my father, he must have believed him guilty of some sort of wrongdoing—given that it was during the Great War, spying for Germany is the most likely offense. Because of this, she realized, feeling nauseated, Wright was chasing my father in a car. My mother was a passenger. The cars crashed, and both Wright and my mother died.

  My father, she thought, killed Neil Wright.

  Then, realizing, she felt like vomiting. He also killed my mother.

  Maggie felt a wave of anger, primal and hot, wash over her. He’s not going to get away with this.

  Chapter Twenty

  Maggie met with Hugh in London, at Highgate Cemetery, under a threatening sky with low-hanging clouds. They met in front of Maggie’s mother’s gray marble headstone: Clara Beatrice Hope 1892–1917. She leaned over and traced the letters with her gloved fingers, then set down her bouquet of bittersweet.

  “When I was a little girl,” she said, “I thought my Aunt Edith was my mother. But when I was about eight or so, she told me my parents had died in a car accident in London. In the version she told me, my father and mother were at a stoplight. A man in another car must have fallen asleep. His car drifted over the white line. His car crashed into theirs and they both died.” Maggie took a ragged breath as the wind whispered through the nearly bare tree branches.

  “But then, last summer, I found another version of the story. In this one, there was an accident and my mother died—but my father didn’t. But he went insane—which is why my Aunt Edith adopted me and lied to me—told me he was dead.

  “Then when I returned to England, I found out my father was not only still alive, but he was also as sane as you or I—he was merely posing as deranged, to try to catch a spy at Bletchley.

  “Neil Wright was an MI-Six agent, hunting down a Sektion agent in London—my father. What happened that night was no accident. Wright must have been chasing my father. One of the drivers lost control and the cars crashed. Whatever happened, it circles around to the same conclusion. If my father hadn’t been a Sektion agent, on the run from MI-Six, my mother would still be alive today. His treachery ended up getting her killed. And Agent Wright too.”

  Maggie brushed tears away. “I’m sorry to tell you all this, but I just—well, who am I supposed to talk to?” She laughed, a short, bitter laugh. “My former almost-fiancé who’s been shot down over Berlin and is ‘missing and presumed dead’? My Aunt Edith, who thinks I’m throwing my life away to be a governess? My friends Chuck and Sarah, who’re civilians? I can’t even tell David, my best friend, because he’s not cleared. This spy business is lonely—no one tells you that. And everyone lies.”

  “I don’t,” Hugh said.

  Maggie turned to him. “I want to reopen the case.”

  “What? Why?”

  “What if he’s a double agent?”

  “MI-Five’s cleared him.”

  “What about the file? There were pages missing. Maybe it didn’t end twenty-five years ago. Maybe he’s still working for Germany! That’s what Nevins thinks. That’s why there’s gossip about him—why he’s been at Bletchley for so long, and never caught a spy. He could have given Victoria Keeley those decrypts! And no one would know—because he’s the one supposedly guarding the henhouse.”

  Hugh put both hands on Maggie’s arms. “Maggie, stop. All right? Just stop. What matters, what’s important, is our mission—finding out what Lily Howell was doing and who killed her and why. How she got those decrypts and what she was going to do with them. Your father’s helping us do that. He’s on our side.”

  “My father’s working at Bletchley. That’s all we know for certain. It’s impossible to know what side he’s on.”

  “He works with us, Maggie.”

  “Nothing’s what it appears to be!” Maggie exclaimed, pulling away and biting through each word. “War took our world and what we once thought was normal. And now we’re all like, like Alice through the looking glass, in some sort of crazy upside-down world where truth is a lie and lies are truth.”

  Hugh shifted. “Look, I understand we’re talking about your father here, and that if he sold secrets to Germany—or, even worse, is selling secrets—that would be hard. Incomprehensible. Untenable.”

  “I want—no, I need—to know the truth.”

  “Before you do anything, let me find out if he’s still under any kind of suspicion. I’ll check some more files, ask some of my father’s old friends.…” He looked at her. “You’re shivering. Here,” he said, putting his arm around her. Maggie was aware of how close they were, and felt a peculiar jolt when she realized how much she liked it.

  “No, I’m sorry,” she said to Hugh, shrugging off his arm. “I’m sorry, but I just can’t.…”

  “Maggie—” Hugh reached out and put his hand on her forearm.

  She shrugged off his hand. “No. I will find out the truth. My days of waiting patiently are over. No. More. Lies.”

  Maggie knew she had another resource, the head of MI-5 himself, Peter Frain. When she found out from Mrs. Pipps that he was at his club, she decided to see him there. “Oh, Miss,” the wizened older man with the thick white hair at the front desk said, gazing up and over his thick eyeglasses. “I’m so sorry, but ladies aren’t allowed—”

  Maggie ignored him and stalked up the grand staircase. At the top of the stairs was the club’s library, with floor-to-ceiling bookcases, oil paintings of huntsmen in red on horses, green leather-covered chairs, and thick Persian rugs. Do these upper-crust Brits see no other possible way to decorate? Maggie thought irritably.

  Frain looked from a folder of papers he was reading at a polished table. “Why, Maggie, how lovely to see you.”

  “What’s the meaning of this, Frain?” snapped an older man in a tweed suit and a hairpiece.

  “It’s all right, Your Grace,” Frain said, raising a hand. “She won’t be here long.”

  “Women!” the man grumbled as he shoved back his chair and swept up his newspapers. “They’re everywhere. And this is where we go to try to get away from them!” He left and slammed the door behind him. Maggie and Frain were alone.

  “Why don’t you have a seat?” Frain said.

  “No, no, thank you. I’d rather stand.”

  “Suit yourself. Well, what brings you to this eminent institution? I’ll have you know that the food is nothing special. Just nursery food, like potted duck, ham and pear soup, and Eton mess—we old men seem to crave meals from our childhood.”

  “I know,” Maggie said in a low voice, “about my father. Th
at he was an agent during the Great War. That he was suspected of being a double agent for Sektion. That he was being investigated by Agent Neil Wright of MI-Six. And I know my mother died because Wright went after him.”

  Frain shook his head. “Maggie …”

  “Who was this man, Neil Wright? What did he find out?”

  Frain sighed. “You can’t know everything all at once, Maggie.”

  “I can and I will!” she exclaimed. Her voice echoed up to the clerestory windows.

  Frain remained unruffled. “Need I remind you, Maggie, that Enigma is at stake? People’s lives are at stake. Your life, for that matter. What you think you know, you don’t.”

  “Then tell me!”

  “You don’t have the proper approval.”

  Maggie was outraged. “Are you serious?” she managed.

  “Yes,” he said, with the patience of a teacher with a very young child. “You don’t have the proper approval. I’m sorry, but there it is.”

  “And how would I go about getting the ‘proper approval,’ as you so Britishly put it?”

  “You would ask me. And then I would tell you ‘no.’ ”

  “To be told how my mother died? My father’s role in it?”

  “There are rules, Maggie,” he said, not unkindly.

  “Then break them, goddamn it!”

  Frain pulled out a cigarette and lit it with his silver lighter. He inhaled, pale blue smoke drifting toward the frescoed high ceiling. “I sometimes forget that you were raised in America. Here in England, we have more respect for rules. And, in wartime, rules are what keep us alive.”

  “I don’t care about your damn rules!” Maggie cried. “I need to know what happened!”

  “You want to know what happened. But you don’t need to know.” He took a drag on his cigarette, the tip glowing reddish orange. “You’re a smart young woman, Maggie. And you’ve seen a lot. You’re going through quite a bit, I know. But I know you’re smart enough not to draw simple conclusions and then assume that they’re the truth. Remember your maths? The truth is always far more complicated. And I would think if anyone had learned that lesson, it would be you.”

  Maggie bit her lip. This isn’t the end. Oh, no, it’s not.

  “What I have learned, Peter, is that if I want something done, I’d better do it myself. And, with or without your help, I will find out what happened. He’s under suspicion for spying again, you know,” she said. “The other agents suspect him of being a mole.” She turned and headed to the door.

  “Although I’m well aware of the office gossip surrounding Edmund, I’m not swayed by it. And I’m quite surprised you’d give it any credence. I prefer you don’t pursue this matter.”

  “Well, it’s not up to you, now, is it?” she said, turning to fix one last glare on him. Then she left, running down the immense staircase, causing the older men in tattersall and tweed to look after her askance.

  If Maggie had turned back, though, she would have seen the tiniest hint of a smile curling one side of Peter Frain’s mouth.

  It was late by the time Maggie returned to Windsor. She’d missed dinner, and the sun had long set. Still agitated from her meeting with Frain, not to mention thoughts of Hugh, she paced around her rooms, chilly despite the fire dancing in the grate, finally throwing herself on the sofa. She picked up the Grimm’s Fairy Tales. Maybe reading will help me calm down, she thought.

  She kicked off her oxfords and tucked her feet under her, then picked up the book. What gorgeous illustrations, she thought, looking at the four-color Rackham pen-and-ink drawings, softened by watercolors. She began to read the first story, “Hansel and Gretel.”

  Again, she noticed the tiny holes that the spilled tea had spotlighted. Damn bugs. But on closer examination, the holes were too regular in their appearance, too specifically spaced.

  What they were, Maggie suddenly realized, was a series of tiny pinpricks in the pages of the book, each over a letter, in seemingly random order. It was code of some sort. Maggie’s heart beat faster.

  That was all of the pinpricks. There were no more.

  Pinprick encryption, Maggie thought, her mind whirling wildly. First used by Aeneas the Tactician, an ancient Greek historian, who conveyed secret messages by making tiny, almost imperceptible pinpricks under letters in chunks of text. Imperceptible—that is, unless someone spills tea on them.

  Getting a pad of paper and a pen, she copied down each letter, in order, that had a pinprick under it. There weren’t that many, really. When she was finished, she had:

  tandersen​sfaulkes​hthompson

  From there, shivers dancing up and down her spine, it was easy enough to get to:

  T. Andersen, S. Faulkes, H. Thompson

  A list of British-sounding names, sent in secret code to her father. Names. But of whom? And why? To get information from them? To try to turn them? To assassinate them?

  Maggie went back over the list of names. H. Thompson? Hugh had mentioned his father had worked for MI-5, as well.

  That he had died in the line of—

  Oh, no, Maggie thought, suddenly realizing. Oh, no, no, no, no, no …

  The next morning after Lilibet’s maths lesson, Maggie climbed the pitted and crumbling stairs of the parish church of St. John the Baptist, on High Street in Windsor, and walked inside, her steps echoing on the cracked tiles. It was between services and the cavernous arched church was empty, except for an organist to the left of the altar, behind a glowing bank of candles, practicing Bach’s “Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme,” the majestic reedy tones echoing through the open space. Maggie saw Hugh and took a seat in the row in front of him. Hugh knelt behind her, on a wooden pew worn from centuries of use, hands folded as if in prayer.

  In a rush, dread in her heart, Maggie whispered, “Thanks for meeting with me.” She wished with all her heart that she could go back to that moment when he’d put his arm around her. Back before she knew.

  “I knew if you contacted me, it had to be important.”

  There was a pause, and the organist began the left hand’s countermelody. Then Maggie began. “My mother—my mother loved to read, and my father would buy her books, fairy tales mostly, German. He sent one to me, after he stood me up in Slough. Last night, I discovered code hidden inside those books. Code! It must have been how Sektion was sending him messages.”

  “What kind of code?”

  “Pinprick encryption.”

  Hugh raised one eyebrow. “Classic Sektion.”

  “Exactly.”

  There was another long pause, before Maggie got up the nerve to speak. She knew she had to. And she knew that things would never be the same between her and Hugh, ever again. “The code—it spelled out a list.”

  “A list?”

  “A list of names,” Maggie said, hating what she was about to tell him.

  “All right,” Hugh said, “a list of names. I can check them out.”

  There was still a chance, though. Still a chance that it was just a horrible coincidence. A cosmic joke of the worst sort. “Hugh,” she said gently, “I need to ask you, what was your father’s name?”

  Hugh’s eyebrows knit together. “Why do you ask?”

  “Was it also Hugh?” Maggie asked, dreading his response.

  “Why, yes, yes it was,” he said. “But—?”

  “Hugh Thompson? H. Thompson? And did he die in 1915?”

  “What—?”

  Maggie passed him a Bible, in which she’d hidden the Grimm text and her notes.

  “Oh, Hugh,” she said, as he began to read. “I’m so, so terribly sorry.”

  Chapter Twenty-one

  In a fog of shock, Hugh returned to the MI-5 offices in London. Without apparent emotion, he dropped the book and Maggie’s decryption of the pinprick code on Frain’s desk, leaving Frain, for once, looking shocked. Then he went to his office and sat down at his desk. He didn’t even pretend to work, just stared at the wall.

  A while later, Mark entered the small
windowless office and looked at Hugh. Then he sat down at his own desk, pretending to work.

  Finally, Hugh spoke. “Maggie broke the code found in her mother’s book. The names of three MI-Five agents. All of whom were assassinated. Including my father.”

  “Jesus.” Mark reached into his desk drawer and pulled out a bottle of gin. “Drink?”

  “Do you need to ask?”

  Mark took out two tea mugs and poured gin into each. He got up and handed one to Hugh.

  “Thanks,” Hugh said, accepting the mug. He downed the gin in one gulp.

  Silently, Mark poured Hugh another, then went back to his desk and pulled out some paperwork. He pretended to be engrossed in it, crossing things out, scribbling in the margins.

  Finally, still staring at the same spot off in the distance, Hugh spoke. “It’s a strange thing, you know. When you’re a child, you learn that your father’s dead. You don’t really know what that means besides your mother always crying and everyone wearing black. At some point you put it all together—that he’s not away on a trip, that he’s never coming back. He’s gone. Forever.

  “Then, when you’re older you learn more—that he was ‘killed in the line of duty.’ But even that’s vague. It doesn’t tell you where, or when, or how.” He downed the gin. “Or by whom.”

  Mark was thinking ahead. “Should we go to the Red Lion? Because given what’s just happened, I doubt that Frain would mind.” He closed his folder and stood up. “And, if he does, he can bugger off.”

  Hugh went on, as if he hadn’t heard. “And then, then you find out the details. The particulars. That the Germans knew about your father. That they wanted him dead. That his name was written in code. In a line of tiny pinpricks. In a book. Then you learn that the book belonged to your friend’s father. Who carried out the assassination.”