Smart old fox, Jake decided; she was pleading old-age memory loss. Maybe her legal team would use dementia in her defense. How can we imprison an old lady who can’t even remember what crimes she may or may not have committed?
Five minutes later, their jaunty car was lumbering up Countess Road, the draught horse slowing down and showing its disgruntlement at the change in route. Meaning, it’d take longer to get his reward of oats.
“Which house was yours, daughter of Patrick McCoy?” Danny Boy asked jovially, undaunted by the elderly woman’s silent withdrawal.
Most of the mansions were either Victorian or Gothic in design, three- or four-storied with large, lush lawns in front. Well-maintained, too, Jake thought; many had been converted to small hotels and B and B’s.
“Don’t remember,” Mary Snider mumbled.
Meg stared at the gray, black-trimmed mansion with an ornate sign bordering its long driveway. “Lough Leane House” was the kind of bed-and-breakfast inn that well-heeled Irish, Welsh and English travelers might stay at while touring the Ring of Kerry or taking hikes in the surrounding County Kerry countryside.
“Gran, look at that place. Could that be your family’s old home?”
Mary Snider glanced over at Lough Leane House. “Could be. It’s been so long, Meggie.”
With an air of defeat, Meg looked down at the map, crumpled it in her hand, then stuffed it in her jacket pocket. The shocked, devastated look on her pretty face was heartbreaking, causing Jake to look away.
The truth cut to the bone. He understood how the truth could wound deeply. But Meg still had only suspicions. The woman who’d raised her like a daughter was feeding her lies. Treating her like a child. That much, Jake knew Meg was feeling.
One thing was certain: Mary Snider was not Mary McCoy, the daughter of Patrick and Elizabeth McCoy of Killarney. Not before the ferry explosion on that fateful night in June of 1940. Only afterwards. The real Mary McCoy ended her short life on that ferry and became fish food at the bottom of the Irish Sea.
A tragic end for a beautiful, young woman with so much potential. A tragic end for her parents, too.
So who was this impostor wearing her name?
Chapter Twenty-Seven
London, October 1944
“Mary, Lady Sarah on the telephone!” Her landlady’s strident call made Mary grit her teeth. She sprang from the window seat in her room, where she’d been reading The Daily Mail. The American armed forces had landed on Normandy beaches in June and were now slogging their way across France. Another division, led by General Eisenhower, helped the Britons take control of North Africa.
Herr Hitler, as she now called him—like all the Brits did with a hateful curl to their lips—considered Field Marshal Rommel a co-conspirator in the latest of assassination attempts against der Fuhrer, and so retaliated against one of the most decorated of German soldiers, a man her father had always called the highest of patriots. She wondered at the injustice of it. For one, Horst had been outraged at Rommel’s forced suicide, and so was she. The Gestapo had given Rommel ten minutes to swallow a poison pill, or risk the arrest and execution of his entire family. What was the world coming to?
The world was upside down and chaos reigned. Still, Herr Hitler had survived nine assassination attempts by cadres of Wehrmacht officers. The madness was enough to make one question the existence of God. Her people were tired of war, their disenchantment beginning with the casualties of over a million Germans on the Russian front, and their terror growing with each kilometer of progress that the Allies made across Europe. Patton and Montgomery had entered Rome June fourth, on the heels of the retreating Germans. By June seventeenth, the Normandy invaders had driven most of the Reich’s Panzer divisions back to eastern France.
Retreating Germans? Could it be possible? Or was this just British propaganda? Could the Fatherland actually lose the war? For the first time ever, Mary considered the terrible possibility.
Sighing, she trudged down the stairs and took the telephone in the foyer.
“Mary, I must see you! I’m frightened.”
For such a large, homely woman, Sarah Spencer’s voice was small and high-pitched; it came across like a child suffering a nightmare. Such a paradox, but the panic in her voice was real. Her aristocratic friend, if you will, was not inclined to exaggerate. In fact, her sangfroid was the only thing about her that Mary admired.
“Sarah, how kind of you to call,” Mary said cheerfully into the phone, pretending this was just a social call. Mrs. Watson was eavesdropping as she pretended to dust the furniture in the little parlor next to the foyer. “Yes, I’d be happy to meet you. Tea would be lovely, and I’ll bring you that book on knitting you asked to borrow. Will you bring yours, the one you told me about?”
Mary was referring to the leather-bound diary that Thomas had seen on Sarah’s bedside table when he’d last visited her a month before.
“A man’s been following me for over a week,” Sarah persisted, ignoring Mary’s cover conversation.
“Yes, I know exactly what you mean. I’ve had the same problem. We’ll sort it out over tea.” Mary leaned through the doorway and, seeing her landlady’s curious expression, added for her benefit, “We’re knitting sweaters for the Blitz orphans.” Then back to the phone, “This book has clearer instructions, you’ll see. Mabel’s Threads and Yarns, on Piccadilly. Yes, Sarah, the same one we shopped at last time. Say, in one hour.” She rang off and went over to the parlor window. “What’s the weather like today?”
Mrs. Watson glanced out of the lace curtains, half hidden by the heavy blackout drapes. “Sun’s out but you’d never know it. Takes the plum out of the pudding, when it’s like this. Expecting warmth but it’s never there. Know what I’m saying, dearie?”
Mary pasted on a smile and turned to leave the room. “Better get my coat.” She returned a second later and fixed her landlady an innocent look. “That man in the homburg across the street. How long has he been standing there, do you know?”
Mrs. Watson drew aside an edge of lace and gazed out. Mary watched the widow closely for an indication of familiarity, but she could detect none.
“Now that you mention it, the gent’s been there every evening for the past few days. I thought it might be one of your admirers, Mary, or a jealous beau of yours, waiting to catch you with another suitor.”
Mary shrugged nonchalantly as if it were nothing she could concern herself over. “Probably the War Department doing its annual check-up of clerical staff.”
She climbed the stairs, a hard knot of fear twisting inside her stomach. Someone was following Sarah, too, which meant that their weekly ladies’ card night had sparked suspicions. Probably one of Sarah’s overly vigilant servants in the Home Guard raising an alarm. Or the Home Defence had picked up the frequency use on Mary’s wireless one night and had zeroed in on the Mayfair district. Maybe even that very street.
These days they had to be very careful. Certainly, Sarah didn’t need to leave her diary around for any upstairs maid to take a peek at. Mary had to find out what was in that diary, whether it implicated her and Horst—er, Thomas McCoy. Ruffling her aristocratic feathers, Sarah had stubbornly resisted showing her diary, and so Mary had applied pressure on the woman, short of threatening her life if she didn’t. If the diary did indeed expose them—as Mary and Thomas both suspected—then Mary had to destroy it or give it to Mary’s “cousin Thomas” to dispose of.
An hour later, as she sat with Lady Sarah in a popular tearoom, her worst fears were confirmed. Mary looked up from the damning pages at Sarah, wishing she could drag the woman down a dark alley and shoot her in the head. What a sodding fool! Writing down for all the world to see what she and Thomas McCoy had done in her bedroom, the tangled web of treasonous plots he’d woven for her, and her and Mary’s weekly transmissions to Hamburg from Spencer House in Mayfair.
“How could you?” Mary hissed, her disbelief steeling her with a cold fury. Sarah wept into a silk, monogrammed handke
rchief, her upper lip curled back to reveal protuberant gums and large, horse teeth as she sniffled uncontrollably. They had discreet privacy at their corner table in the spacious, noisy café on the northeast corner of Piccadilly Square. Mary sat with her back against the wall, mindful of the entrance door as if expecting the surveillance team to saunter in. No, these blokes were professionals, probably SIS operatives.
What a pair they made! A beautiful, blonde German and an ugly, English spinster, both spying for the Third Reich. The possibly doomed Third Reich. Mary wanted to weep for the first time since that horrible night when Horst had won the aristocrat’s support by sleeping with her. Although Mary kept her voice barely above a whisper, curious onlookers might think the two women were arguing over a man, with Sarah playing the guilty man-stealer and Mary the outraged, betrayed one. Ironic miscasting, if ever there was, thought Mary.
Sarah seemed to shrink in the face of Mary’s viperous anger. “I’m sorry. I have to write everything down…ever since childhood…to pass the time, you see. I was such a lonely child.”
Mary muttered softly, her teeth clenched together, and lit a cigarette. American made. Camels. The Yanks called themselves GIs, called the cigarettes “courage sticks.”
“Oh, do shut up. You could get us all hanged, Sarah. Is that what you want? They’ll hang you for treason whether you’re an earl’s daughter or a bloody kitchen maid. You risk your life, my life, Thomas’s—” She inhaled deeply, wishing Horst would show up that night, snap the bloody woman’s neck and dump her body in the Thames. It’d serve her right. “I must keep this…and burn it.” Not waiting for Sarah’s consent, Mary pocketed the diary in her satchel purse. Her eyes having bulged at the mention of hanging, Lady Sarah was wise enough not to protest this time. Instead, she sniffled steadily while Mary’s mind raced ahead. She kept her next remarks barely audible.
“Thomas is coming next week. He’ll know what to do, Sarah. You’ll be fortunate if he doesn’t wring your neck. Meanwhile, I’ll keep it hidden. Yes, that’s what I’ll do. I won’t let it out of my sight.” Her patience exhausted, she issued a couple of “bugger” oaths under her breath. “The…machine is another problem. We’ll suspend our contacts.” Mary blew smoke out of her nose and mouth. “You sodding fool. This isn’t some romantic adventure you volunteered for. This is a bloody dangerous life.”
Mary felt the tea rising in her esophagus and she willed it down. Truth be told, this was a life she was damned sick of, too. God, if she managed to survive this sodding war, she’d go far, far away and never look back. She’d close this chapter of her life like a fucking horror story and never open it again. If she survived…
Across the small table, Sarah shuddered a deep sigh, her meaty shoulders heaving. Her weeping finally snuffled to a stop. Red-eyed and red-nosed, she blew into the handkerchief before meeting Mary’s cold stare. Mary relented and lit a cigarette for her and passed it to her. Sarah took it gladly as a gesture of Mary’s goodwill.
“There’s another matter,” Sarah whispered hesitantly.
“What other matter?”
“Catherine. Catherine Collier.”
“My rooming housemate?” Catherine worked in the War Department’s motor pool, driving the dignitaries and military brass around London. She’d always been pleasant with Mary but tended to keep to herself. “What about her?”
Mary’s stomach muscles were already clenching with anxiety. She stubbed out her cigarette and immediately tapped another one out of her gold-plated case, given to her by Lady Sarah last Christmas. She had an American GI beau who kept her well supplied in return for an occasional intimate night when he was in town. The courage sticks helped her calm down and think rationally.
Sarah sucked her cigarette with quivering lips. “Catherine…she has been asking to join our Ladies’ card night. I told her we needed two tables of four each, not an odd number at one table. The day after, she found three other women. I have run out of excuses. What shall I do, Mary?”
Keeping the gathering small, Mary had explained when they’d first begun, would involve fewer people wondering why she often stayed overnight at Spencer House after their weekly games. The air raids and limited underground shelters at night were the offered reasons, and the other two women never raised the question again. Now, Mary was wondering if they couldn’t expand their ladies’ evenings to better advantage. After all, they had to get rid of the wireless and the suitcase it came in. She couldn’t very well lug a suitcase back to her rooming house without everyone wanting to see the clothes inside that Lady Sarah had deigned to give her. There was another way…
Mary gazed at Sarah, wondering if the woman would have the guts for it. It was too perilous to send Thomas a coded message and wait for his reply. She had to act quickly, for she sensed the net was drawing close. There could be no damaging evidence found in their possession. None whatsoever. Their lives depended on it.
“Yes, let’s include Catherine and her friends.” She smiled at the woman’s widened stare. “Sarah, did you know that the art of disguise is the ability to hide in plain sight? That’s what we shall do with that machine of ours. Your family’s country estate in…Devonshire, is it? There are woods nearby, are there not? You shall invite all of us women for a weekend in the country to play our favorite card games. There will be mountains of luggage, of course, for the early morning strolls, for tea, for formal dinners, etcetera. With all the distractions, the servants won’t notice anything untoward, I daresay. One night, we shall sneak out and bury it in the woods, along with the ashes of our burned ciphers and code books—every bloody thing that could incriminate us. Do you hear me?”
Sarah’s eyes flared—Mary thought, with renewed respect and gratitude—and she opened her toothy mouth, hope gleaming in her face. “Yes, yes.” For a moment, she looked puzzled. “Is our work…truly finished?”
Mary nodded soberly. “Yes, I believe it is. Can you set it up—the country visit—for next weekend?”
Sarah grinned, mouth closed. “Yes, my family shall be happy to meet my new friends.”
Mary beamed. The social outcast of her family would finally prove her worth to her heartless, upper-crust family. “Good. We shall be so honored to meet them.”
Too bad I can’t get some rat poison to sneak in their steak au poivre.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Meg felt a hard knot in her belly; bile threatened to rise up. She swallowed it down hard. Her head was pounding and her legs quivered. Climbing down from the jaunty car with Jake’s help, she mumbled something to her grandmother about getting a cup of tea in the hotel’s lounge to settle her stomach, the cart ride having made her a little sick.
“Fine,” Mary Snider said crisply, “just stay close by. I’ll be in the dining room with Pierre and Madeleine. Then I’m going to my room for a nap. The LeBlancs will look after me, Meggie, if you want to go sightseeing.”
Forcing herself to go through the motions, Meg bussed her grandmother’s forehead. She felt nothing but a growing feeling of betrayal and a cold sense of fear. Smiling broadly for their benefit, nonetheless, Meg waved to her grandmother and their new Canadian friends as she turned away. At least, Gran had people to spend time with. This tour was turning out to be the worst thing she could’ve planned.
A disaster.
MI5 agents hovering nearby; an FBI investigation underway. And yet, there was Jake.
Somehow, she separated him from the FBI investigation, as if one was a man and the other, just an idea. She wanted to believe that, anyway. Thinking about him and their night of lovemaking made her pulsate with longing. Made her sick with guilt, too. Oh God, what was she going to do?
No, that was easy, Meg decided; the solution was simple. She was going to fly home with her grandmother the day after tomorrow. Get advice from their family attorney. Yes—nonstop, from Dublin to Dallas, as fast as their jetliner could carry them!
Fuck Jake Bernstein!
Ignoring Jake’s presence behind her in the hote
l lobby, Meg made a beeline for the bar-lounge. She ordered a vodka-on-the-rocks instead of hot tea. The young bartender tried to make conversation but she discouraged him; instead she hunched gloomily over the glass he placed in front of her.
A stiff, long swallow burned her throat but restored her sense of balance and perspective. Wait a minute…It didn’t matter what or who Mary Snider was or had been sixty-five or seventy years ago. Gran was like a mother to her, had rescued her and her brother Jack from her mother’s hippie commune and perverted cult leader, had given them a responsible family, a decent life, and a good education. Most of all, love. What more could she have asked for?
And now, to be persecuted by her own government—it wasn’t fair! It wasn’t right! Hadn’t Mary Snider been a law-abiding, tax-paying citizen all these years? Did it really matter what she was or did during those crazy war years?
Gran couldn’t have killed anyone! Maybe spied a little for that German fiancé of hers—But then, why didn’t she recognize her own hometown? Why didn’t she know the pub her family had once owned? The cathedral where she’d gone to Mass?
Meg jumped, her nerves frazzled, when Jake took a seat at the bar beside her. “Just don’t say it,” she warned icily.
He sighed heavily. “I’m so sorry. That’s all I’m going to say.”
She downed the rest of her vodka. “Sorry? Not good enough.”
“Look, I know you’re mad, you’re hurt. Confused. Divided loyalties and all that.”
“Another one,” she told the bartender. Slowly she half-turned in her seat.
Jake had taken off his leather jacket, and now showed rounded biceps under his T-shirt. His wavy, dark hair was tousled from their horse-cart ride; his face slightly reddened from the cold air. But his eyes had a haunted look about them. She’d expected him to look smug and gloating, but his expression looked wounded, stricken, as though he were suffering as much as she was. No, she had to set him straight.
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