Mr.Churchill's Secretary(39)

John came around the desk and knelt in front of her. He grasped her hand. “I—I can’t say, Maggie. I wish to God I could, but I can’t. But trust me. Would you, please?” Maggie looked at him, her irritation momentarily forgotten as she wondered at this abrupt display of emotion and uncharacteristic appeal.

Suddenly, they heard a door down the hall slam, and John pulled away. As he rose to his feet, Maggie looked at him in shock.

“Just trust me, all right?” he said, turning on his heel and leaving.

When Maggie looked down, she realized that her hands were shaking. I don’t have time for this. She jammed a fresh piece of paper into the typewriter and began to attack the keys with renewed vigor.

“Are you all right, dear?” It was Miss Stewart, powdered and curled, coming in for the evening shift. She took off her straw hat with pink silk roses and smoothed down her hair absently in the mirror. “What did Mr. Sterling want?”

“I really don’t know, Miss Stewart,” Maggie said in a voice sounding strange and distant even to her own ears. “I really don’t know.”





ELEVEN





CLAIRE LEFT MURPHY at the boardinghouse shortly before five a.m., a cold drizzle falling through the morning light. Pigeons cooed under the building’s eaves. Across the street, a statue of Lord Nelson wept tears of soot.

She paused at the building’s entrance and knotted a silk scarf under her chin, then opened her umbrella. It was a quiet morning, and traffic was thin and the shops were still closed.

Only the café across the street was open. A balding man in a blue seersucker suit sat at the window, reading a paper and drinking a cup of tea. He looked up for an instant, then looked down and turned the page.

Claire flipped up the collar of her gabardine coat. She’d been warned about MI-5, but she’d been careful and always felt anonymous. Suddenly, she sensed prying eyes everywhere.

Outside the café, a few people were queuing up for the bus. Claire looked at them and had the uncomfortable feeling she’d seen one of the faces before—maybe at the hotel, maybe on the Tube.

Maybe in the park.

She looked up at the flats across the street, the windows with taped diamonds and blackout curtains making blind eyes. If they’re watching you, they’ll do it from a fixed position, Murphy had told her. From an upper room or a restaurant or shop.

Claire scanned the windows and rooftops, looking for anyone’s gaze. There was no one watching. She detected no movement.

With another quick glance around, she pulled on her gloves and began to make her way through the streets in the rain.

Maggie couldn’t make Snodgrass give her more responsibility at work. And she wouldn’t even try to figure out what was going on with John. But there was, she realized, one thing she could do. Needed to do.

And that was, finally, to pay her respects to her parents.

She’d meant to do it for a long time but had put it off—after all, seeing the headstones would make it seem that much more real. And she didn’t want it to be real.

But Sarah’s asking, plus a growing fear that somehow Highgate Cemetery might be destroyed in any and all upcoming attacks, made her realize she needed to do it. Now.

“What would you like, miss?” the flower seller near Regent’s Park asked, his hands tough and leathery enough that he didn’t need to wear protective gloves.

“I’ll take that bunch of violets, thank you,” she replied. Simple and somber, the purple blooms seemed appropriate for her mission to the cemetery. As did her plain cotton dress, straw hat, and lightweight coat.

“Right you are, miss. Party?”

“Highgate.” Yes, I’m going to Highgate Cemetery, Maggie thought. I’ve put it off, in denial, but it was just prolonging the inevitable. I must go.

“Ah,” he said. “Newspaper all right, or do you want them wrapped special?” he asked as he plucked the violets from their bucket, water from the stems dripping down his hands like tears.

“Wrapped special. Please.”

Maggie took the Underground to the Archway station, then walked up winding and woody Swain’s Lane to Highgate Cemetery.

It was a rambling, tree-shrouded wilderness filled with Victorian Gothic gravestones, tombs, catacombs, and mounds. Maggie found its beauty surprisingly comforting on her solemn mission.

She walked through rows and rows of monuments and carved angels with unfurled wings—some as cherubs looking heavenward, some in the form of pretty young girls with eyes cast demurely down, and some as goddesses draped languorously across mausoleums. Some headstones were smooth white marble with fresh flowers in vases, others dark and crumbling, covered in green moss and olive lichen.