Mr.Churchill's Secretary(54)

“Oh, Sarah,” Paige said. “I had no idea. I’m so sorry—”

“Pssh, I’m fine,” she said, brushing off any concern. “I don’t hate him; he’s not a monster. But I wouldn’t do that again. And I wouldn’t want to see any of my friends go down that road, either.” Sarah sighed. “They were close before, at university, but I don’t think John ever forgave him.”

“Well, thank you, Sarah,” Paige said.

Maggie put her arms around Paige and Sarah, hearing the muffled sounds of bombing overhead. She realized that slowly but surely, she was getting used to the fact that people simply weren’t like numbers. Just when you thought you had an answer, they’d go and surprise you all over again.





FIFTEEN





THE NEXT DAY in the underground typists’ office, Maggie sorted through all the memos on her desk stamped Action This Day to give to the P.M. when he awoke from his midday nap.

Nelson jumped onto her desk, surprising her. The papers slid through her hands and landed on the floor in a mess. “Oh, Nelson, for goodness’ sake …” she muttered, getting down on her hands and knees on the dusty brown linoleum to gather them. She noticed a fresh run in her stocking. Perfect. Just perfect.

Nelson jumped down and gazed at Maggie intently with large, green eyes from under Mrs. Tinsley’s desk.

“Careful, Nelson,” Maggie said to him, cleaning up the papers. “Not everyone likes cats as much as Miss Stewart and I do. Don’t let the Tinzer catch you here.” The Churchills’ pets roamed the offices with impunity. While everyone tolerated them, some, like Mrs. Tinsley, weren’t pleased.

A few of the sections had flipped open. There was the crossword-puzzle page, with the ubiquitous clothing adverts. Demure day dresses with silk flowers at the neck, straw hats with ribbons, and strappy shoes. Good Lord, is that what we’re going to be wearing? If we have enough rations to spare, that is. “Make do and mend” is more like it, she thought, contemplating her own brown cotton dress with the white piping. It was old and not in the least fashionable, but it was relatively clean and freshly pressed.

Maggie looked at the advert, then looked again, closer this time. She blinked. Those weren’t stitches—at least, they weren’t just stitches. Those tiny little thread marks on the hems of the skirts were dots and dashes. Or were they?

Code?

No, of course not. That would be insane.

She closed the section and pushed it away.

Murphy went back to his boardinghouse to change into his priest’s robes once again. Granted, they were the robes of a Catholic priest, not Anglican, but he doubted anyone would notice.

He made his way to St. Paul’s Cathedral. “Good afternoon, Father,” two matronly women said as they passed him on the marble stairs leading up to the magnificent Baroque structure. Wren’s immense classical dome, with its golden cross, was held aloft by two tiers of double Corinthian columns, set between two Renaissance-inspired towers.

He tipped his hat and gave a charming grin. “Good afternoon, ladies.”

The very size of the cathedral was always a shock. He made his way down the soaring space of the nave, padding softly over the black-and-white diamond-shaped marble tiles. Most of the windows had been boarded up for safety during bombings, leaving the atmosphere dimmer, softer, and cooler.

He walked past the elaborately carved choir benches, past the elevated murals of saints and prophets, beneath gold, bronze, and indigo Byzantine-style mosaics of angels of the dome, and beyond the enormous Gibbons organ, to the crypts’ entrance.

Checking carefully that he wasn’t being watched, he went down a flight of steep and dark stairs, down and down, until he reached a large hallway. He took a series of turns until he found himself in a small room, dank and dimly lit. There, he pulled out a golden watch from a deep pocket.

It was the last component of the bomb he had so assiduously built and smuggled into St. Paul’s piece by piece underneath his robes. Potassium chloride, sulfuric acid, wires, gelignite, detonator … It was all in place now.

As he wired in the watch, which would serve as the bomb’s timer, he hummed to himself, an old Irish ditty his grandmother used to sing.

“Never till the latest day shall the memory pass away,

Of the gallant lives thus given for our land;

But on the cause must go, amidst joy and weal and woe,

Till we make our Isle a nation free and grand.

‘God save Ireland!’ said the heroes;

‘God save Ireland’ said they all.

Whether on the scaffold high

Or the battlefield we die,

Oh, what matter when for Erin dear we fall!”