Mr.Churchill's Secretary(72)

TWENTY-TWO





“WHO ARE YOU?” the man repeated. Their eyes locked, and Maggie felt a shudder of recognition.

She tried not to stare. “My name—” she began in a small voice. Then, stronger, “My name is Margaret Hope.”

“Margaret Hope,” the man said, leaning back in his army-issued metal folding chair. “Margaret Hope, Margaret Hope, like the Pope, Pope, Pope, is a joke, is a joke, is a joke, joke, joke!”

She stared in disbelief. The features were the same ones she knew from photographs—the man had the same high forehead, aquiline nose, and strong jaw. He was older now, of course, and laugh lines, forehead creases, and silver hair at his temples had changed his appearance. But not too much.

There was no mistake. This was her father.

And there was something terribly wrong with him.

“Pope, joke, antelope,” he muttered, gazing off to an unseen point. “Lope, rope, billy goat!”

“Father?” she said softly. “Daddy?”

The door creaked open. “Ah, Miss Hope, Professor Hope,” a high-pitched nasal voice said. Maggie turned to find a tall, thin man with a receding hairline and small yellow teeth. He was dressed in a gabardine jacket and slacks. “My name is Kenneth Easton. Pleased to meet you, Miss Hope.”

He walked in and turned on an overhead light. “I must apologize,” he said. “I meant to be here when you arrived, to make introductions.”

Grasping Easton’s outstretched hand for support, her father rose to his feet. Although he was wearing a shirt and tie and jacket, when he shuffled from behind the desk, it became clear that he was also wearing blue-striped cotton pajama pants and scuffed leather slippers.

“Edmund,” he said to the man, “this is your daughter, Margaret Hope. Miss Hope, this is your father.”

The man who was her father continued to mutter and mumble, his eyes unfocused.

“All right, Edmund,” Easton said, not unkindly, “let’s get you back, shall we?” He wrapped a coat around her father’s shoulders and placed a red-plaid tea cozy on his head. “Won’t wear a hat,” he said to Maggie, a note of apology in his voice.

A white-clad nurse arrived at the door, the edges of her hat curled upward like wings. “Professor Hope,” she said in a stern voice, “time for your medicine.” Before he shuffled off with her, he looked back in Maggie’s direction. “Grand, band, shake her hand,” he said in a monotone.

“Let’s be on our way, Professor Hope,” the nurse said.

“Shake hand! Shake hand!” he insisted.

Mr. Easton sighed. “Miss Hope, would you oblige?”

She extended her hand, and her father clasped it with both of his. The grip was weak, and the flesh was cold.

And then, like a wraith, he was gone.

“Mr. Easton,” she managed finally, “how—how do you know my father?”

Kenneth Easton gestured to another metal folding chair and took the one behind the desk that Maggie’s father had vacated. “Miss Hope, please sit down.”

When she did, she realized how shaky her legs were.

“May I offer you a cup of tea?”

Goddamned stupid British and their goddamned constant need for tea! “No. Thank you. But I would like some answers.”

“Of course you would,” he said, folding his hands. “I know that you’ve signed the Official Secrets Act, so you know that any and all information you learn you must protect—upon pain of death. Hanging, specifically …”

“Yes, yes,” she said brusquely, waving a hand. “Please.”

“Let’s start at the beginning, shall we? When your parents were in the car accident, your mother died instantly,” he said, voice gentle now. “But your father was alive. Barely, but alive. He was in a coma for quite some time, and then had a long and arduous road to recovery.”

Mr. Easton made a steeple with his fingers. “Apparently, you were taken to America by your father’s sister, a Miss Edith Hope. Because of the precarious state of his physical, and especially mental, health, she made the decision not to tell you he was still alive. She asked him to honor that decision, which he has.”

A horrible, awful, and unforgivable decision.

“But—”

“It was a most difficult situation. You see, your father recovered to a certain extent, but he never fully regained his faculties. He was able to function—at an exceptionally high level—as a professor at LSE. But he was almost, how shall I put this? An idiot savant—gifted in his subject but unable to form any sort of connection with the people around him.”

My God.