Princess Elizabeth's Spy(68)

“The King and Queen have planned a sleep-and-dine holiday—they’re calling it a Red, White, and Blue Christmas. Very patriotic.”

“I know,” Hugh said, wrinkling his forehead. “A security nightmare.”

“If Louisa—or anyone—is going to try anything, that would be the time to do it.”

“We know. Everyone’s going to be on sharpest alert. Even I.”

“You?”

“I’ll be there. With Frain.”

“Oh.” Maggie wasn’t sure how she felt about his being at Windsor Castle. “I see.” She shook her head. “I’ve read my father’s file. What do you know about Agent Neil Wright and the blacked-out material?”

“The censored material sparked my curiosity, yes. I tried to get Agent Wright’s folder, but it’s gone.”

“Gone?”

Hugh shrugged. “At least it’s not where someone as lowly as I can find it. All there remains are the basics—that he was born in Hampstead Heath in 1885, went to Christ Church at Oxford and graduated with honors in history in 1906, was recruited to MI-Five not long after.” Hugh took a breath. “Also, he was MI-Six, not MI-Five.”

“MI-Six?” Maggie was confused. Like the CIA and the FBI, MI-6 dealt with foreign threats and MI-5 with domestic. “MI-Six wouldn’t be involved with my father unless …” Her mind grappled with the answer. “Unless they suspected him of being a double agent.”

“That’s what I came up with too,” Hugh said.

“And at that point in time, we were at war with Germany.… He might have been a German spy!”

“But why would MI-Five keep him on, then? He must have been cleared.”

There must be some way of finding out more.

“I need to find out about Agent Wright.” Maggie, the scholar, knew where she had to start. “I’m going to the library.”

“The library? There’s certainly not going to be anything on him there. Too public.”

“Well, I have to start somewhere. Do something.”


Later that afternoon, Maggie went back to the castle’s library. “Hello, Sir Owen. I’m looking for something today, actually,” she said.

Sir Owen smiled and rubbed his hands together in glee, and Maggie realized he must be a little lonely among all the volumes sometimes. “Anything, Miss Hope.”

“Well, I’m looking for information on a man named Neil Wright. He was born in Hampstead Heath in 1885 and graduated from Christ Church, Oxford, in 1906. I’m not sure what there will be, if anything.”

“At least a birth notice,” Sir Owen said, “and marriage and death, if applicable. Let me see what I can do.”

Maggie settled in to wait with a copy of Great Expectations. Sir Owen eventually returned, with two yellowing copies of The Times of London. “If you look here, Miss Hope,” he said, opening the first on the polished wood table, “you’ll find a birth notice—Neil Reginald Wright was born in London, to George Fletcher Wright and Nancy Grace Wright, on March twenty-first, 1885. However,” he said, opening the second, “this is the one you’ll probably be most interested in. I’m sorry, I wasn’t trying to pry, but the names—”

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.