“Well, it’s not up to you, now, is it?” she said, turning to fix one last glare on him. Then she left, running down the immense staircase, causing the older men in tattersall and tweed to look after her askance.
If Maggie had turned back, though, she would have seen the tiniest hint of a smile curling one side of Peter Frain’s mouth.
It was late by the time Maggie returned to Windsor. She’d missed dinner, and the sun had long set. Still agitated from her meeting with Frain, not to mention thoughts of Hugh, she paced around her rooms, chilly despite the fire dancing in the grate, finally throwing herself on the sofa. She picked up the Grimm’s Fairy Tales. Maybe reading will help me calm down, she thought.
She kicked off her oxfords and tucked her feet under her, then picked up the book. What gorgeous illustrations, she thought, looking at the four-color Rackham pen-and-ink drawings, softened by watercolors. She began to read the first story, “Hansel and Gretel.”
Again, she noticed the tiny holes that the spilled tea had spotlighted. Damn bugs. But on closer examination, the holes were too regular in their appearance, too specifically spaced.
What they were, Maggie suddenly realized, was a series of tiny pinpricks in the pages of the book, each over a letter, in seemingly random order. It was code of some sort. Maggie’s heart beat faster.
That was all of the pinpricks. There were no more.
Pinprick encryption, Maggie thought, her mind whirling wildly. First used by Aeneas the Tactician, an ancient Greek historian, who conveyed secret messages by making tiny, almost imperceptible pinpricks under letters in chunks of text. Imperceptible—that is, unless someone spills tea on them.
Getting a pad of paper and a pen, she copied down each letter, in order, that had a pinprick under it. There weren’t that many, really. When she was finished, she had:
tandersensfaulkeshthompson
From there, shivers dancing up and down her spine, it was easy enough to get to:
T. Andersen, S. Faulkes, H. Thompson
A list of British-sounding names, sent in secret code to her father. Names. But of whom? And why? To get information from them? To try to turn them? To assassinate them?
Maggie went back over the list of names. H. Thompson? Hugh had mentioned his father had worked for MI-5, as well.
That he had died in the line of—
Oh, no, Maggie thought, suddenly realizing. Oh, no, no, no, no, no …
The next morning after Lilibet’s maths lesson, Maggie climbed the pitted and crumbling stairs of the parish church of St. John the Baptist, on High Street in Windsor, and walked inside, her steps echoing on the cracked tiles. It was between services and the cavernous arched church was empty, except for an organist to the left of the altar, behind a glowing bank of candles, practicing Bach’s “Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme,” the majestic reedy tones echoing through the open space. Maggie saw Hugh and took a seat in the row in front of him. Hugh knelt behind her, on a wooden pew worn from centuries of use, hands folded as if in prayer.
In a rush, dread in her heart, Maggie whispered, “Thanks for meeting with me.” She wished with all her heart that she could go back to that moment when he’d put his arm around her. Back before she knew.
“I knew if you contacted me, it had to be important.”
There was a pause, and the organist began the left hand’s countermelody. Then Maggie began. “My mother—my mother loved to read, and my father would buy her books, fairy tales mostly, German. He sent one to me, after he stood me up in Slough. Last night, I discovered code hidden inside those books. Code! It must have been how Sektion was sending him messages.”
“What kind of code?”
“Pinprick encryption.”
Hugh raised one eyebrow. “Classic Sektion.”
“Exactly.”
There was another long pause, before Maggie got up the nerve to speak. She knew she had to. And she knew that things would never be the same between her and Hugh, ever again. “The code—it spelled out a list.”
“A list?”
“A list of names,” Maggie said, hating what she was about to tell him.
“All right,” Hugh said, “a list of names. I can check them out.”
There was still a chance, though. Still a chance that it was just a horrible coincidence. A cosmic joke of the worst sort. “Hugh,” she said gently, “I need to ask you, what was your father’s name?”
Hugh’s eyebrows knit together. “Why do you ask?”
“Was it also Hugh?” Maggie asked, dreading his response.
“Why, yes, yes it was,” he said. “But—?”
“Hugh Thompson? H. Thompson? And did he die in 1915?”