The Prime Minister's Secret Agent(4)

The grandfather clock chimed, sending out a loud metallic gong. Maggie started, breathing fast, pupils dilated.

“It’s all right,” Mr. Burns murmured as if to a lost lamb, nearly putting a hand on her arm—and then withdrawing it. “You’re safe here, Miss Hope.”

Safe. Who’s safe, really? Certainly not children with any sort of illness in Germany. Certainly not the Jews. Certainly not young men who just happen to be on the wrong side of a gun. But Maggie liked Mr. Burns, she did, even though he’d been hard on her when she’d been in his section. In fact, much of what he taught her had helped keep her alive in Berlin.

She looked out the window, to the sheep grazing in the neighboring fields, in the shadow of mountains. Maggie watched them until she felt calmer.

“Thank you, Mr. Burns.” She reached for the letter in her marked mail cubby and opened it. She frowned as she read the contents.

“Everything all right, Miss Hope?”

She didn’t receive that many letters. Occasionally a postcard from David, Mr. Churchill’s chief private secretary at Number 10—with funny pen-and-ink cartoons illustrating his favorite expressions: Merciful Minerva and Jumping Jupiter. Sarah sent letters in loopy scrawl on hotel stationery from around Britain, on tour with the Vic-Wells Ballet. And Chuck wrote less now that her husband, Nigel, was stationed in the Mideast and she was taking care of their baby, Griffin, almost three months old. And of course there was RAF pilot Captain John Sterling, now working once again for Mr. Churchill. But after what had happened between them in London last summer, after their return from Berlin, Maggie didn’t expect any letters from him.

But in fact, everything was not all right. The letter was regarding Maggie’s house—the house on Portland Place in Marylebone that she’d inherited from her Grandmother Hope and moved to in ’38. The house she’d lived in with flatmates Paige, Sarah, Chuck, and the twins. The house that, after everything that had happened with the attempted assassination of Mr. Churchill, the planned bombing of St. Paul’s, and Paige’s death, she’d wanted nothing to do with. She’d let out to a lovely couple—he a high-level mucketymuck at the Treasury and she a young wife with the Wrens.

According to the letter, the house had sustained significant bomb damage. Her tenants—who had survived—had moved.

“Fine, fine, Mr. Burns,” Maggie murmured. “Everything’s just fine.”

But her face said otherwise. She hadn’t been to the house in over a year, yes—but it was still a part of her, part of her family, part of her past, a past that had grown ever more complicated and confusing the more she learned about it. And now it had been bombed. Was she sad? Angry at the Luftwaffe? Maybe even just a little bit relieved to be free of the responsibility of it and forced to move on? It doesn’t matter anyway, she decided. Probably all for the best. She crumpled the letter and threw it into the waste bin.

Burns shifted his weight from side to side. “You know, Miss Hope, I served, too—over in France, in the trenches. I was a soldier then. Oh, you wouldn’t know it now, but once I was young—almost handsome, too. We all were, back then. Saw a lot of my friends killed, better men than I ever was, and killed any number myself.”

“Mr. Burns—no one died. Truly. It’s just a house—my house—that was bombed. But no one was hurt. And houses can—perhaps someday—be rebuilt.”

Mr. Burns didn’t seem to hear her, lost in his own memories. “I don’t remember their faces, but I still think of them. What I try to remember is the Christmas truce—Christmas of ’14, we had a cease-fire over in France. We sang songs, if you can believe—us with ‘Silent Night,’ and them with ‘Stille Nacht.’ Same melody, though. We even had a game of football, that afternoon, the ‘Huns’ versus the ‘Island Apes.’ Then, the next day, back to the killing business …”

He shook his head. “I’ll leave you to read your telephone message, Miss Hope.”

“Thank you, Mr. Burns.” Maggie turned her attention to the message Gwen had written out:


Sarah Sanderson called to say that the Vic-Wells Ballet is performing La Sylphide at the Royal Lyceum Theatre in Edinburgh. She may be going on as the Sylph (and she specified, “the lead sylph, not one of the idiot fairies fluttering uselessly in the background”). She’ll put house seats on hold for you and truly hopes you’ll make it!



Long-legged and high-cheekboned, Sarah was one of Maggie’s closest friends. At first Maggie had found her intimidating—Sarah was so worldly, after all, so beautiful and glamorous, with the slim figure of a runway model, dark sparkling eyes, and long dark hair. But she had an irresistible sense of humor and was given to witty retorts in a decidedly Liverpudlian accent.