The Rose Code

by Kate Quinn

  “She had a bout of pneumonia this spring,” the matron said a touch defensively, seeing their horror. “That’s why she’s so thin . . . I’ll leave you, shall I? Visits last one hour.”

  She bustled off. Beth stood staring at the pair of them, and Osla’s nose prickled at the smell of sweat, fear, infrequent washing. “I—” Beth began, her voice raspier than it had once been, and stopped. “Don’t look at me, I’m not used to being looked at, well, doctors look, they look all the time, and the inmates are always watching but the doctors and inmates don’t expect you to behave logically. You need me to be logical, or else you’re going to walk out thinking I belong here, and I don’t—” She ran out of breath, speaking in a monotone almost too fast to follow.

  “Beth.” Somehow, Osla found herself sitting on the bench, crossing her ankles and indicating the seat opposite for Beth as if they were sitting down to tea. Back straight, girls! she could hear her old finishing-school teachers cry. There’s no social disaster that can’t be remedied with good manners! “We’re here, and we’re listening.” Osla kept her voice as calm as possible.

  Beth gulped again. Mab took the seat beside Osla, and Osla could read the flicker of her eyes like newsprint. Insane? Mab was wondering. Or terrified?

  Osla leaned forward. There was no one close enough to eavesdrop; she could finally ask. “Who is the traitor?” And the word didn’t sound this time like something from a melodrama. It sounded like truth.

  “Giles Talbot,” Beth said, and horror drenched Osla in an icy flood. No, she thought, it can’t be Giles, it can’t—but the words were spilling from Beth in a torrent.

  She looked mostly at the roses as she spoke, and her recitation had a clipped haste, as though she’d imagined this moment too long not to rush delivering it. At last she fell silent. Osla looked at Mab and knew they were both picturing irrepressible redheaded Giles with a ludicrously decked-out top hat and a plate of bread and marg. Giles, who had apparently been here just yesterday, threatening Beth.

  Osla looked down at her clenched hands. Whatever she’d been expecting Beth to say, it wasn’t this.

  “He was always angling for gossip.” Mab disordered the carefully set waves of her hair with a rake of one hand. “Not trying to charm it out of you, just being . . . cozy.”

  “He liked to tell a woman he was in love with someone else,” Beth said. “It made them feel safe or it made them feel competitive, but either way they’d talk.”

  “He once told me he was head over heels for you.” Mab looked at Beth, startled.

  “He once told me he was head over heels for you,” Osla managed to say, looking at Mab.

  “We all trusted him,” said Beth.

  “He’s the goods, all right.” Osla heard her voice come out very small as she looked down at the emerald on her finger. “He’s also my fiancé.”

  MIDWAY THROUGH ’44, going with Giles to see the Glenn Miller band near Bletchley Park. Jitterbugging to “Chattanooga Choo-Choo,” taking nips from Giles’s flask, trying to banish the memory of dancing with Philip, trying to banish the bloody heartbreak. Letting Giles kiss her when the music swung into “In the Mood.”

  “I know what I’m in the mood for,” Giles had murmured in her ear—he’d been chaffing her, trying to get a hint what she’d been translating in Hut 4, but she hadn’t given him a word, and when marvelous, unbeatable Glenn Miller changed the tune, so did Giles. “Come on, Os. You’ve got someone you’d like to forget. Why not give it a try with me?” And Osla, a little sauced and wholly heartsick, had thought, Why the hell not? Because what had being good ever got her, except here, heartbroken and wretched?

  So they nipped off to Giles’s car and climbed in the backseat and it was all finished four minutes later, and Osla felt no different except to think all the fuss about It had clearly been a lot of sound and fury, signifying nothing—like the whole idea of romance to begin with. This is all you get, she thought. This is all there is.

  Giles hadn’t seemed to expect much, just gave her a comradely smack on the flank and then drove her home. He’d gone on being exactly the same: a good friend, an occasional date, even a roll in the hay now and then after the war. Funny, exasperating Giles, who had slouched toward her at exactly the right moment earlier this year—the moment she was on her beam ends, thinking she might as well marry just to get on with life—and said, “Let’s give it a go, Os. Romance is for bad novels, but marriage is for pals—pals like us. What do you say?”

  Once again, she’d thought, Why the hell not? and let him park an emerald on her finger.

  And here she was, listening to an old enemy tell her that her future husband was a traitor to the crown.

  “Your fiancé?” Beth had gone so white she looked ready to faint. “He told me just yesterday that he’d have a family soon. He didn’t say—” She broke off, ripping at her nails. “Did you tell him I’d sent you a message? Did you tell him you were coming here?”

  “No.” And why hadn’t she? Osla couldn’t help wondering in the midst of her shock. Giles knew about Beth and Bletchley Park; it was one of the appeals of marrying him—that she wouldn’t have to tell whoppers about her war years. Osla could have asked his advice when she deciphered Beth’s Vigenère square. Why hadn’t she?

  Something instinctive had sealed her mouth like a lock.

  “You don’t believe me.” Beth’s voice was bleak as she looked at Osla. “You believe him.”

  Osla opened her mouth, not even knowing what she was going to say, but memories were slotting themselves into place with the sudden click of keys turning in locks. “June ’Forty-Two, when I was hauled into Commander Travis’s office about those missing files,” she said slowly. “Travis said someone reported me—”

  “Giles,” said Beth. “He told me. He said you nearly caught him, more than once—something about the Hut 4 box files.”

  Osla thought of that whisk of coat disappearing just out of sight. I knew it was something fishy . . . But the realization brought no pleasure.

  Mab took up the thread. “There was a night, after I was transferred to the mansion, when Giles kept pouring drinks into me at the Recreation Hut. I was a bloody mess . . . I had a set of keys that locked up the file cabinets. He said I’d turned them in to the watchman after leaving the Recreation Hut, but I didn’t remember . . .”

  “He had himself a rummage through the mansion’s files when you were drunk.” Beth’s voice was hard. “He turned the keys in, but not before having a good poke-around.”

  Mab went white too, and Osla could tell she was parsing what kinds of reports would have been accessible with those keys. Her chin lifted, and Osla saw her paleness was fury. “He used me,” she clipped. “He used me, he stole from me, then he comforted me.”

  And he turned us against Beth, Osla thought. Something stabbed her stomach again—this time it was shame.

  She looked at Beth: twitchy, wary, desperate, raw. Had she stayed entirely sane, after more than three years in a place like this?

  Even if she was not entirely sane, she was still not wrong.

  “I believe you,” Osla said.

  “You—” Beth’s raspy new voice was barely a whisper. “You do?”

  Mab nodded, too.

  “We’ll get you out.” Osla checked for listeners. Their allotted hour was slipping away. “I’m going straight to London to report this. Once the wheels start to turn—”

  “Too long. They’re operating on me the day after the royal wedding. They will cut into my brain—” Beth shivered violently. “Please—you can’t let them do that to me. Get me out now.”

  She managed to hold her gaze steady this time, not sliding sideways. Osla and Mab exchanged glances.

  “I have a plan,” Beth whispered. “I spent three and a half years watching the routines here. Tell me, did you get here by car or train . . .”

  And their heads came together, among the dying roses.

  Chapter 74

  Osla was being charming
and Mab was being terrifying, and between the two of them, Beth dared to hope she might get out.

  Mab had collared two orderlies, the head matron, and a doctor doing his rounds. “I have serious concerns about my sister’s health.” Arms folded, scarlet fingernails drumming. “If we can discuss your therapies . . .”

  Osla had gathered every nurse in sight and most of the inmates, and was chattering like a breathless Mayfair magpie. “. . . two hundred pounds of rose petals in the abbey alone. She’ll be wearing an absolutely topping tiara of the queen’s for her ‘something borrowed.’” Leaning forward confidentially, making the women lean in. “You mustn’t tell anyone, because Mr. Hartnell swore me to secrecy at my dress fitting, but the queen will be wearing lilac silk, a real fizzer—”

  “How did you get invitations to the royal wedding?” one of the matrons breathed.

  “My husband rubs shoulders with some useful London people. We saw Prince Philip once. An absolute dream . . .”

  No one was paying attention to Beth, lingering close but not too close to the locked gardening shed.

  “Perhaps increased outdoor activity?” Mab was suggesting to the doctor. He was visibly writhing to please her. “My sister always loved working in the garden. If that would help with these mood swings you describe . . .”

  “Gauloises, anyone?” Osla passed her cigarette case around, throwing smiles like diamond chips. “There’s simply nothing like French cigarettes, French knickers, or French men! Now, the princess’s bridesmaids . . .”

  “What kind of gardening tools do you have for the patients?” Mab steered her entourage around to the shed. “I’m sure my sister would improve if she could get her hands in the ground. Let me see what you have . . .”

  The head matron unlocked the shed. Hanging inside was that set of keys that opened the small access doors where the gardeners trundled wheelbarrows of dead leaves off-grounds. The shed that had never once in the three and a half years Beth had been watching it been left unattended, not for so much as a cigarette break.

  “They say Princess Margaret will be in white organza, but I think she’ll switch at the last minute to make a splash—” Osla broke off, patting her forehead. “Goodness, is anyone else warm?”

  Glances at the cloudy sky. “It’s November, ma’am . . .”

  The shed was open; Mab stepped inside to frown at the tools. “You could use more spades and trowels. I’ll speak to my husband about a donation. Tell me, what other supplies could the institution use . . .”

  “Really, it seems quite warm . . . ?” Osla’s voice trailed upward uncertainly. She rose, frowning—and toppled over in a heap on the grass.

  “DOCTOR!” Beth screamed.

  (“Scream loud, Beth—we need every single head spinning in that moment to look at Osla.”)

  The doctor jerked away from Mab and came at a trot. The nurses and even the inmates clustered around Osla, who lay on the ground with her limbs twitching, head rolled back.

  (“The doctors here have seen epileptic fits. Can’t you just pretend you saw a spider?”)

  (“It will work, Beth.”)

  “Nurse, it’s some kind of seizure. Hold her head—”

  Osla twitched gently, not overdoing it. You’re good, Beth thought, hope beginning to hammer at her ribs.

  (“As soon as the distraction’s under way, Mab moves.”)

  With every eye on Osla, Beth watched Mab’s hand move to the key hook inside the shed.

  (“The keys aren’t labeled, but it will be one of the smaller ones. I don’t know which; grab them all. Are you sure you can get them off the ring without being seen?”)

  (“It may have been a long time since I was pocketing lipsticks from Selfridges, but I’ve still got a fast swipe.”)

  Beth saw her arm move in a quick yank, and then Mab was shutting the shed doors and pushing into the crowd around Osla. “My sister has always been prone to these little spells. Give her some air . . .”

  Osla’s eyelids fluttered. Mab helped her sit up; there were blushes, apologies. Oh, how too too embarrassing, doctor . . . One of the nurses, Beth saw from the corner of her eye, was hastily locking up the shed, not bothering to look inside.

  Doctors and orderlies fought to help Osla up, and she drooped gracefully against all the solicitous male arms. “Time to get my sister home,” Mab announced, and brushed through the crowd toward the house, a stream of nurses and patients moving with her. She and Beth managed to reach the door at the same time, jostling each other. Beth felt the three small keys press into her palm.

  (“After that, Beth, it’s up to you.”)

  DON’T RUSH IT, Beth thought.

  Wait for Mab and Osla to be escorted out. Wait for the commotion from Osla’s fit to die down, for the common room to settle. Wait for the nurses to fall back into their usual rounds. Wait.

  But what if the grounds crew goes back into the shed, and they see—

  Beth squashed the panic. She’d waited for three and a half years; she wasn’t going to ruin everything now out of haste.

  Drifting slowly out of the common room, as if returning to her cell. Drifting down the passage instead, whisking behind a curtain. The matrons at the front desk weren’t supposed to leave the entrance unattended, but they did, all the time. The patients were so quiet; there wasn’t any real risk—and besides, there were the walls outside to contain them if they wandered into the grounds. Matron Rowe, on the desk today, couldn’t go forty minutes without a cigarette . . . sure enough, she whisked round the corner after fifteen patient minutes of waiting. Beth slipped outside, barely breathing.

  Down the stone steps. Beth remembered mounting those steps the day she came here, feeling like Alice fallen down the rabbit hole. I am not Alice any longer, thought the former Miss Liddell. I am no longer trapped inside the clock.

  Drifting, not running, around the women’s wing toward the back of the house, crouching under the windows. The access door came into sight, and Beth checked the clock tower. Ten thirty—the orderlies made rounds of the wall on the hour.

  She flung herself at the gate, fumbling the trio of keys out of her sleeve. First key didn’t fit. She yanked it out, panting, fumbled with the second key, dropped it—

  “What are you doing here?”

  An orderly stood staring at her, stopped buttoning his coat over his uniform. Ginger-haired, scrawny, clearly off duty and headed out. He was the one Beth had serviced in a linen closet, trying to learn what a lobotomy was. The one who had ruffled her hair afterward.

  “You shouldn’t be out,” he began, coming toward her, and Beth didn’t hesitate. She threw the useless key at his head, and as he flinched, she flung herself on him. He yelled in surprise, trying to fend her off, but she darted her head forward like a viper and sank her teeth into his cheek. The man yelped like he’d been scalded, and Beth forced her hand over his mouth, trying to contain the shout. He fell heavily, and Beth felt the impact along her entire left side as she fell with him, but her teeth only sank deeper. She heard herself making a mad keening noise. All the helpless rage of the last three and a half years boiled up her throat and roared when it met the coppery tang of the man’s blood in her mouth. She tasted more than blood; she tasted the chalky flavor of sedative tablets and the antiseptic tang of nurses’ fingers thrusting into her mouth to force her jaws apart. She tasted shame and despair and the urge to wind a bedsheet round her throat and hang herself. She tasted bleak stony hatred for Giles and a blunter, smaller venom for the nurses and orderlies who bullied the inmates; she tasted the metal of the drill that would have cut her skull open and the tensile snapping of her brain’s strands as her codebreaking mind was mutilated. “Let go,” the orderly squealed into her ear, faces locked together as if they were dancing cheek to cheek. “Let go, you mad bitch—”

  “No,” Beth snarled through her teeth clamped into his face, and managed to get her fingers into his hair to yank his head against the ground. She banged his head once, twice, and he went slack. She
banged one more time to be sure.

  Beth’s ears buzzed. Her jaws ached as she released her teeth, and she wiped an unsteady hand across her mouth, feeling blood smear. She looked at the unconscious man below her, his cheek torn open. She didn’t know if it had been his head hitting the ground or if he had fainted, but he was out cold. She checked his pulse. Strong.

  He was too heavy to move, and she had no way to hide him. She’d have to take her chances it would be a while before he was found.

  She got to her feet, shaking, and staggered back to the access door. Her hands trembled too much at first to fit the second key to the lock. Her mouth was still coppery with blood. The second key didn’t fit. Please, Beth prayed, fitting the third.

  It turned.

  She was through the door in a flash, wedging it shut and locking it from the outside: outside the walls, for the first time in three and a half years. The path led down a grassy slope, toward a road she’d never seen. Beth flew down it, legs pumping. She’d told them where to wait; if they weren’t there . . .

  Please, she prayed again.

  There was Osla, perched on the long hood of a forest-green Bentley, hair ruffling in the cold breeze. Mab slouched behind the wheel, lighting a cigarette, saying, “. . . been trying to stop, but the week you stage an asylum breakout is not the week to quit smoking.” They looked up, hearing her footsteps, and Beth saw them both flinch at the blood on her mouth. They tried to hide it, but she saw. For an instant her step faltered.

  Osla slid off the hood and threw open the door. “Coming?”

  Beth crawled into the backseat, lying flat. She was suddenly dizzy, inhaling scents she hadn’t smelled in years: leather upholstery, Osla’s Soir de Paris, Mab’s Chanel No. 5 . . . and her own smell, fear and ammonia and sweat. I want a bath. Mab started the car up, and they were swinging round. “Don’t speed,” Beth said. “We don’t want to attract attention.”