The 9

by Madalyn Morgan

  She looked over her shoulder at the commander. ‘Could I have a little space, sir?’ she asked, anxiously. Dalton mumbled a grudging agreement and ushered the three men to a small table by the window.

  Analysing her work, cross-checking the diagram with the hard-wired wheels on the board, Ena made copious notes. Each of the wheel’s twenty-six grooves – one for each letter of the alphabet – were equal distances apart and the letter ‘D’ had Ena’s initials beneath it. She lifted the magnifying glass and looked closely. Her initials were not there.

  She had no idea how long she had been examining the wheels, but her head ached from concentrating and her eyes felt as if they had sand in them. She looked away from the board and blinked rapidly. Commander Dalton and Co. had smoked so many cigarettes the air around them was a blue fug. Ena coughed. It was smoke, drifting across the room, that had made her eyes dry.

  By the time she had finished checking her calculations it was overcast outside. She looked up to see a young Wren pulling the blackout blinds. Ena took advantage of the lack of light and sat back in her chair. When she had pulled down every blind, the Wren crossed to the door and switched on the lights. Ena closed her eyes as the harsh glare from a row of overhead bulbs flooded the room. Her neck was stiff and her back sore. She rolled her shoulders. She needed a break.

  ‘Well?’ Commander Dalton called, ‘has the work been sabotaged?’

  Ena opened her eyes, hardly daring to tell him what she had suspected all along. There was a shuffling of feet and a clearing of throats as the other men stubbed out their cigarettes and made their way to the workbench. When they were gathered, Ena said, ‘Yes, sir. The work has been sabotaged. The wires of seven buttons on the top of the dials have been disconnected from their original positioning and reconnected to different letters. Pointing to each in turn, Ena said, ‘They are, N. E. S. R. I. T. A. to E. T. A. I. N. O and S. The second group are the most commonly used letters in the English alphabet. The first group, I would guess, are the most used letters in the German alphabet.’

  Ena offered the commander her notes. His face reddened and his eyes flashed with anger. He made no attempt to take them, but snapped, ‘Proceed!’

  ‘I don’t know what the board is used for,’ Ena said, though she knew it had to be used in some way to receive translated communications, ‘so I shall speak hypothetically.’ She took a deep breath. ‘If this were a telegraph or teletype machine, where information is input by a typewriter, what is received through this box now would be incorrect. And,’ Ena scribbled on her notepad, ‘if you were to multiply each corrupted letter by the rest of the letters in the alphabet…’ She stopped scribbling, ‘there would be millions, perhaps hundreds of millions of words that wouldn’t make sense. They’d be gibberish.’ Ena took a sharp breath and looked from the commander to Henry. ‘Therefore it is my belief that the wires in these wheels have been deliberately muddled.’

  An outburst of concerned exclamations followed. Dalton put his hand up. When there was quiet, he looked at the older of the two engineers. ‘Can the wiring in the selector wheels be un-muddled?’

  ‘Theoretically yes, sir. But by the time we’ve found out which wires have been scrambled and unscrambled them, the information would be useless, because it would be out of date.’

  ‘How the hell could someone have done this much damage in such a short time?’ Dalton hollered.

  Ena gripped her chair’s arms. She would have offered up a prayer but there wasn’t time. ‘They couldn’t, sir,’ she said, her voice shaky. She looked the commander in the eye. ‘This is not my work. My work was not, as I first thought, sabotaged on the train, it was stolen and replaced.’

  ‘Stolen?’ he bellowed.

  ‘And replaced. If I could explain, sir?’ The commander gave a sharp nod. Ena swallowed, hoping it would lubricate her throat. It did, a little. ‘I know it isn’t usual. Well, it isn’t the done thing at all, but--’ Damn it! Ena said to herself. Just say the bloody words and get it over with. ‘I engrave my initials on the metalwork.’ The four men, having been eager to hear what she had to say, stood open mouthed. ‘All the girls who work on the wheels and dials personalise them with their initials. Which no one is able to see. Apart from not being visible to the naked eye, they are concealed by wires running over the surface of the disks. It is not done for fun,’ Ena said, which was only half true. The girls in the factory loved making their mark. Going down in history, they called it. Ena looked at each of the men in turn. Then, putting on her most serious face to make sure they believed her, she said, ‘It is done at my instruction. If I find a fault when I’m checking the work, I can see at a glance whose work it is. It’s a time-saving device. Instead of having to question everyone in turn, which is extremely time consuming, I speak quietly to the person whose initials are on the work. And,’ she waited a couple of beats for the men to digest the importance of the signatures, ‘the mistake is quickly and easily rectified.

  ‘You see?’ Ena handed one of the engineers the magnifying glass. ‘There should be a small ED beneath the letter D, but there isn’t.’ She took the magnifying glass from the first engineer and gave it to the second.

  At that moment, there was a knock at the door. Commander Dalton’s secretary poked her head into the room and beckoned him out. Watching the commander leave, Ena breathed a sigh of relief. She had never been so in need of a distraction in her life.

  A minute later, Dalton returned with two army officers. ‘Miss Dudley, would you accompany these gentlemen?’ Ena froze as she regarded the two giants standing before her. ‘Tell them everything that happened to you on the way here today.’

  CHAPTER TEN

  The two men, intelligence officers, Ena guessed, dwarfed her as they marched her out of the building and back to the mansion. On the left, along a short passageway leading off the main entrance foyer, one of the officers stopped and opened a door. He entered first, motioning for Ena to follow. The second officer entered after her, closed the door, and stood by it.

  There was a young Wren in the sparsely furnished room. She saluted the two officers and acknowledged Ena with a nod. The officers retuned a hurried salute. Ena was so frightened, her face was numb, and could only stare.

  The first officer waved the Wren to sit. She pulled a chair from under the large square table and sat down. There was a black Bakelite telephone on the table which the Wren moved to one side, pushing its braided cable out of the way to make space for what looked to Ena like a doctor’s bag. She then took a notebook and pen from the bag and placed them on the table.

  ‘Take a seat, Miss Dudley,’ said the officer who had entered the room first, pulling out the chair to the Wren’s right. Frightened and shaking, Ena did as she was ordered. ‘Ring when you’ve finished,’ he said to the Wren.

  ‘Sir!’ Pushing her chair away from the table, the Wren stood up and saluted again.

  When the intelligence officers had gone, the Wren said, ‘My name’s Tilly Anderson. I’m a nurse.’ She pointed to a medical badge on the lapel of her jacket.

  ‘My name’s Ena Dudley, but I expect you know that already. What’s going to happen to me?’ Ena asked, her eyes brimming with tears.

  ‘Nothing you need worry about.’ Still standing, the Wren opened the black bag. ‘I’m just going to do a few tests.’

  ‘Tests? What sort of tests?’ Ena held her stomach. It hurt so much, because she desperately needed to go to the toilet, that she began to cry. And her head. She closed her eyes. Her head felt as if it had been hit by an axe. It had ached since she’d woken up at Euston.

  ‘It’s standard procedure when there has been a breach of security, especially when drugs are involved.’

  ‘Drugs? Thank goodness.’ Ena’s suspicions were going to be proved. Now Mr Silcott would know that she had not been irresponsible, that it wasn’t her fault the work went missing.

  The Wren sat down and read her notebook. ‘You fell asleep on the train and missed your stop?’ Ena nodded. ‘When
you woke up, did you have a headache?’

  ‘Yes, a blinder. I still have it. And I still feel fuzzy.’

  Tilly gave a knowing nod. ‘Were you thirsty when you woke?’

  ‘Yes, and now I think about it, my mouth was really dry. I had two cups of tea on Euston station and I still felt thirsty. That reminds me, could I go to the lavatory before we start, please?’

  ‘Of course, it’s over there.’ Tilly pointed to a door on the far side of the room. ‘And, if you don’t mind,’ she said, stopping Ena when she leapt out of her seat, ‘would you use this?’ She produced a specimen jar from her medical bag and handed it to Ena.

  ‘I thought there’d be a catch.’ Ena wrinkled her nose and almost sprinted across the room to the toilet. ‘There’s no lock!’ she called, from inside the sterile white room.

  ‘Don’t worry, no one will come in.’

  There’s no lock because they don’t want people locking themselves in, Ena thought. She looked around. A tower of white paper towels sat neatly on a shelf at the side of the washbasin next to a pile of linen towels.

  After using the toilet – and filling the small jar – Ena washed her hands, drying them on one of the freshly laundered towels. It felt soft to the touch. Before leaving, she wrapped a paper towel around the jar. Just looking at it embarrassed her.

  When she handed it to Tilly, Ena felt her cheeks colour. Tilly took the bottle as if it were an everyday occurrence, which, Ena supposed, to a nurse it was. She sat down. ‘What next?’

  ‘I need to take your blood pressure and a sample of your blood. If you would roll up your left sleeve?’

  Ena did as Tilly asked. She didn’t mind having her blood pressure taken. At worst the feeling of tightening pressure made the procedure uncomfortable, but she hated the thought of a needle in her arm drawing blood. She looked away.

  A second later, she felt a prick in the bend of her arm as the needle broke the skin.

  ‘Not long now,’ Tilly smiled. That was what the Red Cross nurse had said when Ena had given blood in Woodcote Village Hall, and she’d had to sit there for another ten minutes afterwards. ‘All done.’ Ena looked down at her arm to see Tilly placing a small square of lint over the spot where she had taken blood. ‘Hold onto this and apply a little pressure, will you?’

  A minute later she put a plaster over the tiny pin-prick and Ena pulled down her sleeve.

  Tilly took the syringe and slowly expelled Ena’s blood into a small bottle. After screwing the top on it, Tilly put it in her bag and wrote something in the notebook. ‘I’ll get you a cup of sweet tea,’ she said, ‘as soon as the intelligence officers get back.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Ena watched Tilly pick up the telephone. She asked for Intelligence, gave Ena a sympathetic smile while she waited to be put through, and then said, ‘Miss Dudley and I have finished.’

  Two minutes later, the intelligence officers entered the room.

  ‘I’ll take this to the medical hut. On my way back I’ll call into the canteen and get Miss Dudley a cup of tea.’ The man who had done most of the talking earlier nodded and walked round the table. He sat down opposite Ena. The other man sat on her right.

  The man facing Ena put his elbows on the table and leaned forward. ‘I want you to tell me everything that happened from the moment you left home this morning until you spoke to Commander Dalton here at the Park. Do you understand?’ Ena opened her mouth to speak, couldn’t find her voice, and nodded. ‘Every detail – however small, or unimportant you might think it is, I want to know about it. Right?’

  Ena nodded again and inhaled nervously. ‘I cycled to Lowarth. I got to Silcott’s Engineering, where I work, at half past eight. I parked my bicycle and went into the factory. No! I’m sorry. On the way I stopped at Newman’s, the newsagents on Lowarth High Street, and bought a quarter of pear drops. Then I went to work.’ Ena clasped her hands, gripping the fingers on her right hand with the fingers on her left, until her nails dug into the fleshy parts at the back. She winced.

  The man opposite said, ‘Take your time.’

  Composing her thoughts, in order to recall every detail of the journey, Ena began again. ‘After buying the pear drops, I cycled on to the factory and put my bike in the shed at the back. I went in through the main door and walked across the factory floor to the annexe where I work. Mr Silcott, my boss, was already there. I waited while he took my work from the concrete safe--’

  ‘Was the safe locked?’

  ‘Yes. I had locked it the night before. I’m sorry, Mr Silcott unlocked the safe and took out my work.’

  The man made a note. ‘Is the safe always kept locked?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Who has keys?’

  ‘Mr Silcott keeps the master key on his keyring with the annexe key, the key to the factory’s main door, and his car keys. And there is one in his drawer, which only his assistant Miss King and I have access to.’

  ‘Have you had reason to use the key in the past?’

  ‘Yes. Every night. Before I leave, I unlock the safe, put in my work, and lock it again. I put the key back in the drawer.’

  ‘And have you ever taken the key out of the office?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Never? Not even when you’ve popped out to get a cup of tea? Perhaps there has been an occasion when you’ve dropped the key into your pocket and forgotten it was there.’

  ‘No! Never! We make our own tea. Because we work long hours we have a kettle, milk, and tea in the annexe. But even if we didn’t, the safe is next to Mr Silcott’s desk, so there would be no reason for me, or anyone else, to take the key out of the room if we popped somewhere.’ Ena felt a surge of anger. She knew she mustn’t show it, and took a calming breath. ‘I return the key to Mr Silcott’s desk drawer every time I unlock, or lock, the safe.’

  ‘And at night? Have you ever been there after Mr Silcott has left for the day?’

  ‘Of course. But on those occasions, I put the key to the safe in Mr Silcott’s desk, lock it, and put his desk key in his assistant’s desk, which I have a key to, and I lock that. When I leave, I lock the only door to the annexe and I take both keys home with me. Only three people work in the annexe: Mr Silcott, Miss King and myself – and only we three have keys to the door. The last one out at night locks up. The first one in in the morning opens up.’

  On the edge of peripheral vision, Ena saw the man on her left shift in his chair. ‘Let’s go back to this morning,’ the man sitting opposite said. ‘What happened next?’

  Ena’s mouth was dry. She licked her lips. ‘Mr Silcott put the box containing my work in the suitcase and we left the factory. He then put the case in his car and Miss King drove us to the railway station in Rugby.’

  ‘Did Mr Silcott put the case in the boot of the car?’

  ‘No, on the back seat, next to me.’ There was a knock at the door and Tilly entered. Ena was relieved to see the kind Wren and pleased when she placed a cup of tea in front of her. ‘Thank you,’ she whispered. She took a sip. It was just the right temperature and she gulped it down. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, rubbing the back of her hand across her mouth. ‘I didn’t realise how thirsty I was.’ She felt her cheeks redden and cleared her throat again.

  ‘Why did you travel by train today? Doesn’t the factory owner drive to Bletchley?’

  ‘Yes, but we didn’t have enough petrol. Mr Silcott tried all the garages in the area but he could only get a gallon, which wasn’t enough petrol for a return journey to Bletchley. So, as Miss King had work to take to a facility in Leicestershire, he thought it best that she took the car and we travelled by train.’

  The man consulted a second book that looked like a ledger. ‘It says here that the MoD supplies Silcott’s Engineering with petrol coupons every week.’

  ‘They do. But none arrived this week.’ The man made a note, and nodded for Ena to carry on. ‘It had been drizzling earlier, but it was raining hard by the time we arrived at the station – and it was windy. Mr Silcott s
topped to get the tickets and I walked across to the platform with the case. When I got to the train, I looked back to see where he was. The first time he was in the queue, but the next time I looked I couldn’t see him. Then I spotted him coming out of the Gentleman’s lavatory. The train was about to leave, so the porter opened the door for me and I boarded with the case. Mr Silcott, coming from the direction of the Gents’, ran to the nearest door, which was at the other end of the carriage.’

  The man’s eyes darted from Ena to the officer sitting next to her and back again. ‘Go on.’

  Ena’s stomach lurched. She felt as if she was going to be sick and swallowed hard. ‘As I said, the rain had turned into a storm and it was really windy. When Mr Silcott ran across the platform he had his head down and he was holding onto his hat.’ Ena demonstrated with her own hand. ‘I didn’t see his face. He had his arm up, and I didn’t see his face.’ Ena’s mouth fell open as the realisation hit her. ‘His coat and hat were identical to Mr Silcott’s, so I assumed it was him, but--’ A wave of foreboding washed over her. She looked up at the intelligence officer who had been asking the questions. ‘I don’t think it was Mr Silcott who boarded the train. And if it wasn’t him, who was it?’

  The intelligence officer sitting next to Ena wrote frantically on his notepad. ‘Oh my God!’ Ena cried. ‘If it wasn’t Mr Silcott, what’s happened to him? Where is he if he isn’t here?’ Ena jumped up. ‘I’ve got to see Commander Dalton, tell him and ask him to telephone the factory. Find out if Mr Silcott’s there, if he’s all right.’

  ‘Sit down, Miss Dudley,’ the first intelligence officer said.

  ‘But you don’t understand.’

  ‘I said, sit down!’