by Daisy Styles
‘Working in communications is vital war work, Mummy.’
‘I can just see you in a WAAF uniform,’ her ladyship fantasized. ‘In a roomful of ‒ handsome, eligible men.’
‘I already have an eligible man,’ Bella answered sharply. ‘Brigadier Charles Ryder ‒ remember him?’
‘Yes, twice your age and as dull as ditchwater!’
Before she totally lost her temper, Bella went on, ‘I know how ashamed Edward is when he sees me wearing a servant’s uniform,’ she said, in all innocence. ‘If I know his comings and goings when he’s here, I can make sure I avoid him and save him the embarrassment.’
Her mother looked surprised. ‘That’s unusually thoughtful of you, dear,’ she replied cryptically.
‘Well, do you know what his plans are this week?’ Bella asked bluntly.
‘He’s got business in Holt this morning, then he’s home for lunch, and tonight he’s out to dinner at the Hoste Arms in Burnham Market with Rodney Binge. He leaves for Cambridge tomorrow, then he’s back to work in London,’ she concluded.
Bella’s mind was whirring. It would have to be tonight if Edward was leaving for Cambridge the next day. Pushing aside her chair, she took up the tea tray and made her farewells; she had a lot to do in the next few hours.
Below stairs, Bella worked out her plan with Ruby, Raf, Ava, Maudie and the Brig as they sat around the table drinking cups of hot strong tea. Ava and Ruby lit cigarettes and the Brig tensely puffed on his pipe.
‘He’s definitely having supper at the Hoste Arms in Burnham Market. I’ve just phoned, he’s booked a table,’ Bella informed them. ‘I’ll have to get the key off him before he leaves.’
‘You can’t go rooting through his coat while he’s wearing it!’ Ruby giggled. ‘He’ll think you’re molesting him!’
‘Let’s assume you get the key,’ the Brig pondered. ‘You go to his room, open his desk, find the cypher book.’
‘Crossing fingers!’ Raf interrupted, and held his crossed fingers in the air.
‘You can’t walk out with it, and you won’t have time to copy all the combinations before Edward gets back,’ the Brig pointed out.
Undeterred, Bella smiled at Maudie, Ruby and Ava. ‘Between the four of us we could copy the entire cypher book!’ she announced.
Her loyal friends nodded.
‘No problem!’ Ava answered for them all.
‘When we’ve finished copying it, I’ll put the cypher text back and lock the desk and wait for Edward to return,’ Bella concluded.
‘Hopefully, he’ll be rolling after five pints of the Hoste’s strong beer,’ Ruby said.
‘And I slip the key back into his pocket before he collapses in bed,’ Bella added, with a wide smile.
Raf rolled his eyes. ‘God goes with you,’ he said fervently.
That afternoon, everybody was on tenterhooks. Would Edward change his plans? If he did, they’d have to abandon Plan A, but nobody could think of a Plan B. After lunch, Bella heard a signal on her receiver and realized that Edward was transmitting a message ‒ which, of course, she couldn’t decipher.
‘It makes me boil with rage,’ she seethed to Maudie, who was sitting beside her, watching in total fascination as Bella operated the radio transmitter. ‘To think he’s up there!’ she jabbed a finger towards the ceiling. ‘Making contact with German Military Intelligence, and we can’t break his damn code!’
Maudie turned to her friend, her eyes shining with barely suppressed excitement. ‘Bella, I have a favour to ask,’ she started. ‘I want you to train me as a code girl.’
Bella did a double-take. ‘Really?’
‘Oh, yes, really!’ Maudie laughed. ‘I find the whole thing amazing, intriguing, mind-boggling, and hey, it’s what I came here to do in the first place.’
‘God! I’d love an assistant – but we’ve still got to cook for the trainees. We can’t let Ruby and Ava down.’
‘I’ll make time,’ Maudie vowed. ‘I want this very much,’ she added earnestly.
Smiling, Bella extended her hand. ‘Deal!’ she said, as they shook hands. ‘Welcome to the world of espionage.’
They were all relieved when Edward’s goofy, overweight chum finally arrived, just after seven in the evening.
‘Your coat, sir,’ Ruby said as she took the visitor’s coat, then pointed him towards the stairs that led to the Walsinghams’ suites.
‘His friend’s arrived!’ she cried, dashing downstairs to announce the news to her anxious friends.
Bella smiled grimly. ‘Now all we’ve got to do is wait till they go out.’
In between all the action, the girls, apart from Bella, were still on duty. As they prepared supper, Bella hovered close to the front door, while Raf watched the back door. When Bella heard doors banging upstairs, she shrank back into the shadows and, holding her breath, she listened for footsteps on the grand staircase. When she didn’t hear them, she knew Edward and his friend had taken the back way. Leaping to her feet, she bolted below stairs, where she found Ruby holding the back door wide open.
‘Go Go!’ she cried, ushering Bella outdoors.
Bella hurried into the yard, where she saw Edward with his friend.
‘Edward!’ she called.
Her brother frowned as his sister ran towards him in her black servant’s uniform and white lace pinafore. ‘How many times do I have to tell you that I don’t want to see you when you’re dressed as a grubby little maid?’ he whispered angrily as she approached.
Bella feigned a smile and waved an envelope in the air. ‘Sorry. I just wondered if you could post this for me,’ she said, slipping the envelope into his coat pocket and at the same time wriggling around with her fingers to find the key.
‘Why don’t you post it your bloody self?’ Edward barked.
‘I can’t, I’m working,’ she replied. ‘It’s important,’ she added, following him round to the driver’s seat.
Before he could get in, Bella made a grab for the envelope now poking out of his pocket. ‘It might be safer in here,’ she said, and shoved the envelope deep inside his other pocket. Her searching fingers felt cold metal.
‘Stop rummaging around in my bloody pockets, Annabelle,’ Edward cried, and pushed her aside.
Bella watched her odious brother drive away, then, smiling, she opened her hand and gazed at the precious key lying flat on her palm.
‘To work!’ she laughed, and ran back indoors.
Tom, Kit and Raf took up their lookout positions at strategic spots outside the hall. The Brig gave them precise instructions on what to do if Edward suddenly returned.
‘Flash your torches three times in the direction of his bedroom. I’ll be standing guard at the window.’
When Bella unlocked the roll-top desk she gasped at the sight before her. ‘My God!’ she cried.
For the benefit of the Brig, who stood on guard with his back towards her, Bella listed her findings: ‘Two revolvers, a notebook written entirely in German, a German passport and German ID: Herr Heinrich Brun. Oh, my God …’ Bella’s voice trailed away in disbelief. For all her words about her brother’s ruthlessness, nothing had prepared her for this: unassailable proof that Lord Edward Walsingham, her own flesh and blood, was, irrefutably, a German spy. Sick to her stomach, she studied the German passport with Edward’s picture stamped on it. ‘Herr Heinrich Brun,’ she murmured. ‘Deutsche Reich, Reisespass.’
‘This will kill my parents,’ she thought to herself.
The Brig’s tense voice broke into her melancholy line of thought. ‘The code book?’
Remembering the urgency of their mission, Bella answered quickly. ‘Got it!’ she said, as she lay the book down on the floor.
‘We’ll work in two teams,’ she quickly told her friends. ‘Me and Maudie, will take the right-hand pages, and Ruby and Ava, you take the left,’ she instructed, as she flicked through the book. ‘There are twenty-six pages – write as quickly and accurately as you can.’
They work
ed in total silence, copying the cypher text. The only sound to be heard was the sound of pencils scribbling on paper and Bella turning the pages. In less than an hour, the job was done.
‘Let’s get the code book back where it belongs,’ said Bella, returned the book to the desk, and locked it. ‘Done,’ she told the Brig, still standing guard at the window.
‘Go downstairs. I’ll wait here till you’re safely back in the kitchen,’ he replied. ‘Then I’ll switch off the light so the chaps outside will know we’ve got what we want.’
Once safely below stairs, the girls were euphoric.
‘We did it!’ cried Maudie, who was flushed with nervous excitement.
‘My heart was in my mouth,’ Ruby confessed.
‘I’ve got to have a fag!’ Ava laughed, and lit up a cigarette. ‘My hands were shaking all the time I was writing down the letter combinations.’
Bella laid the sheets in the right order on the kitchen table, then she clipped them together. When the Brig, Tom, Kit and Raf came dashing into the kitchen, Bella triumphantly flourished the copied booklet high in the air. The Brig, visibly relieved, smiled for the first time that evening.
‘Now we can keep track of him,’ he said.
‘But, darling,’ Bella pointed out, ‘We have far more incriminating evidence than the cypher notebook. Edward has a false passport and a fake German identity. We must report him now,’ she insisted.
The Brig nodded. ‘Of course, I’ll get in touch with Military Intelligence immediately, but they’re not going to come marching down here and arrest him.’
‘Why not?’ Tom exclaimed.
‘He’s guilty as hell!’ Kit cried.
‘Nobody’s arguing with that, old chap,’ the Brig replied earnestly. ‘I, for one, would love to see him banged up behind bars but, don’t you see, it would blow his operational cover?’
Tom and the others gathered around the kitchen table still weren’t convinced.
‘It’s too dangerous,’ Tom insisted.
‘I am a brigadier in the British army, and I know what Military Intelligence would say: see the mission through, find the nest, secure the spy ring,’ said the Brig firmly. ‘Kit and I have discussed this at length, and we both agree that the longer we can spy on Walsingham, the more information we’ll get out of him. That’s our mission.’
Looking uncomfortable, Tom shrugged. ‘I take your point but it doesn’t stop me from worrying about what we’re planning to do.’
Further discussion was swept away by the girls’ sudden rush of enthusiasm.
‘I definitely want to help you,’ Maudie announced.
‘Me, too – if you’ll teach me, as well’ Ava added.
‘Oh, God!’ wailed poor Ruby. ‘I’ll be the only cook left in the kitchen!’
‘Don’t worry. We won’t abandon you, lovie,’ Avie assured her alarmed friend.
Bella smiled excitedly. ‘With all of you helping, we could organize a twenty-four-hour rota.’
‘Good idea!’ said the Brig. ‘Around-the-clock surveillance.’
‘Are you in?’ Bella asked her friends.
Ava and Maudie answered together: ‘Yes!’
Ruby shook her head. ‘It’s not that I’m unpatriotic,’ she said apologetically. ‘It’s just that I’m really too daft to be a code girl. I wouldn’t be able to get my head round all those rows of letters, day in and day out. I’d go bonkers!’ she giggled. ‘I’ll be the code girls’ comforter!’ she said. ‘I’ll supply the brews and sandwiches, and fags, too!’
The Brig picked up the copied notebook.
‘OK, let’s start cracking Edward’s last message!’
‘I’ll wait upstairs for Edward,’ said Bella, as she headed towards the door.
The Brig followed her into the kitchen corridor. ‘What exactly are you planning to do, darling,’ he asked anxiously.
Bella smiled mischievously. ‘I’ll give my brother a bedtime kiss,’ she giggled. ‘Hopefully, he’ll be so shocked by my rare show of affection, he won’t even notice me dropping the key back into his pocket.’
In the days that followed, sitting in front of the transmitter in the sewing room, Bella and the Brig took it in turns to teach Ava and Maudie how to be code girls. They showed them how to pick up the date and the algorithm for the day, then how to match up the letters to the enemy’s code.
‘It’s time-consuming ‒ not for the impatient,’ Bella joked.
Ava and Maudie were both enthralled and challenged by the complicated mechanics of decrypting.
‘I love it!’ Maudie enthused. ‘It’s like a really tough crossword – you have to find a letter or two, then everything else falls into place.’
‘If you’re lucky,’ groaned Ava, who was struggling with her first cypher.
Even with a copy of the notebook, it took a lot of hours and patience to match the coded letters with Edward’s encrypted messages. It certainly speeded things up having Maudie and Ava working alongside them, and Ruby kept her word, appearing at intervals during the day and in the middle of the night, too, with hot tea, cocoa or Bovril on buttered toast.
‘Got to keep the troops happy!’ she joked, as she shared around the refreshments.
It was Bella, one early dawn morning, who cracked the first message. She woke the Brig, who was having a nap in the library.
‘Brig! Brig!’ she whispered urgently, as she shook him awake. ‘Look!’
The Brig struggled to sit up, then, rubbing his eyes, he stared at Bella’s decryption.
‘Jesus God!’ he gasped.
‘It’s from Berlin again!’ she exclaimed. ‘Based on the information Heinrich has passed on to them – Heinrich Brun is the name on Edward’s German passport – action will follow. He must have told them about the Lancasters at Holkham airbase, as they requested.’
‘I’ll drive over and tell Kit right away,’ the Brig said, standing up and stretching himself awake. ‘Are you all right to carry on, darling?’ he asked, as he drew a tired Bella into his comforting arms. Laying her face against the Brig’s chest, Bella inhaled the rich smell of his tweedy jacket, which always comforted her. ‘I could sleep right here,’ she sighed.
Tilting her face up to his, the Brig kissed her pink lips. ‘Maudie will relieve you soon,’ he said softly.
Bella nodded as she withdrew from the warmth of his embrace. ‘And Ruby generally turns up with a brew just after dawn! Off you go,’ she said briskly, as she set off for the sewing room. ‘Come back soon!’
Everybody was on high alert, both at the hall and at the airbase, where Kit had extra guards and lookouts posted around the clock. What Kit most longed to do was strangle Edward, who he hated with a vengeance; not only had he twice molested his beloved Maudie, but he had also had the audacity to threaten his precious Lancasters. Kit kept his emotions under wraps, though; he was professional enough to accept the Brig’s decision, which was to continue to monitor Walsingham in order to get to the nest and break the spy ring. There would be time enough after that to have it out with him.
Over the next few days, the messages coming in for Heinrich Brun became more frequent.
‘It’s all a bit boring,’ Bella said, reading her decryptions to the Brig. ‘It’s mostly stuff like this,’ she said, and quoted. ‘Good clear spring weather. Little activity. Await orders.’
‘It’s anything but boring,’ the Brig retorted sharply. ‘The subtext is the weather’s fine for a bombing raid but no decision has been made so far ‒ they’re biding their time until they get further information.’
‘Oh, dear!’ Bella said guiltily. ‘I never even thought of it that way.’
Looking tense, the Brig said urgently, ‘We must send Maudie to the airbase immediately – she needs to deliver a letter to Kit.’
Happy to be relieved of supper duty, Maudie hopped on to her bike. It was the most perfect spring evening, with a new silver moon, the size of a baby’s fingernail, hanging in the clear, bright sky while, all around, in the hedgerows and
treetops, birds sang their final songs of the day. A rush of guilt filled Maudie as she sped along the estate track, the Brig’s letter firmly tucked into her cleavage. It seemed wrong to be happy when so many weren’t; she thought about the thousands of Red Army soldiers slaughtered by the German army in the Ukraine, of the young British soldiers fighting in the deserts of Africa and the Allies steadfastly marching on Italy. Happiness seemed inappropriate, too, when her mission was to deliver a message that could have a huge impact on the man she loved and on his brave squadron.
When she got to the airbase, Kit hugged her tightly. ‘Darling! To what do I owe this pleasure?’
Looking serious, Maudie extricated the letter from her bosom. ‘An urgent update from the Brig.’
Kit’s face grew grim as he scanned the message. ‘Looks like Jerry’s planning another hit.’ Anger blazed in his eyes. ‘God! I won’t let them destroy my Lancasters again.’
Seeing his thunderous expression, Maudie said soothingly, ‘At least you’re one step ahead of the Germans; this time. You have an idea what they’re planning.’
‘What Jerry doesn’t know is that we’re planning a bombing raid, too. We’ve been working on a strategy to outfox the bastards. We can’t just sit around here waiting for Jerry’s plans to unfold.’ Pulling her close, he murmured, ‘We’ve got to act, darling – we can’t be sitting ducks all over again.’
Ava realized she was starting to shake. Would she ever get used to the terror that gripped her every time Kit talked of going on a raid? Seeing her turn pale, Kit kissed her tenderly. Comforted, Maudie smiled and traced the thick blond stubble on his chin.
‘You need a shave,’ she said. ‘Come back to the hall with me, have a bath and a good meal.’
‘Don’t tempt me, you green-eyed witch,’ Kit murmured.
Maudie slumped in disappointment. ‘These snatched moments just aren’t enough!’ she cried.
‘Then stay, my love. We can turn off the light and lie on the floor and make love …?’ he added in a soft, seductive whisper.
‘Kit!’ she yelped in shock.
He buried his face in her rich golden-red hair. ‘I want you so much …’ he whispered, his lips moving down her neck and lingering between her breasts.’
