* * *
Fifteen minutes later, I made it up the steps of Pippa’s cottage, out of breath again from race-walking while lugging my tote and a carrier bag full of books. I felt relieved when Pippa opened the door, her curly hair in a high ponytail and a smile on her face. No possibly unbalanced prep cooks had tried anything on her, then.
“So what’s this project you need help with?” she said, gesturing me inside.
I only hesitated a moment. “Pippa,” I said. “I’ve been trying, and failing, to think of how to start explaining. Let’s just say I’ve got a problem and I need to halve it big time.”
“All right, then,” she said, taking the bag of books from me. “I’ve got some coffee brewing. Let’s drink and talk. But first, an update on Lacey Costin.”
“Great. Lay it on me,” I said, ready to hear all about Lacey being an unhinged stalker or something.
“Turns out, she wasn’t working the day that weirdness with my Chinese food happened. In fact, she was visiting her parents in California.”
I didn’t know whether to say “Good” or “Rats!”
“I also went ahead and checked the security footage for that day, to see if anyone else messed with my food. Mrs. P. came and picked it up to bring to me, just like I already knew, but that’s it. No one even touched it.”
“A good theory, shattered,” I said, taking off my coat and laying it over the back of Pippa’s sofa, but leaving on the lightweight down vest I’d layered over my sweater.
“And we can shatter another one,” Pippa said. “Detective Dupart called just before you came over. Lacey was cleared of Chef Rocky’s murder, too. It seems when she disappeared from the security footage that afternoon, it was because Ysenia, the sous chef, asked her to make a run to the farmers’ market. There’s footage of her at the market during the time of the murder, which Dupart said was between eleven a.m. and three p.m.”
“Well, at least we know she’s not responsible for anything,” I said finally. “That’s something. Did Dupart give you any other information?”
Pippa shook her head. “Not really, except that they know the murderer came in through the backyard. They found evidence that a patch of Chef Rocky’s herb garden had been stepped on, but Dupart declined to say anything else until they know more.”
She made cafés au lait again, and we sat on the chairs in her office. “Okay, I’ve shared my news, now hit me with your half,” she said.
And I did. I just let it all tumble out, explaining everything from Hugo’s dying words and the Montblanc all the way to Sean’s message where he confirmed the names on the list were indeed the descendants of the Operation Greenfinch spies. I then showed her the copy of Hugo’s list where I’d written down the spies’ names next to their descendants. The whole time, Pippa gasped at regular intervals, sometimes in shock, sometimes in excitement, but didn’t interrupt.
“So, to sum up, there’s three lines of code we have to decipher, and I need your help, if you’re willing,” I finished.
“Lucy,” she said, “I can’t believe you’ve had this on your shoulders the whole time, but I understand why you kept quiet.” She held up one hand solemnly. “As the great-granddaughter of SOE agent James Sutton, if you had a copy of the Official Secrets Act, I would sign it. I’m not going to give any of this information away, I promise.”
She couldn’t have said anything that made me trust her more.
“Let’s get to work, then,” I said and handed her a copy of Hugo’s list, with the three names at the bottom still coded as book ciphers. We moved to sit on the rug so we could spread out.
“Ugh, the weather has turned seriously icky,” Pippa said, looking out the window of her home office as a light rain was beginning to fall. The wind was picking up as well, making it look more like a minor squall than just cold, misty rain.
“I’m not unhappy to be in here with lots of hot coffee and a warm dog snuggling up to me,” I said, giving Boomer’s belly a rub. He sighed contentedly, making Pippa grin.
“I’ll take the first cipher, and you take the second,” she said.
“Deal.” I stacked the nine copies of The Thirty-Nine Steps into two piles, and we each took a stack.
I’d explained that Grandpa and I didn’t yet know if the third number in each set of codes referred to the first letter of the designated word, but on this we got lucky quickly. On Pippa’s first try, she not only found the copy that worked to decipher Hugo’s full name—something I wasn’t surprised to see—but it also confirmed Grandpa’s theory of how the codes were encrypted.
We now concentrated on the last two ciphers. Though it was likely one of them was my name, the question of why Grandpa hadn’t been targeted earlier made me want to be sure.
I opened my copy and went to the page indicated by the first set of numbers. It turned out to be the end of a chapter with only a few sentences on the page. So, while the page number existed, the paragraph number and word number did not.
“This one’s out for my cipher,” I said and set it near Pippa for her to try.
Soon, Pippa found hers wouldn’t work, either. “Unless someone’s first name happens to be ‘Blorg.’”
My next book seemed like it was working—I got P-H-O-E and thought it would spell “Phoebe” or maybe even “Phoenix,” if the person’s parents had a hippie bent to them—until the next two letters were “A” and “I.” I didn’t think “Phoeai” was a name, either.
I quickly exhausted my last two books when they came back with “Sbbf” and, my personal favorite, “Gorf.”
“Nada for you, too, huh?” Pippa said, and shoved her pile of books my way. She’d thought she was getting the name Charles or Charleen until it went off the rails and ended up “Charlpk.”
Pippa poured us more coffee and we each took another book.
“What if none of these pan out?” she asked, writing down a “Q” as her first letter.
I sipped on my coffee and stretched my neck out. “Then I keep searching for other copies of the book,” I said.
Pippa tossed her book aside quickly. “I’m going to bet there aren’t any names starting with ‘Q-S-B.’” She picked up the book that had given me “Gorf” and started working.
I’d found my first letter—P—and flipped until I was at the next designated page. I counted to the right paragraph, then to the right word and wrote down an “H.” Then I got an “I” and an “L.” Two more ciphers later, and I looked down at my list.
P
H
I
L
I
P
Philip! I thought in triumph. It was a man named Philip Something. I found the next three letters quickly.
P
A
S
Pasquale? I thought. Pasternak? Passer? I practically dove into the book for the next letters.
U
T
Pasut? No, there were still three more letters. Passuter? Hmm, was that even a surname? Quickly, I found the last three.
T
O
N
Slowly, my eyes ran over the letters again, then I raised my head to look at my client—my friend—sitting right in front of me, her head bent over her copy of The Thirty-Nine Steps, flipping pages at a fast rate.
The cipher spelled out Philippa Sutton. Pippa was short for Philippa.
For a long moment, I felt a wave of terror come over me. I’d just told her everything, feeling safer doing so because I thought she wasn’t on the list. But she was. Pippa was being targeted.
Ridiculous thoughts like chaining Pippa to my side to keep her safe flew through my mind. I looked over her head at the framed photographs that hung between the two windows in her office, once more taking in the photo of her great-grandparents from 1945. I stared at it, calming myself by going over the facts I knew about James and Nell Sutton, listing their statistics like bullet points in my mind.
James Bracewell Sutton. Born December 5, 1920, London, Engl
and. Helen “Nell” Sutton. Born July 29, 1921, Corpus Christi, Texas. Maiden name …
Pippa was counting paragraphs on a page, then words. I saw her write what looked to be an “R” very slowly, as if in a trance, and then her eyes raised up to meet mine.
We could read the dread in each other’s faces as we both turned our legal pads around to show each other.
PHILIPPA SUTTON
LUCINDA LANCASTER
However, instead of being frightened, I smiled. “I know,” I said. “I know who she was.”
“Who?” Pippa said, looking perplexed.
“The female spy in Operation Greenfinch, the one who exposed the double agent. She was your great-grandmother, Helen Sutton, maiden name Davis.” Grabbing Hugo’s list, I showed her that her own name, Philippa Sutton, matched up as the descendant of the spy I’d written as H. Davis, American.
“The ‘H’ stands for Helen, with Nell being her nickname,” I told Pippa.
She blinked those big, dark green eyes. “But Lucy, it was my great-grandfather who was in the SOE. Great-Granny Nell was one of Eisenhower’s secretaries, not a spy.”
I grinned. “And what better cover could there be for a female spy who needed to be able to move around frequently than being one of the top brass’s secretaries?”
I turned and pointed to the V-E Day photograph on her wall. “Your great-grandmother, she was in the OSS, I’m sure of it. Pippa, you’re descended from not one, but two Allied spies.”
Despite the situation, Pippa bit her lip and then broke into a wide grin. “If you’re right, then, wow. I have to admit, that’s really cool.”
“Isn’t it, though?” I said excitedly. I held up my hand and she gave me an enthusiastic high-five. Boomer lifted his head and thumped his tail as if in agreement.
Pippa shook her legal pad at me. “But look at this, Lucy. You’re on the list, too.”
I had assumed I was, so it wasn’t a shock. Then I took her legal pad and really read it. “Wait a minute,” I said. “This isn’t my name. I’m not Lucinda Lancaster.”
Pippa frowned. “You’re not?”
I shook my head. “No, I’m Lucia Lancaster.”
“Really?”
My lips couldn’t help but curve up. “I was named after the character of Lucy Honeychurch in E. M. Forster’s A Room with a View, which is my mom’s favorite book. Mom always loved how Lucy’s cousin calls her Lucia, especially when they’re in Italy. I don’t have a drop of Italian blood in me, but Mom liked it, so that’s what I was named.”
Pippa grinned. “I like it, too, and I’ll have to call you Lucia now.” Then she pointed back at the name. “But then who is Lucinda Lancaster?”
I started to shrug that I had no idea, then stopped and put my fingers to my lips. “I think I might know,” I whispered.
There was a knock on Pippa’s front door. Boomer was up on his feet with a woof.
“Pippa, dear, are you in there?” Mrs. P. called.
“For the love of Pete, this is the third time she’s come to my door today,” Pippa said. “I don’t know what her problem is—she usually either calls or just makes a decision on her own.” She huffed out a sigh. “I’ll go see what she wants.” Boomer’s hackles had stood up and Pippa gave the top of his head a brief rub. “It’s just Mrs. P., silly. Stop being such a goof.”
“Pippa, dear!” said Mrs. P., sounding a bit agitated. Glancing out the window, I couldn’t blame her. It looked like the temperature had dropped another ten degrees and it was still lightly raining.
“Coming, Mrs. P.!” Pippa called back.
“Close the door,” I said. “Just in case.” Boomer followed her out and the barn door closed smoothly on its rollers. I heard her opening the front door and the sounds of genial conversation.
I’d pulled my laptop toward me and found the database that logged obituaries. I typed in “George Lancaster,” “Texas,” and a date range that was in the last ten years.
The obit was long and full of lovely words for the man who had the same name as my grandfather, mentioning his youth in Houston and his time in the European Theater in World War II. I scrolled to the end, where it listed George’s family members. I was picking up my phone and calling Detective Dupart before I could think twice.
His voice mail picked up. Frustrated, I realized he’d never take me seriously if I babbled, so I strove for a clear and believable message.
“Detective Dupart, this is Lucy Lancaster,” I began, speaking slowly but with confidence. “I know this will sound weird, but it’s important, so please listen carefully. My contact at the National Archives has found the information we need. I have the list of spies from Operation Greenfinch who match up to the descendants on Hugo Markman’s list. I’ve also decoded the last three names on the list. One is Hugo himself. The second is Pippa Sutton—but she’s here with me, and safe. The third, however, is a woman named Lucinda Lancaster.”
I took a breath and continued. “Detective, I am not Lucinda Lancaster—my first name is Lucia. However, this woman named Lucinda is the daughter of a World War Two veteran named George Lancaster—which is coincidentally also my grandfather’s name.”
I paused, knowing I was about to give up Grandpa’s secret, but it had to be done.
“This is important,” I said, holding my phone tightly to my ear. “There were two George Lancasters from Houston in the war. One was a regular soldier, the other was an OSS spy. The George Lancaster the killer has listed is not the spy. I know this because the real OSS operative is my grandfather. This means the killer made a mistake in his research. Detective, the killer may be going after a woman who has no connection to Operation Greenfinch whatsoever, and I need you to make sure she’s safe.”
I finished the message by imploring Dupart to check on Lucinda Lancaster, telling him that, as of a few years ago, she lived in Flower Mound, Texas.
I hung up, hoping Dupart would get the message quickly. For my part, questions were popping up left and right.
If the killer had made a mistake in his research and had never been targeting Grandpa and me, then was it possible that Grandpa’s accident was just that—an accident? And what about my brakes? Could Frank have been wrong?
I found the video Frank had sent me and watched it in dismay. No, Frank had not been wrong.
I went to forward the video to Dupart, then stopped. I’d just left him a long message with a lot of information to process. I didn’t want this video to overshadow the potential safety of an innocent woman. No, I’d forward it to him later. I picked up Hugo’s list again, with all the names now decoded.
The killer made a mistake in his research. My own words to Dupart came back to me when I scanned the last three names.
I thought about Grandpa, being nearly run down. I looked down at my phone, at the video that confirmed my brakes had been tampered with. We both could have been killed, and that was no mistake.
“The killer figured it out,” I whispered. “He knows he found the wrong George Lancaster.”
“Would you like to know how I did it?” I easily visualized Grandpa’s grin the other day as he told the story of how he got into the army at sixteen and three-quarters years old. “They didn’t cotton on to me because there was another George Lancaster and I passed myself off as him—at least initially.”
He’d been in his accident the very next day, hadn’t he?
I stilled. I remembered the reaction Grandpa’s story had received. How a pair of crystalline blue eyes had gone round. How she’d said, “Wouldn’t it be funny if he had a granddaughter named Lucy, too?”
I swallowed, hard. No, my mind kept repeating. No. It couldn’t be! Not sweet, helpful Mrs. P. “Don’t even think such things, Lucy!” I admonished myself.
Yet similarly to when I looked at Pippa’s great-grandparents and their stats came up in my mind, I couldn’t help it now. With Mrs. P.’s pink-cheeked face and ginger pageboy swimming before my eyes, the ugly facts, like actual bullets, shot out at me.
<
br /> Terrence had mentioned Chef Rocky was killed in a way that would have required black ops training or medical training. Mrs. P. had been a nurse for ten years before switching careers.
Uncle Dave had told me how Mrs. P. and her admirer, “Mr. H.,” used to sit at the corner table at the Sutton Grand, eating gelato, and talking about World War II and their grandfathers. Uncle Dave had more or less told me Mr. H. was Hugo, but I’d taken that knowledge and put it in terms of Roselyn and her gambling secret. I hadn’t for a second suspected Mrs. P. in Hugo’s death.
And poor, poor Hugo. Did Mrs. P. poison him with radium chloride? She would have known the effects of various kinds of poisons. But how would she have done it?
I smacked my forehead with my palm. She collected old pocket watches. Radium chloride was used to make the faces and dials of clocks glow. I didn’t know how long it took the chemical to kill someone. Days? Weeks? However long, there was enough time in between so that Mrs. P.’s hand in Hugo’s death wasn’t noticeable, that maybe it just seemed like his underlying health issues were merely getting worse. Until it was too late, that was.
I thought about how Pippa’s Chinese-food leftovers had killed the gardener’s chickens a couple of weeks earlier. Mrs. P. must have poisoned the leftovers, hoping to kill Pippa, but it hadn’t worked. Did she use radium chloride there, too? Regardless, she hadn’t tried again quickly. No, Mrs. P. was smarter than that. If she had, someone would have put two and two together sooner.
Other moments flooded back. The look on Mrs. P.’s face when I jokingly asked if her last name could have originally been Pohlmann, and her perfect East End accent as she told me about her mother, a hotel housekeeper, and her father, who was “good with cars.”
“Me mum and me dad were about as far from being toffs as you could get. Hardly two shillings to rub between them their whole lives—though me dad always claimed he was the son of a peer. Mum never believed him, though.”
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