“If the Germans invade England and I’m still here, I promise to come and fight alongside you, Lady Sheffield.”
“You are a darling boy, even if you do have sticky fingers.”
“I’m five pages into The Man in the Queue.” It was the truth.
“Keep it then,” she said, patting my hand. “I can order another from the bookseller.”
I knew then that Lady Sheffield would work with me to uncover a German agent. Information came pouring out of my mouth, all my suspicions about this and that person.
“You have such a vivid imagination. Just like Reggie,” she said. She paused, thinking. “You can cross Alice off your list. She and Reggie were in love.”
“Alice?” I said, surprised. She didn’t seem the lovey-dovey type to me. But it seemed I was wrong there. Turned out that Reggie met Alice on a visit home, and the two fell for each other right away—one of them whirlwind wartime romances: introduced on Friday, engaged by Monday. Reggie even gave Alice a diamond engagement ring—a Sheffield family heirloom.
“The dear thing returned it to me when Reggie died. True, they’d only been together a week… Still, she didn’t have to return the ring—it was hers by rights. But it had been mine before her engagement and she felt it was proper that I should have it back.” She held her ring finger out to me, showing me the rock. I had to sit on my hands.
“Dot is my chief suspect,” I said. “She says she’s going with one of the Millionaire pilots, but I know for a fact that she’s in cahoots with Henry Wilson, a mechanic. I saw them kissing with my own eyes.”
“Oh, my,” she said. “That happens all the time, my dear. A boy goes away and a girl gets bored and takes up with someone else. It doesn’t mean that she has anything but unfaithfulness to hide. Dot seems like a blue-blooded English girl if ever there were one. Come to think of it, I believe her father is in the House of Lords.”
“They’re up to something, I’m telling you.”
Just then, people came pouring out of the church. It reminded me about the pie-eating contest. I wasn’t about to miss it. When I explained my need to run, Lady Sheffield said: “Didn’t those three buns fill you up?”
“Plenty of room left,” I said, wiping my mouth. I excused myself, patting my stomach while sucking it in. “And thanks for the intelligence.”
“You have chores,” she reminded me. “But they can wait, I suppose. Now that we’re friends.” She winked.
Lady Sheffield was A-Okay. I promised to come back to the house after the contest and help her pull weeds.
“It’s as though you won the battle, but lost the war,” said Daphne, looking at the ribbon pinned to my chest. Her hand was on my back, my head hovering above the toilet bowl. Vomit dribbled from the corner of my mouth. Who’d of thought there could be anything left in my stomach?
But there was.
If I had it to do over again, I would still of ate the pies. Afterwards, a nun said she was proud of me, forgetting that pride and gluttony are two of the seven deadly sins. Not only did I get the blue ribbon but a one-pound note, too. On top of that, the priest promised that when the bells were fixed, he’d let me be the first one to ring them.
Daphne put her wrist against my sweaty forehead. “You’re not going to say the Nazis poisoned the five pies you ate, are you? Six, I mean.” She remembered the chocolate cream I’d wolfed down on the way to church.
“Look,” I said. “I’m in no mood for your wise-cracks. If you can find some Pepto-Bismol I’d be mighty grateful.” Even though it was an American concoction, they sold the pink medicine in England. I’d already spotted the bottle in the bathroom medicine cabinet, but I didn’t let on.
Within an hour I was fit as a fiddle, pulling dead dandelions out of the lawn. Lady Sheffield sat in a chaise with a paperback mystery in her hand, shouting instructions to me.
“Not my lavender!” she said when I reached for a clump of weeds. Five minutes later she yelled out when I reached to pull up a scraggly bush with shriveled brown seedpods. The leaves smelt like parsnips. “Not that either, dear,” she said. “I’ll deal with that myself. Now go wash your hands with soap and water, and then join me for tea.”
That was my cue to put down the trowel. When I saw the plate of little cakes, my stomach began protesting. “Tea, please,” I said. “And no sugar.” I couldn’t believe my own lips.
“Hands first, dear,” she said, pointing to the dirt under my fingernails. “Give them a good scrub, would you? There’s a nail-brush next to the bar of soap at the kitchen sink.” I obeyed and entered her cottage, finding everything right where she said it’d be. When I joined her back outside, she inspected my hands and then shooed me into the chair next to her. I noticed she set two places next to a fancy-pants tea service set, made of .925 pure silver.
“I made ginger tea for you,” she said. “It settles the stomach. My mother used to know all the folk remedies. There’s so much healing in simple herbs.” Lady Sheffield sighed. I tried to look sympathetic, which wasn’t hard. When she poured my tea, little slices of ginger floated to the top of the gold-rimmed teacup. “My Reggie was such a good child,” she said. “Brilliant in school. Why, the teachers couldn’t keep up with him. He’d always be asking ‘why this?’ and ‘why that?’ So inquisitive. Drove my husband and me crazy.” She laughed, half-hearted. “What I wouldn’t do for some of his questions now.”
She told me that, with war on the horizon, Reggie got in touch with an acquaintance of his father’s—a man in intelligence during the Great War. At the time, Reggie was in his final year of an advanced degree in Mathematics at Cambridge University. “He was invited to visit an old monstrosity of a house outside of London, where his professor was setting up a secret department.”
“Hush-hush,” I said.
“Between you and me and the four walls, I suspect it was established to decipher German wireless messages.”
We were sitting in the garden, I pointed out. There were no walls.
“I spoke German to Reggie when he was a child. And Yiddish. I wanted him to have a head start on language. They say a mind that is good at languages is also good at maths—so, maybe it helped.”
“I haven’t found that to be true, Lady S., but go on.”
“The war hadn’t begun yet, but everyone knew that—sooner or later—push would come to shove. I suppose I shouldn’t tell you this.”
“I’ll keep my trap shut. I already got classified information in this head.” I tapped my skull. “And I’ll never give it up—not even if they pull my fingernails out, one by one.”
Her body shivered. True, it was a bit chilly. “Please don’t be so graphic,” she said, then poured more tea into our cups. My stomach was feeling better, thanks to her ma’s recipe. She kept talking: “I was so relieved. I mean—Reggie would have a safe desk job. I’d been worried that he’d be sent overseas. Of course, even then, we knew Hitler’s intention toward the Jewish people. I’d read Mein Kampf.”
I told Lady Sheffield that I’d read Mein Kampf, too; that it kept me up nights; that my German instructor, Mr. Fisch, gave it to me in preparation for my trip to Europe—the one where I rescued my brother. I told her that it was because of that book I was extra vigilant in protecting Daphne. That it was one of the reasons I worked nonstop to stop Nazis, when most kids were shooting dice and playing with pick-up-sticks.
I was about to confess to spying on her while she was reading by the fireplace the night before—Agatha Christie, probably. Me thinking she was studying that awful Mein Kampf. But before I could, she looked up at the sky, lost in her thoughts, and said: “I should have known that whatever they were up to at Bletchley Park would draw the attention of the Germans, and that Reggie’s life would be at risk—even if he was safely on this side of the Channel. Hitler’s hand reaches very far.”
I asked her how she could be sure it was them who killed Reggie.
“It was the note—what they termed ‘the suicide note.’ Although it was no such t
hing.”
I asked if she still had it. She rose from the chaise and I followed her into the house, up the stairs and into her bedroom. She opened the drawer with the German pistol. I’d missed the note in my search—my eyes had bugged out soon as I seen the gun.
“I’ll go downstairs,” she said, “and leave you to read it.”
When she left the room, I sat on the bed, my hand trembling and the note shaking back and forth. The note would hold the key to the whole mystery.
Dearest Mother, it said. I shan’t return home at the week’s end. Perhaps not for a good long while—my heart is too heavy to write more. Mother, you were right about one thing—
There the note ended. Without so much as a toodeloo or a signature. I reread it a few times over, not sure why the note made Lady Sheffield jump to the conclusion that the Nazis murdered her son. After putting the letter back in the drawer, I made my way downstairs. Lady Sheffield had hot cocoa ready—or something approximating chocolate. “Carob,” she explained, grown in her own garden. It was better than any chocolate substitute I’d tried yet. Maybe I’d take some back to Mrs. Balson, the cook at Warfield Hall.
“What’s the one thing?” I asked her, after taking a sip. The drink was so hot, my tongue stung.
“The what?”
“The one thing you were right about? Reggie wrote: Mother, you were right about one thing.”
“I only wish I knew,” she said. “I was the sort of mother who was always giving advice. What he should wear, how he should have his hair cut… He might have been referring to a million things. I assumed he meant that I was right about Hitler. I’d seen this coming back in 1932, when a friend in Germany sent us a copy of that vile man’s book—may his name be blotted out forever. That was long before anyone else in this country began taking the threat seriously.”
I had a sudden thought: maybe she’d warned Reggie off Alice. I didn’t like the woman one bit. And since I liked Lady Sheffield so much, it stood to reason that she didn’t like Alice either. But I was wrong there—she’d given Alice the thumbs up from the beginning. Alice and her became pals even before Reggie showed up.
“Alice was perfect for Reggie,” she said. “They had so much in common.”
“Like what?” I asked.
“For one thing, they both loved to travel. Wanderlust is what you call it. Why, from the time Reggie was old enough to read, he gravitated to adventure novels and the memoirs of the great explorers: Richard Burton, Livingstone, and the like. Alice was the same. They were planning a round-the-world honeymoon once the war was over and it was safe to travel again. Reggie had a trust fund, you see. I was afraid he’d spend it gallivanting around the planet with Alice and have nothing left to support a family.” She made one of those laughs that aren’t funny. “And they both loved puzzles and mechanical things. Reggie was always building transistor radios, and train sets, and—” She stopped to sniffle. “Most girls haven’t the least interest, but Alice isn’t like most girls.”
I’d say.
When I finished my cocoa, my stomach began rebelling again and I asked to be excused. By then it was almost suppertime. Even though I was in no shape for food, I wondered if Daphne and me would be meeting Jack for supper.
Lady Sheffield was broken-hearted to see me go. “You may tell the warden that your sentence had been suspended,” she said as I left. “Although I’d always welcome a visit.”
I pulled up a few extra weeds on my way back to the main house, that’s how sorry I felt for the lady.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“THERE YOU ARE,” said Daphne, when I entered the back door and stepped into the kitchen at the main house. She was rinsing out teacups. “Geraldine will get us back into the base, and we can check and see if Jack has yet to return.”
“Mount your saddles!” said Geraldine, bouncing down the stairs, back in uniform.
Alice was at the table, dressed like she’d been to church, even though I knew she’d played hooky. She was reading a newspaper and ignoring me as usual. Suddenly I realized that it might be the murder of her boyfriend that made her so grumpy. So I said: “Nice to see you Alice.” She looked up and nodded her head.
We rolled down the driveway, me with the bicycle all to myself. That is, unless you counted Ringo, who was rolled up in the front basket. Daphne was sidesaddle on Geraldine’s bike rack, clutching Geraldine’s heavy military issued black leather briefcase.
We were almost to the base and nearing the front gate, when Daphne fell off the bicycle in one great thud. I was right behind—only my lightening-fast reflexes prevented me from running over her. I jumped off of my saddle and got on my knees next to her. Ringo began yelping and running around us in circles. Daphne’s face was blue, and her eyes rolled around in her head. Beads of sweat dripped from her skin, even though the temperature was cold as an ice cream pop. She gasped for air. When I took her hand, it trembled like a drunk gone off the wagon.
“I’ll fetch a doctor,” yelled Geraldine. “Tommy, you mind her.”
“Daphne!” I said, “Say something!”
“I can’t move my limbs,” she said with a slurred, gasping voice. She stared straight up to the sky and whispered, “By all means marry,” breathlessly. Then she conked out.
I slapped her face, like I seen in a movie once. All that did was make a red mark on her cheek. I grabbed her wrist and felt for a pulse. There was none. I prayed to Jesus, Joseph, and Mary—Saint Simon of Cyrene might not be high enough up the ladder. With no one there to see, I let myself tear up. My stomach began tumbling again, from the worry.
Thump. Thump. Her pulse was as slow as the chugging of a choo-choo train leaving the station. An ambulance raced in our direction, ringing its bells. Daphne’s hand was in mine. It felt cold and clammy and still. Which worried me more than the tremor had. The ambulance stopped short and the back door swung open. Jack jumped out, along with two nurses. Geraldine came running along on foot, with Squadron Leader Kennard right behind her.
The nurses placed a mask on Daphne’s face. Attached to the hose was an oxygen tank, the kind fitted into Spitfires. Jack lifted her onto the stretcher and helped carry the stretcher into the ambulance. No one spoke. My brother slammed the doors shut and jumped up onto the back bumper. The ambulance sped off toward the base hospital. The three of us trailed behind in the dusty tracks it made. Geraldine put her arm around my shoulder.
Squadron Leader Kennard said, “Food poisoning again.”
I was no doctor, but Daphne didn’t have the same symptoms as the others. They’d all vomited. She’d turned blue and passed out. Come to think of it, she didn’t complain about her stomach, not once.
Squadron Leader Kennard signed me onto the base and we headed straight for the hospital. Jack sat on a bench outside the operating room. He was still wearing his flight uniform: parachute harness, helmet, and Mae West flotation vest. I sat next to him. Kennard took a seat on the other side of Jack. They both looked done in. At first, Jack didn’t notice us. He was leaning over with his hands pressed to his eyes. Geraldine stood right in front of us. She reached into her briefcase and pulled out a small silver flask, handing it to Jack.
“She’ll pull through,” she said, without much gusto. Anyone who’d seen Daphne laying there on the road would expect to see her laid out in a coffin next.
“I don’t get it,” I said. “She was fine one minute, and then the next—”
“Did she say anything before she passed out?” asked my brother.
“By all means marry. That’s what she said.”
“That’s my girl,” said my brother Jack, his eyes watering up.
“Why, I do believe she was quoting—” began Kennard, who was cut off when the doctor came out from the operating room.
“We’re running tests,” the doctor said. “The good news is that we have her breathing again. I’ll say though, it was touch and go for a moment. She’s on a respirator. We’ve gotten everything out of her stomach. Fortunately, we acted in go
od time. She’ll stay with us overnight and we’ll monitor her progress carefully.”
“She said she couldn’t move her limbs,” I said.
“Is that so?” said the Doctor. His face had the look of wheels turning. “Well, there’s one piece of a puzzle, information that may be of use in making a diagnoses. You’ll excuse me?” He raced off down the long corridor. The taps on his heels made clickity-clack sounds on the floor. We were all watching him go—like he was our last hope in the world. The doctor screeched to a halt, so that his shoes slid on the waxed floor. I was afraid he’d fall. He made a note on a clipboard and walked on, even faster.
The operating room door swung open and two medics wheeled Daphne past us. There were all sorts of tubes coming from her mouth and nose, and more tubes stuck in her arm and attached to bags of clear fluids. She was dressed in a green muumuu, and her eyes were shut. Jack jumped to his feet, wringing his hands—I did the same thing; it was always that way when I was with my brother; if you didn’t know any better, you’d think we were playing Simon Says. When we started following behind the stretcher, one of the medics told us to go to the waiting room. We found our way there, not saying a word.
“I’m starving,” I said finally, not thinking. Jack looked over at me, as though to say, How could you think of food at a time like this?
“Actually,” he said, “come to think of it, I’m famished myself. Haven’t eaten so much as a crumb all day.” He took my hand in his and squeezed hard. He didn’t mean no harm, but it felt like he’d crush my fingers. “I don’t want to leave her though,” he said.
“See here,” said Kennard, standing up quickly. “I’ll take the motorbike into the village and bring us back supper. We can’t trust the base fare, obviously. How does fish and chips sound to everyone? And perhaps a beer?”
“Make that two, sir,” said Jack.
“Make that a soda pop for me,” I said. “Sir…please.”
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